"Okay, so this dungeon has a time dilation of 2:1, but it is also a one-way dungeon. You know what that means?"

Alan's efforts at magical farming had taken the rest of the morning, but Akilatjin had challenged him to a race to their targeted dungeon. It would be another chance to see just what his companion was capable of, so Alan had eagerly agreed. That meant that they had managed the trip to tier two in just a little over an hour, and then it was only another twenty minutes to the dungeon entrance. It was located in the trunk of a tree in a small forest.

"Yes, Alan, I know the meaning of one-way. Are we going to do this or just talk about it?"

"We're gonna do this, but I don't know what's on the other side of that portal. We should establish some ground rules before we go in."

"That's smart. I wouldn't want you running off and getting in trouble."

"Riiiight. So, let's stick together, and keep our eyes open. If we need to move suddenly, we need to communicate so that no one is left in the lurch."

Keeping an eye on his partner, Alan reached out and touched the portal. The entrance had been concealed behind a door that was designed to blend in with the trunk of the tree. He had actually passed the dungeon several times before he discovered it, back when he was still stuck in tier two.

After a brief jolting sensacion, they found themselves in a large space. They both took a moment to look around. What they found was unusual to say the least. Instead of a starting room, or an empty hallway, they found themselves surrounded by monsters. Of course, that wasn't the only thing they were surrounded by.

The room they were in was at least fifty meters across and at least that long. The ceiling was also over eight meters high. It was a massive space, but it was filled completely with cages. The cages were all different sizes, but everyone was occupied by some kind of creature. There were normal animals like wolves, mana infused creatures like some kind of horse type quadruped that was perpetually on fire, and more exotic beasts like a bogerrel. Alan had first met that particular creature in an elf filled dungeon.

Some cages were stuffed with monsters while others, like the bogerrel's, held a single specimen. Alan and Akilatjin found themselves in a cage like all the others. That was probably a good thing, because if everyone had been loose, they would have been smothered by the mass of creatures. Like their cage, the room had a single door. Unlike the normal looking opening to their prison, the door to the room was enormous. Two Alan's could have been stacked on his shoulders and he would have still been able to fit through it.

"Alan, those things look delicious."

The dragon's message made him look over at her. Akilatjin was staring at a cage not too far from their own that held several chickens that were covered in sparks and arcs of electricity. For some reason, Alan's identify wasn't triggering. Something in the dungeon must be suppressing the ability. Even without it, though, he didn't think trying to eat those walking electrical hazards would be a good idea. Then again, Akilatjin ate rocks, so maybe she would be fine.

"We're not going to be eating anything if we can't get out of this cage. Any ideas?"

She did, in fact, have a plan. Sliding over to the bars, she opened her beak and closed her mouth on them. Her all-devouring maw skill should allow her to bite through them, letting her create a doorway. Whatever was suppressing his identify skill was also interfering with her eating ability, and her beak closed against the stone bars with a loud clack. It was either that, or the bars were made of a very durable stone.

The noise alerted some of the monsters nearest to them, and they turned their attention to the newcomers. One of the cages that butted up to theirs held what looked like the baby brother of the octospatium that had attacked him when this whole Network thing began. Unlike the other monsters who were left with nothing to do but drool, this tentacled beast made its way over to the bars and started sending its appendages into their cage.

Alan was closest and he took out his spewn and sword. The octospatium had been challenging for him to cut, but his current equipment was much better than the makeshift weapons he had used back then. The creature in front of them was also probably not as high leveled. With two cuts, he severed the closest tentacles, causing the creature to pull the rest back. Alan didn't think it had given up, but it wasn't going to sacrifice more arms while Alan was paying attention.

With the immediate threat dealt with, Akilatjin slid over next to him.

"Ok, my idea didn't pan out. Something is interfering with my skills."

"Why don't you look around our cage a little more, see if you can find anything to help us, and I'll check out the door. If we're lucky it's not actually locked."

That drew another worm snort from his Bond and she slithered off to see what she could find. Alan wasn't very hopeful since his own search had shown an empty cell. Alan made his way over to the door, but he made sure to keep an eye on their cephalopod neighbor while he did so.

It was a standard cell gate, not quite full height, while a metal frame that it locked into. The lock itself looked like it took a fairly large key, and it was definitely locked. Alan checked it with his aura and mana senses, and finding nothing remarkable he then tried to inspect it with his fingers. The hole was massive enough that he could actually fit his whole pinky into it, but he was unable to manipulate the mechanism inside.

Next he took out his lockpicks, but he wasn't very confident. The relatively delicate tools would likely struggle against the oversized tumblers. Sure enough, his set was just unable to make any traction against the lock. Giving up for the moment, he turned to check on Akilatjin's progress. She was still moving around the cell, inspecting the floor. The octopus next door thought to take advantage of her focus, but she had great situational awareness. She waited until the tentacle was about to try and wrap her up and quickly turned her head and bit down on the tip.

The octopus pulled back the now shorter appendage and Alan looked back at the frustrating door. There was one thing he hadn't tried yet. This was a dungeon, and they had their own special type of energy. Activating his aether senses, he noticed that there was a subtle difference in what he sensed from the lock compared to what he sensed from the rest of the cell. It was hard to describe what he was feeling, it was like it was vibrating at a slightly different frequency than the rest. He was about to check if anything else had a different signature when Akilatjin called for him excitedly.

"Alan, over here. There's something off about this floor tile."

The bottom of the cell was simply the floor of the room, and it was made of large stones mortared together. The big worm was pecking at the mortar of one of the ones in the middle of their prison. Making his way over, Alan checked it out with his senses. He noticed a similar vibration to the lock when he used his aether reading. He wasn't sensitive enough to tell if they were in fact the same, or just alike.

"Something about it feels false, but I can't seem to do anything with it. Damn my lack of claws. Sometimes this body is terribly inconvenient."

"Here, let me give it a try."

Akilatjin pulled her head back, and Alan started poking at the mortar. It felt just like everything else. Then he started prodding the stone itself. It felt solid and he was ready to tell his partner that she was mistaken. When he looked over, however, she was totally focused on the block, convinced that she had found something.

Instead of giving up, he moved his hands around the stone, checking everything. When he got to the far side, he felt it move a little. Pressing down even harder, it started to tip down, lifting the back of it up. Akilatjin added in her own strength, pressing down with her forehead, and the whole thing tipped like it was on a hinge. Alan grabbed the back of the block and slid it up and out. It revealed a hole under one side of the stone, and solid floor under the other. No reason it had felt so solid.

In the hole was a dull metal key, oversized just like the room. Fearful that she might try to eat it, Alan quickly reached in and snatched it up. Akilatjin chuckled like she knew what he was thinking. Making his way over to the door, he put the key in the lock. It was a perfect fit and with a surprisingly smooth turn, the mechanism activated and the door popped open.

"Now what?"

"Let's get outta this cell, but then we need to find a way out of the room."

The space in front of the door was clear of cells, but the rest of the room was covered in them. A quick inspection showed that this door had no handle or keyhole on the inside. The door must be designed to open from the outside. Hopefully there was some hidden mechanism on this side that they could trigger. Otherwise Alan wasn't sure how to progress from here. THe dungeon should offer some kind of path forward.

Using his aether senses again, Alan managed to find a patch of wall that was different from the stone around it. Pressing on it triggered a hidden button. It was unexpected, and at first they were unsure what it did. The door was still firmly closed. Then they heard the noise from behind them.

Rather than the sound of rushing feet, it was clanging. Turning around, Alan almost burst out laughing, and Akilatjin did a fair imitation of chortling. Pressing that button had opened one of the cages, the neighboring one that was holding the octopus. Instead of taking the opportunity to try and sneak up on them and attack, the creature had learned its lesson from their previous interactions and it was instead trying to pull its door closed. It was clear that it didn't want anything to do with them.

"So, do we force our way in there? It almost seems like bullying to attack it at this point."

He had to agree. The naked terror on its alien face, combined with its frantic efforts to seal itself away were engendering a feeling of sympathy. The two watched it for a few moments more before the decision was taken from them. The dungeon core, wherever it was, did not find the situation to be amusing or sad. With a small burst of aether, the octopus's tentacles reversed their efforts and the door slammed open.

Alan sighed. "You want this one, or you want me to take care of it?"

"This one is all you, I just wouldn't feel right, it'd be like kicking a puppy."

'Great, make me do it.' Alan thought to himself. With a few deft movements he sliced off its remaining limbs and then drove his sword into the space behind its eyes. A few twitches later and the puppeted beast was dead. After waiting a few seconds, it disappeared in a small lootnado and left behind a few silver pieces.

"Let's check out its cell. The button may have been a trap, or maybe it was trying to show us something."

Together they scoured the cell for anything of interest. Like their own cage, it was mostly bare stone floor, but this one also had a few bones on the ground. No doubt the remains of some of the octopus's victims. At the end of their short but intense search, they had found two places of interest.

Rather than being located on the floor, they found two spots where the bars had small sections that were a slightly different color. They stood out to Alan's aether senses, but only when he was close to them. Akilatjin also could sense something different about the identified sections.

"I think it's related to dragons' innate energy senses. You were asking about natural talents before, I remember now that we dragons have an inborn ability to detect most types of energy. It must be picking up on this aether you were talking about."

Alan had filled the little dragon in on his aether abilities, and what they were telling him, but he had done so mentally instead of outloud. Tamee now knew a lot more of his secrets, but he still didn't want to share everything if he could avoid it.

"So, which one do we touch, or do we do it together?"

"They don't quite have the same feel to me as each other, so I don't think they work in tandem."

She was right, the two sections had very distinct signatures. One was similar to the first button, while the other was nothing like it. For science purposes, he decided to try the button that was so different.

There was the sound of two cages opening, one much closer than the other. The first cage was nearby, and it held a large pack of wolves. The cell was so packed with them, that they must have had difficulty moving around. That was probably a symptom of the dungeon being overloaded with energy. They came boiling out of their former prison and made a beeline for Alan and Akilatjin.

Not warning to be trapped in their cell, they rushed out into the open area, ready to face the snarling threat. Tactically it might have made sense to stay inside and protect the doorway, forcing the large pack to come at them a few at a time. There were two reasons why strategy said that might not be a good idea.

The first was that it would limit their own movement. Neither Alan or Akilatjin were natural tanks, both of their fighting styles leaned heavily on being faster than their opponents. The second was that they didn't know what would happen if the cell door somehow got closed. Would they be stuck in the cage? It wasn't worth the risk of a chaotic battle at the gate, especially when these looked like regular wolves, something they both could handle easily.

A meteor to the middle of the pack would have thinned the numbers down nicely, but it would have also been rather loud. He wasn't too worried about stirring up the other occupants of the cells, they were paying plenty of attention already, Alan was more concerned with whatever might be on the other side of the oversized door.

Just before the leading wave of wolves attacked, Alan remembered that there had been two gates that opened. A quick scan of the other cells revealed another threat. The bogerrel he had noticed earlier was in a cage toward the rear. Instead of a gate that was placed on one of its sides, which would have led into a different cage, it had an opening on the top. The bogerrel had jumped up with its stubby legs and was now pulling itself out.

Then there was no time for more watching as the leading wolves were now leaping at their throats. Like the white tide of an avalanche, full of snarling teeth, it tried to sweep over them. Alan and Akilatjin were no helpless forest or skiers however. Dancing around the snarling bites, Alan retaliated by slicing outstretched necks, unleashing a spray of red. Akilatjin was equally deadly, but she had to tear the throats out with her mouth. The first wave was down, but there were plenty more behind them.

"Can you handle the rest? I have someone I want to say hi to." Alan asked in a lull.

"Go, this is fun!"

The worm had an interesting view of fun, but then again, Alan was looking to get some revenge on the bogerrel, even though it had never met him before. Perhaps they both had a skewed perspective on life.

Scooting backwards, Alan relocated his target. The large, slightly humanoid creature was now bounding across the tops of the cages, looking to attack from above. The other time he had run into the four armed monster, he had been part of a team of four and they had hunted it down for destroying a mushroom patch. It had been a team effort to bring it down. That was then, now Alan wanted to prove he could handle one on his own.

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In the previous fight, the top arms had been its main weapon, being larger and stronger, and surprisingly quick. The shorter arms underneath were designed for more refined movements. It was over two meters tall, so reaching its head and neck area would be a challenge. This time Alan planned to tear into its torso.

Rather than waiting for it to jump down on him, Alan took three steps and then leapt upwards. Landing on top of the cage, he had a moment to contemplate how far he had come from his former human self. The cage was almost two and a half meters tall, and he had cleared that distance easily, able to land on his feet.

Now at the same level as his foe, Alan was still at a disadvantage. The cells didn't have solid roofs, instead they were made of more bars. The bogerrel's feet were wide and large, meaning it was able to run across the top of the cages as if they were solid floors. With his smaller feet, Alan had to place his steps carefully or he risked a dangerous fall. His opal perception and dexterity were up to the task. His focus and wisdom also let him both divide his attention between his enemy and his footing, while also letting him devote enough concentration to both.

Dancing across the bars, Alan approached at an angle, not allowing his opponent a straight charge where it could use its mass to its advantage. When last they had met, Alan had still been solidly quartz. Now he was well on his way to diamond, with better weapons and more skill. Closing to melee range, it was much easier to dodge its swipes, even without archers or another person to distract it.

To get a feel for the flow of the monster's attacks, Alan stayed purely on the defensive. After he started to learn its movements and the way it would burst forward before pulling back to anticipate counterattacks, their interaction started to feel like a dance. So far the bogerrel was leading, but now Alan was ready to take over. The next time it lashed out, instead of simply sidestepping and ducking, Alan brought his sword around and sliced the back of its arm as it swept away from him.

That motion allowed him to get around the other arm coming back towards him, and that one ran right into his spewn. With a howl of pain the bulky creature brought both of its injured upper arms into its chest. Each had a large slice that was pouring blood down its torso. This left only the smaller lower arms to attack and defend.

Not only were they shorter, but they weren't nearly as thick around, lacking much of the muscle of the larger limbs. Sliding forward with his left foot, he spun his body and sliced with his spewn, severing one of its arms below the elbow. His sword flashed out as he turned, warding off the monster's response.

A few quick steps put him behind the bogerrel, even as it tried to turn with him. Alan attempted to activate his twin slash ability, but it must also be suppressed. It seemed that the dungeon wanted them to tackle its challenges without their abilities. Fortunately, those class given abilities were more bonuses and less an integral part of his style. Also, his talents were still working fine and he felt his weapons drawn to the creature's vitals as he lunged forward. Rather than a howl, it let out a pitiful cry of agony and despair. Whatever Alan had hit had hurt it badly.

Some might say that attacking your foe while its back was turned was a cowardly move, but Alan wasn't one of them. He hadn't even snuck up on it, he had approached from the front, and if it didn't want to let him attack its unprotected backside, then it shouldn't have let him get back there. Moving as fast as his arms and hands would let him, Alan plunged his weapons into the tough body, using his feet to stay behind it no matter how it tried to twist and turn.

Finally, it collapsed, unable to maintain the strength to stand. Alan had dominated the once powerful foe completely. As he watched, it turned into a whirlwind of dirt, hair, and claws before revealing a small pile of gold, which immediately fell to the floor of the cage below him. The monsters there, some kind of snarling feline creatures, were pelted with the coins. Oops.

"Are you done up there yet?"

Looking back, Akilatjin was finished with the wolves. Over twenty of the beasts were laying in a pile. Rather than disappearing individually, the entire thing turned into a missive lootnado, leaving behind a wooden box. It wasn't very large, maybe half a meter long and less than that wide. Akilatjin was trying to flip the lid open, but she wasn't having much luck.

Making his way carefully across the bars, Alan jumped down and came over to help. The box was heavy, much heavier than the container would suggest. Something rather weighty must be inside. There was a simple clasp on the front and he flipped it open, then pulled up the lid. The contents were a little disappointing, at least for him.

"Gimme, gimme, that's mine!"

Lying on a green felt bottom were two bars of metal. Without identify, Alan had to guess at what they were. His aura senses revealed a grid pattern similar to natural iron, but it was packed with mana. He would have spent more time trying to pick out exactly what type of mana, but Akilatjin's head was bumping his hands away, trying to get at them.

With a clash, the box and its contents tumbled to the floor and in a startling display of speed and precision, she snatched up both bars and swallowed them down. Her all devouring maw ability might not be working properly, but she had no trouble eating the metal. Perhaps that was some of her innate talent again.

Alan's thoughts were interrupted by a change in the worm. Her body started pulsing, ripples running up and down her body. She also started glowing a brilliant green color. Just as quickly as they came on, the effects passed, leaving her with a startled expression.

"That was incredible! We should find more stuff like that."

"We don't even know what they were. Maybe you should have waited until we left the dungeon so that we could have identified them."

"My body said eat, so I eat."

Looking at her with a critical eye, Alan was pretty sure that she was bigger than she was before whatever happened. Both her length and her girth had increased slightly. As he continued to study her, some of her scales seemed to have a green sheen. It was too bad he couldn't identify her, but then again, she could just check her status sheet.

"Wow, my strength and constitution went up a bunch, as did my hitpoints and stamina. Let's hope for more of that."

After sorting out the loot, they inspected the two cells they had opened. Unlike last time, where they had revealed another mechanism, these two cages were empty and unremarkable. With nothing else to try, they triggered the other button from the octopus's cell. That popped another cage open, this one containing some large rats.

They were each equivalent to a medium-sized dog, and their mouths had some kind of sickly yellow mucus around them. Alan did not want to see what that would do if he was bitten. Thankfully, there were many fewer of them, only six, and he used his crossbow to take out two before they reached the pair. Akilatjin hung back. She seemed to be pretty durable, both physically and health wise, but they didn't want to find out that these things had some kind of disease that she could catch by biting them.

Instead, Alan took out his spear. It was a loot drop from a dungeon he had run. A sturdy wooden shaft led to a twenty centimeter blade at the end, which was counterbalanced by a couple of metal caps and bands on the bottom of the spear. It was a perfectly serviceable weapon, but not one he favored. What it did have though, was reach.

With a few sweeping attacks to keep the rats back, followed by a couple of thrusts, he managed to kill another. The rats had some intelligence, because they used that time to surround the two of them. It was a good thing that Alan was fast, it was taking everything he could do just to keep them from getting closer.

"Hey, why don't we climb the cages and then you can shoot them from up there."

It was a good idea, the only challenge was getting around the one rat behind them. For the first time in this dungeon, Alan used his magic. A prismatic orb dazzled the one rat's eyes, while Alan and Akilatjin surged past it. He leaped up top just as he had done earlier, and Akilatjin was able to simply glide up the bars to the ceiling. Whatever ability made her sticky was still working. Then it was a simple matter of reloading his crossbow and shooting the rats. They were smart enough to work together to attack, but not so intelligent that they thought to look for cover.

Each rat turned into a silver piece. That was not a lot of loot, especially considering how much the other monsters had left. Although, the octopus had left only a silver as well. With the enemies dispatched, then ran a search of the newly abandoned cell. Akilatjin soon found a trigger on the floor, and Alan found another soon after.

Once again, one button felt like the others, while the second one felt off. This time they triggered the like button the first time, which popped open another cell. This one contained a pair of force spiders. Alan didn't know what they were called, but Akilatjin did. Including their legs, they were as big as the bogerrel, but their body was about the same size as the rats Alan had dispatched. These spiders were magic users, capable of firing bolts of force at their enemies, and using that same energy to shield itself against attacks.

Not wanting to mess around with them, they swarmed the spiders almost as soon as they stepped out of their cage. Alan went for their bodies while the dragon worm went for the legs. Each spider could only manifest one force shield at a time, and that prevented them from using the magic to attack them while it was in place. By attacking their body in a fury of blows, he forced them to dedicate their magic on protecting their vitals. Akilatjin, meanwhile, went to work on their legs. She utilized two tactics, biting through the limbs, and smashing them with her bulk. Both were quite effective.

In less than thirty seconds the first spider was left grounded with broken and missing legs. Attacking from both sides, they were then able to overwhelm its defence and Akilatjin ate its heart. She made a pleased gurgle, and then was mad at Alan when he got the final blow on the second spider.

Searching their cell, they found two more triggers. Alan and Akilatjin continued to trigger the one that had an aether signature that most resembled the original. They had to do it three more times, each button opening another cage. The final time there was a single stone trigger and when they pushed it, a loud crack announced the large door popping open. There were still a number of cells with dangerous creatures inside, and Akilatjin wanted to open them all since the loot had been rather pathetic after the wolves. Alan convinced her that there was likely something better later on, but she still eyed the electrocution chickens hungrily as they made their way out of the giant room.

The hallway they entered was equally large, eight meters tall and six meters wide. There was another door across from them, this time with a handle, but there were sounds of people coming from farther down the hallway, around a corner.

"Do you want to check the other room, or move for the people?"

"Let's try the other door? Maybe there's something good in there."

Because of how large the door was, Alan couldn't reach the knob. Akilatjin could have climbed the door to reach it, but she didn't have the hands to turn it. They got creative, and the wormy dragon crawled up the wall with one end of Alan's rope in its mouth. She had the ability to control whether or not her mouth 'ate' things. Once she was above the door handle, Alan started his climb.

This was a test of Akilatjin's strength and traction. Even with all of Alan's weight on the other end of the rope, she didn't budge. In short order, he had reached the handle and gave it a turn. As the door swung open, they stayed in place, ready to drop down or take other evasive maneuvers if required. What greeted them on the other side was madness.

It was clearly a kitchen, but just as clearly something terrible had happened. There were pieces of vegetables strewn all over, bloody smears on the wall and floor, several skeletal remains, still with meat clinging to them, and dirty dishes. So many dirty dishes. Bowls, knives, spoons, what looked like large measuring cups, and cutting boards were stacked up in what was likely a large sink. Someone had been doing a lot of work in here.

After having helped Cook out at the Elstree Inn, he knew what could happen in a kitchen, but this was on a whole different level. Cook would have been appalled to see her cooking space in such a state. It was weird checking the place out since he was shorter than the counters. This is the view his childhood dog must have experienced while begging for scraps from his mom while she cooked.

There was plenty they could have looted in the room. Vegetable scraps, chunks of meat, and knives and forks aplenty. Alan judged it not worth it, as at best it could simply be used for scrap or compost. Everything was too large to be used for its original purpose, and the food wasn't anything special, even if some pieces were quite big.

Exiting the disaster area, they both made their way toward the loud talking happening around the corner. Peering around the bend, Alan found an open doorway leading into another large space. If anything, it looked bigger than what they had already found. Inside of the room he could see a table, with giant humanoids seated around it. Alan meant giant in the truest sense of the word. If they had been standing they would have been around six meters tall, which explained the oversized nature of the building.

The room must have contained more people than he could see, just based on the voices he could hear. All of them were focused on the food piled up on the table in front of them. The angle wasn't the best, but he could see a large cooked chunk of meat in the center, with a collection of side dishes around it. One of the plates contained pigs in a blanket, literally. Whole boars were wrapped in some kind of dough. Alan also saw what looked like cooked wolf carcasses on a stick. It seemed that the room they had escaped was like a larder for a group of giants.

Sneaking forward, with Akilatjin undulating silently next to him, they made their way to the doorway. The room was forty meters long and contained one giant table, around which there were seven giants. They were all piling food onto the plates in front of them. Scanning the room, Alan found something that stood out. There on the table, next to whatever creature they had roasted, was the dungeon exit.

Not wanting to give themselves away, Alan communicated mentally with Akilatjin. "Do you see what's on the table?"

"I know, that is so much food. I don't think I could even make a dent in that."

Alan repressed a sigh. He found himself doing that a lot. "Not that, look in the center."

"Alan, do you see that? There's the exit!"

"Yeah. The question is what we do about it. We could probably cause a distraction and then make a break for it, but that would cost us the final loot. The other option is to try and fight these giants."

Akilatjin didn't even have to consider. "I say we take them. There are only seven of them."

"That's five more than there are of us, and they are much bigger than we are."

Her mouth opened in what Alan had learned to interpret as a smile. "They are, and I know just what to do."

She explained the plan to Alan, and he had to admit, it was a good one. The giants were all focused on the food and each other, so it was a simple matter to sneak around. That became even easier when the giants all held hands, closing their eyes as they bowed their heads, and one of them started talking in a reverent, if loud, voice.

"Thank you all for coming together today. We are thankful for the bountiful feast before us, the many friends and family that are here together, and the good health we have had this year."

Alan tuned out the rest as he and Akilatjin got to work. Staying as low as possible to escape notice, they crawled under the table. As a seasoned adventurer, Aland had several lengths of rope. They worked together to loosely wrap them around the giants' legs. Some ropes were long enough to go around two of the giants. Soon, six of them had a bundle of rope ready to go. Alan and Akilatjin pulled on opposite ends and tightened each rope. They didn't pull so hard that the giants' legs were tightly bound, just enough to cause a nuisance if they tried to move.

With all of that prepped, Alan crept back to the doorway. The sounds of feasting could be heard above him. Once he was back in the hallway, Alan took out his spewn and shortsword. Focusing his mana through the spewn, Alan assembled his most powerful attack spell. Exploding missile was a great way of dealing damage, but he didn't think the stones would penetrate the giants' tough looking skin. Instead, he cast meteor directly on the one unbound giant's head.

He had never gotten a chance to cast his spell on such a large target before. Usually it was used on crowds, not on single huge threats. When the meteor appeared above its head, all the other giants turned to stare at it. The targeted giant hadn't noticed it yet, but he could see all of the others seemingly staring at him.

"What, do I have something on my face?"

That was the last thing he ever said. When the stone hit, it punched a hole through the giant's thick skull, and the following explosion melted a large chunk of its brain. The other giants started screaming, not believing what they had just witnessed. Those screams soon changed timbre. Needing to get their attention, Alan sent a large firebolt into the long hair of one of the female giants.

Her golden braid went up in flames, but her massive aura soon used up the magic, extinguishing the magical fire. It was enough to get everyone's attention, and they all turned to the door to see what had caused it.

"It's a tiny human, get him!" Shouted one of the giants on the far side of the table.

They all stood, and started to lurch towards him. The semi-loosely wrapped ropes around their legs were enough to trip them up, and all six giants ended up crashing to the floor. Akilatjin quickly slithered up one of the fallen enemies and started burrowing into their neck. She had wanted to go for the giant hearts, but Alan had pointed out that she might have trouble getting through their clothes and thick skins without her normal abilities.

That particular giant started rolling around and slapping at its neck. He was tied up along with the female giant next to him and she was caught up in his thrashing. Meanwhile, Alan dashed into the room and started stabbing at the neck of one of the prone monsters. The high quality spewn was able to cut through their thick skin, and the sharpness rune on his sword allowed it to do the same.

In a straight up fight, the sheer size of their opponents would have made even hurting them a challenge, while any hit the giants made would have been crippling, if not fatal. With them lying on the ground, things were very different. They were uncoordinated and flailing, as likely to hit a neighbor as their true foes. Meanwhile, Alan was able to avoid the unaimed thrashings, and move from one giant to the next, opening up their carotid arteries. Without any magical healing they would soon bleed out.

Akilatjin was also doing her part. She had opened up a huge hole, clean through both sides of the targeted giant's neck. The spine had proven too tough for her beak to crack, so she had gone for extreme tissue damage.

After exiting the first giant, as he bled out, she entered the neck of the next one. This time she made a detour and headed down into its torso. She had a heart to find.

By the time she found her treat, Alan had hit all three giants on his side of the table, and was on the way to the lone remaining giant on the far side. She was up on her hands and knees, trying to remove the rope when Alan caught her. He started with another fire bolt to her head, setting her hair on fire too. Her neck was at the perfect height for him to drag both of his weapons across as he ran by.

Akilatjin popped out of the other giant's chest like a xenomorph. They both back into the corner of the room to watch the final thrashing of the rest as they bled out. Soon, they were the only things moving, at least until the lootnados appeared. In their place, each left behind a treasure chest. They didn't look like the one the wolves had formed, but they were enticing nonetheless.

Akilatjin looked at it in wonder before speaking. "Thank you for this bountiful feast."

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