Astrid's mind rushed to understand what Skandr was saying as she whipped her hammer in three quick attacks, dispatching the light blue shimmerbug on the third strike. At the same moment that she killed the blue shimmerbug, Muti and Felix finished with the green while Skandr and Benedict easily dispatched the final indigo shimmerbug.
Blue Iridescent Shimmerbug slain. 2,460 experience gained, split among party.
Green Iridescent Shimmerbug slain. 3,070 experience gained, split among party.
"That means they're finally catching up to us," Astrid said.
"Technically, the indigos are around the same level as us," Skandr disagreed. "They start at level 61, and I'd guess that, given that the blue was 67 and the green 72, each color is a growth of about five levels beyond the previous."
"And with what you said about the rainbow," Astrid said, "that means there will be more, so far as we can guess. I do have to say, though, I don't remember what all the colors of the rainbow are."
"Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet," the Wizard rattled off. "It's not a surprise, it's not like people sit down and talk about rainbows. And going off of how the names for the shimmerbugs have progressed, I'd be surprised if there wasn't a red shimmerbug somewhere around here that's at least level 85."
Astrid let out a long, slow breath at that, thinking about facing a monster that was at the peak of Steel tier. Then she said, thinking aloud, "If they keep getting one Skill for each color they go up, then we'll be looking at a monster at the highest level that's got seven active Skills, and they keep getting comparatively stronger with each color evolution. Felix, Muti, did the green one use a fourth Skill? The blue one had a defensive barrier, to add onto the charge of the indigo and the attacking aura from the violet."
"I'm not sure," Felix said, looking at his lover. "We took care of it too quickly to get a full measure of it. Maybe the attacks it was making on my leg were an active Skill? Or it could just be that it was significantly stronger than the indigo ones that we've fought until now."
"The flow of mana around it was wrong for it to have used another Skill," Skandr said. "I might have gotten a bit distracted by the rainbow realization, but I was still watching. It might have a fourth Skill, so the next time we encounter one, let's make sure we can hold it back for a while to test if it has something. And its general attributes?"
"I'd say that it's pretty close to two tiers higher than the indigo," Felix said, looking at Muti for confirmation.
"I would agree. It still remains lower in total attributes than us, but not by much. However, I do not know what its mental attributes are, as we did not leave it alive long enough to test its mental resilience. We could guess that the yellow will gain even more attributes and will boast a higher attribute total than we do."
"And though we'll plan on each new color getting a new Skill, we can count on the yellows having at least one more Skill than the blue," Astrid followed with the train of thought. "So we'll have to be a bit more careful at that point. However, with our equipment and our own Skills, I don't think that we would struggle with them."
"That is correct," Muti nodded. "However, we do not know how many of them we will encounter at the same time. If they have an aura and strike as many, then they could begin to pose a true threat."
Felix expressed his agreement as he continued, "If there're five of them? We may find ourselves getting overwhelmed on the front lines. Until we start really applying ourselves, that is."
"That is what we want," Muti replied, her grin obvious in her tone.
"So let's go find some more of the green and blue ones," Astrid said, reaching over and grabbing the green shimmerbug's corpse. It was surprisingly light, considering it was a nearly two meter tall, four meter long monster with built-in armor. Pulling up on the… wing casing, she supposed she'd call it, Astrid could see that there were vestigial wings under the armor. Considering they were only maybe two meters long each, she could be pretty confident that, barring gaining some exceptionally strong magic further down the line, the beetles weren't going to be flying anywhere.
The rest of the party gathered around as Astrid conducted what investigations she could on the corpse. The blades on its four legs were, to Astrid's surprise, mechanical. Rather, they weren't simply legs that had blades protruding from them. Instead, they were somewhat like a cat's claws, retractable back into the limb itself. Now that the monster was dead, its muscles seemed to have relaxed, and the blades had retreated back into its arms. With a small bit of flexion, though, they could make the ten-centimeter-wide blades extend from both sides of the monster's arm.
As for the rest of the monster, it was, so far as the rest of the party could tell, pretty normal. Its mouth didn't have any fangs or any apparent mana condensing organs like a dragon. The strangest thing to Astrid, as they examined the body pretty thoroughly, was that they eventually accidentally came across its reproductive organs. She had no idea if it was male or female, and she didn't care to investigate, but she had never seen any monsters with the ability to reproduce. In Dungeon branches, they were completely incapable of it, but in the Dungeon proper, they were real creatures, not just mana-manifested and created beasts.
"So do we want to prioritize finding more of these stronger ones," Benedict said as the party finished their investigations and stood to continue on their way, "or do we want to make sure that we're still being cautious? I'm all for actually getting some good experience, but I don't think it's a bad idea if we slow down for at least today to make sure we're not going to get in over our heads. After all, this isn't a Dungeon branch. These monsters don't just spawn into existence, they come from somewhere, and we can overhunt their population. If the violets are their babies, we could ruin the longevity of this hunting ground."
"And we have no idea if they have predators, a queen, or anything like that," Astrid nodded, slowing her excitement. "I apologize, I was just really happy that it looked like we weren't going to be stuck with painfully weak enemies here. Let's slow down, not get too far into the forest and find ourselves surrounded or anything like that. Muti, you still know exactly how to get us back home?"
"Of course."
"Good. Then, for now, we'll continue staying close to the exit, just in case something we can't deal with comes along. Muti, more than finding more of the shimmerbugs, your assignment right now is to see if you can find any other creatures around here. Obviously, the shimmerbugs eat the vine-trees, but we don't know if that's all they eat, and we don't know if anything eats them. If they're the apex hunter around here, then I would guess we are pretty far from wherever they're all born, and if they're not, I don't wanna stumble across something that can kill a level 85 with seven Skills."
As Astrid gave her commands, the party nodded in agreement, and they settled into, once again, a more cautious stance. Then they started their exploration anew, the anxiety about being unable to find what they were looking for washed away with a certainty that they had, at least, a few monsters around worth hunting. Now, it was just a matter of finding out how they could continue to delve around here without ruining their new hunting ground and or getting themselves killed.
***
The Wanderers limited themselves to the area that they called the outskirts of the vine-tree forest for the rest of the day. Now that there was confirmation that there were, at the very least, monsters a full watershed ahead of them, they were no longer so pressed to find existence of something at that level. Instead, they very willingly contented themselves with crushing any resistance that appeared in front of them in the form of mostly violet and indigo shimmerbugs. The occasional blue found its way out as far as they were hunting, but every one of them was level 65, not a single level higher. Apparently, the indigo shimmerbugs were finding something out here that allowed them to evolve, but then they wanted to get back into the greater depths of this forest as soon as they did what they were trying to in the outskirts.
While they all enjoyed the opportunity to learn about what they could expect from the weak shimmerbugs that seemed to live around here, everybody was focused instead on finding what kinds of anomalous monsters they might come across. It would seem that the shiny beetles here had something to be cautious of, if nothing else, then given how they seemed to be twitchy at any sound. That said, considering their levels, they were basically deaf and painfully easy to ambush. So could there be any real threat to them around here? Because if there was, they would have to be shredding through the shimmerbug numbers at a painfully high rate.
For the rest of the day, though, they found no such potential shimmerbug predator. However, Muti did find a single point of interest that had half of the party looking up into the vine-trees instead of along the ground to where the shimmerbugs were.
"This leaf was broken at the stem," the Lethal Shadow reported as she brought down one of the massive leaves from near the peak of one of the blue vine-trees. "Something, other than us, has been up there, and it wasn't eating the tree."
"So do we think it's prey for the shimmerbugs, or the other way around?" Skandr thought out loud as they all bent over the leaf. "Going off of the way that it's broken, what do you think?"
"It appears to have leapt from the tree, going off of the way this claw mark is deep into the underside of the stem," Muti said. "I would guess that it was jumping downward, either to escape from something higher up, or to attack something below. Given the defenses of the shimmerbugs being focused on being above themselves, I would consider this to be a predator of the shimmerbugs."
"And it's able to sneak up on them, however much that counts for," Astrid said. "So there's the existence of an anomaly around here. Or rather, something that wasn't as immediately obvious to us as the bugs have been. For now, Muti, your number one responsibility is to be on the lookout above. Now that it's been a good long while, I'd say we call it a day."
Benedict hopped forward and, with a very genuine look of concern, reached his hand up toward her neck, wiggling his hand until he could get good contact with her skin. Once he did, he asked, "Are you feeling all right? You're calling for an early end to delving. Are you… I don't know, dying?"
"I was trying to be considerate of you," she replied with a laugh. "If you're going to take my goodwill this way, then I'm just gonna go ahead and keep pushing. Thank you for the—"
"No, that will be quite all right," Benedict shook his head, laughing.
"For what it is worth," Muti said, "I believe you are correct in slowing our approach. Other than the final few floors of the Wandering Trials, this is the first time that we are entering a situation entirely blind. Caution will permit us to survive longer."
The party all made their agreement known, and they took tally of the experience gained through the day.
Total Level: 61 (71,139/450,000)
For only four hours of work, and that time being spent more cautiously instead of attempting to clear out everything in their path, almost 70,000 experience was nothing to sneeze at. And as they grew more confident in the environment, Astrid knew that they'd continue to push that number higher, and as it was, a single easy day of delving would give as much as a hard day pushing in the wyvern nest. On the flipside, they weren't proving themselves in any way, shape, or form to the Great One here. Sure, they could gain levels very quickly here, but that wouldn't provide the party nearly as much Skill and potential growth as they would have somewhere else.
"As we're pulling out," Astrid said, looking at one member of the party in particular, "I think there's one more experiment we want to do to give ourselves more time to experiment."
Skandr squinted at her, wondering why she was staring at him as she said that. Then he looked down at his staff, back up at her, and smiled. The almost childish joy on his face was infectious as he asked, "I get to test it out here?"
"We're gonna be here for a while," Astrid shrugged. "Especially if there ends up being red shimmerbugs. Might as well have a better understanding of just what you're capable of down here, and what these natural storms around here will be capable of. Muti, how far are we from the exit?"
"About three kilometers," she said, pointing in what Astrid had to admit was a different direction than what she had thought. It had been years since she had to grapple with the fact that she was, perhaps, a little bit directionally challenged, and it wasn't a comfortable feeling.
"That means we've got enough space to be able to get out of here if anything goes wrong, so go ahead. Show us what you've got."
Skandr didn't need anything beyond Astrid's approval, and he grinned as he stepped forward. He swirled his staff over his head three times, mana coursing up to the blackened tip before it flowed out in a strange, almost alien way. Astrid watched the mana, waiting for it to transform into some storm, but it never did in the way she anticipated. Instead, it rose above the nearby vine-trees, where the mana seemed to coalesce and pull in the ambient mana to become what Astrid could only call a mana storm.
She wasn't concerned… until she saw Skandr's face. The Wizard was looking at the storm, his eyes wide, and then he slowly lowered his staff and watched the storm continue to grow.
"You're not… making this grow anymore, are you?" Astrid asked.
"I'm pretty sure you know what the answer to that question is," he replied. "I'd suggest we all run."
With the Wizard himself saying they should escape, the rest of the party turned on their heels and started to hightail it. Despite the apparently perilous situation they found themselves in, Astrid couldn't help but turn to look at the growing mana. As it grew, the center seemed to condense into something like a tornado as the mana all around it seemed to darken and take on the tempestuous nature of the storm. However, instead of being just wind that swirled around, it was mana that condensed in on itself and wanted nothing more than to explode.
A year ago, Astrid wouldn't have cared about condensed mana. She would've been too ignorant to know.
She had since fought dragons. She knew what condensed mana could and would do if it was able to make contact with people, and with that in mind, she activated Body Surge, grabbed Benedict and Skandr with each arm, and sprinted further away. A more stupid person would have questioned her panic. A party of people who had found themselves confronting condensed draconic mana for the past month only encouraged her to hurry.
Muti flashed through shadow to shadow as she hurried onward, shadow pulsing around her as she pushed her speed to the limits. Felix activated Defender's Avatar, his larger body weaving with supernatural grace around the trees that could have served as barriers for him. Skandr released a spell from his middle ring, electrified air bursting out from him and boosting the entire party's Alacrity while Benedict layered Voice of Liberation over itself to push everybody's speed to its peak. In less than thirty seconds, the party had sprinted the three kilometers that separated them from the exit of the Dungeon.
In that time, they encountered five shimmerbugs, and they ignored every single one of them. Instead of fighting, they focused on ensuring they were able to survive the situation they had managed to get themselves into.
And that was all the time they got before the storm, uncontrolled and explosive, seemed to reach its absolute limit. Astrid had kept an eye on the growing mana storm over the past few seconds and had seen it continue to draw more and more mana into itself as it then dipped below the canopies of the vine-trees. The trees weren't made of wood, instead a much suppler and more pliant material, so the trees all didn't break, but instead bent toward the explosion.
Just as they all started to duck into the cave that led them out, the bomb burst, and a shockwave passed over them. Trees fell and wind screamed as the mana went wild. Astrid's heart bumped unnaturally in her chest as the mana seemed to revolt against her for a moment. Then there was a loud explosion, and debris started to fly everywhere.
"Time to go," Astrid said as she bolted into the cave.
Nobody argued as she hurried toward the exit, where she put the two casters down and ushered them out. What took her by surprise was a new flash of information as she did so.
Arboreal Tavari slain. 2,520 experience gained, split among party.
"I guess we've learned what the name is of the thing in the trees," she grunted as Muti and Felix went through the entrance in front of her. Then, with a strange sensation, she left the Dungeon proper for the first time after the party's first scouting expedition.