Caeden was at the front of the group as the tank. He was the most durable and the biggest target. That also meant he was the first to see their attacker. Of course, his aura had let him know of its approach from much farther off, so he was hardly surprised when it rounded a corner in the tunnel and came tearing straight at him. More than that, the entire group had known what was coming at them the second they heard the strange roar endemic to its kind.

In a loping, rolling gait, the monster covered ground at a rapid pace, propelled on four limbs. Two squat legs that acted more to support its surprisingly dense girth and two arms that hung low from what would normally be a bipedal torso. The legs were flat, circular stumps, and the arms were long, hairy masses with glinting claws extending out through the dirty grey mass of body hair.

The arms and legs connected to a barrel-shaped torso also thick with the same filthy hair covering every possible feature, whether muscle or fat. The arms it used for running were awkwardly set, neither fully on the monster's sides nor set on its chest, but at an odd 45-degree angle.

The final set of limbs, two more arms, were in the corresponding spot to a humans and led into normal shoulder and upper-body muscles. They were very similar to the running set in construction, with thick hair and glinting claws. The only difference was the claws appeared to exist in much greater numbers, like a bundle of knives poking through that hair.

The face was almost entirely hairy except for the hairless, slavering mouth that was a sucking circle of irregularly placed and random teeth jutting out at every angle. It didn't seem like the monster could even close the grotesque hole without stabbing its own face on jutting teeth.

The unfortunately named Hairy Hole was the first monster to ever make Caeden question who actually created the names his shroud told him the monsters had. He wondered if a god really did exist that named all its creations and that that was what his shroud somehow read from these monsters' very essence.

He also wondered how blackout drunk said god would have to be to make this particular monster and give it that awful name. Such questions had come to him every time they ran into one of these hair-covered beasties. Luckily they were rarer than others and reclusive by nature. They didn't gather in large groups like the Bloodvein Ripper or the Spiderfly. They also exclusively lived in the tunnels, never entering the caverns.

Despite their rarity, the team already had the correct combat strategy ingrained into their minds. Hairy Holes were a 5,500 IP monster, and they were no joke to fight.

During their week down here, Caeden and co had found that certain monsters were able to outperform the power level their IP would indicate. This was one such monster. Hairy Holes were strong, fast, nimble, and had a surprising number of tricks to surprise and annoy. Their filthy appearance and malformed bodies would lead one to believe that they were mindless berserkers. Not true.

Caeden formshift to golden body, his enhanced height now a full match for the monster charging him. The mass difference was still there, as the Hairy Hole was built thicker than even his golden body. However, Caeden didn't shift to defense form. The Hairy Hole's size was a trick, luring them into an assumption about its finesse. Instead, Caeden pulled out Forged Infinity and clicked. It shifted from 003 to 031, dual daggers. Then he went further. 313 caused sections of gold and purple plating to crawl over his hands and up his wrists into gauntlets as the blades of his daggers extended into something comparable to a short sword if it weren't in the hands of his nine-foot frame.

From behind him, Caeden heard Cat use her newest mnemonic. "Swarm."

Cat had found the tight confines of the tunnels to be a major limit on her offensive ability. Her specter's main benefit was from their numbers and skill. The skill remained, but removing the number advantage was a drag on their efficacy. So she made a new mnemonic after trying new patterns for months.

From all around her, a swarm of ghostly pale insectile constructs burst into existence. Caeden didn't have the time or inclination to pay much attention to them right now, but he knew what they looked like. Each construct was the worst nightmare hybrid of a dozen different insects. They had dragonfly wings, but they had the heads of antlions with their crushing mandibles reinforced beyond what nature gave them. Their abdomen was a fusion of scorpion and wasp with two independent stingers. One was in the normal orientation for a wasp, while the other was attached to the top of the abdomen by a long fleshy tensile that was fully articulated.

Cat had made the Swarm to address her lack of offense in tight spaces, and they delivered in spades. Cat had a much better understanding now of how her shroud interpreted her desires when it came to her specters. She had used that knowledge to cram each construct insect with as much power as their little frames could handle.

They proved that immediately, and in spectacular fashion.

The swarm of over fifty insects slammed into the Hairy Hole, crawling under its protective fur coating to get at its vulnerable skin. A moment later and the monster was waving thick, fur-coated arms about while moaning and screaming as if it had been set on fire. Underneath that fur, the Swarm were slamming both stingers repeatedly into every available inch of skin while clamping their thick, powerful jaws into the monster's flesh to remain attached.

The monstrous constructs delivered to varieties of poison. Cat had found out that if she imagined a poisonous effect attached to a construct that had an effective means to deliver it, her shroud would fill in the gap and make it happen. It was a shroud-intensive, high-cost effect, but the results spoke for themselves. The poison from the scorpion's stinger added a caustic solution into the monster's bloodstream that was excruciatingly painful while doing little damage. The hornet stinger was possibly even more evil, as it caused nerve cells to overreact to pain, making a light pinch feel like getting a toe cut off.

Combined, the two poisons caused debilitating, mind-melting pain. It acted as an immensely effective distraction and deterrent. The Swarm wasn't without downsides. As the Hairy Hole slapped itself all over, it crushed dozens of constructs. They weren't durable. As the insectile specters discorporated, the visible and audible signs of pain fell off. The poison was short-lived. More than that, it did little practical damage beyond overstimulating nerves, leaving the victim numb.

Worst of all, the Swarm was inefficient. For Cat, who relied on highly effective use of her shroud, it was a cardinal sin. The design of her news specter was unrefined, lacking the months of effort Cat had put into her other designs to cut down on costs. Despite all that, she still used them for one reason.

As many of the Swarm died to wild blows, they began to disengage from the monster's flesh. Their jaws ripped out chunks as they went, carrying them off. Swirling through the air, insect constructs slammed together around chunks of flesh. Moments later, the wriggling mass separated, revealing newly created constructs born from the monster's own body. Cat had designed a self-replicating construct.

This too had limits. It required the proper fuel. Monsters contained Ki in their bodies commensurate with a shrouded. It's why they produced Invasion Pressure. That made their bodies the necessary ingredient for construct replication. This fell well outside the bounds of what shrouds could normally do with constructs. Creatures shrouds that made actual, living animals could have said animal reproduce the normal way, but generating new fabricated beings from monster bodies was unheard of. It was the first time that Caeden wondered if Cat might be the strongest of all of them.

While the Swarm dove back in to continue harassing their enemy, which was holding up despite the pain, Lily and Erik moved in. Neither of them were bringing anything new to the table for this fight. Lily's newfound penchant for producing poison clouds wasn't as effective on the Hairy Hole. For some reason, ingested or inhaled poisons didn't work on it, only ones added directly to its bloodstream. Caeden and Lily had hypothesized that its mouth, the main defining feature of the monster, had special properties that prevented anything moving through it from causing the body harm.

That didn't mean she lacked impact. Lily's original strategy was still immensely effective. Her typical longsword wouldn't be effective in the confines of the tunnel, so she was using a rapier instead. After all, Lily only had to get a single touch with her weapon for its infusions to take effect. So long as she could get her blade into the monster's flesh, it would take effect.

Lily dashed forward along one side of the tunnel to Caeden's left. Her rapier flashed out, repeatedly stabbing into the side and arms of the Hairy Hole, lacing its body with Chillvein. The attacks themselves did very little. It would take a few moments for the infused poison to truly take effect. In the meantime, the monster charged on, still heading straight for Caeden.

Erik came around Caeden's other side, along the right of the tunnel. His hands were surrounded in writhing lines of white shroud. He ran past the screeching and charging monster, slapping both palms against its side. Both Lily and Erik could move around the monster with impunity because of the distraction provided by the Swarm. Without them, the Hairy Hole would have launched attacks and stalled out either of Caeden's teammates.

When his palms made contact with the monster's fur, the white lines around them rapidly spread over the monster's body until they erupted into stitches that connected the Hairy Hole's arms, legs, torso, and head to each other and the tunnel itself. The monster's momentum ripped it from the stitches holding it to the tunnel unimpeded, but the one's linking its limbs together caused it to stumble and jerk around like a puppet tangled in its own strings.

Up to this point, every move in the battle had been carefully planned to ensure no one did major damage to the Hairy Hole so that it continued to charge Caeden. If anyone had landed a real hit, it would have turned its attention on them and ruined Caeden's ability to tank. This was neither the first nor the tenth time that they had done this, so even as everyone laid debilitating effects on the Hairy Hole, its focus never shifted from ramming into Caeden as fast as possible.

That impact wasn't nearly as devastating as the monster's primitive mind probably hoped it was. The Swarm and Erik's new mnemonic, web net, had messed up its pace. Lily's Chillvein further slowed down its whole body. As a result, the furry mass only hit Caeden with half its initial speed.

That didn't mean the sprinting charge had no effect. Caeden nearly staggered under the force. His strength was barely enough to catch and stop the charge with all the effects his team had laid on the monster. He was more focused on the real danger of the Hairy Hole. Its massive size was nothing more than a distraction.

The thickly built upper arms revealed their secret once Caeden was within striking range. The dozen knife-like claws that capped those arms stirred and began stabbing out, showing the danger hidden by that long hair. Instead of traditional hands, each claw was on the end of a long, dexterous, multi-jointed mini-arm that could move in tandem with the others, forming unavoidable tornados of nasty claws coming at him from all directions. They moved in creepy grabbing motions like the monster wanted to squeeze him in thoroughly not-ok ways.

This was why Caeden had changed Forged Infinity into knives with added protection for his hands instead of a shield. If he had blocked the Hairy Holes charge, the creepy-gross-molester fingers would have stabbed him over it. Instead, Caeden accepted the brunt of the charge while using his daggers to block as many claw attacks as he could.

He wasn't perfectly successful. The reality of the situation was that he wasn't fast enough to block every blow. There were too many claws, and they were too fast. He could have managed it if he had been in speed form, but then the charge would have bowled him over. The last thing Caeden wanted was this monster laying on top of him.

Several claws stabbed into Caeden's chest and shoulders. At the same time, the tooth-filled, slavering maw that the Hairy Hole was named for let out a moaning cry that sounded pleased in all the wrong ways. Why does it have to be so creepy?! Caeden complained internally. This was by far his least favorite monster to fight, just because it was so weird.

Luckily, it would be over soon. The second the monster had locked onto Caeden, everyone else had free reign to hit it as hard as they wanted. Lily was first, using Ice for infusion to physically enhance herself to spectacular speeds, stabbing the Hairy Hole's broad back with dozens of blows. More and more magical Chilevein poison flooded its body, taking away the speed and dexterity that made its claw-fingers so threatening.

The bangbangbang of Erik's enhanced, reinforced, and empowered fists rang out as he punched hard into the monster's side, causing the moan from its maw to transition into a much more acceptable wail of pain. All the while, the Swarm was still under its fur, unrelenting stabbing the monster with stinger after stinger, causing every bit of damage the Hairy Hole took to turn from pain into unbearable agony.

Caeden needed to maintain the furry monstrosity's focus, so he went to work himself. Despite its injured, poisoned, and debilitated state, the Hairy Hole boasted extreme resilience and a robust physique. It wouldn't go down easily. The best Caeden could do to help out was limit its offensive potential. To that end, his daggers that had been occupied with blocking flicked out with precise strikes, severing fingers with a snicksnicksnick of scissors cutting fabric.

The monster's resilience didn't translate to any level of resistance on its fragile fingers and Forged Infinity's powerful blades cut through its flesh like a knife sliding through partially melted butter. The good stuff, not a frozen brick that had been in the freezer too long. Like a chef working with said butter, Caeden rapidly removed fingers with speed and precision. With its main offensive tools removed, the Hairy Hole was basically done, and it knew it. So it went for a desperate final attack.

The mouth on the Hairy Hole was no joke, even if its stupid name might indicate that. The mass of disjointed teeth shoved into a massive circular maw was a viable weapon, but not one that the monster used in typical combat. Nevertheless, desperate times call for desperate measures, and the Hairy Hole was currently in very desperate times indeed. So it lunged for Caeden's shoulder, intent on digging those razor-sharp fangs into his flesh.

That lunge was met with two ornate, red-blade, purple and gold daggers shoved into the soft palate past its gums, stopping the attack before it started.

"Not this time, you overgrown nightmare-fuel!" Caeden growled. He had been expecting the attack, having suffered that mouth full of suffering and disturbing noises noshing on his arms and shoulders several times. The Hairy Hole always went for a bite as a last resort.

Ripping his knives up and out in a move fueled by disgust and unwilling familiarity, Caeden nearly cleaved the monster's furry face in two. The move signaled the end of the short but intense fight. Once more, Caeden had to reflect on how much more powerful the monsters down here had been than their couple experiences on the surface. The Plague Rats and Rockadillos had not prepared them for how diverse, and surprising monsters could be.

Their first fight with a Hairy Hole had ended with Caeden, Erik, and Lily all severely injured with bite marks all over Caeden's torso and arms and him with some deep-seated trauma. He had heard the sounds that monster made in his nightmares for the last few nights, and it wasn't likely to stop any time soon. They had not been ready for the charge, the finger-claws, or the all-around creepy vibe the monster had. Their strategies had been half-formed, not the perfect engine of destruction and murdery goodness they had become.

He was so, so happy he didn't have to go through that again.