And (N)one Shall Remain

“I’m not sure I like these better than the previous ones,” noted Ethan even as he labored to sever a limb from one of the dungeon’s monsters.

 

“Why so? Because they’re uglier than before?” asked Bronwen beside him, half in jest. Out of all their party members, Ethan had gotten along the best with Bronwen and Glenn, mostly because the three of them shared the same role on the frontlines, where they walled off the enemies away from the more vulnerable members of the group.

 

“No disagreement that they’re fucking ugly, but that’s not it,” replied Ethan even as his arms kept striking at the resisting monster, his pollax eventually severing one of its limbs, which kept trying to wriggle around and reconnect to the main body until he kicked it away to prevent that from happening. “It’s more the uncanny look they got to them, you know? The way that they looked almost like a mockery of us but if the one who made them got lazy instead.”

 

“Oh, yeah, I get what you mean, sort of,” admitted the female temple guard with a nod. “Mockeries of the human form are about right, considering how many of these don’t even get it anywhere near close to begin with.”

 

Ever since they defeated the behemoth – they camped at the end of the first cavern and rested first before heading to the second cavern, of course – the party was met with monsters that were in many ways identical to those they fought in the first cavern, yet at the same time were also different, often in challenging ways at that.

 

Unlike in the first caverns, where the colonies of the thread-like monsters gathered to form beastial “shapes” together and fought mostly on what could be best described as animal instincts, the denizens of the second cavern tend to be much smaller in size. Most of them were barely three meters in height, with many being smaller.

 

They also took shapes that were far more humanoid, though it was more like a sculptor was given a rough description of what a person looked like and allowed their imagination to go wild, for the most part. In general, most of the monsters the party faced so far in the second cavern could have passed for poorly sculpted or particularly deformed golems.

 

Despite their smaller size, however, there turned out to be even more of the thread-like creatures within those monster’s forms. The colonies wove themselves in a more compact manner, and like the behemoth they faced at the end of the first cavern, each of the monsters had a “core” of sorts that acted as their brain, which allowed them to fight more intelligently.

 

Needless to say, the latter posed quite a bit of trouble for the party at first, though at the same time, the most humanoid shapes of their enemies and the smaller size also allowed the party to fight them with more familiarity compared to the previous monsters.

 

Since there were more of the creatures in each “monster”, and their levels were also somewhat higher than those encountered in the first cavern, it did allow the party to gain more experience, though. 

 

Other than that, the smaller, more compact size of their enemies and the existence of their cores – although its locations tend to be very random at times – also allowed some of the party to be more effective than during their stint in the first cavern. Joshua and Silvia in particular benefited since their best offensive skills tend to affect a smaller area but have greater penetrative powers.

 

Osmond on the other hand was still out of luck. His skillset was built around accuracy over long ranges. He would have been one of their most useful combatants when fighting demons, where he could aim for vital spots from afar, but against these colonies his arrows were just nowhere near destructive enough to affect them noticeably, which was a source of some frustration for the young nobleman.

 

“It’s the uncanny valley effect,” noted Alissa as she heard Ethan’s complaint while fighting against her own opponent. She also benefited somewhat from their enemies becoming more compact, as her spear could deliver quite a bit of damage using its broader head, especially when combined with [Pierce the Heavens], which by that point she had used often enough that its cooldown was short enough to reset between battles, which were fortunately rarer than in the first cavern.

 

“The what?” asked Nadine beside her as the Princess used her greatblade to slice underneath a slab of rock that clung to the monster’s outer surface like armor and cut deep into the squirming “flesh” underneath. 

 

“Ah, sorry. That’s a term from the world we came from. It’s used to describe things that look like people but just looked wrong somehow, for whatever reason it may be,” explained Alissa as she landed a hewing cut with her spear to the area Nadine had just denuded of protection. Her cut carved halfway into the monster’s “limb” but already more of the thread-like creatures were squirming around and tried to reconnect the cut flesh even as her spearhead left the wound behind.

 

Another vicious chop from Nadine severed the limb off neatly though, and she kicked it away into the distance before it could try to squirm back to its main body. The party had long learned that the most effective way to deal with the monsters in the second cavern was to dismember them before eradicating each part starting with the main body.

 

Of course, that meant that sometimes the limbs they kicked away would merge with one another and form some horrifying amalgamation of limbs and return to the fight, but at least they tend to be far less dangerous that way, as they seemed to have issues coordinating the various limbs properly while in that form.

 

“Would poison and diseases still work effectively on these, master?” asked Joshua to Magus Drummond as he delivered several measured lightning bolts that greatly damaged a monster’s hips and shoulders, where the joint would have been if the monsters had any such thing, at least. Benedictus quickly exploited the chance Joshua gave to sever those limbs with a machete and kick them away.

 

“They would still show effectiveness, albeit at a lowered capability compared to the effect they would have had against the monsters in the first cavern,” explained the old Magus patiently with a smile. While the old man was mostly taciturn in nature, those who knew him were all aware that he was excited like a little kid to be able to teach a [Hero] as his disciple, and he also seemed quite fond of Joshua in a personal way, to boot. “The way the monsters here condensed more of themselves into a smaller form meant that you would mostly damage the ones on the outer end, while the poison would have difficulty penetrating deeply, unless administered that way with some aid.”

 

“So poison would only work effectively in the first cavern?”

 

“Not exactly. You should have noticed by now how where the beasts in the first cavern used foreign material inside their bodies as structural support, these ones do no such thing and their interiors are completely packed with their own bodies,” said the Magus with a shake of his head. “As such, they only cling and attack foreign material to the outside of their forms, to serve as armor and weapons.”

 

“Poison would have greatly damaged the ones on the outer side, which would in turn mean that they would fail to cling to the foreign material those were holding,” continued the old man as he stroked his beard with one hand. “In essence, making use of poison against these monsters in the second cavern would denude them of their equivalent of armor and weapons.”

 

“That would be helpful, I admit,” noted Joshua as he turned his attention to another of the monsters. He had been practicing to try to use just enough power to cause his desired effects on the monsters, to help with his mana consumption. He did have a passive that somewhat helped with that, but until that passive evolved he would still struggle with mana consumption no matter what.

 

Not that even the passive would help much when he went all-out like what he did against the boss monster at the end of the first cavern. He spent nearly three-quarters of his total mana capacity – which at the time was about all he had recovered after the rest – in that single blow, which left him unconscious from mana overuse as a result. 

 

It was something to work towards, at least.

 

The party continued to battle through the second cavern, which was roughly the same size as the first one in total, but was notably narrower and longer. As such, after an entire day filled with battles, they rested around three-quarters of the way through the cavern, camped for the night which was fortunately uneventful, before they continued to proceed on their way.

 

As they went deeper into the cavern, everybody couldn’t help but notice how the monsters they faced generally grew smaller in size, and their shapes had less deformations and offshoots as well. Many of the monsters even started wielding makeshift weapons like cudgels and crude stone spikes in their “hands”, and fought in a more skilled manner compared to before.

 

All that development culminated into what the party observed from afar near the corridor that led to the third and last of the caverns in the complex.

 

Near the pathway, ten monsters created from amalgamations of the thread-like monsters of the dungeon could be seen patrolling the vicinity. Unlike the ones before them, those ten look almost perfectly human in shape, other than lacking any features, with smooth slabs of rock acting as their “skin” of sorts. More disturbingly was how those monsters wielded actual armor and weapons on top of everything.

 

Actual, real weapons that looked like they came out from a master blacksmith’s forge, and armor that looked just as finely made as what some of the party wore, at that.

 

“For the most part, artifact weapons and armor came from the dungeon,” explained Sir Inolet when he noticed Alissa, Ethan, and Joshua look baffled at the armor and weapons in the monsters’ hands. “It is a rare case for a crafter to get so good that they could produce items that were on equal power to even low level artifacts, and most were only capable of, at best, repairing and maybe slightly modifying artifacts we found in the dungeons.”

 

“Monsters like these ones are the source of such artifacts,” continued the old knight with his explanation as he gestured to encompass the distant monsters with his hand. “These ones probably only had artifacts around equal in power to what you wield, at best, but sometimes they could be weaker or stronger at random, so do not let your guard down.”

 

The party exchanged understanding looks as they made their way to face the monsters, twelve of them against ten monsters. While they looked to be much weaker than the boss they faced at the end of the first cavern, the party knew all too well that they should not underestimate the monsters before them. These monsters were at the end of the cavern and likely served as its boss, after all.

 

As such, they went all out, every member of the party activating the group buffs they had available, the multiple buffs cast stacking up with one another and greatly increasing the capabilities of the members of the party. It was only then that they charged forward towards the monsters, which in turn also charged towards them once they reached the territory guarded by the monsters.

 

The two groups collided with a violent clash, and very quickly found that they were nearly even in prowess, even as they tried to bring the other side down to the best of their abilities.