Captain Godrick blocked the attack of a horse sized lizard with his shield. He then pushed the beast aside, getting some space, which he quickly used to stab the monster in its core. But, it was not enough to kill the sturdy creature as dozens of Ratptoxes which the monster led didn’t let him deliver another blow. The situation that they were in was rather problematic - but stable. The attack group allowed itself to be ambushed - after entering one of the widest rooms till now, they didn’t bother scouting the area, instead choosing to keep moving onward. Till now they kept on spotting only regular combat type monsters - the ones that were known for many traits, but intelligence was not one of them, and because of that, they didn’t expect them to attack in a rather sophisticated way.

Monsters waited in the shadow, on the rock shelves till the group moved deeper into the room before jumping on them from all directions. Few were wounded on the first impact, still being the elite of the Lions’ knights quickly adapted to the situation.

It was utter chaos - a total mess. There was no place for footwork, no place for a sophisticated display of skill - just pure carnage.

A duelist jumped on the Ratptox, beheading it with a single swing of his blade, but because of that, he showed his back to another creature who, not waiting for a further invitation, pounced on him, just to be pushed away by a shieldbearer, who body-slammed it with his tower shield raised in front of him.

At the same time, two small lizards managed to dive under another warrior’s defense, locked their jaws around his legs, and started pulling him away from the rest of the team - towards the corner of the room where they could quickly rip him into the pieces, but this time again they were sliced in two by a glaive-wielding girl.

“Thanks, Agnes! I owe you one!” said the man as he tried to stand up despite his wounded limbs. “Two! One for each!” the skirmisher laughed, jumping back into chaos.

The lizards were greatly outnumbering warriors and had an element of surprise. Despite that, adventurers were the ones winning the combat. Arrows always seemed to find their targets, spells always exploded where they would do the most damage, and shieldbearers always managed to save their teammates at the very last moment.

Slowly, but steadily, the ridiculous number of monsters was being gradually reduced, till only the huge leader remained. Despite being wounded, it still tried to murder as many as possible.

Interestingly enough - even dungeon monsters valued their lives. Monsters could feel respect and fear - if they were being wounded they would try running away…

But not these. They were fighting till the very end…

… and Godrick did notice a pattern - usually the most aggressive monster were those who had the greatest amount of plants and fungus growing off their body.

Beast was dying, lying crippled on the floor. The soldiers took their time, not delivering a finishing blow, instead of jumping in, stabbing lightly with their spears before jumping back. One could mistake it for bullying, prolonging a monster's death without much reason. The reality was slightly different - it was respect, fear, and discipline that made them act this way. Even with it broken, lying on the ground, they weren’t going to ignore the possible risk that approaching this huge monster could bring. No, methodically, stab and retreat- primary objective - clear the dungeon and do not let an ‘infestation’ happen. Secondary objective - reduce casualties to a minimum.

Only when the monster stopped twitching, only when it stopped wincing in pain did they approach it and started delivering a few stronger wounds, ripping the muscle tissue and such - just in case.

“Ok lads, good work. Secure the area, we can rest here… Also Louis? How’s it looking?” the captain looked at his second in command, who was currently checking the map.

The other man only shook his head.

“This chamber is nothing like the one we have previously discovered… also, the locations don’t match. The further we go, the less precise the map becomes…” he raised his head to look at his conversation partner, but only froze “..C-captain?” he raised a finger, pointing at something far behind him.

The raid leader turned around and tried piercing the darkness with his eyes, he stayed like that for a few more seconds, before his eyes widened in shock.

“Pyromancers! Priests! Illuminate that corner of the chamber!” he pointed with his sword.

After a quick chant, several orbs of light and fire were raised in the air, throwing some light on the darkness of the opposing wall.

Several meters above the floor there was a huge - good one meter in radius - hole in the wall, the thing is, that it was not the hole that scared the knights, but rather the thing on the other side of it.

The entire hole was “filled” with a single eye gazing into the chamber filled with soldiers. Now, as the light seemed to annoy its sensitive gaze the eye blinked a few times. Then, angered, it hiss-roared, resembling a crocodile. It then closed its eye and retreated using the tunnels between the rooms to disappear.

“Mages, did you manage to identify that?” “Aye sir. Draconis Vulgaris - probably terra dragon class. Either Viperrus or Wijh. Couldn’t really tell… Well, it for sure wasn't Basilisk… cuz, we would know, right?” “That doesn’t help much. Draconis Vulgaris is considered type ten monsters, right?” “Aye sir.”

Captain massaged his head.

“Change of plans! We do not set up a side camp here! Keep on moving maggots!” “Sir?” Louis asked his upper-ranker. “This room is too wide, too many openings. Too many holes, it’s unfit for a camp location… Not in the S-rank dungeon at least.”

We moved deeper into the dungeon via a tunnel which was marked by the attack force passing through. The tunnel was quite narrow and very, very long - we walked for a good twenty or so minutes and the end was nowhere to be seen.

And then, we felt as if the entire dungeon trembled to its core. The walls resonated, letting out scraping sound as if something was creeping right behind the wall, curled. We “held our breaths” till it perished, disappearing somewhere deeper in the depths of the cave.

“The hell was that?” the archer asked in a quiet, frightened tone. “Something big, very big, big enough to make me move my ass as I don’t want it to find me in these bloody tunnels where you have nowhere to run!”

Sergeant only hissed, urging us to resume our march, and as we shared his fear, we did so.

Five more minutes and we noticed “the light at the end of the tunnel”. We hoped for the light of an adventurer's camp, and so we accelerated. But as soon as we reached our destination we noticed that the light didn’t come from a camp’s fires.

We had entered a huge - colossal even - spherical room. The entire ceiling was covered in huge, sharp crystals that filled the cave, the source of the light we mistook for a camp. The tunnel we used led us out on one of the tall rock shelves, letting us gaze deep below.

“... Guys, I believe that the attack group didn’t walk through this room…” one of the scavengers said in a quiet voice. “Why do you think so? Because of those few… hundred... lizards below?”

The entire bottom of the cave was literally filled with bodies of ratptoxes, some of them were moving, some of them were sleeping, but all of them were alive. The whole cave was almost a blinding red to me from all the life force gathered there.

“Sooo… what do we do, turn back and go look for another way? There could be a crossroads that we missed and…”

And then the tunnel behind us cracked open, as something literally stormed through the wall, breaking it and creating a new path. We didn’t manage to take a good look, as we quickly hugged the walls trying to remain unnoticed by WHATEVER IN HELL it was.

“...On the other hand, the entrance to the deeper part of the dungeon located on the other side of the room looks tempting as well.” “Are you kidding me? Look below!” one of the duelists whisper hissed, not liking the idea of facing an entire horde of monsters. “‘Cause we will not alarm them, look, there is this path, if we would just sneak nicely through we can traverse it while avoiding being spotted!” “I really dislike this idea!” “What do you prefer then - dealing with a thirty meters long shit that can literally rip through stone?! In the very worst case scenario, we would be able to fight back, killing some of them causing some sort of distraction, or lead the fight to the choke points where their numbers wouldn’t be that significant advantage… Or you can go back to face your demise!” “... Onward doesn’t look so bad anymore.”

And so we decided what to do. The entire room looked like a ‘funnel’ with dozens of mineral-made bridges and rock shelves. The idea was to move from one bridge to another, jumping over the shelves till we could reach the other side of the room. Well, all the jumps would be made a good fifteen or so meters above the ground, but, if you didn’t take that into consideration, this would be a piece of cake.

And so, one by one, the ten of us started to head across, one at the time in order to avoid overburdening the shelves and bridges with excessive weight and such.

First, second, then the third man from the rear guard managed to safely walk past.

Then I started followed afterward by my three companions. The thing is, that the last one jumping between the shelves kept on landing poorly, sending up clouds of dust and such. Bah, he even partly crumpled a piece of the mineral bridge, making a small web of crack appear on its surface.

And then, the last member of the rear guards started moving. First and second managed to cross the path flawlessly… but, the mage who moved as last was clearly lacking the agility of the physical fighters of the team…

… and so, he landed on the very same crumpled spot, shattering it completely and sending a huge chunk of stone down - right into the lizard-filled abyss.

The chunk fell directly on the head of one of the lizards, splitting it open and killing it instantly in its place, and so, the rest of the hall agitated by the sound of death of one of their comrades raised their heads up to see the reason of it… and they did see us.

One, two, three seconds passed in absolute silence where both groups started at each other in an almost comedic fashion. As if time resumed the lizards suddenly understood what they were looking at wasn’t some sort of weird plant or mushroom, but an intruder - an intruder that dared to attack them from above, successfully too!

The entire place was mentally filled with vicious hisses as the horde started to climb the wall, jumping from one shelf to another at a rather horrid pace.

The mage finished the rest of his jump in a hurry, landing next to us.

“W-w-what now?” he asked, panicking. “Now we will perform an ancient Lion’s strategy, known for generations yet rarely used.” our sergeants said with a stoic and serious face, as he once again looked down, checking the situation of the ever approaching wall of lizards. “Which is?” “Running away, you moron!” he hissed as he bolted deeper into the dungeon. *

The rest of us quickly followed. After our commander - to safety!...

… Or so we thought.