The Cinderwraiths died in our opening volley. I didn’t even get to really fight one of them at all, let alone get a good look at them. Talk about disappointment. Is that what you expect me to say? It’s not what happened.

The cavern the Cinderwraiths had infested looked to have been an animal den at some point in the past. The first chamber seemed like the sort of place a bear might have hibernated, and there were no Cinderwraiths within it. There were two tunnels going deeper, one was small and filled with jagged rocks that would rip anyone larger than a goblin to pieces if they tried to navigate it. We couldn’t risk the wraiths coming around behind us and trapping us in the tunnel we could fit through, so Tyler raised a stone wall and Lilith inscribed it with anti-demon glyphs. It wasn’t a surefire method to block the wraiths, but it should discourage them at the very least, we thought.

I quickly concluded that I hated tight spaces. The jagged protrusions of rock wouldn’t hinder the spectral wraiths, but they minimized our group’s ability to do anything but proceed single file. The tightness gave me flashbacks to the training Sun Wukong had given me in bamboo groves, but I couldn’t just knock rock walls out of the way like I could a bamboo tree. Worse, I didn’t have any of my evasion abilities stacked up, so I’d be at a real disadvantage if I had to fight like this.

And I did have to fight like this.

The only warning was a shift in the air, and a phantasmal form came together before me. Woven of pure energy, the being looked like a spectral human skeleton with demonic horns and two sets of bat wings on its back. Goosebumps crossed my skin, and I couldn’t prevent the shivers that struck me as heat drained away from me at its mere proximity.

Since I was in the lead, I manifested all the cold I could from my Cold Kinesis and struck the flaming skull. Indestructible gloves or not, my fingers went numb by the time I frost-punched it between the eyes. The orange-flames around its skull dulled with the impact of my hand but seemed to be utterly impervious to the release of cold energies from my hand.

“No good, it might as well be immune to cold!” Lilith called from behind.

Darkness writhed before me, and Morgan appeared before me. The curved black blade of Moral Dilemma sliced through the Cinderwraith in one contemptuous swing of the sickle. The flames and magic of the creature sputtered out instantly.

“Behind you!” I called to Morgan and activated Dragonfly Strike to appear behind the next Cinderwraith. My aura flared dark; a black-tinged-with-green marked the ascension of my death Kinesis. It activated even as I ambushed the monster from behind. The teleportation effect of Dragonfly Strike never failed to be exceptionally useful in a fight.

This time I remembered to activate the Void Infusion. The mixture of death and madness I held in my hands put a manic smile on my lips, and when my fists struck the Cinderwraith, I couldn’t stop a little bit of laughter spilling out of my throat.

The dark purple energies of the Void flowed from my gloves along with the power of death, amplified by all of my speed thrown into the attack with no regard for the safety of my own hands. Indestructible gloves were the best. This time when my fist struck the skull of the wraith, it exploded into a vortex of crushed bone, the cold of its awful vampiric existence didn’t even reach me this time.

“Can you do necromancy?” Morgan asked as they stepped up and ran their fingers in the air, creating a rune of darkness and shadow. Shadowglyphs were an interesting ability that Morgan had picked up recently from Arkaziel.

“Keep pushing into a wider opening!” Lilith insisted.

“Working on it,” I added as I stepped past Morgan and the rune. Lilith or Morgan could work out for themselves who that answered, or if it answered both. The rune was a defensive rune I’d seen in practice before, so I assumed it was meant to protect our rear since the tunnel split open wider just a few meters further in. I didn’t worry about it much, and instead was the first to see the large chamber the tunnel opened into, and at the far back a whole swarm of Cinderwraiths fed off a fire orb.

“Hot,” Morgan said. I was uncertain if they meant potential necromancy, or that the chamber with the Eye of Fire spiked in heat compared to the previous tunnels, despite the large amount of Cinderwraiths. Turnabout was fair play, it seemed.

“Fifty-four Cinderwraiths,” I whispered.

New Subquest: Kill all (2/62) Cinderwraiths.

I felt personally attacked by the System.

“We’re starting to cast. Morgan, steal the eye on a ten count, Alexander, make sure nothing gets to the backline, Tyler, be ready to stone-shield.” Aisha and Cassius had moved up and started chanting as Lilith spoke, preparing their spells to be ready at the exact moment Lilith had already timed it out too.

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“..9, 10.” Lilith finished the count off. Morgan flickered through the shadows as bursts of electricity filled the air around the Cinderwraiths. Morgan snatched the Eye of Fire and disappeared, and the motes of electricity exploded into cascading bolts of lightning that chained across the huge swarm.

“Yes!” Cassius cried, and pumped his arm in excitement. He’d never pulled off such a big area effect before, but I’m also assuming he got some kind of title or achievement from the System for hitting so many targets at once.

When the lightning bolts were at their brightest, sacred light blossomed to life within the swarm of monsters. Synergizing off the powerful light generated by Cassius’ spell, Aisha’s sacred light shone more brilliantly than ever as radiant power struck down the vile Cinderwraiths.

Kill all (47/62) Cinderwraiths.

Fifteen Cinderwraiths remained from the combination of Lightning Motes and Sacred Light, and I flashed my Kinesis to Lightning when I sped forward. My Rainbow Dash left a thick storm of stationary bolts of lightning across their path. The fiends ran through it without a second thought. Perhaps my Kinesis lacked the oomph of Cassius? Not a single one of the creatures died crossing the lightning field my Rainbow Dash created.

“My rearguard glyph went off,” Morgan snapped from the center of the group. “Hold onto this, Cassius, I’ll wipe them out.”

By the time Cassius had the Fire Eye in his hands, Morgan had already adjusted her grip on Moral Dilemma and vanished into the darkness.

“Stonewall!” Tyler cried and lifted his hands. Behind me multiple four foot high wall lifted, generating cover for all the casters and leaving only Tyler and I unprotected. Fifteen large Cinderwraiths bore down upon me.

“Across from the Cocytus, behold the River Phlegethon!” Lilith’s voice crashed across the chamber in a mighty echo, driven by divine reverb. It almost made me lose my footing while I dodged blows from the first of the Cinderwraiths to reach me.

I don’t think anyone saw me flailing around and I managed to avoid getting hit at all. Barely. Then rivers the color of blood formed out of portals beside Lilith and crashed into the greater opening of the cave. The blood looking water moved like a Cinderwraith drawn to fire, straight towards the monsters. When the bloody waters crashed into the wraiths the air turned into a shower of sparks, magical paradox that burned at the retinas, or would have if I didn’t have killer sunglasses.

“Finish it!” Lilith shouted, and I activated Chromatic Cascade. The world in front of me, or at least the majority of it, turned into a ridiculous vortex of lightning. Between my lightning storm, Lilith’s on-going damage, and the previous spells the last of the Wraiths fell easily, and the fight ended before Cassius and Aisha’s next spell finished.

SubQuest ‘Kill all (62/62) Cinderwraiths’ Completed.

Eye of Fire acquired. Re-ignite the Eyes of Fire in their proper locations atop Serpent’s Maw.

And just like that, we finished the quest.

“Good job everyone. Alexander, good recovery when you got scared by my invocation.” A small scattering of laughter followed Lilith’s praise for the group. Apparently my nearly falling had been noticed.

One of the voices laughing was Morgan’s. Moral Dilemma wasn’t to be seen in their hands, and they were smirking at me, but after a moment the smirk turned into a wink and a smile. My concern at their safety acknowledged, I gave the cave a once over for more loot. We found some ore, a few Cinderwraith cores, and a pile of bones and broken items that had presumably once been magical, but the wraiths had already drained them of power long before we had ever shown up.

A party of seven individuals who all graduated from the Academy felt like over-kill after such an easy victory. I knew this was hubris though. In fact, Lilith lectured us all on the dangers of hubris, and that the entire purpose of this side-quest could have been to give us a false sense of superiority and safety while we were heading into one of the most dangerous dungeons on the continent. It took us a full two hours to reach the summit of the Maw.

We managed to make it to the apex of the mountain before nightfall, at least. Rather than place the Fire Eyes in their slots straight away, we temporarily sealed one of the eye holes. Tyler and Cassius created an earthen wall to give us shelter. It felt like a childhood camping trip, eating provisions around a fire in the eyehole of a great stone serpent.

No one crawled into anyone else’s bedrolls as far as I could tell, but given Morgan snuck into mine, I could’ve been wrong on that. If Aisha or Akari snuck into Lilith or Tyler’s, well, they were as circumspect and quiet about it as Morgan had been. Silence spells weren’t that uncommon.

After a breakfast of bread and cheese, we finished the Eyes of Fire quest. With the flames restored, we received two keys as reward: a bronze key and a gold key. We had no idea what they were for, but it seemed likely they’d open something inside the dungeon.

With that quest done, we hopped down platforms conjured from air to descend to the Serpent’s Maw. The actual entrance to the Maw was the mouth. There was no actual cave that went deeper into the throat of the serpent, but a large black portal. There was no mistaking it for a regular dungeon entrance, and especially no way anyone could confuse it with anything pleasant.

“Do we all start in the same place?” Aisha asked curiously.

“We should, but the only firsthand information we have on this dungeon came from a party of four. So, there is always a possibility that we will be separated to challenge us.” Lilith bit her lower lip. “It’s what I’d do to any larger parties.”

“Well, it’s too late to rethink our party size. We’re here, we need to grow stronger. I intend to kill Argarg when we leave here. Quit being afraid of a scary dark portal and let’s do what we came here to do!” Morgan tried to be inspiring, but even I had a hard time not frowning at their odd vibe. I gave their shoulder a squeeze and took the first step towards the black portal.

“I want to be first,” Morgan stopped me, and dashed ahead. In a poof, Morgan vanished into the darkness.

“Go team,” I said and followed.

Welcome to the Serpent’s Maw MegaDungeon. Are you absolutely certain you want to enter?

“Yes,” I answered mentally and felt the system teleport me.

Welcome to your first MegaDungeon.

Unlike regularly dungeons, you may not leave a MegaDungeon except at the exits provided in floor change areas.

Challenge Rating* of Serpent’s Maw, Floor 1: Level 22.

Challenge Rating calculated based on party size.