As the droning sound went on, the lizards around the room started to move. They charged at the shield, while the monster with tentacles coming out of its eyes retreated, disappearing in their midst. The barrage of attacks against the shield resumed.

“What the fuck was that?!” Narcha asked in disbelief.

Eiwin frowned. “It must be a parasite monster! It should be the one controlling these monsters!”

Reinhart looked at her with an expectant expression. “So if we kill it, will they stop attacking us?”

The young woman hesitated. “I don’t know, but it’s worth a try!”

“But how do we reach it?” Narcha asked, looking around at the monsters. “How do we even spot it?! They all look the same!”

At this point, the group had been completely surrounded. Giant lizards were crawling even above them as their large claws scratched at the invisible barrier. There were already signs of the shield cracking in a few spots.

“I can single it out!” Red said.

“You can?!” Narcha looked at him in surprise.

The boy nodded. “I can lead you to it, but it’s behind a lot of the other lizards! You’ll need to clear a path to it!”

The woman gritted her teeth. “I don’t know if we can do that in our state!”

“We can use the pills.” Reinhart said.

“That still won’t be enough.” Narcha shook her head.

While they were speaking, more cracks appeared in the barrier.

Eiwin looked at her companions. “We’ll just focus on opening the way! Red, you strike the monster once you spot it. Here,” she tossed the boy something out of her pocket. “Use this.”

Red grabbed the item and examined it. It was the fireball talisman.

He stared at Eiwin with some hesitation. “The whole place might collapse if we use this.”

The woman shook her head. “I know, but it’s the strongest attack we have in our arsenal. If we don’t kill this thing in one blow, it might escape. Besides, we don’t know if the lizards will stop attacking us once this parasite dies, so this fireball might afford us the chance to escape.”

Red nodded, convinced by the woman’s words. Right at that moment, large cracks started to appear in the shield, and they knew this was the telltale sign of its imminent collapse.

Reinhart urged them on. “Eat the pills, quick!”

The knight did as much himself, while Narcha and Eiwin weren’t too far behind him in consuming their own pills. While the effects were in process of making its way through their bodies, Red held onto his talisman and pinpointed the lizard-parasite’s location with his crimson sense.

“It’s over there!” Red pointed in a certain direction from inside the barrier.

The lizard didn’t seem to have moved much since it retreated, and the boy wasn’t sure if this was because of its absolute confidence in its strength or for some other reason. Either way, the monster couldn’t have known about the group’s abilities, and this worked to their benefit at the moment.

Narcha looked at Reinhart and Eiwin. “You two, take my flanks!”

They nodded back.

The woman then stared at Red. “You stay close to my back!”

Red also nodded in understanding.

Narcha then glared at the lizards on the other side of the barrier. “I’m not waiting until this collapses! We’re breaking through right now!”

The others didn’t have the time to protest against her decision before the warrior swung her saber against the barrier from the inside. The strength of her blow was enough to push the shield over the edge, and it shattered from the point of impact of her weapon.

Her blow also carrier through the fractured barrier, carrying even more brute strength now after the woman had consumed the Empowerment Pill. Two lizards that were trying to break through the shield were cut in half by her saber, while a few others nearby were knocked back as the weapon seemed to pass more for a club than a blade.

“Now!” Narcha roared.

The group dashed forward as Narcha led the way. Other lizards poured in from the sides, but Eiwin and Reinhart kept them at bay with extremely quick and precise attacks. If the empowerment in Narcha was reflected in her brute strength, then in Eiwin and Reinhart, it shined through in the form of overwhelming speed.

Monster limbs were flying everywhere, but the monsters continued to scramble over the body of their incapacitated comrades to strike at the humans. Their path would not be impeded, though, and the group made quick progress in a short period of time mowing down any creatures in their way.

Red, in the meantime, was focusing on the lizard-parasite’s fluctuation. It was only 20 meters away from them, but at that moment the boy noticed it had started to retreat again.

“It’s running away!” Red warned his companions.

“Then kill it quickly!” Narcha shot back.

The boy thought to ask her how he was supposed to do that, but there was no time to argue. He still couldn’t spot the lizard amidst the dozens of other creatures in the long room, but that was simply because there were simply too many things blocking his vision, and Red was just a kid after all.

He had an idea, though.

“Stay still!” he said to Narcha. “I’ll jump on your shoulders!”

“You’re going to what?!” the woman asked in disbelief as she struck the lizards away.

Red didn’t respond, though. He put a hand on the woman’s shoulder and used it as leverage to jump up in a single fluid motion. Then, with his feet settled on Narcha’s shoulder and with his one free hand grabbing onto her hair for balance, he looked around for the lizard.

Red heard some cursing from beneath, but he didn’t have the time to respond to it. He looked in the fluctuation's direction, hoping to spot the retreating beast. On any other occasion, the boy would have had a hard time discerning the lizard-parasite amidst the sea of similar monsters.

Yet, the creature was the only one running away from the group while all the others monsters were charging at them, so Red was able to spot it. He activated his talisman without hesitation.

“Stay still!” he warned Narcha again.

Another wave of curses came at him, but the boy ignored it. A few seconds later, the talisman was on the verge of activating, glowing in a bright orange light. The lizard-parasite looked back at Red, as if sensing the sudden disturbance of Spiritual Energy.

Unfortunately for it, it was too late.

Red waved the talisman in its direction, and a scorching ball of flame materialized out of thin air, hurling toward the monster with great speed. The flaming sphere was about the size of an adult’s fist, and yet the power packed within it wasn’t to be underestimated.

It clashed into the general vicinity of the monster, and a shockwave rang through the room. Red felt himself losing balance from Narcha’s shoulders, falling back down onto the ground. A cloud of dust spread through the room as hot air blasted against his face, and the boy wasn’t able to see what was happening around him.

The sound of collapsing stones was clear to him, though, as he could feel the surrounding ground rumble as the fragile building collapsed on itself. Before Red could get up to go find cover, a hand grabbed onto him, lifting him off the ground.

The boy couldn’t tell who it was, but he let himself be dragged like a sack of potatoes as this person ran. The building continued to collapse around him, but by this point they seemed to have found some cover, as they stopped running.

Only now, after some of the dust subsided, did Red see that the person who had dragged him over was Reinhart. He didn’t see any signs of Narcha or Eiwin, though, and he searched for them with his crimson sense. They were within twenty meters of him, though in what condition the boy couldn’t tell.

The collapse of the building stopped a few seconds later, and their vision cleared even further. Much to Red’s delight, the lizards all had collapsed on the ground, unmoving. They weren’t even breathing this time around.

“Seems your friend was right, kid.” Reinhart said.

The boy nodded, but he didn’t let down his guard. For some reason, he could still feel the lizard’s strange fluctuations, which shouldn’t be happening if the creatures were truly dead. To his surprise, he could also feel the supposed parasite’s fluctuation, although severely weakened now.

“It’s still not dead.” Red said.

“Are you sure?” Reinhart looked at him in surprise.

The boy nodded. “It’s wounded, but still alive.”

"Then let’s hurry and kill it!” the knight ran off in a hurry.

Red followed behind him. Not too far away, the figure of Narcha and Eiwin revealed themselves from behind a partially collapsed pillar.

“What are you doing?!” Narcha asked the two of them in confusion.

“It’s still alive!” Red said.”

“Shit!” the woman cursed.

Narcha and Eiwin ran behind them without hesitation.

As they approached the center of the explosion, their path became blocked by the ruins of the building and the dozens of lizard corpses buried beneath them. Most of this section of the room had collapsed, now completely revealing the desert and stormy sky of the outside world.

Suddenly, the fluctuation stirred.

“It’s moving!” Red said.

The group tried to hurry, jumping and climbing over the obstacles. Soon enough, they saw the scorch marks of the explosion, as well as the charred remains of those lizards unfortunate enough to be caught in its radius.

“There!” Reinhart pointed out.

Something moved from the midst of the ruins. A red, small, amorphous blob of tentacles.

“Come here, you little shit!” Narcha charged at it.

Almost as if hearing her words, the blob’s speed increased, disappearing within the ruins of the room.

“Fuck!” Narcha looked at where it had escaped. “Red, where did it go?!”

“It’s running that way!” Red pointed to the other side of the room.

They all continued to give chase, before the boy felt the creature’s fluctuation stop moving.

“It stopped moving!” he said. “It’s hiding over…”

Red trailed off, as he felt something weird with his crimson sense.

“Over where, Red?!” Narcha urged him on.

The boy didn’t respond to her, instead looking around. He felt the fluctuations of the supposedly dead lizards stir.

“Something’s happening to the lizards!” he warned his group.

There was no need for his warning, though, as it soon became clear to the naked eye what was happening. The eyes of the dead lizards all began to burst, one by one, and from their now empty eye sockets, crawled out more red tentacles. There were roughly ten to fifteen tentacles for every lizard, far fewer than the original host, but numbering in the hundreds once you accounted for every monster in the room.

Then they climbed out of their monsters’ eyes, and one by one slithered away like worms. They were all moving in a single direction - the one of the blob they had just been chasing.

“They’re trying to merge!” Red said.

The shock of the situation wore off on the group, and they all moved to stop these disembodied tentacles. They stomped, slashed, and tried everything to kill them. For the most part, it worked, as the tentacles spewed out a strange bright red blood and stopped moving.

However, there were too many of them, and they all moved between the cracks in the ruins and stones to avoid the group’s attacks.

“It’s not going to work!” Eiwin shouted. “Focus on the main body!”

Yet, the creature was hidden beneath tons of rubble of the ruined room, and not even Narcha could clear those in a short period of time. They still tried their best, killing small tentacles along the way before they could join the main body.

It was to no avail, though.

More tentacles slipped by them, and Red soon felt something change in the parasite’s fluctuations. It was getting stronger.

“Move away!” Red warned his companions.

The group had learned to trust his words, and they all moved back without hesitation. A few seconds later, the rubble they had been digging at rumbled before exploding in a shower of dust and pebbles.

Then something climbed out.

It was the blob of tentacles, but this time it was much bigger than before, roughly the size of a human adult, as more and more tentacles joined its mass. Red felt like it had already reached the power of a Lesser Ring Realm creature, and judging by the expression of his companions, they also felt the pressure emitted by it.

The creature remained still, using its tentacles to grab onto the rock surfaces around it to hoist itself up. Then, from beneath the ball of slithering appendages, something appeared.

A single, dark human eye, roiling around before settling in place.

It was staring directly at Red.