An Owl's Rise

During this time, Bylur and Verrader who had linked up within the maze managed to find their way as well thanks to the information sharing that the separated group was able to accomplish on the first floor.

After so long all six of the members of Evelyn party had finally managed to come back together again.

It had been an arduous time fraught with uncertainty and difficulties, but they had persevered and made it through. Plus, their troubles had not been for naught.

The maze had within it several valuable resources, and each one of them had made large strides towards gaining more power at an incredible pace. While none of them had advanced to another tier, the next milestone was not far off for any of them save for Otis, who simply needed far more magical energy as a tyrant rank beast.

"Now that we have finished celebrating, all of us need to decide on how we want to proceed. We have a few options open to us now." Evelyn said, leading the six of them into an important discussion.

Having reached the center of the maze and accomplishing their goal of reuniting left them with no further concrete plans. 

Yes, they still intended to go to the designated area where the Roost would be issuing its entry challenges, but that was still a couple months away at this point.

In the meantime, the six of them had many options open to them. The most likely two being to go on their way and slowly head to the location while exploring more areas or continuing to fight through the maze with the six of them and collect more resources from it.

Both ideas had their merits to them, but ultimately their group decided to continue exploring the maze. With all six of them together again the dangers that the maze presented were not nearly as bad.

"After going through hell in this place, it is finally time for us to exploit the knowledge we have gathered. Let us take this maze for all it is worth." Evelyn said, raising the spirits of her companions.

Each of them gave cheers of approval and began comparing their induvial maps while planning what areas to search through. Their main goals were to upgrade the map function to allow for warping between the checkpoints, and locating the special monsters that dropped the keys to the sealed doors.

…

"Aralee, Rehni, keep it locked down."

At Evelyn's command the two of them used their magic to impede their target. Aralee used her momentum magic to slow the monster down, while Aralee sent out several strands of metal threads to restrict its movements.

The six of them had managed to locate another one of the special monsters within the maze and were doing their best to take it down. Of course, as an entity stronger than most of the others within the maze, it was not going to go down easily.

Currently they were dealing with a monster that was a small flat flower that looked like a sunflower and was able to spin its petals around in order to fly.

It was incredibly nimble and a difficult target to hit, while being able to attack by manipulating the foliage around the maze and shooting out seeds that traveled around two hundred meters a second.

These projectiles were difficult to avoid and required that all of them keep up some level of defense or they would find themselves riddled with small holes that were trivial compared to the real problem.

Once the seeds were embedded in a living host, they began rapidly growing off their blood and magical energy, as Otis had found out at the begging of the fight when he had charged in recklessly.

Thankfully Evelyn was able to use a herbicide potion she had developed to destroy the flowers growing out of Otis before he was killed by them.

Now the six of them were slowly pushing the monsters into a corner until it was unable to resist, and they could safely kill it without incurring any more risks.

"I got it." 

Coming in from above, Verrader was crackling with electricity and brough down a large bolt on top of the flower. As fast as it was, the monster could not avoid the speed of Verrader's attack.

For a moment the nimble flower was stunned by the lightning that had fallen on it and the rest of them unleashed a barrage of attacks that blasted the flower into pieces.

A shower of iron tokens began falling down from where the monster had been destroyed and within the tokens a single key could be seen as well.

"Hehe. We have gotten pretty good at hunting these things down. I remember when one of them gave me a bunch of trouble back when we were all still separated. But now we are the ones hunting them down." Bylur said, wearing a proud expression.

These higher-class monsters had been quite dangerous encounters for all of them before, but no longer. For the last few months these creatures had been their main prey.

"I am just glad that we finally managed to find this one. It would have left a sour taste in my mouth if we did not get anything after searching for nearly a week. Especially since it is our last day here." Rehni said.

As she had said, today was when they were going to be leaving the domain for a time.

There were only nine days left until Otis would be able to enter the Roost and they were going to be using that time to fly to the location where the entry challenges would be held.

Of course, as a tyrant rank beast with a superior evolution Otis would be admitted without any problems. Or at least, that is what Melisandre had assured Evelyn of.

"We have the key now, so let us head to the door. We have given ourselves a bit of extra time as a precaution, but if we miss the challenges this time, we will have to wait another year before the next ones." Evelyn said, picking up the dropped key and heading in the direction of the sealed door it would open.