The death of Ix was not an ordered event, or in any way rational. Many have tried to make some sense of the result, but it defies easy analysis. A God of the Seas, but not of land? A Goddess of Nature and a Goddess of Life? The truth is that Creation encompassed all things, and each of Ix’s successors inherited a part of each of her aspects. It was not Ix’s powers that were split, it was her personality, and each successor chose a role that suited their unique personality.

According to the story, this same fundamental misunderstanding is why the God of Destruction participated in the event in the first place.

- Heresies of Kaval

The goal of the adventuring profession was to turn the struggle for life and death into a boring affair. Proper preparation, planning, and advanced identification of the monsters you would be fighting all added up to a one-sided slaughter of monsters.

At the same time, adventurers needed to push themselves in order to progress. 180 XP for a Threat 12 monster meant more than five hundred fights to get to level five. A Threat of one level higher turned that into three hundred.

That tension, plus the nature of random chance, meant that eventually, a string of boring fights got… interesting.

The first sign, in retrospect, was the fourth chamber - an empty room. It looked like something had happened here, the weathered stone walls were cracked and damaged. There were no traps though, and no monsters. Cloridan didn’t like it.

“I don’t remember anything like this from before,” he said. “And I don’t recall anyone else mentioning an empty cracked room. Anyone else?”

No one had. We carefully inspected for traps and secret doors, but there was nothing. Eventually, we had no option but to try the other door. Cloridan opened it as usual and took a peek in.

“Nope!” he said quickly, and backed off. Our procedure for this situation was for everyone to retreat, but the dungeon had other ideas.

A stone slab slammed down, covering the exit to the cracked room. An angry screech came from the door ahead of us, and it was slammed open by the creature beyond.

[Identification]: Tenta-bull - Threat: 13 - Properties: Multiple attacks

The creature had the body of a bull, but the head had been swapped with a crocodile, or something like it. Coming off of its shoulders were four… tentacles, I guess, but they looked more like snakes. Especially since they were tipped with reptilian heads. These tentacles were what it had opened the door with, and they now extended into the room, hissing menacingly as the main creature shouldered its way into the room. It was too wide for the door, but a few shoves made a much bigger entrance.

I quickly cast [Improved Blind], but there was a problem. The crocodile head in the centre was enveloped, but the snake-heads on the tentacles were not.

“I can’t blind it! The spell only targets the head!” I yelled. Kyle cursed and ran at the thing, heavy shield up in front of him. He blocked two heads with his shield, but two more sank their teeth into his side. Cloridan ran to join him.

“Kyle fall back and block! Let Cloridan flank it!” I called, and cast [Greater Invisibility] on Cloridan. The chance of Kyle hitting Cloridan accidentally would be greatly reduced that way.

Felicia was moving closer, no doubt to heal Kyle, but it was at that moment that the rat-snakes arrived.

[Identification]: Rat-Snake - Threat: 5 - Properties: Immune (Poison)

They came crawling out of the cracks in the wall, dozens of them. Lots of little rat-legs attached to a snake body. They also had the rat-heads, which wasn’t ideal, but better gross than poisonous.

Much of the beast’s noise was muted from its central head being muffled, but intense hisses from the snakes suggested that Cloridan had landed a hit. It tried to whirl to face him, but Kyle was keeping it busy.

Meanwhile, we had smaller problems of our own.

Your party has killed a Rat-Snake - your experience share is 25 XP

You have inflicted 103 damage!

For killing a Rat-Snake, you have earned 25 XP

You have inflicted 107 damage!

For killing a Rat-Snake, you have earned 25 XP

Without a word, Felicia and I blocked as many snakes as we could from reaching the front line. The Rat-Snakes had too low a Threat to actually hurt us, unless we stopped [Dodging]. I wasn’t sure they could actually hurt Kyle through his armour, but they would make a nasty distraction if they got to him while he was still fighting the beast.

We stopped a lot, but a few got through. Felicia shouted a warning, so Kyle wasn’t surprised. It still cost him a blow from the bull though. The Tenta-bull was on its last legs though. Cloridan had landed another backstab.

Your party has killed a Rat-Snake - your experience share is 25 XP

You have inflicted 105 damage!

For killing a Rat-Snake, you have earned 25 XP

You have inflicted 107 damage!

For killing a Rat-Snake, you have earned 25 XP

Your party has killed a Tenta-bull - your experience share is 325 XP

After that, it was just clean-up. Lots of squirming clean-up.

“Ugh. Thank the Gods that’s over,” Felicity said as soon as the last one was dead. “Kyle are you alright?” She went over to heal him.

Cloridan waved to attract my attention.

“Unless you’ve got something important to say, I think I should keep the spell up,” I said to his invisible form. “My mana’s limited and I don’t want to waste the spell.” He shrugged and pointed to the slab blocking the exit.

I looked over. “Shouldn’t that have gone by now?” I said, going over to it. Using [Mana Sense] showed me that it was chock full of magic. That wasn’t unusual in dungeons - most of the cages were magically endowed so that they could be opened when adventurers arrived. Such items tended to evaporate when you tried to take them, or when their purpose was ended.

This slab though, was still here. It didn’t budge when I tried to move it, but that wasn’t a surprise.

“Kyle? Can you try to move this thing?”

He came over. “What’s up?”

“Can you try to lift this? Cloridan will take that side,” I said pointing. They both gave it a go, but it seemed fixed in place, and a few tentative shoulder slams from Kyle suggested it wasn’t going to break either.

“If we had a heavy hammer or something…” he lamented. “Hang on.” He went over to the cracked walls and with some effort, levered out one of the stones. He then proceeded to smash the stone into the slab, to no effect.

“We’re not meant to go back that way,” I said.

“Well, we were going to continue forward anyway?” Felicia suggested.

“Yeah, but now we don’t have a choice. The routes join up before the boss chamber, right?”

Kyle nodded, “That's what the guides said. They didn’t say anything about this though.”

“Well, if the guides were right, there should be two more chambers before that.” Cloridan waved at me and held up three fingers.

“Three?” I said, and started counting in my head. Cloridan shook his head and pointed at this room and the next, and then holding up one finger. “Oh… so these two rooms are actually one?” I asked, and he nodded.

“Did anyone find the treasure?” Felicia asked, and we all started looking around. Kyle was the first one to speak up.

“Found it, it’s another collar!” he called out. He held up a metal collar.

[Identification]: Controller Collar (Beast) - Quality: Perfect - Properties: Control (Beast)

“Nice,” I said. “Do they use those on the griffins?”

“Probably,” he answered, “There are [Skills] to control them, but not everyone has those.”

“Can we use it on the beasts we find in here?” I wondered.

“I’m… not sure,” he said, frowning. “I think it won’t work for us until we leave the dungeon, or maybe the dungeon can take control again… I don’t know.”

“Should we harvest the meat?” Felicia asked. “I don’t think it’s especially valued, but…”

“No?” I said looking at Kyle and Cloridan. Kyle nodded and Cloridan shrugged. “We don’t have unlimited carrying capacity, and there’s no way we can carry all of that.”

The rest of the group agreed, so we moved on to the next chamber.

“Uh, oh,” Kyle said, peeking in. “I don’t like the looks of this.”

We all took turns taking a look in. Again, the room seemed empty, but there were some holes in the upper halves of the walls. Big holes.

“Another ambush?”

“A pretty obvious one…” I muttered.

“Would Cloridan trigger it?” Kyle wondered. “Actually, if we were all invisible, could we just walk through?”

“Risky to test,” I pointed out. “It could close off the exit again, and trap him inside.”

We all pondered for a moment.

“How about this?” I said. “I’ll send in some illusions, and if they trigger it, we can fight them in the doorway.”

“What if the door closes? We’d be trapped between two magical doors.” Felicia said.

“We’d be safe though… and it would have to open them eventually,” I said. While being stuck in a room didn’t appeal, we had plenty of food, and we weren’t going to run out of water.

In the end, that’s what we went with, although we placed a few large stones under where the slab would fall in the hopes of stopping it. Then I sent in our crash-test dummy.

[Phantasmal Entity]

Reynard, looking as dangerous as ever, stepped forward into the room. Nothing happened immediately, and I had him move over to the exit, thinking that was the most likely action to trigger the trap. Sure enough, as he touched the door, a rustling noise sounded from within the holes. Feline-looking heads poked out - big ones. Four of them in all, they looked around and then scuttled out of their hiding holes to attack with a roar!

[Identification]: Tiger Beetle - Threat: 13 - Properties: Armored

As the name suggested, they were giant beetles - about three metres long, with vivid orange and black stripes across their carapace. Crossbow bolts from Cloridan and myself hit them, but didn’t seem to do much.

Kyle met the first one’s charge just short of the door. We wanted to get fighters flanking it while it was pinned. I could see two of the beetles going after Reynard. He could take a hit or two, I was sure, but it looked like curtains for the poor guy.

Kyle and Cloridan both landed blows, but I could tell the armour was causing them trouble. My own strike just skittered off its armour. In return, it shoved open its wing-cases at me. I wasn’t expecting it, and the hard blow knocked me to the ground.

The bug slashed ineffectively at Kyle with its front legs, but the monster behind it wasn’t going to be denied a turn. It placed its two front legs on its brother and pushed with its remaining four. To our surprise and dismay, Kyle was forced back further into the room, until the first beetle was free of the doorway.

“Shit!” Kyle shouted, and tried to push back, but the damage was done. The first beetle just had to turn its body to make more room for Beetle Two. Cloridan should have been in the way, but I could see now that he’d been knocked down like me. Beetle Two could now enter the room unopposed, and headed for me!

Fuckfuckfuck, I thought as I tried to scramble to my feet again and get back behind Kyle, where it was safe.

You have taken 51 damage!

A claw swipe almost sent me flying. At the same time, I felt (though much less intensely) my illusion of Reynard end. Two more bugs would be coming through at any time now!

I was on my feet. I needed to cast a spell, and quickly.

[Improved Blind]

Was the one that came to mind. The bug twitched violently and spread its wing-cases again, but I was in front of it now. I did have to fend off some swipes of its claws, but that was a lot easier when it couldn’t see.

I, on the other hand, could see Cloridan’s invisible form, as he leapt onto the back of my attacker. This was partly to get out of the way of Bug number three as it charged into the room, right through where he would have been. Invisible or not, he would have been trampled.

Still, jumping the back of my attacker and plunging his blades into its back was certainly appreciated on my part. He even managed to avoid the armour, as the wing-cases were still extended. I’m sure it screamed in pain, but we couldn’t hear it.

Bugs Three and Four were now in the room, but only Three had an opponent, having joined Bug One in attacking Kyle. He was being forced back by their strength, but he was holding his own. It was only a matter of time before Bug Four came for me, so it was time for another

[Improved Blind]

Your party has killed a Tiger Beetle - your experience share is 325 XP

Your party has killed a Tiger Beetle - your experience share is 325 XP

Both Cloridan and Kyle managed to finish one at the same time. It had looked a little shaky for a bit there, but it seemed to me the tide had turned. Kyle was able to hold off Bug Three, for long enough that Cloridan could kill the blinded Bug Four. They finished off Bug Three together.

And with that, it was over. I grinned at Felicia who had emerged from behind Kyle.

“Heal please!”