15 Meat Grinder

Right outside of the dungeon, Giony stands in front of a large group of adventurers waiting.

"All right, today we are culling the [Smoke Keep Caves]. As it is a dungeon this party will need to clear it out daily. I as well as the top three members of our guild branch will each be leading separate expeditions in the recently discovered nearby dungeons. I have this one, Eleena has the [Fairy Forest] dungeon, with Rolfo and Rilfa taking the [Stone Works] dungeon. As always I will be the leader of this expedition if there are any objects speak now."

"Since there are none, I'll explain the plan. Every day we are to clear 18 groups. As previous reports have shown, every group should be five Kobolds and a mage. Some groups are missing a few members and in one group a Kobold has evolved into a commander. If it seems like the dungeon starts spawning monsters faster than we are killing them this quota will be upped. We can go hunting in shifts, and you will be fully entitled to any kills you achieve. Now everyone into your parties, I will organize these parties further into raid groups."

After a few minutes of shuffling, everyone was in one of the three groups.

"Okay, the raid parties will have three jobs depending on the time of day. before noon, group one will be hunting, group 2 will be maintaining the base camp, and group three will be resting. In the afternoon the jobs will rotate one will rest, two will hunt, and three will maintain the camp. This will happen again at night and so on for the entire week. Now group one will move out, group two I leave the setup with you."

Giony and his raid party entered the dungeon setting off the alert system.

[Intruder alert, defeat the intruders for DP.

Type: Humanoid

Element: none]

"Oh? Well looking at this group I can't win, but I might as well try. They must be here because of the surge, can't say I blame them. All forces ignore previous orders I didn't realize this would happen, converge on the party and destroy them, mini-bosses too."

As the order went through all of the monsters slowly approached the group of around 10 - 15 adventurers of various levels as they slowly walked down the rightmost path, they quickly found their first group which contained the usual mage at level four and the five kobolds with their levels ranging from one to three. With two spear men, an axe wielder, one with just his claws, and a dagger wielder the group with their blood-red eyes rapidly approached the raiding party fighting aggressively and all at once in a series of one on one fights as opposed to their regular strategy of shifting the weight of the fight around. But all in all, the fight was a one-sided victory. At most all the kobolds did was light damage to a few of the lower-level adventurers' nothing high-level healing magic couldn't fix.

"All right, one down five more to go. Then we can leave for the day."

As Giony made an effort to boost the already high morale of the raiding party, another two groups managed to show up, their composition was similar to that of the first one, but with a sword wielder who was level three present. This time however after watching the massacre, Smaug had to strategize.

"All forces I am going to micro-manage this fight, the last one was a wash, I'll be honest you stand no chance, but I need you guys to hold out for my Elite troops, I may even award a name to anyone who manages to live by the end of the surge."

With that moral was sent into the hearts of all 12 monsters present, and with some instruction from Smaug, the Kobolds managed to do some severe damage, while noone was killed the party had to either stop or slow down as there were some serious injuries on the human side. Meanwhile on the monster side, only a couple of level-one kobolds were killed, the rest now retreating with their injuries not bothering them as they retreated.

This fight lasted around 30 minutes, long enough for the lower dragonling to make it to the front, as well as a few more groups who were for the most part lying in wait to surround and ambush the resting intruders. Sca'Bla and the wyvern however would need a bit more time.

"Stay sharp, I can sense a lot more presences, we should stay here and form a basic protective encirclement around our healers and injured for now. How long until you should be done healers?"

"About another ten minutes sir, 8 if you only want them able to get out of here."

"Then ten minutes it is. We need everyone in better then tip-top shape as we are surrounded and need everyone fighting their hardest."

As the raiding party was organizing themselves the forces advanced, with the dragonling in the forefront. Giony and Smaug were both about to see what it truly could do. Smaug saw that the dragonling was level 15, far stronger than anything inside the dungeon the raiding party had encountered so far.

It's body was long and slender with small folded wings on its back, with smooth soft skin that was dolphin like which was the same color as the fur of the Kobolds. It had horns on it's head but they were small and somewhat underdeveloped as well as lacking much strength.

A higher-level adventurer looked over to Giony and spoke "Sir, that looks like a dragonling, but it seems undercooked, almost as if it hatched early, do you have any idea what it is?"

"It is a dragonling, it's a lesser one. Dragons can be very diverse creatures, and a dragonling is one such example, they have many higher paths they can grow into, but it takes a lot of time, while it's safer to assume a dragonling can always reach great power if you give it enough time, more often than not they are killed before they do. There is another quirk about them however and that is if a dragonling evolves, even if into the mightiest true dragon, it will still be a dragonling, there are very few differences except for some hierarchical issues, but one of the prominent differences being their offspring, a dragonling is always capable of interbreeding with whatever dragon its form takes after, and it's kids usually end up on a similar path, and when I say kids, I mean a dragonling parent usually has litters of upwards of 100 of them, but when you have a dragonling that isn't capable of fully supplementing the last egg, what hatches is what is known as a lower dragonling. Often weak and underdeveloped they don't last long outside of the nest. I imagine this dungeon simply isn't strong enough to supplement a full-fledged dragonling so this is what spawned instead."

After he was done explaining what had happened, the dragonling felt a slight sense of anger, it knew intentionally or not, that Giony both insulted not only it but also it's home. It charrged forward launching a fire breath attack towards the group engulfing them in flames. When the fire receded it was reveled a fire shield was put up. So the Dragonling jumped forward and went for the guy right next to Giony. A level 15 fighter. Swiping with its claw the dragonling managed to catch him by surprise and cut his face.

As that was happening as if on cue, the Kobolds rushed forwards mindlessly trying to overwhelm the group with pure numbers.