"Damn it! I hoped they would kill it!"

  I watched as the dwarfs retreated and the "Fearfiend" passed them.

  The snakes on the sixth made it to the stairwell room in time. They utilised their abilities to the best of their ability in the stairwell room and launched an attack. Their fangs could punch into the monster through its tough outer hide. The creature was almost as fast as they were, and its claws ripped through the snake, which revealed themselves after attacking it. They started dying, and it was soon left to the floor Guardian to take up the fight.

  The Guardian lasted longer due to its enhanced speed. Its fangs were able to bite the monster several times, but this, in turn, left it vulnerable to counterattacks, and one unfortunately caught it, slicing its head clean off.

  It was soon on the stairs again.

  "Krag, you are… Shit, you're already engaged! Puck, help him!"

  Krag was fighting the monster as it had run down the stairs. The monster attacking the Dungeon was one of the strangest I had ever seen. It was tall, thin, and humanoid. Its limbs and body looked stretched and strangely out of proportion. It reminded me of the Slender Man memes and stories I had seen before my death, but it was far worse in appearance.

  Its entire body was covered in a strange carapace that resembled a rhino's hide, a deep grey. It had no clothing or armour, as its peculiar skin acted like it. Its mouth had no lips and had long, metallic-like teeth. Its face was smooth, and neither eyes nor a nose were visible. I wasn't even sure if I could see ears. It reminded me of Ridley Scott's Alien, without the drool.

  Its hands were long and bony, ending in even longer and sharper talons. They were black, and I was unsure what they were made of. Whatever it was, he was ripping through the shield, holding it back from gutting my Guardian.

  I looked at it with my Mana Sight and saw a strange and conflicted energy pattern through the monster. The void corruption was blatant, but another type of energy was present that I had never seen before. It was a type of mana that differed from any I had seen or heard of. The void energy was trying to reach out and corrupt the essence around it, but I was drawing it away as soon as possible to prevent that.

  Krag was not just standing there, taking it, but fighting with everything he had. He was using both his shield and mace offensively. The room was too small to trigger his charge skill, and he tried to pin the monster against the stairwell to beat it to death. Puck was flying around, using his spells against the beast, but I soon realised the problem: as far as I was aware, the monster had no eyes for him to affect. As far as I could tell, his spells were useless, as the monster seemed unaffected.

  "Puck, fall back."

  Larry was downstairs in my Core room, awaiting instructions. The room was filled with the boars and rats from the floor. The Revenant was holding back, and so were my ace and the hole. In truth, he was more my final Hail Mary.

  "I need to think about a specialist defender here I can tuck away."

  I forced myself to stop regretting what I had not done and focus on what was happening right then and there.

  The dwarfs had wounded the creature in a fierce fight, but it had forced them to retreat, which was not a good sign as they were possibly one of the stronger teams that had visited my Dungeon. Krag had triggered his [Harden] skill and hammered at the creature with this mace. He was injuring it, but not to the point where it could no longer fight.

  His shield had gouges and rents across its surface. From its looks, it would not last much longer. His body sported several claw marks indicating different places where the creature had gotten through and wounded him. The red health bar above his head was slowly draining as the injuries increased. His blue mana bar also decreased as he relied on [Harden] to stay in the fight. The green stamina bar was also dropping as he triggered his [Smash] skill to inflict more damage.

  The creature blurred, and the air in the room changed.

  The air grew heavy, and a strange glow surrounded the monster. It was a negative light, the only way I could describe it.

  Krag stumbled, and his attacks stopped. He shook his head, looking confused. He shakes his head, trying to focus on whatever is happening to him. He grunts in anger and appears to be getting angrier.

  "Krag, not weak!" He bellowed.

  He snarls and commits to the fight again. Whatever the monster was doing, it was trying to mess with my Guardian's mind, making them vulnerable to attack. Still, I think his limited intelligence worked in his favour here. From the creature's name, it must be some form of fear-based attack designed to cripple its opponents. Krag's mind was wired differently, I think, to interpret fear as a sign of weakness. When faced with weakness, he became angry, and that anger became all-consuming.

  As far as I could tell, the void-corrupted monster seemed to realise this and continued to attack now without using any of its other abilities. Krag improved his ability to handle his mace and shield, but not to the level that would give him the advantage here.

  He triggered his [Shadow Arms] spell. This worked better than I think either of us hoped, as the monster did not believe or expect him to trigger such a spell, and the arms from its own shadow wrapped around its legs, stalling another attack. This gave my Guardian the opening he needed, and he delivered a decisive and quite hefty blow to the creature's head, enhanced with [Smash]. This knocked it sideways into the wall, but unfortunately, it was not as fight-ending as I'd hoped.

  The monster attacking my Dungeon had been silent this whole time, but now it gave out a snarl of rage. It glowed again with that weird anti-light and attacked this time so fast it became a blur. Krag had his shield up, but that proved no benefit as it soon fell apart under a series of savage blows. He tried to go in with his makes two-handed, but the monster did not relent, and soon his armour was being ripped away, and his health bar was dropping terrifyingly quickly.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  He exhausted his mana bar, triggering [Harden], and as soon as he lost that ability, the creature gained dominance. With brutal and sadistic proficiency, he took my Guardian apart. Krag died, but he fought to the end.

  "Here it comes!"

  Twenty rats swarmed it as soon as it reached the bottom of the stairs. They did little, but a few were bitten deep enough to cause more of the weird purple ichor to flow. However, this was not why I felt better about the fight. Two Rock Boars triggered their [Charge] skills and collided with the void, corrupted monster. Several rats were trampled underfoot, but that was the price I was willing to pay.

  The impact was loud and brutal, but the monster continued its attack, slaughtering rats and ripping into the hides of my boars. They died quickly, even with [Harden], but again with purpose. As soon as the second collapsed, another two charged in. There were no more rats to help with the distraction, and these two soon fell, which triggered the last two, and then the two used their [Charge] skills.

  The void-corrupted monster was taking damage from his attacks. As the boars' health bars dropped, their fury abilities triggered, adding to the increasing number of injuries they were sustaining. Purple ichor was now flowing from nearly a dozen separate areas, and it was staining the floor of my Dungeon.

  I was fervently hoping that these injuries would now be enough for my last Guardian to step in and finish it off. As my previous two Rock Boars were dying, the Revenant stepped up, ready to attack.

  After this Guardian, I had only Puck and Larry left. I was prepared to commit them to the battle, as they were all I had left. My hopes of them swinging the battle in my favour were not high. As I sadly knew, it was all really resting on The Revenant.

  My Core room was now more resembling an abattoir as my final Guardian leapt into action over the collapsing body of the last boar. The Revenant didn't mess around, triggering not one but two abilities as it attacked. The first was [Multi-Strike], and the second was the spell [Touch of Death]. These two combined attacks were the first it launched, but its opponent avoided the first of them and was caught by the second.

  The Revenant's blade sliced into the side of the Fairfield, transmitting the spell into its body. I did not know the spell's effect on it, but it continued to fight on with no apparent signs of slowing. The Revenant was forced onto the defensive and dodged the monster's counterattacks.

  Being undead, the Revenant was more resistant to bladed weapons, but I was unsure what those talents were composed of and what abilities they had attached to them. The Revenant seemed to have a similar perspective to me and avoided being struck at all costs. This does not mean it was soon back to striking out with its sword, but it seemed far more restrained and patiently looking for openings. It found a few, scoring several hits that sliced once more into the monster, causing more purple ichor to flow.

  The Revenant backed into the first cavern, with the Fearfiend following it. This drew it away from my Core, and I had expected it to attack me immediately. I realised that would leave it open for the Revenant to attack it from behind. This monster seemed to want to eliminate my last and most potent Guardian before turning its attention to me.

  My Guardian, however, had a different idea of how this would end, and manoeuvring the fight into the first cavern was part of it. This gave the Revenant more room to work with, as the core room was far too confined. The monster was focused on it and continually attacked. My Revenant was dodging and blocking these attacks using its skills extensively.

  The downside was that the green stamina bar above its head quickly depleted as each skill chewed into the amount of stamina it possessed. I looked at my last two, wondering many bosses to wonder if there was anything they could do to help in this fight. The problem was that neither of them was even remotely suited to such a fight and, at best, could be a distraction. It was getting to the point where I was considering sacrificing them to give the Revenant the distraction it needed to hopefully kill this monster.

  [Multi-Strike] and [Touch of Death] were used again with no visible signs of the monster suffering ill effects apart from another wound. The first hit this time, but the second was deflected.

  The Revenant wiped the purple ichor from the blade across its body covered in Blood Moss. Whatever it was, it wasn't normal blood, and the moss seemed to reject it, dashing my hopes that the Revenant could at least restore some of the stamina it was fast burning through.

  The monster swiped left and right continuously, trying to score hits on the Revenant, and made contact a few times. Nothing serious, thankfully, but the Revenant's rusted armour was starting to look far worse as the glancing strikes were slowly destroying it. The Revenant's red health bar was still quite full, indicating that very little of the damage had managed to penetrate.

  Out of the three bars above the revenant hedge, the red health bar was the fullest, with the other two starting to show a lot of space between the current level and where it should be when full. The most drained was the stamina bar, which now looked scarily low.

  The monster triggered its fear ability again, but the Revenant just shrugged it off as it was not alive. It had no fear. This seemed to enrage the monster, as it increased the tempo of its attacks. This caused it to extend several times, allowing the Revenant to slice back into it with its blade.

  Despite these small victories, the fight had turned against my Revenant, as the stamina bar was draining far too quickly. I was almost exhausted now and knew I had to step in somehow. My hand was forced when the monster raked the Revenant across the chest with one of its claws, scoring a nasty and profound injury to the undead's body. Its red health bar took a massive dive.

  I committed both Larry and Puck to the fight. Puck was ordered to distract it as best he could. Larry was to hit it from behind, aiming for the back of the knees, which I prayed were easier to get through than the rest of its body.

  They both entered the fight without hesitation, and I was strangely proud of them for it. They both did what they could, but the Fearfiend mostly ignored them.

  Puck was able to distract it enough to allow the Revenant to score another sword blow, but was caught by the monster's arm and knocked away, hitting the ground hard and bouncing. From his health party, it was clear that he was severely wounded but not dead. One of his wings, however, was damaged, and he could no longer fly.

  Larry attacked the back of the monster's knees as best he could. Most of his attacks proved useless, but suddenly, one managed to score a small wound, which caused the monster to stagger and go off balance.

  This was the opportunity that the Revenant needed to charge forward, triggering [Touch of Death] one last time. It charged forward, putting all its weight behind its blade, and pierced the monster through the chest, rereleasing the spell into its body. Unfortunately, the beast impaled the Revenant with its claws, and its red health bar dropped terrifyingly quickly as it ripped its claws out sideways from the body of my last Guardian.

  This proved to be a fatal blow, and the Guardian died.

  The sword was still in the monster's chest, and it seemed equally as severely wounded but was rising once more. Larry had retreated and positioned himself in the doorway between the cavern and my core room, preparing to make his last stand.

  The void-corrupted monster turned, swaying on its feet. It took several staggering steps forward and then collapsed onto the blade's handle, driving it deeper into its body.

  Everything was still for several seconds, and then a glaring red notification announced that the raid was over and that I had won.

  The void corruption from the monster flowed out of his body into my Core, and I received a notification of a new type of mana.

  "Infernal Mana! Oh, fuck me!"