Lone Arrow's eyes gleamed madly as she dashed over and snatched the diamond from his hand.

She shrilled at him, "Do you know how much this would get at auction?!"

"No idea." He'd gone to the auction house only once, to buy the fateful invisibility potion instrumental in acquiring his Legacy quest.

"Diamonds are high-level crafting materials!" She started looting the dead mobs frantically, as if they would disappear and take the diamonds with them. "Smiths use them to craft high end-equipment and jewelry, and magicians use them to catalyze spells!"

Drahma just leaned on his pole and watched the two players loot his kills, unconcerned.

Dave shrugged, "The Underworld is supposed to be for high level players. This area was probably meant to be a raid-event. Divided among a whole raid party the loot would be good but not spectacular."

He methodically sorted through a pile of gargoyle corpses, "We were lucky. With Drahma, taking on this many garg-uglies wasn't a problem. And since it's just us, not a full raid-party, we got big lootz."

"Yeah about that, how do we divide the loot? You summoned Drahma, so really the loot is all y-"

"We split the take 50/50," he interrupted her.

Lone looked at Dave and thanked him.

It was only fair, they were dungeon buddies. Besides, Dave needed someone to sell his share of the Diamonds. He'd considered selling the diamonds to the merchant in the Dead-Realm, but Drahma had said diamonds were nothing but mortal trinkets, of no use to the Dead.

After they collected every gem from the battlefield, he gave Lone his findings to auction when the time came.

Lone Arrow gasped when she put their combined diamond-loot into her inventory.

She said in a hushed voice, "A total of 225 uncut diamonds. Last I saw, diamonds were selling for a thousand gold each."

"Holy crap!" That was $225,000 IRL.

"Yeah, enough for a good shopping spree."

SHOPPING spree? She's gotta be rich.

"What will you do with your share? Get something nice for a girlfriend?"

"I don't have a girlfriend, whatever I get will go in the bank."

"Miser! I didn't expect the famous Mr. Skeletal to be single," she teased.

"Like you said before, even dwarfs faint when they see how ugly I am."

"Yeah, you're really ugly, but I still love you!"

Dave stumbled. Where did that come from?

Dave shook his head and moved after Lone.

The tunnel descended deeper into the earth, the air grew hot and humid as a tropical jungle.

"Has your buddy said anything about what is happening topside with the guildies?"

"I forgot about that, let me ask him," she said. She placed a finger to her temple.

Shortly, she opened her eyes and shook herself, "They split into groups and spread out from the entrance, one of the groups is headed in our direction.

"Things are heating up in the main Conquest area. Heaven's Dawn and Blood-Rage called a truce and made an alliance. Their armies are marching for the Dark Threading dungeon. The situation is def-con 1."

The draugr rubbed at his beard, "The Devastators aren't going to let the other super-guilds into the dungeon, it's their territory after all. So most of the higher level Devastators will be busy defending against the invaders."

"That's good for us, the more chaos up there, the more time we have to loot and level-up down here. And hopefully find a way out of this mess."

He needed more about the direct and immediate concern, "What about the party headed here, how many in the group? What are their levels?"

"Hang on. My friend isn't part of that group." She touched her temple again.

The sound of a stampede clopping on stone warned them of something approaching.

"Incoming!" yelled Dave. as he prepared for battle..

ROAAAAR!

A monstrous figure wreathed in fire rushed at them.

Name: Demonic Snake-beast.

Type: -Greater Demon-

Level 350

Monster category Desolate Beast

Danger level:

35,000-40,000 DMG

350,000 HP

35,000 DN

25,000 MA

Skills

[Titan-Carapace]: increases the defense of the monster by 3 times every time it loses 20% of its max HP for 20 seconds.

[Rolling-Stone]: attack by power rolling into random targets dealing 25,000 points flat Damage.

[Thorn-Mail (passive)]: reverts 5% of Physical damage received to Flat Damage back to the attacker.

Lone Arrow whistled, "Whoa, a Desolator-tier mob!"

Drahma spun his iron pillar and surged toward the demon, leaving the players behind.

"Yep, a greater demon too. Let's get some hits on it so we get the EXP, but we'll do it from a safer distance.." He moved back up the tunnel a ways then cast his improved [Spectral Bomb].

Drahma repeatedly slammed the monster's crystalline tortoise-shell armor with home run style swings of his iron bat. Every hit staggered the Snake-beast and sent it tumbling and bouncing between the walls.

Drahma received no damage from the turtle because of his 200 level difference.

Cracks appeared on the great shell of the monster and its HP dropped lower and lower.

Reaching a critical HP Level, it withdrew into its shell and began spinning. It spooled up faster and faster, and periodically released bursts of flames. The shell-demon blurred and started to hum, spinning faster until it sounded like a jet turbine at max revolutions. Then, like a stone released from a sling, it shot toward Dave.

The monster, annoyed at the spectral Bombs and decided that if it was going to die, it would at least take someone with it.

"Ah shit why me!" cried Dave

Dave cast [Rising Strike] evading the roll.

The monster having continued none-stop crashed into a wall. It bounced from the wall and landed on its back. knocked it out of its spin-attack mode.

Though its snake-like head was thrashing in rage, it was now easy prey.

Drahma smacked down on the defenseless turtle, destroying the softer belly armor, the plastron, and the floor underneath the shell.

Level Up

Level Up

Level Up

Level Up

Level-up notifications pinged at him like crazy again. Dave was once again grateful to have his giant 'cheat' of a battle-buddy along.

"Look!" Lone pointed at the dissipating demon-turtle.

"Aw yeah! Lootz!" Dave moved in and inspected the dropped items.

Crystalline carapace and plastron fragments (Epic Crafting materials)

Blueprints for Crystal-armor (Epic)

Xuanwu Rune (Medium Tier)

Flood-Dragon rune (Medium Tier)