CHAPTER 423: FIRST WAVE

It didn’t take long before the monsters appeared. The dungeon was on the verge of erupting, after all, so the environment was practically flooded with monsters. After walking for maybe two minutes, possibly less, everyone heard the ominous noises.

Tapping of the feet against the rocks. Scratching and rustling, seemingly coming from all directions.

It felt almost as if the monsters were crawling on their skin. The sensation was so intense, that a few of the team members couldn’t help but shudder, rubbing their arms or reaching into their collars to make sure that there wasn’t anything climbing on them.

Even though it was obvious that there wasn’t. Based on the information that they received, the adult lizard monsters could reach more than ten feet in length...

Everyone paused in their steps, glancing around, as they watched each other’s backs. The dungeon was made up mostly of tall rock formations, at least in this part, which was like a labyrinth. Countless narrow passages, twists and turns, columns obstructing the view... There were also gaps within the walls, like ’windows’, allowing them to get a glance as to what was on the other side of the wall... But that only made things worse. The field of view was limited, so who knew whether a monster wasn’t going to pop out at any second? Something seemed to move from time to time, a tail disappearing behind a corner or a gap, but it was so quick, that it was hard to tell whether it was truly there, or if it was just a trick of the eye...

Then, everything happened at once. All of a sudden, from all sides. Relentless attack. The lizards jumped down from the top of the rock formations, rushed through the rock windows, crawled on the ground...

It was a coordinated attack. It seemed that the lizard monsters had some intelligence. Perhaps not high enough to be considered ’intelligent beings’ like the teddy bear monsters were, but like some of the animals on earth, they were smart enough to cooperate during the hunt.

The worst part was their speed. One second, they were still nowhere in sight, and the next one, they were inches from scratching the team members’ faces with their large claws...

...But what was their speed in front of Lane? They might have been fast, but he was an SS-ranker, and an agility type on top of that!

"Hehe," he couldn’t help but chuckle with joy, as he smoothly dodged the lizard attacking it and with a twist of his waist, he slashed the monster’s back with one of his daggers, while lifting the other to block another lizard. Then, he kicked the latter one out of the way, causing it to fly back and crash into the wall, and flipped his right dagger to stab it into the former monster once again, pulling it down and leaving a deep gush in its flesh. The lizard let out a squealing noise, calling for one of its scaly friends to come to its help...

It was no use, though. Although two more did rush into the wounded lizard’s defense, Lane just threw his dagger after his initial target (or, attacker-turned-target, to be precise), impaling it right through the head, evading the helpers by climbing up into the air with his Sky Step, and then sending Wind Blades in an attempt to decapitate them. It took two Wind Blades per each for the lizards to drop down on the ground, their limbs twitching as they bled to death, as their scales protected them from a lot of the impact at the first shot, but with Lane’s aim and speed, it wasn’t difficult to cause them grave injuries.

Only a few seconds into the fight, Lane had already scored himself four kills. It was almost too easy.

With a wave of his hand, he summoned his dagger that was still stuck in one of the monsters’ head, and landed softly on top of the rocks, from where he could get a good view of the situation. He kicked off the lizard that was crawling next to him, and glanced down, quickly checking the battle status.

The team was... managing so far. Although they weren’t the best as a team, all of the team members were experienced, high-ranking Field Agents. They could handle themselves against a group of A-rank monsters. Clara was using her thread ability to capture the lizards, before slashing and stabbing them with her sword. Just like Lane, she was an agility type, so she could fairly easily keep up with the monsters’ speed. Damien’s speed was slightly inferior, despite his S-rank, as he was the strength type... But his reflexes were still great. He had been able to block the initial attack with his ice ability, and from then on, he dealt with the monsters by fighting them with his sword. The Guides were doing the worst, because of course they were, but they were in the middle of the formation, while the Espers took the brunt of the assault...

Overall, they should be able to deal with the situation. But they were still struggling a bit, so much so, that they couldn’t pay any attention to anything besides fighting. No one even seemed to notice that Lane had disappeared. Only Damien was glancing around, likely looking for his boyfriend, but even he was in no position to truly search for Lane...

Lane felt a pang of guilt in his chest, but he quickly squashed it. He had to do what he had to do, for the sake of their peace.

He turned his eyes away from the group, and turning on his Mana Scan to see all the hidden monsters better, scanned the whole area. There were more lizards approaching... Based on the current numbers, the team should take at least ten, fifteen minutes to deal with the first wave, before they could take a breather.

It should be good enough. Lane didn’t want to take that long anyway. After all, any second away from the battlefield was a wasted opportunity to hunt more monsters...

The air seemed to have rippled, as he activated his cloaking ability to attract as little attention from the monsters as possible. Then, using Sky Step, he rushed forward, following the path the team was soon going to take, to a certain rock formation located around half a mile ahead...