Dungeon cores weren’t alive in the same manner that monsters of flesh and blood were, but they were closer to that than to the slabs of stone they resembled. They were more like a stimulus and response system than anything else, one that primarily reacted to mana. That was why dungeon cores were paired with guardians in the first place. Even the limited intelligence of a monster helped offset the reactionary behavior of the core itself.

The problem that this particular dungeon core had was that its guardian had changed. Its connection to the monster had gotten fuzzier, and the core didn’t understand what that meant. All it could do was sever the connection and try to grow a new guardian out of mana. When that didn’t work, it tried again, and again, and again.

The thing growing on the dungeon core didn’t like that. It was wasteful, and the mana could be put to better use. It tried to insert itself as the new guardian, using that as a vector to take control of the dungeon. In some ways, it had succeeded, but it was far, far away from assuming total command like it wanted.

You see, it tried to project to the core, perhaps unaware that it was talking to something one step removed from an inanimate object. My way works. This champion is winning. Let me make more!

But the dungeon refused. The mana cost had been too great. That wasn’t how the dungeon responded to this stimulus. And so the thing growing on it fumed in frustration and did its best to undermine the core, just like it had been doing for years now. It had lost precious ground gained over painstaking months of infiltration to remake that champion, and the dungeon would break before it willingly gave that ground back.

* * *

Velik darted for the far wall, mostly because he was still faster than the champion elite and he expected to gain a good second of lead time before it caught up with him. Hopefully, that would be enough for Velik to get a solid grip on the wall out of its reach so that he could start climbing.

As he approached the edge of the arena, he leaped as high as he could, then jumped again using [Air Walk]. He was at least thirty feet off the floor now, and he slammed into the dungeon stone wall hard enough to rattle his teeth, but his spear bit deep enough for him to hold on. Thirty feet wasn’t enough, though, so he scrambled to drive stiffened fingers into the stone so that he could gouge out more handholds.

Behind him, the champion quickly left the cloud of flitting knives behind as it chased Velik down. It made its own great leap, but without something to let it step on air as though it were solid ground, it didn’t even make it half way. Velik glanced down at it as it scrabbled against the wall, but its fingers weren’t strong enough to break the stone like his were.

Good. Part one is done. Now for the climb and the jump.

Velik shortened his spear down to something that wouldn’t be awkward to wield one-handed, then used it as his anchor to help him climb. Despite the difficulty, he quickly scaled a hundred feet, then two hundred. Below him, the champion paced back and forth, repeatedly scraping its nails against the wall and testing itself.

It was kind of funny, in a way, to see a monster suffer from the same issue he’d had for so many years. A lack of a ranged attack meant it couldn’t touch him. It had relied on the environment to keep its opponent from running away, and Velik had beaten that by literally tearing into stone with his bare hands. The wall was smoothing itself over right behind him, and quickly, but not enough to stop him. He could feel the stone regrowing, trying to push his fingers out of the gap he’d wedged them into.

He was ready for the risky part of the plan. He had his three seconds of fall time. His throwing knives had all returned to him, even that one that the champion had chewed up—that one was still battered and wouldn’t get used again until someone got a look at it—and he had enough magic left to fuel the transformation and fight for at least a few minutes.

Sticking the landing was going to be the hard part. He didn’t think he had a prayer without access to his cloak’s enchantments, which meant removing the Traveler’s Bracelet from his wrist and letting it drop to the ground. Hopefully, it’d be intact when he retrieved it later.

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Velik braced his feet, flexed his legs, and hurled himself as far from the wall as he could. He got a split-second view of the champion staring up at him as it paced his position below, then the skill took over. His whole body started to shift, and by the time he started to fall, he was already halfway done. His wolf form snapped into shape with a second and a half to spare, and Velik used that time to [Air Walk] three angled steps.

The first one was nearly vertical and served more to redirect his momentum to the side. The second came at a slightly less severe angle and allowed him to stop speeding up. The third step was the one that truly broke his fall speed, though by that point he was only twenty feet from the ground. A fourth [Air Walk] would have been ideal, but there was neither the time nor the space.

Velik hit the stone hard and went sprawling. Pain shot up his limbs and across his side as he rolled, but his wolf shape had powerful natural regeneration. He’d be fine in a minute, assuming he could survive that long.

Then the monster barreled into him. For whatever reason, its earlier finesse was gone. It grabbed onto Velik, seizing great handfuls of fur as it hauled itself onto his back and tried to tear at him with its nails. He heard the wet creak of its head splitting open again to reveal that mouth, and he felt the pinch of it clamping onto the back of his neck.

But none of it really hurt. Even the pain from the fall was starting to fade, and in his wolf form, Velik was simply too powerful to be seriously injured by the champion’s attacks. There’s one problem solved. Temporarily, at least. Now I’ve got about ten or twenty minutes to kill this thing before I revert to my normal form.

Hopefully it wouldn’t take that long. With any luck, the enhanced power that came from this form would let him crush the monster as soon as he got his jaws around it. This fight had already been a massive resource drain, which he supposed was probably the point. If he had to fight something this strong again in the next hour, it was going to kick his ass.

Dungeons didn’t have infinite resources either, but they were far better at outlasting any individual hunter. That was why whole teams generally went in to clear these things. If he hadn’t gotten immediately separated from Torwin, they’d be switching off on each challenge to give the other a chance to recover. That had been the plan.

Velik rolled, slamming the monster into the ground and crushing it with his weight. It wasn’t so fragile that it could actually be hurt by such a basic attack, but the goal had mostly been to loosen its grip. In that aspect, Velik was successful. He regained his feet and left the clinging nuisance behind.

It tried to scrabble back on top of him, but now that he was upright and focused, he was able to fend it off. One arm flashed back, the hand at the end attempting to grab hold of his neck. Instead, he got his teeth into it and bit down hard. Chitin cracked in his mouth and the acrid taste of monster blood splashed across his tongue. With a twist of his head, he ripped the arm free of its owner.

The champion backed away and held up the stump, where the chitin covering it was already growing down to cap it. There was no chance of it bleeding out, but it’d be that much harder for the monster to grab hold of him again if it only had one arm. As far as Velik was concerned, he’d won that turn.

They tussled for another minute, the monster wary and far too clever for its own good, but in his wolf form, Velik was able to simply overpower it. If it had been daytime, it might have been a different story. In fact, it probably would have, but with it still dark out in the world, [Duskbound] made him far more powerful than the monster.

It was still one of the most well-defended monsters he’d ever fought. Between its armor and its regeneration, putting it down with anything short of overwhelming force was all but impossible. Its strange ability to eat Velik’s skills and spit them back out at him removed his finishing move from his options. It was also skilled and fast, so much so that Velik had trouble landing a solid blow in his human form.

When he’d first obtained [True Form], he’d had a great deal of difficulty fighting in his new shape. It was hard to adapt to being four-legged, not to mention the surge in physical that made him stronger and faster than he was used to. But coordination came with practice, and he’d had plenty of time to understand how [Aspect of the Wind Tamer] extended beyond just spear fighting and helped streamline every movement he took.

He was no longer the clumsy brawler he’d been six months ago. Kulkorax was probably the most powerful champion Velik had ever faced, but in the end, it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t sure exactly how it perceived the world around it, but it simply wasn’t fast enough to avoid being caught and dragged from its feet. Velik pinned it down, then clamped his jaws around its smooth skull. Neck muscles popped with the strain, and he ripped its head off.

Even that wasn’t enough to kill it, but after separating it into six pieces, the monster got the message.

[You have slain Kulkorax the Pit Master (champion elite, level 68).]