Chapter 304

("Everyone ready?") I asked through the bond.

Once everyone acknowledged me, I sent my own. We waited there for more than a minute, waiting for the next break between groups. ("Okay... Now! Raya, give us a corridor!")

Raya held up her wand, and I could see the ripple of mana where her illusion came to life. Torien and Lori took their place at the end of the tree line and waited. Just as the first of the next group of Banshees came flying out of the cave, a pair of arrows punched into it and reversed its momentum enough to throw it backward.

I ran past the two of them with the other melee fighters just behind me. I needed to get into range of the cave to throw up my [Zone of Silence] in the short window of time between banshee spawns. In only a few seconds, I crossed a distance that would be unheard of in my past life, and cast the magic from the tip of my sword. The disorienting sound of the ambient noise dying all at once enveloped me, and I slowed to a jog rather than the dead sprint I had been running at. Kal'daeryn and Silva pulled ahead and tackled the next banshee to the ground near the opening of the cave. With our layered illusions, we were now in a safe spot to fight them and make sure none of them left the area or alerted the horde of bats above us.

The rest of the group caught up shortly after that and we began pushing into the cave with Mimi taking the lead. Watching her fight this closely was a bit terrifying. She used a combination of kicks and punches to stun the banshees before opening a giant maw in her stomach and shoving them in while they were disabled. The cave wasn't as narrow as we initially expected, so Silva and Kal'daeryn made sure to take care of anything that tried to slip past her. We made steady progress through the banshees until we made it to what we were looking for, the recognizable opening of a dungeon. The ornate black marble doors were wide open, revealing stairs that headed impossibly deep into the ground.

"This is it, you first again, Mimi," I said.

"Got it," she replied.

"I'll go second. I have your back, Mimi," Silva said.

The entire time we were climbing down the stairs, we had to fight the banshees that were trying to crash through us and make it outside the dungeon, but Mimi, Silva, and Kal'daeryn handled them as they attacked in ones and twos. I kept a [Zone of Silence] active on us while centering it on myself as we went downward. It was a large enough area to disrupt the banshees' screams, which would have been even more devastating in the tight tunnel. We would only be affected if they screamed right in our face, but it was usually too late for them to use it by that point.

This set of stairs was quite a bit wider than the last dungeon we had entered. I ran my hands on the cool black marble at one point as we passed. It looked higher quality than the dark grey stone of the last one.

"This dungeon must have been here a long time. It isn't relatively young like the last few we've entered. We'll need to be extra careful," Torien said once she noticed my attention on the stone walls.

"Does the age of the dungeon usually affect things like this?" I asked.

"Yes, older dungeons' stairs and safe zones tend to appear like they're made from better materials. Not really sure why, it might have something to do with a greater concentration of magic," she replied.

I decided to shift my eyes so I could see the mana more directly. The stone walls glowed softly, but to closer scrutiny, they were insanely dense with mana. It was more like they were wrapped in something that stopped the mana from leaking out too much. The bottom of the stairs was glowing with a bright haze, and the air began to grow humid as we neared the end.

Silva gripped her spear tightly and ripped it out of her last kill before pushing the corpse over for Mimi to eat. "It looks like daylight up ahead. Odd for a dungeon that spawns demons."

"Not unheard of, though," Morrigan added.

"Fuck..." Silva whispered as she and Mimi got the first look at the dungeon. My reaction mirrored hers when I stepped out onto the rocky cliffs. An endless ocean spread out in all directions. Enormous pillars of rocky stone rose out of the water to create platforms miles apart from each other. Each one looked like an elevated island with its own trees and cliffs. Strong winds whipped around us and the misty overcast sky was partially blotted out by hordes of banshees that were swirling and funneling toward the stairs. Countless banshees were swirling through the air in an angry mass that put the horde outside to shame.

"Lilith! We need a light domain! Move away from the stairs once everyone's out!" Silva ordered.

I didn't hesitate and threw up my [Light Domain]. Now that we weren't in a narrow hallway, all the nearby banshees were swarming at us. I would need to carefully manage my mana now. The banshees individually weren't much of a threat to us anymore, but they would wear us down over time if we couldn't find a place to escape to. Luckily, the surroundings weren't just stony plains, there was a rocky canyon off in the distance behind the stairs. If we could make our way over there, we should be able to find somewhere to hide out.

Many of the banshees didn't bother with us, choosing instead to continue flying up the stairs, but there were so many that even a small portion attacking us was a huge number of monsters. I immediately got to try out some of the new spells I got from the last fight, but I was careful to moderate my mana. [Light Shield] and [Arms of Light] worked well in my domain and strengthened our group considerably. Both of them were strong improvements over the base version of the spells they upgraded from.

I cast [Chromatic Halo] and a ring of rainbow light began to shine behind my back, framing my face from the front. The cost of upkeeping it wasn't exactly cheap, but it made my offensive light spells significantly more powerful. I was able to toss my new [Blinding Crescent]s around and slice through multiple banshees before they faded. I think the improvements from [Light Domain] and [Chromatic Halo] stacked, but I was finding the drain on my mana more taxing than I would like, so I released [Chromatic Halo] for now. I didn't have the mana to spend on offensive light spells. My mana was better focused on keeping my strong buff skills active on my friends and keeping the drain to my resources minimal for now.

"I see a cave ahead!" Lori called out.

I glanced in the direction she was pointing for a moment, but didn't see what she was gesturing toward. It didn't matter. I trusted her to know where she was leading us and decided to refocus on the fight as we followed her path. I pushed the thought through the bond and received a chorus of agreement. For a brief moment, I felt Lori's surprise at being trusted so unconditionally, and that bolstered her confidence.

After spending some time leveling up since the bridge, we were significantly stronger when dealing with this horde. The change was most noticeable among our weaker members who were now able to kill the banshees mostly on their own. Raya's blazing blue [Foxfire] lit up enemies before dancing in the air and spreading to other banshees nearby. Nelly's [Holy Fire] tore through them and burned them to ash. She used it infrequently, but each cast killed her target quickly. Sibyl had gotten some kind of acrobatic skill and was able to leap at each banshee with her sword, stab them through the head with a well-placed thrust, jump to attack another, and return to our group in the span of seconds. It looked especially impressive since her small black furred body leapt multiple times her height each time.

"I see the cave!" Silva confirmed as we were approaching a cliff face. The density of the banshees was diminishing since we had gotten farther away from the dungeon stairs, but there were still a lot of them attacking us.

I glanced in the direction and almost missed it. A giant magic array etched in the ground, built from many of the runes taken from dungeons I had been studying. "Stop!" I called out both out loud and through the bond. I added a brief flash of what I was seeing with the magic sight I had activated on the stairs of the dungeon.

Everyone swayed for a moment. We had been so close to stepping on the gigantic trap. I scanned the runes and glyphs before quickly determining it to be some kind of massive pit trap. Rather than just digging a hole, it would break part of the pillar off to fall into the ocean around us. I sweated for a moment as I realized how bad things would have been had we activated this by accident.

"Cover me for a moment, I can disarm this quickly, but I need to focus!" I called out. I felt my friends acknowledge me, and the twins both stood close to me as I knelt down and closed my eyes. My magic senses traveled through the ritual array and I quickly copied it down in my journal. It was perhaps a bit selfish to be doing that right now, but I was quick. By the time I had completed the sketch, I had figured out how to safely disarm it. It wasn't as complex as the one in the last dungeon, and it would only take a bit of earth magic to break up the ritual into several inert pieces.

[Light Scribing] came alive in my hand as I cast four small earth spells back to back. Each one just nudged the stone under the dirt enough to cut off the glyphs from the other pieces and disarm the magical trap. This dungeon was dangerous, more dangerous than any of the others we had explored so far. This trap would have been devastating, and I only barely noticed it because I happened to be interested in the magical stone the stairs were made of.

I climbed back to my feet and redrew my sword. "Okay, it's disarmed! Let's keep moving!"

As we began running again, the cave quickly became visible to all of us as we approached. I was amazed that Lori's eagle eyes were able to spot this from so far away. From a distance, it had just been a speck to me. One after another, we ran into the cave, each one of us out of breath, and Raya threw up an illusion at the mouth of the cave behind us. A few more banshees attacked us, but after we killed the ones that were still chasing us, no others followed after them. I released the [Zone of Silence], the [Light Domain], and all the other buff skills I had going. I sagged in relief as the massive drain on my mana subsided.

All of us flopped down to the floor or against the walls of the tunnel and breathed heavily. The demi-beastfolk were covered in sweat, while the beastfolk covered in fur, like me, wished we could sweat. I was panting, more exhausted than I think I'd ever been before. While the [Infernal Heat Resistance] that got wrapped up in our [Succubus Constitution] protected us from the heat, the exertion and the humidity were still enough to make all of us uncomfortable. I haven't run that far in one long stretch before, and all of us were fighting monsters the entire time. The only one who actually looked okay was Sibyl, despite having shorter legs than all the rest of us.

When Sibyl met my eyes, she chuckled. "I have a lot in Endurance. I probably could have gone for a lot longer."

"Everyone... let's take 15... er, a quarter bell," I panted out.

"Just a quarter? Let's rest for an entire bell," Nelly groaned. It was a bit uncharacteristic of her, but... none of us were carrying as much weight on our chests as she was, and she was the least fit out of all of us.

Raya had a massive smile on her face. "Did you see how cool my [Foxfire] is? I can spread it to enemies and control it from a distance now! It's going to be so cool once I get a bit more Magic Control and learn to manipulate it better."

"It was really impressive. Everyone's been growing a lot on this trip," I said between breaths.

Raya scooted over to Sibyl and took her hand. "Those flips in the air you were doing were really impressive. I feel like my legs are going to fall off from just running. I can't believe you were flying around us like an acrobat."

"Your magic was really impressive too... I was watching you fight," Sibyl said quietly. She was trying to hide it, but guilt was worming its way into the bond.

Raya leaned over and kissed Sibyl on the top of the head. "No more fighting. It's too exhausting. I miss you too much."

"Okay... I'm sorry, Raya. I was just trying to look out for you..." Sibyl said quietly.

"I know. But you have to let me make my own choices... I love you, Sibyl."

The short catgirl smiled. "I love you too, Raya."