With only the notification as a guide, the challenge began, thousands of beasts appearing out of thin air. Ranging from reptilian humanoids to four legged wolves with skin of lava and fur of crystal, they were immensely varied in nature.

  They immediately charged, eating up the sandy ground in a matter of seconds. Jonathan clapped his hands together, and an expanding half dome of the Void blasted out before him, atomizing the sand and monsters alike. Hundreds died in a split second, a cone of destruction shooting forwards at the speed of a missile.

  Meanwhile, Arkanon and Edgar worked in unison, hurricane force winds fanning a condensed orb of superheated flame as it streaked across the arena. A pyroclasm of an explosion tore through most of the surviving monsters, most of the force directed away from the party.

  The last hundred or so were mopped up in a matter of seconds, the others each taking out a dozen or so. Before ten seconds had passed, the wave was over, and the next starting. The corpses vanished upon the end of the wave, but the blood covering the ground remained.

  The first five waves were mostly the same, just with more monsters each time. The levels stayed the same, but the last wave had almost fifty thousand creatures, packed in tightly. Against area of effect specialists, that only made them fall faster.

  The sixth wave was smaller, but with higher leveled beasts. The first wave had consisted mainly of average, level 300 monsters. In this one, the average level was around 305.

  Jonathan recognized some of them from his time in the earlier realms of Tartarus. The first dungeon he had entered in that realm, the Dungeon of Endless Twilight, had been a series of floors, each with their own storyline and theme to them. In one of them, he had encountered a strange race of beasts, which looked like giant frogs, standing on two legs. Horns jutted out of random places on their bodies, and rather than having soft, gelid flesh, scales coated their bodies. In that layer of the dungeon, the monsters had been ruled over by a cabal of false gods, propped up not by their own power, but by that of their bodyguards, vast hulks of flesh and bone held together by necromancy and foul rituals. Both of them were represented here.

  “Is that-”Edgar began.

  “Some of the creatures from Endless Twilight? Yeah. It looks like whoever created these dungeons doesn’t have much of an imagination,” Jonathan replied. “Doesn’t mean they won’t give us any essence, though.”

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  Jonathan dashed forwards, appearing by one of the necromantic hulks, his fist already hurtling towards the base of its jaw. Each of them had a core of condensed power that granted their strength above their level, but also a weak spot not normally present in the undead.

  The monster tried to block, but by this point, Jonathan was far stronger for his level than he had been during the initial dungeon run against the monster type. His fist blasted its head clean off its shoulders, revealing what looked like a spinal column of green crystal sticking up from the stump. A single karate chop broke it into a thousand green shards, and the undead fell apart, its body crumbling into dust, as befitted the true age of its components.

  Whereas before, Jonathan had slain the monsters in a matter of moments with wide scale elemental purges, now he focused on his martial skills. His fists were like the maelstrom that his fighting style professed as he danced across the battlefield. To a mortal, it would have looked like he were in a thousand places at once, or perhaps, nowhere at all. Monsters burst like sacks of rotten flesh in a constant, pattering beat as the blood rained to the ground, soaking into the sand.

  Arkanon and Edgar were beside him, both men doing the same. For the first time, Jonathan saw Edgar trying something other than long range elemental supremacy as a tactic. The man’s entire body was covered in a transparent suit of condensed air, lending him immense strength and speed, without needing anything allocated to his physical stats. His eyes were somewhat glazed over, as his senses lagged behind his speed, but the man’s True Affinity made up for that, allowing him to read the wind itself.

  Edgar wielded a sword of invisible wind between his hands, and each swing bisected the lesser monsters, and carved into the greater ones. The frogmen were reduced to shards of rubbery flesh, horns and bone, while the undead behemoths were crippled, falling as their legs were severed.

  “This is incredibly easy,” Arkanon said, a note of disappointment in his voice. “Where’s the challenge in this?”

  “That’s the whole point. There isn't one. At least, not for now. We’re going to have to work for the difficulty.” Jonathan raised an eyebrow, even as he ducked under a claw swipe, and punched up through a ribcage. “That felt strange to say.”

  “I think you’ve just become more of a masochist as you’ve grown in power,” Edgar suggested. “It happens to us all. Progression becomes intricately linked to pain, and soon, the two become conflated.”

  “That happened for me a long time ago,” Arkanon said, his eyes flashing in sync with his fists as they pulped undead flesh. “And it’s served me well ever since.”

  Jonathan couldn’t help but smile, surrounded by allies, for once, not in a life or death situation. This challenge was more of a sort of martial meditation, a way for the sufficiently talented to relax, at least for a time.