-Chapter 24- The Unnamed Dungeon II

Arthur Leywin P.O.V.

Peering around the corner with my sword drawn prepared for an attack I see wolf-like creatures preying on the corpse of a smaller mana beast, one of the wolves' ears perks up and turns its head, and spots me. Fuck.

The wolves were covered in white fur with what appeared to be ice needles at the ends. Their fangs were sharp and looked like see-through crystals, no... it appeared to be ice.

All the wolves begin running at me, one leaps out and attempts to bite my arm. A swing of my sword is all it took to take down the first one. A blast of water shoots past me from behind and hits the next wolf. The rest of the party comes running in to help me take down the pack of wolves.

Aaron shouts, "Everyone gets ready for battle!" Everyone gets ready with the conjurers and the emitter in the back with Adam protecting them, and Aaron, Jasmine, and I in the front fighting against the Ice wolves.

"Everyone try to preserve your mana, there is no telling what could appear later in the dungeon," I say.

I fight off a large amount of the wolves, but one of the wolves bites my blade. I thought it was a strange thing at first but when ice began spreading from the fangs of the wolf onto my sword damaging it I saw how big of a problem this was. I kick the wolf away and free my sword from its grasp.

Lilia shoots a spear made of water at high speeds past us augmenters to take down one of the wolves. Aaron using his dual daggers coated with lightning cuts through the fur of the wolves.

We finish the remaining wolves and take a short breather, looking at my sword the ice had damaged the blade making that part basically unusable unless I get it fixed by an expert smith.

We continued our journey through the ice dungeon. I was still confused at the beginning of the dungeon with the runes but I put it to the back of my mind due to the importance of this situation. Those mana beasts we just fought were Glacier Dogs, an A-class mana beast. Considering we found a small pack of them means there's more, making this dungeon ranking at least A-class. Their fangs freeze the objects they come in contact with which I had learned the hard way. Besides that their fur sort of acts like sharp needles cutting skin upon touch.

Lorenzo took the first opportunity he saw to collect all the beast cores himself.

Adam notices this and says, "You better not be planning to take those all for yourself."

Startled Lorenzo jumps in surprise, he quickly readjusts himself and responds to Adam nervously, "Nono of course not, I plan to hand these out accordingly at the end and make sure each and every one of us gets our correct compensation." He obviously lies.

"Sure… sure…" Adam says, doubting everything Lorenzo says. "I'll make sure you see through to your words. Just give me one for now."

"No, I'll hold onto them, I don't see you with a dimension ring," Lorenzo states while flaunting the very decorated ring on his finger. It was covered in gems and gold and all sorts. It looked unnecessary and a serious waste of money to me.

I didn't particularly care about that but Adam looked like he was ready to pop a vein when Lorenzo refused to give him a beast core.

"God damnit Lorenzo just give me a core," Adam says, more agitated.

"Will both of you just shut the hell up?!" Lucas yells. I never thought I'd see the day but I once agreed with Lucas. But he seemed to have caused a bigger problem for us in the process.

I hear tons of Glacier Dogs begin to run at us from all corners of the dungeon, Lucas's yelling must have set them off.

"DAMNIT!" Adam yells as he begins ushering us all to run. With the oncoming threat of what sounded like tens to maybe a hundred Glacier Dogs charging at us we high-tail out of there running in the only direction, we don't hear them coming from.

We continued running as several packs of Glacier Dogs chased us down, Lucas trying to solve the problem he solved began chanting a spell while we ran and launched several balls of fire back towards the Glacier Dogs that were chasing us. That did very little to help our current predicament though so we kept on running.

We soon came to a point where we could no longer keep running when in front of us was a large canyon descending hundreds if not thousands of yards. We can see a door on the other side of the cavern, perhaps it was the way out. But crossing would be a challenge of its own.

What's even worse was that behind us the Glacier Dogs were still approaching. They would reach us in less than a minute.

Damnit, deciding to throw it all away I begin chanting and I create a bridge of Ice using water magic.

"Woah, you didn't say you could do that," Diana says in amazement.

"No time to be amazed, cross the bridge to the door!" I yell to the entire group.

We all cross the ice bridge and open the door to the other room, behind me after the last person crosses the bridge I shatter the entire bridge making it so the Glacier Dogs trying to cross fall to their death.

We close the door to the room we had just entered, but upon it being closed I hear a latch. Did the door just lock itself?

I try to open the door to find it was locked shut, I try again using mana to strengthen myself but with no luck. Lorenzo seeing this panics and pushes me out of the way, he tries to pull open the door repeatedly over and over again. "Come on you stupid door, OPEN!" he cries at the door for it to open.

I look behind us at the room we had just entered, the room was filled with a thick fog that was nearly impossible to see through, I couldn't see the walls of the room so there was no telling how big the room really was.

I try to use mana to enhance my vision to perhaps see if I could see through the fog to no avail. I can't even sense anything in the fog, the fog was created by mana so it cloaks anything within it.

"Everyone stay close, if we separate we most likely won't be able to find each other after." I announce it to the entire group. If someone gets too far away and we can't see them we won't be able to sense them either.

"Hey Diana, could you possibly use wind magic to get rid of this fog?" Lilia asks.

"Sure I'll try-" Diana says before I cut her off.

"Don't, this fog is made from mana, so that means something here created it. If we get rid of the fog we may just give away our positions to the mana beast." I turn to Lucas and Aaron, "And you guys, we can't use fire magic for now because the light will give us away."

"Ok got it." Aaron says.

"Duh, what do you take me for an idiot." Lucas snaps back. A bit of an annoying way to respond but it's at least good to understand he has some intelligence in this kind of situation.

We all focus on our surroundings as we slowly and quietly traverse the room of fog, it was going well until we heard it. What sounded like clicking- no snapping of what sounded like bones reverberated throughout the room. It was then followed by a wicked rattling noise coming from the mana beast. (Think the predator sound)

This terrified Lorenzo as he booked it running in the direction of the door. He screamed like he was being chased for his life. When he reached the door he pulled on the handle over and over crying for it to open to no avail. He turned back and began taking small steps backwards as he realized there was no way out.

Adam began to yell out, "You idiot! What the hell do you think you are doing-"

Adam's sentence is cut short when suddenly like a shark catching its prey, a sudden blur zooms past and snatches up Lorenzo, his arm was torn off and launched in a separate direction flying off.

Whatever it was, it was big and knew where we were. It was just simply waiting for one of us to split away from the group.

"Diana, get rid of the fog now!" I roared as Diana began chanting for a spell of wind to blow away all the fog in the area to reveal the appearance of the atrocious mana beast looming above watching our every move.