Walking through the city streets alongside those two was an entirely new experience in social dynamics.
The predatory stares that usually tracked my every move were still there, but they were entirely muffled.
The moment any passing adventurer or merchant woman let her eyes linger on me a second too long, Vala would casually shift her weight, stepping slightly in front of me with a low, audible growl rumbling in her chest.
She walked entirely too close, her bushy red tail occasionally brushing against my thigh, acting like a highly aggressive guard dog marking its territory.
Elise walked a few paces ahead, completely ignoring the social politics and keeping her cold blue eyes fixed dead ahead.
"So…" I said, breaking the silence as we navigated through the crowded market district. "The Crying Caves. What exactly are we walking into? A spatial tear? An ancient ruin?"
"A, F-Rank dungeon…" Elise answered without looking back, her voice carrying easily over the street noise. "It is a massive, semi-sentient, naturally occurring subterranean labyrinth, constantly birthing monsters inside itself. "
"We aren't doing a standard resource dive today, though…" Vala chimed in, leaning slightly closer so I could smell the faint scent of pine and leather on her armor. "The Guild issued a mandatory annual culling for the lower floors. If we don't periodically thin the herd of mid-tier monsters deep down, the population balloon, and eventually spill out of the entrance in a stampede."
"A culling…" I repeated, committing the terminology to memory. "Got it."
We reached the edge of the city, and the casual architecture gave way to a massive, heavily fortified stone structure built directly into the side of a towering cliff face.
The entrance to the Crying Caves looked less like a natural cavern and more like a militarized border checkpoint.
The gender hierarchy of the city was blatantly obvious here.
The commanding officers barking orders and the heavily armored elites checking guild passes at the main gates were all women.
While the guards handling the actual grunt work, like holding the heavy iron perimeter pikes, or managing the entry logs were almost entirely men wearing basic, scuffed leather gear.
A tall, scarred female guard captain stepped into our path, resting her hand heavily on the pommel of her sword.
Her eyes swept over Elise and Vala with clear respect before snapping to me, narrowing instantly.
"Hold up…" she barked, raising a gauntleted hand. "This is an active culling zone for the lower floors. No low-tier escorts or baggage handlers allowed past the first level today."
Vala didn't even break her stride. She didn't argue or negotiate. She simply let a fraction of her Tier 4 aura bleed into the air.
The heavy, suffocating pressure washed over the checkpoint like a physical wave. The guard captain instantly paled, the color draining from her scarred face to take a hurried, stumbling step back. She nearly tripped over her own boots.
"He's with us," Vala growled, her crimson eyes flashing dangerously.
"A-apologies," the captain stammered, bowing her head quickly to wave us through the archway. "Clear the gate! Let them pass!"
[It's gonna take me whole lot to be actually taken seriously…]
But I kept my face perfectly neutral, falling in step behind Elise to cross the threshold and leave the sunlight behind.
The atmosphere shifted the second we stepped into the dungeon. The air was damp, biting cold, and carried the coppery scent of old blood.
A constant, low whistling sound echoed through the dark tunnels, sounding exactly like a chorus of distant, weeping voices as the wind pushed through the porous rock.
I reached over my shoulder, pulling my bow.
"Formation," Elise ordered quietly, the relaxed posture of the city completely vanishing from her shoulders. "Vala takes the vanguard. I will hold the center line. Luca, you take the rear."
Vala grinned, a feral, terrifying expression stretching across her face. She reached down to her hips, pulling on a pair of heavy, articulated steel gauntlets.
The metal plates extended past her fingers into thick, wickedly sharp steel claws, perfectly built to enhance her natural werewolf instincts. Same went for her plated boots turning her into a pure, close-quarters shredder.
We descended quickly, bypassing the upper floors entirely. The tunnels here grew wider and darker the deeper we went, the weeping sound of the wind growing louder until it was a constant, unnerving hum in my ears.
And then, the shadows ahead of us moved.
A massive swarm of twisted, pale, multi-limbed creatures scrambled out of a side cavern.
Their blind faces were split open in high-pitched shrieks and there were at least forty of them, all easily Tier 2 or higher, rushing us like a tidal wave of pale flesh and snapping teeth.
"Blind Shriekers…" Elise noted clinically, her hand dropping to her sword. "Clear them."
Vala didn't hesitate. She launched herself forward like a cannonball, entirely abandoning defense and crashed directly into the front line of the swarm.
Her clawed gauntlets blurred into a frenzy of tearing strikes. Every time she swiped, the sheer physical force of her Tier 4 stats effortlessly shredded through pale flesh and bone, sending those twisted creatures falling to the ground in bloody pieces.
She fought like an absolute savage, laughing as she gutted them with sweeping slashes of her claws.
But it was Elise who truly sobered me.
The petite swordswoman simply took a single, perfectly measured breath and drew her longsword.
I didn't even see her legs move.
-Crack-! Boom-!
A deafening noise echoed through the cavern, exactly like a bullwhip snapping right next to my ear.
The air around where she had been standing violently distorted, kicking up a massive cloud of stone dust.
And the next moment, she was thirty feet away, standing perfectly still in the dead center of the shrieking swarm.
A localized, miniature sonic boom washed over the cavern a fraction of a second after she had already moved.
Seven of the pale creatures around her suddenly froze, their heads sliding cleanly off their shoulders to hit the stone floor in a spray of dark blood.
[She moved faster than the speed of sound…] I thought, my chest tightening as the reality of the math hit me. [A Tier 5 combatant can casually move at Mach 1. Good to know.]
While the two apex predators pushed the frontline forward, the cavern ceiling directly above me shifted.
Two of the pale creatures had scrambled along the stalactites, completely bypassing the slaughter at the front to drop directly toward the unprotected rear guard.
And they were coming straight at me.
Vala's head snapped around, her eyes widening, "Luca!"
While I smoothly pulled a broadhead arrow from my quiver, resting the wooden shaft against the black bow and pull the string back to my cheek.
At the same time, I tapped into the forty MP sitting in my chest, pushing a condensed pulse of my Fire Affinity directly down my arm and into the metal arrowhead.
The steel tip instantly glowed a blinding, white-hot orange.
And the next second, I released the string.
The arrow crossed the short distance in a fraction of a second, burying itself dead center into the chest of the lead Shrieker.
The moment the superheated metal pierced its pale flesh, the magic violently destabilized.
The arrow hit like a literal incendiary round.
A muffled explosion of concentrated fire ripped the creature open from the inside out as the concussive blast blew the top half of its torso apart in a shower of burning gore, blasting the second Shrieker backward into the cavern wall.
Knocking another arrow, I shot dead the other one as well, enhancing it with just enough fire to not detonate and ruin the arrow.
-Ding!
{
2x Tier 2, Early Stage, Blind Shriekers Killed.
+125 EXP
}
Before I could knock another arrow to get ready for another possible ambush, Vala was suddenly there.
She practically teleported to my side, her chest heaving as frantically check me over. Her hands quickly patted down my chest and arms, lingering noticeably on my biceps under the guise of looking for injuries.
"Are you hurt?" she demanded, her crimson eyes wide with concern, though the heavy flush on her cheeks and the rapid wagging of her tail told a completely different story. "That was incredible! You didn't even flinch!"
Elise walked over at a much calmer pace, casually flicking the dark blood off her longsword to sheath it.
Her cold blue eyes shifted from the charred, smoking crater of the first monster to the arrow sticking out of the second.
"Efficient…" Elise noted, giving me a single, approving nod. "You maintain a cool head under pressure. And slayed two Tier 2 monsters by yourself, despite being a Tier 1."
I just gave Vala a little smirk, watching her furry ears twitch wildly at the direct eye contact.
[Yeah, this party is going to work out just fine.]