Chapter 67: Vibrations

Leon and Mark ducked to the sides, and Sophia pulled back. Kira swung her wand in a wide arc, and a massive gust of wind exploded down the tunnel. It roared through the narrow space, tearing along the walls and picking up dust and loose stones. It slammed into the pack head-on, throwing the dogs back, slamming them into the walls and tumbling them over one another. Bones cracked. Yelps rose and cut off.

The wind faded. The dogs were scattered across the floor, battered and stunned.

"Now!" Kira said.

Leon and Sophia moved at once.

Sophia rushed ahead first, her scythe cutting down through the first stunned dog before it could rise. Leon followed, firing lances into the ones that tried to crawl away. Between the two of them, the rest fell quickly. The tunnel filled with the sound of steel, the crack of ice, and the last yelps of the pack.

Then, from the dark at the far end, something larger came out.

It was another dog, but bigger than the others, about one and a half meters tall, with the same red fur and four eyes burning bright. It did not roar. It did not hesitate. It simply ran straight at Mark.

He saw it too late.

It hit him full in the chest, and the two of them went down together, crashing across the floor. Mark’s metal arm shot up in time to block its teeth, and the dog clamped down on it with a screech of metal. It shook its head violently, tearing at him, claws raking against his chest. He grunted and shoved with his free hand, but the dog was strong.

"Mark!" Leon yelled.

"I’ve got it!"

They rolled across the ground, back and forth, the dog snarling with the metal arm still locked between its jaws, and Mark cursing. His back slammed against the wall. He kicked at it and kept his other hand pressed against its throat. The teeth ground against the metal, deeper and deeper.

He gritted his own and stopped fighting to push it off.

Instead, he pulled it closer.

His flaming hand slid down and pressed against the dog’s chest, right over its heart. The fire in his palm compressed, tightening into a small, dense core of white heat.

"Burn you stupid mutt"

BOOM!

The compressed flame shot through its chest and out the other side. The dog’s eyes went wide, all four of them, and it went limp, its jaws loosening on the metal.

Mark pushed it off and lay on his back, panting hard, staring at the ceiling.

"You alright?" Kira asked, kneeling beside him.

"Yeah I’m Fine," he said. He looked at his metal arm. There were deep dents in it, but it still moved. "Remind me to thank whoever built this."

Silence settled over the tunnel.

They stood among the bodies, the cores were scattered on the floor as the bodies of the dogs broke down and vanished.

They picked up all the cores and moved deeper into the dungeon.

More demon dogs came along the way. They took them out one pack at a time, Leon and Mark at the front, Sophia cleaning up behind. It went faster now that they had a rhythm, and none of them got hurt again.

Not long after, they found a stairway leading down.

"Second floor," Kira said.

They stepped onto it, and Mark was the first to notice the difference.

"These ones are bigger."

He was right. The dogs that came out of the dark were taller than the ones above, and their fur was a deeper red. There were six of them this time, and they did not charge in blindly.

Leon fired a lance at the first one, and it slipped aside. The second dog stayed back and watched. When Leon fired again, they all waited, and the lances passed by or hit the wall. Then, the moment he finished casting, two of them lunged at once.

"Watch out!" Sophia yelled.

Leon jumped back and swung his staff, knocking one away. Mark caught the other with his metal arm. The dogs did not stop. They kept coming from the sides, forcing Leon and Mark back a step at a time.

"They’re pushing us," Mark said through his teeth.

"Yeah these ones are far smarter than the first floor," Sophia said.

She moved ahead of them and cut down the nearest dog. Kira’s wind knocked another off its feet, and Leon finished it with a lance through the head. Mark burned one, then punched the last one into the wall. They took them down with more force than before, and it still took longer than the first floor.

When the last one dissolved, Leon looked at the spot where it had stood.

"They waited for my attacks to pass before they jumped," he said. "Did you see that? The ones upstairs didn’t do that."

"I saw it, pretty wild for monsters to do that " Mark said. "They’re thinking."

Kira crouched and picked up one of the cores.

"Some dungeons have unusual monsters," she said. "Unique ones, and some can even learn. It’s not unheard of." She turned the core over. "But having them this high up, on the second floor, is strange. It makes me wonder if the ranking they gave this dungeon is real."

"The guild said it was low-grade," Sophia said.

"I know what they said."

Nobody spoke for a moment.

"We have keep our guard up," Leon said.

They collected the cores and kept walking. The tunnel curved and widened, and the crystals in the walls grew brighter the further they went. They passed a few side passages, but none of them wanted to risk splitting up, so they stayed on the main path.

Leon walked at the front, his staff ready.

They had gone a few hundred meters when he felt it. A faint vibration under his boots.

He stopped.

"Do you feel that?"

The others stopped too. A small trickle of dust fell from the ceiling. Then the vibration grew stronger, until the floor itself began to tremble beneath them.