Going over what he learned from the quick opening fight with the adamantine statue, Marcus informed Mrazivy and Roxene about his thoughts on their opponent.
‘So, I want to try a few more things to test out some of my theories. If the both of you would not mind backing me up a bit, that would be appreciated.’
Sending back their response, both Mrazivy and Roxene agreed to Marcus’ plan, and they got to work on testing out the capabilities of the statue.
Nearly twenty minutes went by as they all skirted around with Marcus taking the lead thanks to his absurd durability.
Of course, he had not gotten away unscathed during the battle and was currently healing two holes in each of his arms from when he had botched a parry.
Nevertheless, a crippling wound for most was simply a minor inconvenience for Marcus, and he along with his partners had pretty much figured out their opponent.
‘Okay, time to swap.’ He said over their telepathic connection.
Jumping back, he avoided a heavy hammer blow that was aimed to squash him and Roxene came up to the front and activated her supreme skill.
At the same time Marcus used his own which he had been saving for when they wanted to bring a decisive end to the fight.
In turn Mrazivy frowned, not having a supreme skill of her own. But instead used her draconic transformation race ability which packed about as much power.
They were all now going pretty much all out, and only leaving their limited use skills back since this was still only the first of ten floors they would need to clear before being able to exit the special dungeon.
‘Here, here, and here.’
Rushing around the battlefield Marcus instead of taking the statue head on, turned his attention to the traps it had laid.
It was clear now that this fight was like a final test for all of them to see how they could use their new skills, or in Roxene’s case greater power in a fight.
Mrazivy needed to use her speed to deal with its spears, Roxene is hammers with her power, and Marcus its traps with his skills.
‘Got you.’
As the statue tried to use one of the traps it had previously set, it found that it was caught up instead. Falling into a bed of quicksand.
This was thanks to Marcus’ glyph tuning skill which could not only disable magical traps but turn them to work in his favor.
Of course, he had no skill to set his own traps, but with an enemy laying them out all over for him, he had no need to.
Mrazivy for her part was also doing well. Practically teleporting around and blocking the spears in order to let Roxene use her strength to fight from the front.
Slowly but surely, they began to chip away at the statue. And finally, after they had been fighting earnestly for nearly seven minutes, Roxene ripped off one of its legs.
This caused it to collapse and lose any ability to initiate any attacks against them.
‘I have dealt with all the traps it has set so they won’t affect us. I will start helping by attacking in earnest.’ Marcus transmitted.
Jumping into the fight he helped out Roxene in the front, and soon enough the had dismantled all of their opponent’s arms.
But when they thought they were about to win a black smoke rose up from its body and pushed them all back.
Its dismembered arms and legs were then picked up by the back smoke and it put itself back together.
Watching this happen was certainly disheartening. They had put their all into beating it, and all of them were getting close to their limits.
‘We just need to take it down hard and fast this time. When we have taken out all of its limbs, we should aim for the cores on its head and chest.’ Marcus said in order to get them all back into the fight.
This time they went in with far greater ferocity.
They had already learned the patterns of their opponent, and with its earlier traps already turned against it they were able to overpower it again before they were fully tired out.
‘Now.’
The instant Marcus and Roxene finished taking out the statue’s last two limbs which it was using to defend itself, Mrazivy shot in like a flash and with two quick thrusts pierced into the head and chest of the adamantine stature before it could push them back with its black smoke again.
Like a broken machine, as soon as its cores where pierced the statue stopped moving, before head slumped over.
Yet as the three of them relaxed now that their enemy was defeated, its body began to expand before a cloud of black smoke filled the room.
“Don’t breathe it in, it could be poisonous!” Marcus shouted.
He then did something that would seem foolish and in contrast to his earlier statement, and opened his mouth and began sucking all the smoke in.
Without a need to breath or an actual circulatory system though, Marcus was confident that he would be fine and figured that his seemingly infinite stomach could hold all this smoke with ease.
Fortunately, his guess was right, and while it took him some time, the smoke soon began to dissipate. In no small part thanks to his efforts.
“That certainly was a nasty death throe. Thanks for handling that, Marcus.” Mrazivy said as she began moving towards him.
Expect, before she could take a step, Marcus held up a hand and told her not to move.
“This dungeon really is diabolical. To think even while it was dying it would set these up right at the end.”
Squatting down, Marcus carefully gripped what seemed to only be air. But as Mrazivy and Roxene looked closer, they saw that it was an incredibly thin and difficult to perceive wire.
It was at this point they all realized that the cloud of smoke was likely not poisonous, but simply a smoke screen to prevent them from noticing these final traps that had been left to end them when they relaxed thinking they had won.
Luckily Marcus’ trap sensing had found them, and none of them had made a move while the smoke was around.
Getting to work, he disabled all of the wire traps while also keeping an eye out for any other nefarious workings left by the dungeon.
When he finally eliminated the last one, a loud ding sound resounded throughout the room and three treasure chests appeared in the center.
Watching this happened they all let out sighs of relief.
All of them had seen this a number of times on the first ten floors they conquered alone, and when the chest appeared it meant that the trail was over.
“This dungeon certainly is not going easy on us. But I guess I did get my trap disarming and glyph tuning skills up to seven, so it was not totally worthless.”
“Yeah, my warp steps also level up and is at five now.” Mrazivy said happily.
‘I leveled up once again, making it three levels just from this floor. It seems this dungeon knows that I am already perfect and simply need to level up to get better.’ Roxene said with her head raised proudly.
At this Marcus chuckled, before saying, “Well, how about we see what we got for getting through this.”
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