The group approached the area where the smoke was coming from and then confirmed the existence of an active volcano. Aion didn't know much about volcanoes, but he didn't remember hearing about them existing in extremely cold areas like that. He needed to study more…
Aion used the relic again and confirmed that they were pointing to right below the volcano… which was going to be very annoying. They couldn't just go down using the main path of the volcano, so they began to circle around there and eventually found a cave… it seemed like the entrance of a dungeon.
"You said that the in the future, a dungeon explodes here, was the dungeon reactivated here, or it just appeared in the future?" Aion asked.
"I am pretty sure that it will appear in the future…" Arlana replied.
"I don't remember about a dungeon appearing here either," Seris added.
The weirdness of the situation was starting to stand out more and more. In any case, they decided to check the interior after they raised the guard. The draconic wanderer went ahead first while being controlled by Aion since he was planning to give his support with magic.
Aion created a fireball and made it illuminate the path ahead since the interior was completely dark, and soon they noticed that something was off… the monsters weren't coming.
"I really don't like this," Aion furrowed his eyebrows and then said.
"Do you think that someone accelerated how things were going to happen and forced the dungeon to emerge many years before it was supposed to?" Seris asked.
"I guess so," Aion replied, and then he recalled that the smoke of the volcano hadn't spread that much since the ashes didn't fall that much yet. "The mirror probably made us come to a time where the distortion started, and the volcano must be the start of it... The dungeon must be the second part of their plan."
After walking for a while, the group noticed that the temperature was starting to increase. Five hundred meters later, they noticed that there was a light ahead. The light eventually turned into a massive open field that looked like a massive hole. However, even on the walls of the hole, they could see a path going downward and in a spiral. There was this hot steam coming from below that they could even see the bottom of the hole.
"This is a shape of a dungeon that I never heard of… this is more than a bit tricky," Seris said. "Usually, the dungeons would grow over time the more mana they have, it is like a labyrinth, but at a slow pace, but it looks like this dungeon was completed from the very beginning."
"Maybe the core of the dungeon is making the dungeon deeper as we speak," Aion said.
"That is another thing that I never heard of… they might not stay in the same place all the time, but they need to be in the same area once they begin to work as a core of a dungeon," Seris added.
"I don't know the details of the dungeon since it exploded… that was the only thing I found about it," Arlana added.
"Exploded… exploded," Aion rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
"Don't repeat such ominous words," Seris said after gulping, imagining what Aion imagined.
"It is fine. I don't think that the enemy will use such an obvious trap," Aion shrugged. "Let's go down using the earth platform to save time."
Aion created the earth platform, but the draconic wanderer went to town ahead of them since he could fly. Aion wondered when he would get that spell as well. Using his current means wasn't half bad, but he wanted more.
Regardless, as they went down, the temperature began to increase, and they felt like the enemy was laughing at them since they came to that timeline ready for cold and not heat. Still, Aion solved that problem by combining water and wind magic.
After not so long, everyone managed to see some creatures deep below on the staircase-like path near the walls. They were emitting a lot of heat, and when Aion focussed his eyes, he saw golems made of magma… completely made out of magma. They were like five meters tall, quite wide, and without a doubt, heavy. So, he wondered how they didn't make the staircase fall.
"They aren't moving at all… why?" Seris furrowed her eyebrows.
Aion made the draconic wanderer approach one of the monsters and crush its head with all his might since he didn't want to get close to those suspicious creatures under those circumstances while he was using the necromancer class. Thanks to that, the draconic wanderer killed the first beast, but then the body exploded.
Everything in a thirty meters radius was hit by the magma of the body of the beast. Aion quickly summoned an ice wall to block the magma, but he had to keep repairing it for a while. Until he saw the draconic wanderer more than a little bit damaged, and then he saw that the nearest golems had become a bit bigger as well, thanks to the magma.
"This isn't a half-bad plan…" Aion nodded to himself. "Lure the enemies to a confined space and then use the explosive monsters to slow their advance down to proceed with their nefarious plans."
"I don't think that it is a good idea to waste time complimenting the enemy… in my experience, the more time we waste, the worse the situation will become for us," Arlana said, showing a nervous look.
"If the monsters aren't advancing, then the enemy has control over the core of the dungeon… it should be obvious by now since the dungeon appeared hundreds of years before it should be, but still…" Seris began to bite her nails since she also couldn't imagine how they could deal with that annoying trap.
As for Aion, he already had a plan in mind on how to solve that mess.
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