The clouds churned above them with ominous rumblings, responding to his will, and the air around the Grumblers ionized, lifting fur and dust.

  For a moment, Nick nearly felt sorry for the creatures. They were born already doomed, whether by the judgment he was about to deliver or the constant farming of resources that would begin once the dungeon had been tamed. Their destiny had always been death.

  Yet, they were clearly trying to kill him and his teammates, and he had limited tolerance for such monsters. He pointed the staff at them and condemned them, “[Lightning Bolt].”

  The sky responded to his request, and a moment later, a pillar of white-gold lightning struck the first Grumbler, as thick as a tree trunk. It completely engulfed the monster, shining so brightly that even he had to look away.

  Before the thunder even finished rumbling, a second bolt struck, hitting the other Grumbler with equal fury.

  A deafening explosion shook the battlefield, overshadowing the goblin screams in the background. For a moment, only light, noise, and the scent of burning flesh filled the air.

  When Nick forced his eyes open again, both monsters were still alive, if barely.

  The first Grumbler’s chest was a blackened ruin, its hide blistered and split, and ribs poking out beneath charred flesh. One arm hung by threads of cooked muscle, while the other twitched spasmodically, its claws clenching and unclenching.

  The second had fared little better. Half of its face was gone, leaving one bulging eye still intact and rolling in panic. Its legs trembled, knees buckling, but raw, stubborn vitality kept it alive.

  Lightning, even boosted by his preparations, clearly wasn’t enough to kill them unless he really started pouring in the power.

  Nick’s lips thinned as he drove the Shard’s butt into the soil and reached into the thick soup of fear, rage, and bloodlust saturating the air. The shamans’ spells had primed the ether, and the dying Grumblers’ suffering stoked it to such a degree that he barely needed to flex his will to take hold of it.

  Sound dimmed. The colors faded to pale, and for a moment, all he could see was the spiritual landscape: the nasty flares of goblin souls, the larger, heavier masses of the Grumblers, and the domain flowing like a river in the background, suffusing everything and giving the monsters purpose.

  Hate and terror spun around them in heavy waves, and Nick absorbed it, compressing it into a cold, dense core. The Shard hummed hungrily, its orb darkening and swallowing light until it was midnight black.

  “[Bolt of Wrath].”

  The lightning that tore through the sky this time was several times larger and pierced the goblin horde’s spiritual shield, crashing into the two Grumblers before they could even get their bearings.

  Chunks of their existence simply ceased to be, as flesh and bone vanished where the spell passed, leaving ragged gaps punched clean through torsos and skulls. What remained fell in pieces that twitched once and then went slack.

  Shuddering faintly at the violation, the domain let out what felt like a distant growl, but it was too far to exert its will and could do nothing but watch as its agents were killed.

  The goblin horde’s courage had always been superficial, and with their giant battering rams toppled and the storm still raging above, the thin veneer cracked.

  The push against the Crest eased as the monsters struggled to come to grips with the new situation.

  “Now!” Raphael shouted.

  With the biggest threat gone, Nick let the storm handle most of it, releasing its lightning into groups of goblins scrambling over each other, like hammer blows of light.

  Joran’s buried flames erupted next, catching anyone who tried to circle around the trap field. Lina kept refreshing clay snares, and any goblin that got too close was caught, with its legs engulfed and snapped at the knee, leading to a quick death at the hands of their melee fighters.

  Arrows and spears still flew, but the wind deflected most, and whatever managed to get through clanged harmlessly off the shimmering gold of the Crest or skidded along Willow’s secondary layers.

  The horde didn’t last long after that.

  Without shamans to lift their spirits or Grumblers to break the wards, the goblins’ instinct for self-preservation finally overtook any orders they’d been given, and the front lines began to falter.

  At first, only a few goblins stumbled backward instead of forward, trampling those behind them. Then more turned around, snapping and shoving, and within seconds, the warband’s cohesion fell apart into a complete rout.

  “Don’t let them scatter,” Raphael said coldly. “We can’t have them regrouping behind us.”

  “On it,” Nick said.

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  The wind suddenly reversed, colliding with the front of the retreating goblins, knocking them off-balance and slowing their flight. Lightning flickered across the ground in thin, snake-like arcs, following the groups as they ran and striking them down.

  Yvonne vaulted out of the Crest again once the pressure on the shield eased, heading downhill with Malik and Monte. Terence followed, staying close to Monte’s shoulder, ready to spear through any survivor.

  They moved like a scythe through grain, as the goblins, already half-destroyed by magic, were easy prey to disciplined steel. A remaining hobgoblin tried to rally a group of survivors, but Raphael folded the space around its chest, killing it instantly.

  A few nearly reached the edge of Nick’s range, their hearts pounding with desperate hope, but the invisible lance of a [Jet Stream] sliced through their necks. The ones behind tripped over the fallen, piling into messy heaps that another bolt then turned into smoking masses.

  It took less than five minutes for the warband to go from a roaring tide to a twitching heap.

  The storm overhead started to fade as Nick loosened his grip, allowing the clouds to thin. The rain reduced to a light drizzle, then stopped entirely, leaving behind churned mud as the only sign it had ever been there.

  Next, he drew in a breath and let go of the Crest. The golden dome disappeared, the stylized thunderbird breaking into drifting sparks that flickered out one by one.

  The System chose that moment to chime in.

  There was a time not too long ago when six hundred thousand experience would have propelled him through multiple levels.

  Now, it’s not enough for just one. It’s looking like the path to Prestige might be a smidge less smooth than I hoped for.

  Another notification popped up.

  That made him smile despite still not having gotten the level.

  They didn’t spend much time on the bodies since the combination of lightning, implosions, clay, and fire hadn’t shredded enough to make crawling around in the muck worth it.

  They stripped the hobgoblins and shamans of anything that looked magical, like the bone fetishes, carved totems that reeked of low-grade cursework, and a few rings that would require more thorough identification. They also carved out whatever intact Grumbler tusks remained and placed them in spatial rings without ceremony, alongside the real prize of the day so far: the cores.

  The ground became more rugged underfoot as they moved further south. The rich, clay-heavy soil of the Low Savannah gave way to gravel and cracked patches of stone. The tall golden grasses thinned out, replaced by tougher shrubs and scrub that clung to rocks and crevices.

  What had been gentle undulations of terrain turned into sharper drops. Shallow gullies widened into ravines, and as they topped one last low rise, they saw the earth fractured ahead into a maze of canyons, their walls shaped by wind and ancient water.

  So we finally arrived at the original area where the dungeon was located. Yeah, its presence feels stronger here.

  Reddish stone jutted upward at jagged angles, creating narrow corridors and sudden open basins that resulted in much lower visibility.

  “What a lovely place,” Monte muttered, peering over the edge of the canyon they’d have to descend. “Perfect to be trapped and killed.”

  “Don’t be dramatic,” Willow said, though her presence in the ether reflected worry. “If anything, these walls will restrict the directions we can be attacked from.”

  “They also limit our movements,” Malik pointed out, and for a melee fighter, that was a big deal.

  Raphael studied the map, then the landscape. “We don’t have many options,” he said. “The inner dungeon is that way, and the canyons are the only route to see what kind of monsters we have to face. Also, I don’t think we should just sit around, waiting for more monsters to find us.”

  No one objected, and they carefully made their way down a sloping trail carved into the side of the rock, leading into the cooler canyon.

  For a while, only the occasional skitter of small creatures broke the silence, but Nick knew better than to let his guard down. Soon enough, he was proven right, as from one of the side passages came a sound like someone crunching a handful of glass.

  The first beetle crawled along a distant wall, steadily approaching their group with unerring precision.

  It was about the size of a small dog, with a shiny, chitinous shell mottled in shades of brown and dull red. Its mandibles clicked, and its many legs clung to the stone with unsettling ease. A pair of ridged protrusions along its back pulsed faintly with light.

  “We’ve got company,” Nick said. “A lot of beetles are coming.”

  Even as he spoke, more emerged behind the first, crawling along the walls and ceiling. Their numbers grew from a dozen to several dozen and then even more.

  “Shields!” Raphael barked.

  Willow was already casting, and a ward snapped up between them and the oncoming swarm, anchoring to both canyon walls.

  Nick layered it with a narrower Crest, not going for the full thunderbird, since what he was feeling wasn’t anywhere near as threatening as the Grumblers.

  The beetles came into view, but rather than swarming as he anticipated, ridges along their backs split open with a wet sound, ejecting globules of glowing material that arced toward the barrier.

  They struck and detonated. The shield flared, then rippled as the blasts kept coming, gradually eroding the defensive mana.

  The swarm kept coming, covering every surface. More globules were hurled down, turning the front of the barrier into a constant sheet of concussive impacts.

  Nick felt each shockwave through the Crest up his arms. The Shard absorbed the force and redirected what it could, but he couldn’t just send the energy back because the tight space and stone walls meant any reflected blast would damage them as much as the beetles.

  “Let’s play the long game, then,” he muttered.

  They hunkered down, forming more barriers around them. There was no space for fancy moves or flanking, and even though they could attack blindly, the swarm still seemed to be going strong. This was going to be a test of endurance.

  “Target the launchers once it dies down a bit,” Raphael ordered. “We must thin them as much as possible.”

  “On it,” Willow said through gritted teeth.

  Nick narrowed his focus. Instead of casting large spells, he only went for [Jet Streams] to clip legs and knock beetles off the walls, making them fall and detonate their payloads prematurely, and [Spark], aimed at the glowing ridges, to overcharge them and blow them from within.

  Joran targeted creatures with cracked carapaces, exploiting their vulnerabilities to trigger a chain reaction, while Lina subtly reshaped the canyon into shallow ridges that made it harder for newly arrived beetles to find an ideal firing position.

  It was slow and messy work, and Willow was clearly getting tired, but over time, the pressure eased.

  The glowing globules became less frequent and more spread out as the number of intact launchers decreased. Burnt husks and shattered shells piled up at the base of the wards, and finally, after what felt like an eternity but was probably only a couple of hours, the last beetle tried to climb over the corpses of its fallen comrades and was neatly speared by a gust of compressed air.

  It erupted with a final, defiant bang that the Crest absorbed with little trouble.

  Willow exhaled shakily, letting herself slump back against the wall as the ward dissolved. “I hate insects,” she declared.

  Weak but sympathetic chuckles rang out.

  Nick was about to crack a joke to ease the tension, but he stopped as he felt it.

  The shift in the ether was subtle at first, but pride, feral joy, and anticipation were growing noticeably stronger, though he couldn't pinpoint their origin.

  It’s the dungeon. Something must be happening.

  45+ chapters: