3064 Words

Grishnak was confused. For the first time in his admittedly rather short life nature didn't make sense to him. His long green claws gripped his bone sword harder. He wasn't sure wether to advance and explore the unknown or retreat and inform his clan.

In the end his curiosity won and he signaled his group of 30 hunters to follow him. Carefully balancing on the small rocks strewn all over the field, still wet from the morning rain, they made their way to the floating anomaly. Underneath a few rocks were balanced on top of each other making it rather easy to reach the ark. That indicated either human children or other finding it beforehand and at least entering it.

He motioned for the other hunters to follow him before he made his way up. If you wanted the respect of your subordinates you had to lead by example. He never understood why the human generals from the stories hid themselves in the back and fled the battlefield if they lost. No general would ever be so much as allowed to come back home if he shamed himself and his clan that way. Grunting, he heaved himself up on the unnaturally smooth stone platform. This definitely did not feel right. An then he laid his eyes on what was inside the ark. It was a treasure trove. He could clearly differentiate 10 different magic plants and 3 types of bugs that could be used for magic pastes and salves.

He made a few careful steps inside and then promptly turned and ran out. It worked. He was delighted that he wasn't trapped or died. Either of the two would have been very real possibilities if you had asked him before he went inside.

Since the platform soon got crowded he decided to lead the first batch inside to explore what lay behind the initial tunnel. What opened itself to him was his personal little paradise. An abundance of herbs, glowing crystals like in the sacred clan cave and weak . He had spotted the little hidden in hidden holes that littered the walls at the first glimpse. The little pests were abundant in the mountains and main source of food for most of the predatory races that lived there. Including the . Soon the holes were deserted. As expected of the little cowards.

In the pond on the far end of the room he spotted a pair of . Those were very rare and he had only seen them in one of the beast almanachs he had to memorize before he was allowed to become a hunter for the village. the sketch was a bit of but the description matched. Roughly the size of his head, light blue skin and frozen rat corpses on the shore of the pond. They slowly neared the pond until the archers had a clean shot and then pelted them with arrows. They then went to recover their prey and their arrows along with 3 rat corpses that were still frozen and apparently still untouched. He filled the bags of his two fastest hunters with the corpses and a variety of plants. Then he ordered them to report to the village. No matter wether the cave ended around the next corner of the tunnel, they found a rank 2 or dozens of treasure rooms, the clan would at least know that there was something here. That was standard hunter practice.

The next few rooms were not much of a challenge either as they tried to travel in a straight beeline through the labyrinth of tunnels and caves that were riddled with streams of water and little ponds and the only difficulty was not to slip on the wet stone or plants on the ground. That ended when they entered a room that was roughly twice as big as the largest room so far with a small lake in in the middle that was fed by many streams running through the tunnels and it was teeming with frogs. If he had to guess it would have been close to 70 or 80 of them and as soon as they entered they drew the attention of every last of them. A loud croak from a large grey frog that was sitting in the middle of the lake on a small island cut through the silence. Then hell broke loose as every frog began jumping in their direction. The startled hunters quickly went into formation with the guards with sword or tomahawk and shield in the front, behind them the spearmen and the archers in the backline.

"Fire at will and retreat while shooting." Was the only command Grishnak needed to give. Then the first frogs reached them and their tongues rattled against the shields. He knew that his own shield held minor enchantments and would last through the battering of acidic or freezing cold tongues but the other hunters wouldn't be so lucky. Their shields weren't made to withstand such a barrage as they had to be light for extended hunting trips. Then the first hunter slipped. It was one of the shield bearers, so he was directly in the front lines and promptly assaulted by several tongues. One of them belonged to the large grey frog that started this whole mess. But instead of aiming to batter the poor sod with his tongue like all the others it gripped him and dragged him away from his allies. Now that a screaming and squirming target was in their midst all the frogs naturally focused on on him, making him soon the first victim of these strange caves.

Accompanied by the agonized screams of their comrade the rest of the group helplessly retreated. They had been careless and that had cost one of them their lives.

Grishnak theorized that the large grey frog was a at the second stage. Normally something like that would be nothing for his own 7th stage cultivation, but the sheer number of foes had made it impossible to fight back. The Mist-Mana stage was all about strengthening the body and the leap between stages wasn't that big. Sure, he could win 1v1 vs second stage Beasts and even 1v10 if he was very careful. But anything more then that would be very troublesome. If it was him that had been singled out by the frogs he could have fought against the pull of the tongue, but Kramgar hadn't been that strong. He was a fresh recruit at the fourth stage and almost no battle experience in addition to lying on his back on the slippery ground. Oh well. That was the way of nature. The strong survived and the weak got eaten.

The goblins used the next hour to carefully circle around the big room, encountering many different beasts and animals on the way that had hidden themselves in the smaller rooms to the side. After a few easy battles and the subsequent gain of valuable materials the hunting squad slowly began to find their rhythm battle. That was when they heard the first squeaks and the tapping of countless little feet.

"Rat horde. Retreat to the tunnel. Now!" After Grishnak's bellow the began to turn and ran back the way they came from.

"Block both sides. Archers in the middle. Focus on the critters on the walls and ceiling." He didn't get to say much more detailed instructions as the first rats came into sight from both the room they were in a few moments ago and the room they had already traversed. There were about 100 rats on each side with the majority being and . Thankfully the ground was dry this time and no one had any real reason to slip. Then began the onslaught of the rats. Thankfully they were mostly confined to the ground and small wall jumps that were easily parried. Their hides also lent next to no protection against the hunter's weapons as those were made to penetrate much stronger defenses as opposed to the shields that the hunters only carried for just-in-case situations such as this one. When the rats were mostly defeated after an hour of arduous battle the remaining ones fled back into the small tunnel system they emerged from. This time though nobody had died, which should really be expected when facing such low tiered beasts.

The exhausted decided for a rest before they would continue their exploration. They used this rest period to skin the rats or cut off their teeth or claws, depending on what was valuable, while snacking on the fresh meat.

When they were done with collecting their spoils and putting them into basic space bags they went on their way. After an hour of wandering they reached one of the entrances to the second floor. After a brief contemplation they decided to head further down since the higher density of Mana also meant slightly more valuable plants and probably also beasts.

Coincidentally they had used the same entrance the rats had used before them to invade the second floor and they also naturally followed the obvious trail further down. After three hours they had reached the third floor with barely any obstacles.

There however the living conditions rapidly declined as the whole floor was still polluted by the toxins of the . As they wandered deeper they saw scarred rats constantly skirmishing with other creatures and they ran into nests more and more frequently. Apparently their main territory was nearby. Then a loud scream broke their concentration. A hunter in the backline was bitten by a spider that had concealed itself in the webs on the ceiling, but shortly after injecting its venom it disappeared again. Luckily this time there was something Grishnak could do to save his comrade and he pulled out an antidote. The panicking hunter quickly downed the liquid and a short rest was decided so that the it could begin to work. In that time three scouts were sent out together to find out in which direction the spider nets were receding so that similar cases such as this ambush could be avoided. There was only limited supply of antidote after all.

When the scouts returned they led the group away from the spiders, but also straight into the part of the floor that was firmly under the control of the undisputed rulers of the third floor. That was the second time they would clash with the rats, but this time they unknowingly charged straight into their home and subsequently alerted the whole population and not just one swarm of the rats. These evolved rats were naturally smarter then their first floor brethren and let the enter deep into their territory. The were naturally delighted that the third floor was apparently as vacant as the second and confidently marched straight through a a relatively spacious cavern when the first squeaks were heard. They instantly turned on their heels, but it was already too late. This cavern had 4 entrances that were big enough for and every one of them was blocked.

Grishak estimated that there were 400 rats blocking the four tunnels and another 100 peeking out of the little holes in the wall. They had probably dug their own tunnel system for safe transport and that was the reason no one had spotted them beforehand.

Then the rat leader trotted through his tide of minions. It was roughly half the height of a , had big leathery wings at its back and a whole slew of scars all over its body.

"In circular formation. Archers, take out your close combat gear. You'll need it." He began preparing for a last stand. The rats were more dangerous and numerous and his position abysmal to defend. His only hope was to defeat the rat's leader and thus scare them away.

Then the began charging at them and its subordinates followed behind. When it reached the halfway point the wings spread out and it took flight. There it accelerated with a flap of its wings that should normally never allow flight as they were just not big enough. Mana was funny that way, but none of the felt like admiring that right now. The archers tried to fire their arrows, but the rat agilely dodged them all. Grishnak faintly remembered a group of they had fought on the second floor, so it sadly already had experience with projectiles. Another advantage down the drain. Then the first rats reached them and all they could focus on were the foes right in front of them. unlike the rats on the first floor these were very well coordinated and left each other enough space to dodge and retreat after an attack. That made it impossible to effectively decimate their numbers as wounded rats would just vanish into their own backlines and no one was ever exhausted from fighting. The on the other hand felt more and more despair. They were trapped and nothing they did seemed to have an effect.

The used that situation to sweep down and and claw at a warriors head from behind. He didn't even scream and was directly nocked unconscious and then torn to shreds. with one shield less the strain on the whole circular formation was increased and it was only a matter of time until the first mistakes began to appear. At first they just sustained small wounds but when one swordsman lashed out too far he left a wide opening that was promptly abused by a that teared out a huge chunk of his flesh an then swiped a claw at his chest leaving a nasty scratch before it fell back again. He then began screaming and clutching his side. That sealed the deal for him as a , a rat with a membrane between his front legs and back legs, began to glide down and tear out his throat. As if on cue another 20 began swiping down on the followed directly by a certain winged rat. With the invaders distracted like that the whole formation collapsed.

Grishnak was the only one who had a sizable amount of dead rats strewn around him and was thus the target of the rat leader's ire. When he noticed the big rat that swooped down on him he decided to meet it head on. At first he could fend it off with the superior range of his bone sword but when he missed it once because he had to defend against another rat they went down in a ball of claws and teeth. The sword lost in the scuffle he only had his natural weapons to rely on. When they finally separated near one of the entrances a quick look behind told him that none of his comrades would survive.

With a massive leap he catapulted himself over the rats separating him from freedom and then broke into a mad sprint with roughly a 100 rats at his heels. Stumbling from exhaustion, he made his way through the second floor. He had lost the rats by going straight through the spider's territory on the third floor, but he had to lose those afterwards as well. In fear that the rats would try to circle around and cut off his path of retreat he hadn't made any pause. When he finally reached the first floor he took a brief rest to catch his breath, but he never allowed himself to relax. He then spotted a group of 20 rats passing by and nearly had a heart attack until he remembered that there also lived rats on the first floor. Not taking any chances he nonetheless concealed himself until they were gone.

A maniacal grin crept up on his face when he finally reached the exit. Then a mad cackle escaped his throat as he relished in the feeling of surviving a calamity.

The grin was still on his face when suddenly the whole world spun as his head separated from his neck.

Quin was very pleased. The dungeon had survived its first stress test and the constant fighting had the combatants restoring their energy with mana the whole time, giving him very much to absorb. The quality was also higher then normal as the had reached the 5th stage on average. With this boost he currently sat at 48% and would break through in about 3 days. He already had special plans for the fifth floor.

When he shifted his vision to the rats he was amused to see that they had placed the bone sword of the leader in the middle of their nest as a sort of trophy.

The fight had also helped 3 rats including the to break through the fourth stage. The higher Mana density on the fourth floor had the inhabitants there helped with that little problem.

Three days later he finally reached 50% cultivation. That meant that every floor was now 1.5 times as big as in the beginning and he could design the fifth floor. He decided that the normal cave labyrinth was pretty boring and wanted to mix things up. And so he made one giant room, dug a huge 5 meter deep ring in the middle and filled it with water, plants and plenty of . With the 10% increase in size he designed an under water tunnel system that connected every pond from the first to the fifth floor, so that aquatic beasts and fish especially could have a chance at descending into more favorable environments too.

On the island he placed earth instead of stone and planted a few trees, fungi and fluorescent plants. Plant type Mana beasts needed so that was regrettably not an option yet. In the middle of the island he placed a pillar that reached into the ceiling and added four entrances that aligned with four stone bridges that connected the outer ring and the island and were submerged a few centimeters into the water, just enough to be sufficiently slippery and easily attacked from the water to make reaching the island not just a formality. The four entrances then lead to a boss room that with a very high ceiling since the pillar was hollowed out and a hole with a ramp spiraling down. In the future this would be the entrance to the sixth floor.

When he was satisfied with his work he noticed that the next group had already invaded the first floor.