Fenrir

“Shit, it even has the same magic immunity as the beowolves!” Roland swears after watching his fireball simply fizzle out and disappear without doing any damage to Fang. The man then jerks his head towards the two twins, who are tense from both what they just saw and the built up exhaustion from the boss room, before he says, “This’ll be up to you two twins! The rest of us should try to distract it!”

If I had an eyebrow, I would probably raise it right now – something I see that Hybrid, Leon, do basically every time he’s here.

At this point, four out of six of their party members are all on the verge of breaking through to Tier 2, but only two of them are actually there. Which likely means that – combined with the fact that they are exhausted – there should be at least one or two casualties in this battle.

Assuming they don’t have any more secret weapons up their sleeves.

The twins break out of their stupor pretty quickly with a nod before their entire group attempts to do one of the strategies I’ve seen them do multiple times so far throughout my dungeon. That strategy basically being bait and switch, with their Orc rushing in to distract Fang while Sophia heals, Elizabeth – the annoying one – fires arrow after arrow at him, and Roland himself flinging spells constantly as distractions to keep his attention off of the two twins.

Although this time Roland’s stuck in the back leading due to his magic’s redundancy in this battle.

Fang and my beowolves really are the bane of mages.

I watch as the group continues trying the tactic for a few minutes, allowing them to get a couple of hits in on Fang in exchange for the Orc losing the use of his arm due to one of Fang’s fireballs striking his shoulder and taking a large chunk out of it. Fortunately for Fang, their healer had already run out of mana at this point and was left hiding in the back with Roland.

Suddenly, the sparks escaping Fang’s eyes flare outwards before he releases a full breath attack instead of a fireball. And just like with the last times, Roland sends a fireball to meet it; one that barely lasts even for a few seconds before the breath attack continues on its path towards the Orc, who barely manages to raise his two-handed axe with his uninjured hand.

However, unlike the last times this has happened, Fang stops the breath attack right as it’s about to reach the Orc and breaks into a sprint towards the archer, startling all of the intruders. But unfortunately for them, due to their setup, one of the twins was rushing to help the Orc with the breath attack while the other was preparing to attack Fang at the center of their formation from his own position opposite to Elizabeth.

“Yes!” I hear Dawn whisper-shout when Fang reaches the annoying archer and rips into her shoulder with his jaws before she can even raise her bow or pull out a knife. Fang then jerks his head from side to side and brings his claws about to swipe across her body, tearing multiple-inch-thick gashes across her entire front torso towards her neck, with each gash being coated in a black electricity.

“No!!” Roland shouts at the sight, to which the other intruders all echo, only to be greeted with the sight of Fang finally tossing the annoying archer’s now-limp body off of the platform into the lava below. He then turns around to be greeted with the sword of the male twin striking directly into his shoulder.

Finally!!! The stupid archer is finally dead!

As I’m feeling the archer’s lifeforce leave her in the form of an EXP orb, I watch Fang let out a loud snarl in his pain.

Meanwhile, the Orc from before is practically disabled at this point, with his other arm having been partially devoured by the remnants of Fang’s breath attack that he had cut off. And Fang clearly notices this, considering how he completely ignores the sword in his shoulder, along with the twin holding onto it as he rushes over towards the heavily wounded Orc and immediately tackles him.

The Orc coughs out a mouthful of blood as he is sent flying off of the platform with a grunt. At the same time, the other twin manages to dig her own sword into Fang’s neck, causing the sparks filling his eyes to begin fading away.

“Fang!!!” I hear Dawn exclaim with a vaguely hoarse voice that I didn’t realize was possible. Once I turn to look at her, I can’t help but flash my core in surprise as I find her completely blueish-purple with actual droplets of flame falling from her body. But what’s strange about the flames isn’t that they’re falling from her main body; what’s strange is that they don’t have the usual texture of flames.

These flames look more like the shape of droplets of water.

Are those… tears?

I’ve seen some of the intruders break into tears while in my dungeon before, but most of them tend to know that death is a high possibility when they come here, so it’s not all that often.

But I didn’t know that Dawn could cry…

And hasn’t she seen Fang die before? So why now?

I watch for a few seconds, ignoring the intruders as they collapse to the floor, before I quietly ask Dawn, “Are you okay…?”

Instead of answering, Dawn simply teleports into my core room and moves up to my core without saying a word.

Uh… what’s this?

My thoughts draw to a halt as I watch Dawn cry while rubbing up against my core.

I’m so confused. What’s going on right now?

She’s seen Fang die multiple times before, so why’s she reacting this strongly this time?

As if having heard my question, Dawn suddenly says in a very quiet voice, “I knew he would die again, but I was really hoping that he would be able to win his first fight as Tier 2…”

My core flashes slightly in surprise.

Oh.

Well, that would make more sense.