While Rae was enjoying her time with the new monsters, Karl finally reached the other team of miners.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, as I'm certain that you noticed, we have found an unforeseen feature of this dungeon. It appears that fighting the bosses was not the intent of this place. We were supposed to sneak past them, and find the hidden door.
Possibly doors, as there are three bosses, but we only found a nest of Tunnel Worms.
There is a chance that they ate everything else, but I suspect that there are actually more hidden doors in the dungeon that will lead us to more Earth Elemental Golems, and more Manticores that are not bosses.
Rae reports that the tunnel worms are much smaller, and do not have the durability of the boss.
They're also susceptible to poison, and ... Yeah, that's the important part."
The Yizimon Elders looked suspicious.
"What did you leave out?"
Karl sighed. "She says that they make a lovely mess when you blow them up with [Blood Destruction]. And that they hold over a hundred gallons, if you happen to like slightly wormy smelling earth element blood."
The Elder smiled, as he realized Karl was just reluctant to relay that parts that were only really important to a Blood Destruction Demonic Spider, and that he wasn't holding back vital information from them.
"What are the chances that we're interrupted?"
Karl shrugged. "As long as they don't tunnel through the stone between where they are and here, we should be fine. Evidence suggests that they cannot, or do not, do that. So, the odds of you being interrupted are the same as the odds of one of them getting past both Rae and Dana.
Most of my team is going down to clear them out, while some of the constructs are sweeping the dungeon looking for other traps or hidden entrances we might have missed on previous passes.
It was pure luck that we found this one.
The team was following a vein, and dug a bit further than usual, to see if it continued, and ended up in the tunnel that leads to the other worms.
That's how we found the hidden door.
You can close it behind you, by the way. So, you can pass through it, kill the other worms and mine that section. At least, that is the assumption. We already killed the bosses, so we don't know for certain if one will return to protect their brood."
"Alright. That actually sounds like it might make the fight manageable. If we only had to clear the brood, and then fight the bosses one at a time, we could definitely manage it. It's just being ambushed by more than one boss at a time is impossible for most groups."
Karl nodded. "Ironic, really. We found the secret to the dungeon entirely by accident. Usually, the basic mechanisms of the dungeons are pretty obvious."
"Or, they're not, and half the special events that are triggered are just someone finally doing it right."
That was a rather disturbing thought.
Not only did it imply that every other run was missing out on the best resources that should be available to them, but the fact that most of the events only triggered once meant that the team didn't actually understand the mechanism, and had only chanced upon the right conditions one time, without knowing what they had done.
How many times had that happened, just to their own Clan?
Karl wasn't too concerned. He was pretty good at finding strange things in the dungeon, since the System was helping him out. He had found more than one option to upgrade the difficulty as well, which was what many groups were truly after.
Dungeons like the Titan Dungeon that could be done by a wide range of groups were invaluable to progression.
Dana sighed as he entered the brood area. Rae had gone wild in here for certain, and for once, she pletely understood Tian's aversion to getting stuff in his fur. There was blood dripping from every surface of this room, even though Rae and her force had already left.
She must have used [Blood Destruction] to finish them, as there were no corpses at all, despite the mess.
"Remi, can you spray that down for us?"
Remi stared at the mess in disgust.
"{Hawk, you're up. Fire is much more appropriate for getting rid of this.}"
[Ha, another victory for fire].
At the first branch in the tunnels, they followed the path that did not have blood all over the floor, and immediately found another group of the worms, which Oathbreaker tore into with great enthusiasm.
The demon had been told to acpany Dana, which meant not running off ahead to go pete with Rae, and immense disappointment that the mage was not intending to sprint from group to group.
But now that they had found one, it was their time to shine.
The basic racial ability of the Oathbreaker Demon was to apply all damage that it inflicted onto every target within a certain range. So, groups like this, with minimal damage reduction and high numbers, were the perfect place for them to show just how good they really were as an option.
Their skills were mostly wasted fighting a single boss.
Thor watched as the vines from the Dryad Queens joined the battle, tearing at the surface of the worms, while the demons nimbly danced between targets, each using four [Elemental Blades] at the same time.
That bat style intrigued Remi. She also had four arms, and she was fast. Couldn't she fight like that? Except for the fact that she had a much longer lower body, she didn't see why not.
Perhaps she should make Karl summon the demons while they were at home, and she could start studying bat techniques from them?
Fighting from a distance with magic was great most of the time, but darting between targets with a bunch of swords that she could apply her experimental potions to looked like it had great promise.
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