[Chapter 108. Not as Tough]
The thirty-minute break dissolved into a heavy, stagnant silence as the four women began the mechanical task of repacking their dwindling supplies. The adrenaline from the previous swarm had ebbed away, leaving behind a bone-deep weariness that made every movement feel sluggish. Carmen rose first, the leather straps of the heavy backpack groaning as the weight settled across her shoulders. She reached down to retrieve the torch from where it had been driven into the dirt; its movement cast long, dancing shadows across the chamber floor, flickering over the twitching, disjointed remains of the dead Venom Lashers.
Lana drew her shortsword with a soft, ominous scrape of metal against her scabbard. She stepped over a shattered carapace and moved into the dark tunnel ahead, her shield held in a ready position. Sarah and Vanessa fell in behind her with practiced ease, while Carmen positioned herself safely between them as before, remaining the protected, vital center of their tactical formation.
The next stretch of tunnels offered very little in the way of environmental change. Occasional groups of Carapace Crawlers emerged from jagged side passages, but their armored bodies fell to the group's increasingly coordinated attacks with a new, practiced efficiency. Lana’s sword work, though visibly improved by the morning’s brutal training, remained secondary to the overwhelming force of Vanessa’s magic and the surgical lethality of Sarah’s daggers.
Minutes seemed to bleed into one another as the ambient temperature began to climb steadily. A dry, oppressive heat shimmered in the air ahead, smelling faintly of sulfur and scorched earth. Lana slowed her pace, peering cautiously around a jagged stone corner into the next large chamber. She paused, then glanced back at Vanessa with a sharp nod.
"One of those grubs," she whispered, her voice tight with anticipation. "A Flame Spewer. Ready your primary spell, Vanessa. We will move in the moment your first shot connects."
Vanessa nodded silently, her hands already beginning the rhythmic, circular motions of her craft. Arcane energy coalesced in the air before her, the glowing geometric lines of a spell array taking form with a low, vibrating hum. A minute later, the matrix was fully stabilized. The first bolt of concentrated energy shot into the chamber, striking the Flame Spewer’s fleshy side. It pierced through the creature's softer hide with a wet, heavy thud. A high-pitched, agonizing screech tore through the air as the grub-like beast instinctively dove into one of the bubbling, molten pools that dotted the chamber floor.
Lana rushed into the room immediately, her shield glowing with a ghostly light as Sepulchral Anchor activated. The Flame Spewer resurfaced two pools away, its eyes glowing with a malevolent, orange light. A thick torrent of burning, pressurized fluid sprayed toward Lana. She managed to duck behind her shield just in time, but the world was instantly swallowed by a roaring wall of orange flames.
Sarah vanished in a flicker of movement, reappearing instantly beside the massive, writhing beast. Her dagger plunged deep into the creature’s soft side as Vanessa’s secondary bolts continued to rain down from the tunnel entrance, hammering the beast's exposed segments.
Suddenly, a pained scream filled the chamber—Lana’s voice, raw and constant. It was a stark, horrifying counterpoint to the crackle of the flames and the hiss of Vanessa’s arcane spells.
Carmen tried to move forward, but she couldn't reach her. A solid wall of roaring fire blocked her direct line of sight, rendering her healing spells useless until the path cleared. She could feel the ward she had placed on Lana activate, that meant that Lana had died.
Carmen knew that Preemptive Safeguard would only activate in the case of a mortal wound. Providing a small amount of healing to prevent death, and granting immunity for a very short time. When the flames finally died down several seconds later, the sight was gruesome. Lana was kneeling in the dirt behind her shield, her skin burned a raw, angry red, and her hair mostly singed away by the intense heat.
A brilliant white light enveloped Lana as Carmen’s magic finally took hold. The horrific burns faded in seconds, the damaged skin knitting itself back together, and her hair regrew to its original length before their very eyes. Less than a minute later, Lana looked exactly as she had before the encounter, save for the thick layer of sweat and the dark grime of battle.
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The Flame Spewer breached the surface of the molten pool one last time, a blackened, heaving shape writhing in the glowing fluid. Sarah appeared beside it in a blur, her daggers finding their mark in the creature's throat as Vanessa’s final bolts hammered its back. The beast died with one final, screeching hiss, its massive body sliding silently beneath the surface of the glowing, molten fluid.
All eyes immediately went to Lana, who was still kneeling exactly where she had fallen. She didn't move; her chest rose and fell with each shallow, ragged breath. Carmen approached her carefully and saw tears tracing clean, wet paths through the soot and ash on Lana’s cheeks.
Sarah appeared next to her, her hand hovering hesitantly over Lana’s shoulder before finally making firm contact. "Lana, it’s over. It’s dead. You did good. You held the line."
"I didn’t..." Lana’s voice cracked violently between heavy sobs.
`It was only ever a question of when this would happen, not if.` Iris thought as she walked calmly into the chamber, stepping past the bubbling pools of heat.
Lana abruptly slapped Sarah’s hand away, her eyes flashing with a sudden, localized fury. "You don't know how it feels! To be burned alive? To breathe in fire until your very lungs feel like they are turning to ash?" She looked up at Sarah, the tears still flowing freely. "There was absolutely nothing I could have done to stop that."
"But I do know how it feels," Iris replied, her voice entirely devoid of comfort or emotion as she looked down at the sobbing woman. "Except when it happened to me, I did not have a dedicated healer standing by to mend my burns the moment they occurred. I finished my fight without the luxury of healing."
The sharp memory of a dark, suffocating corridor and a literal wall of fire flashed through Iris’s mind, her body tensing for a split second before she suppressed it. "Now get up, Lana. You are not done with this dungeon yet."
Vanessa and Sarah exchanged a quick, meaningful glance—a silent understanding passing between them as they processed the raw, brutal exchange. Lana slowly pushed herself up from the stone floor, her movements stiff and robotic as she wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand.
"The fact remains that you and your team are still alive. In this place, that is the only metric that counts," Iris continued, her gaze unwavering. "But I am certain you now remember what I told you during our morning sessions. It is about not taking every single hit. It is about assessing whether to take the blow or to dodge it entirely."
Iris walked past Lana, turning her head only slightly to address her. "You could have dodged that spray, Lana. There was no one directly behind you, nor was anyone near your position. It was simply unnecessary to block it... or to attempt to block it." Her tone was cold and clinical, the exact same one she used during their training sessions. To Iris, this was a lesson in efficiency, nothing more.
They pushed forward into the dark after Lana finally collected herself. Their heavy boots crushed the charred remains of the Flame Spewer’s discarded segments as they left the heat of the chamber behind. The tunnels ahead began to twist into a complex, branching network—a maze of compacted soil and hanging, gnarled roots that forced them to slow their pace to a crawl. Carmen’s torch cast long, dancing shadows as they navigated the labyrinth, its flickering light barely revealing the jagged passage walls more than a few meters ahead.
After what felt like an eternity of cautious, silent progress, the narrow tunnel finally opened into a vast, echoing chamber. The darkness ahead was absolute—a void that seemed to swallow the orange torchlight without revealing a far wall or a ceiling.
Carmen tossed the torch forward with a grunt of effort. It arced through the stale air, its flame looking like a bright, lonely comet against the dark before clattering onto the chamber floor several meters away. The flickering, dying light revealed only more darkness beyond, an expanse stretching into shadows far too deep for their human eyes to penetrate.
"That is where the next big beast is waiting for us," Carmen said, her voice echoing slightly in the immense, hollow space.
Lana moved forward with extreme caution, her shield held in a high guard. "Vanessa, we use the same strategy as before. If you see movement, you shoot it immediately." Her eyes scanned the ceiling above, searching the dark, uneven expanse of stone and ancient roots.
Sarah and Carmen positioned themselves near Vanessa, their backs pressed against the cool tunnel wall as they waited for Vanessa’s complex spell array to form.
The spell completed in mere seconds, the arcane energy coalescing into a brilliant, glowing matrix before Vanessa’s outstretched hands. Just as the light stabilized, a subtle movement high above Lana caught her attention—a slow shift in the shadows, the oily glint of something massive and segmented moving in the overhead darkness. Vanessa did not hesitate; she released her primary bolt.
The projectile shot upward with a roar, striking hard against what looked like thick, chitinous armor. However, as the light flared upon impact, it revealed a terrifying truth: the bolt had left no visible mark on the creature's shell.
`This dungeon is perfectly designed for their current state.` Iris thought with a grim sense of satisfaction. She watched as a massive shape began to lower itself slowly from the ceiling, revealing the terrifying, segmented form of a Depths Devourer. `It has everything a proper trial needs to forge a survivor: swarms to test their physical endurance, mobile threats to challenge their positioning, and now, an armored behemoth specifically designed to break their spirit.`