Twenty yards away from the freshly summoned party, a pack of sleek, grey-furred Gnasher Rats, or as the pros called them, the Dungeon Rats, each the size of a large terrier with obsidian-sharp teeth, were in a feeding frenzy, tearing into the carcass of a massive, shadow-furred [Lupine Stalker] (Dark wolf) they had collectively brought down.
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"Contact front!" Kaela's voice was a sharp, calm report.
There was no hesitation, even though the monster's appearance was sudden; the party was in no disarray.
It was like watching a perfectly engineered machine snap into motion, gears of a clock moving to shift a minute hand.
Borin took two heavy strides forward, his shield slamming down with a definitive crunch that echoed in the cavern.
Before the rats could even fully register the new threat, two arrows whistled from behind Aria.
Two rats, on the periphery of the pack, were instantly pinned to the ground, their feet injured even before a squeal could escape their throats.
The rest of the pack, enraged by the cowardly attack, swarmed towards the immovable obstacle that was Borin.
Finn didn't cast a spell. He simply pulled a small, crystalline orb from a padded pouch on his belt and lobbed it underhand.
-Clank... beep! Beep! Beep!
It landed amidst the scrambling rodents and detonated with a thundering roar of concussive force, and right after, a spray of magical shrapnel was born, the impact sending several bodies flying.
Aria and Cass stood momentarily stunned, watching the brutal, beautiful efficiency of it all.
The initial skirmish was over in less than thirty seconds.
Borin hadn't moved an inch from his spot, his shield unmarked, not even a drop of blood present on the shimmering steel.
Kaela was already nocking another arrow, her head on a swivel, scanning the tunnels behind them.
Finn, on the other hand, was calmly wiping a speck of rat gore from his goggles with a rag.
The blast somehow carried the blood beyond the front tank.
"See?" Finn grinned at their wide-eyed expressions. "Stick with us, and you'll be—"
A low, guttural growl cut him off, emanating not from ahead, but from a side passage they had just passed.
"More coming! Prepare!"
From the darkness, two more Dark wolves, likely drawn by the noise of battle and the scent of their fallen kin, lunged out with terrifying speed.
They had come from beyond the shadowed, and they had the advantage over the rest of them, being distracted.
They bypassed Borin's defensive line entirely by passing through the shadows, their glowing yellow eyes fixed on the soft, exposed center of the party— straight for Finn, Cass, and Aria.
Cass fumbled for his staff, a spell of panic on his lips.
Finn's hand darted for another gadget, but the wolves were too fast, too close for his reaction speed.
Aria, however, didn't speak. She didn't have time either.
Her mind, cool and analytical under pressure as always, identified the threat vector in the fraction of a second and provided the solution.
She simply willed it into existence.
[Skill {Creation} has been used. Blueprint: Spike Trap (Novice) will be materialised.]
[Cost: 1 Creation Unit will be consumed. Remaining CU: 92.]
Between one heartbeat and the next, a cluster of sharp, magically-formed wooden spikes erupted from the ground directly in the path of the leaping wolves.
-Oooooooooooooooooong!
The sound produced from wood tearing through the flesh of the same creature these spikes had killed the first time she had used it was sickeningly final.
The two wolves, committed fully to their pounce, were impaled by the spikes with the full force of their momentum.
Their bodies slid gruesomely down the spears, twitched once, and went still the next moment.
A profound silence fell over the cavern, broken only by the drip of water somewhere in the distance.
Borin, who had begun a slow turn to intercept, froze mid-motion.
Kaela's bow was half-drawn, her arrow momentarily forgotten as she stared.
Finn the support's jaw went slack, his hand still hovering uselessly over his belt of tricks.
They all stared at the spontaneously generated sharp spikes, a stark and brutal monument that hadn't been there seconds before.
Then, as one, their gazes shifted to Aria, who stood with her hands at her sides, her expression neutral, as if she'd just corrected a line of code.
"Guard Captain did say we'd be in for some surprises," Kaela murmured, the tone of her voice shifting from professional assessment to genuine, deep-seated respect.
"Right... you know—!"
"Awooooooooooooo...!"
Before anyone could form a proper comment, however, a chorus of answering howls, deep and full of rage, echoed from the same side passage as the last ones had arrived.
The rest of the pack seemed to have arrived, and they were not happy with the half-eaten, rotting corpses or two hanging on the spikes before the humans.
"Form up!" Borin, registering the bigger threat, barked at the top of his lungs, the professional soldier inside him snapping back into command.
"They're all yours, Kaela! Finn, suppression and control! Mage, support as you can! Aria, you have a green light for battle assists!"
Once again, the party got in form not as a trio, but as a five-person party that they were originally meant to be.
-Clank! Clank! Clank!
-Swiiiiiiiiiiiish...!
The next hour and a half was a whirlwind of controlled, violent chaos.
Borin became an immovable fortress, his shield a blur of deflecting claws and teeth.
Kaela's arrows became a deadly, precise rain; Finn would hand her special arrowheads— some that exploded on impact in a shower of fire, others that sprouted entangling wire vines upon striking— while simultaneously throwing his own concussive orbs and deploying small, whirring devices that emitted disorienting sonic pulses.
Cass, finding his nerve, launched firebolts that, while not always accurate, forced the wolves to break their formations and created openings for the others.
Aria watched, learned the rhythm of her new team, and intervened with surgical precision.
Two more times, when a wolf threatened to flank Borin or slip past Kaela's arrow storm, she acted faster than their eyes could blink.
[Skill {Creation} has been used. Blueprint: Spike Trap (Novice) will be materialised.]
[Cost: 1 Creation Unit will be consumed. Remaining CU: 91.]
[Skill {Creation} has been used. Blueprint: Spike Trap (Novice) will be materialised.]
[Cost: 1 Creation Unit will be consumed. Remaining CU: 90.]
Each time, the sudden eruption of wood in a stone-dominated dungeon section was perfectly timed, proving to be a lethal surprise that seamlessly integrated into the party's defense.
At the end, the flow of the battle had shifted in their favour…