Fenrir

Surprisingly, the annoying intruder with the bow actually seems to notice the lycan’s actions as it grabs onto the lever at the base of the bridge. Her eyes widen in surprise while glued to it before she quickly nocks another arrow to her bow and draws it back while aimed straight at the lycan.

Oh? She’s more observant than I thought.

The lycan notices her actions and hurriedly begins pulling the lever, but only manages to pull it hallway before an arrow flies directly into his eye.

“Watch out! It looks like there’s some sort of trap on the bridge!” she shouts to the other intruders with a grimace on her face, causing them all to almost immediately break into a sprint in an attempt to get across the bridge before anything can activate the trap. However, another lycan quickly replaces the now-dead one and grabs onto the lever itself.

As I’m watching the action, I notice Dawn teleport into the far-corner of the boss room while invisible to get a better view.

I guess she wanted to see it in person instead of through my senses.

Anyways, Elizabeth tries to draw her bow again to fire at the next lycan who’s pulling the lever, but she is too late, and it manages to pull it before getting shot in the heart by an arrow.

“Shit!” Roland swears as he sees this, but neither he nor the other intruders stop in their rush across the bridge.

Now, will they make it before the bridges change? Or will they all be too slow?

Judging by how fast they’re running, along with the fact that the lycan only managed to pull the lever right after the interval passed, I’m willing to bet that they’ll be fine.

But I do still hope at least one of them will fall.

My attention narrows in on the Orc who’s at the back of their group.

Especially that Orc, since from what I’ve been able to learn through the various different intruders that have gone through my dungeon, the Orcs are stronger than Humans with pure brawn, while Humans are more balanced overall.

So early on in their path through Cultivation, the Orcs have a distinct advantage over the Humans.

Which reminds me… I should probably ask either that irritating Princess or the City Lord if they could give me some basic information on the most common intelligent races around this area.

I’ve seen Elves – such as the Princess – and Vampires before, but neither have died in the dungeon for me to learn about. Meanwhile, I still have no idea what sorts of creatures live in the nations around me outside of just the ones I’ve seen so far.

My focus is quickly attracted back towards the intruders as parts of the bridge begin to flash in and out of existence. However, fortunately for the intruders and unfortunately for me, all of the intruders just barely manage to crash their way through the monsters guarding the bridge’s exit with only a few injuries on their part before the bridge vanishes.

I glance at Dawn as I hear a disappointed sigh come from her before I focus again on the intruders.

After taking a moment to gather themselves together again, of which a couple of the monsters around them takes advantage of to inflict a couple more minor injuries on them, the intruders proceed to wipe out the monsters on the platform with the exception of the Tier 2 mana infused void beowolf that they end up struggling against a little.

During the fight, their magic casters end up becoming completely useless thanks to the beowolf’s magic immunity, so they all end up having to focus on bait and switch tactics.

I continue watching their fight for a few minutes before turning back to my lab again and telling Dawn, “Tell me whenever they engage in battle with Fang. Because I’ve already seen them fight these before, and it’s lost its intrigue.”

Right as Dawn seems to be about to respond I add, “Also tell me if one of them is about to die.”

This time she just chuckles in response without saying anything.

Deciding to take that as a non-verbal agreement, I begin constructing another arc of metal before slowly starting the infusion process again. Just like with all of the other tries, it takes me forever to do, but unlike with the other tries, I infuse some intent with my mana while also inserting some very small bits of script here and there to give it a focus.

However, this all turns out to be too much to start with and the mana that I’m infusing begins to quickly go out of control before the material making up the arc of metal suddenly begins to dent inwards. After that, it continues denting further and further inwards until it suddenly crumbles up into a very thin arc before vanishing in a black flash of light.

“Holy shit…” I mutter as a flash of black light escapes from my core in my surprise.

What just happened?

I’ve failed in the infusion process before, but it’s never done… that…

My thoughts trail off as I notice that there seems to be some sort of very small black particles in the air around the location of the late-arc.

Wait a second… is that void element World Energy?

So… did that arc just get sucked into the void?

I stare at the particles for several seconds before eventually using them to cultivate and creating another arc of metal.

Okay, so I’m not sure if that mistake made a very brief portal into the void or not, but I know something happened. The only thing I can guess is that that’s what happened, and it allowed some void element to leak out and mix with the World Energy.

But…

I glance at Dawn and the intruders to find them still fighting the Tier 2 Beowolf before turning back to my lab again.

At least it looks like I managed to breach the void realm. Even if it was just through an accident.