With the monster’s aggro locked onto her, Maria pulled back from the tunnel and returned to the chamber where they laid out their trap. She didn’t move too quickly and made sure that the monster was following after her at a fixed distance so that she could give the command for her friends to spring the trap at just the right moment while also distracting the monster from looking anywhere else.
Maria and the girls had to time it perfectly so that they hit the monster in the place that they thought was its weak point, which was its thorax that connected its head to the large abdomen that it kept dragging around. One could argue that its head was the weak point, but the girls thought otherwise, especially since it was sporting those menacing horns on it.
If they tried dropping the ceiling on its head, the monster might just break it with its horns that it used for tunneling around the Underworld, which would render their trap pretty much useless. The large abdomen definitely was a no go because the armor in that area seemed way too thick, so the thorax was the only body part left that they decided to target. They had tunneled pretty deep into the ceiling and the girls believed that if they were to go any further, they might just break through into the first layer so they were pretty confident that they could crush the monster underneath all the rubble.
When Maria arrived in the chamber, she waited for a moment for the monster to get closer before backing up. The disgusting smell from the monster began wafting into her nose and she frowned a bit but stood her ground and waited for it to come closer as she continued to fire a few spells at it to keep its aggro fixated on her.
“Come on. I’m right here, big guy…”
The monster broke into the chamber and Maria immediately backpedaled as fast as she could. The monster saw this and it immediately shot some kind of gooey projectile at her. Maria paled in fright and immediately flapped her wings to do a barrel roll to dodge the disgusting attack. She wasn't afraid that the attack would kill her, she was more afraid of it getting on her.
"Ew, disgusting!"
“Mary, how’s it going?” Amanda called out to her from the tunnel she and Emily were hiding in.
Maria dodged another one of those disgusting gooey projectiles and yelled back, “I’ve got its aggro and its inside the chamber. Just wait until I give the signal!”
“Okay!”
Maria needed to lure a monster a little bit deeper into the chamber until it was right at the center. Unfortunately, it was just sitting around the entrance and firing some kind of disgusting goo from its mouth, but with her speed, Maria could evade all of the attacks though it was still disgusting because it smelled extremely horrible. It was to the point where Maria had to hold her breath every time it got too close to her.
However, not only was the goo disgusting, it was highly corrosive. When it landed on the floor, it immediately melted the ground in an instant, so Maria had even more reason not to get struck by it. The corrosive goo created a lot of holes in the ground since Zechenoa started rapid-firing it from its mouth after seeing that its attack was being dodged so easily by her. Maria needed to watch out for those holes since if she accidentally stepped into one of them and fell over, she'd get bombarded by more of that stuff immediately.
The thought of it alone caused Maria to pale and gag. She shook her head repeatedly to get the image out of her brain, but this really wasn't the time for her to be thinking of such things, especially since the monster was getting angrier and angrier after seeing that its attacks weren't landing on its target.
A few minutes passed and Maria was still dancing around with the monster. She didn’t know if the monster understood that there was a trap or something inside of the room and remained at the tunnel, but the smell from its attacks was starting to become a bit overwhelming for Maria.
“Dammit, can’t you just come in already?”
When the monster finally began to move forwards, Maria thought that it was finally her chance to move back, but the moment she turned around, she saw pools of goo behind her.
“W-What?”
She hadn’t been paying attention to her surroundings and with all the disgusting goo the monster had been spitting out and firing at her earlier, she didn’t realize that it was only doing this in order to trap her.
“This bastard…it’s smarter than it looks…”
“Mary, are you alright?” Amanda shouted from afar, asking if everything was okay or not. It's been quite some time since she's attracted the monster's attention, but there was still no signal from her to drop the ceiling on it.
“Don’t worry about me. Just get ready to drop the ceiling.”
Maria prepared herself as the monster began rushing towards her. Right now, she was directly at the center of the chamber where she wanted to lure in the monster. As the monster got close, she began casting her [Dimensional Phase] and just as it was pouncing on top of her, she quickly activated her skill and teleported herself 20 meters away.
“Haha, you didn’t think I had a skill like that, did you?”
Maria fired two spells at the monster and taunted it, which seemingly made it pretty angry. It let out a furious roar and started rushing towards her again and at that moment, Maria quickly yelled at the top of her lungs, giving Lizzy the signal.
Stolen novel; please report.
“NOW!!!”
“Right!”
Lizzy didn’t know what was happening down below so she quickly struck the columns that were barely holding up the ceiling. They had drilled deep into the ceiling and carved they way from one end of the chamber to the other while leaving behind columns that held the ceiling in place. She struck at these columns with her skills and after a few broke apart, the rest could no longer support the ceiling in place and started crumbling from the weight.
While Lizzy did as she was told without knowing where her friend was, Amanda and Emily, however, saw that Maria was still within the impact range of their trap and quickly tried stopping her but it was too late.
"W-Wait, not yet!"
“Mary!”
Maria needed to keep Zechenoa from moving too far away from its place, so she summoned her shadow army and began having her minions attack the monster to pester it and keep it in place as the ceiling began to collapse.
“Come on, come on…fall faster dammit!”
The ceiling was collapsing a little too slowly–at least, that’s what Maria thought. The monster noticed that the ceiling above it was crumbling down, but it was too late for it to move. When it tried to turn its head up, Maria reacted immediately and fired her 5th-form Calamity onto its head, knocking it back down.
“Denied!”
SCHHHKREEEE–
The monster let out a terrifying screech which was immediately snuffed out as the ceiling collapsed onto its body. Maria quickly dashed out of the area using her extreme speed and weaved through all of the falling debris and made it to the safe area where her friends were waiting for her. When she arrived, Amanda and Emily heaved a sigh of relief as soon as they saw her. They ran up to her and hugged her before saying, “Thank goodness you’re okay! I thought you might get buried in there with the monster.”
“Jeez, have a little more faith in me, will you? I won’t go and kill myself like that.”
“Hey guys, did we do it?” Lizzy's voice echoed.
“Seems like it… I can’t hear the monster’s cries anymore–”
*DING*
Mark of the Devourer has been dispelled! The Sunken Devourer has been forced to slumber!
When the girls saw that notification window, they all smiled at it.
“Looks like we did it. The mark has disappeared!”
“Let’s get going then. The entrance to the First Layer should be nearby. I don’t know if the monsters are still there, but even if they are, we should head back up. I don’t want to stay here any longer!” Emily said.
“My thoughts exactly, but where’s Lizzy? She should’ve come here before the ceiling collapsed entirely or else–”
While the girls wondered where their friend was, Amanda’s question was cut off as they heard their friend's voice echo from above, “Guys, I’m still stuck up here…”
“...”
“...”
“You idiot. Didn’t I tell you to come back here the moment you collapsed the ceiling? If you don't, you'll be stuck inside there!”
“I…I just wanted to see the monster get buried…”
“Yeah, you’ve seen it, and now what? You’re stuck!”
“...You better start digging, Liz. We’re gonna…hehe, never mind,” Emily suddenly said in a rather mischievous tone.
“H-Hey! Y-You guys aren’t just going to ditch me here…are you?” Lizzy worriedly asked after hearing what her friend said.
“If this was the first layer, I would’ve left you behind! Come on guys, let’s dig up this idiot.”
While the girls were digging their friend out, Maria was frowning because the message window she saw earlier only stated that they had forced the Sunken Devourer into a slumber. This meant that they didn't kill it yet, but just knocked it out which was rather worrying. If it still wasn't dead, then the next time they came back, they'd likely be pestered by the thing if they encountered it again.
'Even after all that, we still couldn't kill it? If that thing was a normal bug, it would've been squashed underneath all that rubble...'
Maria shook her head and stopped thinking too hard on it. This was actually a good thing because if the monster hadn't died yet, then this meant that they still had a chance of properly killing it in the future when they came back again to the Underworld's Second Layer and by the time they did come back, she and her friends would be stronger and they'd definitely bring a proper raid party to kill the boss.
Killing the boss properly would yield the rewards for slaying it, something they wouldn't be able to get if they had killed the monster with the trap they made just now. Maria shared her thoughts with her friends while they were digging and this made them all fired up. Once they returned to the First Layer, they were going to have a proper grinding session to raise their levels. The monsters of the Underworld were indeed tough, but they yielded a lot of EXP and items in return.
While Maria and her friends continued digging up Lizzy from her ‘grave’ in the Underworld, up on the surface world, her 2 brothers and the other people that they were with had all finally arrived in Dreyra and were just about to disembark from the ship they were on.