As their horses throttled the roads leading to Tarrin, Katherine had spoken to them.
"I’m not allowed to help with the battle aspect unless it’s absolutely necessary, and once I do, it would affect your performance points. So I’ll say this, make sure to have each other’s backs. Is that understood?"
"Yes, Captain!" they said in unison.
At that moment, a new notification screen appeared in front of Aiden.
[New Special Quest Assigned → Complete the Dungeon break mission without taking Damage]
[Rewards: ??]
[Bonus: 3,000xp]
[Quest Duration: ??]
"Heh" Aiden smiled to himself after seeing another special quest assigned to him.
This was also the highest experience reward he had ever been offered by the system.
After about two hours of riding on horseback, the party had arrived at the edge of the town of Tarrin.
From where the horses stopped briefly, they could see from that distance that the town had been completely devastated, with no humans in sight whatsoever.
Such was the fate that befell any town with a dungeon break.
From within the wreckage and destruction of the town were some the beasts that started moved together and started stepping out en masse, slowly approaching the humans they could sense were nearby.
Katherine squinted her eyes slightly while raising her right palm over her eyes to block the sun rays, so that she could get a clearer look at the incoming creatures.
"Kimian Kats, and by the looks of it, I’d say it’s at least thirty of them," the captain said, easily identifying what creatures they were.
Their horses had started getting tense at this point, as they could sense incoming danger and didn’t want to continue forward.
"We’ll get off here," Katherine said, and when they had all dismounted, she said to them, "There’s no time, so I’ll say this quickly: aim for their heads. Anything less would only make killing them much more difficult. I’ll go ahead to see if I can scout for their dungeon lord."
They all nodded, and with that Katherine said, "Alright, off you go!"
As they all started walking toward the town slowly, the beasts themselves approached them as well.
When her guild mages had gone some distance away, Katherine used a supplementary spell: Levitation, to gain flight.
She then took to the skies where she could easily scout the area, in search of the Dungeon’s Lord, whilst still being able to keep her eyes on them.
The others didn’t have knowledge about these creatures except for Aiden, especially as they were part of the creatures he had actually read about recently.
They looked similar to black panthers, but these ones had two horns protruding out of their foreheads.
They were fast creatures with pretty dangerous fangs. The fangs had a strange venom, and one bite would immediately immobilize a human.
There was, however, one major problem: their self-fission nature.
Each time they took any damage, they would react by splitting into two different Kimian Kats.
According to the book, their only known weakness was killing them by cutting their heads off or destroying all of their bodies with absolutely strong magic.
For a monster generally ranked as D, that nature could prove difficult even for a strong mage without experience on how to deal with them.
"Let’s spread out and take up as much space as we can," Arianna said to them, and immediately they started spacing out.
Arianna pulled out a pouch filled with ten-inch nails. She pulled out the nails and held them between her fingers.
Lightning energy streaks had started coursing through Kayden’s eyes.
However, Aiden’s enhanced hearing ability picked up sounds of more of these creatures from far into the town.
To confirm what his thoughts were, he activated his skill: [Dragon’s Sight]. His vision penetrated far ahead as he saw it; more of these creatures!
In fact, it felt as though the ones approaching them from the town were like the first wave.
Without looking at them, Aiden called out, "Ready yourselves! There are way more inside that town!"
However, before his guild mates could even react to that information, the ones approaching had gotten close enough to initiate attack.
One of the Kimian Kats roared out, and so did the others before they spread out and raced speedily toward the mages.
Laela stretched her hand outward and called out, "Tree Bind!" after which thick vines sprouted out from the ground, then curled around and ensnared the feline-looking horned beasts.
However, Laela’s vines weren’t just to ensnare her targets. They came with an added effect which included draining magic from their targets.
These creatures were supernatural beasts and as such had magic in them, making them the right targets.
And almost immediately, their bodies started to get extremely lean under the effects of her Tree Bind spell, almost as if life was being sucked out of them.
It continued this way until every bit of magic they had in them was drained.
For Kayden, he simply waved his hand toward his own quota of beasts, and a thunderbolt erupted outward from his palm, continuing to strike through the beasts in its path.
The strength behind Kayden’s thunderbolt was so strong it was directly disintegrating them on contact.
For Arianna, she flung the nails she held between her fingers toward the Kimian Kats racing to her side. Then she whispered, "Grow!"
The size of the nails instantly grew to an abnormally large size so they looked like huge lances, piercing through the entire bodies of these beasts. This infact left no chance of causing a fission whatsoever.
A devious smirk drew on Aiden’s face as he watched his own quota of beasts racing towards him.
He then tilted his head backward and gathered mana in his mouth, before releasing a devastating and explosive torrent of flames through it.
[Dragon’s Roar]
The amount of flames that gushed out washed through the creatures in front of him and scorched even the very ground they stood on.
When the flames were done, they left absolutely nothing in their wake, simply just cinders and scorched earth, with smoke rising from the ground.