Faced with the seemingly endless number of nail sized mist spears tearing through their first offensive against the mist serpent, both the necromancers and the dungeon core were left in a difficult situation, as neither of the two wanted to pull out their final trump cards when they still had to fight each other to the death after the mist serpent was dealt with.
If one of them ended up using their trump card to deal with the mist serpent while the other side just watched from the side, the situation that followed afterwards would likely be a one-sided beating. Especially so for the necromancers of the Eternal Life Sanctum, who still had to worry about the group of adventurers that had essentially decided to take a wait and see stance following the emergence of the mist serpent.
For this reason, though the SS Rank Monsters, Undead and Skeletons were being rapidly killed off by the mist serpent, neither of the two sides made any moves to add more of their forces into the mix in an attempt to stop the mist serpent before it ended up wiping out all the SS Rank forces they had pushed forth to face off against the mist serpent. Instead, they seemed happy to watch the situation play out from the side and see how things would develop with the mist serpent once it had finished off every single one of the forces they had pushed forth.
"These necromancers... They are slowly guiding the mist serpent in the direction of the dungeon core!" However, watching the battle from the side, one of the adventurers realized that the necromancers weren’t just sitting around and waiting for their forces to be wiped out. Instead, they were subtly manipulating the battlefield into moving in the direction of the dungeon core.
A clear attempt by the necromancers to try and force the dungeon core into using whatever means it had been hiding for a last second struggle to try and fend off the mist serpent before it ended up crushing it.
Awful as the loss of powerful undead and skeletons was in the eyes of the necromancers; it wasn’t something meaningful given how they could just recover the corpses and bones later and rebuild them after the mist serpent and the dungeon core was dealt with.
"We have to do something, or the dungeon core is gong to be played to death by those necromancers!" Understanding that they had to do something to ensure the dungeon core didn’t end up falling because of the subtle scheme implemented by the group of necromancers from the Eternal Life Sanctum, one of the adventurers was about to jump forward and join the battle-
Thud!
"Stay!" Only to be pulled back into place by another adventurer.
"What do you mean stay!? If we remain in place, those necromancers will end up taking down the dungeon core, we must do something before that happens."
"I understand, but would you look around yourself first? Those necromancers have already surrounded us on all sides. If we make a careless move, we will end up walking straight into a trap!" Frowning as he said this while motioning towards the undead and skeletons that had already moved into position around them, the overeager adventurer calmed down significantly as he realized what should have once been weak skeletons had already been silently replaced by a legion of powerful skeletons and undead.
Taking a careless step forward in this kind of situation could very well result in him being attacked by a dozen powerful undead at once, something that could very easily spell his doom even with his powerful vitality.
Looking around at his companions who hadn’t said a word in response to his exclamation, he soon enough realized that everyone else had already figured out what was happening and were trying to look for a way out of the current situation so they could lend a hand to the dungeon core and avoid a situation where it would have to face off against this powerful mist monster on its own once the undead leading the mist serpent directly towards it perished.
Unfortunately, the necromancers had clearly taken the threat they posed seriously, as not only had they been surrounded by a group of powerful skeletons and undead, but even a few necromancers had personally shown up. Ready to use their dark magic and curse magic to weaken them when the time comes.
Of course, given the strength of their group, there was no way these walking corpses and a few measly soul weaver necromancers would be able to stop them.
But... That was never their intention in the first place, the main goal was to delay them long enough to ensure that they wouldn’t be able to interfere with the movement of the mist serpent.
The only reason they hadn’t attempted to break out of the encirclement yet was because their leader had already determined it would be better for them to wait until the dungeon core began its last struggle for survival, as the necromancers would have to move out with full force to ensure they got their hands on the dungeon core at that time.
In turn, it would also give them the perfect opportunity to strike the necromancers from behind and attempt to reach the leading necromancers and take him or her down while the main forces were occupied with taking down the dungeon core and claiming it for themselves.
Risky as this was, everyone except the overeager adventurer who had now calmed down somewhat, saw this as the best opportunity for them to help out the dungeon core and ensure it didn’t end up falling into the hands of the necromancers of the Eternal Life Sanctum.
After all, the leading necromancer was a pillar of the undead army and the main figure in control of the vast legions of undead, once the leading necromancer was killed, the effectiveness and strength of the undead army would drop by several levels compared to its current powerful state.
This was also one of the reasons why the leading necromancer was always the most guarded existence within an undead army and generally also the most difficult to kill, as once this necromancer perished, the vast undead army under them would collapse.
The remaining necromancers would either struggle to cooperate without this central pillar or try to take advantage of the situation to claim large portions of the army for themselves while making a quick retreat before others could stop them. After all, while the leading necromancer might have died, the powerful undead and skeletons once under this powerful necromancer’s command was still around and now ownerless.
Within the Eternal Life Sanctum, there was no lack of stories about a small acolyte managing to stumble upon a powerful ownerless SS Rank Skeleton in the middle of such a chaotic breakdown of command and then relying on said powerful skeleton to rise from a little acolyte rank necromancer all the way into a powerful crypt guardian rank necromancer.
Like this, the battle in the distance continued dragging on, as the massive mist serpent got closer and closer to the mountain at the very core of the eighth floor where the dungeon core was located.
From the original lack luster effort from the monsters to stop the mist serpent that only matched that of the necromancers, the dungeon core was forced to drag in more and more powerful monsters to try and stop the mist serpent.
Unfortunately, no matter what it did, there was no stopping the mist serpent’s rampage. Destroying everything in its path as it got closer to the mountain that the dungeon core was hidden within- or more specifically, the pristine marble temple carved into the side of the mountain that contained the pedestal that the dungeon core existed on top of.
From one powerful monster after the other, the dungeon core began throwing everything it had towards the mist serpent to no avail before finally reaching the limit-
RUUUUMBLE-!
As only a second before the mist serpent crashed into the marble temple housing the dungeon core, a terrifying rumbling sound echoed out below the mountain as a massive claw emerged from the ground and blocked the rampaging mist serpent head on-
BANG! Craaaack~!
Gripping the head of the seemingly formless mist serpent before slamming it into the ground with enough force to crack the ground itself.
The force of the impact even causing the mist serpent that had been easily sweeping through its enemies so far to end up in a somewhat dazed state as it looked up towards its opponent that had slowly emerged from the ground in the shape of a towering golem standing over fifty meters tall made entirely out of the same pristine marble like material the dungeon core temple was made out of, with one clear abnormality being its left hand in the shape of a massive claw that had just gripped its head and slammed it into the ground, while the other was in the shape of a normal hand. Only, it wasn’t empty and was instead holding what looked like a massive round shield.