More monsters were on their way. The monsters had naturally self-selected into groupings based on how fast they could navigate to the entrance. Pulses of light from the Heartstone acted as guides for the monsters, glowing orange pathways to lead them to the one tunnel the team had left open. The first group had been the monsters least inhibited by the tight confines of the tunnel, capable of moving through the dense network of caverns to reach this one the fastest.

The next wave would be wholly different. They would be dealing with the slower, bigger monsters. Inevitably, these were much more durable and powerful on average than the rabble the four of them had managed to mow down so swiftly. Caeden had to acknowledge that everything was going well so far, much of their success being owed to their familiarity to the monsters down here.

Despite all the monsters coming as one big wave, they still attacked in the same way Caeden had seen a hundred times once they ran into the team. That had let all of them employ previously tried and tested strategies to watch each other's backs and avoid any real danger. They had been pressed hard to keep up with the relentless onslaught but had managed with only Caeden even being touched by a monster that whole time.

That almost certainly would not be true in the next wave. They were expecting real heavy hitters to come into play. Monsters that pressed their team alone. Now they would be facing groups one after another. The monsters they had just ended were more of a warmup for the actual danger they would be facing now.

“GRAAAAAAA!” A deep bellow echoed around the bend.

"Rock Troll," Lily stated.

"Only one will fit at a time," Caeden added.

"We won't have any breaks in between fights." Lily continued.

"This is going to suck." Cat groaned.

"I don't want to hear that from the one standing behind me." Caeden quipped.

"Hey, my job is the most mentally taxing! I have to direct a whole bunch of stuff; you just hit things!" Cat protested.

"Don't talk to me about mentally taxing. You haven't smelled one of these up close." Caeden shot back.

It was at that moment when the first monster of wave two turned the bend.

A massive brown fist the size of a dinner plate slammed into the ground, carrying the monster along its path. Rough, craggy skin covered every inch of a long, heavily muscled arm somehow still mired in layers of fat despite the obvious musculature. Then the fist pulled the rest of the body along.

Rock Trolls were ugly. Not 'oh, that's unfortunate' ugly. They were 'what the fuck happened to your face' ugly. They were somehow close enough to human to have recognizable features but enough monster to make that similarity worse. It was the uncanny valley for ugliness. Too-big mouth with too-small eyes and nose, all of which leaked a thick brown slurry that passed for the monster's bodily fluids.

Their bodies were covered in skin that superficially resembled a rough rocky surface but were completely flesh and blood. They had layers of fat all over that made them look morbidly obese, but underneath was a dense layer of hard muscle that was difficult to cut through. The fat made deep blows difficult, and the muscle stopped whatever got through the fat.

The problems didn't stop there. Rock Troll's bodily fluids were highly corrosive, a fact made obvious by the steaming bubbly mess left behind wherever the monster's drool fell to the ground. Any normal weapon that went into its body would be coated in that mess and turned into slag. Their claws also dripped the same fluid. Any wound exposed to the nasty liquid would resist healing as it melted the surrounding flesh.

The plan with Rock Trolls was simple. Don't get hit. Even Caeden would be severely injured if one of them got in a good claw swipe. That's why the second they had confirmed it was a troll, Caeden switched from his dual axes to dual heater shields. A small request to Forged Infinity had the shields curving to wrap around his arms.

The one saving grace against the brute force damage of the Rock Troll was that it was dumb and stubborn. It would attack the first living thing it saw with a single-minded determination until they died, or it did. Since the first thing it saw was Caeden, he didn't have to worry about it remaining focused on him, and he could focus entirely on defense while his teammates laid on the damage.

Roaring in a deep base thrum, the Rock Troll charged forward, leaning on its knuckles for support. In a second, it was on top of Caeden, swinging a haymaker directly at his head. Caeden's arm came up, and the Troll screamed in pain, recoiling with a bleeding fist. At the last second, Caeden had activated his mnemonic, Bramble. It covered his entire body and Forged Infinity in spikes of Sharp.

Even as the Troll reeled, as if it had a mind of its own, the other uninjured fist came up from below in a devastating uppercut for Caeden's jaw. It was blindly fast and perfectly aimed to slip under Caeden's first raised shield. If Caeden had not already fought several Trolls before, it would have caught him off guard and laid a heavy hit on his unprotected jaw.

As it was, Caeden's second shield was already there, blocking the fist before it could complete its journey. This was the real danger of a Rock Troll. They ran so totally on instinct that their attacks were practically independent of conscious thought. You could not confuse or feint a Rock Troll. Its attacks were fast, precise, and always at full power.

Caeden's arms strained to resist the heavy hits. Once again, he was in a position where he needed both strength and speed. This was why he had remained in golden body instead of switching to defense or speed form. It was also why he was using two smaller shields instead of a great or tower shield. The Troll's long arms would find their way around a large, stationary barrier. He needed his defense to remain mobile.

Caeden's teammates weren't slacking as he bore through the opening salvo. Cat's rapier danced up the Troll's long arms when they came for Caeden, lacing its body with Chillvein. Erik had slipped past the monster to get behind it as Cat sent a Swarm to infest its flesh.

Even as they fought this one, another Troll slipped around the corner, looking for a fight. They needed to warp this up fast, which wasn't really a thing with Trolls of any description. They were tenacious above all else. The unique situation they were in meant that the normal plan of slowly wearing it down with poisons before finishing it off wouldn't work.

This was where Erik came in.

"The mouse climbed into the belly of the great toad as it slept and declared, 'there is no tough hide in here,' and he set about thrashing the monster's insides."

{Internal Impact}

Caeden heard Erik's fist slam into the Troll's back, and a second later, it coughed, more brown fluid gushing from its mouth. Caeden didn't think it was drool this time.

{Internal Impact}

{Internal Impact}

{Internal Impact}

Erik Rapidly slammed out Ki-enhanced martial techniques, causing heaps of internal injuries to the Troll. This ate through its endurance at an unprecedented pace. Caeden barely had to strain as all its blows landed with less and less force. When the Chillvein started to kick in alongside the Swarm poisons, it lost all strength, becoming a mess.

Lily jumped around Caeden, slamming her rapier home up under the Troll's jaw and into its brain, where she used the blade as a medium to generate ice spikes that turned the half-formed walnut that constituted the monster's brain into a fine slurry.

Then the next one was upon them. The plan had to change, as the monster had spotted Erik first this time. That was fine, as they had planned for this. If it was any other monster, this wouldn't work. Erik couldn't take hits very well, only dodging. It made it hard for him to hold a monster's focus enough to act as a tank. Luckily, the Troll's single-minded focus made that a null point. So Erik acted as a taken variant, the evasion tank.

With the Troll entirely focused on him, Erik activated his first, and personal favorite, mnemonic. Freewalking. An incoming fist missed Erik's head by scant inches as a sting of Stitch attached to the floor, pulling him out of the way. Another fist aiming at his legs missed as another string attached to the monster itself, pulling Erik's legs up over the attack.

So it went, with Erik's body tumbling untouchable through the air on white strings as the Troll futility swung attack after attack. Cat and Lily followed the same strategy as last time, both laying debilitating poisons on to limit the Troll's considerable strength and speed. Caeden appreciated the practice when he was taking, but he wondered how necessary it was with Erik acting as evasion tank. Freewalking made him truly untouchable for anything that didn't cover a significant area.

Caeden was filling in for Erik's role with a little help from Lily. Caeden could technically copy Erik's internal damage strategy with a couple forms of Forged Infinity, but they cost large portions of the shrouded weapon's internal reserves, something Caeden was saving for later. Instead, he opted for his axes once more, rapidly carving huge section of the monster's flesh off.

Lily help immensely. She would prep an area for him to attack by stitching a series of shallow cuts with her dagger. The infused weapon would lay down a dose of Frostbreak, freezing the Troll's flesh. Then Caeden would carve that section of the monster off, the freeze preventing corrosive blood from getting all over him. So they went, Lily formshifting into a cloud and drifting back and forth through Caeden to lay down Frostbreak before moving out of his way.

The large sections of saggy fat and hard muscle Caeden excavated had a similar effect to Erik's internal attacks, eating at the monster's stamina until Erik shifted from defense to attack. He dropped into a crouch, ducking a swing before springing up in a vicious uppercut accompanied by a loud bang! The Troll's head whipped back, its neck snapping. Its resilience all but gone with the amount of flesh it had lost to Caeden and Lily.

The next Troll was on its way, once more focused on Caeden, and the cycle started anew. Caeden wasn't sure how many of these they would have to fight. Hopefully, not that many. This was a fluid situation where a lot could go wrong.

It was only two Trolls later when Caeden was back on defense, that the first real hole in their plan appeared.

The next Troll to come around the corner was not alone. Instead, another Troll bodily smashed through part of the wall that connected their section of tunnel to the one around the bend with a loud roar and an explosion of stone, making the gap much wider. Wide enough to let two Trolls through. They were scrunched up, tripping over each other, but now the team had to deal with two Trolls.

"Can you handle it?" Lily asked as the monsters charged awkwardly. "We can always have Erik run second tank."

Caeden shook his head, bracing both shields. "It wouldn't be great. We need to put these two down fast, and doubling our defense isn't going to do that. I'll manage."

Those words were put to the test as two fists swung at him simultaneously. Caeden managed to block, but the blows left him open for the last two arms. Luckily, they were pressed up against each other between the Trolls, so these arms didn't have the power and precision that the two outside ones did.

Caeden managed to swing with one shield and deflect a fist up and over his head, but the other one slipped past his similar attempt on the other side, brushing his shoulder and leaving a trail of corrosive sludge along his robe. It ate through in seconds and began to do the same to Caeden's flesh.

He didn't have time to dwell on it, as the fists didn't stop. Caeden was rapidly pushed to the limit keeping up as more and more glancing hits slipped past and scored his arms and torso with trails of corrosion. He grit his teeth and bore through it. It was only a matter of time before the momentum was reversed.

After all, for every hit he took, his teammates were laying on dozens. As Erik dealt internal injuries and Cat and Lily poisoned the monsters, they started to slow down. The pressure eased up. Caeden was taking less hits and feeling more comfortable dealing with two Trolls at once.

That was just the beginning.

From behind the Trolls, Caeden heard a series of rolling, whooping cries. Three Hairy Holes tore around the corner together, one of them even hanging from the ceiling and moving using its dexterous fingers to repeatedly stab into the rock.

The Rock Trolls weren't anywhere near dead, and suddenly another set of monsters was coming up from behind. They were going to get overwhelmed.

"Caeden, use it!" Lily shouted over the cacophony.

"We need that for later!" He replied, still blocking corrosive fists.

"We won't get to later if you don't do it now!"

Caeden sighed. Which turned into a groan as a Troll claw ripped across his chest. It was a superficial hit, but the brackish fluid made it much worse. "Lock."

Flooding out of the Heartstone Chamber came hundreds of thorns that Caeden had been creating this whole time whenever his Sharp shroud refilled. All of them spun faster than ever, only to suddenly stop. The center of the rose-shaped red constructs all pointed down the tunnel at the monsters bearing down on them.

"Release."