The tanks tried to scatter as Zaria approached, but their heavy armor and the thick mud worked against them. Only one was able to leap free, a Warrior whose charge ability pulled him free to slam into the front line of the Candlemen, knocking one back but surrounding him with the deadly Mimics. They set upon him, although the healers threw spells to shield his body and heal his injuries.

Of the other three, one Paladin had the right idea. She immediately dropped flat and raised her shield over her chest, activating her ability to create a translucent shield over herself. Zaria’s crushing footfalls just sunk her further into the mud, but didn’t shatter bones or break limbs.

The other two chose poorly. One attempted to roll out of the way, only to be caught mid motion as Zaria stomped down on him, bearing the full weight of a house down on the man’s spine. Even with a tank’s resistances fortifying his body, he was nothing compared to the sheer mass of a house standing upon him. The other raised her sword over her head, a wild slash for Zaria’s foot. It connected, drawing a thin line of blood from Zaria, but it also did nothing to the descending talon folding her torso in on itself.

“Vysala!” Zaria shouted. “Go for the wrists!”

Then Suderah slammed into Zaria, sending her stumbling forward. She managed one last, desperate lash of the bird's mouth’s tongue, catching one of the healer’s around the waist and pulling him in. The man desperately threw spells into the beak, but a Healer’s offensive magic could do little more than annoy her. To his credit, the man kept casting right up until he was bit in half.

Zaria barely noticed. The healers were normally, in a fight between humans, a high priority target. But once mobs were in the mix, it became more important to eliminate the tanks. Without their ability to hold aggro, the mobs would be able to act freely, targeting everyone else on the battlefield. Now there were only two tanks present, and the Warrior that had charged into the Candlemen only had one healer keeping him alive. For all his valiant struggles, he’d pulled aggro of every surviving non-boss mimic, and it wouldn’t be long before he died. The Paladin that had shielded herself was trying to break free of the mud, but it would take her time.

Her candlemen would be able to focus on the ranged casters and demons. Which left Zaria to handle Suderah.

The boss level servitor’s eyes were furious. Because of the awkward position on his back, Broil was mostly undamaged so far, and the constant presence of hot metal was certainly frustrating - but not as much as the copper boss using his stovepipes to distract and disrupt Suderah’s attempts to fire ranged attacks, misdirecting them before they could impact Zaria. Meanwhile, blood ran freely from the frog mouth, as Maw did his devastating work in there.

Suderah coughed with that head, and Maw was visible for a moment as the Servitor tried to spit the boss free. However, Maw - badly burned by acid and clearly damaged, barely holding on - was wrapped around the Servitor’s tongue with both hands, his jaws clamped down, refusing to be released.

Zaria felt a surge of pride in the clever little Tin boss. In there, in Suderah’s mouth, none of the Bronze abilities could be turned against Maw fully. It was the safest place for Maw in this battle.

Suderah tried to roar something intimidating or threatening at Zaria. What came out, however, was the less frightening “Eeyhh wuhh beh ib yerh bood.”

Zaria cackled, both with amusement and activating the ability, which only enraged the boss further. He readied another Ruin beam, but Broil was on it, tugging on the goat horns and pulling his head to the side. The beam went wild and impacted one of the taller ruins, what had once been a stone watchtower. It didn’t shatter the stone - instead it aged them, thousands of years of cracks forming along the base in mere seconds, moss and vines sprouting from between the stone to crack them before dying instantly.

Zaria did note the Ruin beam stopped once it did hit the tower. So that was one limitation of the power.

As amusing as Suderah’s pain was, the Servitor was clearly more annoyed than actually injured. The bites from Zaria’s cackles did so little, she stopped wasting mana on the ability and returned to lashing with her tongues, which at least did noticeable damage.

Then, catching Zaria completely off guard, Suderah surged forward with a sudden burst of speed unlike anything he had demonstrated so far, turning into a blur for an instant before slamming into Zaria with the goat’s horns. Zaria was lifted off the ground by the blow, and her porch shattered and splintered from where Suderah had hit. Stunned and unable to find purchase, Zaria could do nothing to evade when Suderah’s claws came up and slammed into either side of her house. He whipped the alligator head towards her, clamping down on the Bird tongue with immensely powerful jaws.

The walls of Zaria’s sides started to buckle and creak under the pressure of the claws. Gods of the Hunt, how strong was this monster? She brought up her legs to kick at his chest, finally drawing lines of blood from the creature, but Suderah seemed to not even notice the pain as Zaria did her best to disembowel him. The entire time, the Crossbows clattered, raining arrows down on him. He swallowed hard and Maw vanished, and Suderah looked down at her with eyes full of hate. “I should kill you. Even if you can walk, what benefit do you offer my master?”

“Well,” Zaria said, looking straight up into the giant eyes of the frog monster, glad she could feel no pain, so her head was clear. “I can count to fifty.”

Suderah blinked. “What?”

“Watch.” The crossbows fired again. “Forty nine…” she said, and Suderah cocked his frog head, confusion evident in every line of his body. He still pressed against her sides, and the sound of splintering wood filled the air. She still clawed at his belly, tearing into him, knowing she was doing damage even if the Servitor ignored his own wounds, feeling hot blood running along her claws. “Fifty.” she said, right as the crossbows fired again.

The bolts flew true, and the images of both Ysdrah and Celon fully resolved over his head.

Explosions from the Celon bolts erupted around his form, bathing him in white light as the blasts tore into his hide. Suderah rocked back, releasing Zaria, but not before the splash effect of the bolts had time to do further damage to her. Broil, on his back, was wiped out by the sheer force of the blasts, but it hardly mattered now. Tentacles erupted from the Ysdrah bolts in the aftermath of the explosion, thin tendrils that whipped at the air for an instant before arcing over his body. They drove down like spears, digging into Suderah’s injuries, and twisted and burrowed into his open wounds.

Now Suderah screamed, unable to ignore the pain anymore. To add to the injury, one of Maw’s hands burst free of the Servitor’s belly, using the lines Zaria had slashed with her talons to free himself. The Tin boss only had the strength needed to escape before dying, but an entire chest eating its way out of your stomach had to be a unique kind of torment.

Suderah rolled along the ground, trying to break free of the tortuous tentacles, and the crossbows fired anew. This time the moons that rose over Suderah’s back were Ysdrah and Spiral. Perfect. Zaria stood up, ready to lunge back in to the fight.

Then Suderah’s long tail lashed back like a whip and caught Zaria in the ankle. The strike was so fierce it shattered the air around the tip, a crack so loud it was nearly deafening, and Zaria fell to the ground. Her ankle was nonresponsive.

Broken.

She knew she could heal it, the same way she could repair her dungeon walls, but it would take time. Time she didn’t have. The Ysdrah tentacles had only bought her a few seconds of absolute agony on the Bronze servitor. She commanded the crossbows to fire as fast as they could, heedless of accuracy. There was only one hope of survival right now.

On the battlefield, things were going better. The two remaining horses - what had happened to the other two? Their bodies were nowhere to be found - had been badly injured by the demons, but sheer rage kept them going where normal animals would have fallen. One of the surviving Lycanthropes raised his head up, pulling free a huge chunk of demonic throat, then plunged back down, consuming the demon viciously. It seemed to do well - although Zaria couldn’t help but notice there were horns forming around the edge of its eyes.

That was a problem for the future.

The other two surviving werewolves were worse off, badly injured in their struggles, but they only had one demon they were focusing on, running in to nip at the demon’s heels and back. For a moment, it looked like their demon would be able to take advantage of their injuries and down them, but then one got its mouth tentacles around the demon’s ankle and pulled back, toppling the fiend, and letting both wolves descend upon the creature.

It managed to rip one lycanthrope’s throat out before it died. Zaria cast a quick Dominate on the survivor and assigned it to her-

New Mob Unlocked! Lesser Ysdrahian Lycanthrope Knight (10 Command Points).

-then had it charge in with its duplicate towards the last demon.

With their demons dropping, the ranged casters and healer were falling back, guarded by the one surviving Paladin that kept herself between the Candlemen and the party as best she could. One of the caster’s had lost his wrist, severed at some point by a Sword mimic or by Vysala’s weaponized spork. The mage had fully regrown his head, but now horns were spreading across his eyes, and his movements were becoming erratic. He was still fighting alongside his companions, but his teeth were clenched, and he snarled when they got too close.

The entire time, the Paladin had to keep backing up, step by step, to avoid being surrounded, and the candlemen’s attacks were wearing her down. Still, it looked like she’d be able to get somewhere free-

-right up until Vysala re-entered the fray.

At some point, the witch had climbed up into ruins and gotten to a second-story window. The moment the party passed under her, Vysala leapt out, her spork raised high. The man who’d regrown his entire head saw her and snarled, but whatever was going on in his mind had rendered him unable to form coherent words at the moment. Which meant the group had no real warning of Vysala’s descent until she brough the Spork down directly on top of the healer.

Vysala didn’t have the runes left to detonate his head like she had with the mage. But she didn’t need to. The sheer force of the swing coupled with the acceleration from her leap out the window added to Vysala’s multi-use Impact rune was - in tandem - enough to turn the man’s skull into a bowl. Vysala glanced at his wrists, making sure he wasn’t demon bound, then lunged for the Paladin’s back.

Now surrounded and without healing, the Paladin only lasted a couple of seconds. Meanwhile, Rav, on Vysala’s back, chattered away with crossbow bolts, wild shots that forced the remaining ranged casters to leap behind barriers and take cover. Except for the mage. He stepped forward and snarled as a bolt found his shoulder, but any thoughts of self-preservation were driven from his mind. He raised his hands, preparing some spell that now contained Fiendish mana instead of his prior element.

The lycanthrope mage’s tentacles caught him by the wrist and pulled him off balance, and then the creature’s jaws clamped onto his skull. Instead of biting down, the lycanthrope let loose an Arcane beam directly into the top of the man’s head.

Zaria was certain he couldn’t regrow his head a second time. Not after absorbing his demon earlier to survive the last one.

The two surviving casters stood up and raised their hands. “Surrender!” they shouted. “We surrender!”

Vysala pointed to the building. “Get in there and stay. The mimics will surround, but not attack. The moment you leave, you die.”

They scrambled to obey.

“I’ve got one rune left!” Vysala shouted at Zaria.

Zaria barked two words to her. “The tower!”

Vysala glanced to see where Zaria was looking, then nodded and took off.

Just in time. Suderah had recovered, and the Bronze Servitor Boss hybrid was standing back up. He was covered in injuries, blood streaking from dozens of wounds, but already some magic was repairing his body. He turned to Zaria, hate in his eyes, and bunched up to charge or attack.

“Forty seven!” Zaria shouted.

Suderah hesitated. “Impossible. You couldn’t have caught me with that many bolts in such short a time!”

“I’ve proven I can count to fifty.”

Suderah leapt as the crossbows fired again. Leapt back into the only space left for him, between two of the ruins. Not in time to avoid those two, of course, which gave Zaria a reason to smirk. “Forty eight!”

“You’re lying!” Suderah snarled. He readied another Ruin beam and prepared to fire at Zaria.

Immobile, Zaria did the only thing she could think of. The moment he fired, Zaria kicked the mud with her good leg. The thick, wet dirt splashed like water, kicking up a solid wave. The Ruin beam struck the splash. Instantly, the mud turned to dirt and then dust. Some of the energy still got through, washing over Zaria.

This was pain. Now she could feel the actual injury. She had to clench her teeth against a scream as a sensation of agony washed over her, petrifying spots of her wood. If it had hit her full on, it would have killed her.

CORE STABILITY ALERT! STABILITY BELOW 10%!

The words flickered in Zaria’s vision, but Suderah didn’t know that. From what he could see on that side of the beam, he’d fired his most powerful attack, she had summoned a wall of mud, and now was still sitting there, looking unharmed by the attack. The shock made the Servitor take another step back, and Zaria continued, as if it didn’t feel like she was on fire.

“I’m a dungeon. You know how good we are at keeping track of things. I maintain I have two more shots until they rip you apart again. You disagree. If I’m lying, I still have a host of mimics I can unleash in your face. I’m not out of mana yet. But if I’m telling you the truth, two more shots… one of those moons is Spiral. If it activates, it’ll ignore your resistances. Can you survive that? I’m willing to bet not.”

Suderah hesitated as the crossbows took aim. He was out of range right now and knew it. But the moment he took a step forward, he’d be beset by bolts again.

“You’re lying,” he said. But it was far less certain this time.

“One other thing I know,” Zaria said, continuing in silky sweet tones of absolute confidence. “If you die outside of your dungeon, you can only be respawned if your Heart is recovered. I promise you I will search every inch of this mud for that Heart. I won’t leave this spot until I’ve fed your Heart to Maw.”

Suderah stared at her for a long moment, then slowly shook the frog head. “I’ve seen your weapons, dungeon. They cannot fire that fast. You aren’t halfway through that number. You can’t kill me.”

Zaria took a deep breath. “Damn. You got me. But here’s the neat thing - I just needed to keep you standing right there.”

Suderah’s eyes widened, at the same time Vysala swung her spork. During the conversation, she’d rushed over to the tower Suderah’s ruin beam had damaged earlier. One of the two ruins that flanked Suderah at this exact moment. Between the flood and the mud and the battle, it was leaning drunkenly, barely upright. Vysala hit it with the bowl of the spork, right in the one cornerstone that was supporting most of its weight, then leapt clear.

The Impact rune didn’t have the power to knock over a tower. But it did have the power to break a single, already damaged stone.

The stone shattered, and the tower collapsed in, tons upon tons of stone falling down on Suderah’s back. The Servitor let out one final scream of rage, and tried to move, but blood loss had slowed him too much.

He was crushed beneath the tower he had damaged earlier.

Zaria took a deep breath. The battle was over. Everything that wasn’t a mob, demon, or Reclaimer had died or fled, meaning there was at least one wild lycanthrope now and four tentacle horses on the loose. Future problems. She’d won the main fight. she commanded her crossbows.

Vysala walked over to her, spork on her back. She nodded at the crossbow as she passed. They were already firing, far faster since they were aiming at an immobile target. It had actually only been thirty-three shots when Zaria had made her taunt, but the moons were growing clearer rapidly.

For Vysala’s part, the witch had taken several blows. She was limping, and her face was streaked with blood, but her eyes were alight with the residual exhilaration of battle. The moons over Suderah resolved as Vysala limped the rest of the way to Zaria. “So,” she said. “That was… exciting.”

As if to punctuate her words, the twin moons over Suderah finally resolved. Tentacles erupted from Suderah, this time grappling onto the stones that had pinned him and using them to beat the Servitor. Spiral generated purple psionic lightning that lashed down, racing along the Servitor’s form.

Congratulations! You have advanced to Copper 6!

Hidden Achievement Unlocked: The Most Dangerous Game: Defeat another dungeon’s boss level mob while only using mobs of the same Tier or lower. Reward: Improved Servitor Heart. Your Servitors now have Boss level abilities, and may be made from Bosses. Existing Servitors will not gain the improvement unless respawned. Note that newly born Boss Servitors may be more likely to rebel against your commands owing to their increased strength and independence. Existing servitors won’t change any more than any other Sapient suddenly experiencing a power increase. It is recommended that you use a mob that has already shown loyalty when creating your first Improved Servitor. Special: Cannot be obtained if the other dungeon deliberately allows you to win. Cannot be obtained if fighting a dungeon with core symbiosis with you. Cannot be obtained if mobs use equipment above the Boss level mob’s Tier. Cannot be obtained if you use bosses that are of the same Tier as the opposing boss.

Rav cooed on Vysala’s back in excitement. The great beast was finally dead. Victory was theirs. And now, at least, Zaria knew how Lidivah had made the monster in the first place.

Vysala walked over to one of the dead Reclaimers and pulled out a knife. “How badly injured are you?” she asked Zaria.

“I have seven percent core stability left,” Zaria said. “I can’t even heal my leg without going into the negatives. If I hadn’t ranked up so much during that fight, I would have died.”

Vysala shuddered at the thought, and then nodded and looked down. This Reclaimer had been one of the healers - and thus lightly armored and not bonded to a demon. She bent down and worked her knife into the man’s chest, digging around for the buried herocore. “Then,” she said. “Let’s get that bond established and fix that, shall we?”