“Am I alive?” Heather’s voice asked as she rolled onto her back.

“You landed on me so you’re fine,” Mur’s bitter voice responded.

Everyone began to stand up slowly, all of them complaining of pain. But other than that, they were fine. No one’s bones were broken though they certainly had bruises.

Thanks (?) to Erebus’ curiosity, they had fallen into uncharted territory.

“How deep did we fall,” Luke muttered as he casted a healing spell on his bruised body. Ern was doing the same for Mur, Heather, and Tear.

Obviously, Erebus and Vyne were not injured. But they played the part anyway.

“I don’t know,” Heather answered worriedly. “It would be our luck for the bridge to break, though.”

All of them sighed in annoyance.

“There should be a way back up?” Ern said, looking towards the where they fell from.

“Meh, since we’re down here, might as well explore.” Heather wiped the dirt off of her clothing.

She got a chorus of agreement. Only Ern displayed a look of apprehensiveness.

“But we don’t know what rank creatures are down this far. We may be stuck in here forever.”

Heather chuckled. “I doubt that last part.” She cracked her neck. “It’s better for us to keep moving, that much is for sure. Sitting here is like waiting for certain death. Let’s go.”

“But the monsters!” Ern whined.

Tear snapped her head in the direction of Ern. “Are you an idiot or something? You four are Tier 8 Questers and Erebus, Vyne, and I come from the Demon Continent. If you’re worried by that sort of thing you should quit.”

Ern clamped her mouth shut. But her eyes showed defiance.

“Fine,” she said after a few moments of silence, everyone was waiting for her.

“Your worries are unfounded,” Vyne said, noticing that she was still reluctant.

“Huh?”

“What makes you think that there are even monsters down here? What makes you think that if there are monsters down here, that they’re stronger than the ones upstairs?”

“What...” Ern narrowed her eyes in confusion. Her worries had made sense, at least in her mind.

“After around three hours of exploring, we only encountered two hostile parties. And they were the same type of monster. We haven’t heard any of the other monster’s moving around like we should have if there were any down here. In an area this large, the noise should echo. But we don’t hear anything.”

“That logic is even faultier than mine,” Ern argued.

Vyne shrugged. “But it sounds better than worrying endlessly. Does it not?”

Heather looked like she wanted to laugh. “I can’t argue with you there, Vyne.”

The expression he wore in response to that was: Of course, you can’t argue with my higher level thinking.

Erebus, Mur, and Luke all could care less about what type of monsters lurked down here. They just wanted to explore.

So, with that resolved (not really), they continued their expedition. Tear, claiming that she ‘was afraid’, clung to Erebus like a second skin as they traveled down a cave that had glowing mana stones embedded in the walls that gave the place an eerie glow.

The area was also silent, too silent. The only noise was the tapping of their shoes on the damp rock and the distant sound of water running.

“This place sure is peaceful,” Heather exclaimed. “Hard to believe it’s a dungeon.”

“Indeed,” Mur agreed. “I’ve never felt this laid-back while exploring a dungeon before.”

Like the two said, nothing had happened. There had been a family of lizards one time, but the lizards simply watched them as they moved along.

“This place is creepy,” Ern refuted. “It’s giving me feelings, like, something bad will happen.”

“Hey! Don’t jinx us.” Luke gave Ern a meaningful glare. Didn’t she know those types of words would undoubtedly cause something to happen?

Sure enough, as if to mock them, a rumbling sound was heard. Followed by a loud roar and the sounds of thundering footsteps.

“This is your fault,” Tear said to Ern.

Ern threw her hands up in the air. “I didn’t think it would happen!”

“Run, run, run,” Heather yelled and began a stampede of her own (I’m kidding).

They all began to run, well, except for Erebus who was leisurely jogging yet still keeping up with their sprinting.

“What is with our luck?” Luke moaned. As a mage, he was not cut out for all this running.

The same went for Ern, who had been picked up and placed on the back of Mur. Within a couple minutes of running, she had run out of steam.

“Haha! This is kind of fun,” Erebus said. He clearly felt no remorse for putting them in this type of situation. Repeat: Erebus is a dragon who mostly cares about himself and himself only.

Vyne, extremely pleased to know his master was enjoying himself, agreed to this.

“Pick me up, I can’t run any longer,” Tear lied. She knew that her master would surely save her...

“Can’t have that,” Heather answered, and sweeped Tear into her arms princess-style.

A look of horror crossed Tear’s face. This isn’t who she wanted to pick her up.

Heather, who noticed this look but ignored it, continued to run with no problem. She had definitely done this so that Tear wouldn’t be satisfied.

Vyne, upon noticing this, laughed mentally. Serves the wrench right for trying to get our master to carry her.

They sure had a nice, easy-going atmosphere going despite the fact whatever was chasing them was getting closer and closer.

It was mostly because they were sure they could defeat whatever came at them. It definitely wouldn’t be a Dragon rank enemy, and the chances of it being Demon Lord or Demon Emperor were just as low. Meaning that it was an enemy they could deal with.

Since Tear was an archer and Luke and Ern were mages, they weren’t concerned about the numbers being too overwhelming.

“That’s a dead-end ahead, is it not?” Ern said in an exhausted voice. Indeed, there was a heavy looking door there that would be impossible to push open in time to escape from the monsters.

“Seems like it,” Heather said, skidding to a stop. She placed down Tear delicately and then turned to face the now visible horde of monsters.

Mur let out a whistle. “Looks like we’re going to be busy.”

The horde consisted of: crab-men, smaller versions of the crab-men, very, very large versions of the crabmen, magical fish that were floating in the air with sharp teeth jutting out of their mouths.

There were at least five hundred enemies in total.

Luke made a pained sounded as he placed his hands on his thighs, breathing heavily. “Ern, next time, keep your mouth shut.”

“S-sorry.”

“Luke, Ern, start prepping large-scale magic. Tear, make sure nothing gets close to them. Erebus, Vyne, Mur, and I will attempt to lower the numbers.” After mentioning this, Heather whispered something under her breathe, by doing this, the spikes snapped back out.

“Let’s go.”

The four charged and Tear began to let off a torrent of arrows. The arrows weren’t as strong as they normally were for two reasons: the first being the more arrows the first split into, the power was divided equally among them. The second was that she wanted Erebus to have fun playing.

Vyne and Erebus began mowing down the front-lines, which consisted of the small crab-men. For the sake of time, they put more power into their swings, allowing them to cleave the creatures with little difficulty.

Heather was attacking the enemies but it looked more like she was doing some type of spasmodic dance. But her partners in the dance weren’t very lucky, seeing as she crushed their bodies and moved onto the next one.

Finally, Mur was using his spear in a very nontraditional way that made a person wonder why he didn’t just use a chain scythe instead. When Heather had asked him this during the younger days, Mur claimed it was because ‘I look cool when I do it this way’.

Yes. That was his reasoning.

The only ones who were standing there without attacking were Luke and Ern. They were currently drawing out a very large magic circle in the air and speaking in a difficult sounding language.

When they finished, Ern shouted, “Everyone draw back!”

Without any seconds to spare, Erebus and the other members of the vanguard barely had enough time to jump back in time before the magic circle the two had drawn appeared over the still massive horde. Another circle appeared underneath the horde and it began to glow. The circles created a very high-pitched whistling noise before a beam of purple light engulfed the volume of the circles.

When the light had appeared, a large crack followed it. And the light finally faded, only piles of dust were left in its wake.

Erebus let out a low whistle. It was [Destruction Magic: Encircling Light], a high-ranked spell. The spell required a tremendous amount of mana to activate, so he was amazed they managed to do it in such a short time. Well, to say tremendous was more in reference to the races they belong to.

I suppose I should give these children more credit, Erebus thought. They really have gotten stronger within these centuries.

“Or not,” Erebus said out loud. When he turned around, both of them were on the ground panting with exhaustion.

“We’ll be fine after a few minutes of rest,” Luke said between breaths.

“I haven’t used [Myth Magic] in a long time.” Ern laid her head on the ground.

The magic rankings were as followed:

Common

Lord

King

Myth

The strength of the [Lost Magic] was double that of Myth, though, when the dragons used it the strength raised to quadruple.

The reason why is a story for another time, though.

After a few minutes, the two mages were relatively back to normal.

While they recuperating though, Heather and the others had worked on pushing open the heavy door.

They had managed to get it open to the point where they could slide their bodies through, and when they did a booming voice that put Heather’s to shame called out to them.

“Welcome! To see you have gotten this far means that you are worthy to challenge me to a fight!”

There sat on a throne at least a story high, was a fish-man being who was even larger than that with a glowing triton in his hand.

His name was Triton, the Exiled Emperor of the Seafolk.