Dungeon Raider System

"We had a pretty good run." Said Uriel before collapsing on the ground amidst low battery warnings from the system. His eyes heavy due to exhaustion and his limbs numb due to blood loss, yet he somehow managed to scan his surroundings looking for his friends to confirm they were still alive before passing out.

Luna hung from a tree branch, her silvery hair drenched in blood. Her clothes were ragged, but not because she attempted to shift into her werewolf form. Each tear in her clothes told the story of an enemy attack and though she was very resilient for an ascended hunter, she barely survived and Nika didn't fare much better.

The sunkissed huntress lied on the ground on a pool of blood that looked deep enough to dip the toes. She had given her all against the opponent in the fight, but despite her sizeable combat experience and training, she was helpless against the raw power and superior prowess of their enemy.

The only one who remained conscious was none other than Medusa, whose injuries were far less serious than those of her friends and she also didn't seem tired, though her glimmering eyes proved to be completely useless against the beast in front of her. She tried everything in her arsenal which included a few weapons and even some tools, but the wolf like cryptid was able to shrug off most attacks and recover at an extraordinary rate from those it couldn't.

The Dungeon Raiders had given their all in that fight, but all of their efforts turned out to be for naught as Medusa alone could do nothing against the enemy and their hunting party was wiped out for the first time.

Throughout their career they had encountered many powerful enemies, yet up until that moment they had always been to emerge victorious or at least run to fight another day. But the Morbach werewolf proved to be way stronger than they anticipated.

Word had reached them that a vile cryptid laid waste to a local village in Germany. Slain cattle, houses razed, vehicles destroyed and although it seemed unlikely, there were mentions of sexual violence. Such happenings were regretfully too common for them to care if not for a small detail that changed everything.

The culprit was supposedly a cryptid depicted as a vile wolf capable of walking on its hind legs, its breath reeking of decay and bulging muscles that would tell it apart from any animal. Its Sizeable force was often compared to that of a freight train and although many hunters were defeated by the supposed cryptid, not one of them had perished.

But that didn't mean they didn't pay the price of challenging such a powerful enemy as those who survived its onslaught were plagued by the nightmares caused by their encounter and the things the beast did to them.

To say this was interesting for Luna would have been an understatement and she pestered Uriel and Nika into agreeing to capture the Morbach werewolf alive. If it turned out to be a cryptid they could try to adopt it as a pet, if it was a hunter they could attempt to recruit it and if it turned out to be something completely different, Luna could at least study it and find out a new line of research.

But little did they know that the cryptid in question was actually way stronger than it seemed and not five seconds after the fight started Luna confirmed it was not a werewolf, at least not of her same species. She claimed it lacked the smell of the wolf, whatever that may be.

Despite the rumors of the Morbach did not killing hunters itself, Medusa did not want to find out in her own flesh if the other aspects of the rumors also held true and she grabbed her friends however she could before turning to leave.

Being so focused on the battle while following the beast at first and then running away from it, Medusa was completely lost and while the night was beautiful, cryptids showing up from time to time started to worry the heavenly rank huntress as she could already sense the stronger ones drawing near.

Getting rid of the small fries was easy for Medusa as she needed but a flash of her petrifying glare to kill them, but doing the same to entity rank cryptids was difficult and costly in terms of flux energy expenditure. If running through a cryptid infested forest was difficult on a regular day, doing so with a horny werewolf on a full moon night was such more difficult, though it also gave Medusa the proper motivation to crank up her speed.

"These idiots..." She huffed for the umpteenth time.

Being kind hearted and nice to everyone by nature, Medusa was rarely mean to her friends, though none of her friends would have blamed her for being snappy and for a good reason. Anyone who knew the full extent of their circumstances would be more inclined to blame anyone but Medusa, who was the only one who actually attempted to kill the creature while the rest attempted to capture it alive, which ended up being the cause of their defeat.

As luck would have it, before the next wave of cryptids showed up she saw a light in the distance. A rare find in the wilderness, even more so in a place ridden with cryptids. She paused for a second to question if it was a good idea to get near the light source, but a quick look behind allowed her to make up her mind.

If the unknown ahead was potentially dangerous, she knew for certain the cryptids following her track were certainly deadly and she walked towards a fenced farm in the middle of the night. She knocked on the door.

"Who goes there?" Asked a man before opening the door. Shotgun in hand and ready to open fire, he opened the door just enough to see who stood in the other side but the moment he saw the wounded hunters he lowered the weapon and approached them with concerned look on his face.

After a quick exchange of words the man invited Medusa in, not that he could have forced her to leave as his energy signature was that of a regular human. Compared to the tall huntress he was a weakling, but the same applied even when comparing the man to other humans. He was slender and had an emaciated look, his eyes were tired and even his shotgun was old and rusty making him as threatening as a kitten to a heavenly rank huntress like Medusa.

"Pardon my rudeness, I rarely have visitors," The man said after finishing first aid on the hunters. "My name is Thomas Johannes Baptist Schwytzer, it's a pleasure to meet you..."

"Medusa." She replied, squinting her eyes yet failing to smile at the creepy man that despite looking even closer to death than her injured friends still had the gall to ogle her cleavage without a hint of shame.

It was a strange day for Medusa, after all watching her friends get bested in combat was unusual to say the least and the same applied to her. Despite being the less wounded of the party, that didn't mean she was unscathed as she was also covered in deep cuts all through her body and she had also spent the last drop of stamina she had on her to get her friends to safety.

The minute she saw Thomas taking care of her friends Medusa felt a wave of relief. She had made it, against all odds she managed to run away from the cryptid with her friends still alive. Now it was only a matter of time before they recovered and when that happened, the cryptid's fate would be sealed.

Luna would find a way to defeat it, a deadly allergy, a poison, maybe a weakness while Uriel would over prepare for a rematch fight that would likely be anti climatically boring while Nika would take things seriously this time. Medusa found comfort in that line of thought and she found herself bobbing her head as the physical and mental extenuation started to sink in, yet she did not want to fall asleep until she knew if her friends were going to make it.

Luna had already recovered from most of her wounds thanks to her werewolf nature that gave her the ability to regenerate faster than humans and despite his grievous wounds Uriel was probably in better shape than Luna since after all his close encounters with death he was unlikely to enter in shock. But Nika, she was in such poor shape as she had lost too much blood both during the fight and during the escape as Medusa did not have the time to even perform fist aids on her.

"Don't worry, I'm a doctor." Thomas said as though he read Medusa's mind. She did not reply as she was too tired, but with just a glance she was able to confirm Thomas's claim as he had his medical degree hanging on the wall.

'Everything's going to be fine.' Medusa thought, at least until she noticed something odd, something that would likely have gone unnoticed if not for Uriel always talking about history.

The name on the medical degree on the wall coincided with the man's name, but so did the world war I medals on the counter which meant the man who did not appear to even be a hunter had to actually be way older than any regular human could be.