Alpha, their illustrious leader, slapped the ground again, sending a cloud of dirt into the air in front of the approaching groups. It was his go-to move. Not surprising as the monsters were prone to rushing headfirst towards them whenever the group had been detected, a habit that often ensured that they would pass through the resulting dust cloud, which in turn would often result in the monsters choking on the detritus that would enter their lungs, often dying from suffocation in the process, with the others being, at the very least, blinded as dirt entered their eyes. The only way to avoid that from happening was to either stop or veer around the cloud, both actions resulting in the loss of the advantages that the mad rush gave to the monstrous group of rabbits.

The rabbits were, by themselves, no more powerful than a dog. Even less so as, even mutated, their jaws were not designed to rip out throats or tear into flesh. But the enormous power of their legs meant that a head-on charge at full speed from one of them had the same power behind it as a charging horse or boar and a collision from a group of them would bear similar results to being run down by a herd of horses, even a fully armoured front line would break out into a cold sweat over the thought of such a prospect.

Heavy armour being something that was noticeably absent from this band of idiots’ front lines. Even an indirect impact would leave any of them completely crippled if not outright killing them, their bones shattering from the physics involved.

Fortunately for them, however, the move had served its purpose, though the rabbits had seen the danger in time to avoid it their momentum had been disrupted. Both groups veering to the sides in an attempt bypass Alpha’s power, completely avoiding the hazard, with the exception of two rabbits, each on the very edge of the two groups, who entered a choking fit as soon as they passed through the cloud of dust.

Three rabbits were coming in from the left, four from the right; it still creeped him out that they made little to no sound as they moved, the hairs on the back of his neck having been in a semi-permanent state of rigidity since their first encounter.

A shower of knife-like shards of ice shot out from somewhere to his left, he turned to see Ditsy’s hand raised towards the oncoming beasts. The attack had been one that he had never seen from her before. They had not had many fights since entering the burrows, but he doubted that she was intentionally holding back, a new skill from a level up, maybe?

The group of four rabbits tried to pull back, the one on the inner edge, making the mistake of pulling into the dust cloud to end up choking alongside the others. The two in middle having nowhere else to go ended up colliding with each other taking the full brunt of the attack as it landed, the shard burying themselves deep within their naked flesh; the pain of it, causing them to finally break their unnerving silence, issuing a strange, repeating noise, their scream, he assumed, that sounded to him like a high pitched ‘ooweee’. Weird.

It was the one on the outer edge that caught Goodie attention, however, as it showed a disturbing level of intelligence; instead of turning into the tunnel wall or getting hit as it backed up, it dove behind the two in the middle, using their bodies to shield it from the oncoming attack.

He would need to keep an eye on that one.

But for now, he needed to watch the others of this group, he still had little knowledge of their skills and classes. He did not exactly know what he would with that knowledge, but he needed anything he could find, every piece of information he could get hold of could literally mean the difference between life and death for him.

So far, he had only gathered that the group seemed to be primarily focused [ELEMENTALIST]s and [TELEKINETIC]s.

While he understood that they had chosen to focus on their element to increase their own power and that being in a group would have, supposedly, covered for any of their weaknesses, an unfocused [ELEMENTALIST] would have been able to rely on all the elements, a versatility that made the [ELEMENTALIST] class the most popular and the reason he would have chosen it in a heartbeat if it were not for its lack of healing and summoning skills.

Admittedly, earth and ice would have had far more utility than, say, fire, with them both being able to construct weapons and, at higher levels, whole buildings, especially where Alpha’s earth summoning was concerned, but still…

With the obstacle of Alpha’s cloud and the assault on the group of four rabbits on the right, the left group of beasts had slowed, their movements cautious as they watched for any signs of attack. While Ditsy’s new move had thrown it off, if the idiots were keeping to their usual attack pattern, Spear-Guy would be next.

And there he went…the guy swung his spear in a horizontal arc, seeming for naughty as the trio of monsters was well over twenty feet away, but Goodie knew better. The creatures each let out a high-pitched squeal as painful-looking gash appeared on their faces

You would not be able to tell as the beasts had moved in order to escape whatever had afflicted them, but had they remained still, the cuts would have all lined up perfectly. A perfect cut from an invisible slash.

Spear-guy, the Geezer, and, if his suspicions were correct, Bip and Bop had all chosen a telekinetic build as their class. Goodie could say for sure what their classes were exactly, but he knew enough to guess; spear-guy specialised in attacking, his magic power, allowing any cut, slash, or stab from his weapons to extend far beyond its natural reach.

The geezer’s speciality was obvious, in that he had none. A general class, weaker than if he had chosen to focus on one particular skill set. Whatever class the geezer had picked allowed him to use his magic to wail on any single enemy, space wizard-style, with the old fart heavily relying on the use of pushing, pulling, and choking to deal with his targets.

The use of his powers had meant that he and Alpha-boy had become the two powerhouses of the group, with one of the two usually delivering the killing blow to any creatures that they encountered. A practice that no doubt resulted in their levels skyrocketing ahead of the rest. A discovery that answered Goodie’s question of why the rest of the group gave so much influence to a soon to be geriatric and a narcissistic arsehole. Power always mattered.

But this was not the time to be dwelling on that.

As for the cousins, Bip and Bop, if he had guessed correctly, the two of them both specialised in defence. He could not be certain as guarding the sides of their small group had meant that they had rarely ever needed to face combat, but they wore no armour yet he had seen one of them take a falling rock to the head with no apparent injury. Hardly conclusive evidence as they guy may have just been a numbskull, but Goodie was sure that the two had been using their skills to form some sort of telekinetic shield around themselves.

A yell came from his right; Goodie looked over as Alpha called for the group to hold positions.

He turned to where everyone else was looking and saw that the trio of rabbits had recovered. Spear-guy’s attack had been far from strong enough to deliver a killing blow the beasts, the horizontal swipe barely able to leave a shallow cut in their twisted flesh, but the way he employed it to his advantage forced Goodie to admit that the guy was smart in the way that he handled his powers.

Spear-guy could have aimed for their legs to hamper their movements, but that was far from a sure thing down here as any creature that lived in a place like the Burrows had to learn some form of pain tolerance if they hoped to survive. So instead, he aimed for the brow. Spear-guy was not accurate enough to aim directly for the eyes, but by wounding a creature on their head, the resulting wound would end up leaking blood into their eyes and once blinded would render them easy prey for the rest of the group.

Wait…where was the other one?

Goodie’s head darted round as he searched for the intelligent one, the one that knew to hide when shit went south.

There, holding back at one of the tunnel entrances, it was sticking close to the right wall, its foot thumping upon the earthen floor like a jackhammer.

“The hell?”

A feeling came over him; he focused on his link with Her Majesty, whom he had hiding within the largest tunnel.

While he had nothing to do with the first lot’s arrival, he knew that the idiots would have little trouble in dealing with the two groups of monsters, and with them going deeper and deeper underground his chances of escaping kept shrinking, so, he had Her Majesty standby within the most heavily populated tunnel ready to draw in some more monsters to pressure his captors. His efforts had had limited success so far, but with the runes on his neck, he could not risk the Alpha-Bitch dying for fear that they might explode after her death rather than vanish.

But right now, Her Majesty was showing him that the beasts within the tunnel had begun moving, even that big lizard, he could only assume that something similar was happening in the rest of the tunnels. A parade of monsters heading straight for them.

He screamed at Alpha, “That rabbit’s calling in reinforcements!”

Alpha and some of the others turned to him, the looked to where he was pointing.

“Kill it,” alpha screamed behind him.

Goodie had to resist the urge to face-palm; what was the point of killing it when it had already sent out the call?

He refocused on his link, Her Majesty still keeping track of the approaching forces.

He did not know how effective her drunk attack would be on them, but he asked her to try and bring down as many as possible. It was true that he wanted to pressure these arseholes into quitting this idiot’s errand of theirs, but the numbers approaching them would definitely result in injuries, possibly even death. It would not have been his biggest concern, in fact, it would probably have been something that he would have desired if he knew who it was, exactly, that was going to be eating dirt, but it was not like he could turn to the monsters and go ‘yeah, I’m not with them, you go ahead and deal with that lot and I’ll just walk on back home.’ With his life on the line, he knew that he would help the people that had forced him into this whole mess or he would have risked dying besides them.

His, or rather Her Majesty’s, efforts were wasted as the rabbits moved too fast for her to properly aim her attacks. While her [SHADOW RUN] ability could allow her to move with amazing speed, transferring from wherever it was that the ability took her back reality took precious seconds to accomplish, the time taken making it nearly impossible for her to strike.

She tried aiming for the giant lizard thing instead, but its scaly hide proved too thick for her fangs to pierce. Thick enough that it did not even notice her flimsy attacks at all as it ran towards the band of would-be adventurers.

Goodie cursed; this was why he tried to avoid combat. Despite the advantages the drunk effect of Her Majesty’s attacks held, it was worthless if she could not bite their enemies in the first place.

It was not the end of the world, however, as soon as the front-line slowed the creatures down, he…

Goodie’s head whipped round as a high-pitched squeal from behind threatened to shatter his eardrums. The scream had come from the quiet kid, the him of the group. A nondescript brown-eyed, brown-haired boy around Goodie’s own age, wearing a pair of ratty jeans and a stain covered hoodie. A hoodie that was now torn to shreds, pieces of it scattered about on the dirt floor beneath him, along with bits and pieces of the kid’s intestinal system. A giant mole-rat, no, two of them had breached the tunnel’s wall and had set upon the group from behind; as Goodie had predicted, the quiet kid was the first to die.