Part Thirty-Four

“Mrrrraaagggggghhhh!!!”

More screams emanated from the Dullahans as Kalia made yet another move. By now, almost half of the monsters had been activated. She’d made good progress on the puzzle, and the others weren’t struggling with the monsters at all, so it looked like they’d clear this challenge soon. In fact, if she didn’t have to stop to let the others kill the Dullahans every move, they’d already be done by now.

Kalia had long figured out what exactly the slide puzzle was of, and it kinda made sense when you thought about it. They were in a Dungeon with several Demonic monsters, so why wouldn’t there be a pentagram?

Okay, another five moves and I think we’ll have this wrapped up. Hehe, I never thought I’d be glad that mama made me do puzzles with her, but it’s surprisingly come in handy several times now.

She hadn’t noticed though. She hadn’t noticed that the anxiety she’d been plagued by for days now was gone. And since she didn’t notice that, she couldn’t come to the realization that they were in grave danger. Or the repercussions that danger would carry.

***

“EuuuaaaAhhh….”

“Got ‘em! That’s the last of them!”

“Got it! Making the final move…now!”

The second she said that, the room trembled again. All the surviving Dullahans let out pained screams as they went limp, falling to the ground like puppets with their strings cut. I could feel whatever energy that had powered them get sucked away and go back to the podium.

“Ah! What the!?”

A bright, ephemeral light burst out of the top of the podium. It only lasted a few seconds, but that was enough to nearly blind us. By the time it faded, all I could see was spots.

“Dangit! K-Kalia, can you heal my eyes? This hurts more than I thought it would.”

“Y-yeah. Just give me a second to adjust. Okay, [Area Heal]!”

I get the pulse of magic wash over me, fixing the damage to my eyes. The light hadn’t been so bad as to permanently blind us, but being disorientated inside a Dungeon was never a good idea. Though, when had Kalia learned to use [Area Heal]? Huh, weird. Maybe she’s just never needed it before. Her [Heal] is usually enough after all. We don’t typically get hurt enough for everyone to need healing at once.

“Ah, much better. Now, what the heck was that light all about?”

“Uh, I think it was the crystal. See how it’s popped free of the podium? I bet this is our reward for clearing the Challenge.”

“Yeesh, so even that’s like a Mid-Boss. Well, what we’d get?”

“Eh!? What the heck is this thing!?” Huh?

Lesser Demonic Core

Rank: Special

Description: The Core of a Lesser Demon. Contains a considerable amount of Demonic energy, which can be used in Dark Magic Rituals, or to barter with other Demons.

Warning: Demonic energy is highly unstable. Handle with care.

For some reason, everyone looked at me after they read the description. Okay, it was pretty obvious why they were looking at me, I just wish they wouldn’t. Especially since I could see the mischief in their eyes.

“So, what’s it worth to ya?”

“Absolutely nothing. I don’t know of any spells that require Demonic energy to function, nor do I know any Demons.”

“Hrm, are you sure about that?”

“Fairly certain, yes. So yeah, I ain’t got any interest in that dang thing. Besides, we all contributed to getting it.”

My lack of interest seemed to bum them out, as their attempts to needle me ended there. Still, we did need to figure out what to do with it. Normally with item drops, we just distributed them based on who they dropped for, but this thing was the reward for a challenge we all cleared together. Just one person keeping it seemed wrong.

“Hm, I’m a little intrigued about the energy inside it, but since we don’t have any concrete way to harness it, we’ll have to leave it be for now.”

Since no one else had any suggestions, it got thrown into the Dimension Bag we’d gotten from the weird mage. We’d chosen to use it since none of us could figure out if there was anything wrong with it, though we made sure to not put anything truly important inside. There honestly wasn’t much inside yet anyway, just some of the crap we’d found after killing those Gremlins.

Huh, I just realized that I don’t know if we’re going to keep working together after this or not. This expedition started as a way to see if we could work together well in a long-term setting. But since I’ll be leaving to attempt my Trial soon, that kinda throws a wrench into the works. Though maybe I shouldn’t be worried about this right now. We are in a Dungeon.

With that out of the way for now, we decided to keep forging ahead into the Dungeon. Both doors had opened after the puzzle was solved, which also let us find the stairs too. We descended deeper into the Dungeon, prepared for more battles.

***

“BROOOOAAAAAWWW!!!!”

“EUAAAAAAGGGH!”

“Crap, crap, crap, crap! Why are there so many of them!?”

The second floor was just as dark as the first, though it was definitely more dangerous. Not only were there now more Hellhounds than before, but they were also accompanied by Dullahans as well. It was a development that was obvious in hindsight, but wouldn’t really dawn on you until you experienced it for yourself. But it definitely made the battles harder.

Hellhounds were strong, but only attack-wise. So long as you countered their ambushes, they weren’t really a threat in small groups. On the other hand, Dullahans had terrifying tenacity, and while their attacks were very easy to deal with if you just watched them, but when they worked together, they covered each other’s weaknesses surprisingly well. The Dullahans would distract you with their unkillableness, while the Hellhounds used their flames to launch devastating attacks from in-between them. In addition, if you stopped to hack the Dullahans apart, you open yourself up to the Hellhounds. Prioritizing one monster was really hard when they complemented each other so well.

Damnit, this is so annoying! My Grudge Magic is basically useless here! All I can really do is continue to hack the monsters apart one-by-one.

Unfortunately, I was reaching the limits of my stamina. Despite the short breaks we’d taken, we’d been in near-constant battle since entering the Dungeon, and these last few fights were really tiring compared to the ones on the first floor. The number of monsters had doubled, so it was pretty obvious that would happen.

“Gkyaaaa…”

The last Dullahan collapsed to the ground, finally letting things fall silent again. Everyone looked exhausted, particularly Kalia. She’d had to use her staff to beat up a half-dead Dullahan that got too close to her in the last battle. Though that hadn’t worked too well for her since you had to cut those things up to actually kill them.

“Is anyone else feeling tired? Because I keep thinking about my pillow.”

“Eh, I could keep going. Though I have used up about half of my Imbued arrows. How much longer is this floor?”

“Based on the outline of the map, I’d say we’re about seventy percent done with this one. Though that’s only because it seems smaller than the first floor.”

“Hm, we’re all tired, and low on mana. At this rate, fighting the Boss will just get us killed. We need some sleep. Should we maybe exit the Dungeon for today?”

“Won’t everything reset if we do that? That’s how dungeons usually work in games.”

“Some might, but I’ve heard reports that E and D-Rank Dungeons don’t reset even if you leave them alone for several days. Hmph, one perk of working with Braddock, I suppose.” That last line was said quietly, so I thought only I heard it. Whether he was talking to me or himself though, well, that I couldn’t tell.

“Hm. Well, if it doesn’t reset, then we could head back outside to take a breather. But I have a different idea. What if we went back to the Challenge Chamber and checked it? The corpses should have disappeared by now, so if it hasn’t reset, we could probably rest safely there. And if it has, then we just go back outside.”

“Clever. I like it. It wastes as little time as possible. Going all the way back outside would take too long and probably cost us a second day clearing this Dungeon. Let’s go check it out.”

***

Just like I’d thought, the chamber was completely empty once we got there. Even the pedestal had disappeared. It was basically just an empty room now.

Hm, odd. Does this mean monsters don’t respawn? But I seem to remember running into monsters in places I’d already cleared back in the Labyrinth. Then again, it might be kind of stupid to compare this Dungeon to that one. That place was just weird, what with the pink sky and all.

With some relative safety secured, everyone began preparing for bed. As far as I knew, monsters wouldn’t move between floors, so we’d only have to worry about Hellhounds coming in from the first floor, though I personally thought we’d cleared it. Though, there was a slight concern about something spawning directly into the chamber.

Honestly, I doubt that would happen. It might be a possibility in higher ranking Dungeons, but it seems overkill for low-ranked ones. Then again, if something does spawn in, Survival Instinct should wake us up in time. None of the monsters in here have been immune to it, so it should be fine. I think.

I slipped into my sleeping bag, pulling it over my head. The others had insisted that we have a light just in case, and while I agreed with the sentiment, I always had a hard time sleeping when it was light out. Blocking out all light using the bag was probably the only way I’d get to sleep. Honestly, I was just an all-around picky sleeper. Even changing my blanket could affect how quickly I got to sleep.

But it also seemed that I was more tired than I’d thought. I soon found myself drifting off.

***

[Alicia’s POV]

Haaaaah…….yeah, it’s not happening.

About an hour or two had passed since they’d all laid down to rest. Alicia had originally fallen asleep fairly quickly, but had woken back up a short time ago and couldn’t fall back asleep. Even the rhythmic breathing of her companions, normally a soothing sound, wasn’t helping.

Having run out of patience, she extricated herself from her blanket and looked around. The twins had chosen to prop themselves up in the corner, sleeping with their weapons within reach, while Kalia was curled up on a rather plush rug she’d taken from somewhere. Michael, on the other hand, was completely hidden by his sleeping bag, which seemed like a bad idea at first, until you realized that he’d left it unzipped and would roll right out of it at the first sign of trouble. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Stretching out her stiff muscles, she contemplated what to do for the next few hours. Any sort of practice carried the innate risk of waking the others, and she couldn’t really Imbue arrows since the flow of mana could wake them as well. In the end, she didn’t really have anything she could do that was quiet and productive, but just sitting around felt dumb. So with little other option, she cracked open her Grimoire, intent on choosing her next school of magic.

After multiple talks with Kalia and Michael, Alicia had decided on upping the destructive force of her arrows instead of honing her magic. The reason for that was because she could build up a store of magical projectiles, where a mage would be reliant on their mana pool for their spells in battle. And as an added plus, Imbuing the spell actually boosted the output of the spell, though it limited the range as well.

The only real issue with this was that making a single Magic-Infused arrow cost her almost twice as much mana as the base spell did. If not for that, she would’ve stopped making Grenade Arrows a long time ago.

The reason for this was her low proficiency with Imbuement. Whenever she Imbued a spell into an arrow, her imperfect technique caused some of the spell's mana to be lost in transition. She needed to provide extra mana to counter this, thus raising the overall cost.

Still, this wasn’t a hard problem to solve. All she’d need to do was practice using Imbuement until the cost of infusing an arrow went down. After that, she could start refining her spells to make them even more powerful and less costly, creating a powerful cycle. Then she could move on to the higher grade spells she was ignoring for now.

And the first step in her plan was to learn a few more spells from different schools. Considering her natural affinity for Lightning, Wind Magic would have to be next, followed by either Ice or Magma, though the three neutral elements were also options, but they had their own issues. They weren’t technically elements, but were just categorized that way for convenience.

Of the three, Destruction Magic was the most problematic. Simply put, that particular school of magic's spells were all extremely dangerous, and some had the possibility to create nuclear explosions, or even worse. It was aptly named.

Venom Magic obviously dealt in all things poisonous, whether they were mineral or organic based, and some spells even created poisons out of mana or other forms of energy. The issue here was that infusing these spells into arrows wouldn’t provide the kind of firepower she was looking for. Monsters were often highly resistant to poison, meaning this particular school was usually utilized by those who targeted mortals, i.e. assassins.

And finally, there was Solar Magic. When she’d first seen it, Alicia had immediately realized that it would be useful, but not in the way she wanted. Despite the grandiose name, Solar Magic simply dealt with the light spectrum, but not just visible light, oh no. There were spells that employed the UV and infrared spectrums, as well as spells that provided night vision and optical camouflage. And while there were attack spells, Alicia wouldn’t be able to access them for quite some time.

All these factors meant that she’d be better off learning the two Elemental schools she had a neutral affinity with, and maybe one of the ones she had a slight disadvantage with as well. Doing anything else right now wouldn’t help her achieve the goal she’d set for herself in recent days.