"Stay focused, Liss. Hey, hey, do not close your eyes, you hear me. You have to keep them open, concentrate damn it." Sir Nick muttered in the face of a girl laying her head on his lap.

She looked like she was at the gates of the afterlife; her face all pummelled up in every angle from zero to three six zero, her eyes out casting tears in red that completely drenched her forehead's sloped sides. They camouflaged the blood that was leaking from her ears. 

She had bones dislocated in her tiny little nose, one of her not-so-broad shoulders, along with the entire lower torso starting from below her waist and her abdomen. 

Dark Reddish-brown stains painting the lower part of her face screamed the amount of blood her nostrils squirted. And the fresh blood oozing out of her mouth from the corners of her lips made a clear path, ploughing through the dried stains down onto the chin.

"Why didn't you crank up? You damn well knew that monster wasn't your brother, yet your feelings for him got the best of you. See where that got you, you stupid girl." he said.

His sight was trembling at her horrible state, teardrops rolling down his cheeks as he cried his heart out for that little girl. 

He didn't stop for a second, shouting at her, screaming into her ears, slapping her cheeks hard and harder, whatever it took to keep her from slipping into the abyss.

"I saw it coming, yet I carelessly left you alone with him. Had I put him out of his misery with my own hands, you would have been creeping around, being a pain in my *** like the beautiful little adrenaline-driven elfin you are. I did this all to you. I'm sorry, sweet pie. Please don't leave me alone in this god-forsaken world. Please, open your eyes." 

Stammered words of guilt and sorrow got thrown out from his mouth, his voice stuttering in pain and fear of losing her as he watched her eyes not opening any more.

"Ryan, gas the rover power to beta," he said to the young man, panicking in the driver's seat. He was adjusting his glasses up and down over the ridge of his long pointed nose.

Sir Nick's cold gaze passed chills down his spine at the very brief moment when his eyes locked with the latter's. 

He looked out his seat window and took a deep breath out of the wind blowing over his face at the insane speed their land rover was thrusting forward into the light greenish crystallized terrain.

It was big. It had a size of a six-seater at the least. It had six gigantic wheels whole, two front, and four below, packed far apart. The only thing they had in common is their thick hardened multi-coloured but mostly greyish monster skin tyres. 

A fence made of sharp-edged monster bones embedded with their razor shaped teeth formed the bumper of that monstrous truck. The earth under that speeding rover got more and more crystalline as they pushed forward into the Mayan dungeon.

"You sure about doing this, Sir? You may not be thinking straight right now." Ryan said as he stomped his foot onto the gas pedal.

"The only way to save my daughter now is to crank her up before she turns into one of those hideous things we hunt." Sir Nick said in an affirmative tone, without taking his eyes off her.

"I can understand if any of you are not up for this suicide mission. Now is your chance to speak up."

"Liss didn't leave me behind, not once, no matter how bad the situation got out of hand. She more than earned my gratitude and respect." the girl, sitting across from Sir Nick, said as she leaned forward and gently brushed Liss's hair with her palm. 

She was genuinely worried about her. She looked just like Liss except for her short coiled hair and sky blue colored eyes as the latter had silky-soft wavy brown hair and a unique set of cat-like eyes. 

They both had faces featured with a strangely identical freckle design extending from below the eyes onto the nose.

"Zoe." Sir Nick looked at her, his eyes filled with warmth and appreciation toward her. "She is very lucky to have found a friend in you."

"Hey, keep it together, old man. No one's backing out on anyone. That's what being a team means. We always got each other's back." seated beside Ryan in front of the rover, was Riley.

A woman with her looks in mid-twenties, her face covered from sunlight by a baseball-type hat and screened from the magic dust by a square scarf wrapped around her face. 

It stood on the base of her nose, and hanged all the way down to her perfect waist, outlining her well-endowed chest.

"Heh. Yeah, what she just said." Ryan took a gulp of his own saliva, which his tongue secreted excessively because of the panic inside his heart. 

He was freaking out from every hair of his head to that of his toe, but it seemed like he had a lot of experience in how to act cool in a pant wetting situation. 

He raised his hand to face his palm toward her, expecting her to land a hi-five on it instead he got a cold shoulder and attitude from her.

"Alright, then, you all know the drill. Loosen your seat belts and get ready to roll." Ryan instructed as he drove the rover into the entrance door of the dungeon. 

It was a single gate made out of magic iron with three sets of thick hinges supporting it on one end and chained to the wall on the other end. 

The impact vibrated its way onto every single one on the rover, but at the power level they were at, it felt like, well, nothing.

Thrusting forward, it gouged the door right off its supports while the chains binding it to the crystal wall were being pulled out like veins from a human body. 

The enormous weight of the unhinged door struck onto its bumper, and the chains it was dragging created enough friction against the rover for its engine to overpower itself and burn hotter than it ever did. 

Its hood got blown off because of the pressure exerted by the steam its engine emitted and the white smoke that was let out along with it blinded the path in front.

… to be continued.

"Time for some action, guys!" Ryan signaled the team as Riley crawled into the back of the rover from her seat. He then lifted his foot and stuck a cane-like monster bone onto the gas pedal before hopping to the back. 

Forming a circle around Liss by holding hands up to each other's sleeves, they tapped into their souls and concentrated their energy into a sphere that enclosed the entire team. 

They rolled off the rover just before the sphere lost its form and scattered them all like pesticide grains in different directions.

Sir Nick didn't let go of his moribund daughter as he held onto her the whole time when they both were thrown away from the others.

He landed with his back against a thick spiked crystal pillar holding Liss in his arms. 

More than two spikes pierced his rather fat than a built-up body, one in the shoulder, one in his right chest, and one just below his heart. They protruded from under his flannel jacket, stapling it with holes.

Soon as the rest of the team members pulled themselves together, and they did unnaturally quickly, Riley and Zoe kept gaping at the rover they abandoned as it streaked straight into a big spider-web type structure. 

Bulky thick shimmering fiber bundles built that web so stretchy and flexible that it negated the impression of the crash in no time. They were both eagerly and avidly waiting to lay their eyes on a grand explosion, but it never came to pass to their utter disappointment.

During that time, Ryan was busy as he raised his hand and extended it as if he was holding onto a doorknob until all of a sudden an opalescent knob had actually formed in his palm. 

When he turned the knob clockwise, a barricade made out of thick energy particles appeared on the only staircase located in the south-west corner, barricading the path both to and fro the upstairs.

Sir Nick was still breathing when Zoe and the others found him pinned on the pillar a few minutes later which meant the spike just grazed his heart not too deep. But the blood gushing out of his mouth onto his worn-out jacket screamed otherwise.

That place was crawling with six-legged wolf-panther hybrid beasts that were confined outside the protection shield Ryan was holding up. 

He was gathering all his soul energy into his palm and transforming it through the ground into that barrier while Zoe through her palms was pushing hers into the pillar, directed toward Sir Nick. 

Soon as it reached his perforated body, his wounds healed instantly and woke him up from his heavy trance.

He moaned as he lifted his body up out of the spikes before falling onto the ground underneath. For a moment there, the depth in the pain of his groans overpowered the howling of the mutated creatures outside the barrier.

"About time you woke up, old man. Care to crank up?" Riley threw her taunts at Sir Nick. "The barrier can fall any second now."

"Forgive me for burdening you, Madam. Please sit back and relax." apologized Sir Nick, bowing in front of Riley.

Curling his fingers into a fist, he folded his left arm backward and rested it on his hip. That hand of his radiated a pale but pure light that could ease any heavy heart in no time. 

That glow crawled up his arm and headed toward his heart when he raised his other arm and extended it as if he was reaching for something. 

It then climbed onto that other arm and made its way up into the palm of his hand where it got intensified before cooling down into the shape of a chain-sickle.

The sickle was decorated with a design of queued perforations along its well-honed edge and was mounted on a bluish-crystal shaft. 

The shaft's end was connected to a heavy stainless steel chain. The chain was long. Maybe ten meters or even more. 

A gear-shaped iron weight with razor-sharp teeth along its outer circumference was welded to the other end of the chain.

He held the sickle shaft in his left hand and the chain nearer to the weight in his right while he asked Riley and Zoe to get on the ground.

"Ryan, can you open only the front side of the barrier without bringing it all down."

"I can try. But I'm running on my reserved power. So, whatever you do, do it real quick." Ryan said as he strained his whole body to burn up his last reserves and succeeded in lowering the front part of the shield.

The hungry wolves waiting outside it darted toward the opening, all at once, and charged ferociously at Sir Nick who was standing guard in front of his team. 

They were half his height, double his size, cement colored stripes on their charcoal dark skin. A single horn twisted in many circles and pointed forward outgrew from their forehead.

He swung the sickle by the chain in a vertical circle toward the first one heading towards him and that stroke sliced its face into two perfect halves dangling from its neck. 

Its corpse slid over near to his feet due to the momentum of its stampede.

For his second and immediate attack, he got down on one bent knee before swinging his sickle clockwise with his left hand, and his toothed weight anticlockwise with the other, both in horizontal circles simultaneously over his head. 

It was one among his many combo attacks that could hack any living thing in flesh and blood within its radius.

The blade slashed clean through each and every wolf in the first wave and they were all cut in two, one with the upper torso and the other with the lower. 

The sharp teeth fused around the weight did nothing less. As he continued to keep them twirling, he landed a third blow over the next wave of the wolves with his second swing and it was his combo two attack.

Then he kept slicing and dicing through the next wave and the one after that without changing his about-to-propose stance. 

That lasted till he reached combo ten where he dealt the only wolf left after the astounding slaughter with his final blow when it tried to bolt out of there alive.

... to be continued. 

Sir Nick had swung around his weighted chain in a large circle over his head and entangled the wolf with it immobilizing its legs while he planted the shaft of his sickle into the ground behind it with the sickle blade facing it. 

He then whipped the beast forward toward the standing blade gashing it all the way from its mouth down to its behind.

Meanwhile, Zoe tended toward treating Liss but no matter what she tried, she couldn't heal her wounds, not even a shallow cut on her forehead.

"She must've fallen too deep into her soul abyss. That's the only possible explanation I can think of," she said, looking at Sir Nick as he lifted his crank from the ground and trudged towards them, completely exhausted. 

"We have to pick up our pace. The infection is spreading more rapidly than anticipated. At this rate, she doesn't have much time left."

"How much...?" he asked, his face all sad and gloomy and his mood darkened.

"An hour at the most. Maybe less." Zoe replied.

Clusters of glowing particles emerged from within the corpses and clumped together to form big shining spheres with a divine glow, levitating on top of their mutilated remains.

"Time to eat, Bone Slicer." when Sir Nick raised his weapon up in the air, it created a magical force field and siphoned all those energy spheres in. 

That mass of energy gathered in it then got transferred within his body to his heart where it vanished in a split second.

"Ryan's body won't make it through another crank up for a long while. That's two down. By the looks of it, you used a considerable amount of your power on those puny feeble creatures." Riley analyzed their current situation to Sir Nick in a taunting manner to provoke him.

"Without Liss, I'm the only one left with a decent attack-type crank in our team. So, you have to follow my lead. That's your only option if you want your daughter to not die." she told him, her tone very much domineering.

"Guys, this place seems weird to me," Ryan said. His inner sniveling alter ego had already shitted himself a thousand times at the less scary more sinister look on Riley when she rolled her eyes onto him.

"Speak," she ordered him to explain what he said as she walked up to him, the heavy tread of her boots gave his skin goosebumps.

Sir Nick sat on his knees beside Zoe, both gazing at Liss lying in front of them. Their grave concern for her could be seen on their depressed and gloomy faces.

"I haven't seen one-horned hybrids in such large numbers in one place before. Have you?" Ryan said.

"What's your point?" she asked, slightly angered but more annoyed.

"These creatures never hunt in packs. It's not like them to gang up on their prey. They enjoy taking their time to chase their prey and catch onto them before they give up."

"Moreover, they don't lurk around in first floors where the magic dust levels in the air are arguably considerable." he said, voicing his qualms before everyone.

"You think someone unleashed them onto us? That someone has been controlling them?" Sir Nick enquired. He stood up and advanced towards Ryan promptly to join their conversation, leaving Liss with Zoe.

The first and foremost thing Ryan did the second he recovered from the rash landing was creating an energy barricade on the staircase connecting the first floor to the second. 

It was meant to danger-proof his team from the many unknowns that were loitering around on the floor above them. 

It was still in place, not a single scratch on it the whole time those hybrids made their entrance known to them.

"Most possibly. But the real question is from where did they enter this floor. There must be some kind of secret passage that opens into other floors of the dungeon. If we can find it, there is a slight chance we could save Liss and get out of here in one piece." 

Ryan came up with an idea and put it forward for consideration by others.

"Done, you two? Now shut up and carefully listen to each and every word I am about to utter." Riley got annoyed with their discussion or more precisely leaving her out of it. 

She got used to ordering people around, one of the privileges she gained by wielding an elite-class crank, and she very much loved being the boss in the room.

"I am the leader of this group, am I not? Do you know why? Because I'm the strongest among us. So, you two fine gentlemen better stop playing adventurers in a lost jungle before anyone else gets hurt."

"We are taking the visible main route to the second floor, the third floor next, and the fourth after that. Got it?" she raised her voice with both the men, one old and one young,

She didn't care that she was talking to her teammates. She never did. All she ever cared about was herself, and forcing her decisions onto others and dominating them every chance she got was the only thing she ever loved.

"No disrespect to you, madam. But even if you go all-out with your power, clearing twenty floors in one hour would be like a toddler reaching out to grab the moon." Ryan stood firmly before her as he expressed his opinion of her both flawed and stupid plan.    

While they were arguing, putting their cards one by one onto the table, Sir Nick disintegrated his bone slicer into an infinite number of tiny molecules that looked like a group of fireflies sparkling to the eyes as they floated in the air.

A spell cast for any technique would demand equal chi for elite, rich, middle, and poor cranker. And offers equal result, oppression, and effect against them. 

Nick just completed the first part of a detection technique that had created a raging tempest with howling gales, rumbling thunder caps, and lightning flashes extending over a few feet around his spell caster named bone slicer.

... to be continued.