Adriana channeled her mana and swiftly put an end to the remaining platypuses, leaving only two mini-bosses, one of which Arctur was dealing with. Reaching out once again, she began to put pressure on the platypus, who was able to resist her even after it had gotten so close to her. Admittedly, she would have preferred if it had been able to hold her off on its own, but it could only offer minimal assistance because she allowed it to. If she had been serious, the beast would have been long dead. Additionally, it didn't help that she still found the creature rather cute and was trying to delay slaying it, hoping that it would surrender. So, she continued the back-and-forth struggle, spending mana to pressurize the area around it, trying to squish it while also allowing enough room for it to unleash its own mana to counter her.

  Perry the Platypus was closing in on Alex, the creature clearly having used more mana to speed itself up upon realizing its situation had changed once its kin began dying. This meant that Alex had much less time to react than he originally thought, and the elf hastily launched a lightning bolt at the incoming platypus. The platypus managed to block the projectile by condensing the water and was now approaching at an even greater speed.

  Realizing he couldn't stall the creature, Alex braced himself as he prepared to unleash an attack. Alex waited until the platypus was within a few feet of him, and then, in a burst of mana, unleashed a burst of electricity all around him. The lightning managed to stop Perry's advance as it spasmed under the electricity's influence. Even so, and taking Alexion by surprise, the platypus was able to move much faster than anticipated, and in a blur, its small, webbed feet touched Alexion, the elf's eyes going wide.

  After helping Alexion out, Arctur turned back to deal with his mini-boss, who was almost out of his binds. It was obvious that the platypus had spent a considerable amount of mana trying to poison the vines and roots. Sadly, for the beast, its time was over, and Arctur redoubled his magic, strengthening roots and vines which then began to crush the creature.

  As Arctur watched his victim slowly get crushed to death, he did feel a little bit bad, but an opponent was an opponent, and he was rather annoyed. The fight with the otters had been somewhat interesting, as they had countered his fighting style of entrapping things and killing them with ease. However, despite the platypuses' variety compared to the otters, he felt they were slightly weaker. It seemed that even Adriana was holding off as she had a magical contest with the other mini-boss, which Arctur watched for a little bit until things finally started to get slightly interesting.

  The moment Perry touched him, Alexion felt the magic rush into his body as his whole being stilled. Alexion had been paralyzed. It wasn't an ability he had been expecting, and it definitely caught him by surprise. Of course, if it had been in real life, that would have been the end of him, at least if the creature in question had been savage and had instantly torn into him. All right, that wasn't true. It wouldn't have been the end of him, but he would have definitely gotten heavily injured, both by the attacking creature and because of the reckless actions he would have taken to survive. Thankfully, the dungeon wasn't the real world, and more importantly, it didn't seem like Perry was a full-on savage beast.

  Instead of tearing into or poisoning him further, the lord swam away, heading in the direction of Adriana and the mini-boss she was fighting. Naturally, the lord didn't know that they could communicate telepathically, and the moment Alexion knew he would be all right, he sent a message to his two friends.

  “Guys, apparently, the lord can paralyze people, so it would be great if I could get some help. The bastard really pumped a lot of mana into the attack, and it's going to be a minute before I can move again.”

  Hearing Alexion's calm words, the two friends quickly turned towards him to see what was going on. However, what they found was two completely different things. Arctur saw a paralyzed elf slowly sinking, but more importantly, he also saw Perry and the powerful beam he unleashed. Meanwhile, Adriana's view was blocked when a beam of dark purple energy struck her face.

  The mermaid was overcome with pain as the poison spread throughout her face, head, and then continued towards the rest of her body. Thankfully, her training kicked in, and she immediately dropped her enhancement and switched to her shield. This proved to be the correct choice as moments later, and due to having dropped her magic because of the pain, her shield managed to block the incoming poison beams from the mini-boss, who had broken free. Of course, through all of this, the mermaid had been pumping a lot of her mana to try and cleanse away the poison, but it would still take time before she could function properly. In fact, the only thing she could really do was hold her face and ensure no attack made it through her shield.

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  Arctur winced as he saw the beam hit Adriana square in the face. Then he realized things were starting to get dicey, and he quickly turned to his mini-boss. The platypus was half dead, and Arctur finished the job by spending a little more mana as thorns shot from the vines and roots wrapping the creature, killing it. With his mini-boss down, Arctur turned back towards his two friends and shot two beams of energy at his friend while he swam towards Alexion.

  Both beams were golden green, and, as expected, one was for Adriana to help her with her poison issue, while the other was to help Alex cleanse himself of the paralysis. Annoyingly, the two beams reminded the Beast Lord that Arctur was still there. However, instead of heading for him, the platypus turned back towards his elf friend, letting Arctur know exactly what it was planning to do. Apparently, having helped its mini-boss survive Adriana was enough, and it now wanted to take out the elf while its companion kept the mermaid busy.

  Naturally, Arctur couldn't let the platypus attack his friend freely, and as soon as he saw Perry begin to move, he unleashed beam after beam of destructive nature energy. The problem with his attacks was that the lord was fairly small and was able to dodge or block the beams rather well, only a few grazing the creature. Arctur wanted to do more, but if he stopped his attacks to charge something better, Perry would be able to advance even faster, giving Alexion less time to cleanse himself.

  Alex saw the platypus getting closer out of the corner of his eye. He had been hoping that Arctur would be able to delay him further, but he understood why he was unable to. At the very least, his friend’s beam had helped a lot, and with the use of a weakened cleansing technique, Alex was almost out of his bind.

  Adriana was getting really annoyed. At first, the pain had been debilitating, but she had gotten used to it rather quickly. The problem came with the spot the attack had landed; a creature's head was one of its greatest weak spots, and she had been on the verge of losing consciousness. Luckily, she had plenty of mana, and with a quick reaction, she threw a lot of pure mana towards her head, which only amplified the pain, but she managed to hold off the poison from causing too much damage. Even then, she was still slightly confused as she attempted to repair the damage caused by the poison. Granted, even with all of this, the most annoying thing was the constant bombardment from a certain platypus. Adriana hadn’t thought about it, but what she had done to it was almost torturous as she essentially played with its life, and now the beast was getting back at her.

  With that in mind, Adriana could only care so much, and after the twenty beams, which were only getting weaker, she was over it. The platypus was stopping her from recovering, and though she knew it was good to recover the normal way, she was on the verge of taking out a potion. In fact, she did. Adriana took a cleansing potion from her ring, drank it, and moments later felt it begin to work as it cleansed her body. Feeling much better, Adriana focused on her magic, letting out pulse after pulse as she looked for the platypus while also extending her Presence. Having locked onto the platypus, the mermaid wasted no time in spending more pure mana to crush the cute annoyance, this time in a much more acceptable manner.

  Perry was rushing towards the elf, hoping to land a proper hit. He was burning all his mana on his enhancement as well as his Water Jet ability to gain speed, power, and some resilience, allowing him to dodge or take on the hits from the green man, whom he continued to ignore. At that point, Perry was like a blueish arrow piercing through the water, solely focused on his target, at least until he felt it.

  Behind Perry, a burst of power emanated, likely from the mermaid. Curious and worried, Perry dodged in a way that let him flip his head in the direction of his fellow, finding that he had been turned to a paste of blood while the mermaid still looked relatively fine. Seeing this annoyed Perry, as these adventurers were simply too strong; he had fought one or two parties so far, and he, along with a few of his minions, were usually enough to have them run away. Of course, Perry knew he had likely gotten lucky, as there were stronger adventurers out there, the current party probably being the strongest he had ever faced. However, Perry really wanted to smack that elf with his tail, but after feeling the friendly mermaid behind him, he thought it might be best to surrender.

  Perry’s choice to surrender was made for him when he saw that the elf was already beginning to move. It was annoying because he had only been seconds from smacking him, but if he could move things would get much harder. Not that they wouldn’t have been already, as even if he did paralyze the body, some adventurers were not stopped by that mental block, and could still mobilize their mana. The mermaid was a good example of this, as even after taking such a hit, she had still defended herself rather well. So, due to all of this, Perry came to a stop as he yelled out to the adventurers.

  “I Surrender! I will join you! Just don’t kill me!”