Tesilim felt a slight wave of air. Taking a quick peek as he moved around his target, it was clear that Alyx was done with his nancle. Not that it would matter since the gnome was likely looking to regenerate his mana and would not send anything his way. And even though regenerating mana would be fast with the mana potions they took, Tesilim was looking to finish off his foe way before the gnome had time to send anything his way.

  So far, Tesilim had been making sure the tentacle monster was solely focused on him. That way, when Jasmine struck, it would get caught off guard. Tesilim doubted it could even sense Jasmine from her current location, since, although its spatial sense was good, its range was relatively short. It also helped that it did not have eyes or noses attached to its tentacles, which limited its vision and was one of its weaknesses.

  To that end, Tesilim had been sending weak water slashes its way while dodging beams of force and occasionally teleporting out of the range of its senses. It had taken a bit of thinking to figure its range out, but with teleportation, it hadn’t been a problem. And now that the thing was completely focused on him, and he was on the verge of figuring out the correct wording for an impromptu spell, Tesilim knew it would soon be time to finish the aberration off.

  Another weakness of aberrations was that not all of them were smart. Like the tharnik, many aberrations, albeit with some exceptions, primarily focused on attacking. Tharniks were prime examples of this. They were very much muscle heads, which made sense since they were mainly muscle. As such, the tharnik had not thought about the poison on Rose’s blade. Poison, which would be the death of it, no matter how good its regeneration was.

  After bashing the monster, it got even angrier, and its attacks were quickly empowered by telekinetic magic. This change had swiftly put Rose on the back foot as she dodged—or, to her arms' protests, blocked—the attacks. The thing was that her blade was fully clean, not because her magic had burned off the poison, but because it had completely seeped into the monster since it had kept her sword in its body. Of course, that meant that the High D Rank monster was on a timer as the poison began doing its job.

  The first few blows had been the worst for Rose. However, around the time Alyx called down whatever he had called down, the tharnik's body was filled with black veins. And from that point forward, Rose felt, very literally, as the attacks began losing their power. Annoyingly, the tharnik also realized this, not only because Rose was now beginning to land hits with her sword instead of fully focusing on defense, but because it probably finally felt its body grow weaker. To make up for that weakness, the monster began further enforcing its hits with magic, even causing them to release focused blasts of force upon contact.

  Naturally, the extra oomph in the attacks caused Rose to refocus on defense, her body, shield, and armor returning to their previous golden glow. In full honesty, if it weren’t for the issue of the cave, the fight would have been just right for her. After all, she was great at defense. Plus, the fight had been good for her advancement. She had used plenty of her own and Sol’s pure mana.

  The group was split: half watched the fight between Rose, Tesilim, and the aberrations, while the other half watched the cave entrance. They had already quietly discussed it in person so as not to distract the redhead and the chaos elf, but they weren’t sure if nothing coming out of the cave was good or bad. Either the remaining aberrations and their leader had chosen not to engage and were moving their operations, or they were aware of the fighting and were simply unworried.

  Neither answer was good because the first meant that the brother was dead or taken, and the quest wouldn’t update until they went inside. Meanwhile, the second answer suggests that whatever was inside was aware of them but didn’t perceive them as a threat. Of course, the aberration could be overestimating itself and its remaining underlings, but it was a worry nevertheless.

  Moving into the range of the nancles spatial sense, Tesilim dodged a few force beams by ducking, weaving, and making a few tiny teleportations. The tentacle monster had decided to start destroying his weak water slashes instead of letting them strike its shield. Tesilim didn’t know why it had chosen to do so, but he wouldn’t complain since it meant less dodging for him. It also meant that Tesilim could begin casting with fewer interruptions. Though first, he reached out telepathically.

  “Jasmine, give me about ten seconds, then hit it with whatever you got. Make sure it's something good though, enough to surprise and catch its attention.”

  Getting a mental thumbs up from Jasmine, Tesilim began working on his latest spell. It was nothing special, and he had merely changed some of the wording from his chain lightning spell. Still, he wanted to get it right and made sure to annoy the aberration with plenty of water slashes, thankful for the fact that that particular spell needed no incantation.

  "By storm's fury and lightning's might;

  Oh lightning bolt, bring your light;

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  With thunder's roar, electrify;

  And strike my foe as sparks fly high!"

  The words came a bit more naturally to Tesilim than he thought they would, but as he spoke, he saw sparks emerge around the aberration. Thankfully, the thing was too busy destroying the water slashes, plus its attention would be quickly set on the two attacks coming its way. It seemed that Lili and Jasmine had chosen to do a combo attack, and a blade of darkness struck the monster's shield. The monster, who had been about to shoot a few beams at him, instead turned towards the direction of Lili’s attack, only for a beam of pure white to strike.

  Right as the beam of white hit the shield, Tesilim finished his chant, and the sparks around the aberration intensified until, finally, there was a loud crack as lightning split the sky in a flash. The lightning struck down, piercing the unsuspecting aberration and shattering its shield as its magic was overwhelmed.

  Without any further resistance, the lightning struck the monster with most of its remaining power, and to Tesilim's surprise, the creature spazzed as the electricity flowed through its body. The nancle then dropped to the ground, and with a quick teleportation, Tesilim appeared beside it. A few quick cuts later, Tesilim found the crystal, grabbed it, and threw it in his bag of holding. The crystal would fetch a decent enough price, and the aberration wouldn’t start regenerating for a few days at the earliest.

  The tharnik's body quickly deteriorated, and about a minute after Tesilim had killed his target, Rose’s aberration was on the ground, barely moving. Its body was mostly black, and some chunks were beginning to fall off as it rotted away. The group had to admit the monster's regenerative powers were impressive; any other D Rank creature, and it would have died not long after getting infected with the poison.

  Of course, just because its body was done for didn’t mean the monster itself had actually given up, and the aberration still unleashed weak blasts of force in the direction of the group. Eventually, though, Rose cut it apart, taking its crystal as well.

  In the meantime, Tesilim had gotten his die and found that one of the hound's crystals wasn’t shattered by the ice missiles, so he had also thrown it into his bag. Meanwhile, the party was happy to rest for a minute or two. They couldn’t delay for too long outside the cave in case the aberrations inside did call for backup. After all, it wasn’t like the monsters were all alone. They had peers all around the planet. It wouldn’t be the first time a group of adventurers thought they had finished off some aberrations only to find reinforcement suddenly bearing down on them.

  So, even though Rose and Tesilim’s mana tanks were half gone, the party knew they had to finish the fight as soon as possible and then leave.

  Entering the crack in the wall, they had enough room to move, which made sense since the tharnik had been rather large. Of course, if a fight broke out, they would be hard-pressed to move around or dodge.

  At the very front of the group, maybe ten feet in front of everyone else, were Lili and Drex. As a C Ranker, she had the highest chance to escape or delay any attack or monster inside. Meanwhile, Drex, who could be respawned, was effectively a distraction to let everyone else escape. Behind Drex was Alyx, who had the most mana out of the trio that had fought. His staff was on his back, easily reachable but out of the way in case they had to run. Jasmine was behind Alyx, then Tesilim behind her, and at the very back of the line was Rose, who couldn’t teleport and had as much mana as Tesilim.

  Making their way through the crack turned tunnel, the party was glad the space didn’t shrink much, and though it got a bit tighter, it was still enough to let them move semi-freely. However, they imagined the tharnik had to squeeze past the portion of the tunnel they made their way through.

  The main issue with the tunnel, like most tunnels or perhaps those formed from stone cracking, was the extensive zig-zagging and pieces of the walls poking out in odd places. Additionally, they didn’t expect the tunnel to be so deep, and they had been walking for a good few minutes, the light of the entrance having mostly disappeared. Thankfully, everyone could see in the dark, one way or another.

  Eventually, after what felt like an hour but was probably only a few additional minutes of walking, everyone saw the flash of pink energy that erupted from up ahead. It had been a flash, followed by a steady glow of pink, before it vanished once again. Then, a few seconds passed, the party having gone still until another flash came, and another moment of a steady pink glow followed.

  Obviously, their journey through the tunnel was coming to an end, and the light had shown them that it wasn’t far till they reached the supposed end of the tunnel. After another flash, Lili mentally asked everyone if they were ready, and upon receiving thoughts of approval, she began to move.

  So, with their nerves on edge, the party began walking once again, and it wasn’t long before they reached the end of the tunnel and found themselves at the entrance to a large cavern.

  Tense as they were, they watched Lili and Drex enter the cavern, and she prompted them to move forward, so the group did so. However, Tesilim had felt the palpable fear and disgust that Drex had been unable to hold back through their soul link. That worried Tesilim. What had his drake seen that had shocked it to its core?

  It wasn’t long before Tesilim finally entered the cavern himself, his eyes focused specifically on Lili and Drex, who were staring into the far wall of the cavern. Not wanting to see just yet, he looked at Alyx and saw resolve and recognition there. Whatever was at the far wall was something the gnome had seen before. As for Jasmine, her face was contorted in pure anger, a sight that sent a shiver down his spine. It was the first time he had seen such a deep anger come from the sweet half-elf.

  Finally, Rose came in, and she didn’t hesitate to look, a flash of light making whatever she saw with her glowing golden eyes even more detailed. Horror flashed on her face, then anger, then disgust, and with a retching sound, the redhead threw up.

  Tesilim finally looked, the constant pink glow giving him more than enough light to see clearly. And upon witnessing what everyone else had seen, he, too, joined Rose as his stomach emptied.