The battlefield geometry of the twenty-five Adventurers formed a flawless weapon.
At the very front stood the five Tankers. They held the heavy iron line. Behind their broad backs, six Mages dug their boots into the mud and focused their destructive spells directly against the towering Miasma-Titan.
Then came the six Healers. They occupied the rear, but they did not simply stand around waiting for someone to bleed or watching the clock to flush the poison. These were seasoned Adventurers. Their eyes constantly tracked the chaotic shifts of the formation, the monster's lumbering weight, and the footing of their own vanguard. Whenever the frontline advanced, the Healers mirrored the distance. If the Mages stepped left to dodge a flying root, the Healers adjusted their angles so they never blocked a retreat path. A backline support who fails to read the breathing of a battlefield dies instantly in a high-rank zone. Even a half-second delay in their positioning could cost the entire party their lives. Rookies often stare at the monster, though these veterans read the entire board.
Meanwhile, the Swordsmen operated on a strict pendulum system. They shared the front line with the Tankers. But the moment the Titan swung a massive root, they immediately fell back behind the heavy iron shields. Once the crushing impact hit the Tankers, the Swordsmen used that brief opening to step out and carve deep gashes into the bark.
The Thieves acted as the loose gears in this machine. They were the most agile fighters, so they completely avoided frontal clashes. They constantly circled the mud to look for blind spots. The Titan's petrified outer armor was incredibly thick. A Thief's dagger lacked the raw mass to pierce it with a single strike. So, they waited. Whenever a Mage's fireball or a Swordsman's heavy blade cracked a section of the hardened bark, the Thieves darted in. They drove their steel into that exact same damaged fissure to deepen the wound before retreating to the shadows.
It was a continuous, brutal cycle of violence. The Adventurers struck, the bark shattered, and then the monster instantly healed the gap without a single flinch. The humans simply reset their footing and attacked again.
To normal people, throwing swords and spells against a mountain of constantly regenerating monster looked like an exercise in suicidal madness.
If a rookie Adventurer watched this fight from the trees, they would likely drop their sword in pure despair. What is the point of swinging a blade? The humans struck hard, the monster took heavy damage, and then the torn bark knit back together in the blink of an eye. The monster instantly healed every single wound. It completely erased the effort like nothing had happened. It looked like an infinite, unwinnable loop against an unkillable beast.
However, in the high-level hunting world, this was a strictly calculated biological process.
Monster threat levels dictate how they must be killed. Fodder-class beasts usually die from a simple iron blade to the brain or heart, even without the use of Aura. Even a civilian can kill one.
Hazard-class creatures require a dense Aura to pierce their thick hides before an Adventurer can strike a vital organ.
A Disaster-class threat forces an entire Adventurer's party to coordinate heavy, sequential blows just to crack its calcified armor, finally allowing a lethal strike to reach the heart.
A Calamity operates on entirely different laws of physics. They do not die from massive blood loss or normal organ failure. Their towering, impossible bodies are kept alive and anchored to the world by a highly condensed, physical Monster Core hidden deep inside their mass. Stabbing a Calamity in the heart achieves absolutely nothing.
To kill the beast, the Adventurers must shatter the Core. To reach the Core, they must strip away the impenetrable outer shell. Since the Miasma-Titan instantly regenerated its thick mud armor to block them, the raid team had to weaponize the act of healing itself.
In real combat, there are no visible numbers hovering in the air to measure a monster's exhaustion. Adventurers must rely on pure battlefield instinct and the highly specialized radar of the Thief class.
Thieves like Vance and Korinn constantly tracked the beast's invisible Life Force.
Every time the Mages' fired attack spells or Swordsmen cleaved a thick root, the Titan was forced to pull Mana to instantly rebuild the damaged tissue.
A single regeneration cycle consumed a microscopic fraction of its massive internal fuel tank. To the Thieves, that tiny, almost imperceptible drop in the ambient atmospheric pressure signaled a successful hit.
It was a brutal, grueling war of attrition. The raid team simply needed to inflict continuous, agonizing damage to force the monster to heal over and over again.
They were bleeding its reserves dry. Once the monster's Mana reached empty, the beast would lack the energy to rebuild its flesh.
The regeneration would violently halt, and the hardened shells would shatter permanently, leaving the glowing Core completely exposed for the executioners.
Lumina stood in the back row as she watched the glowing yellow vents. She formed a small, dense ball of fire.
She did not cast an Aura Thread to guide it. Instead, she calculated the exact wind resistance of the thick fog and the unpredictable movements of the Titan. She used the precise fraction of fuel needed for the Tail.
The fireball shot forward in a perfectly straight, calculated line. It bypassed the swinging arms and struck the exact same spot Thorne had hit.
It was not that Thorne's method was wrong. In a normal, one-day dungeon hunt, the Mana cost of a thin Aura Thread is so tiny it is practically zero. No one cares about it.
But this was a fifteen-day war of attrition. Every single drop of Mana burned meant another sip from a Mana potion later. And a human body can only drink so many harsh, toxic potions before the stomach violently rejects them.
Thorne was a veteran. He knew a sudden gust of swamp wind could easily blow a normal fireball off course. To a cautious fighter like him, the large Mana cost of missing the target entirely—and the extra potions needed to replace that wasted fireball—was a hundred times worse than spending a tiny bit of Mana on a guiding Aura Thread. Thorne willingly traded a piece of his long-term physical endurance for guaranteed accuracy. His logic was smart and reliable.
But Lumina did not need caution. She had flawless calculation. She did not waste a single, microscopic drop of Mana on threads, which meant she was not burning the extra fuel which could led to potion sickness. She fired at a steady, rhythmic pace, calmly chewing on a piece of dried fruit between casts.
Celia moved behind the Tankers and cast healing magic to the wounded men directly. The green light knitted flesh and broken bones together instantly.
Despite standing in the middle of the suffocating, acidic fog, she did not cough. She simply blinked and stepped smoothly out of the way of a flying rock, completely unbothered by the deadly air.
"Thirty minutes down!" Kaelen roared. His broadsword glowed brightly as he smashed a heavy root aside. Black sap splattered across his iron chestplate. "Keep chipping the hardened shell! We wear it down piece by piece! Keep your Auras thick, do not let the acid touch your skin!"
The air grew incredibly dense as the Titan vented more poison from its yellow lights. Before long, the gray fog turned black.
Vance stumbled and dropped to one knee. He hacked violently. "I need a flush!"
Nia ran forward and pointed her staff at the Thief. A concentrated beam of green light hit his chest. It violently flushed the black poison out of his system. The toxic sludge dripped onto the mud and sizzled.
"Thanks," Vance gasped. He stood up and swung his daggers into a mud-crawler's skull.
The first hour of the battle did not break them. They were capital veterans; their stamina was built for grueling campaigns. But as the Tankers bashed away the endless, mindless roots, a grim realization settled over the raid team. The thick, acidic fog was forcing their Auras to burn fast just to keep their iron armor from melting.
The Mages kept their breathing steady, but they could physically feel the heavy, continuous drain on their Mana pools. It was only hour one. They were not tired yet, but the grim reality of the next fifteen days already looked brutal.
"Hour is up!" Kaelen bellowed. He bashed a root away. "Group B! Fall back to the clean zone! Group A, close the gap!"
The thirteen members of Group B stopped. They turned and ran.
They sprinted back through the dead willow trees, running until the black fog thinned out into a dull gray mist. Eventually, the group reached the edge of the swamp.
A big, heavy Tanker dropped his Warhammer and Shield. He fell onto his hands and knees in the dry soil. He vomited violently.
A Mage leaned against a tree and pulled a glass vial from her belt. Her hands shook. She popped the cork and downed the glowing blue liquid.
"This is tough," the Mage muttered as she wiped her mouth. "That poison fog drains our Auras twice as fast as normal combat."
Celia and Lumina stopped near the back of the group. Lumina pulled her dark hood down and sat on a clean rock. She pulled out a small cloth wrapped around a sweet pastry. She took a bite and chewed slowly.
Celia sat next to her. She opened a canteen of water and took a sip.
They just sat quietly, showing no signs of sweat or vomit. The veterans were too busy gagging on Mana potions to notice.