Arin pressed himself tighter into the alcove, every muscle in his body trembling. His shield was split down the rim, his spear chipped and slick with drying blood, his knife heavy on his belt like dead weight. The air was too close here, the walls sweating with damp, the taste of copper and mold thick on his tongue.
And then he heard it—steel clashing, ringing sharp and bright. Not the guttural clang of crude iron against stone, but the hard, deliberate strike of real weapons in the hands of real fighters.
For a moment, he thought it a hallucination. His head drooped, his vision blurred at the edges. But no—there it was again: a booming cry, echoing through the tunnels, and the shriek of a lizardman cut brutally short.
Arin dragged himself forward and risked a glance past the alcove's shadow.
Four figures fought in the tunnel's open stretch, holding ground where he himself had nearly died a dozen times.
The first was impossible to miss—massive, shoulders wide as a wall, an axe clutched in his hands like it weighed nothing. With each swing, the weapon's iron edge tore through scale and bone, scattering gore across the stone floor. His voice boomed, commanding and unshaken:
"Hold steady! Push them back!"
Arin's heart lurched. Garrick. The giant of a man from the guildhall, whose laugh shook the rafters, whose presence had filled the room when Arin had been nothing but a shadow against the wall.
The sight nearly broke him—not from despair, but relief so sharp it hurt.
Beside Garrick, a slighter figure darted through the melee, moving faster than the lizardmen could track. Twin blades flashed like fangs in his hands, striking once, twice, before he slipped away just as a crude spear stabbed where he had been.
"Kaelen, cut their flank!" Garrick bellowed, swinging his axe wide, cleaving through two snarling lizardmen with a single brutal arc.
The smaller man grinned, fangs of his own catching the flickering light. "Already on it!" he called back, voice slick with confidence, and his daggers found the back of another lizardman's neck.
Behind them, a calm voice rang clear over the chaos. "Garrick, hold still."
The burly man grunted, teeth bared, as a pale glow swept across his bleeding shoulder. His wounds closed, skin knitting back together as though time itself bent for her. Arin's eyes widened. Not a spellcaster, not a fireball-slinging mage, but a healer. Her staff glimmered faintly, light pooling at the tip before spilling across her companions.
And then there was the blond girl. She moved with precise fury, blade thrusting like a spear, parrying with a flourish that was as sharp as it was angry.
"Don't tell me how to fight, Garrick!" she snarled as she cut down a lizardman in a single thrust, blood splattering across her armored boots. "Just clear my way!"
Kaelen laughed, slipping past a snapping maw. "Ease up, Elira, you'll get us all killed shouting like that!"
"Shut your mouth!" she snapped back, her next swing catching a lizardman clean across the jaw, teeth scattering like pebbles.
Arin could only watch. Where his own fights had been frantic, ragged struggles for survival, theirs was a storm of purpose. Each blow landed true. Each voice cut through the noise with direction. Even their bickering was part of a rhythm, an unbroken flow that pressed the lizardmen backward until they had nowhere left to stand.
The last beast shrieked as Garrick's axe split its chest, driving it into the stone floor with a sickening crunch. Silence fell, broken only by the panting of the adventurers and the drip of blood from shattered corpses.
Arin sagged back against the wall, his heart pounding as if he'd fought beside them.
"Check for stragglers," Garrick said, planting his axe against the ground.
Kaelen darted forward, blades still gleaming red. He slipped past the bodies, eyes sweeping the dark corners of the tunnel—until they landed on Arin.
"By the shadows…" the thief breathed. "We've got a survivor!"
Arin stiffened, instinct screaming to hide again, but he was too broken, too weary. Kaelen's daggers lowered, but his expression flickered with surprise.
"What the hell—"
"Arin?" Garrick's booming voice cut through. The big man turned, and his eyes widened as recognition set in. "By the gods, you're alive!"
The relief in his tone was real, like a weight lifting from the stone air.
Arin coughed, a rasp tearing through his throat. His lips curled into the faintest smile. "You… came at the right time."
Heavy boots echoed closer. The blond girl stepped into view, wiping her blade clean with practiced disdain. She crossed her arms, glaring down at him.
"This half-dead wretch is what you're celebrating?" she said, voice sharp enough to cut.
Garrick turned his head, scowling. "Elira—"
But another voice cut in, firm yet gentle. "Quiet. He's injured."
The healer knelt beside him, staff set aside as she pressed a hand close to his wounds. A warmth unlike anything Arin had felt in days seeped into his flesh, easing the fire that had burned through him for what felt like eternity. His breath caught. The pain dulled, replaced with the sensation of his own body stitching itself together.
Light glowed across his battered cuirass, flowing into torn muscle, closing shallow cuts and steadying the tremble in his chest.
Serah's eyes softened, her voice a quiet balm. "Rest. We'll take care of the rest."
For the first time since the dungeon swallowed him whole, Arin's guard lowered. His spear slipped from his shaking grip, clattering against stone. Relief weighed heavier than fear.
The fight wasn't over. Not for them, not for him. But at last—he wasn't alone.
The dungeon felt different now. When Arin staggered through these halls alone, every shadow seemed to breathe malice, every echo promised a pack of lizardmen. The hours of running, fighting, bleeding had ground him to exhaustion—long enough that his body wanted to fold at every step, but short enough that the memories of the terror still clung raw to his mind.
Now he walked at the rear of a formation. Four others pressed ahead with practiced ease, their presence pushing back the weight of the dark. Where Arin's every breath had been desperation, theirs carried purpose.
Garrick led them, broad shoulders filling the tunnel, axe in hand. Beside him moved the blonde duelist—her rapier gleaming with cruel elegance, each step measured and precise. The thief flitted at their flank, light-footed and restless, daggers spinning between fingers. And in the center, the priestess, Serah, murmured prayers that laced the air with a faint warmth, protective wards clinging like a second skin.
Arin's cracked shield felt heavier than ever. His battered spear clumsy. He had survived—but only barely.
A hiss tore through the silence. A patrol, smaller than the ones Arin remembered—only four lizardmen. They rounded the bend, scales scraping against stone, weapons raised.
"Forward!" Garrick thundered, stepping to meet them.
The axe came down in a brutal arc. CRUNCH. Two lizardmen crumpled in halves, blood slicking the floor.
"Elira, right flank," he barked.
She was already there. Her rapier struck twice in blinding thrusts, piercing scaled armor as if it were cloth. Both beasts dropped with strangled screeches, dead before they hit the ground.
Kaelen whistled low, wiping his dagger on a corpse. "Four, and they dropped like flies. That's it?"
Garrick frowned. "Strange. A patrol this close to the boss chamber shouldn't be so small."
Arin swallowed, speaking before he could stop himself. His voice was hoarse, heavy. "I… already killed most of them. Hours ago. Wave after wave. It felt endless."
The thief blinked, then gave a lopsided grin. "No wonder you look half-dead. You carved through their nest by yourself?"
Arin shook his head once. "Not skill. Just… not dying yet."
Serah's eyes softened. She reached out, her healing light brushing faintly against him, though she didn't cast fully. "Even so, it's a miracle you survived. If it hadn't been Garrick's party that found you—" she hesitated, lowering her voice. "It could have gone very differently. You've heard the rumors… adventurers turning on each other in dungeons. Claiming loot, killing, and letting the core erase the evidence. If someone else had stumbled on you first—"
Arin's chest tightened at the thought. His fight, his exhaustion, his very existence… snuffed out by another human hand, vanished without a trace once the dungeon collapsed.
Elira scoffed, sliding her blade back into guard. "You should count yourself fortunate, then. Most adventurers lost in a dungeon don't even leave whispers behind."
They pressed deeper.
But the strangeness grew clearer with each step. Where Arin remembered ambushes, shrieking hordes, clawed feet pounding stone, now there was only silence. The tunnels stretched empty.
Kaelen muttered after a while, voice low but carrying. "Not to be rude, but this feels… off. A dungeon doesn't just go quiet. Not unless the core is draining every last beast toward itself."
Garrick's jaw tightened. "Or unless someone's already done the work."
He looked back at Arin briefly, and Arin caught the unspoken thought: One exhausted man shouldn't have been able to thin an entire nest.
Arin gripped his spear tighter, gaze falling to the floor. "I fought until I couldn't feel my arms. Slept against corpses when I had to. If not for you showing up when you did, I wouldn't have lasted another fight."
"Then it's good it was us," Garrick said simply. "Any later, and the dungeon would've swallowed the truth with you."
The words landed heavy.
The next skirmish was quick—only two lizardmen this time, lurking near the narrowing corridor. Garrick's axe crushed one in a heartbeat. Elira's rapier skewered the other clean through the throat. Kaelen didn't even bother stepping forward.
Arin had raised his spear, but lowered it again, unused.
Kaelen shot him a grin. "Cheer up, spear-boy. We'll let you poke the next one."
Arin managed a dry exhale. "At this rate, there won't be a next one."
Serah, walking just behind Garrick, murmured in reply. "That is what worries me."
The air grew heavier. The silence of the tunnels pressed tighter. It wasn't relief—it was tension. The absence of foes was not safety, but warning.
The boss was near.
Got it. Here's the full Section 3: The Chieftain's Wrath (~5.5k words) in one continuous draft, followed by Arin's correct Status Window at the end.
Chapter 14 – Section 3: The Chieftain's Wrath
The chamber yawned before them, a cathedral of stone and rot. Torchlight burned sickly green in sconces hammered crudely into the walls, smoke curling upward in thick, choking streams. The smell was a mix of sulfur, rot, and the acrid tang of blood that had seeped into the stones long ago. The ground crunched underfoot, not with gravel or sand, but with scattered fragments of bone—discarded offerings left to bleach in the damp darkness. A mound of skulls rose at the center, stacked high upon a crude altar, some cracked, some stained black, some so freshly placed that strips of flesh still clung to them.
And waiting atop it all, like a grotesque sentinel, was the Lizardman Chieftain.
The beast dwarfed its kin, standing nearly a head and a half taller than Garrick himself. Its scales were darker, a deep iron-green streaked with pale scars that caught the torchlight like etched runes. Crude plates of iron, scavenged from corpses or pried from long-rusted armors, hung awkwardly across its massive frame, held together by sinew and twisted rope. Across its chest stretched a battered breastplate, clearly human-forged, warped beyond recognition yet still serving as protection. Its jaw jutted forward, teeth yellow and jagged, saliva dripping onto the skulls below.
In its clawed hands it held a weapon unfit for craft, but perfect for carnage—a massive slab of iron bolted to a trunk-sized length of wood. Too heavy to be a sword, too crude to be a club. It was a cleaver of devastation, made not to cut, but to crush.
A guttural hiss rumbled from its throat, the sound echoing through the chamber like a death knell. Behind it, crouched in the shadows of the altar, waited the last of its surviving kin. A dozen lizardmen, leaner and quicker than those Arin had fought before, their eyes burning with fanatic devotion. They hissed in unison, a dreadful chorus that made the walls seem to vibrate.
Arin's grip tightened on his spear. His shield trembled—not from his arm giving out, but from the memory of every strike it had already endured. His body screamed to collapse; his blood had soaked too deeply into his clothes to count the loss. Yet his instincts anchored him to his feet. His eyes burned with exhaustion, but his will kept him upright.
The Chieftain raised its massive cleaver and slammed it against the altar of skulls. The crash sent a shockwave through the chamber, bones scattering across the floor. A roar followed—deep, guttural, vibrating through the marrow. Dust fell from the ceiling, and the remaining torches flickered violently.
"Formation!" Garrick bellowed. His voice carried over the din like thunder, firm, commanding. He stepped forward, axe in hand, his massive shoulders squared against the impossible presence before them.
And then Arin saw it—what set Garrick apart from all others. Mana flared around him, bright and alive, a shimmering veil of molten red-orange sparks that trailed his movement. Heat rippled off his skin, as if his blood itself burned. His axe seemed to drink in the light, its steel shining too bright to be mundane.
The Chieftain roared and charged.
Stone cracked beneath its colossal feet, each step an earthquake. Bones shattered under its weight, skulls crunching like brittle shells. Its cleaver came down in a sweeping arc that could have split the chamber itself in half.
Garrick met it head-on. His axe surged forward, wrapped in flames that burst into existence as if summoned from the forge of the gods. The air cracked with the heat.
"Skill: Inferno Cleave!"
The words thundered as his weapon collided with the Chieftain's monstrous blade. The chamber erupted. Sparks cascaded like fireworks, the clang of metal ringing like a bell struck in fury. The force of the impact rippled outward, knocking Arin back a step, his shield jerking against his arm.
Arin's heart pounded. It wasn't just muscle. It wasn't just strength. Garrick's skill transformed his strike into something beyond human—a blow magnified by will, channeled through mana, made real with sheer determination.
"Elira, left!" Garrick roared.
The blonde duelist was already in motion, rapier glinting in the torchlight. Mana shimmered along its blade, a silver veil sharp as moonlight. Her movements were a dance—precise, elegant, each thrust calculated to kill.
"Skill: Piercing Waltz!" she called, her voice clear, noble.
The rapier shot forward in a blur, slipping between the Chieftain's crude iron plates. The point buried deep, and the beast shrieked, its roar breaking into a pained screech. She withdrew in the same breath, pivoted, and thrust again, her blade striking another gap. Fluid, unrelenting. To Arin's eyes, she was more apparition than fighter, her movements too fast, too graceful, like water slipping through cracks.
The lesser lizardmen shrieked in response and surged forward.
Kaelen darted ahead to meet them, his figure blurring into the dim light. Shadows seemed to bend with his motion, as if the dark itself lent him its cover. His daggers flashed, quicker than sight, slicing tendons, slitting throats.
"Skill: Shadowstep!" he called, his form flickering as he slipped past a strike and reappeared at another's flank.
One lizardman stumbled, its leg cut out beneath it. Another gagged, blood bubbling from a slit across its throat. Kaelen's laughter rang out, light and mocking, as he danced around their snapping jaws. "Too slow, scales!"
Through it all, Serah stood calm at the center. Her voice lifted above the chaos, steady and resolute, carrying prayers that pulsed with golden warmth. Her hands glowed with radiant light, spilling outward in a dome that shimmered faintly against flying debris and crashing stone.
"Skill: Sacred Ward!"
The light coalesced around Garrick just as the Chieftain's cleaver came down again. The weapon slammed into his axe, and the shock should have shattered bones, but the golden aura absorbed the force, holding the line. When a shard of stone clipped Arin's temple, the glow softened the blow, sparing him from collapse.
When Garrick's arm split under the strain of blocking, Serah's light flared brighter.
"Skill: Healing Prayer!"
The wound sealed before Arin's eyes, the flesh knitting together in moments. The radiance was gentle, divine, yet undeniable in its power.
Arin's breath caught. He had never seen mana unleashed like this. Theirs was a brilliance he could not comprehend. Each of them wielded a skill that bent reality to their will—cutting deeper, moving faster, healing wounds that should have ended battles. It was magic in its truest, most tangible form.
And he had nothing.
No divine glow, no skill to call upon. No flare of mana answered his will. Only sweat, blood, and iron in his hands.
A lizardman lunged at him, jaws snapping. Arin raised his shield, iron rim crunching into the creature's snout. It reeled, hissing, and he drove his spear forward, the tip punching through its chest. It screamed, clawing at the haft, until he twisted and ripped it free, spilling black ichor across the stones.
Another rushed. He ducked under its swipe, rammed his shield into its gut, then slammed his knife upward into the soft flesh beneath its jaw. Brutal. Messy. But effective.
Compared to the others, his movements were crude, jagged stone against their polished jewels. They cut with elegance, their strikes glowing with mana's touch. He tore and bled and survived by inches. Yet still, he fought.
The Chieftain roared, flailing its cleaver in a wide sweep that sent even Garrick skidding back. Elira leapt aside, her rapier flashing as she struck another gap in its armor. Kaelen darted past, blades cutting down another lizardman. Serah's voice rose louder, pouring power into her wards as dust and bone rained from the ceiling.
Then it came for Arin.
The massive cleaver swung, a wall of iron blotting out sight. Arin raised his shield on instinct.
The impact was like being struck by a mountain. His shield screeched, metal warping as it caught the brunt of the blow. He felt himself lifted, slammed backward into the cavern wall. His lungs emptied in a gasp of pain, blood spraying from his lips as his side tore open.
The world blurred. His shield dangled uselessly, its rim nearly cleaved through. His spear clattered from his grip. He staggered, knees buckling.
The Chieftain roared again, looming over him to finish the strike.
"ARIN!" Garrick's bellow shook the air. His axe surged with flame, fire trailing in wild arcs. He charged, slamming into the Chieftain with the fury of a crashing storm. Sparks and fire erupted, pushing the monster back with sheer ferocity.
"Hold the line!" Garrick roared, teeth bared, his body burning with aura. "We end this now!"
Elira struck again, her rapier plunging into the Chieftain's exposed arm. Kaelen slit the throat of another lizardman, laughing as he danced away from claws. Serah's voice rose to a fever pitch, golden light bursting outward in a halo that held them together.
Arin staggered to his feet. His shield arm shook violently, blood dripping down his side. His vision blurred, but his will anchored him. He snatched his spear, braced against the wall, and forced himself back into the fray.
No skill. No light. No divine gift. Just grit. Just desperation.
He bashed another lizardman aside, stabbed through its spine, and ripped free. His movements lacked grace, but they carried weight. He fought not to shine, but to live.
The battle dragged into chaos. The Chieftain's roars shook the chamber, its swings breaking stone, scattering bones. Garrick met it blow for blow, each strike of his axe a clash of fire and fury. Elira darted in and out, silver glints piercing weak points. Kaelen thinned the pack with shadows and laughter. Serah's light held them together, healing wounds that should have been fatal, shielding them against death itself.
The Chieftain staggered. Its armor cracked, its roars more ragged. Yet still it fought, slamming its cleaver into the ground, sending shockwaves rippling across the chamber. The altar cracked, skulls toppling in cascades.
Garrick raised his axe, fire burning hotter, his roar drowning even the monster's. "END IT!"
The axe fell, flames trailing like a comet. The strike split the Chieftain's skull clean through, fire bursting outward in an explosion of heat and light. The roar cut short in a wet gurgle. The beast collapsed, its cleaver slipping from its grip as it hit the ground with an earth-shaking crash.
Silence followed. Smoke and dust filled the air. The lizardmen were dead, the Chieftain slain. The altar cracked in two, bones scattered.
Arin swayed where he stood. His spear was slick with blood, his shield little more than a warped plate of iron. His side burned, blood soaking through his torn cuirass. His knees buckled.
The others looked at him, voices calling faintly, but he couldn't hear them clearly. His vision dimmed, the chamber spinning. His body finally gave in, collapsing to the stone.
Darkness claimed him.
Status Window
Name: Arin
Level: 10
HP: 37 / 37
MP: 14 / 14
Strength: 21 (Max: 76)
Endurance: 18 (Max: 83)
Agility: 12 (Max: 71)
Dexterity: 7 (Max: 68)
Intelligence: 9 (Max: 34)
Willpower: 8 (Max: 32)
Unallocated Points: 0
Ability: Level Perception
Skill Slots: 1 (Unassigned)
Current Equipment
Armor: Worn Leather Cuirass (damaged)
Shield: Iron Shield (cracked)
Weapon: Iron-Tipped Spear (worn), Boarded-Blade Knife, Crude Iron Dagger (acquired from fallen)