I couldn't put off visiting the institute forever. I travelled there the next day, holding my tongue about my trip to the great dungeon while making empty platitudes about looking into solutions to the Law. It wasn't like I'd drawn a complete blank; I had two avenues of exploration. Waiting for Erryn to heal, and the crystal in the great dungeon core room. Neither were good options, but they were options. I wasn't completely floundering.

If nothing else, I needed to pop back down to the core room and have a full look around without Krana's supervision.

For their part, Harry had actually made some progress on portal defences. Like my own, it wasn't great progress, but given their initial pessimism and that only a few days had passed, it was a pleasant surprise. Horail had turned up, offering... not so much his expertise, because even a [Spatial Archmage] didn't actually get any information about how spatial magic worked downloaded into their heads. Offering his spells, then. He could produce the small portals with just mana and, unlike Darren, wasn't limited in range.

... Yet. I felt the extra qualifier was warranted, given Horail had mentioned that Krana had asked him to join in one of Darren's lessons. Perhaps Darren would learn the secret of long range portals.

Anyway, the team had produced something that blocked Horail from producing portals nearby. It was an enchanted item the size of a small bead, with a tiny dollop of mythril encased in a tempulite shell. The tempulite interfered with spatial magic.

It was interesting that the device used tempulite instead of contulite. Opposites again.

Of course, while it was a nice step, it wasn't a huge help. It only provided local protection, and it disrupted all spatial magic, not just Earth's portals. Grover had mentioned he already had enchantments that could do that much, and while the beads were tiny and mobile, we couldn't defend everywhere with them. Even if we covered the entire continent with them, what would stop portals simply opening up a hundred metres in the air?

After spending the minimal socially appropriate amount of time there, I excused myself and returned to the dungeon, where the upgraded monsters had gained an ability similar to [Far Reach]. It didn't make them any tougher; both me and Cluma could see mana well enough to avoid them, and their long-range attacks sapped some of their concentration, leaving them less dexterous.

And so continued our next few days. On floor twenty-eight, they were no longer confined to the floor, gliding along walls and ceiling with as much grace as the ground. On twenty-nine, they gained their previously advertised ability to shoot bullets.

Bullets of fat, of all things. That should not have been a suitable material for a projectile, but somehow they made it work. They were firing bits of themselves, and presumably their physical stats still applied.

I quickly found that using [Dislocation] to reflect their fire was counter-productive; the projectiles were simply reabsorbed by the monsters, ready for another shot. Not that we could win by waiting for them to fire their entire body mass; the projectiles were too small compared to their full size. They'd be able to go for hours.

On floor thirty, the strangeness stepped up yet another notch.

"Is that... [Detach]?" asked Cluma, staring at the six bladed limbs hovering in the air in a circle around the monster. Instead of being embedded into the glob of fat, they were just floating, completely free. It didn't seem to be [Detach]; the telltale black haze wasn't present over the base of the limbs.

One vanished in a puff of spatial affinity, reappearing in front of my face, already swinging.

I twisted away from the surprise attack, not bothering to attempt a parry, and blasting the main body of the monster with lightning instead.

As we descended the floors, they were growing tougher. I now needed three crystals to reliably stun the monsters, but there was only one in this room. I could use all four crystals and still have my other hand free. That was fortunate, because although the blob of fat shuddered and froze, the detached limbs did not. Two teleported into the stream of lightning, disrupting it. The other four teleported into a ring around me, all swinging at different heights.

"...!" I exclaimed wordlessly as I leapt upwards, unable to dodge or parry four blows at once on the ground.

Three of the limbs teleported after me, the fourth sliced through by Cluma, which caused it to clatter to the ground.

I spun gracefully in the air, slipping over one swing while using my short sword and sword-staff to block the other two.

[Danger Sense] fired. There hadn't been any spatial affinity, so what was it alerting me to? There were too many things happening at once! Right, there were still two more of the limbs, and even if they hadn't teleported, the things could shoot bullets. I hastily cast [Dislocation] in the direction [Danger Sense] had warned me about.

I was a fraction of a second too slow. The projectile slammed into my gut with the force of a strong punch, knocking the breath out of me and sending me tumbling through the air.

At least it had only been one; Cluma hadn't been idle on the ground and had destroyed one of the two limbs the monster was using to guard itself. The second spun, blade fully extended, swishing through the air as it tried to catch the invisible catgirl. She ignored it, leaping into the air and dispatching one of the three that were after me.

The main body of the monster slid across the floor, positioning itself below my landing site. Tumbling as I was, I had no hope of avoiding it. I sliced through another limb with my short sword, glad the monsters weren't yet durable enough to stand up to the rank four enchantments, then stabbed down with my sword-staff, pole vaulting over the mound of fat.

[Soul Perception] showed Cluma going after the final limb that had been after me, so I employed [Far Reach] to briefly position my short sword in the path of the spinning one. It cleanly bisected itself against my blade.

Cluma wasn't quite as lucky, with the final limb teleporting out of the way. The monster's main body was charging me again, so I blasted it with lightning while keeping an eye on the limb. It teleported repeatedly around the outside of the chamber, launching projectiles at me from all directions.

... There must be some link between it and the main body, then, or else where was it getting the bullets from?

I flickered [Dislocation], catching each of the bullets and redirecting them harmlessly into the ground. Cluma gave up chasing the teleporting limb, waiting against a wall instead, and sure enough, it eventually teleported within her reach. She ended it with a slice.

It took another couple of minutes for the lightning to cook the main body, but without its limbs, there were no more moves it could make.

ding

Skill [Danger Sense] advanced to level 17

"That was unexpectedly exciting," I commented, gingerly prodding my stomach. [Regeneration] had already taken care of any damage, but it still ached.

"Mmm," agreed Cluma. "That was like fighting seven monsters at once! We can't take more than one of them at a time."

I looked around with [Mana Sight], which revealed we didn't have any choice; there weren't less than two monsters in any of the surrounding rooms. We couldn't even backtrack; we were in the very first room of the floor. There was nowhere to backtrack to.

"We're going to have to. I've got a decent handle on their teleportation. If I rush in with [Timeless World] and avoid getting surrounded, you can concentrate on taking out the limbs."

Cluma snuck into the next room, while I took a deep breath and activated [Timeless World]. I followed after her at a sprint, never slowing my pace. She was moving at a snail's pace towards one monster, its six limbs frozen around it. The second monster was glued to the ceiling. Hopefully, we'd be able to take out the limbs of the first one before it could do anything.

I curved my path towards the centre of the room, holding out my sword-staff as I passed and slicing through two of the limbs. Cluma made it just as I did, slicing through a third limb in slow motion.

Spatial affinity flared around the monsters, but the limbs were still moving slowly enough compared to my dilated time that I could barely see them. The merged skill was still a blatant cheat.

Bullets criss-crossed the room, and unlike the limbs themselves, they were moving fast enough for me to see. Not fast enough for me to fail to dodge, though, so I weaved between them as I kept up my speed. Tried to keep up my speed. Sharp corners weren't conductive to a full-speed sprint.

The limbs popped out of existence as I turned, using the small amount of time my deceleration granted them to reposition. It wasn't enough to catch me, though, as I sped back up. I sliced through another as I passed.

Another wave of bullets, which again I could dodge, followed swiftly by another and another. I used [Dislocation] to avoid having to take another sharp turn, but two more came from behind. I dropped under them and rolled, managing to land back on my feet, but still losing a small amount of speed. That gave them time to launch another few waves.

Cluma, outside of my dilated time, managed to slice through another one, but there were still seven launching their projectiles. I realised with alarm that they were boxing me in, forcing me towards a wall. I tried to break out using [Dislocation] to make a hole in their net, only to find a limb in my way, swinging at my legs. I had to jump, which slowed me down further, but I paid it back by slicing the limb. Six left. Now we were basically back to our last fight.

Another one teleported, but it didn't even try to attack me. Instead, it materialised beneath my feet. I tripped and went sprawling. My time dilation stuttered as [Timeless World] broke, and movement came back into the world.

The monster on the ceiling detached.

Cluma dispatched another limb, but another wave of bullets came at me regardless. I ignored them, focusing on getting out of the way of the mound of fat falling towards my head. I aimed a [Far Step] across the room as a bullet slammed into my shoulder.

A limb teleported into my path and the skill failed. The world went dark as the monster engulfed me, all sound replaced only with a loud sucking and slurping.

Oddly, I didn't panic. I'd survived being eaten by a hydra, so what was a big blob of fat going to do? Of course, it helped that despite the lights switching off, I could still see perfectly well with [Mana Sight] and [Soul Perception]. For a definition of 'perfectly' that I needed to relax slightly, given the twisted geometry. Either way, it meant the experience wasn't as terrifying as it might otherwise have been. I wasn't left completely deprived of my senses.

The monster tried to force itself under my eyelids, up my nose and into my mouth. My face burnt, either due to some attack or because it was trying to eat me. I could feel it squeezing itself through the gaps in my armour around my neck, my body pressured all around as it constricted. I couldn't cut my way out; resilience of the monster aside, I couldn't move. With the speed boost from [Temporal Mage], I could probably escape with [Redistribute] before taking too much damage, but that would leave Cluma abandoned.

Really, there was only one Peter move available to make. I pulled a flame grenade from [Inventory].

The world flipped from black to white as I was suddenly at the epicentre of an explosion. Thankfully, I had full-body armour with rank five fire resistance, and a ring with rank five fire resistance on top. The monster did not.

The next half second was rather eventful, and ended with the room splattered with white, brown and black globules. Some of them were smoking. I very carefully did not disengage the odour suppression enchantment I was wearing.

The remaining limbs, all belonging to the monster I'd just blown up, dropped from the air, dead. The other monster—now all alone but not having the option to surrender—charged at me, so I fried it with lightning, a small grin forming on my face as it cooked.

ding

By the time it died, I was in full-blown hysterics.