There wasn’t any time for Arwin to stop and consider if he actually wanted to help the Ardent guild. This was probably the team that Busal had mentioned reaching the fifth room. Arwin really didn’t have much desire to have any more dealings with them than he had to — but a death was still a death, and none of the adventurers before him looked far from it.
He bounded down the hill, [Scourge] pouring into his legs and accelerating him with every step he took. It wasn’t the ideal way to engage the snake, but there wasn’t enough time for him to draw Prism’s Reach.
Arwin shot past the Ardent guildmembers just as the snake’s head shot forward. He summoned Verdant Blaze and brought the hammer around, slamming it into the side of the snake’s snout and pumping his muscles full of [Scourge].
A crack rang out, tremors racing up Arwin’s arms, and the snake flinched back to abandon its attack. It felt more like he’d surprised the monster rather than actually injured it. Arwin dropped to the ground in front of the other adventurers just as Rodrick arrived beside them.
The snake hissed, pulling back even farther to stare down at him with a massive, watery eye. Its tongue flicked out to taste the air, trying to determine if Arwin was actually a threat or if he was just another snack waiting to sprint into its mouth.
“What are you doing?” the leftmost guildsman asked in a distressed tone.
“Saving your sorry asses,” Arwin barked. “Why are you still fighting this thing? Do you not realize that we’re just a few deaths from a Dungeon Break? Get out of here!”
The air itself rattled as the Life Constrictor let out a low hiss. Green smoke wafted out from the corners of its mouth and curled up around its head.
“We can’t!” the healer said, her voice gummy and thick, like she was trying to speak through a mouthful of food. “You’re the one that needs to leave. The snake has a neurotoxin in its breath! It slows your movement. We can’t move fast enough to get away.”
The corners of the Life Constrictor’s mouth pulled back, almost as if it was smiling. Then it exhaled. Sickly green fog rolled across the ground like the front of an approaching storm. The adventurer closest to Arwin groaned and pulled his shield forward like he was moving through molasses.
Energy erupted from it as he activated a Skill — but Arwin didn’t wait around to see what it was. He banished Verdant Blaze and grabbed the two men closest to him, slinging one over each shoulder as he spun.
Rodrick grabbed the first of the healers and Olive drew up alongside them just in time to snag the last woman — and they all spun and sprinted back for the hills as fast as they could move.
The snake roared and stretched after them. Even as bound to the tower as it was, the monster was huge. A shadow blocked out the sky, but Arwin didn’t even bother craning his neck back to look up at it. The only thing he was focused on was pumping his legs as fast as he possibly could.
Water rippled around Rodrick, who was staring straight in Anna’s direction and using the increased movement speed he got for moving toward allies to escape danger instead of run into it.
Shadows rose up from the ground around Arwin and the others running from the Life Constrictor. They formed into a thick plate and snapped to the side, launching them all like toys through the air.
A thick wall of wind slammed into Arwin before he could even hit the ground, throwing him and the two adventurers in his grip even farther. They hit the ground in a tumble of limbs and an earth-shaking crash shook the world an instant later with enough force to buck Arwin back into the air.
The world spun around him and he lost his grip on the adventurers, letting them tumble on their own as he caught his own balance. He needed them alive, but that didn’t mean he was going to go out of his way to make sure they didn’t get bruised up.
Arwin managed to catch his balance just as the huge snake’s head started to rise. It had slammed its body into the ground in an attempt to crush them, and Lillia had just barely thrown them to safety in time.
Ironically, when dealing with a monster this large, its shadow was actually big enough that Lillia’s own abilities were also stronger. Groans from the adventurers at Arwin’s feet told him that they were still alive.
Rodrick and Olive had been thrown a fair bit farther than Arwin had, but they both pushed themselves back upright as well. They weren’t out of the snake’s range yet, and trying to take it on while they were ferrying around what might as well have been corpses would make the fight borderline impossible.
Arwin scooped the Ardent guildmembers back up, activating [Scourge] once more so he could actually lift two people in full plate armor, and sprinted off. Rodrick and Olive were right behind him, though it looked like Olive was dragging her target more than carrying them.
The Life Constrictor’s hiss echoed through the dungeon once more. Another wave of green mist rolled from its mouth and washed toward them. Arwin pumped his legs harder, skidding to a stop at the edge of the hill and hurling both of the men in his grip.
They sailed through the air, but Arwin had already turned back to the others by the time he heard them hit the ground with two loud thuds and a multitude of pained curses. The wall of poison was rolling closer, and without Scourge, both Rodrick and Olive weren’t as fast as he was.
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Arwin shot back into motion, running to grab the two female guildmembers from their grasp. Rodrick instantly grabbed Olive instead, drawing on [Flowing Steps] as he raced back for safety.
The few moments it took Arwin to shoulder the two women and draw on [Scourge] again were enough for the poison to reach them. It washed over his body like a cold, wet fog and pressed in against his armor.
Almost immediately, the gem on the center of Arwin’s chest armor started to glow a dull green. It did its best to absorb all the magic around him, but it was nowhere near enough. The Ardent guildmembers coughed and wheezed as the poison wound into their lungs.
It prickled at Arwin’s throat and wound into the base of his skull, but he sprinted all the same. They were only in the fog for a few seconds before he burst free of it once more, sprinting past Rodrick and up the hill.
Wisps of green smoke coiled off his body and he coughed, expelling some of it from his lungs. Despite the furious prickling that had now stretched to completely cover him, his movements didn’t feel slowed at all.
A small laugh slipped free as he realized why. The Life Constrictor’s poisonous mist was a neurotoxin. It targeted the mind. [Indomitable] protected him from mental effects, so unless he took a bath in the snake’s poison for a prolonged time, it wasn’t going to be able to do anything to him.
Anna rushed over as Arwin dumped the two guildmembers on the ground and turned back to the snake. It hissed, tongue flicking out once more, but they’d finally escaped its range. The poisonous fog gathered at the foot of the hill, but it didn’t climb it.
The snake turned back and pulled away from them, returning to the tower and coiling around it. It kept a single, massive eye staring at them in challenge, as if daring someone to grow close enough to try it again.
“Are you okay?” Anna asked.
“I’m fine. Get them,” Arwin said, nodding to the men and women on the ground. “Can you deal with something like this?”
“I’m not so sure Cure is meant to deal with ailments this bad, but I should be able to with enough time,” Anna replied, dropping to her knees beside the healer of the other group and pressing her hands to the other woman’s Chestplate.
“Nobody else got hit by the poison, right?” Lillia asked.
Rodrick and Olive shook their heads as one.
“No. Rodrick got me out fast enough,” Olive said.
Anna’s patient sat up with a strangled gasp. She doubled over, coughing, and Anna moved on to the next one of the Ardent members without hesitation.
So much for not being sure if Cure was meant to handle something this bad. Anna handled it in just a few seconds flat. Did she just flood the skill with magical energy so it would perform faster?
But, by the time that the Ardent guild’s healer had managed to gather herself enough to wipe her mouth with the back of her hand, Anna had already made her way around the rest of the woman’s guildmembers and purged every single one of them of the poison.
Anna flopped to the ground with an exhausted groan. “Okay. I’m out. That took everything I had. That poison was really strong.”
“Who are you?” the shield-bearing warrior asked through a coughing fit. He pushed himself upright, wobbling as he rose, but managed to find his footing.
“Does it matter?” Arwin asked. “I think there’s a different line you should be starting with.”
The man reached up to his helm and pulled it off to reveal a clean-shaven face with straight black hair. His cheeks colored slightly with embarrassment, but there was a distinct sadness in his eyes as he looked back over to the Life Constrictor lying in wait. “You’re right. My apologies. Thank you for the timely save. We couldn’t have taken more than another blow or two. The snake was playing with us.”
“Did you get Jonah?” one of the women asked. “Is he—”
“Dead,” the warrior said. His fists tightened at his sides. “We will grieve later. We aren’t out of this yet. If we don’t deal with the dungeon—” The man cut himself off and glanced at Arwin, then blew out a breath. “Are you aware of what a Dungeon Break is?”
“Yes,” Arwin replied. “We don’t typically risk death to ourselves just to bail another group out. This dungeon is one strong push from teetering over the edge and taking half of Milten with it.”
The man gave him a grim nod. “Then you understand why we need to press onward. That snake has absorbed an enormous amount of magical power. If we can kill it, we can delay the break.”
“You can’t kill it, though,” Reya said. She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Are you seriously going to try again?”
“We got caught off guard the first time,” the other warrior said as he rose. “We need to. After Jonah—”
“The girl is right,” the dark-haired man before Arwin said with a sharp shake of his head. “We’ve already made a mistake. Without Jonah, we aren’t going to be able to take that thing down. It’s injured, but so are we. If one of us dies fighting it, we could trigger the very thing we’re trying to stop.”
“So we’re just going to give up and leave?” the healer asked. Her hands tightened at her sides. “How are we supposed to explain that to—”
“Leave that to me.” The dark haired-man looked back to Arwin and the others and inclined his head. “I know you only acted out of necessity but I thank your team, nonetheless. I will mention this to my guild.”
Arwin let out a snort. “I doubt they’ll think much of it but feel free. Tell them the guild that bailed you out was the Menagerie.”
Judging by the look in the man’s eyes, he didn’t recognize the name. That was only a mild surprise. Larger guilds had a lot of branches and people in them, after all. The part of the Ardent guild that managed purchasing goods probably only had limited interaction with the actual adventurers, so only some of them would know a blacklist by heart.
Which makes it even more suspicious that Busal did. That guy was waiting specifically for us, wasn’t he?
“I’ll do that,” the man said. He looked back to the snake, then grimaced. The look of regret in his eyes was one that Arwin recognized. The man shook his head and blew out a breath. “We’ll try to send reinforcements to deal with this. My group is weakened, but we have stronger adventurers. Be careful.”
With that, he gathered his people and they broke away.
“They could have been a bit more grateful,” Reya muttered. “That thank you almost felt like he was fulfilling an obligation.”
“He’s not thinking about how he and the others survived,” Arwin said, watching the group jog off. “His thoughts are on the one that didn’t. I don’t like the Ardent guild much, but I can give them a pass for that.”
Lillia didn’t say anything, but the thickening shadows around her told Arwin everything about her mood that he needed to know. Losing an ally was something that was all too familiar to both of them.
“How in the world do we deal with that thing, though?” Olive asked. “They’re going to find out who we are the moment they leave the dungeon. If we wait for reinforcements, we aren’t getting shit.”
Arwin looked back to the snake. “I’m noticing something about it that I believe may be to our advantage.”
“Seriously? What?” Reya asked.
Prism’s Reach materialized in Arwin’s hands and a cold smile pulled across his lips. “It can’t dodge.”