Though they thought they would get a little time to rest, even while walking: but they never truly got a chance to rest.
Less than ten minutes after the last fight, more of the dinosaur-creatures came. Then another group after that.
The forest no longer felt like it was testing them. It felt like it was trying to bury them. Smaller ones rushed in from the sides while heavier, thicker-scaled ones charged straight through the middle. The formation held, but every clash left the team slower and more bloodied than before.
Rhuvia stayed near the center of the group. She only stepped in when someone was about to be overwhelmed. Her mana was being spent in short, careful bursts, thin blades of air, sharp pushes of force, nothing extra.
Even so, the cost was starting to show. Her eyes had grown tighter. Her movements carried a faint lag that had not been there earlier in the day.
Vessa noticed, being close to her even through all of this.
During a short pause while the others checked wounds and shared what little healing salve of herbs remained with them, as they had no healer, no adventurer priest with them, Vessa moved up beside her.
"Your mana is getting lower than you're letting on, isn't it?" Vessa said quietly.
Rhuvia wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her wrist. "I'm fine. Watch the trees."
Maya leaned on her spear a few steps away, breathing hard. Two of her hunters were helping an adventurer whose leg had been torn open. The bandage was already dark with blood.
"We're losing too much time," Maya said. "If this keeps up, night will catch us before we ever reach the gate."
No one had an answer that helped. The light under the heavy canopy was already fading. The gray of late afternoon was beginning to turn darker now.
To answer her question, Rhuvia just said, "Don't you see it? The stronger monsters keep attacking us the more we are heading forward; doesn't that suggest that we are getting closer? Let's keep moving; we might be closer than we think."
Hearing her say it like good news, after all of this fighting, the group found a little hope in them all of a sudden, and started moving once again, without complaining.
Only Rhuvia's face had seemed to be staying the same, as if she said it just to keep the group calm somehow, not really knowing herself whether it was true or not.
----
The next open space was larger than the ones before it. Thick trees ringed the clearing, their roots rising from the ground like the knuckles of something long buried. The moment the team stepped into the open, the undergrowth on three sides exploded into motion.
More than a dozen of the creatures poured out at once. Some were the size of large dogs. Others stood nearly as tall as a grown man at the shoulder. They came in a single coordinated rush, jaws wide, claws ready, no hesitation at all.
The line of the team almost broke on the first impact.
Drosha went down under two of the larger ones, her spear trapped beneath her body. One of the Fiora hunters took a deep bite to the shoulder and staggered sideways with a sharp cry. At the rear, an adventurer mage forced out a hurried fire bolt. It only scorched scales and did nothing to slow the charge.
And getting sick of this kind of simple yet frustrating development, again and again, something in Rhuvia finally gave way.
She raised both hands. Mana surged out of her in a visible wave. The air around her thickened and began to vibrate.
Suddenly a sphere of compressed force expanded outward from her body in a perfect, growing ring. Trees groaned under the sudden pressure. Leaves were shredded midair. Every dinosaur-creature within thirty paces was lifted off the ground and slammed outward with bone-breaking power. Bodies crashed into trunks or tumbled through the brush in broken heaps. The few that remained at the edges of the blast staggered, dazed, and were quickly finished by the others.
When the pressure and light faded, the clearing was filled with the dead and the dying.
Rhuvia swayed once. She locked her knees and forced herself to stay upright. The amount of mana she had just spent on this one spell was larger than anything she had used since entering the forest. What remained in her core felt thin and distant. A dull ache pulsed behind her eyes.
She lowered her hands and looked at the battered group around her.
"Let's go," she said. Her voice came out rough, like a zombie, repeating the only words it knew. "We finish this tonight. Whatever it costs."
Seeing the scene that just happened, and how she said "let's go", so casually, no one dared to argue with her.
They pulled themselves back into formation as best they could. The group moved slower now. Even the ever-strong Drosha needed help getting fully upright. The bitten Fiora hunter held a fresh bandage tight against her shoulder. The guild mage looked drained from the rushed casting.
Still, they moved. They left the ruined clearing behind and pushed once more into the deeper green.
-----
Just like that, the night finally came.
The strike team walked in near silence. The earlier complaints about the forest and the missing gate had burned away, replaced by the simple need to keep putting one foot in front of the other, just as their leader, Guild Master Rhuvia, was doing.
After what felt like a long stretch of time, though it was probably less than half an hour, one of the scouts near the front suddenly raised a hand.
"Miss Vessa," the young woman called. Her voice was tight, carrying a mix of exhaustion and something that sounded almost like hope. "I think I found something. I think… I think it's a Gate."
Hearing the word "gate", the entire team stopped at once.
Vessa moved forward immediately. Rhuvia followed close behind. The scout pointed through a gap in the trees toward a low, irregular arch of black stone. It sat half-buried in the thick roots of an enormous ancient tree. Faint interlocking runes ran along the inner curve of the arch, dull and inactive. The ground in front of the structure was strangely bare, as if nothing had grown there for a very long time. How that was possible when the dungeon was supposed to awaken just a few days ago, no one had any idea about it.
Rhuvia stared at the black stone in silence for a while. Her face gave nothing away. Around them, the forest had gone completely quiet, as if it too were waiting for her to say something.
No one spoke for a while.
The possible gate stood in the fading light, still and waiting.
And finally, breaking the silence, Maya was the first to speak, voice low and strained. "But it's closed? How?"
Her words hung in the cooling night-air, confusing everyone at the present.