Trent
The moment the brat's magic dropped him onto the arena floor, Trent stood there stunned, the sheer absurdity of it threatening to pull a laugh from his chest.
He never imagined he would see a day like this. If someone told him a decade ago that their Goddess would plant a forward base in the Dungeon, he would have called them mad. Back then, just surviving was a bloody struggle. Yet the base stood in Rivira, and the blue-haired brat who pitched it actually kept his word and built it. Now that same brat had dropped them into the middle of the legendary death trap of the 37th floor.
The surprise didn't last. The roars of the endless spawn echoed off the pale walls and dragged him back to the present. Beyond the outer walls, the fresh spawns clawed fruitlessly at the glass. Inside, only the thin wall of the kid's partition stood between the squad and the hundreds of monsters trapped in the kill-box, and every one of them had just snapped its murderous gaze onto the newcomers.
"Form up!" Trent bellowed, his gruff voice cutting through the din. "Veterans on the perimeter! Greenhorns in the center! Move yer arses!"
With the partition still holding, the squad moved like clockwork. Two dozen seasoned elites stepped forward and locked their heavy shields into a solid wall. The dozen greenhorns, who were yet to see the true horrors of the Deep Floors, scrambled into the protective ring.
Trent glanced up at the roof where Max stood. Holding barriers of that size had to be draining the kid's Mind faster than a parched dwarf emptying a cask of ale. Trent meant to keep the boy's intervention to a minimum; he wasn't about to let his vanguard lean on a babysitter while the kid bled his reserves dry keeping the whole thing running.
"Listen up, fresh meat!" Trent barked, turning to the rookies huddled in the circle. "This ain't the upper floors! Every beast in this pit is at least a Mid Level 3, and some sit comfortably at base Level 4."
He paused, letting the weight of that power gap settle over the greenhorns. A few of them swallowed hard, their knuckles whitening on their weapons, but none of them broke eye contact. Trent gave an approving nod.
"The Spartoi will lock yer blades," he continued, ticking the threats off on his fingers. "The Lizardmen will flank ye before ye blink, and those Skull Sheep will shatter yer ribs if ye try to take 'em head-on. Keep an eye out for the Peludas—they'll rain toxic needles on yer heads the second they get a clear shot."
Trent paced a step and pointed the heavy head of his axe at the swirling mass of monsters beyond the partition.
"Watch out for the Barbarians, too—those horned brutes hit with the raw power of a Level 4, so don't try to lock weapons with 'em! The Loup Garous might be small, but those wolf-headed bastards are blazing fast and will gut ye with stone knives before ye even see 'em move. And if ye see a walking chunk of lava with a purple eye, that's an Obsidian Soldier. Don't waste yer big spells on 'em—their defense is iron-clad, and they'll shrug off yer magic like a light breeze!"
He let the grim reality of the pit hang in the air for a second, making sure every rookie understood they were standing in a meat grinder.
"But there's no need to start shaking in yer boots!" His gruff voice pitched up, shifting from warning to battle cry. "The chief up there on the roof didn't bring us to a slaughterhouse—he brought us here to grow stronger. So fight to yer absolute best!"
He locked eyes with a particularly pale human rookie in the front.
"If ye find yerself in a pinch, call on yer cell," Trent instructed. "If they can't pull ye out of the fire, swallow yer pride and call for the chief!"
Keeping the brat's burden light is one thing, Trent thought, his grip tightening on the axe handle. But pride ain't worth a casket. If a kid is about to die, the strain on the brat's Mind is a cheap price to bring 'em all home breathing.
"The priority today is gorging on excelia and securing those level-ups," he concluded, his own bloodlust beginning to flare. "But don't get carried away! These monsters are dangerous, and they'll adapt to yer tactics faster than ye'd credit. Guard yer vitals, aim for their heads, and don't get cocky!"
The briefing didn't run long. Once the greenhorns grasped the shape of the slaughter they were walking into, Trent called the next command.
"Break into cells!" he roared, hefting his massive axe. "Every greenhorn sticks to two veterans! Watch yer flanks and cover yer blind spots!"
The squad divided without a hitch, shifting into tight triangles with their backs to one another. Trent pulled the pale rookie into his own cell and anchored its defense himself. A fierce grin split his beard as he stared down the horde. He could feel it in his Falna: the tight, straining bottleneck of a man at the very edge of a level-up. All he needed was one strong Spartoi to push him over, and he would carve through this entire pit until he found it.
Around them, the partition vanished.
Overhead, the brat's voice rang across the basin. "For Lady Freya! SHOW NO MERCY!"
The squad charged to meet the wave.
"Keep yer cells tight!" Trent roared as the monsters crashed into them.
The first few exchanges were unadulterated chaos. It took precious minutes for the vanguard to sync with the hyper-aggressive rhythm of the Deep Floor spawns. The monsters didn't spread themselves evenly across the arena. The swarm piled straight onto the outermost cells, straining the perimeter of the formation while the center starved for targets.
Trent gritted his teeth, parried a Barbarian's heavy club, and buried his axe in its chest. Around him, the outer cells were buckling under the uneven pressure.
Before he could shout for a rotation, a barrage of precision spells lanced down through the seams overhead. Flashes of crimson magic obliterated the excess Lizardmen and Spartoi pressing the flanks and took the weight off the outer trios.
Trent used the breathing room to bark new orders. The vanguard adapted fast, pushing their cells outward until they spanned the whole arena floor. With the squad spread across every corner of the kill-box, the horde had no choice but to spread with it, and the pressure evened out across the entire squad.
The Dungeon answered just as quickly. With the walled spawns unable to get in, the ground spawns increased to match every monster that fell.
Just as the line stabilized, the Peludas showed their vicious nature. Rather than fire at the heavily shielded veterans in front of them, the reptilian beasts arched their necks and loosed volleys of toxic needles across the arena, sniping at the blind spots of other cells.
Once again, Max's magic flared from the barrier, intercepting the crossfire and blasting the offending Peludas into nothing.
Trent's fist tightened around the haft of his axe, and his eyes went to the roof. Guilt and frustration gnawed at him. His whole plan was to spare the kid the strain, yet here the brat was, babysitting the perimeter and picking off projectiles while holding up a massive spatial roof.
A casual voice echoed down through the glass.
"Don't stress about my intervention, old man," Max called. The smug smirk was practically audible. "I'm fine, and I can do this all day. Focus on hunting the monster you need to level up. You don't want to stay in my shadow forever, do you?"
Trent's worry evaporated, replaced in a heartbeat by indignant pride.
"Damn brat!" he bellowed.
He sidestepped a charging Skull Sheep and brought his axe down in a brutal arc that cleaved the beast in half. Then he threw himself back into the slaughter with renewed vigor, his eyes scanning the endless horde for his prey.
-◈ -
Max
From his perch on the roof, Max split his attention two ways: one eye on the fight, the other on his returns. For the first few rounds of the clash, he flicked precision spells through the barrier, intercepting needle barrages and staggering monsters that pushed too hard against the defensive cells. But as the horde cycled through, even that work dried up. The vanguard, veterans and rookies alike, quickly grew used to the spawns' attack patterns.
Good. The less I babysit, the more excelia they earn.
Below, a supposed greenhorn broke formation just long enough to slaughter a cluster of encroaching Peludas, then ducked back behind a shield.
Rookies or not, these guys are all crazy, Max mused.
His amusement was cut short when his Auto-Evade pinged a presence closing in around him. Max looked up.
An Obsidian Soldier was wobbling its way across the top of the barrier.
He raised an eyebrow. When he cast the barriers, he deliberately left a gap of several feet between the outer walls and the Colosseum's stone. Anything spawning from the basin walls stayed trapped in that gap, unable to reach the arena floor. Yet here this brute was, having figured out how to jump the gap onto the roof instead.
Leave it to the Dungeon to find the one exploit I forgot to patch.
More presences crowded in around the creature. Dozens of Skull Sheep, Peludas, and Spartoi leaped across the gap and landed on the glass, every drop of their murderous intent locked on him.
Flattering.
A smirk broke across his face. Looks like I won't be bored after all.
But he wasn't cocky enough to leave the floor unsupervised while he played. Max activated a second Simple Protocol with a single instruction: ping him the moment any monster broke a defensive line and closed on an adventurer below.
Safety net in place, he pulled his new Knuckle Dusters from his spatial storage. The metal slid over his fingers with a sharp shing. He rolled his shoulders, stretched his legs, and bounced on the balls of his feet.
"Trent!" Max called down, his voice carrying through the glass. "I've got company up here! Yell if you need a hand!"
Trent glanced up, spotted the swarm converging on the roof, and let out a booming laugh. "Aye! Have fun up there, brat!"
Blue lightning erupted around Max, encasing his arms and legs in a crackling cloak of Lightning Armor. The air filled with the scent of ozone as he vanished in a flash of thunder, hurling himself at the approaching horde.
-◈ -
Gulliver Brothers
Unaware of Max's sanctioned slaughter, the four brothers were in the corridors of the White Palace in search of their next batch of monsters. Their primary purpose was done, the materials they needed mined. More than a day after descending, they could finally hunt for their level-ups.
The maddening absence of Udaeus didn't deter them in the slightest. They knew that traitorous Braver and his ilk already swept the throne room clean. As they already had a backup plan.
This time, however, they also had something new.
Magic.
The spell belonged to Grer—incantation and all, a devastating finale of a thing. For men who spent their entire lives on the wrong end of a mage's cast, it should have been impossible. All four of them knew the words by heart, but none of them believed the words would work.
So when Grer finally stood alone in an empty stretch of corridor to test it, his brothers watched in silence, weapons lowered, afraid any noise might break it.
Grer's first line came out rough. He stopped, swallowed, and started again. His voice steadied with each verse, and somewhere past the middle of the incantation, he felt it: a pull from deep in his chest, his Mind draining out of him into something he couldn't see. The air in the corridor tightened.
He spoke the final word, and the spell answered him.
When the storm died, a big section of the far wall was simply gone. Grer stared at the hole, his arm still raised. For a long moment, nobody spoke.
Then Dvalinn whooped, Berling slammed a fist against his chestplate, and Alfrigg grabbed Grer by both shoulders and shook him until his teeth rattled. The corridor rang with their shouts.
That thrill drove all four through a brutal day of trial and error. Grer cast the spell again and again, picking the incantation apart verse by verse, and somewhere along the way, he made a discovery that left his brothers speechless all over again. The spell didn't have to belong to him alone. Its incantation could be split.
He tested it with Alfrigg first. The eldest took the opening verse, stumbling over words, and Grer finished it. The spell held.
Alfrigg stared at his own hands.
Then all three elder brothers were talking over each other, demanding their turn. For the first time in their lives, magic wasn't something that happened to them. It was something they could do. Together.
What followed was hours of walls crumbling and monsters vaporizing across the pale corridors. One blast after another rolled down the halls of the White Palace, and every pack that came to investigate the noise was wiped out with a power the brothers spent their entire lives envying.
They didn't stop until the three elder brothers collapsed into Mind Down. Alfrigg went first, his pool the shallowest of the four, dropping flat onto the stone mid-laugh. Dvalinn and Berling followed soon after, and Grer sat with them while they recovered, grinning at the ceiling.
The moment they could stand, they went straight back to it. Mind Down. Rest. Again. And again. Somewhere along the way, they lost count of how many times they collapsed.
Grer topped up his Mind only once.
Eventually, the lesson stuck and hardened into their tactics. The spell was a final option, reserved strictly for the end of the dive. One cast, all four brothers giving their pieces together, and no experiments before that.
Now they rested in a hollowed-out alcove, chewing dry rations in the dim light, their eyes on the corridor.
Alfrigg pulled the stopper off a Mind potion and drank it down, grimacing at the sweet taste. It eased the ache behind his eyes, but it didn't take it away. That ache stayed with him since the first time he collapsed.
"Years of swinging steel," he muttered, wiping his mouth with the back of his gauntlet. "And now we swill mage's tonic like one of them."
"You wrung yourself dry so many times we lost count, brother," Dvalinn pointed out, leaning his hammer against the wall. "Magic comes with its own disadvantages."
"It's strange, is what it is," Berling murmured, pressing a hand flat against his chestplate. "All these years, magic was just something that happened to us. Fire from the sky. Lightning out of nowhere. Now... there's a piece of it sitting on my tongue. Just waiting."
Alfrigg didn't answer, but he knew exactly what Berling meant. Every time he spoke his verse, he felt his own Mind rush out through his veins and something answer on the other side. After the raid, the Magic on his status sheet finally read something other than zero. He wanted to watch that number climb. He wanted to feel more of that rush than his shallow pool could hold.
"Speaking of waiting—" Alfrigg jabbed the empty vial in Grer's direction. "You cast the heaviest piece and didn't blink. Didn't even blink. I watched."
"Didn't need to. My pool is the deepest, elder brother." Grer smirked around his ration. "Someone had to carry the weight."
Alfrigg's jaw worked, but before he could fire back, Berling snorted into his ration bar, and Alfrigg let it go.
He tossed the vial aside and pulled his spear across his knees, running his thumb down the haft over the fresh nicks the last day carved into it.
The magic was a gift, but the level-up was what brought them down here. Level 5. First class. He was itching for it. They would never match Allen's pace, but if they reached it now, the four of them would still be among the youngest to make first class since the fall of Zeus and Hera.
"How many stones do you have left, Berling?"
Berling popped his waist pouch open and peered inside. "Just over a hundred, brother."
A hundred Deep Floor stones. A small fortune, and he was about to suggest throwing it down a monster's throat on a guess.
Alfrigg turned to their youngest. "Is that enough to force an enhancement? Enough to push me to a level-up?"
Grer swallowed and took his time answering. Alfrigg didn't rush him. When Grer took his time, it usually meant he wasn't sure.
"In theory, it should. Nothing down here comes with a manual. But every monster is built around its stone—flesh grows to fit the magic, not the other way around. So my guess is this: flood a body with foreign stones, enough of them, from its own kin and floor, and its stats have nowhere to go but up." He turned a palm up.
A guess. Alfrigg leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Would that equal a full level's worth of excelia? Maybe if the stones belonged strictly to the same species, the resonance might—"
"Same species? Oh, please!" Dvalinn scoffed, reaching for his hammer to scrape the dried blood off its head. "Aside from the Skull Sheep, the Spartoi, and the occasional pack of Peludas, nothing down here attacks in hordes large enough to farm that many stones."
"Then we mix the pot and find out." Grer shrugged. "We have enough Skull Sheep and Spartoi stones divided between us. We feed them to your target to make up the difference—and if I'm wrong, we're out a pouch of stones and we've learned something anyway."
Berling was frowning at the far wall. "You've seen this before. Somewhere."
Grer was quiet a moment, turning his ration wrapper between thick fingers.
"There was a Moss Huge," he said at last. "On the 24th, the one that chewed through the second string three years back. Everyone called it a freak—a big one, bad luck, nothing more. But I got close enough to see its stone before it went down." His hand curled loosely.
"It wasn't one stone. It was a dozen, maybe more, fused together and matted into the moss. Nobody fed that thing. Nobody farmed it. It ate its way to enhancement all on its own—stumbled onto the very trick we're about to try." He looked around the alcove. "If a mindless moss-heap can do it by accident, I see no reason we can't do it on purpose. That's my guess. The Dungeon will tell us if I'm wrong."
Alfrigg looked at Berling's pouch, then down at the spear across his knees. A dozen stones made that Moss Huge a legend on the 24th. A hundred would make something he couldn't picture.
He nodded slowly. "And if these forced mutations aren't enough to trigger the level-up... we make for the Colosseum. Hunt the stragglers there to close the gap."
Grer's head snapped around. "Don't joke about that, Alfrigg. Farmed blind, the Colosseum is a one-way hellhole. We couldn't survive it without the Vanguard anchoring the line, and it's just the four of us. That's the whole reason the spell waits for the end of the dive: one cast, all four of us at once, to clear our way out if the spawn ever pins us. We stick to the plan."
Alfrigg didn't think about who walked into the Colosseum alone and called it a test. He decidedly didn't think about the pervert at all.
And he certainly didn't think about that ooze.
None of them talked about the slime, not since the executive dive. It made all four of them question what they were capable of, and challenge after challenge, it ignored Alfrigg most of all. A slime, of all things, already sat where he was clawing to reach, and that still stung.
So he let Grer's point stand. His brother was right; the spell still needed grooming. Every cast so far was rough at the seams, a beat too slow between the verses. Once the four of them could perform it flawlessly, though, that stuck-up white elf was next.
For years, Hedin's magic was the one guillotine he held over the four of them. With this spell, that guillotine was gone. However far-fetched it sounded, Alfrigg wanted to stand beside his brothers and put that elf on his knees.
With their mind and stamina recovered, the debate settled as Dvalinn called an end to the rest. Alfrigg was on his feet before his brother finished the sentence, and he took point.
He led them through the winding corridors, passing over everything they found along the way. A pack of Spartoi, then a lone Lizardman. He could kill those without a second thought, and that was exactly the problem. He wanted something that would push him, and he finally found it in a wide alcove off the main hall: a Peluda, denning alone. A perfect match for him—his extreme dexterity against its reach.
"Stand back and guard the perimeter," Alfrigg ordered. "Do not interfere unless I am about to die."
His brothers fanned out behind him without argument. Berling emptied his pouch into a pile in the center of the corridor, and the three of them pulled back into the shadows. Alfrigg weighed a single stone in his palm, then chucked it at the beast's snout. The Peluda spun toward the sting, caught the glow of the pile, and lunged. It swallowed the offering in three snapping bites.
Alfrigg's grip tightened on his spear as its body began to convulse.
The skin darkened into an iridescent purple, and the muscles beneath it tore and rebuilt under the influx of monster stones. The change went deeper than flesh. The shards of bone that always drifted loose inside its body pushed outward, punching through the skin one by one and latching together across its hide into a bone white lattice, like a second skeleton grown over the skin. Its crimson eyes brightened, and at the center of each one a black pupil split open beside the red. The needles along its spine lengthened last, venom already smoking where it dripped onto the stone.
Behind him, Alfrigg heard Dvalinn's breath catch. He didn't look back. None of them had ever seen anything like the beast in front of him now, and the moment it finished changing, he engaged.
The needles came first, a spread of them shrieking off its spine. Alfrigg turned half a step and let the volley pass close enough to feel the heat of the venom, then batted a straggler aside with the shaft of his spear. He closed the distance behind the volley and drove a thrust at its throat, but the spearhead skated off the fresh bone plating with a screech that rang up both his arms and chipped a white shard into the darkness. The tail whipped at his legs in answer. He was already airborne, clearing it with room to spare, and he landed light on the balls of his feet.
Eight heartbeats in, Alfrigg let out a breath, and his shoulders dropped. The armor was new, but the speed wasn't. Under all that bone, it was still a Peluda, and he had killed more of those than he could remember. It never came close to touching him. The beast seemed to realize it too, because on the ninth heartbeat it broke off. No roar, no death rush—it poured itself backward into its alcove and vanished around the pale rock.
The brothers stared after it.
"Is it fleeing?" Dvalinn asked flatly.
Alfrigg watched the spot where it vanished. Every beaten Peluda he ever fought died where it stood, spitting needles to the end. This one looked at him, as if it sized him up, and left.
"No. It's thinking," he breathed. A grin crawled up his face, and he waved them along the wall before following it inside.
The alcove opened into a den, and the den was occupied. A few dozen Peludas inside, coiled in as if resting, crimson eyes blinking as the mutated beast walked in. Alfrigg approached the entrance and waited, with his spear ready, but the Peluda didn't look at him as it slid past him deeper into the den, and jumped on its kin.
The brothers crouched at the entrance and watched their target slaughter its own kin. The other Peludas fought back the only way they knew, spraying venom and firing needles, but all of it bounced off its new bone armor. Its needles punched through the gaps in their plating, and its tail tore their sides open. When the last of them stopped moving, it cracked their chests open with its foreclaws, dug out the glowing stones, and swallowed them one after another. With every stone, the bone lattice grew thicker, new plates forming over the old seams.
"Are we seriously letting it rob us?" Dvalinn muttered.
"Quiet. I'm learning something," Alfrigg said, his eyes never leaving it.
When the den was empty, the Peluda slipped out through the far side, and the brothers followed it into the corridors beyond. It tore through a group of Skull Sheep, then a pair of Spartoi, eating everything it killed, and with every kill, the armor crept higher over its body. Alfrigg kept his distance and counted the stones going down its throat until he lost track.
"There," Berling murmured at last. "It's stopping."
From the mouth of the lair, Dvalinn watched the Peluda stop and turn to face their eldest, and this time it didn't look ready to run. Its head came down low and level, both eyes fixed on Alfrigg, as if it was sizing him up. That was when it clicked for Dvalinn. It fled from Alfrigg the first time because it couldn't win, and as far as he could tell, every monster it ate since then was meant to change that.
Looking at it now, Dvalinn would say it succeeded. Its armor stood off its body in thick ridges, stronger and denser than it was in the corridor, and the needles on its spine were three times longer, dripping green venom. It barely looked like the same Peluda that ran from his brother, and he found himself eyeing it nervously.
Alfrigg, on the other hand, let out a delighted squeal he never heard from him in all their years together, completely beneath the dignity of the eldest Gulliver.
"LOOK AT IT!" Alfrigg shrilled, spinning his spear up into guard. "It ran, fed on more monsters on its own and grew stronger—stronger to match ME!"
Before Dvalinn could say anything, the Peluda fired a spray of needles wide enough to cover the whole lair. Alfrigg dodged through them, and the two he couldn't avoid broke against his bracers. But he was so busy with the needles that he didn't see its tail until it was already swinging at him, faster than before. The tail caught his ankle mid-jump and threw him into the wall, and he rolled out of the way before the Peluda's next swing smashed into his spot.
Pain shot up Alfrigg's side as he got back up, but he went straight back in, because he was still faster than the monster. He ran around to its side and stabbed at every spot that looked soft, hitting the Peluda three times before it could even turn to face him. All three hits bounced off the beast's bone armor. Each time, the jolt shook his arm all the way up to his shoulder, and when he jumped back to look, he saw he left nothing but a few scratches.
The Peluda didn't chase him. It just kept turning in place to face him, and the longer Alfrigg watched it, the more it looked like it was waiting for him to tire himself out.
So he went for the Peluda's eye instead, since there was no bone covering it back in the corridor. This time the beast saw him coming and lowered its head, and his spear slid off the bone above its eye. While he was still off balance, its tail came swinging at his side, and he had to throw himself flat on the ground as the tail passed over him.
Damn, that's a smart beast, Alfrigg thought as he scrambled back up. In the corridor, the Peluda couldn't keep up with him, but now it was letting him wear himself out against armor he didn't expect.
He ducked left under the Peluda's next round of needles and, out of habit, left his right side open, the way he always did when Berling's axe was there to cover it. Except Berling wasn't beside him this time, and the tail swung right into that open side. The tail didn't hit him full on, but it scraped down his right arm, and two needles stuck into his shoulder. He pulled them out with his left hand and stumbled back, and a few breaths later, the venom started to burn. The burning spread down his arm to his fingers, and his grip on the spear grew weak.
Behind him, he heard his brothers start running toward him.
"Stay back!" Alfrigg barked without turning around. "I'm not dying yet!"
His brothers stopped where they were, and Alfrigg took a slow breath to steady himself. With no one covering his sides, rushing in again would only get him hurt more, so he stopped attacking and started backing away along the edge of the lair. The Peluda followed him, firing needles and swinging its tail, as if it was trying to trap him against the wall. His arm burned all the way to the elbow, his lungs ached, and sweat stung his eyes, but he kept watching the beast.
The further he backed away, the harder the Peluda pushed, as if it wanted to tear him apart before he could recover, and that was when Alfrigg finally understood what he was facing. So this is an Enhanced species. It gets smarter as it gets stronger. A monster like that was exactly the kind of opponent that could take him into the first-class ranks, so he kept fighting, one careful step at a time.
As he backed around the lair, he started to notice how the Peluda attacked. The beast always fired its needles first, then swung its tail, and every third swing was so heavy that it needed a moment to pull the tail back before it could swing again. As far as he could tell, all that new armor was slowing it down. That moment was his only opening, but it was short, and to reach the Peluda in time, he would have to run through the needles instead of dodging them.
His chance came when his back touched the wall and the Peluda arched its spine to fire again. Instead of dodging, he threw his left bracer up over his face and ran straight at the beast. One needle broke against the bracer, another stabbed into his thigh, and a third cut across his ribs, but he made it through just as the third swing came.
He feinted low, and the tail swept down at the spot where he should have been and hit nothing. While the Peluda was still pulling its tail back, he jumped onto its back and ran up its spine, his boots catching between the bone ridges. Right above its magic stone, there was a gap between two armor plates, and he drove his spear down into it, but the spear stopped a finger short of the stone.
The Peluda bucked so hard that he almost went flying, so he wrapped his legs around one of the bone ridges and held on. Every time the beast shook, the plates on either side of the gap squeezed his spear, and his right hand was already too weak to hold it. Knowing he couldn't last much longer, he put his left hand over his right and pushed down with all his weight until the spear went in the last inch, and he felt the stone crack and break apart under it.
The Peluda fell apart into ash beneath him, its bone plates clattering against the floor and crumbling before they settled, and Alfrigg dropped into a crouch, chest heaving. Blood ran down his thigh, his right arm hung limp, and his left hand was shaking on the spear. He stared at his hand for a moment, then started laughing, high and breathless, until it turned into a cough.
"Now that," he panted, "was a monster."
Berling stepped out and crouched by the pile of ash. "It wasn't just the stones," he said quietly. "It fed itself. On purpose. It ran from you and came back stronger."
Grer stared at the ash and thought about what Berling said. Back in the alcove, all he had was a guess, and he told his brothers as much. He even said the Dungeon would tell them if he was wrong, and now the Dungeon proved him he was right. The stones made the Peluda stronger, and then the beast went and made itself even stronger, just like the Moss Huge on the 24th. It wasn't a theory anymore.
Grinning, he turned to Alfrigg. "That answers your question, elder brother. It works. We can farm them like this—for all of us."
Dvalinn let out a whoop, Berling pumped his fist, and the three of them cheered. Alfrigg tried to join, but it came out as another cough, and the cheering died almost as fast as it started.
Grer went over to him, and up close, Alfrigg looked worse than he thought. His right arm wouldn't move, the skin around the needle holes was already turning dark, and blood was soaking through the leg of his trousers.
"Berling, keep an eye on the corridor," Dvalinn said, already kneeling beside him.
Berling picked up his axe and planted himself at the mouth of the lair, and soon enough, the noise drew in the first monsters, a Skull Sheep and then a pair of Lizardmen. While he cut them down one after another, Dvalinn and Grer went to work on their eldest. Grer dug the antidotes out of his pouch and pressed one into Alfrigg's good hand as Dvalinn poured a healing potion over Alfrigg's thigh.
Alfrigg took one sip and grimaced. "Gods, this is worse than the Mind potions."
"You have to drink it, brother," Grer said sternly.
Alfrigg drank the whole thing, then a second one when Grer held it out.
They made him sit against the wall after that.
"I don't need to sit, I'm—"
"Sit," Grer ordered with finality as he evaluated Alfrigg's injuries.
Alfrigg grumbled under his breath, but he leaned his head back against the stone, and for a few minutes, the only sounds in the lair were Berling's axe at the entrance and Alfrigg's breathing slowly evening out. The dark marks around the needle holes faded first. Then the color came back into his face, and he flexed the fingers of his right hand one at a time until they closed properly around his spear.
"I'm fine," he said, already trying to get up.
"You ran straight into a wall of needles," Dvalinn said, pushing him back down with one hand. "Sit a few more minutes."
Alfrigg sat for exactly two minutes. Once he was back on his feet, Dvalinn looked over at the ash where the Peluda fell.
"So the more stones we feed them, the stronger they get," Dvalinn began.
"And the stronger they get, the more excelia we get," Alfrigg concluded, already grinning again.
So when they laid the next pile, nobody counted out a hundred. They poured in everything the monster could hold, and a handful more on top.
It took them most of an hour of walking the pale corridors to find their next target, an Elite Lizardman patrolling a wide intersection, and that pile went to Dvalinn. As it rushed through the stones, the Lizardman doubled over in size. In addition to its increased size, black scales stacked over the old ones, and its claws grew as long as shortswords. Dvalinn didn't wait for the Lizardman to charge. He jumped in, while the rest of them took the flanks and cut down the monsters the noise pulled in.
Grer could tell from the first blow how much stronger the Lizardman was. It brought its claws down with both arms, and when Dvalinn blocked them with the handle of his hammer, the force pushed him back, his boots scraping grooves into the stone.
For a moment, Grer thought the Lizardman would force his brother to his knees, until Dvalinn pushed back and shoved the whole beast a full step away. The strain was plain on his face. As far as Grer knew, no Elite Lizardman ever pushed him that hard before.
"There you are," Dvalinn rumbled, grinning, and stopped holding back.
Grer noticed right away that his brother was guarding both of his own sides, instead of leaving his left open for Alfrigg's spear the way he always did. After watching what happened to Alfrigg, Dvalinn wasn't about to make the same mistake, and he fought the Lizardman like it was just the two of them in that hall. For a while, he was winning. Then the Lizardman did something Grer never saw before. It jumped back to the wall, pulled a jagged stone blade straight out of the rock, and came at Dvalinn with the blade in one hand and its claws in the other.
For the first time in the fight, Dvalinn had to back away. The blade cut a gash across his forearm, and a claw hit his helmet hard enough to make it ring, but he stayed on his feet. The Lizardman's new scales were too thick to break with one hit, so he kept hammering the same plate on its chest until it finally cracked.
Then he knocked the stone blade aside with a twist of his whole body and swung his hammer up into the cracked scales, caving in the Lizardman's chest. The blast of the hit blew the ash of the monsters his brothers killed ten paces back across the floor, and a moment later, the Lizardman's stone shattered.
Dvalinn rolled his shoulders, blood dripping off his forearm. "Good harvest."
They rested long enough for Dvalinn to drink a potion and for his arm to close up, then pushed deeper until they found an Obsidian Soldier standing guard in a narrow hall, and Berling took the next pile. The Soldier swallowed every stone, and its rocky hide hardened into plating as tough as diamond, the purple eye at its center glowing. The change made the Soldier stronger, but it also made its body heavier and slower, and Berling noticed that right away.
Like Dvalinn, he fought it on his own, keeping his guard closed, and this time, he was the one pushing forward. Every time the Soldier swung, its heavy body needed a moment to recover, and Berling used that moment to step in and take a little more ground. The problem was its hide. One chop barely left a mark, so he had to hit the same spot two or three times before the plating even started to crack, and every extra swing kept him in front of the Soldier longer than was safe.
So he turned it into a battle of attrition. He kept drawing the Soldier into heavy swings, slipping out of each one at the last moment and chopping at the cracks while it dragged itself back up. Its swings slowly got slower, but Berling's arms were getting heavier too, and the plating still wasn't breaking fast enough.
Then, instead of swinging again, the Soldier slammed both fists into the floor. The stone cracked and buckled under Berling's feet, and before he could find solid ground, a glancing blow caught his shoulder and knocked him back a step. Grer and Dvalinn both moved toward him, but Alfrigg threw up a hand.
"Wait. He's got it."
Berling caught his balance and went straight back to work, and Grer could see the slam cost the Soldier more than it cost his brother. The Soldier was moving sluggishly now, and each swing took longer to pull back than the last. Finally, one swing carried it too far, its heavy body tipped forward on the broken floor, and the Soldier stumbled and crashed down onto its knees.
That was the chance Berling was waiting for. He raised his axe high over his head and brought it down on the glowing eye with everything he had left. The blade split the Soldier's face down the middle, and the stone behind it shattered. He leaned on his axe, breathing hard and rubbing his shoulder, as his brothers gathered around him.
"Nothing to add, brothers," he managed.
"We know," Alfrigg said.
Watching Berling catch his breath, Grer was sure of one thing. Neither of their monsters ran the way Alfrigg's Peluda did. Both of them stood and fought head-on, and his brothers came out of it with nothing worse than a gash and a sore shoulder. After fights like those, Grer was confident all three of them earned enough excelia to level up.
This time, they rested longer. Alfrigg, mostly recovered by now, took over guard duty at the mouth of the hall, so Berling could sit down against the wall with Dvalinn and pass around a waterskin while their wounds closed.
Once they were back on their feet, Grer opened his pouch and found it empty, so they spread monster bait through the nearby corridors and waited for whatever it drew in. The monsters came in small groups, and the brothers cut them down as they arrived, collecting every stone left behind in the ash. Every now and then, while they worked, the walls around them shook. Dvalinn glanced at Grer the first time it happened, but nothing came of it, so they wrote it off as some strange quirk of the floor and went back to collecting. Within an hour, the pouch at Grer's hip was full again.
By then, Alfrigg was swinging his spear like nothing happened, the gash on Dvalinn's forearm was only a pink line, and Berling wasn't rubbing his shoulder anymore, which meant it was finally Grer's turn. He waited the entire dive for this moment, because going last meant he got to look forward to it the longest. For years, mages wiped out in a single cast what took his greatsword minutes of exhausting work to cut through, and it always bothered him. Now he held the biggest share of a real spell, one his deep Mind pool barely felt, and he could hardly wait to use it.
Dvalinn clapped him on the shoulder as they set out, and Grer rested his greatsword on that same shoulder as they went deeper. To their joy, they didn't have to search long. A few corridors later, they found a Loup Garou resting in a side passage, the kind of unpredictable monster that could come at him from any direction.
"This one is mine. Keep the hall clear," Grer said, grinning.
While he watched the Loup Garou, his brothers piled every stone they collected into the middle of the corridor, and by the time they finished, the pile held more than 300. On the surface, that many stones would sell for a small fortune, but Grer didn't give the money a second thought, and from the way his brothers tossed the last of them onto the pile, neither did they. Their level-ups were worth far more.
"Let's give him the strongest one yet," Berling said, stepping back.
Grer jumped back from the pile too and waited for the Loup Garou to come eat. For a long moment, it didn't move. Its red eyes went from the glowing stones to Grer and back again, and then it slowly dropped to all fours with its muscles tensed. Grer took hold of the sword on his shoulder, ready for the Loup Garou to lunge at the pile like every monster before it. Instead, it came straight at him like a thrown knife.
He barely had time to swing the sword off his shoulder. The claws screeched across the blade, and the impact rattled up both his arms as the Loup Garou drove him back three full steps, his boots skidding through the stone dust until his heels hit the wall. Its claws pressed down on his crossguard, inching closer to his face, and for a few heartbeats, all Grer could do was push back and hold on. The claws stopped an inch from his nose. He could smell the rot on the Loup Garou's breath, and he could see it watching him, as if it was waiting for him to give up.
Then, without warning, the Loup Garou let go. It twisted away from him and leapt back toward the pile with its jaws wide open, and Grer realized too late what it was doing. It never meant to fight him. It only wanted him out of the way.
He pushed off the wall to chase after it, but before he could take a single step, the wall to his right burst apart.
Chunks of pale stone flew across the corridor, and through the dust came a Lambton, a giant worm as thick as a cart, its mouth a ring of teeth wide enough to swallow a man whole. Its jaws closed over the pile of stones and the Loup Garou diving at it, and in one gulp, all of it was gone. Grer stared in surprise could.
Then the Lambton roared. The sound filled the corridor and shook the floor so hard that Grer stepped back without meaning to, and dust rained down from the ceiling onto his shoulders. Grer figured that all those times the walls shook while they were collecting stones, it must have been this thing burrowing through the White Palace.
He was still mid-step when his brothers were suddenly beside him—Alfrigg on his left, Dvalinn and Berling on his right, the four of them shoulder to shoulder. Nobody said a word at first. They just watched as the Lambton pulled back into the hole it made, its body thrashing as the stones started to work on it. Its hide darkened and split, and ridges of bone pushed out through the cracks, the same way they did on Alfrigg's Peluda. Only this time, the monster was already ten times bigger, and it was still growing.
"That thing ate your whole turn," Dvalinn said.
"And every stone we saved," Berling added grimly.
"But look at the size of it." On Grer's left, Alfrigg was grinning again. "A Deep Floor monster, stuffed with every stone we had, changing right in front of us. Brothers—this is the perfect chance. The spell. Now, while it's still changing."
Grer looked at the Lambton, then at his brothers, and his heart started pounding. The spell was their last resort, the one cast they saved for the end of the dive, and they never used it on anything this big. But Alfrigg was right. If they waited for the Lambton to finish changing, they might not get another chance. He gave his brothers a single nod, and Alfrigg started the chant, each brother ready to take a line in turn.
"Four minds, bound in iron."
Alfrigg's Mind poured out all at once, even though his pool was the smallest of the four, and Grer heard his brother's breath catch from the strain. The air above their heads shuddered, and a ring of gray wind snapped into place, stiff as iron and still, holding the shape for the rest of the spell. Down the corridor, the Lambton tore itself out of the wall. Its new bone armor scraped along the stone as it turned toward them, and then it came at them from 50 meters away.
"Four blades, forged in storm."
As Dvalinn spoke his line, the wind picked up. It rushed in from all directions at once, tugging at their clothes and hair as it gathered inside the ring, and it grew thicker every second until it became a javelin the length of a longboat, packed so tight it twisted the dust in the corridor into spirals. The howl was so loud that Grer could barely hear the Lambton anymore, but he could still see the monster, 20 meters away and closing.
"We unleash God's judgment."
Berling spoke his line with anticipation, as the Lambton beared down on them. The howl dropped to a whisper as more wind wrapped around the javelin, layer after layer, and somewhere at the javelin's center a light flickered once and disappeared. Grer hoped the Lambton didn't see it.
To anyone watching, the spell looked like pure Wind magic, nothing more than a hurricane. The Lambton was 10 meters away, close enough that Grer could see its teeth, and as he took a breath for the last line, he thought of all the years he watched mages do this from behind his greatsword. This time, he was the one finishing the spell.
"Pierce the heavens—Gungnir!"
As Grer spoke the last word, the spell locked into place, waiting for him to launch. He felt his Mind rush into the center of the javelin, and a core of lightning formed inside the storm hidden under the whirling wind. At the same time, Grer locked the spell to the charging Lambton, not bothering to aim.
Sensing the Mind building up in front of it, the Lambton roared louder, as if it knew it was in danger. Mid-lunge, it twisted aside and slammed its huge body into the corridor wall, cracking the stone, but unfortunately for the Enhanced beast, Gungnir didn't follow the path of an ordinary spell.
As Grer released it, the spear shot across the corridor with the sound of a thunderbolt and curved in midair toward the Lambton's new spot, 5 meters from the brothers. The Lambton let out a shrill roar and tried to escape, slamming its long tail against the floor to launch itself fifty meters back down the corridor, but the spear simply changed direction again and rushed after it.
With the hit coming no matter where it went, the Lambton tried one last thing. It started digging into the floor, as if it hoped the wind would pass harmlessly over it, and it managed to bury half of its body in the stone before the wind spear finally hit its mark, right at the base of the part still sticking out.
The storm inside the spear burst outward and tore apart everything within 5 meters, ripping away the stone around the Lambton and exposing more of its body. Then the wind died down, and for a moment, the corridor went completely quiet, like the calm before a storm.
That was when the real power hidden inside the spell took effect. With the crack of lightning striking from the heavens, the lightning core pierced through the Enhanced Lambton's thick scales and burned it from the inside out, punching straight through its dense magic stone. When the light faded, nothing was left of the Lambton but ash.
The corridor went silent, leaving the four of them standing shoulder to shoulder—almost out of Mind, half-deaf from the thunderclap.
--> Devil in a Dungeon <--
AN:
Sorry for the delay folks, my eye and the Gullivers are in consensus and made it hard for me to complete the chapter. Bet you didn't expect the end though ;)
Bloody hell, that's the longest chapter at almost 8.7k words, longer than the solo Loki familia chapter at 8.3k.
Now, do I think this is too much, yes. But would I decrease the word count because of that, not really. Do you feel the chapter is lagging and could be trimmed? Let me know in your review/comments. I just want to the Gullivers the stage they deserve, especially with the new magic and did my best.
And we finally see what the brothers were up to since the Update and their magic in action and let me know your thoughts on how it is. Its a short chant magic with each of the brother's sharing a verse and the spell hits hard as the Lambton witnessed. Though the real question is, do you think this was enough for them to finally Level up??
Imagine them stumbling into Max and boys, who are grinding in the Colosseum, with Max single handedly keeping everyone safe, lmao. How do you think they would react if they found out? :)
Anyway they obviously used the teleportation circle to come here and Freya implemented a monthly subscription just to be fair to Max and each member will be charged 50k Valis a month and can use it up to their approved floor level with the Executives paying double that money and accessing the deepest floor accessible.
The next chapter will be possibly Rudra's execution and Max with the knowledge that his experiments work, dives for his own level up. As discussed in the last chapter's comments, Loki familia will take few days to respond as Riveria's not easy to let go of her dignity.
Do share how you felt the chapter was. Was it good or did you feel it was a bit forced? Please share your feedback/suggestions on how to improve the story in a comment/review. I will address them to make the chapter better.
If you'd like to read 10 chapters ahead(around 50k words), support my work, check character images for free, read a free chapter(Ch 51.5), or commission a story idea, visit my p.a.t.r.e.o.n.c.o.m/b3smash
Please note that the chapters are early access only, they will be eventually released here as well.
Next update will be on Tuesday.
Ben, Out.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.