Calvin’s Relfow Minions grouped together to attack the sub-bosses in formations—leaping at them and making quick, sharp bites before they fled into the darkness of the cave.

  Then Calvin himself leapt in, attacking to draw their attention and let his pets escape safely.

  Or… that was the theory, anyway. In practice, it didn’t quite play out like he’d planned.

  Despite his pets’ endless attempts at attacking the sub-bosses, in the end they were still only minion level. The sub-bosses remained unaffected. Some minor scratches in the best case, a few strands of fur being torn off in the worst.

  It was like when Calvin had been trying to first punch Wolfey with his untrained human strength. Only instead of himself being brutalized, it was his precious subordinates.

  Beta’s specialized mental attacks froze entire formations in place. Each wave of Terror Inducement made the nearer Relfows whimper and cower and those at the edges of the effect turned tail and fled, their determination to fight entirely overwhelmed. Any who’d been unfortunate enough to come close fell prey to his less advanced but no less deadly attacks.

  While Beta kept the crowd managed, Alpha moved with incredible speed and stealth for a monstrous creature of such size. Calvin lost track of it entirely, only catching glimpses of its crimson eyes as it appeared at the edges of his army to pick off minions dozens at a time.

  The monstrous sub-boss almost seemed to be playing with them. Corralling them back into the range of Beta’s paralyzing fear, leaving them with no chance to escape, not even a momentary hope of it.

  But as dangerous as the first two were with their controlled specializations, Gamma put them both to shame for sheer damage potential. The green-eyed monster simply charged straight through the heart of his army, heading straight for Calvin himself as though the minions he was crushing underfoot didn’t even exist.

  While the blue-eyed terror circled the cave emitting waves of paralyzing fear and the red-eyed hunter swiped at them from the shadows, the third sub-boss had no time for such subtlety. Arcs of silver-white light flashed out from it first one way and then another as each paw landed, Moon Strike demolishing entire swaths of Calvin's army effortlessly.

  That any of Calvin’s minions survived as more than mists of blood was a miracle. Even straining herself to the utmost, Hannah could barely keep up. That she even had the opportunity to heal them was a miracle.

  A miracle clearly induced by his master to prevent Calvin’s heart from breaking as he lost all of his beloved pets one by one, but he could feel the inevitability of their defeat.

  Right. In his excitement, Calvin had gone purely for quantity over quality. While his pack would be an undoubtedly formidable force back in the human world, in an S-Rank Dungeon… most of his pets were only burdens. There was a reason they were only Minions, after all.

  Hannah was struggling, having to heal dozens of his Relfows repeatedly, in a short period of time. The Relfows were practically useless, not even serving as distractions. Sure, most of them had levelled after being tamed due to all the other dungeon Minions the party killed, but none of them, except for Wolfey and Doggy, had crossed Level 100.

  Only Wolfey, at Level 140, managed to avoid the sub-bosses fully. It even managed to get an attack in on Beta once, but had to retreat since it was obstructed by his other pets.

  Doggy, who was in Level 132, was a more caring, kind type of Relfow, and hence oversaw the other pets’ escape rather than try to damage their enemies.

  “Master!”

  Immediately, the battle froze. The sub-bosses entered a strange state of confusion as they blinked and looked around, and his pets all relaxed.

  “What’s up, Calvin?” His master tilted his head.

  “Master, can you hide the auras of all of my pets? Keep them behind you, please, just like Hannah. I’ll fight only with Wolfey and Doggy. We three will face the sub-bosses…” He took in a deep breath, “until we win.”

  Dominic blinked. A second later, a bright smile found its way onto his face. “Good, you’ve realized. Certainly, my disciple. None of them shall suffer any harm. They can relax behind me. As for you…” His master’s smile turned just the slightest tinge sadistic—no, more schadenfreude laced with pride, “Good luck.”

  Hannah stared at the battle in front of her with trembling legs. She’d gotten used to watching Calvin get himself smacked around, and then used to seeing his minions fighting against the native dungeon ones. But this? This was entirely on another scale.

  Was this how a battle between S-rankers looked? Was this truly what S-Rank Rift Sealers dealt with every day when they dived into dungeons?

  How powerful were they? How unbeatable were the threats they faced? No wonder so many of even the most powerful warriors came into this dungeon and never returned.

  Calvin and his two Relfow minions viciously fought with the sub-bosses in a terrifyingly primal yet somehow beautiful dance. Each of them aimed for the necks, for the legs, for any and all weak spots they could find.

  If even one of the three grew the slightest bit careless, slipped up the tiniest bit—

  The demigod would pause the battle, and Hannah would heal all three, and the dance would start again.

  Over, and over, and over.

  The sheer strength on display here enchanted, yet terrified her.

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  True, she’d been watching the minions fight against each other so far, but compared to this, it had been… beyond tame, almost mild and peaceful. More like squabbling puppies. These… these were true monsters.

  She’d been a frog at the bottom of a well too long, it seemed. Even when she’d heard S-rankers were strong—unbelievably strong—she didn’t quite process what it meant. She’d been exposed to enough so-called powerful people to start thinking of them as merely another sort of position. After all, she was the Saintess of the Church of the Light, and her strength—at least until she started working with Calvin in this dungeon—was nothing close to matching up with her exalted title.

  She had been, in most aspects, just like any other ordinary citizen. No one without the experience of diving into an S-rank dungeon could imagine the sheer calamity that the monsters within presented, and the sheer monstrous strength the S-Rank Rift Sealers themselves boasted to be able to fight them.

  She couldn’t help but think about the King. If S-Classers were this terrifying, then what about him? What about him, who was called an SS-Class Rift Sealer? How terrifyingly strong must he be, to get acknowledged by all the S Class Rift Sealers themselves, to be acknowledged by the system itself, to be acknowledged by the Goddess’ herself—that he deserved to be called someone greater, someone of the next tier?

  Hannah turned towards the demigod.

  Right. It had never sunk in, just what all these beings could do. The fact that the demigod was endlessly powerful was something she’d logically acknowledged, of course. He paused the entire dungeon around them on a regular basis, but that was a different sort of power. It felt more reasonable, somehow.

  Watching this she realized that, till this second, she hadn’t realized just what it translated to, the level of destruction he could casually wreak.

  He could end them all, couldn’t he? End this very world, or turn it into the purgatory of hell if he so desired.

  She’d grown comfortable with the demigod’s presence, and hence had forgotten the sheer threat he represented.

  And yet, even as paranoia tried to consume her, she knew better. The demigod was far too kind to do something like that, to end the world. She’d played board games with the man, and had even bantered with him. Not even mentioning she’d performed blasphemy rather freely—had protested against a few of his actions.

  The god had become far too human in her mind for the paranoia to be truly able to take root. Even if he could destroy them with a thought, she truly and deeply believed that he wouldn’t. Dominic was a power she could trust in.

  But the King of Nohl, however, was not kind, was he? Even though he was a few tiers lesser in strength than the demigod, the King of Nohl could easily destroy an entire kingdom. And he had.

  Tales of the death and destruction he’d wrought during his conquest were still whispered as legends, none of them daring to portray him negatively.

  That was how he’d managed to make Nohl a hegemony. The unrelenting strength of an SS-Rank conqueror.

  And she, directly or indirectly, wanted to face off against such a man. Reforming the Church of the Light may not technically be a rebellion, but any attempt to take power away from those who held it tended to be treated less than kindly. It may not be the king’s private holding in name, but the amount of sway the nobility held over her church was extreme even compared to most countries’ official religions.

  “Hrahh!” The primal growl that leaked out of Calvin’s lips brought her attention back to him, a sound filled with joy, relief, residual anger and frustration and rage and—

  Ah. He’d subdued the three sub-bosses, after hundreds of tries. She grinned, a shiver running through her spine as she imagined the sheer satisfaction he must be feeling. Finally, he had them at his mercy and could finish this.

  The sub-bosses lay on the floor, their tongues sticking out helplessly, limbs straining to lift them without success. Calvin’s latest strategy had been targeting their mouths whenever they tried to bite him or Wolfey and Doggy, and it’d worked quite well.

  Blood painted the cave floor red. The puddle around them was so large it nearly reached all the way to Hannah’s feet. He’d kept at them until they were so weakened from blood loss that they couldn’t even stand.

  She couldn’t help but wonder how much of the blood was Calvin and his two Relfows’. They were riddled with deep cuts and multiple flesh wounds too, after all, painted in red themselves.

  However, compared to the three sub-bosses at the brink of death, Calvin and his pets looked fit as a fiddle.

  Calvin lifted his hand, ready to cull the three sub-bosses.

  Hannah, anticipating the movement, leaned closer. True, she wanted to see how much experience she would get from the three sub-bosses, but more importantly, she wanted to witness Calvin receiving his rightful reward. Reward and vengeance from these wretched monsters he’d battled to the brink of death repeatedly till he could snatch victory.

  But instead, Calvin paused. He turned toward Hannah. “Heal them.”

  Hannah started forward to heal him and his pets, then blinked in confusion as his words sank in. “What do you mean?”

  “Heal them,” he repeated, pointing at the three sub-bosses.

  A pang of confusion squirmed through her gut. Did he really want to go through this all over again? Was he unhappy that his strategy had taken so long, and wanted to test himself against them even longer? She wouldn’t put it past him. But that was insane.

  She turned toward the demigod for verification, but she could practically feel the pride radiating from him. Dominic clearly approved fully.

  Right, these friends of hers truly were that brand of crazy.

  Honestly, if anyone learned she’d healed the sub-bosses of an S-rank dungeon, they would probably think she was anti-human and on the side of monsters. Corrupted or controlled in the best case.

  How would she even justify this without sounding crazy? Perhaps she had gone crazy already, and this was all a product of her imagination?

  “Why would you want to heal them? You and your brood have fought so hard, endured so much, just to defeat them. Why would you heal them—it would only to start this entire process again, wouldn’t it?”

  “Exactly.” Calvin smirked fiendishly. “If they give me such trouble, imagine how effective they’d be as part of my team.”

  Hannah raised a finger and opened her mouth, ready to object, before she closed it.

  Honestly…

  Fair point.

  She wasn’t sure why she’d expected otherwise.

  “Alright, one rematch, coming right up.” Holy power flooded out of her hands and into the monstrous trio. Slowly, gradually, their wounds closed and their strength returned, though it took far longer than anything else she’d ever healed, even though her strength now was so much higher than it’d ever been in the past.

  No wonder it had taken so long for Calvin and his team to bring them down.

  The three sub-boss Relfows rose to their feet, steadied themselves with quick glances between themselves and a joint echoing growl, then charged.