The team was jogging steadily as they approached the first boss.

The boar man had been watching his minions being crushed by the advance of the invaders, and now they were coming for him. It was clearly a mismatch between the forces, but he was much stronger than the boars were.

He prepared for the inevitable attack, whether it was those tall and slender demons or the bears that were leading the final charge.

No matter what it was, he was confident that he could take them.

That confidence did not survive the first engagement between the boss and the bears.

The two Spirit Bear Tyrants were so much larger than the boar man boss that it could only desperately try to fight them off. But all the damage that it could do was of the physical element, in the eyes of the System.

And that meant that he couldn’t even scratch them.

So, he gave up on that and tried going for anyone else.

Unfortunately, the bears were not on board with that plan, and they immediately began to pound him into the dirt the moment that the boss dared to turn away from them.

That was enough to put him off balance, and put the boss on the run, trying to avoid the bears as he worked on attacking anything but the bears. The sight was somewhat comedic, and the three Elders couldn’t help but think that they were actually the bullies here.

Then, Dana’s Golems got in position to keep the boss from running, while the bears covered the other two sides, and it was just a matter of dealing as much damage as possible.

And that was the end of hope for the boss.

In under a minute, he was dead, and everyone was low on mana, even with a pair of Mana Pylons up. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

{Iron Man Bonus In Effect} Rewards will be granted upon completion.

"Well, that was unexpected. Much more mana burn than I had thought that we would manage. Take a few minutes and have a snack, then we can continue." Elder Alix informed them with a deep frown.

The break wouldn’t be long, but too many breaks would be the difference between finishing two and getting to down a boss on a third run before their timer ran out.

It took nearly two minutes before everyone was full of mana and ready to go again, but the Golems had been working hard.

They had left the moment that everyone took their break, and they had been clearing their way through the Kobold and hellhound groups. And they were actually doing it more smoothly than the first run.

Instead of accidentally gathering everything, they were grabbing one group at a time, and the hounds weren’t howling to pull the rest of the monsters to them.

"There must be something about our group, and not our tactics, that triggered them last time. The tactic is essentially the same. It’s all the golems we had last time, plus a pair of bears.

But they’re not causing the chaos that our arrival did." Elder Socrate noted.

Karl frowned. "Excellent point. Let’s let them keep clearing the way, and then we will follow behind them and see if anything strange happens. It will cost us some time, but I suspect that the issue was actually our area damage abilities.

We hit targets that were outside the area of the group that we pulled, so we pulled more mobs to us.

We could try hitting them only with small area attacks and direct damage skills.

That should be enough to keep from pulling anything else, since it’s clearly not a regular occurrence, or one of you would have known and been prepared for the situation."

The Elders considered the solution, then motioned for Karl to lead the way.

Everyone could deal direct damage to the monsters when they caught up with the golems, and that would take them to Cerberus in a reasonably short time.

"This whole speed running a dungeon situation is a bit crazy. Who even does this?" Elder Socrate complained as they jogged toward the fight.

"You just hate physical exercise. You’d rather be in your lab working on new pills instead of out here in the fresh air, stretching your legs."

"Yes, very much so."

Remi nodded. {I don’t like stretching legs either. Legs are overrated.}

Elder Alix stared at the snake for half a second before realizing that it was a joke, and bursting into laughter.

"Indeed. I can see how a Naga would object to all things leg related."

Remi giggled as she floated along beside the Elders. "Exactly, Even my lovely bodyguards do not come equipped with legs, and they’re specifically designed to protect me.

Since they don’t need legs, how important could they be?"

"Words of wisdom from our resident Naga Matriarch. Perhaps we should start teaching the students how to fight effectively when their legs are not in use." Elder Socrate joked.

Cara could already imagine how much fun she would have with that training class.

They were just about to join the group when an angry brown form launched itself out of the trees, one of the roaming wolverines that had missed the passage of the main group.

Cara was on it instantly, and for a moment the Elders hesitated. They were roughly the same size and shape, and she looked so happy having a fist fight with her wingless brown cousin.

But they were on a schedule, so it was time to get rid of the nuisance, and move on to join the rest of the team.

The barrage of single target skills took out the wolverine the instant they hit, and Cara was left with just one hit. Hardly enough to be satisfying, but better than nothing. Now that she knew what they looked like, she could just have Opal make them with [Illusionary Domain] and [Reality Warp].

Playing with those long toothed cousins of the badger family seemed like it could be a lot of fun.

There was plenty of time for that, though.