Stray Soul

“1...2...” I started counting the seconds that were passing as the flames from inside the room continued to roar.

“...3—done.” I told myself and pushed my soul back out to my body as I felt the flames coming from the room disappear.

And as I started regaining my senses, I quickly realised a few parts on my body were still a flame, but they seemed to only be the plant parts of me, which could be mostly ignored for now.

Then I tried to take back the control of my eyes and muscles so I could assess the situation, and get off of Heinrich, and then go heal Caroline and Lazarus if they were not fully charred.

After I managed to spread my soul further into my body though... things didn’t look well.

My eyes still... technically worked, but they were really blurry, and I could barely make out rough shapes and sizes of the things in front of me.

My outer body on the other hand just felt stiff and was hard to move. Probably because of the small fact that it was just burned and was still burning to some degree.

But its stiffness wasn’t that big of a deal as I could just pump a few points of mana into my legs, and they’d work again.

Which is exactly what I did.

*Crack~*

Small cracks appeared all over my body as the charred skin expanded, and I lifted myself up.

Then I moved over to the side, and let Heinrich go free, and after that, he became animated and started sitting instead of lying down.

“Good, he’s alive. Now onto the others...” I thought to myself and turned to my side, and my eyes followed the black line left behind by the flames, which had a weird curve for some reason.

Then I quickly realised that Lazarus and Caroline had already gotten up and were standing behind Elise, who had both of her arms up and pointed towards me and Heinrich.

Quickly understanding that there was some magical tomfoolery going on, I ignored her and started looking at both Lazarus and Caroline to see if they had any injuries.

“Are any of you injured? If you are, I can heal you.” I told them, after a few moments of not being able to tell if they were fine or not as they just seemed like blobs to me.

For a few moments I couldn’t process what was going on.

One moment, Heinrich was just trying to open the locked gate while talking with the deity.

The next moment, the deity suddenly kicked me towards Lazarus and we both rolled to the side.

And then, fire bursted forwards from inside the room, and both Heinrich and the deity were immediately covered in flames.

And for a moment the flames seemed like they were going to take both me, and Lazarus too.

But then a wind barrier appeared in front of us suddenly and Xavier pulled us backwards.

And as soon as I was able to get up, the flames had gone away. And in front of the gate lay the deity’s body, with Heinrich nowhere in sight.

*Twitch~*

While I was still trying to process what was going on, the deity’s body twitched while small flames were still burning on it, then it slowly got up, and moved to the side, and revealed Heinrich from under it, who immediately sat up the moment he was given the chance to.

Then the deity turned towards us, its monstrous form looking more monstrous than ever before, and it stood like that.

2 red dull eyes gazing through us.

“...Are any of you injured? If you are, I can heal you.” The deity then spoke, which reminded me of the kick I got from the side, and I immediately moved my hand towards it, as I started feeling the pain once again.

“...So, are any of you injured?” The deity asked once again, but I couldn’t speak as... did I even have the right to ask for it to heal me after it had just saved my life?

Then a few moments passed, and no one spoke.

“...Well then, I’ll be back in—”

“Haahhh...” Lazarus cut the deity, and started speaking after all the attention was on him.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” He said and gestured towards me with one hand.

“...I don’t believe so?” The deity said after a few seconds passed.

“...Are you blind? Did you not see what I did just a moment ago?”

“As a matter of fact, yes, I am quite blind right now, as my eyes were subjected to live fire. So, if you are not going to tell me what you are talking about, I’ll just head out as I need to get a pair of eyes for myself quickly.” The deity then said.

“...Caroline. You kicked her just a moment ago.” Then Lazarus said, sounding tired for the first time since I’ve met him.

“Oh right! How could I forget! Now... which one of you were Caroline again? I can’t really tell...”

“...The one right next to me?”

“Lazarus, I don’t think you understand that I literally cannot tell which one of you is which. You all just seem like blobs to me. I’ll need her to step forwards.” The deity said, and Lazarus just looked at me and gestured with his head for me to go forwards, which I did after thanking him for a moment.

“Ah you’ve... lost your hat, right?” The deity asked as I went in front of it, and I couldn’t help but immediately put a hand on my head and check for it and... it was gone.

“I’d offer to replace it but... I do believe that neither the goblins nor the ents would have something like that...” The deity then said as it moved its sceptre towards me, and a soft green light, which threatened to make me puke, emanated from it.

“How can those priests live with this thing inside of them?” I thought to myself as even this little exposure to holy energies was too much for me.

“...I should probably send a letter to my parents, thanking them for not telling the church about my ability, shouldn’t I?” I thought to myself once more as the deity pulled the sceptre back after I stopped feeling pain in my chest.

“If that’s all, I’ll head out. This time, wait for me.” It said and started going towards one of the exits.

*THUD*

Then immediately crashed into one of the walls...

“I-I am fine! Just... wait for me for a few hours! I’ll be back!” The deity said, and then quickly left... that’s a lie. He crashed into a few more walls, and trouble getting through the doorway, but somehow managed to.

“...He doesn’t seem very godly, does he?” Xylene muttered a few minutes after the deity went away.

“Darling, please don’t say that while we are still in the dungeon.” Xavier said.

“What? He’s not going to hear us is he now?” Xylene responded.

“No shorty, he’s not going to. But on the off chance he does, it’s going to suck for us. So, shut your trap about these kinds of things.” Lazarus said, and I could see the anger rising in Xylene in real time as she prepared some sort of argument against Lazarus, and as Xavier just moved a hand to start massaging his temples and sighed.

But I wasn’t really interested in the argument they were going to have, so I turned my attention to Heinrich and Elise who were standing next to each other at the doorway, and moved towards them, and started eavesdropping their conversation.

“—so, the entire reason why you weren’t more cautious about a trap was simply because you never thought there could be one?” Elise asked Heinrich, her tone implying disapproval.

“Not merely because I didn’t think there could be a trap, but because there couldn’t be a trap! Whatever language was used for this gate was clearly for barriers and locks only, zo, there zhould be no way for a trap like this to exist!” Henrich countered.

“And yet, it did.” Elise said.

“But—”

“Heinrich, shut up.” Elise cut him off, before he could start defending himself.

“I can respect you for who you are, and for how dedicated and excited you are for your job, but what I cannot respect you is you throwing caution out of the wind.

“You’ve known that there could’ve been magical traps all along, and the main reason we didn’t break through the doors to the third floor was because of your caution, but just because we have not encountered any traps placed by the dungeon, or by this place’s previous residents, it does not mean that there will never be one.” Elise said quite harshly.

“...And who gives you the right to criticize me? After all you didn’t realise there was a trap too! Zo, if anything, we are both at fault.” Heinrich said, clearly not pleased by how Elise was talking to him.

“...You are right. I am at fault for not thinking that the door, which was clearly magically sealed by the previous inhabitants of this place, could have a trap set on it. That I will accept.

“But there is also the fact that this is not my area of expertise. I’ve rarely been in dungeons, and never in one that was built on top of an abandoned research facility.

“But you’ve been to dungeons that are similar to this place, maybe not in size and their origins, but in the ability to construct magical traps, or have the knowledge to do so. So, you should’ve expected this.” Elise said.

“And there was a reason I didn’t expect this, Elise. People don’t leave behind active magic circles like this, and even if they do, that is the only line of defence they leave. I don’t know what kind of picture you have in my mind of these kinds of places, but they usually aren’t filled with anything other than useless ztuff people left behind. A full magic circle like this, with a trap connected to it is unprecedented!” Heinrich said.

“But you could’ve died.”

“I am aware.”

“Both Lazarus and Caroline could’ve died too.”

“I am aware of that as well. Now, will you let me do my job or are you going to continue annoying me?”

“...Well then... I’ll leave you to your job.” Elise said, and left Heinrich, and joined the other 3.

“Do you need anything Caroline?” Heinrich asked me as I looked at Elise leave.

“I was just—err... wondering what was... inside the room?” I asked, not really knowing what to say right now.

“Ah... that...” He said and turned back to look at the room.

“Not sure, and I couldn’t tell you even if I wanted to as the fire blast seems to have destroyed whatever was inside this room, but if I had to guess I’d say it’s a portal room.”

“A portal room? Aren’t portals too expensive to be operated like this though?”

“Normal portals are, but whoever made this portal room could’ve found a more efficient way to cast portal magic, or their destination might not be that far from this room.

“Perhaps another portal at the entrance to the facility? I mean, it’d make sense for there to be a more conventional entrance as they couldn’t’ve built this place into the mountain without some sort of large cave system to build from.

“I could probably restore the portal and figure out where it led to if I had seen the inscriptions they used, but without a larger crew and specialists... this lead as good as dead.” He said, and our conversation died a few moments later.

“...Hopefully there doesn’t remain a large gap between Elise and Heinrich.” I thought to myself as I left him alone and returned to the others, who had already started another argument over something superficial.