The ‘night’ in the dungeon kept everyone in a constant state of nervousness, for from its deeper parts muffled noises kept on resonating across the tunnels, making my companions wake up, grabbing their weapons in shock, ready to fight till death.

But not even once did they have to. In the end, these were nothing but noises. Noises of reptiles fighting, hissing and roaring, sounds of snapped bones and ripped flesh - as if warning us of what awaited us if we wanted to descend deeper.

Ha - despite calling it ‘a night’ we couldn’t quite tell how much time we spent here. The tiredness of my companions and their physiological needs were the only indicators of passing time that I had. Taking this into consideration they ate once every twelve or so hours, and they had rather short, insufficient periods of sleep (huge shades under their eyes) I would risk a statement that it had been around sixteen hours since we moved in.

My team should have enough food for “another stoppage”, then things would start turning dirty. The last resort would be eating killed monsters. But, the thing is, that some of dungeon monster’s meat in inedible - either poisonous, requiring an insane amount of purification magic before being ready to actually eat it, or made of strange compounds which made them impossible to cook - simply, their tissue either completely carbonized or lost all nutritious property it could have ever held - no one knew why it happened, there were many theories, but too little facts to support any of them.

And last but not least - even if we could find meat which you could prepare and eat - the smell would lure half of the dungeon’s inhabitants to your location, which is considered to lead to a situation described with one phrase: “utterly and completely fucked”.

I watched as Adam was ordering everyone to “clean up” the camp, packing their things back to the bags, readying for departure.

“How are you?” the sergeant asked, walking past me. “Full physical combat capability, mana fully regenerated. Lack of negative abnormal effects detected. Ready to go whenever you are.” I answered with a quick, formal summary. “Shit, you guys are really incredible. The Lions should get more of you - techno-crafted, right? - they can keep on saying that you are dangerous or ‘could never replace humans’, but I have seen your performances with my own eyes and I can tell, that having you in the raid is a blessing.”

…The what now?

“Ok everyone, are you ready? Behind us there is this huge ass ugly mother fucker, that means we have only one direction left to go - the other one.” He did his best to act and sound like a man for whom such a situation is bread and butter, trying to build up the confidence of other party members giving them hope - as every leading commander should. “Won’t we reach a dead end?” one of the scavengers raised his hand. “Doubtful. You see, dungeons, even if reshuffled, still follow certain patterns. We weren’t able to tell the differences between the first floors and the map, for those nearly didn’t change at all! Deviations started much later, and kept on increasing the deeper we got - that’s because dungeons are growing deeper down the ground, increasing their size. That tunnel here is new and was made for a certain reason…” “What if the reason is to lead us to our demise?” “Then the trap would be more sophisticated, not just a chamber with a small army. Any more questions?”

There were none.

“In that case, into formation!”

Prepared like that, with tanks shielding our front and back, with duelists following right behind them and mage with archers waiting in the center of the formation, we moved out, marching into the darkness of the dungeon.

On our journey, we found a few more crossroads leading to different rooms, some of them were dead ends, filled with bones, in two of them we fought with groups of insignificant opponents, which earned me small doses of essence.

[958/1750] ➝ [1137/1750]

But, eventually, our steps led us towards another, rather huge room. Within it, we found quite a bizarre sight - a lair. An actual monster’s lair filled with hundreds of eggs, most of them hatched, but numerous still remained untouched. And, across the room, we spotted a few lizards walking lazily, taking care of their unborn offspring.

One of them was truly colossal, in body type it was resembling Ratptoxes… but the sheer size was… ridiculous. Ratptoxes were tiny! Standing they barely reached thigh level! This one was… bigger than Ol’ Rockpaw. She was as big as my old house, back in the village! Good three or four meters tall, tail alone was good three meters as well! I could tell that she was unusually fast and strong… but, her abdomen was filled with eggs that were yet to be laid. She was followed by four other Ratptoxes, also bigger than the ‘regular variant’, walking behind the mother in formation, licking her clean, bringing her food or grabbing the eggs and bringing them to safety once she would stop to lay them down.

Ratptox Queen - Mother of the pack

Ratptoxes rarely have leaders, being rather a pack of 'equal individuals' fighting only once a year for dominance in order to earn 'the privilege of mating' - this way, only the strongest in the pack would bear offspring, ensuring its prosperity.

But! If one of the individuals would 'earn their privilege' over and over again, and later their offspring would do the same for several generations straight, a mutation is bound to happen.

Born with supreme genes of dozens of generations of fastest, strongest, and smartest individuals, The Queen comes to life.

She rarely hunts, and not for food - for pleasure alone and to not let her skills get rusty, for she is busy with guiding the pack and giving life to more superior individuals.

Ratptox Praetorian

The Maiden of The Queen.

Don't get fooled by their 'nickname', these creatures are more than just servants of The Pack Queen. They hunt for her, they fend off unworthy males, they protect her with their life. With bodies much more suited for battler, they have a quarter of her strength but twice the speed, and that combined with sharp claws and fangs is more than enough to be considered one of the most dangerous beasts living in the forests and mountains.

If The Queen would be happy with their performances, they would also be allowed to mate - and with that being the most vital part of their life cycle, the Praetorian will serve her queen with fanatic devotion.

Seeing deeper into the room, we were able to see another set of tunnels leading deeper into the dungeon. The situation was cleared - if we wanted to keep on going, we had to fight with these five nasty creatures.

We took a few steps back, finding shelter in the darkness of the tunnel.

“These sons of the bitches look like trouble…” one of the scavengers groaned. “Daughters.” Robert corrected. “What?” “They are all females. If you want to offend someone, do it properly.” “You can’t be serious? Right? Is the pronoun I address them with that important?”

Mage only smiled mockingly, making the scavenger groan. Not gonna lie here, that’s one weird way of making friends.

“The big one might not be the problem seeing how slowly it moves, but the other four seem problematic. Any ideas?” The sergeant tried making up a battle plan before going in. “We need to go in, now we have the advantage of numbers, so choke points would only do us harm…” “But then again, looking at how massive they are, they probably need lots of space to maneuver - tight locations might be better…” “They won’t need to do any maneuvers fighting one on one - which would be forced in chokepoints, they would just overrun us.” “Fuck. Fair point. So?” “Do we have any traps to put in the tunnel? We could lure them out…” “Dunno, did you bring any?” “Nope.” “And neither did any of us. Our formation lacks proper rogues.” “Still, attacking them one at the time should be our tactic…” “Won’t happen. Have you seen them? They are sticking to that huge son o… Bitch, that bitch, like a sailor sticks to a port whore.” “What if…” I spoke up “... one of us is constantly running after the queen, trying to wound her - then, the rest of her ‘maidens’ would focus on that one person, letting the rest to freely attack them one at the time.” “And who would be willing to become a scapegoat? Ya offering your services?” one of the scavengers tried teasing me. “Yes. That’s exactly what I am saying.” “Ha, just as I thought, do not risk the lives of other people if y… wait, what?!” his eyes almost popped out. “Anyone else has a different battle plan?” I tried to quickly finish up this - from my perspective - pointless argument. “Alabaster, let’s not act rashly, maybe if we analyze the situation better…” Robert tried to join the conversation. “Then we would lose precious time. What are you waiting for? For more monsters to hatch? For more monsters to return? You have said that - these four are all women, and last time I checked to get an egg to hatch it needs to be fertilized, and for that, a male is needed. Do you want to wait for her mate to return? Because if the creature was bold enough to hit on HER, then the SON of a bitch needs to be at least as big as she is. And then we would most certainly be doomed.”

The sergeant gritted his teeth.

“Alabaster… We will be counting on you. If the situation gets too heated, please run away…” “More heated than taunting four carriage sized and one house-sized lizard? Got it sarge” I allowed myself for one last joke “... also, mind if I borrow one of your crossbows? Loaded please, will drop it after shooting once, so feel free to pick it. I just want to make sure that all eyes would be on me to let you do the job.

In the next minute, we adapted our formation and were ready to go. For now, I put my sword in its sheath, carrying a simple, medium-sized crossbow, noticing that the tip of the arrowhead was glistering from some substance smeared all over it. Poison? Most likely. Not very honorable to use it in combat, but we didn’t enter the dungeon for ‘civilized war’, but annihilation. I started walking towards the room entrance.

I stepped into a more illuminated part of the room, not hiding my presence nor acting quiet - quite the opposite, I did kick a few pebbles on my way, attracting their attention. Five heads moved towards me in unison, eyes filled with a mixture of shock and curiosity, as one tiny creature just casually entered the den. They didn’t yet act, but the four praetorians did move to the front making a line between me and the queen, hissing.

I kept on moving to the side of the room, making them look in the other direction that the tunnel’s entrance was, then, stopping, I raised my weapon, aimed at the queen… and shot.

It was far from a perfect shoot, even despite the fact that the enemy was not moving and… well, as huge as a house, but, in the end, the arrow did dig itself in the skin of the Ratptox Queen.

The huge beast looked at her side as if trying to understand what happened. To her, the blow was most likely like a shallow stab with a needle, and yet, it roared. But not with pain - with anger.

The roar was a signal for the rest of the team to jump from the tunnel - they did, taking a position behind them.

Now, the battle was about to start. And by battle, I meant a desperate act of survival, with me as the main actor.