Kels led the way while we emerged into the familiar blank stone room that was the entrance chamber to the dungeon. The more dungeons I went through, the more it seemed that this entrance chamber was nearly universal. It was well known by this point that the entrance chamber was safe enough, at the very least, no one needed to be worried about being ambushed by monsters lying in wait in this particular room. None of the other possible dangers or hindrances were present. That at least I was sure of, there wasn't much that could hide from my [All-Seeing Eye], at least not without being so much higher levelled than I was that worrying about it being able to hide from my senses was besides the point.

  I stayed back while Kels and his team marched forward, checking the corners and proceeding without a word. A small sigh escaped me as I followed. It was a pity I couldn't borrow Victor and his team for this; they were by far easier to work with, and we were used to each other by this point. Such was life, though, and problems rarely waited until one was ready to deal with them. We tromped out of the entrance chamber and up a set of narrow stone steps in single file. Ahead of a slow curve, I could see pale light around the corner and feel a chill in the air.

  "Field type chamber…" I muttered to myself. Larger dungeon chambers usually meant one of two things, and sometimes both at once. Larger monsters or more monsters. We'd soon find out which the dungeon had in store for us.

  As a group, we emerged from the underground into the pale light of a snowfield. The frigid wind was biting as it blew over the mostly flat plain of white snow. I could see that dips and gulleys were littering the plain; how large they were was hard to tell. The snow could play games with your vision at times, making things seem farther or nearer, larger or smaller.

  Kels pointed his sword at the far end of the plain, where a scrim of dark pine stood black and straight against the sky. “Choke point,” he rumbled. “Too obvious. Watch the flanks.” He took off at a jog, and the rest of us skated after him. The snow was crusted hard enough that our boots only punched through every third step. Felix started muttering behind, words half swallowed by the wind.

  "Wide open tundra on a first floor, that's... that's, not right. Should be copses, thickets, denning monsters, smaller chambers—" He fell silent as Signe cut him a look, but I could tell he was still cataloguing, theorizing, drawing up lists of what sort of horrors belonged in "wide open tundra" dungeons.

  "Akhlut," he hissed, mostly to himself, but just loud enough I caught it.

  "Akhlut?" Signe murmured, not so much asking as letting the word roll over her tongue like a curse.

  "Orca-wolf," Felix supplied grimly, "Inuit legend, apex of the cold water and fresh snowfall. Eats sled dogs, eats men, eats anything. Probably."

  "Probably punches above its normal weight class in here." I added to the conversation, "The mana wash outside was fairly intense, and this place is filled to the brim. More mana, stronger monsters." I couldn't help the small grin that slipped onto my face. While I didn't like the rush we were in, I relished the opportunity to get stronger again. The looks Signe and Felix cast my way were equal parts caution and surprise.

  "Didn't expect you to say much, you've got a bit of a reputation, you know?" Signe turned to look at me as we jogged through the snow.

  I shrugged.

  "Reputation? He's what they scare the interns with!" Angus cut in with a guffaw. It seemed the frigid walls around the team were starting to come down now. Apparently, they had expected some sort of monstrous psychopath, going by the reputation I apparently had. I didn't mind being the boogie man; it came with advantages and disadvantages I was familiar with.

  I gave Angus a sidelong look, a smile curling at the edges of my mouth. "Didn't know I'd reached campfire ghost story status. Good to know." The warmth of mutual suffering and shared gallows humour was familiar, and it settled over the group with unexpected ease.

  We stuck to the plan, or at least Kels' plan: straight for the tree line, picking up speed as we crossed the snowfield. I flicked [All-Seeing Eye] on and off as we ran. The exit was easy enough to find, considering I could see the mana washing out from the tree line we headed towards. As were the monsters lying in wait beneath the snow.

  “Incoming, from below.” No sooner had the words left my mouth than the snow exploded ahead of us, casting powder into the air in several large clouds.

  "Huh, whale puppies, who would have thought?" Angus voice left us all staring at the large man.

  "Puppies, he says." Signe shook her head in exasperation. He wasn't exactly wrong, but he sure as shit wasn't right either. Emerging from the snowy clouds were a dozen massive quadrupeds that looked like a crossbreed between a timber wolf and an orca. As if an orca had grown so mad in its hunger, it sprouted four thick, muscled legs to prowl the land for prey instead of the ocean. If their still glistening black and white skin was an indication, I would wager they were still just as effective in the water as their non-monsterous relatives. The beasts charged out of the snow, coughing out strange calls as they sprinted towards our group. The damn things weren't small, either; they looked like their shoulders would be at my hip, perhaps a little taller even.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  All traces of joking demeanor fled the group as we prepared for combat. Well, they did. I felt it was prudent to see what the group I'd been saddled with was capable of before we got too deep in the dungeon. So, in turn, my first move was to trigger [Analyze] and see what we were dealing with here.

  [Akhlut Juvenile][Dungeon-born]

  Level: 23

  Species: Phantasmal Orca-Wolf

  Strength: 52

  Dexterity: 38

  Endurance: 41

  Intelligence: 7

  Perception: 25

  Charisma: 6

  Species Skills:

  [Overwhelm]

  [Blood in the Water]

  [Cold Resistance]

  A quick scan through them was enough to confirm my suspicions—mid twenty level range, with stats to match. The real nightmare was that "Juvenile" in the name, and in the context of dungeon monsters, my own experiences told me that almost always implied there was something much bigger and much more pissed off nearby or deeper in the dungeon. It worked in the same way that if you found goblins in a higher-level dungeon, you would almost certainly run into hobgoblins and orcs, since they were in the same conceptual family of monsters. Dungeons were strange things that seemed to draw as much from fantasy as they did from reality or folklore at the very least.

  Either way, mama or papa akhlut might be an issue, but they were an issue for later. For now, I wanted to see how Kels and his team would perform.

  I held position as Kels and the team surged forward, I waited, watching Kels and his squad react. Kels was a thing of violence as soon as the monsters closed—His sword was out before the first Akhlut hit the snow, and it caught the animal full in the face, a perfect slash that split flesh, bone, and into the shoulder below it. The impact should have been a mess of momentum and teeth, but Kels sidestepped on the ball of one foot, hauling the sword free and using the creature's own push to slide it into the next Akhlut barreling forward. Blood misted in the air, instantly freezing and falling like dark snow.

  The creatures were faster than the size of them suggested, and stronger to boot. Signe was on Kels' right and managed to down one immediately with a spell—her wand spat out a bolt of sickly looking greenish lightning that ripped through one Akhlut, leaving it writhing on the ground covered in smaller bolts that seemed to leave burns and rot in equal measure wherever they touched. Then the bolt of nasty was on to its next target, almost as if it had a mind of its own. It seemed Signe was not a one-trick pony, however, as she was already conjuring up something else, even more Akhlut emerged from beneath the snow. A gout of fire ripped forth from the tip of her wand, bathing several Akhlut in roaring flames.

  I turned away from Signe and Kels; neither of them needed help and seemed capable enough on their own. My gaze fell on Angus and Felix, who had moved up to work in tandem with the larger man. Felix's rifle spat out heavy rounds, glowing with power, if the multi-hued muzzle flash was anything to go by. Rounds flew across the field to find their targets, leaving a variety of effects in their wake, some exploded casting shards of ice in all directions; others left their targets ablaze in sickly green fire that hissed against the snow and refused to be extinguished. I counted half a dozen different effects within seconds as the rapid rat tat tat of his rifle echoed over the battlefield.

  It wasn't enough to stop the rush of bodies; however, Akhlut were emerging by the dozen from beneath the snow, and many of them were heading directly for Angus and Felix. It seemed, however, that Angus was quite happy with that outcome, laughing while Felix fired around him, all the while. As the Akhlut finally came into range, the man's hammer came off his shoulder, sweeping around in a tight arc; the first Akhlut it struck was reduced to jelly splattered across the snow. The second was hurled, battered and broken, several dozen meters through the air.

  Within minutes, the snow field was littered with corpses and gore. I was impressed, despite myself, Kels' team handled themselves well enough. I hadn't needed to lift a finger by the time the horde of Akhlut had dwindled down to dregs and then nothing. I could feel Vipera roiling within me; she would want to be let out soon enough. She enjoyed a good fight as much as I did most times. As much as I lamented the loss of the chance to grow in this fight, it was worthwhile knowing the people with me were capable in their own right and not just dead weight.

  We all cast around looking for signs of more monsters. There was nothing.

  Kels gave the field a last, slow scan—helmet off, eyes squinting, blood spatter already crystallizing on his beard—then jerked his chin up at the tree line. "Stack up. Move." The team didn't hesitate. There was a battered efficiency in the way they checked mags, wiped blades, and fell in at his flanks.

  "One moment." I posited, holding up a hand as Vipera materialized around me. She knew what I wanted and immediately slithered down to the ground, then out among the Akhlut corpses, tagging them for my loot ability [Spirit Forge]. It was almost silly, the way the team looked askance at Vipera as she swept the field. They'd seen odd things in dungeons before. Who hadn't? But there was always a special kind of tension the first time a familiar strutted their stuff. 'Friend or Foe?' was always a pertinent question when a monster appeared. No matter where you are from. It only took a couple of minutes before Vipera returned to me.

  Would you like to loot [Akhlut Juvenile] x63.

  [Y/N]?

  Would you like to use Class Skill, [Spirit Forge]?

  [Y/N]?

  I activated [Spirit Forge] and the familiar golden light spilled out of the monster corpses into the air. Over the course of a minute, the light drew towards my open hand in thick streams, coalescing into a collection of orbs. All in all, once the light show finally stopped, I held a collection of six glassy black and white orbs, a couple of inches in diameter, in my open hand.

  [[Forged Soul Core (Akhlut)] - The motive spirit of several Akhlut refined and forged into a raw material with many possibilities.]

  I slipped two of the orbs into my pocket as cover for depositing them in my [Inventory] and tossed the rest of the orbs out to Kels and his team members. There was no point in being greedy about the loot. I could quite literally make more of it. Besides, it wasn't as if they hadn't done the work while I sat on my hands, metaphorically speaking.

  "If you know a crafter, they might be able to make something useful out of those." I shrugged. The looks that had turned somewhat suspicious after I hadn't lifted a finger to fight rapidly went back to normal. Loot, it seemed, was a bit of a cure all for annoyances between team members. I imagined that was enough to soothe any ruffled feathers; rare or unusual loot was, after all, worth a premium. There were several looks, however, when Vipera slithered back up my legs before vanishing. Signe and Felix both looked like they had questions they wanted answers to, and Angus just looked amused.

  "Focus up." Kels ground out, though I noticed he didn't hesitate to pocket his own orb. As a group, we turned towards the pine trees that marked the exit for this chamber. Moment of levity over with, I could feel the timer ticking down in the back of my mind.