The army's mages had not yet locked down all of the sixteenth zone when the next reset hit.

It wasn't terribly surprising; even the layout of the zone had been designed to confuse the senses and isolate people in looped corridors, hidden passageways, and secret rooms. Mordecai would have preferred it if the zone had been more completely taken over, but he had to work with what he had.

Which was thankfully a lot. While some of the irregulars were not suited for combat, others were the sort of mercenaries who were able to charge a lot for a reason.

Teams of six immediately attacked each raid boss when they reappeared, with regular army squads assigned to hunt out the zone bosses from the previous three zones. The rest of the soldiers simply dealt with whatever creature was directly in front of them and did their best to support each other. All of this meant that the Azeria party could hold back a little and mostly act when others needed help.

Mordecai was just glad that he had been able to lock down Nikita. If he'd been forced to kill her, she'd now be in the middle of those swarms of creatures in some unassuming guise. The raid bosses were all strictly more powerful, but they were easily identified and focused upon. She'd have been an effectively invisible murder machine, especially once she was able to insert herself into the ranks and appear to be one of the soldiers.

Of course, that was still a problem they were facing, just with less dangerous foes. Fortunately, Kazue's unusual magic and Fuyuko's sense of smell were both good at picking out shape-shifted foes, and Mordecai was very hard to fool, so the three of them were primarily hunting out potential infiltrators.

This was the first floor where any soldiers were killed, despite these also being the strongest soldiers the army had sent in. The combination of different enemies had gotten complicated, and the battle was spread out amongst too many winding corridors to always provide fast support.

About half an hour had passed before Mordecai felt safe to call all of his party away from the remains of the battle. "Time is tight; we need to begin preparing." They nodded and retrieved wooden boxes from their packs, along with some dry rations. Each box had an identical set of carefully colored, labeled, numbered, and distinctly shaped potion bottles and pills.

The various boosts to stamina, alertness, resilience, and even a minor continual healing effect were designed to provide about eight hours of full strength benefits, followed by eight hours of slowly tapering off effects. At least eight to twelve hours more would be required to fully recover just from the after effects, plus recuperation time for the continual hours of activity.

This was achieved in part by several of the pills having thick coatings that would delay when they began working.

Each kit was rather pricey, and that was with Moriko's parents only barely making a profit on the ingredients and time that went into creating and testing them. Though, given the other potential uses for those particular set of boosts and how thorough Moriko's parents undoubtedly were in testing their products, Mordecai had to wonder how much longer it might be until Moriko had yet another younger sibling.

Even that much of a payment was only because they had been pushed; they had tried to sell at cost for the ingredients, but Ricardo had been present and was familiar with the current market price, so he'd called them out. After that, it was simply a matter of the stubborn couple being outnumbered by other stubborn people, including their daughter.

Mordecai appreciated that they wanted to keep their daughter safe with no consideration of cost, but it would be easier for them to help now as well as possibly in the future if they were also still making a profit. Admittedly, they were pretty well off already, especially because of the increased trade in the region, but there was no reason to set a bad precedent.

The rations were mainly to help keep the rapid intake of alchemical items from upsetting stomachs, but the party also probably wasn't going to have another chance to stop and eat for several hours.

It took a little over ten minutes to get through hastily eaten rations and all the medicine. When they were done, Mordecai led the way toward the exit from the zone, making sure to pause by one of the more senior officers present. "Send the signal to the soldiers topside, then finish securing this zone to make sure your backs are protected. Feel free to also barricade the exit after we are through; if things go well, it won't matter to us, and if things go badly, you'll want the protection, and it likely still won't matter to us."

There were only about five hours left until the next reset, and they needed to clear two zones in that time, so even though there were still a few enemies being hunted down by the soldiers, the Azeria party pressed on.

It didn't take long for Mordecai to call a temporary halt to their descent; there was a lot of light coming up from below and the air was rapidly becoming painfully dry. He waved for everyone else to wait a moment before he cautiously moved ahead. He was able to briefly look around the corner, but that alone was enough to make him need to rest with his eyes closed for a bit while his vision recovered and he considered his options.

"Kazue," he said as he thought, "this is one situation where I almost wish you'd found the path to being a priestess instead of discovering how to bond with spirits."

"What? Why" she asked with clear confusion.

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He opened his eyes and glanced up the stairs at her with a smile. "Ozuran may be the Lord of Shadows, but Mericume is the Goddess of the Night. Who do you think is better for directly opposing an assault of overwhelming light?"

"Oh."

"So," Mordecai said, "do we have any good material for blindfolds? I think there is enough light to be able to see through a thin enough layer of leather and cloth, even with your eyes closed." Before anyone could answer, he held up his hand. "Wait, I might have a better idea."

As Dersuta had told them just a few scant weeks ago, the masks could take on different appearances or become invisible, like they were right now. If that was all a single, flexible enchantment, then maybe... yes! Mordecai's mask turned into a smooth white surface with no eye holes. "Perfect, I can't see through it at all right now."

He looked back around the corner and nodded. "Everyone, make your masks opaque enough to just barely be able to see the light down here. Keep making it darker as the light gets brighter. We may still want blindfolds if it gets too bad. Oh, and make sure that you have no exposed skin." Mordecai was the only one here whose skin wouldn't burn from the light alone, and he still made sure that all of his skin presented as scales before he continued to lead them downward.

The zone proved to be just as bad as that preview suggested it was going to be.

It was a vast, empty cavern filled with overwhelming, searing, blinding light that rendered the heated air so dry that there was no scent except for sand and stone.

There were no immediately obvious enemies, but the ground was a fine, mirror-bright white sand, matched by the smooth, polished walls of the enormous chamber. And every single speck of it glowed the same color spectrum as the sun. Annoyingly, sun-mimicking magic often captured the colors invisible even to the caster of the magic, so no knowledge about beyond-blue colors was needed to leave the area saturated in it.

This had also made it incredibly hot and dry in the chamber, which was compounded by a sort of aggressive, almost hostile, vitality. While vitalizing energy normally healed and soothed, this energy had been tweaked to be so aggressive and invasive that it could make healthy flesh burn or burst by over-energizing the flesh until it failed.

Kazue grimaced when she got a look. "That light even washes out the liminality of the entrance, making a weak blur instead of a line."

Moriko shook her head and sighed. "There are prayers to protect a person from heat or cold, but this is beyond what you would even find in a desert."

While the others were discussing options, Mordecai experimented a bit with his control over shadows. Standing near the cavern meant he cast a large shadow into the tunnel, so he tried to use that as a source to grow it out into the cavern, but the shadow began to fade before it reached the edge, and any part that moved out over the sand was immediately evaporated by the light.

Even his shape-shifting abilities didn't give him good options. Combining a spell with his innate abilities would let him take on the form of a winterblade dragon, but an environment like this would overwhelm the cold radiating from any dragon whose form he was strong enough to take. And that would only have addressed the problem of the overwhelming heat.

Living ice might work, but they didn't have the time to let it grow across the entire cavern, and casting as many spells as needed to maintain their schedule would take a lot of time as well as a lot of mana.

Their ice guns could fire endless ice bullets, but not fast enough to have any notable impact.

Hmm.

He had an idea.

Normally, it took higher-tier spells to create exotic elements, with a lot of the spell's power being devoted to damaging a target. But if he wanted to do something technically gentler, and maybe not even quite a proper spell, there were some options.

Mordecai drew out his pair of ice guns and examined the mana structure of the enchantment that allowed them to take in spells. Dersuta's style was a bit different from his, but that was fine and possibly even better in this case. It took several tries, only a few of which were even worth firing a test shot into the sands, but it wasn't too long before he found the right mana structure to link between himself and the guns. He fired again, and this time when the bullet struck the sands, there was a brief burst of growth from living ice, and the patch continued growing slowly from there.

"Alright, I have a partial solution. This won't help with light that strikes you directly, but it should help knock down some of the ambient heat from everything else having been overloaded with heat. Amrydor, I think you should try to experiment with your death aura; see if you can negate some of this aggressive vitality. We've already spent more time than I like solving this much of the problem; we need to get going and improvise from here."

While he spoke, Mordecai had continued to fire his guns, creating a spreading pattern of living ice. Now he stepped fully out onto the ice-coated sands and continued to fire at the ground in front of and around them. Every shot drew mana from him to convert the ice into living ice, but with the mana he'd been skimming from the battles above to keep himself topped up, it was a sustainable drain for him. He certainly expected to be able to leech more unclaimed mana after the next set of fights.

"It will chill the soles of your boots, but between lacking will or spiritual power, and being much more drawn to the heat of the sands, the living ice shouldn't be able to penetrate your clothing's enchantments." Each initial shot channeled his will as much as any casual attack would, which helped give the ice its initial burst of growth, but that was quickly expended.

The heat was still oppressive, but the layer of growing ice helped absorb a small portion of the light from the glowing sand as well as create small drafts of slightly chilled air. The ice had its limits; it could only absorb heat and convert it into ice so fast, and would soon be overwhelmed, but in this case, there was a small additional benefit. Anywhere that the ice was overwhelmed, it would melt and evaporate, providing a tiny bit of moisture to the insufferably dry air. The continual creation of new small patches of living ice was required to absorb enough heat to allow most of the patches they would traverse over to 'survive' and keep growing.

Mordecai would have preferred to have some of their party in the air, given the size of the cavern they were crossing, but Moriko and Kazue both needed to stay near the ice, and Mordecai wanted to be able to feel vibrations in the sand, so he stayed grounded as well. There didn't seem to be anywhere else for the enemy to be.

That was when Mordecai realized he'd been distracted enough by the combined need to hurry, partially overcoming the environmental issues, and the obvious area for enemies to hide, that he had failed to consider at least two types of creatures that could hide out in the open without having to use an invisibility or camouflage effect.

Even as he started focusing his attention on the air above and around them, he felt the sands beneath begin to vibrate and shift, the sensation easily traveling through the living ice. "Attacks coming from below, but beware of the sky above!"

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