"Did you see that guy trying to harvest those crystals by hand, despite the commander's instructions?" Snorted one of the younger members of one of the adventurer groups, laughing as he tapped his comrade on the shoulder. "And then he just goes on and does the same to all the other crystals after that as well, while looking with a furrowed brow at the mana crystals falling to dust in front of him!" And he only laughed harder as he looked after the seal bearer, who moved on with his other three companions and was now out of sight.

"Well, but... I don't know about that, dude. Somehow he didn't really look upset when the mana crystals turned to dust. More like... Curious? Sure he was harvesting them and not testing something else?" Replied his colleague, who had just been tapped on the shoulder with a laugh, with a confused and questioning look while also staring in the direction.

"Who gives a shit! Help us finally harvest the crystals here you idiots!" Came a feminine and annoyed voice from behind the two, immediately followed by a thumb-sized slightly cracked crystal landing on the back of the head of the first of the two young men, bringing a yelp.

*Clonk

"Hey! What was that all about!" Shouted the young man, who had just been laughing, as he massaged the back of his head where the already worthless little mana crystal had painfully landed with no small amount of force.

Elsewhere, Avan also earned critical and confused looks, but seemed to reassure his teammates with his encouraging grin as he kept picking up and harvesting mana crystals, only to have them crumble to dust in front of everyone.

Even Jen, who was walking alongside him, raised an eyebrow in a strange way, but got no response from the mage of her group.

Meanwhile, Avan had only one thought going through his head as he made a new groundbreaking discovery of what was in all those crumbled mana crystals. *Holy fucking shit! It doesn't work without physical contact, but I can use the stored mana in mana crystals to expand my mana veins bit by bit and circulate internally before slowly expelling it! Even if it's only a marginal expansion, it's finally a way to accelerate the speed and flow of mana through my body!* he triumphantly gloated inwardly, as one mana crystal disappeared into his backpack for all to see, only for the other to turn to dust in his hand.

Meanwhile, in a completely different place, hundreds or even thousands of miles away.

"Commander!" Saluted a sweaty soldier in front of her and stood bolt upright for reporting. "They've already started torturing the newest prisoners by their monsters in front of our eyes... again!"

You could see the hard-breathing young man, barely 20 years old, shaking inside at all the atrocities the defenders had witnessed over the weeks. Meanwhile, a deep heartfelt sigh came from the woman standing in front of him, whose life all the survivors owed to and who had united them all under her banner, even if she was not the strongest or most powerful person in the camp, but nevertheless the most astute and clever. Not to mention her background.

"All is well, soldier. I'll be right there... Thanks for the information. You can take a short break. And have a drink..." She replied, thinking with a heavy heart about the whole situation the survivors were in right now.

It had all started so quickly, and when she had first seen the extent of the disaster with her own eyes, most of it had already passed, leaving only minor skirmishes to deal with.

The survivors, who numbered only a few thousand, had had to flee here under the earth, cruel shapes and twisted monsters of every imaginable kind right on their heels. There were only a few hours left after the attackers disappeared to save all the belongings of the townspeople, and even she had to catch herself mentally and push all emotions coldly and brutally to the back of her mind to attend to the most important things first.

Her grandfather had owned spatial rings, exactly two in number. One large, spacious and not really magically great secured, and one inconspicuous spatial ring but with the most expensive magical protections she could have ever imagined.

In the larger of the two rings she had been able to save any books and anything valuable in her former home - but actually almost only books. In addition, magical herbs, ingredients, potions of all kinds, and everything that had occurred to her in a hurry had disappeared in the ring. There simply hadn't been much time to think, when the first shouts about a dark horde of thousands of monsters from the burning city wall had reached her ears.

In the smaller and magically secured ring were the most valuable things, as well as the former possessions of her grandfather.Until today, she had not found the time to mourn, and it hurt and stung in her mind, her stomach turned and she felt wobbly on her feet every time she opened this mental "drawer" even a tiny bit, in which she had locked everything away for the time being, like right now.

One or two slaps on her cheeks and her face glowed rosy. With her mind firmly back on her feet, she slid her reading glasses, which were perched on her nose, upwards into place and took one last look at all the books, scrolls and reports piled up on the round stone table in front of her.

Another sigh escaped her lips, and she turned to march through the otherwise magical locked door to see for herself the situation that had just happened again on the defenders' front.

She marched down the stone corridor with her back straight and without any emotion, to encourage and set an example for all those who were fighting. She did not even glance at the excellently and masterfully crafted murals to the right and left, her focus entirely on the ever louder sounds of battle in front of her.

Hundreds of men and women, adventurers, former city guards and soldiers, but also volunteers from the population, gathered in front of her in orderly formations and groupings. Mages, healers and archers were stationed in the back, the first thing the approaching woman saw.

Injured were placed to the right and left in the large and magically lit corridor, some without limbs, some asleep, some crying, or others in the arms of their loved ones and family. Healers and volunteers were applying bandages, brewing herbal decoctions, and rushing frantically back and forth.

The young woman marched past the injured and nodded gratefully to some familiar guards, which often earned her a pained and weary nod back.

She passed the ranged fighters and reached the command area between ranged and close combatants, the shield bearers at the front, supported by spearmen and all sorts of close combatants with their respective weapons.

An older man shouted orders and then bent over the heavy hozltisch again, on which a map and various small carved figures were located and represented important strategic information. His calloused hand shifted some red and black figures, while a distinct sigh was heard from his mouth.

"Those sons of bitches..." he muttered, then looked up, directly into the eyes of the young woman who had just approached. "Commander.... Usual procedure?" He asked the question that had been asked dozens of times now as he rubbed his eyes tiredly.

"How many times do I have to tell you...? I have a name that has been given to me and is to be used. And yes... Put them out of their misery with a quick death.... Again. "

The people rushing all around could clearly see the tired faces of the two commanders, and read the pain in their eyes as it came to "This" situation again.

"Let's deal with it quickly, Larin..." She sighed for the umpteenth time that day. It had become a habit to walk around with a headache all the time and the sighs just didn't end.

"If only we could prevent these bastards from exploiting every little gap and weak point to grab fighters or helpers, only to torture them in front of our eyes or... Do these THINGS to them!" Roared the other commander, Larin. "If I get my hands on any of those bastards, I swear to all the gods, I'll rip out their fucking spines with my own two hands!" A fist crashed down on the table with force, but other than a few unused figures on the edge of the unrolled map, everything else remained intact. The figures were all pinned into the map with small pins, so even the commander's brief frequent outbursts did no harm.

He beckoned to a waiting soldier who was taking a break. "Give the go!"

And turned to the young woman. "Where is this going to get everyone. If this goes on and we continue to lose dozens of fighters every day, we'll soon have no one left to fight, and no one left to fight for! If only your grandfather were still with us, Elisa..." He stared into her eyes with a sad, tired look. He knew exactly how much it hurt the young archivist to think about this topic, but it had slipped out of his frustration.

Indeed, the commander of the previous inhabitants of Cyntha, appointed by everyone, was the granddaughter of the former guildmaster of the Adventurers' Guild, Elisa Stormcloud. And the commander standing before her was the former commander of Cynthas city guard.

Arrows hissing through the air, a whole hail of arrows, interrupted the respective melancholy thoughts of the two, and they turned to the front, which was equipped with sharpened barricades of their own kind. Behind them, dozens and even thousands of monsters scurried in the walls outside the Dungeon of Akkalon.

But the most chest-thumping thing was the new way the "masters" of these twisted monsters and experiments were doing things lately. First, black-clad assassins had penetrated the defenders at the smallest gaps and slaughtered the back ranks until they themselves could be killed.

A few days later, their pattern had changed, and the first defenders had been kidnapped in various ways as soon as an opportunity arose for the attackers. Only to be tortured, cut, and dismembered in front of the defenders to demoralize them.

This, too, lasted only a few weeks, when suddenly the next macabre act happened, filling all the defenders with a rage and powerlessness that could not be imagined otherwise. The "masters" of this gigantic monster horde of twisted experiments with their purple veins had resorted to a far more brutal method - psychological warfare.

They had the prisoners, whether young or old, man or woman, in front of the eyes of all defenders and often also relatives and acquaintances - be raped. By monsters. The screams of horror and pain followed all of Cyntha's defenders into sleep, and there was no night in which many people didn't wake up screaming or crying into sleep because it had happened to a loved one.

And exactly such a scenario was now happening again, which is why the messenger had also informed Elisa. And why she got up from her planning and research and came to the front as well. She felt an obligation to the defenders and survivors to be there when they were doing the only thing they could do for the victims. Show mercy with a quick and largely painless death.

The gurgling and screaming in agony of the people who had just been torn apart and raped again under torture by the monsters in front of the defense for demoralization ended little by little, until only the scratching and smacking sound of the eating monsters remained, bouncing eerily off the walls.

Stunned and shaking her head, because no matter how often you had to watch it, it hurt inside, Elisa nodded to the commanding officer Larin, and went back to her other activities with long strides.

There were still the situations to check on the first level, where all the other civilians and survivors had settled. The formerly dense forest was now regularly cleared of all wolves and served as the new home of the refugees. Houses had been built from the cleared trees, the flowing river served as a source of water, and the first fields were already bearing fruit. The magical climate inside Akkalon's dungeon had extraordinary advantages, much to the refugees' delight, and Elisa was always inwardly grateful to the man who had made it all possible.

As she walked down the entrance to the first level, she lingered again on the one question. *Are you still alive and well, Avan?*