The dungeon itself isn’t particularly hard to find. It’s guarded by quite a lot of people from Team Cloud, and Sen wonders how they convince so many people who aren’t able to hunt in it yet to guard it. Eventually, he decides that they’re probably getting paid in crystals or contribution points, and stops minding it.

Before they approach, they have a short discussion.

“Do you think we should just try and fight our way in with the Ares guild? Or should we try for a more diplomatic approach?” Sen asks.

“Well first I’d see what the Ares guild has to say about it,” Julie replies. “For all we know, they could already have an agreement with them.”

Sen nods, and hops off to chat with the Ares guild for a bit. He soon finds that they do indeed have an agreement with Team Cloud, along with many other groups. They’ll allow dungeon entry to anyone so long as the group pays up one of the crystals from the dungeon run.

Sen is confused as to why it’s only one crystal, until he learns that there are only between seven and nine monsters each dungeon run. When he finds this out, he dies a little inside. If he’d thought it was grindy to get up to B rank, this takes it to an entirely new level. The amount of crystals needed to raise a stat from B to A has doubled, and there are only a few monsters in each dungeon?

He sighs, then logs back in to tell his group the bad news. They all seem annoyed, but decide that it would be better to just pay the toll. As they approach, they see groups of players scouting the surroundings.

The guerilla warfare Sen’s group had done with arrays had proved that defense needs to be much more active than before, as otherwise someone can just run a big circle around the dungeon to place an array with all of the defenders inside of it.

While people can still set up a few smaller arrays, that will only be creating a few images that will be easy to break, and images from arrays can only go around a hundred meters away from the array anyway.

They greet the first patrolling group they see, and are escorted to the larger group of players surrounding the dungeon. As they arrive, they see the team that they had beaten exiting the dungeon, and everyone gives them a bow, as the fight had been a very good one. The group mainly gets bows in return, though one of them simply turns away in an annoyed fashion, still angry about the loss.

As they approach the dungeon, they see that it’s built into the side of a mountain, and looks like an abandoned mine shaft. The entrance is massive, towering above them, as if it was made to fit massive excavating machines rather than just humans, and there’s massive steel bracing above it keeping the tons of earth from crashing down upon people who enter.

Once they get inside the dungeon, all the people outside disappear as they’re entered into their own instance, and they look around. What once was a brightly lit place, lights hanging from the ceiling, is now dark and dreary. The walls are made up of stone, with patterns worn into them from the machines that had dug the tunnel out.

As they continue through the massive mineshaft, there are occasional tunnels branching out, and they explore each one, only to be disappointed. Even so, they continue their hunts down the side tunnels, and eventually find the first monster that the mine contains.

Sen is ecstatic to see that it isn’t a giant bug. It looks to be a bear with tusks jutting out from its upper teeth with a mottled green and white coat. He asks Tir what it is and learns that it’s called a wind bear, and he’s a bit confused until he charges in.

As he approaches, the wind bear waves its paws towards Sen and he’s buffeted by a massive storm of wind that is carrying along small pebbles from the gravel ground. Sen is terribly thankful that he’s gotten his skin enhancement skill up to rank C at this point, as even with that the pebbles manage to cut into his skin, leaving traces of blue lines in it.

He’s knocked back a bit by the wind, even though he tries to control it so as to not bowl him over, and tries to approach again. This time, the wind bear doesn’t send a gale towards him, and he’s able to get into close range along with the rest of the group, only to be surprised.

What appears to be a bulky monster moves deceptively fast, swinging at him with a speed just a hair slower than Sen’s. He’s forced to block the blow, but finds that it isn’t nearly so heavy as he’d expected considering the massive bulk of the bear.

He’s still knocked a bit to the side, but he isn’t sent flying, his sword cutting into the monster’s paw as they impact each other. He charges back in as the wind bear starts constantly turning, sending its swift blows towards everyone in the group.

With the blows lacking weight, the girls and Kang are quite easily able to block them with their shields without getting knocked over. The bear will occasionally make some space with its wind control, but the worst that happens is Kang getting bowled over. When they go to cut into the bear’s hide however, everyone gets annoyed.

The bear’s skin and muscles are massively tough, the blows only cutting in an inch deep, which is practically nothing when compared to the two and a half meter tall bear. They slowly start to wear out the beast.

Julie eventually gives up on making arrays, as the created images can barely leave a scratch on the all too tough hide. She then sits back and starts to chuck fireballs at the bear, along with a move that wreathes her sword in fire then launches it like a flamethrower.

Sen eventually starts to use weight of the mountain repeatedly out of annoyance. At this point, the simple G ranked skill has a massive amount of power behind it, and each time he cuts into the bear it slices in with a meaty thwack sound, or a crunching one when it hits bone. Eventually, the beast falls from a myriad of small wounds, and the group takes a short break before continuing.