Daryl handed Serenity a fist-sized chunk of black fireglass. It was probably obsidian, at least notionally, but since it came from a dungeon and was used in the same dungeon it was hard to be certain. “If the giant fire-rock elemental gets too close, hit it with this. Don’t miss. I’ll take care of preventing any more from coming out of the vent, but that means I won’t be fighting the big guy. We usually whittle it down more and this isn’t needed, but don’t be afraid to use the fireglass. It’s better to need an extra delve for more fireglass than to have someone badly hurt.”

It was good to see that they were willing to use resources on someone who wasn’t permanently with their guild. It was even better to see that they had a plan. Serenity was fairly confident he wouldn’t need the fireglass; he hadn’t revealed just how insane his resistances were, after all. He would be just as happy if it stayed that way, too. “How difficult is it to get this much fireglass?”

Daryl shrugged. “On a glass run, we can generally get as much as we can carry out. It’s a good bit of work to mine it, but if you do that after you thin the elementals, you can take as long as you need. The trick is that it has to actually be carried; if you put it in any kind of storage device, it won’t work if you bring it back. We usually send the lower-Tier people in the guild on those runs; they’re relatively safe and good training while not tying up those of us who should be doing the more lucrative tasks. It’s safer to have us do the fire-heart runs, because they’re tougher even when you thin the elementals properly. We don’t, always.”

“We didn’t always when we had a proper mage,” Gabriel butted in. “I’m a utility healer, I’m not half as good as a real mage.”

Serenity frowned at Gabriel. “Don’t say that. A healer can be just as good at offensive magic as a mage. I’m probably not the best example, but I’m a hybrid and I can manage the mage role. You just have to work on it.” Serenity paused. Yeah, he definitely wasn’t the best example. He was a Tier Eight hybrid using a Tier Four Skill with an insane level of Affinity. His best guess was that that was about equal to a normal Tier Six Skill for a trained mage, but he could be off.

“Don’t be afraid to take a Mage Path instead of a Healer Path, it won’t hurt you. More than that, practice and try to expand your Concepts. You already use Ice Walls; maybe you can extend that into a chilling slowing attack. Or maybe you can manage one that makes someone shiver; involuntary movement like that can make fighting in melee really tough.” Serenity had seen both. He’d had both used against him. Shiver didn’t work as well on undead as it did on the living, but it could still work.

“It’s not easy,” Serenity stated. He didn’t know why that mattered, but he’d been told it enough times that he had to accept that other people believed it, even people far higher Tier than Gabriel. “You have to work at it, that’s all. Figure out where you’re going and what feels right to you and do it. If you only want to heal then do that. If you hate not being able to cast spells as well as a mage can, well, do something about it. There’s no such thing as a real mage, only one with more practice than you.”

Everyone, even Naomi, turned to look at Serenity for a moment. Gabriel coughed slightly. “Didn’t mean to set you off, sorry.”

Serenity sighed. Most people didn’t really listen; they knew what they knew and in this case Gabriel knew he’d always be a worse mage because he was a healer first. Serenity was fairly confident Blaze didn’t feel that way, but he was sure Gabriel wouldn’t listen to Blaze. He was twice Blaze’s Tier so why should he listen to him?

Serenity shook his head. They needed to get through the dungeon and that meant getting through this fight. “So what do I need to know? I’m expecting a giant monster, probably like the ones we’ve been killing but much bigger, made up of the ones we didn’t kill. I assume I’m to use magic on it and use the fireglass to temporarily freeze it if it’s close enough that I feel in danger?”

He was pretty sure they were treating him like a pure mage now, but that was fine. It meant he knew what to expect from them.

“That’s it,” Daryl agreed. “Knocking it back into the vent also ends the encounter, but don’t do that. It costs us the fire core and means we have to move on to the next level immediately, because this entire area will be flooded with fire rock soon if you do that.”

So … knocking it into the vent triggered an eruption? Serenity wondered if that meant there was another secret here, but if there was it would require a lot more preparation. At Tier Six, it probably wasn’t worth much to the Silver Blades, even as a first time completion, but it might well be worth something if he could complete it and bring it back to Earth.

He was going to have to do some planning, but with the right planning his group might well be able to take on the fifth level of the dungeon. He’d need either enough fireglass or another way over the lava; that was something to talk to Blaze about. For now, he needed to focus on the boss.

“No knocking it into the vent, got it. I assume Naomi and Gabriel will be controlling the boss while I hit it?” Serenity glanced at the two of them. At their nods, Serenity continued, “Will we be able to see it from a distance? I have something I’d like to try. It might make the fight easier.”

“It won’t make the fight worse if it doesn’t work?” Naomi sounded doubtful.

Serenity shook his head. “If the skill doesn’t work as well as I think it will, I’ll release it early and go back to the normal attacks. I’ll have to do that after the first hit, no matter what.” He’d been stretching his Death Magebolt Skill. It was still limited, but he was pretty sure he could manage a sustained channel at about half the power of a single bolt without destabilizing the Skill’s structure too badly. He wasn’t sure how long he’d be able to hold it and he was only going to get one channel before he had to go back to the burst spells the Skill was intended for, but if he was able to hold the channel for more than a few seconds, it would be more Death magic than he could put out with individual bolts in that time period. It seemed worth a try. “I may have to get close to keep it running.”

“Be careful,” Daryl said. “They’re slow but when they do hit, they hit hard. This one’s no faster but at its size it can move faster and reach farther than you think. Killing it slow is better than being dead. I don’t want to end up fishing your body out of a pool of molten rock after we kill the elemental.”

Serenity nodded. “I can stay out of reach.”

Daryl nodded. “Good. Let’s get started, then. One last fire river and we’re there.”

The group made it across the river of lava without any interference from golems. They must already be gathered at the boss. It was convenient right now, but it might be a problem if he decided to come back with his own group. They didn’t have the advantage of significantly out-Tiering the boss. On the other hand, he could bring in five people other than himself. That would help.

It was a short walk from the lava to the edge of a pool of lava. The Silver Blades hadn’t mentioned it, but when he saw Daryl toss in a small chunk of fireglass with a bored expression, Serenity guessed that was forgetfulness rather than anything directly worrisome. It was enough to make him wonder just how many of the other things they hadn’t mentioned weren’t picking on the new guy and were instead a really poor training plan.

It also made Serenity wonder if they’d missed anything important on the future levels. There had to be a reason, and Serenity had a guess for what that reason was. “Your former guild leader, Zany, did all the training for this dungeon, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Gabriel said. “He really liked this one. He’d let other people lead the first few levels, even up to gathering fire glass, but never with anyone completely new.”

Zany clearly hadn’t planned to be gone in the future. If he’d even thought about it, he clearly hadn’t cared. Serenity wasn’t surprised; it was pretty common, once someone quit trying to Tier up.

Instead of hardening, the pool of lava started to withdraw. It became thicker as it drew back. Serenity watched it for a bit, then asked the next obvious question. “This is the boss, isn’t it? What happens if you attack it before it puts itself together?”

Naomi and Gabirel looked blank, but Daryl had an answer. “Physical attacks don’t really do anything, they just splash the rock. If you can cut it off and get it to cool separately, that can work like killing the small ones before they join in, but it’s not really worth it. We tried. Magic attacks seem to do more; the boss was smaller that time. It wasn’t worth it, though. Ked ran himself almost out of mana once and it was only half size. He can kill the boss from full with that much mana normally.”

That was actually pretty ideal for Serenity; he had mana to spare, far more than a normal Tier Eight. This would also make it a lot easier to kill with a relatively low-power channel. He’d just have to make sure he stopped when he was halfway down, just in case. “I’ll make sure to reserve enough mana to kill it. Everyone ready?”

It was always better to make sure your team was ready before jumping into things, even if it gave up a momentary advantage. Serenity was still not completely used to following the rules for being a good party member after so many centuries of doing everything on his own as the Final Reaper, but he did know what he was supposed to do. He just didn’t always think about it.

“You can’t be at full mana. Not after all the casting you did,” Daryl objected.

Serenity smiled and gave a small headshake. “I have really high mana regeneration, especially in dungeons and ley lines. Are you ready?”

Daryl sighed but seemed to decide he was done arguing. “Yes.”

Serenity turned to the pool of lava and slowly pushed mana into his Death Magebolt, careful to keep it too low to burst out as the formed spell. This was stretching it in a different direction than the earlier overpowered bolts; this was a long slow drip of mana.

He directed it at the edge of the lava from as far away as he reasonably could and followed it as the edge shrunk. It didn’t seem to become thicker as fast as it should have; Serenity had Aide do the math and either it was thicker in other areas or some of the mass was not being used to thicken the lava.

When they reached the final ridge that overlooked the vent itself and the boss was nearly formed, it was obvious that both were true. A large area surrounding the path Serenity had taken had higher ground, like the lava had left most of itself behind when it retreated. There were visible ripples on the ground running out from there; Serenity had the feeling that he’d been killing quite a bit more of the boss than was immediately obvious.

This feeling was reinforced by the fact that the boss was only about twice as tall as Serenity, which made it only three times as tall as one of the normal elementals. There was no way that was an oversized boss after not killing all of the minions.