Before her friend could curse, Emily smacked her mouth shut and scolded, “Language, you idiot, Cali’s listening!”
Lizzy immediately began to apologize before asking Maria, “Sorry, sorry, but what the heck are you on about, Mary?”
“You heard me. I say we collapse the cave on top of the monster and kill it with the debris.”
“...Mary, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but using the environment to kill a monster doesn’t reward us with anything,” Amanda said.
“Reward? Who said anything about getting a reward? Don’t we want to escape from this guy? We’re in no position to even think about getting a reward when we can’t even fight him head on and defeat him. I say, anything goes at this point,” Maria said as she explained herself.
Maria didn’t care in the slightest about the boss monster’s rewards. It certainly was a unique monster and the rewards that could be obtained were definitely high tier, but in their current situation, they shouldn’t even be thinking about the rewards. It certainly was regrettable that they’d have to pass up on the rewards, but what could they do? They were outclassed in all respects, so slaying the monster normally was completely out of the question.
They couldn’t escape because of the [Mark of the Devourer] debuff that allowed the monster to track them down at all times and they couldn’t use any teleportation item or skill since they were in the Underworld. If they could, Maria would’ve used her [Mass Teleport] ability to send them out of the Underworld a long time ago, so with no other option left, this was the best plan Maria could think of.
Lizzy didn’t like it because they would be throwing away the rewards for slaying the monster, but her friend’s words were true. They really shouldn’t be thinking about the rewards, since they can’t even kill it normally.
“What Mary said is true. Fuck the rewards, let’s get the hell out of here! I’m sick of all this hide and seek!”
“Lizzy, language!” Emily yelled.
“S-Sorry…”
Amanda gave up on trying to think about an alternative and just hopped onto her friend’s idea along with Emily. Both of them were sick of the Underworld already. Things would be different if they were exploring things normally, but not this. This was just torture for them.
“Let’s go with Mary’s idea then. I want to get out of here sooner.”
“Okay…then we’re all in agreement, yes?”
“Mhm.”
“Yup.”
“Alright, let’s set the plan in motion then. Amanda said before she turned to Maria and asked, “First of all, we need to find a place that we can lure that monster to and collapse the cave on top of it, but before we do that, can our attacks even do anything to the cave at all?”
Maria nodded at her and said, “At our levels, we can definitely destroy the environment here. I noticed it the last time when we tried attacking the monster. All of our attacks just bounced off of its shell and when they hit the ceiling or ground, they were able to destroy the terrain easily.”
“Okay, but just to be sure, let’s try attacking the ceiling with our normal attacks. After that, we’ll try using our skills.”
“Okay.”
The girls immediately did as Amanda suggested and only Maria and Lizzy’s normal attacks were able to crush the cave’s ceiling. Emily was a tank, so her destructive capabilities weren't really that high while Amanda was still in the process of leveling up her character, which had been downgraded due to her class change, so her damage was still low. When they used their skills, however, everyone was capable of causing some form of destruction to the ceiling.
“Okay, since we’ve confirmed that we can destroy the environment, let’s proceed to the next step; finding a place to set the trap.”
Emily spoke up this time and said, “We don’t really need to find any particular spot. Luring the monster over to any place is easy, since it’s chasing us blindly. We should just create an extremely large distance between us and the monster, then start preparing after we find a good spot.”
“Yeah, that sounds good. Let’s get going then,” Maria said as she activated her [Metamorphosis] and changed into her battle form.
The girls had seen this a few times already since they entered the Underworld, but Lizzy could never stop admiring her friend’s transformation, since it looked so cool.
“Man, I can’t stop loving the way you transform, Mary. It’s so freaking cool!”
“Hehe, enough with the chit-chat. Grab onto me. I’m the fastest one here and bringing you all with me shouldn’t be a problem with my STR stat in this form.”
Cali was clinging tightly onto Maria’s chest while her friends grabbed onto her back and arms. She secured them with her Greed's Chains and once they all found the most comfortable positions they could be in, she quickly took off and sped through the vast underground tunnel network. Maria could only use her subsonic speed since her friends were weighing her down, but this was already much faster than their regular running speed.
“H-Holy shiiiittt!!!”
“Language, Liz! Stop cursing!!!”
“U-Ughhhh!”
“Isn’t this fun~”
Maria was practically piggy-backing Amanda while her two friends were holding tightly onto her arms and being dragged along either side of her. Lizzy was enjoying the ride while Emily still had the capacity to scold her for cursing out again.
Despite having the most ‘comfortable’ position, Amanda was the only one not enjoying it. She didn’t do too well with high speed movement, unlike Lizzy and Emily, who were enjoying the ride. Whenever they went to an amusement park, Amanda always avoided going on any of the big rides, like the roller coaster, big drop, or any ride of that kind.
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“Ama, are you okay?” Maria asked after hearing her friend groan.
“I-I’m fine. Just keep going! W-We’re still not far enough.”
“Okay. Just tell me if you want me to stop. We can always take a break before moving again.”
“I’m fine!”
What Amanda said was right. Despite moving through the tunnels extremely fast, they still had to be mindful of the path ahead of them which sometimes didn’t go in a linear direction. The paths were winding, so they didn’t go in one straight direction. At times, the tunnel would go backwards before connecting with another branching tunnel that led forward in the direction they wanted to go.
They had to be mindful of this because, unlike them who had to go along the winding paths, the Sunken Devourer could just tunnel its own path through the underground and get to them much quicker. Maria understood this so she kept on going until her SP bottomed out and this was after hours and hours of flying. When she stopped, Maria and the others found themselves back in a rather familiar room.
“Hey, guys…isn’t this the place where we first met that Devourer guy?” Maria said as she looked around the room.
Seeing all of the protruding crystals and ore veins in the room, the girls realized that they were indeed back in the room where they had first met Zechenoa by accident.
“This really is the place! That means nearby should be the entrance to the First Layer!”
“We got so lucky with this! Why don’t we head back up right now?” Lizzy suggested happily.
“No, we can’t do that,” Amanda said.
“Why?”
“The mark is still on us. What happens if we lead the monster back with us onto the First Layer and it stays there? Or even worse, it follows us back to Mary’s city? We have to try and take care of it here before going back.”
“Oh yeah, that’s true…”
“Let’s get to work then. We need to start drilling holes into the ceiling to make it easier for us to drop it onto the monster. It’ll take hours, I bet, but hopefully it’ll be enough time.”
While her friends got to work, Maria plopped down to rest as she said, “I’ll help you guys in a bit after I’ve recovered…It sure has been a while since I’ve completely used up all of my SP, hehe.”
The chamber they were in was pretty sturdy with all of the minerals and ore veins lying around. It took them more effort to destroy the ceiling than they originally expected, but thankfully, things progressed pretty smoothly and after a few hours later, they were nearly finished.
“Dang, I feel like I’ve become a miner all of a sudden…” Lizzy said as she used one of her skills to drill a hole into the ceiling.
“It’s been a few hours already…how are things looking?” Emily asked.
“Well, we need a few people up here and some down there to act as bait. Mary, you act as bait.”
Being called out, Maria turned to Lizzy and asked, “Huh? Why me?!”
“Because you’re the fastest out of us all. You can escape when we start collapsing the chamber.”
“...Fine.”
Amanda was looking at the clock and around 4 hours had passed. She thought that it was taking a bit too long for the monster to come because, by her estimates, it should’ve arrived much sooner. Most of their preparations were already completed an hour ago and all they were doing now was trying to overcompensate things for safe measure.
“It’s taking the monster too long…did we actually leave it behind that far away?” Amanda questioned while scratching her head in wonder.
Emily shrugged and replied, “Who knows? Maybe? I mean, we did spend a long time running away from it and somehow, we made it back to the room where we first encountered it. Maria’s movement speed is pretty overpowered when you think about it.”
Lizzy, who was still in the chamber's ceiling, popped her head out and added, “Yeah, I know right? We were moving at supersonic speeds! Zoom zoom!”
"Subsonic. You guys were weighing me down so I couldn't go that fast," Maria said.
“Let’s just continue doing what we’re doing. I don’t know if dropping the ceiling will even kill the monster, so having more time to dig into the ceiling is good, don’t you think?”
The girls continued digging into the ceiling but, since they didn’t want the monster to start digging upwards, Maria, Amanda, and Emily stayed on the ground while Lizzy was tasked with continuing the work.
Lizzy whined about it but she continued doing her work without rest since the girls were giving her the honor of dropping the ceiling onto the monster when it got there. A few more hours passed until, finally, the area around them began to tremble. The girls immediately knew that the monster had arrived and Emily yelled, “Get ready everyone. It’s coming!”
“Lizzy, you ready up there?”
“Yeah!”
“Em, Ama, pull back. I’ll lure it in here,” Maria said as she began buffing herself with a few spells before saying in their party’s voice chat, “Lizzy, when I tell you to, immediately drop the ceiling on it!”
“Roger.”
The girls moved into place as Maria moved towards the direction where the rumbling was coming from. She charged a [Fire] spell and condensed it until the flames glowed white before shooting it into the tunnel. It flew extremely far and fast into the distance before hitting something and exploding with a loud, sonorous bang. The rumbling stopped for a moment before an extremely angry roar ensued in the next moment that deafened and almost stunned Maria, who was in the tunnel.
A pair of yellow eyes appeared in the distance which belonged to the Devourer and it immediately began moving towards Maria with utmost haste and rage. Now that she had completely attracted the monster's aggro, Maria waited for it to get closer as she yelled, “I got its attention! Get ready guys!”