Morwenna practically vibrated with excitement.

"Captain!" Morwenna volunteered eagerly, stepping forward and drawing the Astral Corsair from its scabbard.

The deep-blue cosmic veins in the metal pulsed violently.

"If we can’t blow it up, let me just walk in there! I can use Tidal-Blade Arts to slash the main tunnel in half! I’ll flood the lower levels with phantom heavy-water!"

Eluned aggressively glared at the pirate.

"You are an unrefined brute!" Eluned insulted her directly. "Did the parameters completely skip over your water-logged brain? If you slash the main support beams, the entire cavern collapses! We lose the loot!"

"At least I’m offering a functional melee solution!" Morwenna bickered back instantly, her feral eyes flashing. "You just want to stand in the back and throw shiny leaves at them!"

"I am an SSS-Rank Goddess!" Eluned shrieked.

"And I am the Dread Queen!" Morwenna roared back.

Silas aggressively pinched the bridge of his nose.

The SSS-Rank kindergarten was officially back in session.

Before Silas could order them to shut up, Tasmin confidently stepped forward into the middle of the bickering divinities.

The Wilderness Huntress drew her chained daggers with the dark crimson flames instantly igniting at the tips.

"My Lord," Tasmin offered with absolute, unyielding loyalty. "I know the exact interior layout... I will gladly run into the darkness, aggro the entire horde, and act as bait to draw them out into the clearing for the Vanguard!"

Total silence fell over the raid team.

Silas looked at Tasmin.

Morwenna looked at Tasmin.

Eluned looked at Tasmin.

Brida and the girls looked at Tasmin.

And then, in perfect coordinated unison, every single person in the group completely ignored her.

Silas turned his attention directly back to the cavern.

Morwenna went back to glaring at Eluned.

Brida adjusted her heavy shield.

Tasmin stood there with her flaming daggers completely useless.

"Hey!" Tasmin complained loudly with her pride taking a massive hit. "I am the fastest unit here! I can easily outrun a Corrupted Orc!"

"Absolutely not," Thora shut the assassin down entirely, stepping forward and dropping her heavy canvas duffel bag into the mud. "You literally got your spine pulverized into sawdust exactly three hours ago. We are not risking you getting grabbed again... Act mature about this."

Tasmin violently puffed her cheeks out, completely humiliated.

’You know it’s bad when Thora is the one being mature...’ Silas thought.

"Besides," Thora grinned, kneeling down and unzipping her heavy duffel bag. "I have the exact perfect tool for this specific tactical scenario."

Thora reached deep into the bag of highly volatile explosives.

She pulled out a small smooth gray sphere.

It was roughly the size of a baseball, completely covered in intricate complex runic engravings that pulsed with a irritating yellow light.

"What the hell is that?" Brida asked, leaning over her shield to inspect the device.

"It’s a Sonic-Aggro Emitter..." Thora explained proudly, tossing the heavy metal sphere casually in her hand. "I completely modified a standard concussive grenade chassis. Instead of exploding outward, the internal runes generate a highly concentrated high-frequency sound wave that physically irritates the eardrums of monsters... It is designed to draw hostile targets out of their defensive hiding places."

Silas stared at the highly advanced snd incredibly specific piece of tactical equipment.

’She literally built a specialized monster-lure grenade from scratch?’ Silas thought, baffled by the speed of her production.

"When exactly did you have the time to completely engineer, design, and forge a custom sonic grenade?" Silas asked, his voice deadpan. "You spent all night forging my armor and other stuff."

Thora shrugged her muscled shoulders with a massive arrogant grin on her face.

"I have a lot of free time, Boss!" Thora laughed loudly.

She didn’t wait for formal authorization.

Thora aggressively cocked her arm back and violently hurled the small gray sphere directly into the pitch-black maw of the cavern.

The metal ball sailed through the air in a perfect flawless arc, disappearing completely into the deep shadows of the tunnel.

Exactly three seconds later, the mechanical latches engaged.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

A condensed shrill agonizing sound wave violently erupted from the depths of the cave.

The high-frequency pitch was completely silent to human ears, but it caused the muddy ground to physically vibrate.

Instantly, the silence of the Umbral Basin was shattered.

ROOOOOOAAAAAAAR!

A massive deafening symphony of guttural, homicidal roars erupted from the darkness.

The sound of dozens of heavy armored footsteps frantically rampaging up the stone tunnel echoed loudly, shaking the ironwood trees.

It wasn’t a small scouting party this time...

It was a whole horde.

"Form a perimeter!" Silas roared, drawing the violently glowing Tier 3 Azure Guillotine from its scabbard. "Do not let them break the line!"

The Vanguard responded instantly.

Brida slammed her heavy kite shield into the mud, planting her boots firmly.

Fenna and Elara knocked arrows, drawing the bowstrings back to their cheeks.

The monsters violently breached the cavern entrance.

It was an terrifying tidal wave of corrupted monsters.

Dozens of towering eight-foot-tall Tier 2 Corrupted Orcs poured out of the cave, wielding heavy rusted iron maces.

They were flanked by a massive pack of Umbral Wolves... massive pitch-black direwolves with glowing red eyes and razor-sharp bone spurs protruding from their spines.

There was a shit ton of them.

"Engage!" Silas ordered.

The clearing instantly erupted into absolute, cinematic violence.

Fenna and Elara didn’t stagger their shots. They engaged a high-speed rapid-fire sequence.

Twang! Twang! Twang!

A massive condensed volley of enchanted arrows rained directly down onto the charging horde.

The arrows didn’t aim for the heavy breastplates.

They found the unarmored gaps in the Orcs’ thick necks and the glowing red eyes of the Umbral Wolves, dropping half a dozen targets before they even crossed the clearing.

"Hold the line!" Brida roared.

A massive mutated Tier 2 Orc completely bypassed the arrows and charged directly at the heavy infantry commander, swinging a heavy iron club.

Brida didn’t flinch as she applied Morwenna’s lesson perfectly.

She didn’t brace her shield flat.

She angled the heavy mythril edge exactly fifteen degrees to the right.

The massive iron club hit the angled shield and deflected harmlessly to the side, completely throwing the Orc off-balance.

Brida aggressively stepped forward, swinging the pulsing axe in a brutal upward arc.

SQUELCH!

The heavy mythril axe entirely, completely bisected the towering Orc from groin to sternum.

Black blood erupted across the mud as the two halves of the monster fell away.

To her right, Gunnhild was putting on a show.

The towering spearwoman utilized a flawless high-speed thrusting technique.

WHOOSH!

She didn’t slash.

She kept her distance, utilizing the massive reach advantage of her heavy spear.

She rapidly pierced the throats of three charging Umbral Wolves in quick succession with her movements looking very fluid.

"Too slow!" Tasmin laughed loudly, she was back in her element.

The Wilderness Huntress flipped gracefully through the air, entirely clearing the front line.

She landed directly on the broad armored shoulders of a confused Orc.

"Die!"

SWISH!

Tasmin crossed her flaming Tier 3 daggers against its neck like a pair of scissors and violently jerked her arms outward.

The Orc’s head cleanly popped off with the stump instantly cauterized by the dark crimson fire.

The girls were dealing work, but the volume of monsters pouring out of the cave was threatening to overwhelm their stamina.

"Allow me..." Eluned sighed politely, stepping forward into the mud.

The Goddess of Nature didn’t draw a weapon.

She didn’t even raise her hands.

She simply looked at the massive horde of charging Orcs, entirely unimpressed by their biology.

Eluned lifted her flawless bare left foot and gently, casually stomped directly down onto the muddy ground.

KRA-KOOM!

The entire clearing violently shook.

A massive surge of pure condensed SSS-Rank nature mana erupted directly into the bedrock beneath the horde.

Instantly, dozens of massive razor-sharp thick ironwood spikes violently erupted completely out of the earth.

They shot upward with terrifying velocity, entirely impaling twenty Corrupted Orcs and a dozen Umbral Wolves simultaneously.

The monsters were skewered mid-stride with their heavy bodies lifted completely off the ground and suspended in the air like grotesque bleeding trophies.

"Show off," Morwenna muttered, deeply annoyed by the massive AoE kill-steal.

The Dread Queen didn’t stay idle.

She completely abandoned the defensive line, charging directly toward a cluster of heavily armored Orcs that had managed to bypass the wooden spikes.

Morwenna didn’t use a standard sword technique...

She swung the Astral Corsair in a wide, sweeping horizontal arc as she engaged her Tidal-Blade Arts at 15% output.

A massive wave of phantom dark blue heavy-water erupted directly from the edge of her blade.

The crushing pressure of the deep-sea slash hit the Orcs like a literal tsunami.

Their heavy iron armor instantly crumpled inward with their ribcages shattering completely under the pressure before the blade even physically touched them.

"Hehehahaha! Don’t you want more?!"

The clearing was a slaughterhouse.

The black mud was completely choked with the mutilated, burning, and skewered corpses of the dungeon horde.

Silas stood in the center of the chaos calmly.

He didn’t swing wildly.

He executed simply clean flawless strikes with The Azure Guillotine, cleanly severing the limbs of any Umbral Wolf that got too close to his backline archers.

The horde was rapidly thinning out as the girls had successfully broken the primary wave.

And then, the heavy earth-shattering sound of massive footsteps echoed from the cave entrance.

Silas instantly locked his golden-ringed eyes onto the yawning darkness.

The ambient air in the clearing violently shifted.

The temperature completely plummeted.

The low-tier monsters still surviving on the field actively flinched and scrambled out of the way.

A massive towering behemoth stepped entirely out of the cavern and into the gray daylight of the Umbral Basin.

It was massive.

It stood an impossible twelve feet tall.

Its thick, leathery hide was a bruised sickly shade of obsidian black as heavy unrefined plates of raw mythril were bolted directly into its collarbones and spine.

It held a massive thick pillar of solid iron ripped directly from a mine cart track and it’s crimson eyes burned with a intelligent sadistic light.

It was the exact monster that Tasmin had described.

"ROOOOOHHHHHH!" the behemoth bellowed as a massive wave of killing intent blasting across the clearing.

It locked its glowing crimson eyes directly onto Silas, instantly recognizing the Mythic Gold Core as the primary alpha threat on the battlefield.

It didn’t hesitate.

It shot forward instead with its massive iron-plated boots tearing huge gouges in the mud.

"RAHHHHH!"

It raised the solid iron pillar high above its head, preparing to completely crush the Sovereign into paste but Silas didn’t back away.

He didn’t ask Morwenna or Eluned to intervene.

This was a very personal execution.

Silas gripped the hilt of The Azure Guillotine tightly in his right hand.

"So you like bullying girls, huh?" Silas muttered with his voice cold and lacking any sort of mercy.

The monster swung the massive iron pillar in a brutal sweeping downward arc.

Silas didn’t block it.

He ignited his Mythic Gold Core to maximum output as a blinding roaring aura of pure golden sovereign mana erupted directly from his body, completely engulfing the Midnight Carapace armor and the blade of his sword.

He stepped directly inside the monster’s massive guard and Silas executed a single overwhelmingly powerful upward slash.

The golden mana condensed entirely along the razor-sharp edge of the cosmic steel.

SHING!

The sound was incredibly crisp.

The Azure Guillotine effortlessly, flawlessly cleaved completely through the solid iron pillar.

It didn’t stop.

The golden blade tore directly upward, slicing cleanly through the thick mythril armor plating on the monster’s chest, slicing through its thick obsidian hide, and passing entirely through its skull.

Silas stood perfectly still with his sword extended high into the air.

For a fraction of a second, the twelve-foot behemoth stood frozen in place.

And then, a massive glowing golden line appeared perfectly down the exact center of its massive body.