“Alright, kids,” Vinna said an agonizingly long period of time later. “It’s just about time. Stand up and shake those legs off. You don’t want them falling asleep on you.”

“Can we go?” Damien asked eagerly, hopping to his feet.

“In a minute,” she replied. “Please remember that you’re on your own until you return to this room. I cannot go into the Crypt after you. It would draw even more powerful monsters after us both.”

“We’ll be careful,” Sylph promised.

“Then go,” Vinna said. “I wish you both the best of luck.”

Damien and Sylph walked over to the door. It swung open under Damien’s touch, revealing a long hallway with faint red light at its end. With a final glance back at the healer’s room, he headed into it with Sylph close behind, the door clicking shut behind them.

A sickly-sweet stench tickled Damien’s nose as they headed deeper into the Crypt and a thin layer of murky water covered the floor. The light at the end of the tunnel turned out to be a torch burning in a small square room. There were three closed doors on the far wall, each unadorned and identical to each other.

“Ominous,” Damien mused. “What door should we take?”

“I don’t think it matters, but we should probably remember which one we went through,” Sylph said. “If this place is a maze, getting lost could be a problem.”

She flicked her hand, summoning a black blade, and carved a gouge into the rightmost wall near the doorframe. After tapping the handle, she pulled it open while positioning herself behind it. Nothing emerged, so she continued drawing the mark into the hall behind the door.

Damien opened the door on the left. A dark hallway greeted him. He was unsurprised to find that the middle door offered exactly the same.

“Well, the right door it is,” Damien said. “They all look the same to me.”

They headed into the hallway and continued deeper into the Crypt. Damien instinctively tried to make his breathing and footfalls as silent as possible, but he couldn’t stop the echo and splash of his footfalls completely.

In stark contrast, Sylph seemed to drift across the floor. The water barely even rippled where her feet touched it. He wanted to ask how she was doing it, but the words died before they ever reached his lips.

“Something is ahead,” Henry warned him a few minutes later. “It’s not even trying to hide itself, and it’s big.”

Damien tapped Sylph on the shoulder to get her attention. She nodded her understanding when he pointed up ahead. The two readied their magic and continued forward.

The hall slowly opened up into a large, rocky room. Stalactites the size of small trees hung from the ceiling, glistening with moisture. The only light in the room came from the faint glow of dull green moss that covered portions of the floor and distant walls.

A low rumble echoed through the room. Damien tensed as what he’d thought was a huge pile of boulders shifted, rising upwards as two glimmering yellow orbs opened on what must have been its head.

“What unlucky little creatures,” the monster rumbled, rocks cascading off its body as it rose to full height and breaking several stalactites in the process. “You won’t even fill the gaps between my teeth. A waste of energy, you are.”

“It’s sentient,” Damien whispered. “Maybe we can convince it not to fight us?”

“It is called Ovurg,” the monster said. “And, unfortunately for little creatures, Ovurg is stubborn.”

One of Ovurg’s huge hands reared back and whipped forward with surprising speed, sending a boulder flying towards them. Damien Warp Stepped out of the way as Sylph dodged to the side.

The rock smashed into the entrance of the hallway with enough force to embed itself in the ground, blocking the exit completely.

“Well then,” Damien said, pushing more Ether into his hands and overloading two gravity spheres. “Whatever Ovurg is, it’s scaled to our strength. It’s probably got horrible defense if its attack is this strong.”

Damien teleported, appearing in the air above the rocky monster. He hurled both gravity spheres at it. The spells struck the creature in the back and detonated with two loud cracks. When the magic faded, two tiny dents had formed in its skin. The monster turned toward him as he fell back to the ground, finally close enough that he could get a look at its features.

Ovurg was roughly humanoid. It had huge stone fangs that jutted out in every direction from its mouth, stopping it from closing completely. Its eyes were faceted like two sickly gemstones, and a faint fire burned behind them.

Damien teleported moments before a stone hand blurred through the air where he’d been falling and obliterating a huge portion of the wall. He landed on the ground beside Sylph, his eyes wide.

“Sylph? Are you hiding something? Because that thing is not scaled to my power at all.”

“You’ve seen everything I’ve got,” Sylph replied, fading into camouflage. “Is it Henry?”

“Tiny creatures talk a lot,” Ovurg rumbled. “Ovurg no mind talking, but too much get on his nerves. Ovurg tired, so you die now.”

Henry!

Ovurg balled its fists and brought them crashing down on the ground before it. Stone surged like water, rippling outward in a massive wave. Damien teleported into the air and hardened his mage armor as a fragment struck him in the chest.

Henry surged forth, turning Damein’s armor dark and extending his tendrils. They shot out and wrapped around Ovurg’s arms and yanked them together.

“Shit, this bastard is strong,” Henry snarled. “I could fight him if you give me control, but you won’t be doing much afterward.”

That’s not an option.

Ovurg roared and tensed its arms. The bands around them tightened, straining to keep them together. With a roar, Ovurg swung both arms like a club, striking the wall. An explosion rocked the room and stone rained from the impact site.

Henry’s tendrils reached their maximum length. He released the rock monster, yanking them back before the rock monster could strike the cavern again.

“Is there anything Henry can do against this?” Sylph called.

“Not for a price we want to pay right now,” Damien replied. “It’s just us.”

“I’ll distract it, then,” Sylph said. “You try to figure out a way to do serious damage. My swords aren’t going to do much more than annoy this.”

“No talk!” Ovurg lumbered towards them. Damien lobbed a gravity sphere at the creature’s head. It raised a hand, blocking the spell as if it were nothing more than annoying fly.

Sylph darted at it, her weapon flashing when she grew close. If it did any damage, Damien couldn’t tell in the dim light. Ovurg growled, raising a clawed foot into the air and driving it down on the ground.

Ribbons of wind enveloped Sylph. She shot out of the way, then leapt onto the monster’s other leg and sprinted up its side, dragging her sword through its rocky flesh. Ovurg roared in fury, slapping at its body to try and squish her.

Damien gritted his teeth and mentally ran through his repertoire of magic. Direct casting was too unreliable and was unlikely to be of much use against something as huge as Ovurg at his current skill level. Enlarge wasn’t going to hit with nearly enough force to damage the creature, and reduce didn’t work on living things.

He summoned a gravity lance, pushing as much Ether into it as possible before sending it flying at Ovurg’s chest. Whether the monster was distracted by Sylph or simply didn’t care, it didn’t attempt to dodge the attack.

The lance burrowed into its rocky skin and detonated with a series of sharp cracks. Ovurg snarled and threw itself at the wall. Sylph leapt off just before it struck, blurring into camouflage as she fell.

A rumble shook the room and a huge cloud of dust billowed from the wall, obscuring nearly half of the room. Ovurg’s massive form turned to an ominous shadow concealed by all the debris in the air.

“We can’t fight this,” Damien muttered.

Henry, you have to go find Sylph. We need to run, this thing is too powerful. There’s got to be a doorway somewhere in the room, and it’ll be too small for Ovurg to fit through.

Henry mentally sent his understanding and Damien’s shadow detached from his feet, darting off into the dark room without a sound. As soon as it was gone, Damien teleported to the far wall and started searching for the exit.

“Where tiny things go?” Ovurg asked, stomping across the cavern in search of them. The dust cloud it had accidentally created was now working on their favor. The monster swept its hands through it, trying to regain its eyesight.

It was no use. While Ovurg was so large that Damien could still make it out from outside the cloud, he was little more than a tiny dot to the monster. As for Sylph, spotting her by figuring out where the dust was absent was an impossible task. There was simply too much.

Damien cast Warp Step in quick succession, blurring across the room at a rapid pace. He held the top of his mage armor to his nose, filtering out the air as best he could. His eyes watered and a cough begged to escape his chest, but he repressed it.

A shadow at the base of a wall caught his attention. Damien stopped just before Warp Stepping again and ran over to it, waving dust away and squinting. There was a gap between the wall and the floor, just slightly taller than he was. It looked to lead deeper into the ground.

“Come out, little things,” Ovurg yelled. “You making Overg bored. Overg need to kill you so that Great One happy.”

Damien glanced around for any trace of Sylph. The dust cloud worked against him now. He cast his mental net out, hoping that the increased Ether sense would help him spot Sylph, but the room was too large.

“Sylph!” Damien yelled. “To me!”

Ovurg spun and hurled a boulder in his direction. Damien cast enlarge on a rock at his foot, sending a pillar soaring into the sky and knocking the attack astray. Ovurg roared and charged toward him, each step shaking the room.

Sylph slipped out of camouflage beside Damien, nearly making him jump. She spotted the exit and dove into it. Damien leapt after her. They broke into a sprint, darting into the hall as Ovurg’s furious screams followed them. The ground shook as the giant slammed a fist into the exit, but it had no way to follow.

“I think we’re safe,” Damien said, slowing down and bending over to catch his breath. “But what was that? That thing was stronger than most of the Corruption I’ve seen!”

“Most of the Corruption are fodder,” Henry said, rising up from the ground and forming a faint purple light above his palm. “The Seeds are the strong ones, and you only had to fight ones that had already fallen. I could have handled this thing too, but you just don’t have the power to spare.”

“That was only the first enemy too,” Sylph muttered. “There’s no way the professors would have sent us here if everything was that powerful. Something is wrong.”

“Should we just try to leave?” Damien asked.

“That’s hardly an option anymore,” Sylph said. “When Ovurg punched the exit, I think it caved in. We’ll have to find another exit. But, exit or not, I’m more curious as to why the Crypt is stronger than it was meant to be.”

“It could be Second,” Damien suggested. “Maybe he messed with it somehow to make it harder?”

“But why?” Sylph asked. “He could just attack himself.”

“I wonder if all the other floors are equally more difficult,” Damien said, chewing his lower lip in thought.

“You think he’s trying to stall us so that Drew has a chance to catch up?” Sylph asked. “That could make sense. If monsters are really scaled to whoever enters, maybe Second can’t get deep enough for some artifact, so he’s using Drew to get it instead. He could have made this floor harder to keep us from some artifact.”

Damien blinked. He couldn’t see Sylph beyond a bundle of faint lines of Ether in the darkness, and he was glad that she couldn’t see the stupefied expression on his face.

“Yeah,” he said. “That seems reasonable. But, if that’s the case, we should double our efforts. Anything that Second wants this badly is something we need to keep away from him. And, if he really does want an artifact, I bet it’s the same one that Whisp sent us here for.”

“Then we know what we need to do,” Sylph said.