The beasts were scaled and akin to komodo dragons. Jagged stone plating jutted from their backs and they wielded their armored tails like clubs. Their eyes glowed red, and when their mouths opened, rows of serrated, saw-like teeth were revealed.
In moments, the fleeing mob was reduced to twitching piles of flesh.
Aurelius stumbled backward. "What are you doing just standing there?!" He barked at the mages. "Attack them! Now!"
The mages nodded nervously, raising their staff. Following their incantations, waves of water, bolts of lightning, and plumes of fire rained down on the monsters.
Nothing.
The spells fizzled, washing harmlessly over the beast's stone plating then dissipated like mist.
"Th-They're absorbing it—?" one mage whispered in horror.
The monsters pounced.
One screamed as claws tore open his gut. Another was caught mid-chant and decapitated. A third tried shielding himself with wind magic, but the monster crushed him against the wall like a fruit beneath a hammer, his body painting it red.
Even the dignitaries didn't escape.
A portly man was dragged by the ankle, screaming until his skull was cracked open like an egg. Another man tried to flee, only to be skewered through the back by two monsters and torn apart in opposite directions.
A woman's body was twisted backward until her spine snapped. Limbs flailed. Blood fountained. Screams echoed—then died one by one.
Aurelius didn't wait.
He ran.
The moment he saw the spells fail, he bolted, dashing between corpses and rubble, ignoring the pleas and cries for help. One of the mages, bleeding out and missing half a leg, stretched an arm toward him.
"P-Please… help me…"
Aurelius didn't even slow down. "Fulfill your role like a good little lamb," he spat. "Be useful for once."
The mage sobbed as he was torn open.
Daisuke knelt, shielding the few demihuman children who remained. They huddled into him, their tiny fingers gripping his tunic.
"HISS!"
One monster lunged.
Daisuke summoned his daggers, the metal singing as they materialized in his hands. He shot forward like a phantom—low, fast, and silent.
DING!
[Terragoros | Lvl 15 | Champion | HP: 694/694]
The first beast opened its jaws.
Daisuke slid beneath it and sliced upward, carving through its underbelly. Guts spilled out in steaming globs.
Another one pounced from the side.
He twisted, stabbed both daggers into its neck, and used its body as leverage to spring upward and flip over a third beast. In mid-air, he hurled both blades—one piercing an eye, the other lodging into a creature's brain through its open mouth.
He landed, willed the blades back, and spun.
Two more lunged. He stepped aside, let them collide, then plunged his daggers into the base of their skulls.
All five fell. Dead before they hit the ground.
The children stared, wide-eyed, their terror momentarily dulled by awe. Aurelius had also been watching. He paused, panting. His boots squelched in the blood of the dead.
A soft shuffle echoed behind him.
He turned, but a fraction of a second too late.
A monster burst from the darkness and bit into his ankle.
"AAAAARGH!" he screamed, stabbing wildly with his short sword. The blade punctured the creature's eye repeatedly with wet crunches until it dropped dead.
"Damn beast!" He gasped, stabbing the corpse once more in his rage. "Curse this place! Curse the gods!"
He tried to run—but his legs wouldn't move. His muscles twitched, then locked up, numbed by the fiend's neurotoxin.
"No… no no no—!"
He turned, eyes wide as they locked onto Daisuke. "You! Girl! Help me! Kill these things—you have the strength! It's your duty!" he barked.
The children clung tighter to the stranger they had instinctively designated as their guardian, their small frames quivering.
Aurelius sneered at them. "Don't waste your time on those flea-ridden brats! Save me! I'm a noble! I can make you rich—powerful! A title! Gold beyond your wildest dreams!"
Daisuke didn't move.
Aurelius's voice cracked with desperation. "Please! I'll give you land, power—anything! I'm too important to die!"
No response.
Then rage returned.
"You lowborn slut! You dare defy me? I'll have you flogged—no, executed—!"
A low growl cut him off.
The monsters closed in.
His bravado crumbled, his face contorting into raw terror. "No—no! Stay back! I said stay back!"
"Curses!" He sobbed, tears and snot streaking his once-proud face. "Please—please don't let them take me! I was only doing what I was told! I swear!"
The monsters lunged.
One grabbed his arm and yanked—tearing it from the socket. He screamed. The second bit into his thigh and ripped it open, tearing tendons and flesh. The third bit off the other leg at the knee. A fourth tore into his side, spilling intestines that fell like wet ropes. Several monsters scrambled over each other, fighting for the bloodied mess, dragging bits of him away.
They didn't kill him quickly.
They feasted.
Aurelius screamed, a gargled, high-pitched wail—until there was no voice left to scream.
Daisuke's eyes flared golden once more. He looked down at the frightened children clinging to him, then turned toward the rest of the approaching beasts.
"Stay behind me."
He leaned forward.
Then vanished.
His blades danced through air like streaks of silver lightning. He dashed toward a group of monsters, leapt over them and twisted. His daggers carved two arcs, slicing clean through their skulls.
One beast lashed its tail. Daisuke caught it, spun it around, and slammed it into another.
Two more advanced from behind.
He threw one dagger, piercing a monster's temple, then staved off the other's bite with the hilt of the other blade. In a fluid motion, he brought his free hand forward with a Helix Bullet in palm, grinding the fiend's face into a bloody mess.
Upon reclaiming his other dagger, in a final flourish, he spun, slicing every remaining beast in his radius in a seamless dance of death.
Then there was silence.
The floor was littered with twitching corpses and steaming blood. While the children stared at him in stunned silence, Daisuke calmly cycled through his ocular abilities, layering in a newly acquired skill until his gaze locked onto the monster he was looking for.
[Detect]
[Rank: Normal
Classification: Active Skill
Lvl: 1
Proficiency: 0%
By attuning your senses to the subtle shifts in the environment, you can detect the presence of living beings within your vicinity, their locations revealed as clearly as ripples on a still pond.
Skill Effect:
▪︎ Reveals the location of all living entities within a 60-meter radius
Mana Cost: 10
Skill Duration: 10 Seconds
Skill Cooldown: 1 Minutes]
DING!
[Dolomagnon | Lvl 20 | Unique Dungeon Boss | HP: ???/???]
Daisuke's eyes narrowed in thought as he watched the winged fiend herd the frenzied monsters toward the upper levels of the dungeon. Just like the other Unique Monsters I've faced… I can't see its HP at all. Is the Eye of Verity not strong enough?
More importantly, the boss is on the move, which can only mean one thing—it's setting the stage for a Monster Wave. His stomach sank. This is bad. Reneal and Neville are in trouble.
As he considered the mayhem that was about to unfold on the surface, his mind drifted back to Thalia's lecture on Dungeon Breaks at the guild academy.
"The Boss Monster in each dungeon is quite unique," Thalia began, chalk in hand as she sketched across the blackboard. "They possess the remarkable ability to manipulate the dungeon's mana. To recap: mana originates from the planet's core. Dungeons act like massive magnets, drawing in that mana—and the Boss Monster directs it."
She added a row of jagged teeth to her doodle of a monster. "For reasons we don't fully understand, dungeon monsters are far more aggressive and powerful than those found on the surface. They want nothing more than to bridge a path to our world so that they can plunge humanity into chaos.
To that end, the Boss Monster slowly suffuses each floor of the dungeon with the mana it manipulates from within its depths. Because of the gradual exposure, the weaker monsters get stronger instead of succumbing to mana poisoning as previously mentioned."
She drew several parallel lines depicting the dungeon levels. "As for the higher-tiered monsters from the deeper depths, their default floor provides them with just enough mana density to sustain their magic cores, but if they don't try to ascend in tandem with the Dungeon Boss, their cores will be quickly depleted as all mana is pushed to the surface."