Derivan struck down the last of the Crystal Mimics, his sword slowing as it shattered. He didn't have the muscles to feel the ache of acid or the soreness of prolonged battle, but his movements were beginning to feel sluggish. It took more effort for him to move and react, even to speak.

Conveniently enough, that meant that he sounded out of breath when he spoke, just like a human would. "That is... the last of them. [Monster Sense] has faded again. I believe we are due for a break."

"No fuckin' kidding," Misa groaned, flopping down onto the ground with a thump. "How long have we been at this?"

"Five hours," Vex said. He leapt nimbly down from the platform he'd been standing on, but stumbled slightly as he straightened; Sev quickly grabbed him and steadied him, and he flushed slightly as he nodded at the cleric. "Thanks. We're lucky, I think; the countdown's down to about twenty minutes. I knew crystal processing would be faster, but I didn't realize it would be this much faster."

Vex called up the window again to confirm, glancing quickly through the displayed information.

Mana Crystal Collection — Processing...

Ambient mana concentration detected at 95%.

Ambient mana deviation measured within 1.3 standard deviations.

Crystal purification proceeding... Estimated time: 18 minutes, 20 seconds to Grade 2 crystal.

"We've shaved about twelve hours off the initial reported time," Vex said. "A grade 2 can sustain a village for a week. Should we stay for a grade 3?"

"If it keeps speeding up, we should," Sev said, but he bit his lip. "I hope the Guild hurries up. It'd be better if multiple parties could take advantage of this, and that mana concentration is going up way faster than is normal."

"There's no guarantee that any adventurers will be close enough, anyway," Misa grunted. "Though at least with a job like this they'd actually pick up the quest."

"The mana concentration is significant?" Derivan asked curiously. "Vex mentioned earlier that the quality of the resulting dungeon depended on mana concentration, but I was unaware that it had an effect on the time taken for a dungeon to form."

"Dungeons always form a certain amount of time after the process begins, but reaching a hundred percent usually triggers the process immediately." Vex looked at the status. "Sev, you said it was two or three days away?"

"It was," Sev confirmed, flicking a finger through his own status with a worried scowl on his face. "I should've noticed it before, but it's accelerating. And not just because of the monsters we fought off — that contributed only about three percent of the mana concentration. We've gone up the other sixteen percent in five hours."

"Worrying," Vex said, his brows furrowing; he wondered if it had something to do with the amount of mana he was throwing around. "Then I think we should definitely stay. There's no guarantee anyone else would be able to get here in time to take advantage of the bonus."

"I agree," Misa said, and Derivan nodded as well.

"We're staying, then," Sev decided. "Anyone need healing? I'm about topped up on mana." Sev glanced around, checking the party for injuries. No one was significantly hurt... a low-cost [Area Heal], then.

The glow of his heal rippled through the party, reflecting briefly off the walls of force that made up the small defensive structure Vex had built. Everyone let out a small sigh of relief, and the party settled in to wait.

Surprisingly, the wait was uneventful.

Mana Crystal Collection — Processed.

Ambient mana concentration detected at 96%.

Ambient mana deviation measured within 1.3 standard deviations.

Crystal purification complete! A Grade 2 Mana Crystal has been deposited with your party leader.

Please remain within the Nucleus to upgrade your crystal further.

A pause, and then the screen updated, reflecting a new upgrade time for the next grade of crystal.

Grade 2 Mana Crystal detected!

Grade 2 Mana Crystal will be upgraded to Grade 3 in: 10 minutes, 40 seconds.

"...Ten minutes?" Vex said, staring blankly. "That... can't be right."

"It's not." Sev gripped at his staff, his face suddenly pale. He glanced at a screen no one else could see. "I changed my mind. We should leave. Now."

"But... ten minutes. A Grade 3 crystal will keep a village topped off for at least a month, if they don't need to cure any diseases." Misa breathed, staring at the display and half reaching out towards it. Then she shook her head fiercely. "I — no, you're right. [Danger Sense] is telling me we should leave, too. Let's go."

"We cannot," Derivan said softly, and the other three all glanced at him. He gestured to the the edge of the crater that made up the Nucleus.

Past the force walls Vex had conjured, mana was swirling, the concentration so thick it was visible as streams of glittering light. It would have been beautiful if not for the fact that it was beginning to form into solid, physical structures. It began from the outer edges of the crater, where towering walls of light were beginning to solidify.

"We are best protected here," Derivan said. "If we leave now—"

"We'll get stuck out in the open with no defenses," Sev breathed. He shook his head. "Okay. Shit. Ten minutes. We can do this. Once the dungeon finishes forming, we can leave. I have [Divine Communion] if things go too far to shit. We'll be fine."

Warning!

Ambient mana concentration has reached 100%!

Dungeon formation imminent!

Grade 2 Mana Crystal will be upgraded to Grade 3 upon dungeon formation. Further upgrades will be provided based on remaining ambient mana and combat performance.

Estimated time left: 10 minutes.

"Incoming!" Derivan shouted, and everyone scrambled into position. The first monster burst into view, burrowing up from just outside the [Earth Ward], and launched itself towards Derivan in a blur of motion; the armor barely managed to bring his sword up in time to block the scything blades of its legs. "Level 37 Burrowing Spider!" he called back.

"I've got a level 32 Earthwyrm!" Misa shouted; her voice was pained, the wyrm having managed to squirm past her guard for a moment to dig a deep gash into the flesh of her arm. She saw her health ticking rapidly down in the corner of her vision — shit, it's got poison, she thought briefly — before the familiar comfort of a heal trickled through her arm, and she gripped her mace in a [Paralyzing Bash] to give herself a moment to breathe.

There were more monsters. So many more monsters, this time. It was sheer luck that they weren't intelligent enough to register the walls that Vex had built as anything more than an obstacle. As long as there was an opening, they flooded towards that, instead of trying to break down the spell.

The corridor of force itself was narrow enough that neither Misa nor Derivan needed to fight off too many of them at the same time. But the monsters were hard to kill, and they were slowly getting pushed inward, closer towards the center of the corridor where Sev stood. Even with Vex desperately casting spells, even with Sev's support magic flooding through them and gifting them with divine strength... It felt like they wouldn't last three minutes, let alone the ten they needed to last for the dungeon to finish forming.

It was going to be a long fight.

Misa grit her teeth. The wyrm she was fighting was ten levels above her. If it was the only enemy she had to fight, she could handle it; level differences didn't matter as much as Skills did, and monsters in particular didn't usually have the intelligence to take advantage of stat differences. But she had to do more than fend off the wyrm: she had to fend off every enemy in front of her, and make sure none of them could get past her.

There were too many for that.

But that was fine. She could handle this. There was a reason she was their tank, over even Derivan and the ridiculous durability of his armor.

On the best of days, Misa disliked her class. It was rare, sure, and she had no doubt that others would kill to get it — but it was a reminder, too. A reminder that she'd failed, once upon a time; a reminder that she'd once stood before a horde of monsters just like this one, her fellows dead and beaten.

A reminder that for all that she'd fought, she was only one person, and she could do nothing against a horde. She fought until she was inside her village, engaging as many as she could, but even then the monsters kept flooding past her. She could still remember the chittering laughter.

She'd tried. It wasn't that she hadn't tried. She fought until she could barely stand, until her limbs were broken and bleeding. She still didn't know how she'd managed to survive, how she'd managed to keep fighting; the memory was a blur for her.

But when she'd come to, she'd seen how her status had changed. She'd been given a class. [Fallen Guardian].

The name was a reminder of her failure, and it never stopped hurting — but at the same time, a part of her was grateful. She'd be able to prevent that from ever happening again.

[To Fall Yet Hold the Line] [Active Skill] [Maxed]

Cost: 10% Max Health per Attack Blocked

You guard the gate, and none shall pass while your blood still flows.

If you would fail to block an enemy, you do not.

It was a powerful skill — vaguely worded skills like that always were. It had its weaknesses, of course, and anyone that knew precisely how her skill worked would be able to subdue her all too quickly. But against monsters, with a healer at her back?

As long as ten of them weren't attacking her at once, she would be fine. She trusted Sev.

With that in mind, Misa moved.

Skills provided by the system were some mixture of natural prowess, knowledge, and physical or magical capability. Rarer skills allowed the users to break past their limits, either granting them with greater knowledge or — particularly in the case of skills that were not explicitly magical — allowing them to perform impossible physical feats.

This was one of the latter types of skill. Misa had neither the stats nor the reaction time to block three wyrms that were over level 30 all at once, but she somehow still did, flowing from one form to the other and striking them each hard enough to knock them back. The skill drew on her knowledge, predicting what she would do if she had the speed and power, and moved her body for her.

The cost, of course, was that her body could not truly handle those speeds or feats of strength; her muscles and ligaments tore with every movement.

It was a small price to pay. This was still on the lower end of what the skill could do, in any case.

Misa twisted. A wyrm was launching itself towards her, teeth gnashing in the air; she leapt to meet it, sword impaling it through the mouth and into dark, bitter flesh. In the next instant a wyrm threatened to cross the line she held, and Misa found herself there; her blade flicked through the flesh of the first wyrm like it was nothing, and she impaled the second one through the head into Vex's [Earth Ward].

Without pausing, she spun and punched, trusting the skill guiding her movements. She left her blade and the squirming wyrm in the ground. Though she had no idea what she was aiming at, there was a satisfying smack as the force of her fist sent the last wyrm crashing into the edge of the corridor of force.

Misa breathed. She felt healing trickle in. Part of her was worried that they wouldn't be able to keep this up; ten minutes suddenly felt like a long, long time.

Another part of her was falling back into an old state of mind, letting all her worries and fears fade away. There was no space in battle to think about any of that.

All she had to do was hold the line.

Derivan was worried. He was stronger than any of his companions thought, certainly, but there was only so much he could do to hide the true extent of his skills; he would not allow them to die simply to preserve his secret. No. If this fight revealed him, and this was where his journey ended...

...It was easier not to think about.

Despite the warning on [Hide Status], the skill couldn't completely force him to fight as a level 26. The problem was twofold; one, no skill would remove knowledge that you already possessed. [Combat Proficiency] was a skill that was currently being restricted down to a grade 1 skill — but he still possessed all his memories of fighting at maxed [Combat Proficiency].

The second problem was that skills themselves were never completely disabled; the most they would do was be restricted to grade one. But some of his skills were exceptionally effective even at a grade of one; it was one of the perks of being an elite monster, as much as he hated the thought.

[Consume] [Active Skill] [Maxed ]

Cost: 250 MP

Grapple a target. If the target does not break out of your grapple in seconds, absorb the target, refilling your HP and MP by of their remaining HP and MP, and gain the [Satiated] buff.

[Satiated] grants of all stats and skills possessed by the target, and lasts for 10 seconds per 10% of the target's remaining HP. Note: Until [Satiated] expires, target has a chance of escaping every 5 seconds.

[Consume] may not be used while [Satiated] is active.

It wasn't a skill he enjoyed using. But for this battle, while he was still restricted to level 26...

The average Burrowing Spider or Earthwyrm, at level 35, took him 30 seconds to kill without assistance from Vex. Grappling would restrict his movements slightly, but not completely — he had the benefit of being large enough to grapple the smaller enemies with a single hand.

Derivan had three enemies headed for him; one level 32, one level 40, and one level 37. This was a small enough crowd that he could handle them, even with his current stats.

The level 37 Burrowing Spider reached him first, and he ducked underneath its leap, catching its exoskeleton on the wicked hook at the end of his sword; he spun his blade forward, smashing it into the ground and stunning it.

Before it could recover, he ran forward. He grabbed the level 40 wyrm in the middle of its body, ignoring the razor-sharp teeth and making sure it didn't have the leverage to twist around and bite him. He activated [Consume], then scrambled back into position, using the force of his blade hitting the ground to launch himself back.

It was a trick Misa had taught him. If the skill or weapon was stronger than his stats, it could give him more power and speed to leverage than his stats would.

The level 32 Burrowing Spider was scrambling over the still-struggling body of the first; they were getting tangled with one another in their desperation to get to Sev. Derivan didn't give them the chance — his sword slammed into the two wriggling spiders, cracking carapace and splattering insectoid goop.

Not enough to kill them. But enough to wound them badly; they retreated briefly, hissing at him.

Four more seconds.

He opted to wait. The spiders were circling his position, wary of him; the other monsters were looking for an opportunity to attack. The timer continued to tick down.

One. Zero —

There was a flash of darkness, and the wyrm he was holding on to abruptly vanished.

Buff [Satiated] applied!

7.5% of the stats of a level 40 monster was not an incredible boost, though it also wasn't insignificant. More important, however, were the skills.

Or, more accurately, the skill. There was only one skill that he cared about receiving. The [Earth Ward] Vex had applied to the ground did, after all, only prevent enemies from moving; it would do nothing to stop him from wreaking whatever havoc he wanted.

[Burrow] [Active] [Grade: 1] [Temporary]

Cost: 15 MP/s

Move underground at normal movement speed.

The other ridiculous thing about [Consume], of course, was that skills were often designed for the particular species they belonged to. Earthwyrms did not move particularly well on land, but dug through the dirt like they were swimming through water. Translated to Derivan, who could already move at high speeds for his level?

The armor dove into the dirt, feeling it part easily for him; his feet landed on platforms that didn't exist, and he felt the earth almost pushing him forward as he aimed towards one of the two Burrowing Spiders. He swung hard as he exited the dirt, still moving at twice his normal velocity—

Carapace shattered.

Your party has killed a Level 37 Burrowing Spider!

Derivan would have smiled grimly, if he could. That spider still had more than half of its health. This was good. And he still had 97 seconds left on the buff.

It wasn't quite enough yet. But he could make this work.