[Chapter 219. Inferno]

He stood there for a minute or two, rubbing his eyes while he considered his next move. The heat of the cavern pressed against his armor. Each blink felt like sandpaper against his eyelids, the sulfur-laden air stinging his vision. With a heavy sigh that tasted of acrid minerals and a shake of his head that sent sweat flying from his brow, he turned toward the tunnel where the Elemental Dire Wolves waited.

`That's insane, but two can play this game.` Searanox thought, making his way deeper into the tunnel.

His boots crunched against the crystalline floor with each step, the sound echoing in the silence. On his way, he calculated the drone cost for this fight. The TP drain would be substantial, his resources taxed to their limits. He needed a preemptive strike to eliminate the majority, or the encounter would spiral into a drawn-out battle resembling his early fights with these beasts. The memory of being hunted down dark tunnels while hellfire burned everything behind him sent a shiver down his spine, despite the oppressive heat.

`In the Howling Caverns, I used two drones to deal with the entire dungeon. The boss died before he had the chance to notice me. But here, there are too many to burst down.`

At the entrance to the chamber, he dismissed most of his drones. Their forms dissolved into particles of blue light and vanished. With focused intent, he summoned all available Offensive and Assault Drones. They materialized in a flash of energy, prepared for what promised to be an impossible battle.

He sent his drones in. They fanned out in formation, their metallic bodies glinting in the orange glow. A wall of bright violet and crimson beams lanced through the cavern. The beams cut the air like solid spears of light, their passage marked by the hiss of superheated air and the crackle of energy. Searanox stood in the entrance, his rifle primed. The violet energy hummed as it gathered power, and he fired into the space, his beam joining the barrage of destruction.

Within a second, nearly a dozen beasts fell dead, their fiery forms extinguishing in showers of embers and dissolving into motes of light. However, the attack drew the attention of the remaining five, their ember eyes burning with fury.

One bellowed a deafening howl that shook the interior. The sound wave pushed against his armor. The flames on their bodies intensified; their manes and tails flared, and the light coals in their chests burned with vengeance.

Searanox dismissed two Assault units in a flash of blue light and replaced them with Defensive drones. Their barrier shimmered into existence before him and his squad—a hexagonal pattern of blue energy pulsing with power. Its light offered a stark contrast to the red and orange cavern.

What followed realized Searanox's fears. The wolves opened their maws, revealing obsidian-like fangs veined with molten cracks, and a torrent of flame erupted. The immense heat became a physical force pressing against his drones barrier, the air shimmering and distorting from the thermal energy, consuming everything in his vision. Their breath attack proved far stronger in this environment than in the dungeon he knew. The fire fed on the heat, growing in intensity as it raced toward him. They continued until the cavern ground became nothing more than a molten pool of liquefied stone, the crystalline floor melting and churning like a sea of fire.

As the flames died down, he saw not just five remaining Elemental Wolves, but ten; the others had emerged from behind rocky outcroppings and shadows at the edge of his vision. His drones behind the barrier remained intact, but the ones caught outside did not fare as well. While not destroyed, their hulls gleamed with a white-yellow color, the metal glowing with a dangerous light that spoke of immense heat.

`Had they been basic drones, he would have lost them to the flames; their simpler construction could not withstand the damage taken in those few seconds.`

His rifle swung toward a target, the motion smooth and practiced. In sync with his drones, he fired another volley of beams that brought seven more down. Their bodies dissolved into showers of embers and light before they hit the molten ground. The remaining three dashed forward. Their powerful lupine silhouettes became a blur of fire and fury, leaving a trail of fire across the molten stone. The rock hissed, turning to black glass in their wake.

They crashed into the barrier with obsidian-like claws, the sound of metal on energy a screeching, discordant note. They ripped the first and second layers down in the time it took his drones to take aim and unleash another volley. The remaining three wolves fell dead before they could move past the broken barrier, their bodies dissolving into light, their howls cut short.

Searanox inhaled. The heated air burned his lungs, an acrid taste of sulfur and molten rock filling his mouth. He released the breath in a sigh, the sound lost in the hissing of cooling stone.

"That went better than I expected..." he said. His drones stored away in a flash of blue, leaving behind only two Assault, two Offensive, and one Defensive drones.

His gaze darted over the perfect line of black crystalline rock where his drones barrier stood and the pool of molten stone behind it, the surface mirroring the glow of the cavern.

`I expected much of the new dungeons, but that... That was wilder than I anticipated. Twenty fucking bosses of a prior dungeon. Who comes up with that?` He thought, the sheer audacity echoing in his mind.

Walking to the edge of the molten sea, he examined the pile of dissolving bodies. Their forms no longer burned with animated flames, nor did their vibrant fur glow like a kindling flame.

`Greater variant... At least it has the same level— I don't even get experience for them.` He thought, reining in the anger crawling inside him.

The frustration simmered like the molten rock before him: powerful enemies presented as challenges, but offering nothing when they fell below his level threshold. The chest gleamed mockingly across the churning lava, its metallic surface reflecting the glow with obscene cheerfulness.

With a flick of his wrist, he summoned a basic travel drone that formed under his hand, pulling him forward over the molten slag that now made up the cavern floor. The drone materialized with a faint shimmer of blue energy, its smooth surface feeling cool against his palm for a fleeting moment. As he flew over the cooling floor, Searanox felt a searing heat that threatened to burn him alive. Even through the magic that protected him from cold winds and altitude during flight, the thermal energy pressed against him like a physical weight. His suit whined in protest, straining to maintain a livable temperature as the air thickened.

His drone became hot within the seconds it took to cross the lake of magma. Its surface turned from dark matte to a faint red glow, absorbing ambient heat at an alarming rate. He lay flat on the disk-shaped drone, minimizing his exposure to the blistering heat radiating from below, until he crossed the molten lake.

He jumped off the burning surface of his drone and landed in front of the chest. His boots made a crunching sound on the rocky floor. The air remained thick enough to taste of sulfur and superheated rock. He pushed open the chest; the lid moved with smoothness despite the extreme environment. Inside lay a single white-gold ring, its circumference filled by a band of ruby-like material pulsing with internal fire. The ring rested on a velvet pillow untouched by the heat, its deep blue color a stark contrast to the fiery surroundings.

Searanox picked up the item, prompting another System Window to open in his vision.

`Yeah, great. Give me a ring to protect me from fire after I fought beasts that could turn an entire cavern into a scorching hellscape within seconds.`

His armored gauntlet hissed as it disengaged, the seals releasing with a click. Before he removed one of his basic MP Rings to replace it with his new find. As he removed one of his MP Rings, his TP pool immediately dropped by twenty-five points, the number in his vision flashing before stabilizing. His eyes caught the way the ruby band pulsed with trapped firelight. Each pulse synchronized with the distant rumble of the earth's core. After placing the new ring on his finger, he felt cooler; the suffocating blanket of heat pressing against his suit dissipated like morning mist. The scorching ambient heat vanished, replaced by a refreshing coolness that felt unnatural in these volcanic tunnels.

For a moment, he considered walking across the floor glowing dull red to test the ring's claimed immunity to temperatures up to 800°C, but decided against it, recalling a flicker of pain from earlier burns. He returned to the other side via one of his basic travel drones. It materialized beneath him with a hum, its surface no longer heating to dangerous levels as it carried him over the cooling magma. He flew further into the tunnel, the rhythmic thump of his heart competing with the distant cracking of cooling rock. The drone beneath him disappeared in a shower of blue sparks upon arriving at the crossing, the light illuminating the obsidian walls before fading away.

Searanox looked from the tunnel leading into the unknown, toward his Tech-Point counter in the corner of his vision. More than half of it was spent, the numbers stark against his field of view. Nearly all of it vanished during the fight against the Elemental Dire Wolves, their fiery forms burning through his resources as efficiently as they had melted the cavern floor. He had used his overcharge twice on thirteen targets. Combined with the drone upkeep, it had cost him close to 700 TP in that short fight an expenditure that would have been unthinkable two weeks ago.