I awoke to many faces looking at me, I looked around the room. I was in a daze when I suddenly remembered what happened, it all came back to me like a flood.
'My hands! My hands!' I looked down at my hands expecting them to be melted but when I looked at them they were completely fine.
'Your hands are fine, I healed them.' Riley was speaking from across the room. 'But just what did you do for them to be completely melted like that?' Only then did I realise that I was completely safe before my mind was completely overwhelmed with that one thought.
'I don't know. Is everyone alright?' I tried getting up but as I was putting myself upright I was hit with a sharp pant of pain. I winced and fell to the ground. The ground was cold and even and there was a torch behind me. It was the same torch from the last challenge.
'Don't get up. I exhausted all my healing power trying to heal you but you haven't healed up fully, when my healing power gets refilled I will finish your healing. But for now, just rest.' Healing power didn't use mana, healers had a set amount they were able to heal before their healing power was exhausted.
I looked around, and when I set my eyes on Edwina she looked away quickly, not being able to look into my eyes. I heard a loud rumble, were there enemies coming? I heard the rumbling again.
'Get ready for battle!' I still wasn't able to get up, then I looked around and saw that no one was getting up.
'Sorry guys that was me, I'm actually really hungry.' I was worried over nothing, no doubt he would be famished.
'We should eat some food, what are our rations looking like?' I looked over at our rations bag.
'We have 15 sandwiches left.' That would be enough to survive, although we would still be greatly hungry.
After we had eaten and I was fully healed by Riley we stood right before the door to the mini-boss.
'Everyone, be careful here. This next part won't be a joke, don't let your guard down.' I didn't know which boss it would be, many mini-bosses could be in a C-rank dungeon. There was only one way we could find out.
I opened the door, we walked in. The room was bright, the walls were blue and chalices were holding blue fire in them littered across the room. There was an entity sitting down on the other side of the room. Its body was large and muscular. Its head was white and it had horns, it held a giant hammer in its left hand.
When the entity noticed us its eyes started glowing red, and it stood up and held its hammer high. The doors behind us closed with a resounding thud. The monster was a minotaur.
'Everyone it's a minotaur! It's weak to lightning damage, Akari keep casting Lightning Chain, Octavia buff us!'
'Lightning Chain!' She shot the lightning at the monster and it was shocked for a moment, but then it started to charge at us.
'Cover me! Edgar go forward and tank for Edwina' I jumped back and started preparing.
Clarent Eclipse Mode, I put it into Eclipse mode just in case. I was ready to absolutely decimate this minotaur. I raised my hand into the air.
'Thunderbolt!' Something interesting about this skill was that you could charge it for an even greater effect, there were 3 levels of charge, of course, I was going to charge it to the third level.
I felt the Lightning mana gather into my hand, then a substantial force manifested in my hand, that was level 1. I gathered more mana and it became even more powerful. Level 2. At this point, it was getting difficult to control the thunderbolt.
'It's getting difficult Mordred are you done?!' He was yelling at me but there was no point in replying. Level 3 had come.
'Everyone disperse! I'll pull aggro!' Everyone listened to me and dispersed, because I was the only one in front of the minotaur it naturally came at me, it was just what I wanted.
I had to control the massive thunderbolt in my hand and push it forward. I strained my hand, my veins had started bursting but I was able to push the thunderbolt forward. It flew straight at the minotaur and hit him, there was no doubt.
'Grarrr!' The minotaur howled in pain but was not dead
'Edgar gets back and everyone get behind him!'. It lay there for some time, then its eyes started glowing even brighter. It stood up and raised its hand, then it stabbed its hand into its chest and gouged its heart out.
What was it doing? Why was it committing suicide? Nothing like this had ever happened in King's Fall. It then crushed its heart and fell to the ground with a loud thud.
'Hey, Mordred is it dead?' Edgar lowered his shield and looked at me with a puzzled look on his face.
'Don't get complacent.' I held my sword high in anticipation of an attack. But it didn't get up, we were confused but ultimately accepted it.
'That was strange, wasn't it? It committed suicide, but why would it do that?' Akari was scratching the back of her head.
'I don't know, but we have to take every advantage we can get. First up we should eat and drink some water, it's been a while since I have I'm getting thirsty.', Riley was lying down flat on the ground, I couldn't blame him though, he was keeping our entire team in top shape. 'We brought 9 water skins with us, hopefully, it will last long enough.'
You couldn't use water magic either to hydrate yourself because of the fact that it is made of mana and not actual water, but the real reason was that it would make things too easy. I hastily drank about half the water in my water skin, I didn't want to drink too much because we didn't bring many.
'My healing power needs to recover, in the meantime, we should inspect the room for any clues regarding why the minotaur killed itself.' Riley was smart, it was comforting being around him for some reason. It felt like he knew everything, he acted with logic and a cool head.
I looked around the room, there was nothing out of the ordinary. The only thing that I could notice was the door to the next room.
'There's nothing here guy we should head to the next room.' After some rest, we started the next room. There were largely the same enemies as the first room except they were harder.
'Stay in formations, do not falter!' I yelled out while defending Edwina from orc knights. Orc knights had a large sword, armour and a shield so they were extremely difficult to deal with. 'Edwina, get back and deal with the trash enemies, I'll deal with the knights.' She nodded and supported my rear from getting swarmed by enemies.
The only way to realistically deal with these orcs was to burn them to ash, I needed to find the perfect window to do such though. One of them slashed vertically in front of me, I stepped back swiftly and observed the situation.
As one of them lifted their sword the other quickly came charging at me with their shield in front of them, I panicked and broke into a cold sweat.
'Dark Chain!' Thankfully I had a technique just for this, the chains came from behind the charging goblin and bound its limbs.
'Walpurgis Fl…' I was interrupted by the other orc charging at me, I quickly rolled to the side and held out my hand ready to cast a spell.
'Celestial Boulder!' A giant Boulder was manifested in the air as I said those words, I shot it at the orc and it was crushed by the boulder. The boulder then split into little pieces and homed in onto the other knight, then they made dozens of holes in the orc's body and dispersed.
I never knew that Celestial Boulder was that powerful, if I had used it in my fight against Dengen I may have killed him.
With the orc knights gone, we had killed everything else and the fighting went smoothly.
'Yuck, it's all over me.' Edwina was wiping the blood off of her armour that must've gotten on her when she was slicing the enemies apart.
The door in front of us started glowing, it was the boss room.
'It's time, after we complete the next room we'll be able to go back home. It's been tiring. We should get some sleep after we wake up we should finish off our rations, we won't be needing them anyway. Afterwards, we'll face the boss and finally make it out of this godforsaken place.' Everyone nodded their heads in agreement and we lay down again.
Edwina was still somewhat ignoring me, she had a grudge against me but I didn't know what. I decided that it would be best to deal with her later and rest for the upcoming battle. I lay down on the ground, this time the floor was even and smooth, it made for a good place to get some sleep.
And sleep is exactly what I got.