"Ugh, I still need to recharge my mana."
Sylvie groaned as the group made their way down a set of spiral stairs. The walls, seemingly handmade and adorned with various patterns, went unnoticed by the group.
"If we want to get out of here, we've got to keep moving," Ares said from the front, blade in hand and grip unyielding. "Or would you rather hang around until those pale stalkers break through the blockade?"
"Well, at least we've escaped the first floor. Honestly, I'm glad the first-floor boss is gone. " It saved us a lot of trouble," Jones said.
Marcus nodded. "Indeed. But we've shown our skills, and this second floor will probably be harder."
"Don't jinx it, you smiley bastard," Sylvie shot back, but Marcus ignored the jab. "Oh, I wouldn't want that either, but that's just how the dungeon works."
"Ugh, I can't wait to get out of here," Henry muttered, clearly the most uncomfortable of the group, though no one seemed to care.
As they descended the stairs to the bottom, they froze in place, stopping dead in their tracks, unwilling to take another step toward what lay ahead.
"Two more people dead," Ares muttered, staring at the corpses of two participants on the floor, their heads lying several meters from their bodies.
"Again!"
"Great. Just when I thought we could have a moment without trouble, it finds us," he added.
Marcus stepped forward, examining the bodies like before. "Clean cut, same as last time." "The way they died—they were definitely running from whoever, or whatever, killed them," Marcus said.
"Everyone, prepare for the worst."
Weapons were gripped tightly as they continued moving through the tunnels, now wider and smoother than those on the first, the walls detailed instead of rough.
Then, just like before—
"More bodies. How many are going to die at this rate?" Three more lay on the ground, heads intact but with gaping holes in their chests, stomachs, and each missing a leg.
"That makes eleven. We're dwindling fast," Ares said. "And we'll be next if we don't hurry and finish this experiment," Henry added.
"Sorry, but we'll have to put that on hold. We've got company," Venia said, peering into the darkness ahead. Despite the shadows, her dungeon experience let her see clearly as a gunsman.
Everyone braced themselves, falling into defensive positions, while Henry lingered at the very back of the group.
From the darkness ahead came the sound of breathing—one, then two more.
They emerged slowly, neither charging nor stalking, simply appearing with a steady, deliberate pace.
There were three of them.
At first glance, they looked like wolves, maybe half the size of the queen pale stalker, but something was off—their fur split along the spine and ribs like cracked earth, glowing faintly with pale blue-white light, like mana under pressure.
Their legs bent at one joint too many, and their eyes were pure white, no pupils or iris, just a faint glow behind them. The one in the center lowered its head to sniff the ground.
"What the hell are they?" Jones whispered.
"How should I know?" Sylvie replied, her bow already aimed at one.
"Fractured Wolves. Mutated wolves made by the government," Henry murmured. "You've got a file on them?" Ares asked, blade aimed forward.
"Yes," Henry replied uneasily. "And?"
He hesitated, bracing for what he was about to say.
"They're blind, but they hunt by mana signature," Henry explained. "They already know exactly where we are."
No one needed more motivation.
The wolves didn't charge.
They spread out — the outer pair drifting away from the center, creating space, moving with deliberate patience.
"Are they as arrogant as the Queen Pale Stalker?" Ares questioned, but to himself.
The center wolf kept its head low. Then it turned.
Straight toward Sylvie.
"Why is it looking at me?" she asked, clearly nervous and shaken.
"It's not looking," Henry said. "It's sensing. Your bow has active mana on the string."
Sylvie glanced down. The conjured arrow between her fingers glowed faintly.
"Drop it," Marcus ordered.
"Drop—"
"Now."
She released her grip, and the glow winked out.
The wolf's head tracked the fading light before halting, recalibrating. Its gaze swept around slowly and ominously over the group.
"The more mana you're putting out, the easier it is for them to lock on," Henry said. "Cut back everything you can—no active skills, no channeling. If you're running hot, you're their first pick."
"And if we can't fight without mana?" Venia asked.
"There's always combat."
"Heh, I would like to see you try, Mr.Mage." Henry frowned, then ignored, rolling his eyes.
The wolf on the left sprang first, zeroing in on Venia—her pistols still thrummed with leftover mana from the sprint through the pale stalker nest, just enough to draw it in. It closed the distance quickly, its strange extra leg joint giving it a distorted stride that ate up far more ground than it should.
Nia channeled mana, trying to divert it to her. And she succeeded
The wolf shifted mid-stride to an even bigger signature, which was Nia. With a smile, she grabbed it by the scruff with both hands and used its own momentum to slam it sideways into the wall.
The impact blasted a crater into the wall, the wolf slamming hard as the fracture along its left flank split wider — a fresh rupture spilling mana in a thin blue-white stream.
It shook itself upright and snarled.
"The cracks," Marcus noted, watching the split. "When it widened — it flinched."
"The mana under the fur is pressurized," Henry explained. "Those cracks are its vents. They're not armor — they're part of the vital organs it has. Widen one enough and the pressure balance collapses."
"It destabilizes from the inside?" Ares asked.
"Yes."
The wolf committed then, lunging for Henry — still the strongest mana signature in the room, residual heat from his suppressed reserve drawing it in.
Henry didn't wait.
Calculated or reckless, maybe both, he said, "Fire of Death," forcing his output higher and conjuring a dense, bright fireball between his palms.
The wolf locked on and accelerated.
"What are you—" Sylvie began, startled.
"Jones, cover me!" Henry called.
Jones was already moving, shield low and angled toward its legs.
Instead of pushing it back, he swung the shield sideways into the joints. The rear left leg folded at an unnatural angle, pitching the body forward as its legs scrambled for balance. It crashed to the tunnel floor and skidded away.
"Good." Henry extinguished the fireball, the output vanishing instantly.
The wolf lifted its head, scanning.
Henry's signature was nowhere to read. He had suppressed even more to hide himself.
"The third joint in the back legs," Marcus said, positioning himself to keep all three wolves in sight at once. "That's the weak point. Hit from the side, not the front."
"Easy for you to say," Jones muttered, rotating his shield arm gingerly. The blow had aggravated his shoulder again.
The right wolf still hadn't committed, circling the group's perimeter with patient calculation, waiting for the perfect opening.
"It's picking a signature," Venia observed.
"The weakest one," Ares replied as a thought struck him. He let mana seep from his blade.
"What are you—"
He strode straight toward the right wolf, releasing only faint traces of mana — exactly the wrong move on instinct — and the wolf's head tracking slowed.
At four meters, its scan wavered. At two, it lost him entirely.
"Their own mana output causes interference at close range," Henry noted. "They can't detect low-signature targets inside their own field. They're blind to anything right beside them."
"That would've been useful before I walked into it," Ares said.
He sank the steel blade into the crack along the wolf's spine and twisted slowly.
The wolf let out a high, pressurized scream — like something venting all at once — and jerked violently.
The crack split wider under the force, mana spilling out in a shimmering cascade, lighting the tunnel in pale blue-white before fading away. Its legs gave out first, and it toppled sideways, unmoving.
"One down," Ares muttered. Two more to go.
The center wolf locked onto Henry's lingering signature and charged.
'It can still sense my mana even when I suppressed it further.'
Nia intercepted it from the side before it could reach him.
She wrapped both arms around its midsection—careful to avoid the razor-sharp edges of its cracked fur—and squeezed. Not to crush, but to pry. Her fingers found the largest split along its spine and pulled it open with both hands.
The sound it made was that same pressurized scream, shorter this time, before fading to silence.
She let go and stepped back. The wolf collapsed and didn't move.
The left wolf—the first one, from Nia's wall impact—was the last still standing. The fresh crack in its flank had been venting long enough for the blue-white mana around it to dim noticeably. It was losing pressure on its own.
"It's bleeding out," Marcus said.
"Wait, let it die on its own," Ares replied.
They waited.
No one moved.
Ares counted the seconds.
At thirty, its legs started to buckle. At forty-five, it was on its side. Just under a minute in, the glow behind its white eyes faded for good.
The tunnel went still.
Jones exhaled slowly. "Nobody tell Sylvie she didn't do anything in that fight."
"I heard that," Sylvie said from where she stood, dagger in hand, without a single wolf near her. "I was available the entire time."
"Very available," Venia added.
"I hate this dungeon."
Ares watched them quietly, surprised at how much smoother this second experiment was going, thanks in part to Henry's information.
"This doesn't make any sense," Marcus muttered, but Ares heard him. "In what way?" he asked.
"Our abilities haven't been countered," Marcus replied.
Right! Ares had forgotten the dungeon was adaptive. Things had been going so well, he almost thought Marcus was lying.
"Well, shouldn't we be glad it hasn't? This dungeon could be different from those National Classification dungeons."
Marcus frowned. "I guess so."
"Let's keep moving," Ares said, heading toward the others. But Marcus lingered, lost in thought.
Was he wrong?
Or was something worse than adaptation waiting for them?
He couldn't tell, but the thought left an uneasy feeling deep within him.