Delving deep

Conquering dungeons had become a simple task for them at this point, whether they were big or small, the dungeon they ran into were all the same, it was stone bricks and corridors everytime, rarely anything was out of the ordinary.

They heard the tales of dungeons mimicking biomes or creating ones, of bosses with an uncanny ressemblance with beings outside of the dungeons, dungeons with elementals alignments or with specials ways of functioning, however, it seemed like they were doomed to only delve into bland dungeons filled with common monsters.

This dungeon was an exception to the rule or so it had appeared during the first fifteen floors, this dungeon was very tower-like, from the analysis of the people who can tell just about everything about a dungeon at a glance, this dungeon had fifty floors, that was a lot but the floors in themselves were very small and was not even that confusing to navigate.

However, something weird started happening after they reached the fifteen floor, the walls seemed to be cracking and falling to dust a bit, nothing too dangerous but this was a clear sign that the dungeon had stopped regenerating its structure, meaning that the thing maintaining this dungeon was no more, be it a dungeon core, dungeon master or maybe both had been felled already.

"Someone must have gotten ahead of us" suggested one of them, the most logical assumption.

The group decided that delving any deeper was useless if some people had already managed to get to the end of it, they set up camp for now and were ready to leave this dungeon the next day.

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Some time before the group of adventurers came to realise the state of the dungeon they had entered, a figure dressed in dark robes was seen panicking as it circled around a palm-sized orb that floated in the air.

"By the gods, oh the gods, this is horrible, this is shit, I am in shit, I am sinking in shit and its already gotten to my neck! I am so fucking dead, damnit, damnit, damnit!" the dark figure was having a meltdown.

This was the dungeon master and he had been born as a demon, he looked just like the civilised demons one could find in the outside world, however, he was simplya monstruous demon given express evolutions to this point upon birth and given the task to grow this dungeon, growing the dungeon was all a dungeon master could think about, usually, the specie they had been born as had no incidence on their thoughts or even on the nature of the dungeon.

The dungeon master was having an issue, as a monster he had definitely not spawned himself had appeared inside of his dungeon, on the forty-eight floor to be exact, just two floors above the core room.

Dungeon masters were usually quite knowledgeable on monsters but he couldn't even guess what this thing was, it massacred the monsters again and again, it ate their body whole and even licked the blood of the ground and walls, he couldn't even get any of the points he had put into these monsters.

Normally, the dungeon master would have the compensation of getting a large amount of points due to the presence of a being that severely outmatched his whole dungeon but this thing wouldn't give any points at all, it had even started breaking the walls for no reason!

At first, he had hoped that the monster would simply leave but it was descending, at the moment it was on the fiftieth floor, moving toward the core room as if it knew it was here.

The dungeon master closed his eyes as the monster was right in front of the core room, expecting to never open them again but after a few minutes had passed without even the smalled of sounds being heard, he opened them again, not seeing the monster anywhere.

In fact, it seemed like the monster had popped out of existence as he couldn't find it anywhere in the dungeon, the dungeon master heaved a sigh of relief.

He looked forward again and felt like something was off, he rubbed his eyes, thinking that it was his eyes that weren't seeing properly, it seemed as if what he was seeing in front of him was slightly distorted.

He put his hand forward but failed to do so as he immediately hit against something.

"Ah" that was the only sound he managed to make before his upper body was crushed by seemingly nothing, his corpse was lifted up in the air as his upper half was ripped off his body, disappearing from sight, after his whole body was gone, all that remained was the blood that covered the unseen monster and the floor.

Soon after, the core was shattered between the monster's teeth and gobbled up.

Crawling on the walls and ceiling, the monster ascended the dungeon, ripping through the monster's that remained, none of them even saw it coming, they could only hear the sound of its claws scraping against stone.

One of the adventurer's was awoken by that very sound, it wasn't constant, sometimes stopping for a few seconds before starting again, it seemed very similar to the sound of an insect crawling inside of the walls, except much larger.

The adventurer woke their teammates up and upon hearing the sound they all agreed to leave this place right now, this dungeon had already been cleared after all, whatever it was, it wasn't worth the risk.

Fortunately for them, whatever was causing this sound seemed to be busy with other things, allowing them to get some advance on it as unlike it, they never stopped.

After a while of running at high speeds, the adventurers made it outside, the sun was slowly rising in the horizon and they were able to fill their lungs with fresh air, they weren't sure why they had ran as if their lives were on the line when they didn't even have the slighest of ideas what was the cause of that sound but they didn't stop for long and headed back to the city.

Unaware that right next to them, as they spoke and walked, the source of their fear was right there moving with them as if it was a member of their group, the sounds that they had heard in the dungeon had both been coming from it and also had not been coming from it.

This venerer was one that used tricks, not a predator that overpowered its preys with strength and sheer intimidation but one that outsmarted them.

One who knew of the venerers could only wonder, how would this specific venerer slaughter a city?