[Chapter 108. Not as Tough]
The thirty-minute break dissolved into a heavy, stagnant silence as the four won began the chanical task of repacking their dwindling supplies. The adrenaline from the previous swarm had ebbed away, leaving behind a bone-deep weariness that made every movent feel sluggish. Carn rose first, the leather straps of the heavy backpack groaning as the weight settled across her shoulders. She reached down to retrieve the torch from where it had been driven into the dirt; its movent cast long, dancing shadows across the chamber floor, flickering over the twitching, disjointed remains of the dead Venom Lashers.
Lana drew her shortsword with a soft, ominous scrape of tal against her scabbard. She stepped over a shattered carapace and moved into the dark tunnel ahead, her shield held in a ready position. Sarah and Vanessa fell in behind her with practiced ease, while Carn positioned herself safely between them as before, remaining the protected, vital center of their tactical formation.
The next stretch of tunnels offered very little in the way of environntal change. Occasional groups of Carapace Crawlers erged from jagged side passages, but their armored bodies fell to the group's increasingly coordinated attacks with a new, practiced efficiency. Lana’s sword work, though visibly improved by the morning’s brutal training, remained secondary to the overwhelming force of Vanessa’s magic and the surgical lethality of Sarah’s daggers.
Minutes seed to bleed into one another as the ambient temperature began to climb steadily. A dry, oppressive heat shimred in the air ahead, slling faintly of sulfur and scorched earth. Lana slowed her pace, peering cautiously around a jagged stone corner into the next large chamber. She paused, then glanced back at Vanessa with a sharp nod.
"One of those grubs," she whispered, her voice tight with anticipation. "A Fla Spewer. Ready your primary spell, Vanessa. We will move in the mont your first shot connects."
Vanessa nodded silently, her hands already beginning the rhythmic, circular motions of her craft. Arcane energy coalesced in the air before her, the glowing geotric lines of a spell array taking form with a low, vibrating hum. A minute later, the matrix was fully stabilized. The first bolt of concentrated energy shot into the chamber, striking the Fla Spewer’s fleshy side. It pierced through the creature's softer hide with a wet, heavy thud. A high-pitched, agonizing screech tore through the air as the grub-like beast instinctively dove into one of the bubbling, molten pools that dotted the chamber floor.
Lana rushed into the room imdiately, her shield glowing with a ghostly light as Sepulchral Anchor activated. The Fla Spewer resurfaced two pools away, its eyes glowing with a malevolent, orange light. A thick torrent of burning, pressurized fluid sprayed toward Lana. She managed to duck behind her shield just in ti, but the world was instantly swallowed by a roaring wall of orange flas.
Sarah vanished in a flicker of movent, reappearing instantly beside the massive, writhing beast. Her dagger plunged deep into the creature’s soft side as Vanessa’s secondary bolts continued to rain down from the tunnel entrance, hamring the beast's exposed segnts.
Suddenly, a pained scream filled the chamber—Lana’s voice, raw and constant. It was a stark, horrifying counterpoint to the crackle of the flas and the hiss of Vanessa’s arcane spells.
Carn tried to move forward, but she couldn't reach her. A solid wall of roaring fire blocked her direct line of sight, rendering her healing spells useless until the path cleared. She could feel the ward she had placed on Lana activate, that ant that Lana had died.
Carn knew that Preemptive Safeguard would only activate in the case of a mortal wound. Providing a small amount of healing to prevent death, and granting immunity for a very short ti. When the flas finally died down several seconds later, the sight was grueso. Lana was kneeling in the dirt behind her shield, her skin burned a raw, angry red, and her hair mostly singed away by the intense heat.
A brilliant white light enveloped Lana as Carn’s magic finally took hold. The horrific burns faded in seconds, the damaged skin knitting itself back together, and her hair regrew to its original length before their very eyes. Less than a minute later, Lana looked exactly as she had before the encounter, save for the thick layer of sweat and the dark gri of battle.
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The Fla Spewer breached the surface of the molten pool one last ti, a blackened, heaving shape writhing in the glowing fluid. Sarah appeared beside it in a blur, her daggers finding their mark in the creature's throat as Vanessa’s final bolts hamred its back. The beast died with one final, screeching hiss, its massive body sliding silently beneath the surface of the glowing, molten fluid.
All eyes imdiately went to Lana, who was still kneeling exactly where she had fallen. She didn't move; her chest rose and fell with each shallow, ragged breath. Carn approached her carefully and saw tears tracing clean, wet paths through the soot and ash on Lana’s cheeks.
Sarah appeared next to her, her hand hovering hesitantly over Lana’s shoulder before finally making firm contact. "Lana, it’s over. It’s dead. You did good. You held the line."
"I didn’t..." Lana’s voice cracked violently between heavy sobs.
`It was only ever a question of when this would happen, not if.` Iris thought as she walked calmly into the chamber, stepping past the bubbling pools of heat.
Lana abruptly slapped Sarah’s hand away, her eyes flashing with a sudden, localized fury. "You don't know how it feels! To be burned alive? To breathe in fire until your very lungs feel like they are turning to ash?" She looked up at Sarah, the tears still flowing freely. "There was absolutely nothing I could have done to stop that."
"But I do know how it feels," Iris replied, her voice entirely devoid of comfort or emotion as she looked down at the sobbing woman. "Except when it happened to , I did not have a dedicated healer standing by to nd my burns the mont they occurred. I finished my fight without the luxury of healing."
The sharp mory of a dark, suffocating corridor and a literal wall of fire flashed through Iris’s mind, her body tensing for a split second before she suppressed it. "Now get up, Lana. You are not done with this dungeon yet."
Vanessa and Sarah exchanged a quick, aningful glance—a silent understanding passing between them as they processed the raw, brutal exchange. Lana slowly pushed herself up from the stone floor, her movents stiff and robotic as she wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand.
"The fact remains that you and your team are still alive. In this place, that is the only tric that counts," Iris continued, her gaze unwavering. "But I am certain you now rember what I told you during our morning sessions. It is about not taking every single hit. It is about assessing whether to take the blow or to dodge it entirely."
Iris walked past Lana, turning her head only slightly to address her. "You could have dodged that spray, Lana. There was no one directly behind you, nor was anyone near your position. It was simply unnecessary to block it... or to attempt to block it." Her tone was cold and clinical, the exact sa one she used during their training sessions. To Iris, this was a lesson in efficiency, nothing more.
They pushed forward into the dark after Lana finally collected herself. Their heavy boots crushed the charred remains of the Fla Spewer’s discarded segnts as they left the heat of the chamber behind. The tunnels ahead began to twist into a complex, branching network—a maze of compacted soil and hanging, gnarled roots that forced them to slow their pace to a crawl. Carn’s torch cast long, dancing shadows as they navigated the labyrinth, its flickering light barely revealing the jagged passage walls more than a few ters ahead.
After what felt like an eternity of cautious, silent progress, the narrow tunnel finally opened into a vast, echoing chamber. The darkness ahead was absolute—a void that seed to swallow the orange torchlight without revealing a far wall or a ceiling.
Carn tossed the torch forward with a grunt of effort. It arced through the stale air, its fla looking like a bright, lonely cot against the dark before clattering onto the chamber floor several ters away. The flickering, dying light revealed only more darkness beyond, an expanse stretching into shadows far too deep for their human eyes to penetrate.
"That is where the next big beast is waiting for us," Carn said, her voice echoing slightly in the imnse, hollow space.
Lana moved forward with extre caution, her shield held in a high guard. "Vanessa, we use the sa strategy as before. If you see movent, you shoot it imdiately." Her eyes scanned the ceiling above, searching the dark, uneven expanse of stone and ancient roots.
Sarah and Carn positioned themselves near Vanessa, their backs pressed against the cool tunnel wall as they waited for Vanessa’s complex spell array to form.
The spell completed in re seconds, the arcane energy coalescing into a brilliant, glowing matrix before Vanessa’s outstretched hands. Just as the light stabilized, a subtle movent high above Lana caught her attention—a slow shift in the shadows, the oily glint of sothing massive and segnted moving in the overhead darkness. Vanessa did not hesitate; she released her primary bolt.
The projectile shot upward with a roar, striking hard against what looked like thick, chitinous armor. However, as the light flared upon impact, it revealed a terrifying truth: the bolt had left no visible mark on the creature's shell.
`This dungeon is perfectly designed for their current state.` Iris thought with a grim sense of satisfaction. She watched as a massive shape began to lower itself slowly from the ceiling, revealing the terrifying, segnted form of a Depths Devourer. `It has everything a proper trial needs to forge a survivor: swarms to test their physical endurance, mobile threats to challenge their positioning, and now, an armored behemoth specifically designed to break their spirit.`
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