"Pow! Pow!"
The pufflings shrieked in resistance, wings flapping wildly, but it didn’t matter.
Not against Akhil.
He already knew their cute-face trick, and honestly, he was way past falling for it.
He didn’t even give them the chance to transform into their real monstrous shapes.
He was already on them—slashing, cutting, tearing through the tiny fiends without hesitation.
Ruthless.
Efficient.
And he didn’t stop, not even for a breath.
A few minutes later, the path was quiet again. A heap of dried, shriveled bodies marked where the pufflings once stood.
{You have absorbed various low-level essence}
{Blood essence: +300}
"This has been a mess," Akhil muttered, stepping over the pile as he moved forward.
Two tunnels opened ahead of him, both stretching deeper into the dungeon. He studied them for a moment.
’Which one should I take?’
An idea struck him. He shifted into heat vision and scanned the tunnels.
At the far end of the left one... heat signatures. Lots of them. Packed together, unmoving. Waiting.
Their numbers alone made his skin prickle.
’The next horde?’ A cold shiver crept down his spine.
Part of him wanted to go there immediately—more beasts meant more blood essence, and that strange rush he felt whenever essence flowed into him... yeah, it was becoming addictive.
And the power he gained? That part was real.
It would make facing the boss so much easier.
But exhaustion was already settling deep in his bones. He couldn’t recover stamina mid-fight, no matter how much essence he absorbed. More battles now meant hitting the boss half-dead.
Fighting the boss like that was basically suicide.
’If I want a real chance, I’ll handle them later... I need to save my strength.’
He turned right without hesitation.
His footsteps echoed softly through the rocky path.
The cave was dark, but with heat vision, that barely mattered.
Faint light filtered through from somewhere ahead. Good—he was close to the end of the tunnel.
He had no idea that another group had entered the trail behind him.
At the entrance, Hale supported Samxon with one arm as she stepped into the darkness.
"Are you sure this is the right way?" she asked, her voice low as she tested her footing.
"Can you just shut the fuck up already?" Samxon barked. "We’re literally following dead bodies!"
Hale didn’t answer.
Samxon exhaled sharply—then suddenly felt his balance tilt. Before he could even register it, he was already hitting the ground.
"Wai—? Sorry!" he yelped, scrambling.
Hale didn’t look back. She just kept walking, deeper into the cave, leaving him to pick himself up.
"That’s only if you actually listen to orders, you know?" Samxon muttered, his brows twitching.
Hale still didn’t respond.
Grinding his teeth, Samxon pushed himself up from the ground, wobbling a little.
"At least wait for me!" he shouted, limping after her.
Hale didn’t slow down. Her instincts were prickling harder with every step, especially as more dead beasts came into view.
Then something clicked.
’Hold on... if we’re heading toward the base, shouldn’t we be seeing more beasts? Not fewer... and definitely not dead ones.’
She looked back, her eyes landing on the struggling Samxon.
"You know, I’m only in this condition because I saved both our asses. You could treat me a little nicer," Samxon complained as he finally caught up.
"Yeah, nobody asked you to do that," Hale replied with a casual shrug.
Samxon felt the words hit him like a jolt of lightning. "You—!"
"It’s not like we didn’t have a plan," Hale continued. "You ran straight into danger on your own."
Samxon opened his mouth... and nothing came out. He just stared.
Hale scanned the area around them once more before turning back to him.
"Shouldn’t we be seeing more beasts instead of corpses?"
Samxon crouched slightly, eyeing one of the dried-up bodies.
"Yeah... true."
’He said there’d be more beasts near the boss room... but after that giant spider, we haven’t seen any alive ones. Everything’s already dead,’ Samxon thought, unease creeping onto his face.
"Don’t you think someone else might be in here with us?" Hale said quietly. "It’s the only thing that makes sense."
She looked forward again, eyes narrowing.
"I doubt it," Samxon said. "These beasts didn’t die recently. Look—they’re dried out. No blood at all."
’No blood?’ Samxon frowned. A certain memory flickered in his mind.
’There’s no way... he wouldn’t know about this too.’ He scoffed at himself, but an uneasy, uncomfortable weight settled in his chest.
Akhil hadn’t been at the orc camp. And Samxon really, really didn’t want to believe that the cocky kid had walked up the mountain alone.
"Let’s just keep going," Samxon said, brushing the thought aside. "Dead beasts are good news for us. Less work."
"If you say so," Hale replied, stepping deeper into the tunnel.
Their silhouettes slowly sank into the darkness.
Thanks to the lack of any living enemies, they made quick progress.
Samxon also seemed to have recovered a bit from the backlash of going above his mutant level.
Which made things even more smoother.
Before long, they reached another split—two massive tunnels stretching even deeper into the dungeon.
They stopped at the fork.
"So... which path do we take?" Hale asked, staring into the twin maws of stone ahead of them.
"I think we should go left" Samxon said calmly.
Hale looked at the two passages for a short moment.
"Alright then, let’s use left" She said calmly.
With that, the two started moving through the left tunnel.
For a while, the only sound was their footsteps. The air felt oddly still—like the whole place was holding its breath.
Samxon glanced around. "You feel that?"
"Feel what?" Hale didn’t look at him.
"The air... it’s too quiet."
"Maybe the tunnel’s dead."
"That’s not comforting."
She didn’t respond, just kept walking as the walls widened around them. Before long, dried corpses began to appear again—more than before, piled carelessly along the path. Some had thin reddish roots wrapped through their limbs, like something had threaded them there and sucked them dry.
Hale crouched beside one. "These weren’t killed by beasts."
Samxon didn’t want to know more, so he stepped around it.
As they went deeper, the ceiling rose. Thick roots hung from above like veins, pulsing faintly. They crawled across the walls, disappearing into cracks and reappearing farther down.
Samxon swallowed. "Okay... now I’m uncomfortable."
Hale followed the direction the majority of the roots flowed toward. All of them seemed to lead deeper into the darkness.
Eventually, the tunnel opened into a massive cavern.
Both of them froze.
On the other side of the tunnel, Akhil moved deeper, each step echoing softly against the narrowing walls.
The air grew warmer the farther he went, carrying a metallic scent that clung to the back of his throat.
In this part of the cave, surprisingly he didn’t encounter even one beast, but strangely enough, he found dried bodies appearing along the path—slumped, curled, or half-buried beneath dust.
’I guesss I was right’ he thought calmly glancing at the beast.
He didn’t stop to study them.
Fatigue pressed on his shoulders, and the lingering pull of blood essence kept nibbling at the edges of his thoughts.
’Maybe I should’ve gone to the other side, gathering some blood essence before facing the boss isn’t a bad idea’ he ran his hand through his hair as he walked ahead.
He felt like he had just missed out on a good opportunity to gather blood essence.
But that didn’t matter anymore.
He kept his pace steady, eyes scanning every shift in shadow.
The ground sloped downward.
The air thickened.
And slowly, the faint glow ahead sharpened into a steady green light.
Akhil stepped forward, and the tunnel opened wide. A cavern waited on the other side—huge, silent, and washed in that eerie green radiance.
Roots dangled from the ceiling. The air pulsed faintly. Something alive echoed in the stone.
Akhil exhaled once and crossed the threshold.
Just as he entered the cavern, his eyes widened in awe as he stared at the sight before him.
’Talk about height’ Akhil thought as the lathe shadow of the beast loomed over him.
He had prepared to face the boss head on, but upon seeing the beast.
He couldn’t help but feel fear instead.
Before this mighty beast, Akhil could only hold his breath.
Fighting the boss was definitely not going to be as easy as he had thought it to be.
Akhil’s grip tightened on his blade.
Before him stood the boss of the beast, a massive—