The moment they accepted the prompt, they appeared on the fifth floor of the dungeon. What they found wasn’t just the same swamp as the earlier floors. There were sinking statues all around, and stone tiles sunk into the ground before them, creating a puddly path leading ahead through the fog and weedy trees and brush.

  “Quest maker is straight ahead,” Aaron said, taking a step.

  Talia nodded, and they got walking, but they barely made it a few steps before finding their first corpses.

  The bodies were gory, torn apart, and some even thrown into the trees, and hanging down from branches.

  “The fight didn’t go well for these guys,” Aaron said, and Talia just grimaced as they kept moving.

  Soon, they could hear the cries of battle carried on the air, and they quickened their pace. Gradually, they spotted stone through the fog, and as they got closer, they saw it. The main base of the cultists.

  Explosions sounded, and flashes of Skill energy brightened up the murky sky.

  “Looks like they started without us,” Aaron said, and they rushed toward the makeshift walls that surrounded the chapel and stone buildings.

  It looked like some post-apocalyptic gang had built their rough little base around ancient ruins, and in the distance, they spotted the pointed tip of what Aaron assumed was the chapel roof rising above the walls.

  However, unlike the outpost on the second floor, they spotted no defenses or patrols. The walls were empty and damaged, and flames and smoke trailed up from several locations throughout the battered camp.

  The trio made quick work of the walls, flying straight over them. With no cultists in sight, they decided to head straight into the base and deal with whatever they found. Besides, Aaron could still see the quest marker on his map and knew more or less where the beast lord was, and as such, wasn’t too worried about accidentally pumping into it.

  What they found on the other side of the walls was a battle-torn courtyard, covered in corpses. Much of the ruins were dotted by flames, and they even spotted a couple of cultists hiding among the rubble. And some who looked to be playing dead.

  There was no love lost on the cultists, but neither Aaron nor Talia particularly wanted to go around executing cowering cultists, and so they left them and moved on.

  “Looks pretty obvious who won this fight,” Aaron said.

  “Yeah. This beast lord is no joke. We should probably hurry. If it is still fighting the cultists, this could be our best chance to deal with it.”

  “Yeah, right. Strike it before it recovers,” Aaron agreed.

  “Exactly.”

  He glanced around at the destruction one last time. Even he wasn’t sure about charging headlong into a camp this size.

  “Right. Good point. Let’s move!”

  The three of them shot through the base, using their movement Skills, and traveled straight over another gate and wall that led into an inner courtyard where the chapel was located.

  Aaron could see the quest marker before they even passed over the wall, and prepared himself by lobbing off his ring and eating a couple of quick meals, although he was already looking healthily plump.

  Landing within the courtyard, they found bodies lying around, and then they spotted it, with its back turned to them. The dark fur of the towering beast was glistening with blood, and it gave off a hungry aura.

  This thing, it wanted power, and lots of it.

  Between the angry beast that was feeding on one of the corpses and the ancient chapel beyond it was a group of people. They were just as disfigured as the others they had seen, but one man looked oddly normal, like any old white-haired man, and he wore loose robes, with a pointy white hat, and all kinds of religious-looking symbols hung from him.

  Vicious Iron Fur Bear [ Level 144 ]

  Titles: [ Stalker ] [ Giant Slayer ]

  Father Malcolm [ Level 125 ]

  Titles: [ Cruciform ] [ Kinslayer ]

  “Looks like we found them,” Aaron said as he limbered up, and Talia prepared herself.

  “You there! Intruders!” Father Malcolm called out. “Help us slay this vile beast, and I’ll pay you whatever you wish!”

  The bear looked up, its mouthy gory as Father Malcolm spoke, still chewing on the severed arm of one of his fallen comrades. It was a big bear, and not just large, but it looked like it was packing on pounds.

  “Preparing for winter, are you, mate?” Aaron asked the bear, but it just tilted its head and kept eating.

  But in truth, Aaron’s attention wasn’t just locked on those before him in the courtyard. He could feel it now. The energy of the anchor. It was just beyond, likely within the chapel. And he decided to take this moment before the fighting started to ask the cultist leader a question.

  “We’ve come for the anchor. Give us that, and maybe we’ll help.”

  “The anchor?” Father Malcolm’s brow twitched. “How dare you threaten the holy vassal! Brothers and sisters, do not let either fiend inside! Neither the humans, nor the bear!”

  “Aaron!” Talia said. “Why are you agitating them?”

  “I just want to understand this anchor better. They seem to think it’s something holy.”

  “Can’t you wait until after we deal with the beast lord?”

  “Fine,” Aarons said, and then raised his voice for the cutlist leader. “We’ll help with the bear. Then we talk, okay?”

  Father Malcolm snorted and flared his nostrils, but then his gaze shifted to the bear, and he reluctantly nodded.

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  There were only half a dozen remaining cultists standing in a line behind Malcolm, and they clenched their weapons tighter as their leader took a step further, uncertainty written clearly on their faces.

  “Be brave, my children! We do this for the holy vessel! Let us kill this foul intruder and save our home!”

  “Raargh!” The cutlists roared, and a couple of them started to glow red and flash, and then they ran forward.

  The bear’s ears twitched as the flashing red cultists ran for it, and then it balled up, and as they reached it, they exploded in a spectacular display of gory confetti. Unfortunately for them, the bear unravelled from its balled up form, and looked entirely unfazed by the suicidal attack.

  “Not good,” Aaron said.

  In a flash that seemed far, far too fast for its massive, pudgy size, the bear shot toward the remaining cultists.

  Aaron didn’t trust this weird cult in the slightest, and hardly wanted to put his own life on the line for them, but he had a feeling they might need each other for this fight.

  Also, there was a part of him that wanted to spare Father Malcolm, at least long enough to question him. After all, dungeons were a curious phenomenon, and he wanted to learn as much about them as he could. Especially considering the token he possessed.

  But the beast lord wasn’t just about to sit around and wait for them to scheme up a plan on how to kill it.

  Before the beast could reach Father Malcolm, two armored, low D-grade cultists stepped in its path, and they were torn apart in seconds, as if they didn’t belong in the fight at all.

  Aaron’s eyes widened, and he realized there was no time to sit back and watch. They needed to take this seriously, and they needed to do it now.

  The D-grade cultists mightn’t have been the strongest, but the effortlessness with which the bear had struck them down was something else entirely. It had treated them as nothing more than cannon fodder, and even if Aaron could have bested them alone, he doubted he could have made it look anywhere near that easy.

  Talia didn’t need to be told, either. She raised several of her most powerful Skills and flew toward the beast with black, nightmare wings that seemed to suck up the light.

  And Aaron wasn’t a second behind, shooting toward the beast’s unguarded flank with deadly intentions.

  The remaining two cultists and Father Malcolm were pushed back in less than a second, and several Skills flashed brightly as they did everything to keep themselves alive.

  In the blink of an eye, the melee had already grown desperate, and the trio slammed into the beast’s back with everything they had to stop it from ending their unlikely battle companions before the fight had even started properly. And a cascading series of attacks slammed into the beast from all angles.

  But the furry beast was no pushover, and that became scarily obvious as the dust settled. They had hit it with almost everything, and yet, it barely looked as if they had done anything. Even Talia’s recently upgraded Nightmare Blade had barely managed to pierce the beast’s hide, only causing a thin stream of blood to appear.

  Zero had done even worse. It had a little of the steely fur in its claws and jaw, and a tiny bit of blood. But that was nothing against a D-grade beast, and it would heal from such superficial wounds in seconds.

  “Hold the line!” Father Malcolm shouted as he flung his fists at the bear, and they exploded on impact, actually managing to force the bear back a little.

  He’s actually pretty strong, isn’t he?

  But Aaron didn’t have time to muse about the cult leader’s battle strengths and threw himself at the bear with another attack. Luckily for him, he had just the attack for dealing with stubbornly powerful enemies, like the bear. And no amount of defenses could entirely shrug off his [ Soul Shattering Strike ], and the energy-crushing attack was followed up by a devastating combination.

  Unfortunately, the attack didn’t just anger the bear but turned its full attention onto Aaron.

  With a single swipe that was enough to cut D-grades in half, it forced Father Malcolm and his two remaining cultists to back off, and charged straight for Aaron with a fury as he had never seen before.

  It required every ounce of his practiced steps, evasion, and spamming the ever living hell out of [ Spectral Rush ] to have any chance of surviving the absolutely apocalyptic onslaught of attacks that followed.

  And he didn’t for long. It wasn’t just levels that separated them, though, he realized. Sure, the bear was the highest-level creature he had fought, but it was also skilled. Then again, that made a lot of sense. To have come so far so quickly was evidence of the beast’s ability, and it was putting it on full display for everyone to see.

  Eventually, even Aaron couldn’t avoid every attack, and a lightning-fast claw attack that was surrounded by crackling energy tore him in two.

  Father Malcolm clearly saw this as his opportunity, and flashed into range, attacking with a superpowered explosive punch that rippled through the air with enough heat and power to level block, and a shockwave that the others had to plant their feet down to resist being thrown away.

  And yet, despite taking a clean hit from the devastating attack, the bear simply coughed a mouthful of blood and then turned its savage display against the cult leader.

  Father Malcolm took a serious wound when they clashed, but before the bear could end the cult leader, his two remaining followers slammed into its sides, giving him a second to trace his steps back.

  Talia and Zero understood just how desperate things had gotten, and they didn’t waste time either, attacking from opposite flanks of the beast with everything they had.

  But with every landed attack, the bear grew more enraged, and it turned its attacks on them, landing one of Zero that made the wolf whimper and retreat in a stream of silver light. When the wolf reappeared, it had a gnarly cut opening its body and gushing blood.

  Talia’s attack had been more successful, and slivers of black, corrupting light had pierced into one of the bear’s quickly closing wounds. The attack was visibly more effective than the other attacks had been, but it was far from enough to even incapacitate the massive beast. Its powerful claws slashed back at her, causing her jet black shields to flash and flicker as they did their best to block the incredible energy of the attacks coming their way.

  She could feel the power and the threat behind them, and less than a second later, she flapped her massive wings and flew out of range as Malcolm reengaged with another explosive punch.

  The truth was, as sturdy as her shields were, the amount of mana they drew from her was directly related to how powerful the attacks they blocked were, and stopping two of the beast’s full-powered strikes had drained almost all of her mana, leaving her chugging a potion from the sidelines.

  But the trio’s attack wasn’t over, and the beast was shocked when Aaron reentered the fray, slamming into its back with another [ Soul Shattering Strike ] that unbalanced the impressive beast lord.

  However, it was far from over, and the bear’s counters were incredibly fast, and to avoid getting killed every time it countered, Aaron raised his [ Gorgon’s Soul Vortex ] Skill, and felt something he hadn’t exactly expected.

  Thanks to the slowing of time, Aaron wasn’t just finding it easier to avoid the blinding fast attacks coming his way, but he had time to think about what he was sensing in the background, since his bottleneck was the speed of his body, rather than his senses, once time was slowed.

  What he sensed was the System energy within the anchor. It was incredibly dense, and he could even sense the energy radiation coming from it, and how it was linked to the dungeon around them with tethers of divine kind of power.

  Weaving through several attacks coming his way, he leaned into this sensation. It was like a new truth of the multiverse at his fingertips, waiting to be explored.

  Although this energy was different from the ones he had previously mastered. He doubted it was something he could use himself, or any living creature for that matter, but that didn’t mean understanding it and how it worked would provide no value.

  It was, after all, the energy that built the multiverse, he believed. Pure energy of the System, and understanding it would no doubt give him insights into many things.

  But a quick series of claw attacks killed him only a second later, reminding him of just how dangerous the current melee was, and he was forced to resurrect, drawing from his adipose reserves.

  But as he did, he had an idea. As the battle continued, he felt this System energy and tried to delve into its truths as he focused on cycling his [ Reverse Cycle Faux Core ].

  He knew he was onto something, but he also couldn’t allow himself to forget about the fight before him. The beast lord was simply too powerful not to take completely seriously, and he struck hard with another [ Soul Shattering Strike ] as the cultist leader and his fading minions tried to hold the beast off.

  This was going to be a difficult fight to win, but that wasn’t about to dissuade the madman who had made a habit of dying, and an excited grin twisted his face and drilled dimples into his cheeks.

  “Let’s bloody fucking go!”

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