The anticipation was palpable. The vitapygmy were abuzz at their end of the dungeon working on something that I couldn't get close enough to see behind their fortified section of tunnel. Chanting and hammering could be heard by my monitoring hare but nothing that could be translated into anything I could understand.

A large herd of fist sized cooing green lumps was coxed and corralled out into the main hall by a pair of vitapygmy. As they wriggled and rolled beyond the fortifications the chanting momentarily stopped and then picked up with a renewed fervor.

At the entrance the delvers had arrived. Rhan marched at their head shield in one hand and spear in the other. Then came a shorter lanky man in worn dark leather armor and a hood and an unreasonable amount of knives strapped to various places all over his body. Third was a slender woman with short ash colored hair worrying at a string of red glass beads that seemed to hum with mana. Bringing up the rear was a balding portly man in a silvery cuirass under a brown leather jacket with a dull grey mace in one hand and a torch in the other. Lastly was Dernan the dungeon manager with his silver pocket watch contraption and a stern expression.

"Alright, its underground work Eyana so no sucking out all the air with your spells. We need that. Just finish off the regenerators as needed and leave the rest to me and Drick." Rham said over his shoulder.

"Aw man does that mean you expect me to actually work? Why can't we be one of those parties that lets the tracker just do the tracking then piss off." The hooded man said

"Thats so you can justify asking me to cast healing spells on you for your regular hangovers Drick." said the portly man with a grin. "Hey Rhan, what about me? Am I chopped liver?"

"No you're too important to waste in the fray Nelin. If you got hurt who would put Drick back together when he inevitable screws up and gets stabbed."

"Hey! I've never gotten stabbed on a Delve!" Drick yawped defensively.

"I don't think he was referring to a Delve but more the string of angry fathers and lovers you've made along the way." Eyana joined in on the good natured ribbing.

"Quiet down. I thought you lot were professionals We are in the middle of a delve." Dernan admonished.

"We are professionals. You've been spending too much time with trainees Dernan." Rhan grinned but the chatter died down nonetheless as they reached the first junction with the chalk arrow.

"Here we go. 'Bolster' " With a hum of mana Nelin cast some sort of party wide buff and the five proceeded forward.

I wish they hadn't been such early risers, If they had waited for mid day there would be more Dire hare and mana pearls to maybe take advantage of the situation, but as it stood, my best course of action looked like letting them do their thing see nothing strange and go home. It would give myself a month to prepare for their next arrival.

Dernan kept checking his pocket watch contraption and it kept flashing green at him but he didn't seem satisfied by what he saw unlike the last time I had seen him use it. "I just don't get it, the Manameter keeps telling me the dungeon and the ambient mana is mono-axis Life. Except Life affinity doesn't have a smoke screen spell."

"Rogue Ash hedge-wizard from the baronies maybe?" inquired Rham.

"It looked more like a Cloud spell to me." said Drick

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Dernan shook his head "Its mono-axis Life. A Human mage would taint the ambient mana with their spells. Like up above the ambient mana was full of Fire Affinity mana after Eyana let loose up there. If it is a rogue foreign wizard camping out here and arming the vitapygmy for some reason they are insanely good at scrubbing their tracks."

Drick chimed in as this was likely his entire job. "Well I'm not seeing anything strange in the tracks around here. Mostly just vitapygmy and what looks like it might have been a mountain lion that wandered in from outside I guess. Its all hard stone floors and walls so there isn't much to leave your mark going through but if there was a person down here in the past month I could probably see something."

They were fast approaching the vitapygmys fortifications and I was keeping close tabs on them. I made sure that my hare stayed well away and only move when the tracker was facing away.

A surge of Life Affinity mana flooded the dungeon and spilled forth from vitapygmy territory. Dernans manameter lit up and began to hum. I quickly moved up one of my hare to see if it could get any information on what was happening. The Delvers had the same reaction and hurried in for a closer look weapons at the ready. There was no one guarding the barricade so I had the hare creep even closer and what I saw shocked me.

The room was in the process of applying a chamber bonus of some kind. The uneven walls of the chamber were being lit by six green crystal pillars that were covered in artistic scrollwork that continued onto the floor surrounding a meticulously carved altar that was set into the ground with intricate channels carved into it. There were ten vitapygmy standing around the pit like altar. Nine were dressed in the usual moss ponchos holding stone knives with slightly glowing caramelized Life mana handles. One stood on a raised platform overlooking the altar in a grey-green dress covered in luminescent verdant green swirling tattoos wielding an intricately carved staff with a large crescent shaped chunk of green crystal affixed to the head with rivulets of caramelized Life mana resin. In the pit was a pulsating mass of little green cooing lumps piled into its centerpiece a jagged edged thick walled bowl.

Dernan looked at the sight in front of him, his jaw hanging open. "I... I have no idea what to make of this."

"We should, interrupt this right?" Rhan signaled his Delver team and they started to fan out into the room not waiting for the dungeon manager to give him the ok. "Eyana, if they turn toward us, light'em up."

The vitapygmy payed them no attention and the one in the dress took a deep breath "Hab Paboogah! Luciantsss! LuciantSSS! LUCIANTSSS!"

Eyana, most likely and understandably so saw the Variant Vitapygmys chant as something threatening, unleashed her spell fire knocking them from their post. The other eleven vitapygmy in unison raised their knives and precede to start stabbing themselves repeatedly. Their green tinted blood pouring into the pit.

"Yo, Rhan I say we bail this is defo' not a standard encounter." the tracker advised

"Ya, this is a mess. We're getting out of here." Rhan shouted "Dernan! What the hell is this?"

The variant vitapygmy crawled back onto their dais raising their staff over her head and in a flare of verdant energy a pulse of healing light fills the room. Vitapygmy on the verge of collapse received a macabre second wind while the pool of blood below them began to glow and was being drawn into the crystal bowl. The cooing from within the bowl became agitated and got deeper and deeper. A large arm emerged from the bowl pulling a three meter tall vita-behemoth, for lack of a better word, with an extreme case of muscular hypertrophy as the small green lump things had all fused into a singular mass.

A bead of red light shot out from the shocked pyromage and upon impacked with the large creature filled most of the room with a roaring firball that took several of the vitapygmy with it but just seemed to make the lumbering beast mad.

"Out! Back to the entrance!" Rhan grabbed the back of Dernan robe and bodily pulled him along as the team made haste away from the new monster breezing past my hidden dire hare without breaking stride.

"Was that a Fleshborn Behemoth?!?" Dernan seemed to still be trying to catch up to the reality that they were in full retreat.

"Whatever that thing was its above our class rating. We need to get out of here alive and pass this up the chain."

The Creature lumbered after them keeping a much slower pace. It reached the entrance corridor and made its way up toward the outside and just as it cleared the entrance was met with a great deal of shouting and flashes of light and explosions. It apparently decided that the heat was a bit to much for it and retreated back into the dungeon nearly running into my dire hare which I had following it. It lumbered back to vitapygmy, territory curled up into the crystal bowl in the altar and proceed to emit deep mournful cooing.