Uruga tiredly sunk to the ground, staring at the carcasses of the monsters which had attempted to kill him. He himself was not without wounds, as he had chunks of flesh gouged out his torso, cuts and puncture wounds along his arms, neck and face, and bloodied patches of fur missing from his body.
Damnit…This really sucks… Uruga chided himself in letting the goblin shamans get away. He simply couldn’t catch up to them when they manipulated the dirt to wrap up his limbs, all while fighting off the remaining resistance after he had killed the giant spider-like creature. Each of the monsters he had faced had specific strengths which worked exceedingly well with each other.
The boars were exceptionally powerful for their ranking, enough to harm him. The white wolves always took advantage of when Uruga was tied down to take bites at his limbs. The mantis could make small cuts on Uruga while the large centipede was fairly resilient and proved to be a good distraction. The smaller insect type monsters had bitten him and rained acid onto him and his wounds, while the giant spider utilized its claws with an uncanny dexterity. The goblin shamans had tied down his ankles with dirt and stones, and their location near the back allowed them to escape Uruga, however, he had still killed the sizable group. One stone-clawed spider, three rage boars, four whistle wolves, five sickle-blade mantises, five hard-shelled centipedes, ten giant centipedes, thirteen leaping and heavy bombardier beetles, and several dozen swarm ants had perished in Uruga’s claws.
If Uruga had known that the wind wolves which had been following him had already perished, he would’ve been furious. However, what he currently felt was extreme irritation coupled with an undercurrent of fear. The reason was simple.
Two more…Eh? Wait… Uruga’s eyes narrowed seeing the shapes of Stone-Clawed spiders appear. Mixed in were the normal Clawed spiders as well. More and more monsters began to appear and Uruga felt a lump rising in his throat. I don’t think I can win…this? This is bad.
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This is bad. Dylan thought after watching the werewolf warrior slaughter a sizable number of troops by himself. To think that I would lose this many even with my orders…we need to swarm him now.
The werewolf mage had finally assembled his wolf pack and had started moving through the path of destruction which the warrior had left to reach this point. It wouldn’t take more than a few minutes for them to find him again and support him, so Dylan needed to end him quickly.
Go! At Dylan’s behest, a mixture of monsters charged the werewolf head on, while a large number of them fired off their ranged abilities. Dylan watched the werewolf snarl before releasing an aggressive howl before charging the group, killing two insect-type monsters in an instant. Dylan’s anxiety peaked immediately, as he had noticed one thing. The other werewolf and his group began to move faster.
Shall we execute evasive maneuvers soon…? Dylan nervously laughed to himself as he used [Dungeon Edit] to build a small stone bridge originating at the end of the river. It was little more than a small stone path which appeared to be carved out of the wall, and it was highly inconspicuous. He then ordered Kuraura to take his core to the opposite side of the river at his signal, as he didn’t want to be caught moving around at such a dangerous moment. He planned to distract the werewolves with an astonishing last stand at the stone forest, then beat it while everyone was distracted. He also had many other decoys planned out for his escape. In the worst-case scenario, he was willing to even chuck his core into the river to survive.
As he watched the red werewolf meet his monsters in a head on collision, Dylan smirked. The werewolf was quite exhausted and injured due to his avid attempts to destroy wave upon wave of Dylan’s fodder monsters. He alone must’ve killed over 100 monsters, though most of those were of the lower ranks.
He’s done. Dylan chuckled to himself as the werewolf failed to hit a stone-clawed spider with his full force, getting another cut along his side to show for it. Although it didn’t seem like a lot of damage, the failed attack opened him to other attacks such as…
CRACK!
An audible crack was heard as a rage boar, bloodied and enraged, slammed the werewolf, goring him with its large tusks before smashing him into a tree, which also crumpled on impact. The pair of intertwined monsters were buffeted by multiple rounds of acid from the bombardier beetle monsters and covered in net-like webs thrown by the clawed and stone-clawed spiders. Lastly, the dirt, stones and surrounding trees twisted and formed into spikes before impaling themselves into the pile of webs, sacrificing the rage boar to score a fatal blow on the werewolf.
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Seeing a notification pop up and feeling the werewolf’s aura flaring out, Dylan ordered a hasty retreat, and his monsters scattered into the surrounding forest.
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Only a few minutes after Dylan’s monsters had beat it, Maxin arrived at the clearing. Looking at the destroyed trees and scattered corpses, along with the puddles of blood and ichor covering the ground, his mouth twisted into a furious snarl as he looked around before his attention was caught by the corpse of a large boar with multiple spikes made of stone impaled through it. The reason why it stood out was that the surrounding trees and shrubs also had warped branches and twisted trunks, impaling into the pile too.
Maxin walked slowly over to the large mass, heart beating faster. He began to snap off branches and push the large boar’s corpse out of the way. Shoving off the corpse, he inhaled sharply seeing the corpse of a male human; a male human with reddish hair on his head, a stout body and a mustache and beard. The glassy-eyed corpse was bloodied and covered in wounds, and was in a pitiful state. Maxin’s mouth twitched and he carefully extracted the corpse from the mass of spikes.
As his hands shook, the final straw was watching Uruga’s body start to fade and turn into bright light, which then itself fell apart into small particles as the dungeon absorbed his body.
Hehe, Uruga, you’re going to get it from the Lord…You might not be summoned for a while now…Ugh, guard duty will be so boring without you though…Also…I’LL KILL YOU NOW DUNGEON! YOU’VE DONE IT THIS TIME!
Maxin’s eyes glowed a deeper red as he ferociously howled up to the ceiling of the cave, startling all of the other wolves into submission. Frankly, the death of Uruga wasn’t a huge problem although it definitely stung. The biggest problem was the amount of mana it would take to summon him back. Inconveniences to the Lord which Uruga and Maxin served dearly was a sin punishable by death. Although the werewolves both had their fears of death, they at least knew that it was possible for them to be brought back to life with their Lord’s power.
Following the howl, Maxin rushed deep into the forest blindly, while the army of wolves followed behind.
Several hours later…
Maxin grumbled to himself as he passed by another swath of forest which had been marked with his scent. They had carelessly rushed through the forest killing and destroying at random, and hadn’t found any signs of the Dungeon’s core. Even the strange stone field they had found had been carefully combed through by the wolves, every tunnel carved into the boulders was examined, and others with small entrances were blasted with fireballs until they fell apart. Even the breeding caves had been entered and were mostly destroyed.
Of course, the wolves took too much damage too. Who would have known that so many pillars and trees were trapped to crash down on them at the slightest touch? It was almost unfair. In addition, the exploration of the tunnels in the rock field had unearthed new monsters (Maxin hadn’t encountered them yet) which took the lives of or injured the wolves which were sent in to explore them. These monsters were ripped out of their holes and killed, or blasted apart with fire magic luckily, as they weren’t too powerful.
The only surprising existences were the goblin war chief and the tall stone spiders which had the large claws which had been guarding a huge hill-sized boulder. Those were able to at least kill Dire Wolves but they didn’t match up to Maxin’s magic. Maxin had originally thought that goblin war chiefs were weaker than Dire wolves but apparently, he was wrong. He was also wrong about the core being inside of that massive boulder apparently… As he snapped out of his thoughts Maxin surveyed the corpses and items which had been fished out of the tunnels.
This one looks like a giant beetle…and this one…giant centipede? Maxin poked through the items and fished out bones, rudimentary weapons, and even a spirit stone.
Yet there was no core.
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Unfortunately for Maxin, Dylan’s core was in a satchel carried by Kuraura, who was currently waiting inside of the Southeast breeding cave across the river. They had been sitting there for hours now, surrounded by insects and a very small number of monsters. The monsters involved in the killing of the werewolf warrior had long scattered to safer places, due to them receiving a massive amount of mana which would allow them to evolve. The goblin shamans and stone-clawed spiders in particular were ready for evolution, and had hidden themselves underground or high up in the ceiling respectively.
A strange thing that Dylan had noticed was that the mana from the werewolf had passed on to several of his monsters instead of just the one which killed it. He wasn’t exactly sure, but he reasoned that it could have resulted due to the werewolf having too much mana compared to them. Normally, when his monsters killed each other, he noticed that the winning monster absorbed some mana from the slain monster, and if it ate the body, it could gain even more mana. However, this time several monsters had filled up to their maximum capacity, and seeing the 4000 mana price tag of the Fireball wolves, Dylan wouldn’t be surprised if the werewolf provided a similar amount to that. He had even received a warning from the Voice of the World saying that the mana he would receive from absorbing the corpse would exceed his maximum capacity. He had only absorbed it because he felt like the werewolf mage would have burnt the body into ashes to prevent Dylan from absorbing it.
This is really boring…and its truly a shame that I’m not allowed to summon the Werewolf Warrior even though I killed it fair and square. Dylan grumbled to himself as he pulled up the quest to look it through again.
With only a few hours left on the quest, he decided to make a move on the Ember and Iron spine wolves. At the bare minimum he would be able to summon them when they died.