Chapter 35: Pack Tactics
Azazel melted back into the circle of Joren's light as silently as he had left. His expression was the same impassive mask, but Reginleif, attuned to his subtlest shifts, noted a slight ease in his shoulders. He'd burned off the restless edge.
"Is everyone ready to move on now?" His voice was a flat statement, not a question.
Reginleif stood, stretching her arms. The faintest hum of contained wind vibrated around her. "Yeah. Ready to move now."
The Hands of Scouting rose as one, their brief rest and shared confidence having solidified their resolve. They moved out, the formation tighter now, a unit bound by more than just guild rank. The descent through the 22nd and 23rd floors was a grim, grinding process. The dungeon's resistance grew. Crystal beasts became more aggressive, environmental hazards more frequent—collapsing shelves of geodes, patches of floor that hummed with paralyzing resonance. They fought through ambushes of Shardscale Lizards and dodged volatile Gas Spores. Each encounter was handled with the Hands' efficient, textbook precision, with Azazel and Reginleif providing subtle, supporting touches: a gust of wind deflecting a stray crystal shard, a sudden patch of slippery Black Ice causing a lunging creature to miss its footing.
It was on the 24th floor, in a vast cavern where the walls wept slow, viscous sap that smelled of copper and ozone, that the atmosphere changed.
The familiar skittering and groaning of lower-floor monsters ceased. An oppressive, predatory silence fell, broken only by the soft drip… drip… of the weeping walls.
Rin froze, one hand pressed to the stone floor. "Multiple contacts. Light. Fast. Converging from ahead and… above. On the ledges."
Kael raised his shield, the sound of scraping metal loud in the quiet. "Positions!"
They didn't have to wait long.
From the gloom of a high, sap-dripping ledge, a shape dropped. It landed with a fluid, terrifying grace on a stalagmite, crouched, and let out a guttural, clicking shriek.
Bloody Raptor.
It was larger than a man, its powerful, bipedal form coiled with lean muscle under scales the color of dried blood. Its head was a nightmare of serrated teeth and intelligent, hateful yellow eyes that locked onto Kael. Claws like curved daggers flexed against the stone. Then another dropped beside it. And another. Five in total, encircling them from the high ground, their movements a synchronized, silent ballet of threat.
Before the party could fully form their defensive circle, the alpha—a beast with a crown of jagged bone crests and a scar across its snout—let out a piercing cry.
The pack exploded into motion.
Two raptors surged from the front, not directly at Kael, but angling to split the formation. Two more dropped from the left flank, aiming for Joren and Tarin. The alpha remained on the high ledge, its head jerking in swift, analytical movements, directing the assault.
"Hold the line!" Kael roared, bracing as a raptor's claws screeched across his tower shield. He heaved, shoving it back, but a second was already darting past his right side, towards Rin.
Tarin's arrows flew. Thwack. Thwack. One shaft sank into a raptor's thigh, causing it to stumble. The other was deflected with a spark off the creature's scaled shoulder. They were fast, and their scales turned glancing blows.
"Gale Wall!" Joren shouted. A visible barrier of compressed air shimmered into existence between the flanking raptors and the backline. One raptor hit it and was thrown back, shrieking. The other scrambled around the edge, its speed barely checked.
Chaos threatened to engulf them. The raptors' hit-and-run tactics were perfect for breaking formations. They'd strike, disengage before a counter could land, and another would attack from a blind spot.
This was where textbook tactics started to fray.
"Reginleif!" Azazel's voice cut through the din, calm and direct. He wasn't asking. He was initiating a sequence.
He didn't draw his kilij. Instead, he stomped his boot down. From his shadow, racing across the cavern floor, a jagged line of Black Ice erupted. It didn't attack the raptors. It formed a low, slick wall between the two raptors harrying Kael and the one trying to circle Rin. The wall was only shin-high, but it was a barrier of pure, unexpected friction.
The raptor circling Rin tried to leap over it. Its claws found no purchase on the dark, frozen surface. Its leap became a clumsy, sliding sprawl, directly into Rin's waiting reach. Her daggers flashed, finding the softer scale-joints at its armpit.
At the same time, Azazel's left hand shot out towards the raptor recovered from Joren's Gale Wall, which was now charging Tarin. From Azazel's glove, a thin, dark line—Kinetic Tether (Darkbane)—zipped out, not to pierce, but to snare. It wrapped around the creature's ankle just as it pushed off for its pounce.
Azazel didn't pull it off its feet. He yanked sideways.
The raptor's perfect pounce was thrown violently off its intended path. It crashed into a cluster of stalagmites, stunned.
That was Reginleif's cue.
She had been a blur of green scarf and motion, a Harrier dancing on the periphery. Now, she struck. A Gust Step propelled her not at a raptor, but straight up the wall beside the staggered creature. She kicked off, her body a spinning wheel of green and steel. As she descended, the air around her moonstone dagger hummed with Kinetic Amplification, concentrating wind pressure into a single, devastating point.
She dropped like a falcon, the amplified dagger piercing straight down through the back of the stunned raptor's neck, severing its spine. It died without a sound.
"One down!" Rin yelled, her voice fierce.
But the alpha shrieked in rage. The remaining three raptors disengaged from their probing attacks, regrouping with unnatural discipline. The alpha's intelligence was clear; it had seen the duo's combo and identified them as the critical threat.
It pointed its snout at Azazel and screamed.
All three remaining raptors ignored Kael, Rin, and Tarin. They turned and launched themselves in a terrifyingly coordinated triple-pronged assault on Azazel.
It was a perfect pack-kill maneuver. One from the front, one from each diagonal, no room to dodge.
Kael bellowed, trying to intercept, but he was too slow. Joren began an incantation, but his spell would be too late.
Azazel didn't try to dodge. He planted his feet. His mind, cold and geometric, calculated vectors, timing, and shadow angles.
For the front raptor, he used Black Ice. Not a wall, but a single, sharp pillar that erupted from the ground at a steep angle, directly in its path. The raptor tried to adjust, but its own speed worked against it. It impaled its chest on the spear of darkness-frost with a sickening crunch.
For the two coming diagonally, he used Darkbane. Two tethers snapped out from his hands. He didn't try to hold them. He anchored the lines to two sturdy stalagmites behind him and to his left and right, creating instant, razor-sharp tripwires of solidified shadow at knee-height.
The diagonal raptors, focused on the kill, didn't see the near-invisible lines until it was too late. The first hit the tether at a full sprint and was clotheslined, its legs swept out from under it. The second managed to leap, but the tether caught its trailing foot, sending it into a crashing, tumbling roll.
The frontal raptor was dead on the ice spear. The second was flailing on the ground. The third was scrambling to rise.
They were vulnerable for less than two seconds. But for Reginleif, that was a lifetime.
She was already moving, a Storm Dancer in the eye of the storm. A Pressure Knife of condensed wind shot from her free hand, not to kill, but to blind, slicing across the eyes of the rising raptor. As it recoiled, she was upon the tripped one. A single, amplified stab to the heart. Then, a whirling Gust Step carried her to the blinded one. Her whispered-steel dagger found its throat in a silent, final flash.
The sudden, brutal counter wiped out the pack's assault in a handful of heartbeats.
Silence, heavier than before, descended. The only sound was the ragged breathing of the Hands of Scouting and the slow drip of sap.
High on the ledge, the Alpha Raptor stared down. Its intelligent eyes burned with fury, but also with a newfound, wary understanding. It had seen its pack dismantled not by brute force, but by chilling, precise control and savage, amplified execution. It let out a low, rattling hiss.
Then it turned and vanished into the dark upper tunnels of the cavern, its retreat a clicking scramble of claws on stone.
"It's… regrouping. Calling more," Rin panted, her ears straining.
Azazel let the Black Ice spear and the shadow tethers dissipate into wisps of cold smoke. He looked at the carnage he and Reginleif had orchestrated, then at the stunned, awed faces of the Hands of Scouting. He had used only two abilities—ice and tether—presented as simple, if uncommon, combat magic. Control and bindings. Nothing that screamed "void" or "abyss."
He met Reginleif's gaze across the bloody floor. She gave a slight, approving nod. The combo had been seamless, effective, and within the bounds of their cover.
Kael let out a long, slow breath, lowering his shield. "By the fallen gods," he muttered, looking from the ice-pierced raptor to the two with precise, fatal wounds. "That was… some timing."
"It was necessary," Azazel said simply, brushing imaginary dust from his sleeve. "Their coordination was their strength. We disrupted it."
We, he said. Not I. He included Reginleif seamlessly in the explanation, cementing their teamwork as the key.
Joren adjusted his glasses, his scholar's mind whirring. "Fascinating applications. Cryomancy for terrain alteration. And a… kinetic binding spell? The tactical utility is immense."
Azazel just nodded, offering no further explanation. He looked towards the dark tunnel where the Alpha had fled. "It's not over. It knows we're a threat now. The next attack won't be a probe."
The message was clear. The 26th floor awaited, and the hunter had become the hunted. The real fight was just beginning, and the alpha would be ready. They needed to move, and they needed to finish this.
---
The silence after the alpha's retreat was heavy, thick with the coppery scent of raptor blood and the dungeon's weeping sap. Reginleif knelt beside one of the fallen creatures, her green scarf masking her expression as she deftly used a small, sharp tool to pry out its longest, serrated fangs. "Good enamel," she muttered to herself, dropping them into a pouch at her belt. "Should fetch a decent price from an alchemist."
A few paces away, Azazel had settled on a low rock, his back to the gruesome scene. He'd pulled out his worn notebook and a stick of charcoal. With swift, economical strokes, he was sketching the anatomical structure of the Bloody Raptor—the powerful hind leg muscles, the angle of the sickle-claw, the overlapping pattern of the blood-red scales. It was a cold, clinical record. Potential weak points: inner thigh, scale junctions at the throat, ocular vulnerability.
Meanwhile, the Hands of Scouting were catching their breath, their adrenaline cooling into awe.
"Did you see that?" Tarin whispered, notching a fresh arrow with still-trembling hands. "She moved like the wind itself. One second she was over there, the next she was driving that dagger right through its skull."
Kael nodded, cleaning gore from his shield's edge with a rag. "Precision like a master surgeon. And that jump off the wall? I've never seen a fighter use terrain like that. It's not just her Mythic; it's her mind."
Rin was quiet, her sharp eyes flicking between Reginleif and Azazel. Her thoughts were a tangled knot of observation. Reginleif is really powerful. Obvious. But him… She watched Azazel close his notebook, his movements devoid of celebratory energy, only pragmatic readiness. He uses a spear, but he didn't even draw it. He used that curved sword earlier like he was testing it. And his Mythic… he called it ice, but that wasn't like any frost magic I've seen. No shimmer, no cold mist. Just… black. And those lines he used to trip them. That wasn't ice at all. It was like he pulled shadows right out of the floor and made them solid. A chill that had nothing to do with temperature crept down her spine. He fights like an assassin playing at being a guardsman.
"Rin?" Joren's voice broke her reverie. He was watching her, his brow furrowed with scholarly concern. "Are you okay? You zoned out again."
She shook her head, forcing a sharp grin. "No, I'm okay. Just… processing the attack vectors. Thanks for asking." She didn't voice her suspicions. Not yet. They needed this alliance.
Azazel stood. "We're burning light. Move."
---
The descent to the 25th floor was a somber, single-file trek through narrowing tunnels that gleamed with internal, mournful light. The playful, dangerous coordination they'd shattered above seemed to have sent a warning through the dungeon's ecosystem. An uneasy quiet prevailed.
It was Rin, her hand on the wall, who felt it first. A change in the resonance. Not the skittering of claws or the drip of sap, but a hollow, final silence.
"Stop," she said, her voice barely a breath. "Up ahead. The cavern widens. There's… something there. Not moving."
They advanced with weapons ready, Joren's light orb pushing back the gloom. The cavern did widen, opening into a high-ceilinged chamber veined with luminescent purple crystal. And there, slumped against a large, tear-shaped geode, was the source of the silence.
A body. Or what was left of it.
The guild investigator's leather armor was shredded into bloody ribbons. The wounds were not clean cuts, but savage rents—the work of claws and teeth. One arm was missing entirely. The face was frozen in a rictus of final, unimaginable terror.
A heavy, sick feeling settled over the group. Lira made a small, choked sound and looked away.
Azazel approached without hesitation, his face a mask of detached analysis. He ignored the horror of the wounds and focused on data. He checked the pouches—empty, looted by the raptors or earlier scavengers. Then he spotted it, partly tucked under the body, protected by the geode: a water-stained, leather-bound notebook.
He picked it up, carefully opening the brittle pages. His eyes scanned the frantic, spidery handwriting. Sketches of raptor pack movements. Notes on the alpha's commanding shrieks. A last, desperate entry: "Floor 26 is not a hunting ground. It's a nest. A massive central chamber. The alpha doesn't just command them… it's breeding them. The walls are… alive with eggs. We stumbled into a hatchery. They're not just defending territory. They're defending their brood. We need to pull back—" The sentence ended in a long, desperate smear of ink.
Azazel closed the book with a soft snap. "Okay, guys," he said, his tone grimly factual. "I guess we found one of the investigation unit members. His notes confirm the 26th floor is a primary nest. The alpha's aggression makes sense. We're not just exterminating pests. We're conducting a cull of a breeding population."
Reginleif gazed at the ravaged corpse, her usual stoicism touched by a faint, cold sorrow. "He saw it coming. What a terrible way to go."
With a efficiency that bordered on the disrespectful but was purely practical, Azazel conducted a swift, thorough looting. A few usable, unbroken potion vials from a hidden belt pouch. A silver guild ingot, scratched and battered. The notebook. He left the rest—the ruined armor, the personal effects—for the dungeon to eventually claim.
The Hands of Scouting stood in a loose circle. Kael removed his helmet, holding it over his heart. Tarin bowed his head. Joren whispered a short, formal prayer for the lost. Lira hummed a single, pure, mournful note that hung in the air like a blessing. They paid their respects in their own ways.
"Let's go," Kael said, his voice thick. "Let's make sure his warning wasn't in vain."
They moved on, the weight of the mission now a physical burden. The tunnel began to slope more steeply downward, the air growing warmer, carrying a new, pungent odor of damp earth, ammonia, and something organic and foul.
They were nearing the 26th floor.
They never made it to the entrance.
From side passages they had assumed were mere crevices, a new pack erupted. Six Bloody Raptors, slightly smaller than the first group—juveniles or scouts—but no less fierce. They didn't shriek a challenge. They attacked with silent, deadly intent, bursting from the darkness in a coordinated pincer movement aimed to split the party in the narrow corridor.
"ALRIGHT, EVERYBODY, GET READY!" Kael bellowed, slamming his shield into the path of two raptors, holding the center with sheer mass.
Chaos erupted in the confined space. Tarin's arrows were less effective here, the raptors using the uneven walls to ricochet and dodge. Joren couldn't risk a large area spell without catching his allies.
Azazel fell into his role, the controller. His mind clicked through the limited toolbox he allowed himself.
Black Ice. He didn't create walls. He targeted the floor. A patch directly in front of the two raptors trying to flank past Kael's left side flash-froze into a slick, dark mirror. The lead raptor's claws scrabbled uselessly, its charge turning into a uncontrolled slide that sent it crashing into the wall. The second tried to leap over its companion, but Azazel was ready.
Darkbane. A shadow-tether snapped out, not to trip, but to pull. He hooked the leaping raptor's forelimb in mid-air and yanked it down, adding force to its collision with its already-stunned packmate.
This created a temporary bottleneck of tangled, shrieking reptiles. It was the opening the party needed.
Reginleif, seeing the tighter quarters, shifted her style. Instead of the grand, acrobatic Storm Dancer maneuvers, she became a precision needle. She darted forward, not with amplified dagger strikes, but with focused, piercing projectiles.
Pressure Knives. With sharp exhales, she launched blades of condensed wind. They weren't meant to decapitate, but to cripple. One shot past Kael's shield and punched into the knee joint of a raptor trying to climb over the others. The limb buckled with a sickening pop. Another zipped down the corridor, striking a raptor aiming for Tarin directly in its open mouth, shredding its throat from within in a spray of blood and silenced shrieks.
She was using her wind with surgical, brutal efficiency, picking off vulnerabilities created by Azazel's disruptions and Kael's brute-force hold.
Rin and Tarin capitalized on the chaos. Rin slipped through the gaps, her own daggers finding the eyes and under-jaws of the downed raptors with swift, merciful kills. Tarin placed arrows with calm precision into the thrashing bodies, ensuring they stayed down.
It was over in less than a minute. A brutal, close-quarters brawl where control and precision won over raw ferocity.
The party stood panting in the sudden quiet, surrounded by the twitching bodies of the scout pack. The path ahead sloped down into deeper, warmer darkness, from which the faint, collective chirping and clicking of countless raptors could now be heard.
The hatchery awaited.
Azazel caught Reginleif's eye. He gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod toward the source of the sound. The two-skills limit had held. But the final chamber would not be a narrow tunnel. It would be an open arena, filled with enemies, and an alpha that had already seen their tricks.
The real test of their controlled facade was about to begin.
End of chapter 35