Chapter 181: Fluke

"O-Okay, it’s done, they should be-...," Muttered the Healer, before shaking her head and trailing off as a dazed look appeared in her eyes, a trail of blood trickling out of her left nostril."Are you alright?" I asked her, as she wiped her sleeve across.

"Y-Yeah, I’ll be alright. Normally, K-Ranked Healing Magic isn’t strong enough to heal such severe injuries, like regrowing limbs. I was able to push past that limit thanks to Damien’s Enchantments, but I really had to strain my Magic output to get it strong enough to heal all of you, and that takes a toll of me," She explained, before letting out a sharp cough, flecks of blood flying out of her mouth.

"She’s basically the best Healer in the world who isn’t an Ace. No other K-Ranked Healer can pull off what she can, even with Enchantments," Chimed in Damien, as he flopped onto the grass and stared up at the ceiling with a somber look on his face.

"I’m just glad I was able to heal everyone-...at least, everyone who survived. I couldn’t heal any of you fully though, I know you guys must be in a lot of pain still," She replied quietly, briefly glancing in the direction of Kelsey’s corpse before looking away.

"The same goes for you. The skin around the middle of your stomach is really tense, so you’re in a fair bit of pain yourself, aren’t you?" I surmised as I glanced at her stomach.

"Yeah...but a sore stomach is better than no stomach. I’ll survive, at least. Not all of us were so lucky," She shook her head with a grimace, before adding, "Let’s rest up a bit before leaving. We’ll need to wake these two up too."

"You should go extract the Archdemon’s Core...it might seem cold, but don’t let it go to waste after everything we went through and all the casualties we’ve suffered," Remarked Damien, as he slowly sat up and glanced at me.

"I would, but I completely vaporized his Core," I informed him, before getting back onto my feet, stumbling a bit as my knees wobbled slightly, before dragging my feet over towards the Archdemon.

I used Devour to consume what was left of his body, before heading back to the others.

"Why didn’t you use that attack earlier? That purple blast that killed him?" The Healer asked me.

"I can’t use that attack whenever I want. I can only use it when my rage reaches a certain level," I explained, as I sat back down wearily.

"It certainly was powerful. You blasted a hole through the Dungeon," Remarked Damien, before nodding at the back wall of the space.

There was a hole there, rays of sunlight streaming in through it. Since I fired Obliterate with the Rage Meter at sixty-five percent, the beam’s range was sixty-five meters.

"Couldn’t you have, like, riled yourself up by thinking of memories that make you angry?" Suggested the Healer.

"It’s not that simple, it doesn’t work like that. Believe me, I’ve tried. I can’t force it, I can only use it if my rage rises up naturally."

"I see...I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to imply anything, I just-...I’ve never had so many people die in a raid, and I just can’t seem to bring myself to accept it," She mumbled quietly.

"We were progressing through this place so easily until the very end.

And when we were about to leave, before we got teleported to the Boss Room, we likely relaxed and eased off, only to immediately and abruptly find ourselves in an extremely dire situation.

It all happened so fast too, it’s only natural that we’d struggle to process such a drastic whiplash," Pointed out Damien.

He’s not being all emo and dramatic, I guess he is capable of speaking normally when the situation calls for it.

"Poor Keira...I can’t imagine how she’ll react when she wakes up," Added the Healer solemnly.

Yeah...I may not like her, but I definitely sympathize.

To lose a loved one, especially in such a brutal fashion right before your eyes, can’t be anything less than soul-crushing.

This was definitely the closest I’ve come to death since, you know, my actual death.

We were all so hopelessly outclassed, it’s honestly a miracle that any of us survived. Me killing the Archdemon was little more than a fluke.

Calamity Level Monsters, they’re on a whole other level, and to encounter one in a High Level Dungeon, or even at all, is a seriously rotten stroke of luck.

This Archdemon was only the fifth Calamity Level Monster to appear in history, and the first in over twenty-five years.

Normally, the Dungeon Boss tends to be no more one Threat Level above the Threat Level of the Dungeon itself, so High Level Dungeons usually have Critical Level Bosses, or sometimes a stronger individual High Level Monster.

But that rule doesn’t apply to Critical Level Dungeons. They’re pretty rare to begin with, and even when they do appear, the Dungeon Bosses in them are Critical Level Monsters.

They tend to have a number of slightly weaker individual Critical Level Monsters across the upper floors, and then a stronger Critical Level Monster of the same species as the Boss, there’s never been a Calamity Level Dungeon Boss in a Critical Level Dungeon, let alone in a High Level or lower one.

Calamity Level Monsters have only ever appeared in Calamity Level Dungeons before, so this is a first.

And there have been a grand total of four Calamity Level Dungeons in history, each with one Calamity Level Monster, two of which were Archdemons.

The other two were Dragons, the evolved form of Wyverns, a Fire Dragon and a Water Dragon.

Those are the only three Calamity Level species we know of, and at the very least, there are probably other species of Dragons, based on the number of different Wyvern species.

So, the Monster we fought was only the third Archdemon to appear in history, and like I already mentioned, the fifth Calamity Level Monster overall.

And the first one to not appear in a Calamity Level Dungeon.

This doesn’t bode well...Dungeons deviating from standard patterns has always been an issue, but not to such drastic extents, and not this frequently.

I’ve been seeing news articles from the other Sanctuaries where Hunters were killed in Dungeons with drastic deviations.

And if this becomes more common, a lot more people are going to die.

I don’t stand a chance against Calamity Level Monsters at my current level...even if I’d been able to use Enrage, it wouldn’t have made much of a difference.

Like I said before, me killing that thing was a fluke, and if and when there’s a next time, I might not be so lucky.

I have to take on more raids going forward, I’m going to need to get stronger as fast as I possibly can...