The moment they stepped through the portal, the world felt like it shifted.
This place looked like a massive underground cavern, with strange glowing red veins running through the stone walls and giving off just enough light to see by.
The space was huge, easily the size of a warehouse, with a ceiling that disappeared into darkness above. The ground beneath their feet was solid rock, uneven in some places, with cracks running through it.
But this place wasn't actually a cavern or cave in the traditional sense.
To be more precise, this was a dimensional crack. The gap between their world, Charvis, and the dimension where the invading monsters came from.
Think of it like this; their world was on one side, the monster's world was on the other, and this place? This was the crossing point.
The monsters invading their world moved from their own dimension into this crack first, gathering here before they could fully breach through.
And if this breach zone wasn't dealt with on time, within five days, the monsters would breach through the gaps and spill out into Charvis.
Causing a full-blown dimensional break.
That was the nightmare scenario the DSB worked day and night to prevent.
Ethan stood near the back of the group, with his eyes moving constantly. He was the most cautious here on entry, and for good reason.
Not only did he have to be careful around Wilson, he also had to be careful of the monsters.
He had zero combat experience, two spells to his name, and a vampire who could potentially bring him harm, standing twenty feet away.
It was then that he decided to activate one of his perks.
[Eyes of the Sage]
Based on the description he remembered about the Eyes of the Sage, it was supposed to help him see minute details with great clarity.
He intended to make sure he stayed watchful of every movement and potential threat.
The moment it activated, complex arcane symbols appeared on his irises and hhis pupils glowed a certain red pattern.
Suddenly the world before him became extremely clear as his vision had just sharpened to an almost absurd degree.
He could see; Every. Single. Detail.
How intricately carved the walls of the breach zone were, down to the smallest crack in the stone. He could see the smallest movements of dust particles floating through the air.
He could even see the individual hairs on the skin of his teammates, the way they stood slightly on edge from the cold air of the breach.
It was almost overwhelming at first, and felt like much information flooding in at once. But then his mind adjusted, and it all just made sense like his brain had upgraded to process it all without effort.
"This is insane," Ethan thought, blinking a few times.
Hoffman, who was a few feet ahead, raised his hand. "Answer my call, Bee King."
A red magic circle glowed on the ground beside him and from it emerged a massive mythical creature, easily the size of a small car.
The Bee King.
It hovered above the ground with its buzzing see-through wings. Its body was wrapped in red armor, with a collar of white fur around its neck like a mane, and its limbs were covered in metallic skeletal plating that looked both organic and mechanical at the same time.
Golden flame stones seemed to have been dancing around it.
Hoffman was a mythical creature summoner, as they called them. Those whose summons were spirits of mythical creatures instead of human-related ones.
Ethan stared at the Bee King for a moment, then quickly realized something.
"This summon is stronger than Albedo."
He could tell just by looking at it. The sheer presence the Bee King had and the weight of its mana signature.
Summons themselves, whether mythical creatures or human-related summons, were graded too. The least was Regular class, then Elite, then Knight, and right above Knight class was Commander class.
Hoffman's Bee King was Commander Class.
Albedo, for all her sass and skill, was at the bottem of the list, Regular class.
There were, of course, summons ranked above Commander. However, Commander was the highest level a summoner with B-rank talent could ever call forth.
Anything beyond that required A to S-level talent or higher.
—-
As they walked farther into the caverns, Ethan was first to notice the movement of monsters approaching.
Bone Hounds.
They emerged from the darkness in a horde, with their skeletal frames covered in bone spikes and armor-like plating.
Their bodies had red accents, with their eyes glowing red as they charged forward, snarling and growling.
The team froze for a second.
Clumsy Bettie was the first to state it, with her voice rising in alarm. "Bone Hounds? Wait, was this not an E-grade zone? How are these here?"
For Ethan, who had no experience with zone explorations, seeing as he'd always ducked it in the past, he didn't wonder why those level of monsters were there.
He was only just alarmed by the presence of monsters in general.
But Percival? Percival grinned widely.
"Doesn't matter the grade," the werewolf said, cracking his knuckles. "Bring them all!"
Then he roared out as blue mana flared around his body with his claws extended fully.
His muscles bulged and with that, Percival leaped into the air, soaring above the approaching horde of Bone Hounds with his clawed hands clenched into fists.
He came down them like a meteor. "RAGING FIST!"
The impact was catastrophic and the ground cratered beneath him causing a shockwave that scattered some of the horde in every direction.
Some slammed into walls, while others tumbled across the floor.
The rest of the team immediately got into action.
Hoffman stretched his hand forward. "Bee King, attack!"
The wings of massive creature buzzed aggressively as flew toward the horde. The golden flame stones launched from its side towards the bone hounds, exploding and incinerating several on contact.
Wilson moved as well. He was the fastest here. Being both a saber and a vampire was such a nasty combo for speed that it almost wasn't fair.
He didn't have his sword with him, but that didn't seem to matter. Orange aura rose around his arm, concentrating along his fingers.
His knuckles were straightened as he made his hand form a blade-like shape.
Wilson blurred forward, cutting through the monsters with precise and lethal swings. Each motion of his arm sliced clean, dropping Bone Hounds left and right.
Ethan, of course, cast the only spell he knew for offense.
He lifted his right hand forward, and a darkish purple magic circle formed in front of his palm. Then he whispered, "Fireball."
A large orb of flames materialized, it swirled then launched forward and chased down a few of the Bone Hounds that had broken away from the main group, reaching for him.
The fireball exploded on impact, engulfing the hounds in a burst of flames.
Wilson, in between slashing through another hound, turned slightly to give Ethan a look with his side eye.
It was brief, maybe less than a second even, before vampire quickly refocused his attention and continued fighting.
But brief glance was enough. Ethan, had caught that slight movement of Wilson's glare aimed directly at him.
This was the power of his Eyes of the Sage.
Not a single detail in this growing commotion was too hard for him to notice, and that brief look from Wilson only just made Ethan more careful.