The Stubborn Light of a Dying Flame [Isekai - LitRPG]

More than an hour into the battle, the Orcan's numbers showed no sign of diminishing, in fact, as they killed off the smaller ones, more and more mid-sized monsters had come to take their place.

Patty had long since reached the Second Ascension, but as the battle ramped up, it became harder to get a spare moment to apply her gains. Helga had joined the fighting sometime at the half-hour mark and none of them had managed to take a break since.

"You know, I'm beginning to miss Hoka's stalking," Bob said, as he sliced through a Level 45 Orcan's head. "Helga, any progress on that shield of yours?"

"It's not holding against the bigger ones. I need a few more levels." Helga cut through the crowd with a fireball, thinning the monsters just enough to buy them a brief moment to regroup.

"The fact that you're gaining levels at all is a miracle," Bob said. "Don't expect it to last forever."

"This isn't my first rodeo," Helga snapped. "If you're jealous, why don't you get yourself a—" She cut herself off, narrowly avoiding an attack aimed for her stomach.

"There's a time and a place," Patty said. "We might want to revisit the fighting-our-way-out-of-here plan."

"Yeah, right!" Bob said sarcastically. "We're just gonna get trapped in an even smaller cavern."

A happy yip echoed down the tunnel, bringing with it their salvation. Fluffy burst into the room, tearing through enemies like tissue paper.

Patty nearly missed dodging an attack as she stared at the wolf. He wasn't ever a small creature, but he had grown to three times his size. Glowing red lines streaked through his coat, and he was fighting with a mix of physical attacks and fire magic. His coat was clean of bug blood, which boiled and evaporated as soon as it touched his fur.

Adding to the effect of his appearance, the downed monsters in the room burst into flames, reducing to ash in seconds. With the bodies went the smell and Patty wondered if there might be some purifying effect to the flames.

A ring of fire appeared around them, pushing the living monsters back and giving Patty and her friends some space. The flames were hot, but not enough to burn. The monsters didn't seem to think so as they backed away from the ring of fire, screeching angrily. They turned on Fluffy, attacking him in a flurry of scythe arms and blood splatter.

The bugs' blood. Fluffy didn't have a scratch on him.

"Are you sure that thing isn't immortal?!" Bob asked, backing away from the flames.

"He's a good puppy," Helga said proudly as Fluffy ripped through a Level 60 Orcan with his teeth. He paused to wave his tail, apparently aware of his master's praise before returning to the fight.

It seemed the Friendly trait was more overpowered than Patty thought. It was one thing to turn monsters into pets. This…

This was ridiculous.

Fluffy emptied the room in seconds, reducing a long exhausting battle to a rather anticlimactic spat between monsters. The Orcans lay in purple-splotched pieces at their feet, a few of them twitching, but none of them alive.

Fluffy pranced over to sit in front of Helga, the fire consuming the rest of the carcasses as he wagged his tail.

"That was awesome!" Helga said. "You're the best familiar a girl could have." She hugged the giant demon-dog.

Fluffy shrank back down to his normal size, the red disappearing from his coat.

"Well, that's convenient," Bob commented, still keeping a notable distance from Helga's familiar. "Are we planning on reporting this to Pillan?"

"They should already know about his capabilities," Patty said. "Canus Maximus is a common breed of monster. I'll ask around when we get back."

"I haven't gained this much Experience in weeks!" Helga said.

"It's because of the level of monsters he was fighting," Bob said, his Menu open and visible.

A familiar of one of your party members has killed a Level 98 Orcan. For killing a monster more than 25 levels above his own, he has received a bonus which has been split between all members of your party.

+100,000 Exp

+20,000 Coins

"A hundred thousand, split five ways?" Helga said. "So, twenty thousand each?"

Bob shook his head. "That was after the split."

Helga whistled. "That's half a level. Good boy, Fluffy!" She scratched the wolf aggressively under his chin and he wagged his tail harder.

"Now that we're done killing the Orcans can we get the hell out of here?" Bob asked. "It's not even like we can grind right now. We all have to Ascend first."

"Agreed," Patty said. "I'm not planning on dealing with any more bug creatures for a while."

Helga shuddered. "At least I don't feel bad about killing these ones."

Fluffy sat up straighter, turning his whole body to face the way he had run off to earlier.

"No, Fluffy, we're going home," Helga said. "Well, back to Pillan anyway."

Fluffy whined, his tail no longer wagging.

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"There will be plenty of bugs to tear through after we've had a bath." She grabbed the fur around his neck—his 'leash' was long since gone, probably burned to ash like the bugs—and started gently pulling him toward the exit.

Fluffy whined louder, never tearing his eyes from the tunnel.

A chittering scream echoed down the tunnel, shaking dust free from the walls. Fluffy growled and barked, pulling against Helga's hold.

"Okay, now we're definitely getting out of here!" Bob said, heading straight for the exit. He slammed into an invisible wall. A notification popped up in front of the force field and Bob blanched. "We're screwed."

Patty ran over to read the notification.

The Seran Sabers Dungeon is in a dkeas of overflow. To prevent rde udjje shken from escaping ken sleudke has been placed under dkenslwk. Please defeat the lwhuu and restore the psuneon to working order to bekwmns significant damage to nearby pellrnkesnt.

The dungeon will provide eksnclqod rewards until the kelwclis has been dealt with and players can sokkeit overflow Experience up to ####### even if they have reached an ekcwniosy. (The Experience will be lens for the players and applied as ciin as they Ascend.)

Every fifth word or so was absolute gibberish. It was like the data was corrupted, giving them only half the message. Patty could read enough of it to understand the situation, however.

They had to defeat the boss to get out of the dungeon.

Fluffy broke out of Helga's grasp and shot down the tunnel, heading toward the boss' scream.

"Dammit! Fluffy, heel!" Helga ran after him, shouting for him to come back.

"So much for escaping!" Bob said.

They ran after Helga, catching up to her quickly, but none of them were able to gain on Fluffy, who pulled further and further ahead.

"You know, if he lets us ride him, I'm never walking again," Bob shouted over the Wolf's yips and howls.

Patty wasn't sure she would go near Fluffy after this, let alone ride him. The familiar was damn useful in a fight, it seemed, but the image of herself burning to a crisp while sitting on his back made the idea of riding him extremely unappealing.

Fluffy finally stopped running as they entered a cavern that was more than three times the size of the last one. A large circular arena sat in the center of the cavern, surrounded by a sea of dead Orcans. There were no visible wounds on the monsters that Patty could see. They hadn't been killed by Fluffy; it looked like they just fell where they stood.

In the center of the arena, a massive Orcan sat, her fangs sunk into the neck of one of the smaller creatures.

A notification appeared, raised slightly so it sat just below the face of the boss.

The kdusn Queen has absorbed the sisjty of her followers to wreak vengeance upon the psbakjtj of her hive. Her stats are ueisbek and she has gained increased resistance to leysolak attacks.

"Oh, that's just great!" Bob snapped. "Really helpful System. A+. What would we do without you?"

As bob continued to rant, Patty took stock of the situation. The Queen herself wasn't that impressive. Her large bulbous body made her head and arms look small in comparison. Her tiny wings weren't large enough to carry her bulk unless magic was involved, which Patty couldn't rule out, considering where they were. Her backside was covered in an additional layer of thick black chitin that glowed slightly with veins of purple. Her underbelly was armored as well, though not as heavily.

The room beyond the Queen was far more interesting. Portals lined the arena's edge, seeming to appear and disappear randomly. The only consistent one was the large purple rift at the far end of the cavern. It glowed with an ominous black edge that seeped into the hall, filling the room with a haze almost like smoke.

It certainly added to the effect. Patty wanted to find whoever it was who designed these dungeons. They were too close to video games to be unintentionally similar, and she didn't believe for a second that the System's resemblance to game mechanics was a coincidence. It was a puzzle to solve but at the moment, Patty had almost none of the pieces.

The monster's health bar appeared, along with its name tag.

[Orcan Queen — Level 150]

"This thing is raid-class," Helga said. "We need to get out of here."

"And go where?" Bob demanded. "The tunnel is blocked. We're stuck in here with it."

"We're stuck in the dungeon but not in the boss room," Helga said, entering the tunnel to demonstrate. "We don't have to fight it; we have to hole up in the relatively safe waiting room and see if we can find another way out of here."

"I agree," Patty said. "We can't beat the Queen, not at Level 150."

Fluffy barked at the boss, growling menacingly.

"No, Fluffy." Helga grabbed his fur again. "We're leaving. You can play with the bug monster when we have Hoka to back us up." She tried to drag Fluffy out of the cavern, but he stood solid as a statue, his gaze fixed on the Orcan Queen.

Despite the System glitches, the boss room itself seemed to be operational, in that, as long as they didn't approach the Queen, she didn't seem to notice them. They hadn't aggroed her yet, despite the appearance of her Health bar.

Patty would love to see numbers on health bars, it would make it easier to decide how many people to bring with them when they returned, but she supposed their inclusion in the first place was certainly better than the original state of the combat system.

The rift at the back of the room grew noticeably larger, and black billowing smoke rippled out of it.

Patty frowned. "Guys, something's happening."

The others followed her gaze to the other side of the cavern, looking mildly confused.

A man stumbled through the rift, his momentum taking him several steps into the room.

"A little warning would have been nice!" the man snapped. "I'm not—what the F—"

The man's words were covered by an ear-piercing scream as the Queen turned to face him. Patty glanced at his feet and swore.

He was standing inside the arena.

"New plan," Patty said. "Fluffy distracts the Queen. You two switch to ranged attacks and whittle its HP down. I'll deal with the party-crashers."

"Got it," the two chorused in unison.

Helga let go of Fluffy's fur and he needed no further prompting. He grew to his larger size, the red lines in his coat glowing as he howled. The Queen swiveled to look at him, immediately honing in on the bigger threat. Fluffy charged into the arena, sinking his teeth into the Queen's neck. She screamed and scratched at him with her arms, but the scythes barely made a dent in his fortified skin.

Unfortunately, Fluffy wasn't doing much damage either.

"Raid rules?" Bob asked. "Save Mana for healing? Or go all out and hope we can kill it before it kills us."

"Are you guys bugged as well?" Helga asked.

"Bugged?" Patty frowned. This situation would be bad enough without glitches.

"I can use spells even if my MP pool is empty," Helga said. "I get a little bit of a headache, but it goes away quickly."

"I haven't been paying attention," Bob said. "I just cast spells when I need them. I noticed the headache though. Thought it was the flashing lights."

Unlike the other two, Patty watched her MP like a hawk and only spent Mana when she had enough.

"I'll test it when I get a chance," she said. "For now, exploit the hell out of that bug. I'll be back."

"Good luck!" Helga said.

"You too!" Patty ran around the edge of the room, making sure to keep out of the arena. Three people had joined the man coming through the portal, but all of them had their name tags off.

Please be powerhouses, Patty thought. I don't actually want to fight that thing.

"What's your average level," Patty demanded as soon as she got within hearing-range. They looked human but looks could be deceiving in Ember.

"Just past the First Ascension," one of the women replied. They were all dirty from traveling and the smoke in the area made it difficult to see their faces.

Patty groaned. "Get to the exit. The Queen is—"

"Patty?!" the other woman interrupted.

Patty couldn't see the woman's face, but she recognized the voice. It belonged to the last person on Ember that she expected to see.

A wide grin spread across Patty's face despite the situation. "Long time, no see, Captain! Ready for a boss raid?"