She didn’t wait for orders.

A second blinding blur of emerald green magic violently shot past his other shoulder.

"Wait entirely for me!" Eluned yelled competitively, actively summoning a massive ironwood staff and charging directly into the center of the horde. "I am going to completely uproot that disgusting weed!"

"Don’t you dare kill the Boss before I get there, Goddess!" Morwenna roared, sprinting directly into the mud, her Astral Corsair leaving a trail of blue cosmic light.

"For the Blessed Land!" Brida bellowed, hoisting the axe and charging into the fray.

Fenna, Maren, Hilda, Gunnhild, and Elara completely abandoned the disciplined diamond formation.

They entirely broke ranks, screaming battle cries and eagerly charging head-first directly into the massive stadium of heavily armored monsters.

They were bloodthirsty and they didn’t want to hold a defensive line.

They wanted to slaughter...

Silas stood completely alone in the tunnel entrance, his sword raised for a command that nobody had stayed around to listen to.

’I can’t even be mad at them...’ Silas thought with a sigh but he didn’t look angry.

He slowly lowered his glowing blade with an affectionate proud smile touching his lips.

"Don’t entirely worry, my Lord!" a loud abrasive voice cheered from high above.

Silas looked up.

Thora was still sitting securely on his shoulders with her thick thighs completely wrapped around his neck. She patted the top of his head affectionately.

"I’d absolutely never leave yo—" Thora started to promise her complete loyalty.

Silas didn’t hesitate.

He calmly reached up, grabbed the Dwarven blacksmith by the back of her heavy helmet, and forcefully threw her off his shoulders and directly into the middle of the raging battlefield.

"AGGGGHHHH!" Thora screamed as she sailed through the air toward a pack of Umbral Wolves.

Silas smirked, adjusting his armor in the cold light of the floating lantern.

"Clear the room," Silas ordered the empty air.

"AGGGGHHHH!"

Thora’s scream echoed violently across the cavern.

The half-naked Dwarven blacksmith sailed completely through the air, flailing her muscled limbs as she plummeted directly toward a massive snarling pack of Umbral Wolves.

The wolves didn’t hesitate.

They were corrupted predators.

Seeing a chunk of raw unarmored meat literally falling out of the sky and directly into their kill zone, five of the massive dire-wolves leaped simultaneously into the air with their venom-dripping jaws unhinging to rip her apart before she even hit the ground.

They entirely underestimated the territory’s Master Smith.

Thora’s terrified screaming stopped the exact microsecond she was in striking range.

Her panic completely vanished, instantly replaced by a massive grin.

"Just kidding, you ugly mutts!" Thora cackled loudly.

She reached behind her back and she didn’t pull out a heavy forging hammer.

With a sharp ring, she drew a pristine and perfectly balanced custom-forged shortsword.

The blade wasn’t made of standard iron.

It was forged from a hyper-conductive variant of deep-earth alloy, and the flat of the metal was completely covered in glowing blue runes.

Thora forcefully surged her mana directly into the hilt.

KRACK-THOOM!

A blinding deafening explosion of pure high-voltage lightning violently erupted directly from the blade.

The lightning didn’t just shock them.

It arced aggressively through the damp, humid air of the cavern, instantly chaining between all five airborne Umbral Wolves.

The electrical voltage completely flash-fried their internal nervous systems.

Their corrupted yellow eyes violently burst.

Their dark fur instantly caught fire, filling the air with the sickening stench of charred meat and Thora landed heavily in the mud, rolling perfectly to absorb her momentum.

The five charred, smoking wolf corpses crashed to the ground around her, completely dead before they even hit the dirt.

"I call this one The Defibrillator!" Thora laughed maniacally, raising her crackling, lightning-wreathed shortsword. "Who else wants a shock therapy session?!"

She aggressively charged entirely into the horde, swinging her lightning blade like an absolute lunatic.

Behind her, the rest of the Vanguard was dealing work.

They had entirely abandoned their defensive diamond formation, turning the massive subterranean cavern into a slaughterhouse.

Brida was an unstoppable tank.

The towering commander waded directly into the thickest cluster of Corrupted Orcs.

The purple gravity runes on the axe pulsed violently with every single swing.

She wasn’t just cutting monsters... she was actively manipulating the physical mass of her strikes.

"Come get some fuckers!"

She swung the massive battleaxe in a brutal sweeping horizontal arc, cleanly bisecting three armored Orcs at the waist.

Their heavy top halves slid off their legs with black blood geysering into the mud.

Gunnhild was a maestro of lethal distance.

The spearwoman utilized her heavy shaft to perfectly control the engagement zone.

An Umbral Spider leaped at her from a rocky outcropping, its mandibles clicking wildly but Gunnhild didn’t step back.

She planted her back foot and thrust her spear upward with terrifying velocity.

The heavy iron spearhead punched cleanly through the spider’s thick purple carapace, completely skewering its vital organs and pinning it to the cavern ceiling.

Fenna and Elara didn’t stop firing.

The two archers had found a high-ground vantage point on top of a massive boulder of unmined ore.

They operated with terrifying precision. Every time an arrow left their bowstrings, a monster’s skull violently snapped backward.

And Tasmin was a complete blur of dark crimson fire.

The Wilderness Huntress was actively hunting.

She completely utilized Morwenna’s lesson, condensing the thermal output of her daggers strictly to the razor-sharp tips.

She danced through the chaotic melee with her chains whipping through the air.

She didn’t waste a single drop of excess mana as every strike was perfect.

She severed hamstrings, melted through iron breastplates, and instantly dropped targets with ruthless efficiency.

The girls were winning but Silas wasn’t looking at the trash mobs.

His golden-ringed eyes were completely locked onto the massive twelve-foot-tall armored Behemoth standing in the center of the stadium-sized room.

The massive Orc wielded its solid iron mine-cart pillar. Its left eye was a ruined blackened crater of cooked flesh.

Silas completely ignored the chaotic fighting happening around him as he marched directly through the battlefield. A cold suffocating aura of pure sovereign killing intent rolling off his Midnight Carapace armor.

"Tasmin," Silas called out, his deep voice effortlessly cutting through the sounds of slaughter.

Tasmin decapitated a wolf and landed gracefully on the mud, looking over her shoulder.

"Is that the one?" Silas asked flatly, pointing The Azure Guillotine directly at the scarred behemoth.

Tasmin looked at the towering monster. Her dark eyes flashed with pure spite.

"Yes, my Lord," Tasmin confirmed sharply. "That is the exact bastard that pulverized my spine."

Silas didn’t say another word... He didn’t need to...

BANG!

Silas exploded forward.

His heavy iron-plated boots violently cracked the obsidian floorboards, instantly propelling his massive Gold Core frame across the fifty-yard distance.

The Tier 3 Behemoth instantly recognized the approaching threat and the massive monster didn’t just rely on its raw physical mass.

It actually possessed a mana core.

The Orc roared, heavily channeling a massive surge of corrupted, dark-purple earth mana entirely into its solid iron pillar.

The crude weapon instantly doubled in size, completely coated in a thick layer of volatile bedrock.

It swung the massive mana-enhanced pillar in a brutal sweeping downward arc designed to completely flatten Silas into the mud but Silas didn’t dodge.

He wanted to make a very painful point.

Silas stopped his forward momentum entirely and he smoothly raised The Azure Guillotine with a single hand, catching the descending multi-ton iron pillar perfectly on the cosmic blue edge of his blade.

KRA-KOOM!

The impact was apocalyptic.

The force of the clash instantly generated a massive gust of wind.

The shockwave aggressively exploded outward, blowing the remaining low-tier monsters entirely off their feet and tearing the heavy white petals off the corrupted tree at the back of the room but Silas didn’t budge a single millimeter.

His boots sank two inches deep into the solid bedrock.

His Mythic Gold Core flared violently, effortlessly absorbing the crushing weight.

The Behemoth’s remaining crimson eye went completely wide in terror.

It pushed down with all of its massive, twelve-foot-tall muscular strength, but the human standing beneath the pillar simply refused to move.

Silas didn’t just hold the block.

He didn’t try to use fluid technique or elegant redirection like Morwenna either... partly because he couldn’t do it.

Regardless, he was a warlord, and he fought with overwhelming brute force.

He violently surged his Mythic Gold Core, channeling a massive explosive pulse of pure mass directly into his arms.

With a brutal earth-shattering shove, Silas applied leverage to the edge of his cosmic sword.

He aggressively batted the multi-ton weapon entirely to the side with pure crushing strength.

The rebound ripped the monster’s massive leathery hands entirely off the iron shaft.

The Behemoth violently stumbled forward, completely losing its balance and over-committing to the broken strike as its guard was fatally exposed.

"This is for Tasmin..." Silas whispered coldly.

He didn’t swing with elegant finesse.

He executed a brutal horizontal cleave, fueled entirely by golden sovereign mana.

The Tier 3 cosmic blade tore through the ambient air with a deafening roar.

It completely bypassed the monster’s heavily armored mythril breastplate, targeting the unarmored gap directly beneath its massive chin.

SHING!

The weight of the cut was so incredibly violent that there was virtually zero physical resistance.

Silas smoothly followed through with the slash, stepping neatly past the stumbling behemoth.

He smoothly sheathed The Azure Guillotine as he walked away, never looking back.

The massive Tier 3 Boss stood entirely frozen for a fraction of a second and then, its massive, ugly head cleanly slid off its shoulders.

The head hit the mud with a wet thud, immediately followed by the rest of the colossal, twelve-foot body collapsing like a felled tree.

Black, corrosive blood aggressively geysered from the severed stump of its neck, flooding the stone floor.

Silas had just casually parried and decapitated a Dungeon Boss without breaking a sweat but the fight wasn’t completely over.

The exact second the massive Behemoth’s head hit the floor, the entire cavern violently shuddered.

The massive corrupted tree rooted at the back of the room didn’t just sit there.

The death of its primary enforcer completely triggered its automated defense mechanisms as the tree went absolutely berserk.

Its massive necrotic gray trunk physically twisted.

Thousands of thick, violently glowing white roots aggressively erupted entirely out of the mud and the obsidian walls.

They moved with terrifying whip-like velocity.

SWISH! SWISH! SWISH!

Dozens of razor-sharp roots shot directly through the air toward Silas, moving like fired javelins.

Silas didn’t panic as his Gold Core combat instincts engaged instantly.

He fluidly ducked under the first root, side-stepped the second, and casually batted the third away with his armored gauntlet.

He back-stepped smoothly, completely creating a ten-yard tactical buffer zone between himself and the thrashing homicidal flora.

He looked directly at the massive tree and instantly, a glowing blue holographic interface materialized directly in his retinas.

[Target Identified: The Necro-Arbor Sovereign]

[Classification: Tier 4 Boss]

[Description: A massive armored biomechanical terror born from dense necrotic sludge and mana anomalies. Boasts extreme physical density, resistance, and the ability to hijack local biological systems. It is capable of widespread AoE parasitic infection.]

"Tier 4?!" Silas muttered out loud, genuinely, completely surprised by the scaling jump.

He had expected a strong Tier 3 core.

A Tier 4 anomaly located this close to his territory walls was a massive threat as the structural density of a Tier 4 meant standard attacks would practically bounce off its bark.

Before Silas could draw his blade again to deal with the escalated threat, the ambient air directly in front of him completely warped.

Eluned stepped smoothly into his peripheral vision.

The Goddess of Nature didn’t draw a weapon.

She simply stood directly in front of Silas, physically shielding him from the thrashing aggressive roots.

"How dare you!" Eluned hissed as her voice vibrated with divine wrath.

She didn’t cast a complex spell.

She simply spread her slender arms wide, projecting her pure SSS-Rank nature energy completely outward.

The effect was instantaneous and completely overwhelming.

The moment Eluned’s divine aura clashed with the corrupted necrotic mana of the Tier 4 Boss, the entire cavern froze.