Gauron’s POV

He had been at this for many decades now, and despite this, going into a completely unexplored dungeon never got any easier. More than that, attacking a dungeon always seemed to bring out some of the worst monsters and traps you could find inside. He really hoped that they could at the very least open this thing. Anxiety and excitement blended together. In the end, that was why he liked clearing dungeons so much.

“All right, I think we’ve prepared as much as we could.”

He looked around at the people in his Raid, his comrades. Without them he knew he wouldn’t even be alive right now and he hoped that they weren’t going to die this time. Such thoughts always plagued him, which was quite ironic, since despite his quite reckless nature, he was quite the worrying person.

“Ready the ram!”

Five people were setting a battering ram on the cracks that seemed to be the closest thing to a door the dungeon had. Gauron knew better than to let anybody be anywhere near the dungeon after the attack started, so it would be used by a mage at a distance. He waited for a few seconds after the people that had set the battering ram took their positions.

The Raid had a wing-like formation, with Gauron and the Raid’s best defensive oriented mage forming the vanguard. Two defenders covered the flanks, along with two duos of ranged mages and attackers Between them were two trios of melee attackers. Behind that frontline was a line of four ranged attackers, along with a defender, protecting the heart of any raid: The healers, who would be responsible for keeping everyone alive. Alongside the healers was the most powerful warrior in the Raid, Maliel, an incubus.

Gauron checked around one last time. To their backs were some small woods that separated the town from the dungeon. In quite a big radius around the dungeon, you could see nothing but grass.

“Waiting more time would not make much of a difference… Mages! Prepare the ram! Enchant it with a fire explosion! And, RAM IT!”

The battering ram collided with the dungeon’s door, producing a deafening explosion.

“Was it any good?”

Gauron himself completely ignored the dust cloud that had been made by the explosion, instead he intently paid attention to the dungeon, trying to see if anything had changed. It did, he could see a horn-like thing had appeared on top of it.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeoooooooooo. A strange noise blared out of the horn, the kind which Gauron could only have imagined coming out of a monster. After it subsided a voice came out of it, distorted, with a sort of metallic quality to it.

“Hostile actions detected, should they continue, the outer structure might be compromised. Engaging threat elimination processes. All life forms within a one kilometer radius will be eliminated.”

It spoke in a strange language that none of the raid members could understand.

“What the hell? Can you understand what it’s saying Tellendir?”

Gauron asked the elven defensive mage next to him, but he just shook his head in answer. That wasn’t good; in his experience whenever a dungeon “said” anything, it was definitely something very important. If they couldn't understand it, then how could they mount any countermeasures?

“Uh oh, those look like dangerous ranged traps, I guess I should…”

Tellendir was pointing at a series of strange contraptions with protruding tubes that had appeared all around the dungeon’s structure. Gauron had a very bad feeling.

“Do something! Now!”

Tellendir chanted at the same time that the sparks started flying from the tubes’ ends.

“Savior of light! Protect thy humble Servant, keeping away all that might pierce these hearts that beat for thee!”

Ratatatatat, the deafening sound of small explosions could be heard continuously as the projectiles got stuck in the translucent barrier that Tellendir put up. Sweat was quickly starting to form on his forehead, he couldn’t keep it up much longer.

“Something more physical, that doesn’t drain your energy when it keeps getting attacked!”

Tellendir nodded, he had to do something else fast or he was going to faint.

“Spirit of the Earth! Create a sanctuary for this body so its spirit might not flee at the loss of its container!”

He created an Earth Wall between the Raid and the dungeon. They could hear the impact of the projectiles hitting against it, but it didn’t seem like they would destroy it anytime soon.

“Safe for now. Start preparing Boulder Tosses! As soon as we have some five ready, this wall is going down and we are going to destroy those traps!”

Boulder Toss was an extremely powerful magic that was generally done with the help of a magic circle being fed by more than one mage, its chant was merely used to release the power. The many attack mages set to drawing circles on the ground.

Less than a minute after the Earth Wall was put up, the attacks ceased. Some on the raid let out sighs of relief, but soon the strange voice was blaring out again.

“Hostiles have terrain-altering capabilities. Threat level increased, terrain control procedures will be used.”

As the voice faded again, a vibration started to be felt, coming from the ground. Everyone in the raid recognized that sensation: The dungeon was altering the terrain around it, just like the “Bone Pit” when it was attacked.

“Form groups of five, as we discussed before! Be careful of traps coming from anywhere!”

As he said that, the ground opened up in the middle of the raid. Luckily, nobody fell inside it, but a terrifying thing emerged from it. It was a pillar, some three meters tall, with many rows of those tube contraptions all around it. At that very moment, Gauron felt that they all would die, shredded to bits, but there was a trump card left in the Raid.

“Savior of light, Virtue of virtues! Take only this servant’s life and spare her beloved! As with your daughter, Grace of graces!”

The activation chant was quite simple, but all of the other members knew that the healer who just uttered these words spent a couple of hours every day chanting in order to have the spell available to her. The miracle-level spell apparently did nothing, but everyone knew that for thirty seconds nobody there would die, except for one specific person.

The pillar started to spin and sparks flew, but miraculously nobody was hit, except for one person, whose body ended up mangled beyond recognition. A few seconds after it started attacking, the pillar was destroyed by a shockwave that came from Maliel’s rune sword. The vibrations were not stopping.

“Just calm down and destroy anything that comes up!”

At that point, most of the groups were together, it was going to be fine.

“Oh, no!”

It took only a split second after the ground started to move suspiciously nearby one of the ranged attackers in Gauron’s group: A weird spider-like monster covered in plates emerged, grabbed the man and disappeared underground.

“Damn, Tellendir, seal the ground, we can’t deal with this and… eh?”

Walls burst up from the ground and before Gauron could properly assess what was happening, he found himself inside a maze. He looked at his feet and saw Tellendir’s head, it had probably been cut somehow as the walls went up. This was a huge disaster, and there was one last thing he could do, as the one responsible for gathering all these people. Gauron took a small crystal from his pocket and crushed it; doing so would activate a spell that let him briefly speak directly to all the other members.

“Retreat, we must get out of the dungeon’s area influence. Only engage an enemy if your life depends on it or you’re near the town and it hasn’t stopped pursuing you.”

Having said that, he started running. It was quite a cramped maze, with less than two meters width, which meant that a minotaur like him could easily touch both walls around him. He crushed all the strange spinning blades and tube contraptions that came at him with his beloved Severance. He did his best to ignore the corpses he saw in his way, he was experienced enough to know that getting too emotional in such a situation would quickly get him killed. They could always come back shortly after the dungeon calmed down to properly take care of their fallen comrades, but taking too long could result in them being added to the dungeon’s menagerie of horrors. He couldn’t help but mutter to himself.

“This is insane, we made a huge mistake.”

The scene he saw as he finally exited the maze did nothing to change his mind. Maliel was frantically battling something that could only be called an abomination. It had a humanoid form, but seemed more like a writhing mass of flesh with different weapons coming out of it and many metal parts. Its movements were fast but erratic and despite the powerful Maliel getting a few blows in, the thing did not seem to bleed. It didn't seem to be any kind of golem he had ever seen.

“Ugh, oh, Gauron! … Could you please… give me a hand? I can’t get to… have time to charge a shockwave and… end this thing.”

Maliel’s words were being constantly cut by brutal attacks from the monster. Gauron did not hesitate to charge it and couldn’t help but realize that all of the thing’s “weapons” were broken contraptions not unlike those that had first appeared on the dungeon’s walls earlier. Not for the first time in his life, he was glad that Maliel was a friend. It was soon clear that the monster was not made for melee combat, thus was merely flailing its limbs in an attempt to hurt anyone that was nearby. Knowing that, he got in a very good swing that knocked it back a few meters.

“There, now!”

He put himself between Maliel and the thing. It charged him, but he defended the attack head on, as he knew that for the most part, his magical armor would protect him. He silently counted four seconds in his head, maintaining the same position, not letting the thing move. As the thing tried to swing at him from the side, he did not need to defend anymore and put his all into jumping and rolling to the side. A shockwave came through the exact place where Gauron had been before and split the thing in two. To their horror, both parts were writhing on the floor.

“Wow, what the hell? What is this black thing coming out of it, is that rotten blood? Ugh, the stench. Let’s go.”

They both started running towards the woods, they were almost there, they were almost safe, or so Gauron felt. He heard the sharp sound usually made by having a sword swing past your ear really fast and saw Maliel stumble and fall, his right leg was bloodied.

“You can’t fall here, come on!”

He took a quick glance back as he helped Maliel lean on his shoulder. On the steel dome, he could see the small form of a humanoid monster with a weapon that had a long tube. They had been hit from that far? This was completely crazy, only magic should have been able to reach that far and magic wielding monsters were ridiculously rare.

“Ah, I see, we are going to die here, so I finally get my due. Gauron, just leave me, if you’re helping me, you won’t be able to dodge those weird traps.”

How many times had he heard that kind of speech from Maliel? It didn’t matter, he would give the same answer as always.

“I’m not leaving you, and if you think you still owe them something, live so you can pay them. Come on, we are quite far already, just a little more and we should be…”

As he was about to finish, he felt himself stumble on something, something that he really shouldn’t have stumbled on. He heard a small explosion and saw a strange cylindrical object flying to the air. Gauron reacted fast. With an incredible burst of energy he jumped ahead and threw Maliel with a spin, it was the best he could do, as the object stopped its ascent, roughly at Gauron’s chest’s height. It exploded in dozens of tiny sharp hot fragments.

Pain. His world, his vision, his life was only pain. He felt like a thousand burning needles were being buried in his skin. His great armor, of which he was so proud, had its protection enchantments temporarily worn out from all the things that had happened before, so it was no wonder it was destroyed by all those fragments.

He stumbled a few steps back and fell sitting with his back to a tree. He could only gasp, as the searing pain was too much for him to even let out a cry. Most of his vision was obscured, did he lose an eye? Such a thing was entirely possible, in fact, he had probably lost way more than just an eye, it’s just that with the pain he couldn’t particularly feel any part of his body.

Was he going to die? Quite probably. With his one good eye, he could see approaching shapes that probably belonged to monsters from the dungeon. His vision was blurry and he was unable to focus on anything, but he could see that they stopped at an arm’s length and stood there, seemingly staring at him.

Gauron gathered enough of his wits to want to retort something to them. Am I just too weakened, you bastards? You won’t even deign to finish me, is that it? Go to hell, monsters! He spat and cursed at them in his head, but all that came out of his mouth were whimpers of pain. Even his thoughts were scattered as the strange voice once again blared from the dungeon.

“All hostiles within the defined radius have been eliminated. Recalling troops and initiating cleanup processes.”

Gauron couldn’t understand a word of it, but the tone made it clear: There was no urgency to it, most likely it was declaring its resounding victory. It was then that he realized the reason that the monsters weren’t attacking: He and Maliel were probably outside the dungeon’s area of influence. He felt that this was a confirmed fact as he realized that the monsters were leaving. So he had survived by a few stumbled steps, was it lucky or unlucky? He blacked out before he decided which it was.