Signa’s voice ca through Destro’s comm-artifact, shaky with frustration beneath her usual cool tone.
"The other route is a dead end, literally. The tunnel drops straight into a sinkhole, then curves into a magma basin, with freaking magma serpents or sothing swimming in it. We’re not getting past that. We have to go through your path."
Destro exhaled slowly and heavily. "Then this is going to be one bloody ordeal."
"So be it," Signa replied.
Not long after, she appeared, leading what remained of her squad. Twenty, down from twenty-five. They looked shaken and humbled.
But they still marched.
With the two forces united, they reorganized at the mouth of the abyssal rock corridor. The tunnel was barely wide enough for two grown n shoulder-to-shoulder, forcing everything into an ugly, grinding choke-push.
The battle began the mont they stepped inside.
The floor was a carpet of pressure spike traps while Abyssal Nightclaws swooped through the cramped airspace above, wings scraping the jagged ceiling as they strafed the front line with slashing talons.
There was no room to dodge.
Barely room to swing.
Screams echoed as the first man in line stepped on a plate and spikes burst from the floor, bursting clean through his boots, sending him tumbling.
"Rotate!" the one behind barked.
They dragged the injured man back and shoved the next warrior forward. The line crawled. Always moving. Always stepping. Always bleeding.
Every twenty seconds, soone hit a trap.
Every thirty seconds a Nightclaw dove.
Every minute soone cried out in pain.
But they adapted.
Two took the front while two behind them kept shields angled overhead to swat away Nightclaws. When the front pair grew too battered or too exhausted to keep swinging, those behind would yank them back by the collar, and the next pair would take the position.
It turned into a chanical cycle: fight, bleed, retreat, replace.
Eventually, one man let out a breathless, bitter laugh as a healer was working on restoring his mangled feet.
"This must’ve been what grandpa ant when he talked about tunnel warfare. Damn trenches all over again..."
"Shut the hell up," three people hissed at once.
Destro and Signa remained at the back of the formation, guarding the rear, conserving their strength.
The looks their subordinates kept throwing over their shoulders said it all.
Why aren’t you fighting? Why do we have to do all the dirty work? Why are we bleeding while you watch?
The resentnt wasn’t spoken, but it simred hot as molten stone.
Signa and Destro both ignored them, for they understood the truth.
They couldn’t go in.
Reports claid a powerful demoness remained in the dungeon. The sa woman who knelt before Kaiden. She could freely walk out of her dungeon to et Kaiden, so what exactly kept the woman from leaving the boss room?
Which ant she could show up whenever she damn well pleased.
If she arrived while they were exhausted, wounded, or knee-deep in spike traps, she’d slaughter them all.
So Destro and Signa had to remain untouched, fresh, and ready.
Just like this, the grinding advance continued, with blood soaking the stone and the tunnel roaring with groans and spikes and wings.
They pushed forward another ten ters.
Then another.
Slowly, painfully, the tide began to turn.
Nightclaws dropped from the air with their wings clipped, skulls split, bodies tumbling off the edge into the darkness below the walkway. Every ti one fell, a ragged cheer burst from the invaders.
"We can do this!" soone yelled.
"They’re thinning!" another barked.
"Push! PUSH!"
The line’s morale surged.
Not high per se... But high enough.
Another Nightclaw dove too low and was bisected by a sword thrust, its corpse spiraling off the path.
More cheers ca.
Then...
"ScreeeeeeEEEEEE—CHRRRRRRR!"
The sound cut through the tunnel.
Every human froze.
Even the Nightclaws, blood-crazed, relentless, and frenzied, twisted around to look behind them.
Sothing deeper inside the tunnel was approaching.
A shadow filled the thin corridor’s far end. It flapped once, just once, and the wind pressure alone rattled armor.
It was larger than any Nightclaw.
Too large for this cramped passage.
Its wings scraped the walls, its talons dragging sparks along the stone.
A hulking abyssal creature, all long limbs and cathedral-like ribbing under its wings. Its eyes burned with unnatural blue fla.
The invaders braced.
"It can’t move well here," soone muttered. "It’s too damn big. We’re fine."
But the beast didn’t advance much further.
Instead, it hovered behind the Nightclaws, hanging in the air with eerie, perfect stillness.
Then its chest swelled.
Its throat opened.
And it unleashed a sound not ant for human ears.
An otherworldly harmonic shriek rippled through the corridor, piercing, vibrating, echoing against the stone in layered tones that felt more like psychic pressure than noise.
Every Nightclaw was hit by it.
And every Nightclaw lit up.
Their wounds receded.
Cracked bones straightened.
Battle frenzy doubled.
Talons glead.
Eyes ignited like tiny blue stars.
They shrieked as one, renewed, empowered, maddened.
"FUCK! It’s a buffer!" Signa shouted.
The tide flipped.
Nightclaws exploded forth with increased speed and fury, forcing shields back, battering weapons aside, and tearing into exhausted n with frightening ease.
Seeing the sight of his subordinates getting slaughtered, Destro let out a long, heavy sigh behind his mask.
"This can’t go on. We need reinforcents."
Signa ground her teeth. "... Yeah. We’re losing too many lives."
She flicked her wrist, and a hovering artifact unfolded behind her. It was a floating, crystalline mana cara shaped like a glassy orb with runic stabilizers.
"This landscape is nothing like the reports. The intel was pure fiction. Monsters, terrain, habits... None of it matches anything we were told. We get footage. We regroup. We strategize."
The cara whirred to life, recording the renewed carnage and the hulking buffer radiating power behind its flock.
Or so it should’ve.
The mana-cara floated forward, runes glowing... then sputtering.
The crystal flickered.
Dimd.
And went dark.
"... What. The. Fuck?!" Signa was about to have a ntal breakdown.
She slapped the side of it.
Nothing.
She pumped mana into it.
Nothing.
She hit it hard.
Still nothing.
The orb hung there like a dead glass eye.
Her expression snapped.
"No. No, no NO! Record!" she snarled, grabbing the stabilizer fin and shaking the artifact like a misbehaving child. "Don’t you DARE do this to ! Record the damn thing!"
"You’re behaving like a child," Destro decreed, prompting Signa to snap her head toward him with a wild, beastly expression. The subordinates thought she might just punch him as well.
With perfect timing, the orb made a faint clicking sound.
Then died again.
A patch of silence swallowed that part of the tunnel, broken only by Nightclaws’ screeching and steel clashing up ahead.
Signa’s face twisted in confusion and fury.
"JUST WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN THIS PLACE?!" she scread, voice full with raw frustration.
...
Far away.
At the deepest end of the dungeon.
A man sat comfortably on a wide, plush couch.
One hand resting on a warm, tanned thigh.
The other lazily draped over a smooth, exotic red one.
Two monster girls leaned into him lovingly, one purring, one softly humming as her tail flicked against his waist.
And Kaiden?
Kaiden watched the chaos from above through his Creation Mode interface like a god peering down at mortals.
He wore a grin that belonged on a villain enjoying the show.
"Being a dungeon master..."
His fingers squeezed the monster girls’ thighs fondly.
"... is way too aweso."
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