They both stopped speaking immediately as they slowly turned their heads glaring violently at each other across Silas’s armored chest.

"Do not completely interrupt my debrief, you overgrown weed..." Morwenna snarled with her feral gray eyes narrowing dangerously.

"I am his primary woman, you washed-up trench-rat!" Eluned shrieked back territorially. "I speak to him first! It is my right!"

"I will literally wrap my anchor chain entirely around your neck and drag you into the—"

"I will turn your blood into aggressive flesh-eating thorns before you even draw—"

Silas aggressively raised his hand, completely chopping the impending catastrophic SSS-Rank argument in half.

"I am begging you," Silas sighed. "Just tell me exactly what the problem is before my brain physically hemorrhages."

Morwenna and Eluned both huffed, aggressively crossing their arms over their chests and looking away from each other.

"The behaviors of the low-tier monsters we just slaughtered outside were very strange, Captain," Morwenna reported first with their instincts taking over. "Orcs and Wolves are aggressive territorial apex predators but they didn’t fight like they wanted to kill us."

She frowned, looking down at the dark stone floor.

"They fought like they were terrified," Morwenna concluded. "Like they were actively fleeing from something much worse, and we were simply in their way."

"The trench-rat is actually correct," Eluned agreed reluctantly with her glowing green eyes narrowing in disgust.

The Goddess of Nature raised her delicate hand, summoning a tiny orb of pure green mana.

"When I skewered the horde with my ironwood spikes, I analyzed their internal systems," Eluned explained smoothly. "The monsters were being completely controlled against their actual will. There was a parasitic corrupted seed violently constricting directly around their hearts."

Eluned’s face twisted into a mask of pure divine hatred.

"The entire Dungeon Boss ecosystem in this grid is highly likely to be a massive, parasitic monster that fundamentally relies on the hijacked corrupted power of Nature to control its subordinates..." Eluned stated coldly.

She clenched her fist, crushing the glowing green orb of mana.

"And for that exact reason," Eluned hissed, her voice vibrating with true divine wrath. "I completely hate it. It defiles my domain."

Silas didn’t argue with her.

He knew Eluned was a Goddess of Nature at her core.

Anything that actively corrupted the natural order of biology was a direct personal insult to her divine authority.

"Understood," Silas nodded grimly. "Stay on high alert... The main chamber should be just—"

RUMBLE!

The solid stone floor beneath their boots violently shifted.

It wasn’t a distant earthquake. It was a direct ambush on their location.

The thick smooth obsidian floorboards exactly ten yards ahead of the group formation physically exploded outward.

Massive chunks of heavy rock and compressed dirt shot violently into the air, bouncing off the ceiling.

From the freshly created craters, massive horrors erupted entirely out of the ground.

They were colossal armored Umbral Spiders. They were easily the size of armored cavalry horses, covered in thick, dark purple carapace plates that looked like solid iron.

Their eight compound eyes burned with a sickly corrupted yellow light, and their massive venom-dripping mandibles clicked aggressively in the cold light of Thora’s lantern.

There were easily two dozen of them, completely blocking the tunnel and chittering loudly.

"Ambush!" Tasmin yelled, drawing her chained daggers.

"I have the crowd control!" Rowena shouted enthusiastically from the center of the formation.

The elegant human mage stepped forward, raising the violently pulsing Sapphire-Core World Weaver high into the air.

She didn’t hesitate.

She began rapidly channeling her maximum mana output into the mythic staff, fully preparing to drop a massive, crushing gravity well directly onto the spider horde.

"Mage, halt your cast!" Morwenna barked sharply.

The Dread Queen stepped forward, grabbing Rowena’s arm to interrupt the spell.

Rowena blinked, entirely confused. "But they are swarming the bottleneck!"

"Do not entirely waste your energy reserves on disposable trash mobs!" Morwenna scolded the mage smoothly. "You have a massive mana pool, but it is not infinite! Save your high-yield crowd control for the actual Parasite!"

Morwenna didn’t fall back into the formation.

The SSS-Rank Pirate Queen stepped directly to the absolute front of the Vanguard line.

She didn’t draw her heavy boarding anchor as she casually rested her right hand on the hilt of the Astral Corsair.

She turned her head, looking over her shoulder directly at Silas.

"Captain," Morwenna requested with a confident grin stretching across her pale face. "Do not waste your energy... Let me clear the deck."

Silas didn’t argue.

He crossed his arms over his armored chest and nodded. "Show them how it’s done, Morwenna."

The massive horde of Umbral Spiders shrieked with their mandibles clicking wildly as they charged forward.

Their heavy armored legs skittering terrifyingly across the stone floor as they moved with unnatural speed, preparing to overwhelm the single woman standing in their path.

Morwenna didn’t wait for them to close the distance.

She smoothly drew the Astral Corsair and the cosmic deep-blue veins etched into the Tier 3 mythril blade flared violently to life.

She fluidly dropped her center of gravity as she engaged her Tidal-Blade Arts at 20% output.

Morwenna executed a single horizontal slash.

VWOOSH!

She didn’t just generate a small wave of phantom water.

A massive wide crescent arc of dark blue deep-ocean water completely erupted from the edge of her blade.

The crushing pressure of the slash entirely filled the width of the mining tunnel, scraping against the stone walls.

The dark blue arc shot forward with staggering velocity as it hit the charging horde of Umbral Spiders like a tsunami.

The attack didn’t just cut them.

The atmospheric pressure of the heavy-water entirely crushed their thick purple carapaces inward.

The blade of phantom water passed completely through the entire horde in a fraction of a second, tearing through their dense body as if they were made of wet paper.

The tunnel went dead silent and then, every single one of the twenty-four massive Umbral Spiders completely fell apart.

They had been flawlessly split in half horizontally.

Black spider blood, corrupted viscera, and toxic venom flooded the stone floor in a massive tidal wave of gore.

Morwenna calmly, fluidly sheathed the Astral Corsair. The entire execution had taken exactly one point five seconds.

The Vanguard girls stared at the carnage in awe as Rowena slowly lowered her mythic staff, realizing exactly how far the gap in their martial power truly was.

Silas stood behind the Dread Queen, deeply impressed by the flawless display of kinetic violence.

"That was cool," Silas complimented her genuinely with his deep voice echoing in the quiet tunnel.

Morwenna physically froze.

The terrifying SSS-Rank mythic entity who had just casually bisected two dozen giant armored spiders completely lost her feral swagger.

Her pale cheeks instantly flushed a bright, undeniable shade of crimson. She looked down at her boots with a small flustered giddy smile touching her lips.

’The Captain thinks my swordplay is cool!’ Morwenna thought as her face melted. ’I am definitely getting that promotion!’

"Move up," Silas ordered smoothly, breaking her out of her stupor.

The girls advanced deeper into the cavern, carefully stepping entirely over the bisected bleeding corpses of the spider horde.

As they walked, the physical environment of the tunnel began to drastically, visibly change.

The smooth carved obsidian rock walls began to warp.

The glowing valuable veins of blue star-iron and deep-earth alloy were no longer pristine as they were being violently overrun.

Massive corrupted white roots were violently spreading across the walls, the floor, and the ceiling.

The roots were actively burying themselves deep into the mythic ores, draining the ambient mana from the crystals like giant leeches.

The stale smell of the mine entirely vanished.

It was instantly replaced by a thick and overwhelmingly sickeningly sweet scent. It smelled like rotting fruit mixed with highly concentrated cloying sugar.

Silas’s Gold Core combat instincts violently flared.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood completely straight up.

"Stay on absolute guard..." Silas ordered sharply with his hand resting entirely on his sword hilt. "That scent is an active neurotoxin. The Boss is trying to pacify us."

Eluned didn’t tolerate the insult.

The Goddess of Nature aggressively stepped forward. Her glowing green eyes narrowed in pure disgust at the corrupted flora choking the stone walls.

She lifted her bare foot and violently stamped it directly onto the root-covered floor.

KRA-KOOM!

A massive overwhelming wave of pure pristine nature mana violently erupted from her body.

The sickeningly sweet scent was entirely obliterated as the heavy and fresh dominating scent of ancient pines, morning dew, and blooming wildflowers completely flooded the tunnel, forcefully suppressing the Boss’s neurotoxin.

"Pathetic corrupted garbage," Eluned cursed the white roots, glaring at them in absolute disgust. "I will burn this entire root system to ash."

Sitting safely on Silas’s shoulder, Thora finally realized the truth of the situation.

The Dwarven blacksmith pulled the massive, severed crimson crystal completely out of her duffel bag.

She held it up to the bright white light of the floating lantern, inspecting the internal matrix as they walked past the corrupted roots.

"I understand why this specific crystal is crimson!" Thora gasped loudly, her eyes wide with sheer, scientific revelation.

"Why?" Silas asked, keeping his eyes entirely on the path ahead.

"It’s not just a standard mythic ore!" Thora explained frantically, tapping the glowing red crystal. "It is a crystallization of condensed monster blood completely fused with the ambient deep-earth alloy! The corrupted roots are actively bleeding the monsters into the rock! This is amazing! It’s a living biological metal!"

Before Thora could completely nerd out over the discovery, the tunnel abruptly ended.

They stepped entirely out of the narrow corridor and into the absolute main chamber of the dungeon.

The room was massively wide. It was a sprawling subterranean cavern easily the size of a modern football stadium and the ceiling was entirely lost in the dark shadows high above.

The entire floor of the cavern was completely, entirely packed with hostile targets.

There were a lot of of them.

Corrupted Orcs, massive Umbral Spiders, and heavily mutated Dire-Wolves filled every available square inch of the muddy ground and standing directly in the center of the horde, towering entirely over the rest, was the massive, twelve-foot-tall Tier 3 Behemoth Orc that had mangled Tasmin.

Its left eye was a ruined charred crater of burned flesh, matching Tasmin’s exact report but none of the monsters were actively charging and none of them were roaring.

Every single monster in the massive cavern was currently kneeling.

They were completely bowed in terrified submission, facing the far end of the stadium-sized room.

Rooted deeply into the bedrock at the back of the cavern was a massive, towering, heavily corrupted tree.

Its bark was a sickly necrotic gray as its sprawling twisted branches were completely covered in heavy glowing white petals that actively pulsed with the sickeningly sweet toxic mana.

The tree didn’t have a face... It didn’t speak...

But Silas could physically feel the massive spike in the ambient atmospheric pressure.

He felt the terrifying psychic command completely issue forth directly from the roots of the tree, broadcasting straight into his Mythic Gold Core.

It was a silent order to slaughter the intruders.

In perfect unison, every single kneeling monster in the massive cavern slowly turned their heads.

Dozens of glowing corrupted yellow and crimson eyes locked entirely onto the squad standing in the tunnel entrance.

Silas didn’t flinch.

He slowly drew The Azure Guillotine.

The cosmic blue Tier 3 mythic blade hummed with violent golden authority.

He took a deep breath, preparing to issue the command to his army.

"Atta—" Silas started to yell, raising his sword high into the air.

He didn’t even get to finish the word.

A blur of dark leather and spinning iron chains violently shot past him.

"On it!" Tasmin shrieked happily, completely abandoning formation and launching herself into the air directly toward the blinded Tier 3 Behemoth that had broken her spine.