Deep in the darkness of the Helighat dungeon sounds of battle have been ringing out constantly. On a closer inspection, one would see lights from magic spells and razor sharp swords, flashing by. There, in one of countless, common tunnels of the dungeon a fierce fight could be seen going on.

The currently winning side was a party of humans, who were fighting a group of goblins with some wolves mixed among them. Naturally, those humans are Ariel and his friends that have already been venturing through these corridors for several hours with a couple of battles on the way.

However this newest battle was a bit more difficult, since compared to the previous fights, this one was much bigger. At the beginning there were almost two dozen goblins and wolves, all prepared to fight. Thankfully since the start of the battle only a couple of goblins and a single wolf were left.

Right now Erna was standing at the front of the group facing off against a goblin with a shield and sword, as well as another goblin with a spear riding a wolf. Behind her, in the middle of the group was Brendon responsible for the support, while to the left and right of him was his familiar and his sister Sarah. Brendon’s ancient turtle was supporting the group with water spells just like himself while Sarah was another attacker with her acidic magic.

Unfortunately her purple panda was still too young to do anything and Erna’s unicorn would be unable to do much in these tight corners, so both of them weren’t part of the battle. Only Brendon’s ancient tortoise and Ariel’s ice shade, both of which have reached middle Elite rank, with the ice shade surprisingly being on the edge of breaking through, were participating.

On the topic of ranks actually, Ariel was still at the same level as before while all of his friends have already reached late Elite rank for a while now. The sequence from fastest to slowest was Erna, Sarah and last but not least Brendon. However although Erna was the fastest, right now it is unknown, who will break through first since this will depend not only on magic talent like before, but also on their comprehension of their soul.

Back to the situation at hand, the previously mentioned ice shade was currently leisurely floating at the ceiling while continuously peppering the enemies with its ice magic. His master on the other hand was doing the same thing, but from the far back of the group.

Due to the fight going like this, it is easy to guess that Ariel and the group would soon win, and the goblins probably understood that as well, however for some unknown reasons they couldn’t retreat, so instead they became even more aggressive than before.

Both the sword wielder and the rider charged at Erna and attempted to quickly take her down in their last ditch attempt, but she simply slashed out with a sword covered in light, creating a deadly wave of energy which decapitated the sword wielding goblin. The other one however, was a bit luckier and barely evaded it, but after seeing what happened to his comrade, he changed his target and immediately started closing in on Sarah.

Unfortunately for him this action didn’t change the end result, as several magic spell immediately pierced his and the wolves body just as he turned, ending both their life and the battle. After the monsters took their last breath, Ariel and his party finally let out a sigh of relief. Although it looked like it was easy for them during the battle, it was actually extremely tiring for them.

Let’s not even talk about how Erna and Sarah had some trouble killing anything remotely humanoid at the beginning, simply continues fighting and walking without rest was extremely taxing for them while at the same time they had to be constantly on the alert. So it was rare for them to have even a bit of time to relax, since it could cost them dearly, just like this time.

As Ariel began heading towards the front of the group, Erna, who turned back to look at the others suddenly had her face dyed with shock as she screamed out. “Dodge!” Ariel didn’t understand what was happening and was barely able to react on reflex as he fell to the side, just as an arrow flew by, slightly clipping his shoulder.

Fear showed in the expressions of the group members, especially the girls, who were first to rush over. Erna was the fastest, as she used wind magic to enhance her speed and rushed directly at the goblin archer who stood a bit further behind Ariel.

The goblin didn’t have enough time to react before his vision was already spinning and his lifeless body fell to the ground, while Erna without even looking at it, quickly closed in on Ariel. Sarah was already there with Brendon applying healing magic.

When Erna finally got near the two, she could only watch and try to not get in the way, since she unfortunately, completely ignored the healing aspect of her light magic while growing up. Also she didn’t have holy magic like those paladins of all the churches, who were quite well rounded in all aspects.

Ariel in the mean while was trying to calm down the panicking Sarah. “Don’t worry at best these goblins only use paralyzing poison. It isn’t enough to kill even a normal human, with just a scratch like this.” Sarah eased up a bit at his words, but still frowned and responded. “You never know, so it is better to be safe than sorry, in case there is an infection.”

The others didn’t speak, but also gave slight nods in agreement. Ariel could only sit and obediently let Brendon patch him up. This was actually the result of the most important Ariel’s problem. Besides not having anywhere to rest and constant fighting, Ariel’s most trusted tool for danger, his magical left eye didn’t seem to work here, or maybe it is more accurate to say that it is too useful here.

As it is already know, dungeons have an enormous amount of Mana in them, be it monsters or even the walls around it. In the same line of thinking, Ariel’s left eye, which could see Mana was almost as good as blind here, everywhere Ariel looked was Mana, it was like trying to see what was dyed in paint while standing in front of a single colored wall.

Because of that he couldn’t differentiate monsters from simple scenery, and couldn’t predict when they would come out. Of course it wasn’t a problem with the eye, but more of a problem with him, as he isn’t accustomed to such situation. However he felt that this wasn’t an unfixable problem, but he still needed time to adapt, so right now it was quite a stressful journey for him because he couldn’t rely on the eye right now.

Right after Brendon finished his healing, Ariel stood up and spoke. “We should move a bit quicker right now and try to find a place to rest, if we don’t. it will only be harder as we tire more and more.” The group understood this point well. They already could hardly keep their eyes open after all the energy they wasted fighting, so they quickly got ready to move again.

However as they finished harvesting the trophies and were about to go on their way, once more they heard footsteps coming from up ahead of their path. It didn’t seem to be just a single entity, so they immediately raised their guard, in preparation to face the upcoming danger.

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If you want to read further, visit https://verathragna.wordpress.com/ I will always have an extra chapter there