Dungeon Raider System

When the hunters first heard Alonso calling for the retreat they reacted by immediately mounting their horses and rallying to the gathering spot near the camp, though when they saw him charging against three windmills at the distance they couldn't hold their laughter anymore.

"There he goes again." One of them covered his face in shame.

"I'll bet a thousand credits to the windmill." Laughed another.

"I don't know, the boss has always been kind of an oddball, but he's also pretty strong." One of the snipers present said as he grabbed a hundred credit bill and waved it in the air. "I'm betting on the boss."

Uriel and Nika just happened to be walking nearby and watched the entire interaction, including Alonso's furious charge against a windmill firing sniper rounds without bothering to use the scope.

"What's going on?" Asked Uriel.

"Nothing, it's just the boss going ape shit on random stuff. It's shocking at first, but you get used to it. Please, don't think less of him because of it, his trait allows him to see more than we can, but it's not unusual for him to get entangled in imaginary fights." Explained Sancho, a pikeman whose waistline was almost as large as he was tall.

"Yeah, like that time he broke a mirror saying there was someone looking at him." The same sniper that spoke previously laughed.

"So, he's not called the mad hunter for being an otaku, then?" Nika tilted her head.

"Actually, that's the thing. Even if he chased after imaginary enemies, we know he at least is seeing something. Light is a wide spectrum and being able to see it in full must mess with someone's head, who knows how he sees the world. But the otaku thing, that's when his madness really gets out of hand." The woman explained and then kept on chuckling as she watched her boss taking laps around the windmills and firing at them.

"Well, that's a waste of high caliber rounds..." Nika said regretfully.

"is it?" Uriel squinted his eyes to focus his eyesight on the windmills noticing that the heavy sniper rounds caused absolutely no damage to the buildings. That was odd, but could be explained if those windmills were actually a part of a dungeon.

Nika sharpened her eyes as she understood that something was wrong and without any meddling words she merged with the shadows to use shadowblink and fetch Luna. It took two full minutes for them to arrive and in that time Uriel didn't take his eyes from the fight and he noticed more oddities.

"Is it normal for windmills to continue moving their hasps even without wind? Also, they seem to have moved ever so slightly from their position. Luna, do you know if there are windmill cryptids?"

"That is... nonsensical. There are some documented haunted houses, but a windmill has never been mentioned." Luna replied, unbothered by Uriel's lack of concern for her health as she became invested on the scene taking place in front of her.

Alonso's efforts to take down the windmills at a distance had failed, but he was far from giving up and he grabbed a cavalry lance that was strapped into his horse. He then rushed towards the windmill and jumped off his horse directly onto the windmill, with such bad luck that he got entangled with the hasp and was sent flying at a distance.

By then all of the Spanish Tercio was gathered laughing at the comical situation, all but Sancho who showed more concern about his boss than anybody else. To him, if what his boss saw was a light phenomenon playing with his mind or a figment of his imagination made no difference. The only thing that mattered was that he did get hurt and he rushed ahead to help him.

"Stop right there." Uriel grabbed Sancho by the shoulder and despite the man's attempts to shake him off, it was impossible. Uriel's appearance and energy signature didn't match the firm grasp of his hand and Sancho could feel how easy it would be for Uriel to crush his bones by simply clenching his fist. Not that it surprised him since he witnessed Uriel's fight against the lizard, but now he knew it wasn't luck what allowed him to defeat such a cryptid.

"Let me go, I need to rescue him!" Cried the round belly man as he ran trying to at least drag Uriel along with him, but the latter didn't budge a centimeter.

"Let me handle this." Uriel said as he walked past Sancho, now sure that there was something off about the windmills. Nothing seemed wrong if he saw them with both his eyes or glasses, but the minute one of the hasps made contact with Alonso, Uriel's mystical sense briefly fired up and that was all the confirmation he needed.

"Wait! You forgot your horse!" Sancho shouted assuming Uriel would take too long to reach the distant windmills, though as soon as Uriel took some distance he grabbed a strange figurine out of thin air and next thing he saw was a huge jaguar running alongside the hunter.

"Hurry up!" Uriel said despite needing no words to convey his commands to his faithful cryptid, then he grabbed the jaguar's fur and leapt on top of it without stopping his race.

As he drew near the windmills, Uriel realized it wasn't his imagination that the windmills had moved. Not just that, he also saw Alonso was gravely injured which added more mystery to the already long list of strange phenomena taking place.

"I'm Okay, just tell them to run away. I'll hold them off." Alonso said as he mustered whatever strength he had left in him to stand up.

"What the hell are those windmills?" Uriel asked.

"Looks are deceiving, those are not windmills but powerful giants summoned by some kind of sorcery, but the sorcerer is concealed even from my eyes and the only thing we can do is hold them off."

"Concealed with sorcery? Why does everything needs to be related to magic these days!?" Uriel let out a snarl as he craned up his neck to take a better look at the windmills expecting to find something out of place. Not even after closing his eyes was Uriel able to pick up the any traces of their flux signature, which meant he wouldn't have anything to prove that those were indeed cryptids.

"Let's just leave, they'll figure it out eventually." Uriel looked at Alonso with pity in his eyes, but the man refused to budge.

"I will not abandon my men." He said.

"You leave me no choice, then..." Uriel said as he attempted to knock Alonso unconscious, yet in spite of his dire wounds the man was able to shrug off Uriel attack like a mosquito bite.

"I appreciate your intention, but you are no match for me, even in this state." Alonso wiped the blood of his mouth with his sleeve.

"If you're this strong, then what in the hell are those things!?" A shiver as painful as a thousand needles crawled all the way up Uriel's back as he suddenly felt paralyzed by the oppressive flux energy of the cryptids that had just woken up.

"They are above the entity level, horrors I believe they are called. Never stumbled upon one of them before, now I know how lucky I have been. Leave now with everyone, leave knowing that I am gladly giving up my life in exchange for everyone's." Alonso managed to stand up by using what was left of his lance as a walking stick and as battered as the poor man was, he still looked like the proud warriors of the ancient times commonly depicted in the sagas.

Uriel turned to look at his jaguar and patted him on the head causing the feline cryptid to retreat from the vicinity and rush towards Nika, then Uriel loudly complained to Alonso.

"Man, you're killing me," Uriel readied both his revolver and the Red thread of fate, then exchanged a knowing gaze with the hunter by his side. "if you're not leaving your friends, then I can't do the same."

"But your friends..."

"You said it before, we are now friends for however long we live."

"For however long we live." Alonso echoed and charged once more at the windmill, only this time Uriel was able to see it for what it truly was.

The moment Alonso made contact with the cryptid the illusion created by the cryptids faded and he saw three mountainous giants, almost the same size of the windmill mirage. They lied in close proximity with each other and seemed to be just waking up. Their ugly faces crumpled up in the exact same fashion an office worker's who just woke up by the alarm on a Monday morning, more annoyed than angry.

One by one they stood up, causing the illusion to flake for just enough time for the hunters to see their true appearance for the first time and they all erupted in horrified cries. The surge of flux energy was so strong it made their knees waver and their noses to bleed.

Now that they knew what they were against, the entire Tercio ran like headless chickens, unsure if they needed to arrange their usual formation or run away in panic with such bad luck that the gigantic cryptids noticed not just their screams, but also the juicy flavor of the Tercio's flux signature added up and considered them much more of a treat than the flaky hunters at their feet.