Collecting our Bounty

The monster we managed to pull in was one of the weaker ones, an ordinary . Those only ranked E- and were the most common monsters in the dungeon. It was dealt with swiftly and Iris hadn't just killed it with one swoop but also got a clean opening to the crystal. She seemed to have taken note of the place where those where located to not have to make her hands as dirty as yesterday again. The blood of those monster happened to be quite sticky and blueish in colour, basically it could only be described as nasty.

We went ahead towards the corner to the room and Iris took a peek on the monster again. Thankfully they really hadn't noticed their comrade going missing. In the same manner as last time, we took care of one monster after another. We spent a significant amount of time luring them in as carefully as possible, but as long as only one of them came towards the corner, everything worked out just fine.

As soon as the monster died, we extracted its crystal and stored it away in my bag. So far the hunt had been quite bountiful. If things continued on as smoothly as today, we could probably head back to school in a weeks' time. But I also didn't want to be too optimistic there.

Our tactics went on until there were only four monsters left in the room, the mage and three stronger versions of the . Those ones might even be greater variants, which puts them nearly on the same rank as the mage itself with a rank of C-. Their lack of intelligence made them rather easy enemies despite their strength, although they weren't as dumb as the savage ones.

Once again, we were facing a dilemma. Considering how close they stood to the mage, luring one only seemed impossible. Despite that, Iris still gave it a shot and threw a stone right at the one standing nearest to the entrance.

Unexpectedly however the stone didn't hit the beast. Instead the monster easily deflected it with its club. The stone fell to the ground and now all of them including the mage turned facing towards us. The mage even began to prepare a spell already.

Most spells couldn't be casted immediately, they had a certain cast time. The higher skilled the mage was, the shorter the cast time would be. More powerful spells also needed more cast time. Because of that, even strong mages relied on weaker spells a lot to make use of the speed advantage.

We didn't know how this could be compared to a hybrid mage but since it casted for a while, the spell couldn't be too weak. Since none of us where able to use spells at this point besides healing, we were left in a predicament. Either we faced them head on or we could run away.

Considering how many crystals we had collected, running away wasn't too bad of a choice either. But I didn't get to voice my decision anyway, Iris and the two boys had already decided on our plan.

What that was?

Fighting them head on of course…

It seemed like they had gotten bored already from those easy kills and wanted to have a certain thrill as well. Considering how long we had spent spectating the room, we already knew too well how many opponents there were. Traps couldn't be spotted either. So this time charging right in was far from as bad as last time. And of course, Iris had her own plan and knew how to deal with the mage.

While charging at one of the regular beasts, Iris threw the rest of her rocks towards the mage. This successfully disrupted its spellcasting and the celestial energy gathered at top of its staff exploded in a spectacular manner. This also had the nice side effect of distracting the other beasts.

But to Iris surprise the beast still managed to dodge her sword and only took a major wound to its stomach instead of instant death. Julian and Lander also had a hard time with their opponents and it soon came to a stalemate.

As we were safe from ambushes, I also charged in and targeted the unprotected mage. I slashed at it but as clever as it happened to be, it chose to sacrifice its staff to parry my katana and tried to run away. Seeing it unarmed, I disregarded the mage for now and slashed at the beast Lander was facing. He clearly struggled against it, but with the two of us we managed to make quick work of it.

With a deep wound on its back, it collapsed to the ground. This fight would actually have been way too hard if we didn't have the advantage in numbers. But thanks to the buffs I received from Emilia, I could act like an assassin, which gave us another edge and the mage was essentially useless.

Lander headed to Julian and I to Iris to also kill the other two monsters shortly after. We might have received some minor bruises but those were quickly taken care of by Althaia. The only monster left in the room now was the staff-less mage.

Iris took matters into her hands and swiftly ended the poor fellow's life. It cried in agony while doing so, but there wasn't any comrade left to help it. Those had all been killed in the corridor before.

We all sat down on the ground and panted. Although we managed to overpower them, all of us still had a certain amount of nervousness on our minds. Iris trick to cancel the spell might have saved us, nobody wanted to address the elephant in the room what might have happened if the mage successfully casted its spell.

After a well-deserved break, we looted the rest of the monsters and headed for the exit of the dungeon. We didn't want to stay in it and the exit was only a small journey away.

It had been a bountiful day, hopefully tomorrow things would continue to go on as smoothly.