The target grew in my sight while my gaze darted around, trying to pick the best vector to approach. Killing the gargantuan beast was not too difficult.

Killing it without revealing my identity, not so much.

Of course, I wasn't under the impression that my involvement or the dungeon gate would stay secret for a long time. However, there was a difference between being revealed by an expert scout, and identified by a half-baked report, about a mage-fighter that was throwing blasts of decay.

So, rather than immediately taking it down, I observed it carefully. The muddy ground rippled like cloth under its presence, swamp water dancing outward due to its sheer presence. Getting closer, I could feel something build-up, a likely nasty surprise once the defenses fell.

The distance dwindled, and I finally got a glimpse of the beast. It was a grotesque parody of a frog, its head alone larger than me, its presence towering over me. Its skin was a blotched canvas of sickly green and deep violet, though it was not cosmetic. I could sense an aura of poison radiating off the violet spots.

However, the most attention grabbing part was its eyes, bulbous and deeply set, radiating a green light as it reared back and roared, expelling a wave of pressurized poison that melted a great section of palisade, a gap that the subordinate monsters rushed inside.

I approached it from the side, but when the distance dwindled to fifty feet, the frog caught my presence. Its tongue darted out like a bullet, fast enough to break the sound barrier.

Just not fast enough to pin me down. I shifted slightly to avoid its attack, and once it passed, I brought down my spear, its head covered with Health to enhance the damage, bisecting several yards of its tongue. It cried in pain in response. I prepared for another attack, noticing the tenseness in its legs.

It jumped away.

Watching it, I had to admit that the colony was rather lucky. The monster was determined to stay at range while it harassed the encampment, surprisingly hesitant to engage in melee. It was the first boss monster that was hesitant about it.

I wondered if it was about it spending too much time outside the dungeon, or something to do with its roots as an ambush predator that snacked exclusively on smaller critters. Or maybe its reserves are depleted to sustain its regeneration.

Too many possibilities, I decided, following the beast to finish it off.

"The boss is retreating," someone shouted from the base.

"Stay in place and check your reserves," shouted another. "It must be faking. A retreat, but it's an opportunity to clean the weaker monsters at the walls."

Smart, I decided. Frog monsters were shifty and dangerous, but relatively squishy, and the sudden lack of command aura weakened their coordination and general impact significantly.

"Defensive formation!" the same one bellowed, his voice strained but steady. "Archers, up top! Spears, to the ditches! Crafters, where's those cannons?"

I ignored their struggle, confident in their ability to deal with it. I used my variant of Fleeting Step, chasing the beast.

Chasing the frog wasn't as simple as I hoped. While it was fragile, at least in terms of boss monsters, what it lacked in endurance, it compensated with its speed. Each leap brought it fifty yards up, covering almost three hundred yards with each leap. Poison hissed as it touched the ground, melting vegetation and tainting the shallow water.

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It was lucky that the beast chose to escape rather jump into the settlement, making the situation simpler. But, the same fact made me continue to chase. The level of low-cunning it displayed would make it more dangerous if it got away.

That escape lasted until the beast pulled me to the depths of the swamp, to a small pool of concentrated poison. Once the frog half-sank into its poisonous waters, its bulgy, disgusting eyes locked onto me.

I felt a shift in the air as suddenly, it pulled a great amount of mana from underground, a reserve I noticed only when it pulled. "That's a surprise," I said, my eyes widening at the same time with my jaw. I pushed my Mercurial Movement perk to the limit, deciding to ignore my previous decision to keep my attitude down.

Just in time for a massive glob of green sludge, a mixture of physical poison and swirling mana to pass near me, the close call enough to damage me.

[-149 Health]

I was glad that I was not hit by it. The poison attack was a nasty one, the kind that might have put me in a disadvantaged position, if not killed outright unless I used all my mana to block it, and invariably shout my presence to anyone with strong enough detection capabilities.

It was not the kind of attack I expected a beast like that to deliver, but looking at its current state, it was obvious that it wasn't my assessment being wrong. The moment it delivered the attack, the frog monster wilted like it had been the target of the attack, pushing its resistance.

Its flesh started to rot, the skin turning into a disgusting brown and red mess in various spots, already pushed to the limit. "No wonder you have been afraid of putting yourself in battle," I thought. It was probably not the first time the beast used that attack, and looking back, it was not the kind of thing it would recover in a day or two.

Its tongue lashed again, but this time, it was slower, and easier to deal with. A swing of my spear was enough to bisect it once more. Before it could even touch the ground, I made a feint, like I wanted to close the distance.

I only took a couple steps, but vitality was already gathered at my soles, ready to reverse direction with even greater haste. I still remembered the way it was imbuing the ground back at the base, and I expected it to have a superior version at its base. Either it was the pool of poison it was resting, or something it had been hiding below.

A good call, it turned out. Once I covered half of the distance, the pool pulsed with mana, even more intense than its previous attack, a wide-angle cone that would make any attempt to sidestep impossible.

[-300 Health]

I released the gathered Health, reversing the direction at the greatest speed I could manage, while a small mana shield appeared in front of me, ready to be employed in case I misjudged the range. Compared to the explosive attack of the beast, that shield would go unnoticed. Always read at the source—MV@LEMP@YR.

A wave of devastating poison rose in front of me. For a moment, it resembled a devastating tsunami, but the inherent weakness of its shape disarmed it soon after. It faded soon, and I let the mana shield fade.

When the attack faded, so did the thick pool of poison that the beast had been resting, leaving ordinary swamp water in its place.

I turned my gaze to the unfortunate beast, lying on the pool, its skin corroded completely, leaving its rotten flesh, struggling to regenerate. I couldn't help but feel a hint of pity, but that didn't prevent me from launching my spear from a distance, skewering its head.

[Level 82 - 83]

[+5 Vitality, +4 Strength, +3 Dexterity, +5 Essence, +3 Wisdom]

The notification was a welcome surprise, but not the only one. Before I closed the distance, mana started to bubble into the pool, slowly infusing the water. A phenomenon I had never seen before, but one I had a nice guess about based on the description.

A leyline.

Or, more accurately, a materialization point. My knowledge of leylines was limited to my idle chats with Maria, as I had always assumed any such point was not something we could acquire. I knew that, despite the name, they weren't just some kind of underground river going underground. Most of their existence was hidden in extradimensional space, not unlike the dungeons, only surfacing in rare locations.

Or, pulled into material dimension by expert mages specializing in such tasks.

In a way, it was fortunate, as it meant the dungeon would be absorbing far more mana than I had initially calculated. But, on the flip side, if it was discovered, it wouldn't be just Drakka aiming to take this spot. It was a fortune that was difficult to defend.

Especially if the dungeon couldn't absorb the output fully, or if we were discovered otherwise.

"One thing at a time," I said, and covered the distance.

First things first, I needed to open the dungeon gate before the nightfall.