The party was blinded for a long few moments, eyes squeezed shut as they were enveloped in light and whisked away from the previous chamber.

As their vision finally returned, they reflexively hunched together tight, eyes flicking back and forth as they took in their new location.

The gradual increase in decor they’d seen earlier continued on here as well, massive amounts of gold running through and over everything in the chamber, a massive rectangular room stretching on and on ahead of them. Rows of broken wooden pews filled the space, clearly less fit to withstand the ages past as well as the rest of the stone and metal around them. Tall pillars lining either side of the long room stretched up into a ceiling too far away to see.

“A-Are we even still underground…?”

“Doesn’t feel like it… I didn’t really expect a church down here.”

“It beats more cramped tunnels though, I was getting tired of not being able to dodge anything, and my eyes were killing me in that darkness.”

“Glad to hear that cramps were the biggest threat you’ve had to deal with…”

They cautiously stepped forward, scanning over the out-of-place church for anything resembling a boss. Nothing greeted them other than empty seats and lifeless statues, Prim gripping her weapon just a bit tighter each time they passed the latter.

Rows and rows of pillars and pews and ancient relics of some long-lost religion stretched on further and further, seemingly never ending.

“Is this another of those looping halls again?”

“They wouldn’t do that t-twice in one dungeon… right?”

“Chk…”

“I haven’t noticed anything repeating... but it doesn’t hurt to check. Flash!”

The witch pointed her webbed staff dead ahead, casting off a ball of light forwards and illuminating their path,

As soon as the flame was lit, the room came to life.

Torches on the pillars and walls blazed to life of their own accord as the fireball burned past them, the shadowed chamber lighting itself up like sunrise the moment one of them had finally taken the initiative.

The room was certainly not infinite, a fact they could finally confirm as light flooded in like an instant sunrise. Familiar veins of gold glowed with their own light as they twisted through the room, each and every one of them crawling back towards the same point of origin at the rear of the hall.

Echoing voices emerged from the back of the chamber, cutting through the oppressive silence they’d had before as the forms of a dozen robed figures emerged into the light.

Two pairs and one set of eight eyes glared back at the caster who’d fired off the opening shot, gazes burrowing into her threadbare defenses.

“...oopsie!~”

With no time to spend chewing her out for a preemptive boss pull, the party charged forward with renewed energy, trying to close the massive remaining gap before the group across from them could whittle them down from afar.

However, they remained perfectly unassailed even with as much open space as there was between the two sides, none of robed enemies looking towards the approaching band of adventurers. None of them even seemed to notice their presence at all, not bothering to face them as they formed a circle amongst themselves, hands outstretched towards the center of their formation.

The wide area they encircled rose slowly, stone and metal creaking as untended mechanisms spun to life. The golden veins lining the room amassed in the center of their platform, a solid unbroken slab of pure gold, each line feeding into it throbbing like a blood vessel, shining rays originating from an artificial sun.

Each of the nondescript priests stood atop a vein, energy pouring from their hands into the artifact, chanting in an unknowable language as they carried out some manner of ancient ritual.

“T-That seems bad…!”

“Guh, you pulled them from too far away and we don’t have any way to do anything from all the way back here.”

“Maybe you don’t! Meet you both up there!”

“What are you-”

“Blowback!”

Monica had broke off from the other pair as they ran straight ahead together, Silk already stuck tightly to her back as her staff slammed hard into a pillar, the spell activating as the force of the blow sent her sailing overhead, arcing towards the ritual platform.

“Oh no, she’s not getting to do this all herself! Elise, double-speed!!”

“I-I’m trying!!”

The slower pair faded away under her as the spiders flew through the tall corridor, barely able to aim their flight as the false sun grew larger and larger, chanting voices echoing unnaturally loud around them.

“Hazard Fumes!”

She landed at an angle, skidding over the smooth stone as her signature cloud reemerged, already engulfing the first of the cultists that she’s landed near.

Their share of ritual recitation quickly cut out, Silence being one of the myriad of ailments it afflicted targets with as they grasped uselessly at their throat as they were locked up.

“Let’s not have any more of that now, mmkay? I’m fine without you all finishing… whatever this is supposed to be.”

The cultist turned to face her, struggling to pull out a small, curved dagger as they lunged at her… only to collapse instantly after, the incredible boss enemy amounts of status resistance they had no match before her excessive status effect buffs. Their HP slowly began to drain out at the same time, making incremental progress on their disproportionately large health bar.

Not long after, the other pair reached the raised platform as well, Prim rushing past and shoulder-checking another of the robed figures off of their pedestal, Elise stumbling up after her, falling shield first onto the fallen monster, bursting them into red particle effects as they were crushed twice over.

Both the newly unmanned gold veins slowly faded out, the light dribbling away as the other ten strobed brighter and more rapidly as they tried to make up for the loss in magical output.

Monica hopped clear of her massive toxic cloud, flailing and gesturing wildly at the others, waving them on to keep going as she turned heel and dragged the poison fumes along behind her.

“Ok, no letting her get more of them than us, okay?”

“I-Isn’t this a team effort…?”

“Absolutely not, come on!”

“...r-right!”

Elise strained herself to keep pace with the blood-hungry crafter, both of them charging down the next of the robed priests.

“Silkshot!”

“Chhhk…!”

Before the other two had even cleared their first of the targets, their Gloom Mage was already closing in on their second target, two wads of webbing striking them at once, a hard tug on both of them following up with much stronger pair of impacts right after, Monica and Silk both slamming bodily into them and tackling them off their platform.

Their unwavering focus broken as they were knocked down, scrambling for their weapon as they tried to retaliate… only to turn back to find an arachnoid staff meeting their face, another Blowback launching them back down the long corridor the party had come from.

A fusillade of bombs took out a fourth of the cultists, their vein being blown open entirely as it was forcibly cut off, Elise crashing into a fifth shields-first as she forced them back out of the ritual.

Each pair slowly took out more of the chanting enemies, more of the pulsing leylines being snuffed out even as those remaining pumped more and more energy in, the golden disk slowly twisting and rising further, deforming slowly into a dome shape.

More clerics were slain, thrown, stunned, crushed, poisoned, or launched away, their numbers sinking faster still as they redoubled their channeling efforts.

Soon only one remained, body trembling from exertion as they put every ounce of energy they had into the ritual, trying to outrace the adventurers closing in.

Both sides rushed together, coming in at one another in a race to be the first to secure the final kill away from the other side.

A hammer, a shield, and two projectile-speed spiders launched at one another, crashing together perfectly atop the final body, the poor priest being utterly crushed between them as a shower of damage effects spewed out like water.

“We got him!”

“No no no, we got them!”

“Eh?! I was clearly faster…!”

“U-Um, you both-”

“You just tackled it, that’s not an attack!”

“Moni, P-Prim-”

“C-Chk…!”

“I’m just not a barbarian like you, it counts!”

“It’s Berserker, thank you!”

“Same thing, whatever, it’s all-”

“Now r-really isn’t the time…!”

“What?!”

“Eh?!”

The pair managed to stop bickering for a moment, heads snapping towards Silk and Elise, and more importantly, what they were gesturing at.

As fast as they’d been, one, final, brilliant pulse of energy ran through the last of the gold veins as it went dark again, bleeding into the bloated mass of gold in the room’s center, now towering tall above them all, throbbing with the amassed energy pumped to it.

“…oh it got… a lot bigger real fast, huh?”

“We, uh… we stopped it in time, though… right?”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…yeah, def-”

Monica wasn’t even given enough time to finish being wrong, a massive wave of heat and noise bursting off of the misshapen sphere, knocking all four of them back across the corridor as it pulled free and rose out of its leylines, fully charged at last.

The surface tightened and flowed in equal measures, beating like a living heart as it floated in midair, shining like a false sun in the long-forgotten church as it burned above them, too overwhelming to come any closer to it. It took all they had to even look at the mass of living gold, squinting as they tried to determine what exactly it was the ritual had been for to begin with.

Eventually, the light burned itself out, the elongated orb hovering silently above them as they waited, cautious and nervous.

“What is that…?”

“Some kind of… fake sun, maybe?”

“I-Isn’t the sun supposed to be more circular though…? This looks m-more like…”

“…oh, it does.”

“……that’s bad, yeah?”

“U-Uh huh.”

“Chkchk…”

The party stood in quiet silence for a moment, processing the same realization they’d all come to regarding what this ritual device was. All at once, they started running towards it again, clambering after it in hopes of getting rid of it before things got much worse.

But their last second efforts proved useless, as the moment after they approached, the floating object came to life once again, a massive crack appearing directly down the center of it.

And as they all watched in dismay, the massive, shimmering, golden egg finally hatched, flames billowing out from the swiftly discarded shell, a deafening cry bursting free as the form of a giant bird appeared from within it.

An inferno erupted from every feather on its body as it cried out, shrill and horrible, the sound of a furious phoenix being birthed into the world.