After three hours of fighting and recovering his stamina, Aion managed to kill around five hundred of those creatures. Seris also helped him recover mana, but while that wasn't an alarming pace, he was worried that the enemy was just letting him do his thing.
"You haven't met this guy, have you?" Aion asked.
"No, while they messed with you in some timelines, they didn't show themselves even once," Arlana replied. "Even now, they must be in that timeline… trying to change the past as much as possible while plotting against you."
Arlana didn't even know the name of that fucker. So, Aion decided to refer to them like that… he wanted to think of the fucker as an AI with the body of a computer. Still, even in the future, in five hundred years in that world, things won't be that advanced. Besides, it was hard to imagine a machine that could use magic.
Regardless, after three more hours, they finally reached the end of that tunnel and got rid of all the monsters. Things ended so smoothly that they felt almost suspicious that something was off.
In any case, they also found a metal door that was twenty meters long and five wide at the bottom of that hole… Aion tried to move it, but it didn't budge even a bit. He created two massive earth hands to pulse it since he couldn't change his class, but that wasn't enough either.
"What the hell…" Aion furrowed his eyebrows.
"This isn't supposed to be here… this a magic door that negates all sorts of force applied agaisnt it," Seris said while touching the huge door. "I thought that this was lost magic technology, but… I guess nothing is actually lost when you can use time magic."
"I am starting to think that the relics are useless," Aion furrowed his eyebrows.
"Without them, things would be a lot worse," Arlana shook her head. "The relics at least decrease exponentially the number of people that can use time magic since they have to deal with a lot of restrictions and find ways to reach their goals."
"Anyway, it seems that the enemy wants to keep us away from something on the other side… this might cost some mana and make a lot of earth collapse on us, but I need to go all out for once," Aion said.
"Brute Strength won't help here… like I told you…" Seris said, trying to stop Aion.
"It can only work up to a certain point since it requires mana to do that," Aion declared and then infused his mana on the magic staff. "If I surpass the mana inside the door, I should be able to ignore that."
"Well, in theory, yes, but…" Seris said and then sighed.
Arlana put a hand on her shoulder and just shook her head. There was no point in trying to stop Aion. Just to be sure that he would be able to reach his goal on the first try, Aion also used five mana orbs to duplicate the power of his attack… the magic staff was covered in a thin layer of ice. Still, a layer powerful enough to make everyone around feels like they were about to freeze.
In the next moment, Aion used his magic to make the magic staff spin insanely fast, and then he fired it toward the door. The sound of metal colliding against each other almost made everyone go deaf for several seconds, and much to their surprise, the door didn't get a single crack, even though it had been completely frozen.
In the next moment, Aion felt a shiver and then grabbed Seris and Arlana by their hands before he flew upward by using a burst of wind coming from behind on himself. Soon after, the metal door was smashed by something, and then the temperature began to increase again. Once the steam started to dissipate, Aion saw a massive magma golem that was as large as the width of that hole. Around fifty meters tall and ten meters wide…
"That hurt… but you saved our lives," Seris said once she saw the beast below them. "You have the wild instincts of an animal."
"Is this the guardian of the core?" Arlana furrowed her eyebrows. "Its power is much larger than the other monsters, but…"
Aion nodded… it wasn't an enemy that he couldn't deal with. The creature looked at them and then jumped. Despite its size, it could jump quite high, but Aion fired an ice spear that pierced its head… and then he felt a shiver again.
"Shit!" Aion said and then used all his remaining mana to create an ice wall.
The monster exploded, and then the whole dungeon trembled. Somehow, the ice wall endured the attack, but the temperature increased exponentially. They coughed for a while, but then Aion stopped when he heard more footsteps… another monster of that level showed itself.
You obtained 10.000 experience points.
"I have a bad feeling about this…" Aion muttered.
Before the monster could jump, Aion used a mana orb to recover his energy and then flew upward. The beast jumped, but it didn't reach them, but quickly began to climb the walls of the dungeon. An explosion of that level could easily destroy an entire town, so they couldn't let such a thing get close to them.
"I didn't feel any weird presence when the monster died… didn't they have souls of other people?" Aion said.
"Most likely not. I also didn't feel anything…" Arc said. "To think that people would be able to harness the power of the dungeon cores and be able to control the guardians in the future… your enemies sure are a resourceful bunch."
Arc was talking as if he was unrelated to the problem. In any case, once they got far away enough, Aion attacked the monster with another giant ice spear since he couldn't risk breaking his magic staff.
You obtained 10.000 experience points.
Killing them with his current magic power was relatively easy. Still, soon Aion saw another monster climbing the walls… he had to take the fight outside since the dungeon was starting to get some cracks in the walls.