As Viktor was about to call Celeste to teleport him out of the workshop, the Dungeon Core reached out to him first.

  [Master.]

  “What’s it?”

  [Cedric’s party is making their way down the staircase to the second floor. They are about to engage the Cyclops.]

  “Oh,” Viktor said, amused. This particur battle was too good to miss, but of course, he was not going to watch it here. Something could blow up in his face at any moment. “Teleport me back to you.”

  [Understood.]

  Once again, the world around him shifted, and he found himself back in the Core Room. In front of him stood the dais that held Celeste’s crystalline form, its blue light casting an eerie glow over the many sets of tables and chairs of different sizes scattered across the room. They were meant to accommodate other Guardians who would be summoned ter on, but at the moment, the dungeon only had Sebekton, and even the big guy was not present, so the room just felt empty.

  He settled on one of the nearby chairs and closed his eyes, projecting his mind to the room under the staircase. When he arrived, the battle had already begun.

  The Cyclops bellowed, its lone eye locking onto Cedric as the tter surged forward. The young warrior had cast away his shield, since he knew that it wouldn’t help much against such a behemoth. As the monstrous club carved a deadly arc through the air, Cedric dropped and rolled, nding near the brute’s legs, sword sshing at its ankle. Steel bit into flesh, and the creature jerked back with an agonizing shriek, before swinging its club in a wild backhand. Cedric threw himself sideways, barely evading the massive weapon that hissed past his body.

  This is unexpected, Viktor thought. He had assumed that Noi’ri and Cedric would attack the Cyclops at the same time. With his speed, the gnoll could disorient the towering monster, allowing more opportunities for his companions to nd a decisive blow. In fact, judging from the brief exchange between him and Sebekton, Viktor wouldn’t be surprised if Noi’ri could take on the Cyclops alone. But instead, the Silver-ranked adventurer stayed in the rear, standing behind the other three.

  Is he seriously treating this as just another “training session” and letting the three kids handle the Cyclops themselves?

  Viktor saw Noi’ri pcing his hand on the handle of his curved bde, ready to intervene if things went awry. But would he be fast enough? One misstep, and Cedric would immediately be reduced to a bloody pulp. No one could reach him in time. Well, not exactly. There was still Lucian here.

  A crossbow bolt sprouted from the Cyclops’ shoulder. The creature twitched in irritation as it growled, swatting it off like a twig. Fiora had made her move, but clearly, the projectile dealt no real damage. Perhaps she was just trying to distract it so that her friend could attack again.

  Cedric lunged, his longsword sshing a silver arc toward the monster’s meaty thigh. It struck true, spttering blood across the floor. The brute screamed, smashing its weapon downward in revenge, and the massive club crushed the ground where he had stood moments earlier. Rock shards flew everywhere as the bck-haired boy scrambled backward. Meanwhile, another bolt whistled through the air, burying itself in the creature’s stomach.

  The Cyclops had suffered several wounds, but it wasn’t slowing down in the slightest. In fact, its attacks came even faster than before, fueled by sheer rage. Some might argue that the strikes became less precise, but any seasoned adventurer would know that a Cyclops was far more dangerous when it stopped aiming at them and swung its club indiscriminately instead. The attacks became erratic and unpredictable, making them far harder to dodge. And while its opponent needed to avoid every single blow, the brute only needed to be lucky once.

  And it seemed that, at st, the one-eyed beast was about to make its mark. By pure coincidence, it brought down its monstrous weapon directly where Cedric was plunging, and there was no way the young warrior could adjust his trajectory at the st second. The deadly club was mere moments away from crashing into his chest, and that would be the end—

  But then, suddenly, it stopped mid-swing. The Cyclops shuddered, its entire body stiffening as if every single muscle was being strained to its limit. Its lone eye bulged, and a low growl escaped its throat. The club now hovered motionless in the air, and Cedric took the chance to roll away, before it finally descended, three seconds too te, and cratered the stone floor.

  Obviously, that was Lucian’s handiwork. The boy mage had cast the same spell he had used against Sebekton in their previous battle. And while the Guardian was incapacitated for only a second, the Cyclops was held much longer, giving Cedric plenty of time to maneuver.

  When Viktor first heard about it, he had assumed that the organization Lucian belonged to, the Brotherhood of the Verdant Shade, taught its members both mind control and healing magic. But after talking more with the boy afterward, he had learned that what Lucian did was not mind control at all. He didn’t manipute the mind in order to bend the body to his will. Instead, he targeted the body directly.

  What happened to the Cyclops was that Lucian had seized the brute’s every muscle, rendering it unable to move. The creature’s mind was still active. It wasn’t confused, tricked, or unconscious. It was just no longer capable of commanding its body to do what it wanted. The same happened when he “mind-controlled” the goblins. Their bodies were forced to obey him, making them no different from puppets dancing on his strings. This power was quite horrifying, actually. When Lucian ordered the goblin to kill itself, the creature was fully aware of what it was going to do, but it couldn’t stop its hand from slitting its own throat.

  Upon reflection, healing and enhancing one’s physical abilities were ultimately just a form of manipution of the body’s state. The difference was that those spells benefited the body, while Lucian’s magic did the opposite. Considering the shared origins between the Brotherhood and the Emerald Order, everything made sense. Essentially, the mages of the two organizations practiced the same discipline of magic, though they focused on different aspects.

  That said, most Emerald Mages had to touch their targets in order to work their magic, and only the older, more experienced members of the Order could cast spells from a distance. Thus, Lucian’s ability to control his target’s body without physical contact was undeniably impressive, especially for someone his age. Viktor wondered whether all members of the Brotherhood were that powerful or if this boy was actually special.

  And so, with Lucian’s assistance, Cedric pressed on against the Cyclops. He moved swiftly despite the weight of his armor, darting between the behemoth’s strikes and sshing at exposed parts of its flesh. Only when he was about to get turned into a red smear, his friend intervened, freezing the creature’s movements for a few critical seconds so that he could dive out of the way. At the same time, Fiora kept peppering the one-eyed brute with her crossbow bolts from a safe distance.

  So far, so good. Everything had gone well for the three young adventurers. But Viktor still didn’t know how they would end this. It didn’t look like Cedric was capable of delivering a killing blow, and waiting for the Cyclops to bleed out or exhaust itself was not a viable strategy. Sooner or ter, either Cedric’s legs would falter, or Lucian’s clever tricks would run dry, and when that moment came, blood would sptter across the stone.

  Or perhaps... Noi’ri wanted to push the kids to their limit, testing how far they could go before he himself joined the fray and finished off the fearsome opponent. If that was the pn, Viktor hoped the gnoll had a good sense of timing. Because there was a fine line between proving a point and getting your promising pupils pulped into meat paste.

  But then, he noticed something strange about the Cyclops. Gradually, the creature’s movement became sluggish, its breath grew heavy, and its single eye, now clouded, darted in erratic motions. This wasn’t fatigue, but what then? He scanned the towering minion’s entire body, and he saw them, bck veins spiderwebbing outward from the wounds caused by Fiora’s bolts.

  Poison.

  Viktor chuckled. Apparently, he was not the only one here who had the idea of coating weapons with poison. Fiora, huh? He had barely spared the auburn-haired girl a second thought before today, since she didn’t stand out at all compared to her more impressive companions. To him, she was just someone with a crossbow. But today, it seemed she was the unexpected hero of the battle.

  At first gnce, it appeared that she was just doing a very easy job of shooting at a target one must be blind to miss, while staying out of harm’s way and letting the others do all the heavy lifting. And, well, it was not entirely wrong. But it was the poison she used that fascinated him.

  When he had been an adventurer himself, he had fought Cyclops, and he had heard stories of people who had fought Cyclops. Everyone had tried different strategies, and obviously, poison had been attempted many times before.

  And it never worked.

  The amount of poison one could inject into a Cyclops was too small to have any real effect on its massive body, and more often than not, the poisoner got squashed long before the creature even felt a thing. So if Fiora managed to concoct a substance that could bring one down, she certainly deserved recognition.

  As the poison took hold, the Cyclops dropped its weapon. Cedric lunged, driving his sword into its belly and dragging at it. Entrails spilled as the brute colpsed to its knees. The bde didn’t stop. It moved upward as the young warrior rammed it through the jaw, and it erupted from the back of the skull in a spray of blood and brain. The creature swayed, then went down with a gurgle.

  Four hundred mana down the drain, Viktor thought. But that was a good fight, so perhaps it was worth it.

  He opened his eyes. There was nothing left to observe. Based on what he knew of Cedric’s party, he was certain they would call it a day after the battle, rather than venture deeper into the byrinth. And there was a chest of gold in that room, meant to reward whoever managed to defeat the Cyclops, so they could leave satisfied.