Since Aion could check with his system, he realized that the rate of conversion from mana to stamina was a bit off… one point of mana was used to recover one point of stamina. That was obviously wrong… mana is more important than stamina, after all.
After some practice to make his mana work better, the rate doubled. Still, Aion wasn't satisfied… but making progress from that point onward was difficult.
"Now I just have one problem left…" Aion thought. "Let's hope that this one won't bother me for long."
Aion had given up on perfecting Force Release before the fight against the guardian. He could use the version that could wound him, and that was probably going to be fine for as long as he didn't get hit in the head and became unable to heal himself.
"Maybe I should use some coins to increase my resistance… the monster certainly will use ice magic, so I should try to become able to endure some of its magic and effects," Aion thought.
Dodging was possible, but Aion wasn't so sure if he should. Those two in the back probably won't be able to fight if they get hit once, and while they might be able to use the blood rune, that can only be so useful against a guardian of a labyrinth that has been around for hundreds of years.
"I am not their babysitter, but I need to do my job…" Aion thought and then sighed.
Although it had been tough, Aion kept fighting the monsters for almost twenty hours before taking a break to rest. This time, he didn't go to sleep feeling eager to wake up, all in order to rest his mind and body completely.
More than twenty-four hours had passed when he woke up since the time Sauros had determined the break, but in the end, it looked like Seris didn't finish her preparations.
"What is wrong?" Aion asked.
"... Seris is more nervous than usual, so she isn't satisfied with her preparations," Sauros replied. "She also says that she had a bad feeling about the next fight."
"She will never feel satisfied since we don't know what is waiting for us," Aion said.
"I told her that, but…" Sauros said and then sighed.
"You two sure are relaxed, considering that we are trying to do what no one managed to do in hundreds of years," Seris said. "Someone had to worry here."
"I thought that missions like the ones we have faced so far were normal for you all, but I guess I was wrong," Aion said.
"Haha, truth be told, we barely have to fight aside when we find pirates… things have been hectic since we teamed up," Sauros said while looking away.
It was definitely impossible that someone tried to make that dungeon harder for them since it was something out of their control. Still, it seemed that the other things that happened were events that were out of the norm, even for them.
"There isn't much for you all to worry about," Aion said. "Just shoot at the enemy and make sure that you won't hit my back. If you do that, then the battle will end in the blink of an eye. Monsters are smart enough always to attack and focus on the most dangerous target, and that is me by a long shot."
"That annoying confidence again…" Seris said and then sighed. "Well, whatever. If the worst comes to the worst, I have a trump card as well."
"I won't expect much from it," Aion said.
After that, the group headed toward the door of the last room of the labyrinth. In the end, Sauros just had to touch it, and then the door went upward on the wall of the dungeon. Aion took the lead and then crossed the entrance… The other two quickly followed him with their guards up. Just like things outside, they couldn't see anything more than five meters away from them, but Aion still kept walking.
Eventually, all of them stopped moving when they heard the grunts of something… the darkness of the place still didn't let them see much, so the guardian could be anywhere around.
When Aion suddenly felt the ground trembling, he raised his guard to the limits since he knew that the enemy had moved. All of a sudden, a massive head appeared in front of him, and Aion couldn't help but open his eyes in shock… it was a single head, and it was blue… but it was a human-like head that had somewhat long and curly strings of hair that looked like snakes… rather, they were snakes.
" Medusa? What the fuck is going on here?" Aion thought while he was being pushed away.
Seris and Sauros jumped away while shooting at the enemy, but that didn't even slow down the beast. All of a sudden, Aion saw the snakes in the head of the creature being pointed toward them.
After clicking his tongue, Aion used Fighting Spirit and Inner Force to take a step backward and then thrust his spear forward. The impact made the monster tremble, as well as it pushed the creature backward, and stopped its preparations for the attack.
Aion changed his class to the monk and then used Sonic Fist to keep up with the combo and pushed the monster backward even more. That gave Seris and Sauros enough time to move to the sides and bombard the creature with their attacks. Unfortunately, the magical bullets were only making a small amount of steam emerge from the spots that had been hit.
Aion changed his class back to Lancer and then charged at the creature that had recovered, but he was forced to stop when several ice spears were instantly fired at him. Instead of spinning his spear, Aion followed the projectiles with his eyes and then blocked them with his weapon. Still, each impact slowed him down so much due to their weight that, at some point, he began to be pushed backward…