"On the left," Muti said, her voice barely a whisper.
Now in the Dungeon proper for the first time, they had made their way very slowly forward for the kilometer that Muti had said they needed to find their first monster. Each step they took was shrouded with Muti's Shadow Aura to keep them all quiet, and as close to unnoticeable as possible. Feeling the Lethal Shadow's aura, Astrid cursed her own stupidity in not having developed her own aura hardly at all since she'd evolved to Steel. Unconquerable Aura would be immensely valuable if they were ever surrounded, and Astrid could think of at least half a dozen times in the past month alone that the party would have benefitted greatly from her remembering one of the damn Skills that she had been given upon evolution.
With a shake of her head, Astrid refocused on the present as she redoubled her determination to be better moving forward. Here in the Dungeon, they'd only known the general mana density in this entrance, and that the monsters found here should be about 15 levels higher than they were. The general relative strength of the monsters, how many of them there were, what wandering elite monsters there might be, and every other pertinent piece of information remained completely unknown. As such, losing herself thinking about what she could or should have done was long gone.
Instead, Astrid's focus remained on the sounds that Muti was leading them towards. As they had gotten closer, Astrid had been able to pick up on the very faint sound of whatever they were approaching. A faint chatter, almost like knocking teeth together, filled the air. It was so quiet that, even using Acumen-aligned mana to heighten her senses, Astrid could barely hear it once they were within at most a hundred meters. With her Alacrity, that might as well be right in somebody's face.
Even so, she couldn't see anything, at least until Muti drew her attention at the base of one of the vine-trees. There, with a shining, iridescent carapace, the Wanderers' first encounter with a monster from the Dungeon proper stood. Or, at least, the first time they encountered a Dungeon proper monster inside of the Dungeon proper.
It was a beetle about a meter tall and twice as long. The bulk of its shining armor was on its back two thirds, making Astrid think of the Hiveguard frontliner that she'd seen in the Wandering Trials. Although, different from the Hiveguard, she couldn't say if this monster would be able to fly. Its armor was a shining dark blue color, so deep that Astrid needed to call it indigo. That color seemed to lighten because of the vine-tree it was eating, making the creature start to glow as its carapace lightened towards blue.
Astrid would have thought it was a pretty harmless monster for Steel tier, if it wasn't for the two forelegs that the monster was using to rip into the vine-tree. Each was a meter long and curved like a scythe, and was evidently as sharp as one too. It sliced easily through the vine and pulled it into its mouth. As soon as the section of vine was cut from the ground, the beetle seemed to slurp it up like a long noodle, its carapace glowing ever brighter as it ate.
Astrid stopped, observing the monster as she looked at Muti. Wordlessly, the team's scout communicated that this was the only one nearby, and though she was nervous, Astrid smiled wide as she nodded and gestured for Felix to take the lead.
With the hours of traveling it had taken to get here, the party had long since established what they would do when they made first contact with a monster. They had no way to tell what level it was, so they wouldn't hold back a single thing. Benedict's Skills washed over the party as Felix himself activated his Boon of the Protector and stepped forward to protect his allies, Impenetrable Fortress, Guardian's Amplification, and Raging Guardian serving to protect him. Then, as he hurried forward, using Defender's Mandate to force the beetle to focus on him, he activated Defender's Avatar and swelled to over twice his size and nearly double his physical attributes.
The rest of the party followed in after him, Astrid activating Unconquerable and Heroic Auras while also holding a charge of Physique at the ready, just in case. Behind them, Muti blurred into shadow while Skandr's voice cracked like thunder, the magical power contained within promising death. As such, Felix was as close to untouchable as the party could make him as he rushed into combat.
With several different Skills demanding its attention, the beetle whipped towards Felix, and while its inhuman face was emotionless, it opened its mouth wide and chittered a challenge as it dropped the vine and charged towards Felix.
At least, it tried to, but the party had slowly gotten into position to blitz forward before it had noticed them. It only managed a few steps before Felix roared and swung his axe into the beetle's back, right between the faint juncture between its wing protections. The rest of the party rushed onward, but Felix's axe chopped completely through the beetle, smashing into the ground, and nearly bisecting the beast in a single attack.
The disbelief they all felt at so easily dispatching this first monster dissipated as they received the kill notification.
Indigo Iridescent Shimmerbug slain. 2,100 experience gained, split among party.
Felix raised his axe, shaking the blood off of it as he deactivated his Skill and shrunk down to his regular size. Though his face was covered by his helmet, Astrid knew his expression was much the same as her own, confused and disappointed.
The party all came together, looking out for the possibility of swarms of these beetles coming forward, but there didn't seem to be anything at the moment.
"Disappointing," Skandr said. "However, who knows what the population density is of the things around here, and if that was one of the weakest variations."
Astrid nodded grudgingly, then, maintaining her attention on their surroundings, asked Felix, "If you were to guess, what kind of attributes did this thing have?"
"I'm not sure if it engaged with me because it wanted to or because it had to, so I have no idea what its mental attributes were like," he said, investigating the corpse with his hands. He tapped at the armor his his finger as he continued, "It was over too quick for me to tell if it wanted to go anywhere else or was forced. If I had to guess, I'd say that its mental attributes aren't too high, but that's just me being biased. Insect types typically aren't too smart. As for its Fortitude? It was tough, for a level 61. I hit it in the perfect spot, and it didn't seem to try to avoid me hitting it there, but I could have pierced the defenses in other places. But there's some good resistance on this armor especially. Obviously, we didn't see any Skills, and these scythes are pretty sharp, though I don't know how much Power it has behind them."
"So pretty unimpressive, huh?" Astrid asked.
"I'd say this is probably just about the weakest a monster of this level could be," Felix confirmed.
"Duchess above," Astrid breathed. "Are we going to have to dive in far to try to find something that's even worth hunting?"
"Again," Skandr said, reaching out and elbowing her in the ribs. Of course, it didn't do anything as he smacked his arm into her remarkably high-quality armor, and he grunted in pain before he collected himself and repeated, "Again, we don't know anything about this place yet. We've seen one monster, and there will be plenty more where it's come from."
Astrid nodded, pushing her own impatience to the back of her mind as best as she could. Then, having regained better control over herself, she stepped forward and looked at Muti.
"Lead the way to the next."
The Lethal Shadow didn't say anything in response, instead nodding and gesturing forward. The party fell in behind her, falling into the same ready positions. Now that they'd entered the forest of vine-trees, getting to the next of the shimmerbugs didn't take long. It was only about two hundred meters away, and as they got within a hundred meters once again, it, just like the first, didn't seem to notice their presence. Was that because of Muti's Shadow Aura or something else entirely? There was no way to know.
As Astrid looked at it, she could see that, instead of the indigo color from before, this one was a deeper purple, just like many of the vine-trees to be found around here.
Glancing back and forth, Astrid could see that everybody else was in position, and they went through every preparation that they had for the first.
This time, as Astrid was better prepared to estimate the beetle compared to the last one they'd killed, the shimmerbug seemed slower to respond, turning and rearing back somewhat while brandishing its scythe arms. Felix arrived just about the same moment that it landed back on its feet and started to throw itself forward.
Again, his axe fell, and again, it smashed straight through the beetle.
Violet Iridescent Shimmerbug slain. 1,950 experience gained, split among party.
"It's even weaker," Benedict grumbled.
"Oh, really?" Astrid growled. "I hadn't noticed."
"Calm down," Skandr said, his hand, when he smacked her this time, crackling with enough electricity to give her a little jolt. She glared down at the Wizard, who stood his ground and scowled right back up at her. "He's as frustrated as you are, we're all a little unhappy about this, but we've killed all of two monsters. You're acting like a child. I understand you're excited, now stop making a fool of yourself while we keep moving."
Her immediate reaction was to give an excuse, say that she was teasing, but she knew she wasn't. She was being pissy, as if anybody here had done anything wrong.
As soon as she forced her unreasonable anger down, she apologized to Benedict. This time, instead of just pushing down her impatience, Astrid felt a hot flash of shame. Of course Skandr was correct. She was acting like a child, a fool, and needed to control herself. She thought she could be proud of how far she'd come in controlling her temper, and then the second she thought that, she started acting like this?
"I truly am sorry," Astrid repeated the apology she'd given to Benedict, though this time to the entire party. "I promise, I'll start acting like an adult."
"I will vent your anger for you," Muti said, her voice carrying nearly as much frustration as Astrid felt. "However, we must continue and learn more."
Astrid nodded her head in agreement and gestured for Muti to lead them on. Now, she kept herself tightly controlled, swearing that she wouldn't be angry over such stupid things again.
***
An hour later, Astrid was proud of how well she had maintained her control over her anger. On the other hand, she was growing more and more disappointed with this entrance to the Dungeon proper.
The one good thing that had happened so far was that the density of the shimmerbugs' appearance was going up. Evidently, where the Wanderers entered had already been picked through or was farther away from where the shimmerbugs hatched, or something. Whatever the reason was, as they moved deeper into the Dungeon, they encountered a higher density of monsters, so that sometimes they would fight even two or three of the bugs at the same time.
Unfortunately, that was where the good news had ended.
In an hour, the party had killed 45 shimmerbugs. They ranged in level from 55, like the first violet shimmerbug they killed, to 63, which had been one of the other indigo shimmerbugs they encountered. All told, 45 monsters of about their same level in one hour wasn't a bad amount of experience for that amount of time delving. After all, though about two thirds of the shimmerbugs killed were the violet ones, which had never crossed the watershed of level 61, each person had gained nearly 17,500 experience in an hour. If they were to conduct a full day's delving, they could expect about a third of a level in a single day.
The problem was that the bugs were just… painfully weak.
In fighting more of the violet versions, Felix had to reevaluate his estimation of the strength of the indigo. After all, he'd said that the indigo should be, per level, about as weak as a Steel-tier monster could be. In fact, that honor belonged to the violet bugs, who the party estimated to be about half a tier of rarity lower in growth per level than the indigo ones, which were just painfully weak.
Once the party grew more comfortable in being able to identify general relative strength among the shimmerbugs before they closed in to fight, they'd begun experimenting, trying to understand exactly what the capabilities were for these different monsters. As such, they'd come back with, in terms of being presented with a challenge, rather disappointing information.
The violet shimmerbugs had a single Skill, which was actually an attacking Skill, to Astrid's surprise. They could cause their scythe arms to grow larger, causing a purple aura, just like their shells, to coalesce over the weapon arms and double them in size. Even so, at that point, the attacks didn't have any prayer of piercing through Astrid and Felix's armor, much less their shields.
With the crossing of the watershed, the indigo shimmerbugs had an additional Skill, a charge, which was somewhat like that of the nightmares. Instead of being something that they could just channel every time they charged, the indigo shimmerbugs needed about ten meters to run uninterrupted before the additional spectral armor would appear in front of them to strengthen their attack.
Of course, the party continued to experiment and test the capabilities of the bugs, and learned that only Skandr would be in any appreciable danger from one of the indigo shimmerbugs' charges. Even then, he could easily avoid it, and the attacks, either the charge or the scythe arms, couldn't pierce through Astrid or Felix's armor without them allowing it to repeatedly attack. Even Muti could remain unworried about one of the bugs' attacks with her much lighter armor.
Beyond that, there really wasn't anything worth noting about each of these bugs, and all that the party could really say in the end was that the bugs generally seemed to eat the vines that glowed the same color as their own designation, though why they couldn't say.
"It's been long enough," Astrid said, looking at the rest of the party, "to check out some of the parts of the forest that have higher density of different color trees. Maybe we'll find something more than these little bastards there."
"Yes," Muti agreed, her voice insistent.
The rest of the party didn't disagree, and Muti led the way forward, towards a patch that had several green and yellow vine-trees sprouting, no violets mixed in there at all, just a couple of the indigo ones. Mostly, the vine-trees there were blue, a much lighter blue than that of the indigo.
Something in the back of Astrid's mind prickled at thinking of all these colors, but before she could wonder about it, they drew within about 150 meters of the patch of brighter vine-trees. As they slowed, Muti leaned towards the other members of the party, about to whisper something, when the faint chittering and slashing sounds from up ahead ceased.
The Wanderers all went still, knowing what that meant. The bugs, however many there were up ahead, had all gone silent and still. The delvers all looked at each other, and Astrid signaled for Muti to get a better look while the rest hunched low and waited for their scout to investigate.
She nodded, and with the way that the lighting functioned in this section of the Dungeon, she could simply take a step in one direction, where the shadow was darker from one of the large, drooping leaf branches. There one second and gone the next, Muti went to see why the beetles had gone silent. Only about fifteen seconds passed before she was back, and when she reappeared, she flooded the area with her Shadow Aura once again as she whispered, "There is a green one. It is looking over here. One blue is with it as well as two indigo. The green was sending one of the indigos over here to investigate."
Her whisper-quiet report came over the space of just one second, the words so quick that most people in the world wouldn't be able to understand. Even so, every member of the party understood, and the Wanderers could all see and hear an indigo shimmerbug approaching. They all fell into their battle stances, and as soon as it noticed them, it let out a chittering warning that set the battlefield into motion.
The Wanderers exploded into motion, Astrid punitively smashing her hammer into the indigo beetle's head as they all rushed past it and charged towards the unfamiliar blue and green shimmerbugs. Even so, she didn't feel much in the way of hope for a good fight and swung her hammer into the broadside of the blue shimmerbug while Felix closed in on the green one.
To her surprise, a defensive aura burst into existence around the blue beetle monster, and though Astrid's first hammer strike dispelled the defensive Skill, the echo of her hammer didn't strike into anything as the blue beetle used its charging Skill, and did so much faster than the indigo ones could. It smashed into her, though she braced herself against her shield and was able to stand her ground against it without trouble.
Then, in front of her, she watched as Felix attempted to smash his axe into the same weak point of the green shimmerbug, but it too used the same defensive Skill that the blue one had, and then its scything arms curved out in a flurry of blows at Felix's shield and legs.
Each variety of shimmerbug seemed to be larger than the last, the green one as tall as Felix himself, and it obviously was tougher than the others, as Muti appeared above it and sunk her midnight Mithril blade into the chink in its armor just behind its head.
It wailed in pain, its movements weakening, but it wasn't killed in that single hit.
Astrid felt her excitement soar at the prospect of a real fight as Skandr stopped chanting behind them. And then called attention to that little doubt that'd been in the back of Astrid's head.
"Of course, it's the rainbow!"