Stray Soul

After waking up in the dungeon, we started our day with having a breakfast while waiting for the deity to arrive.

We had assumed that it’d be here by the time we woke up but apparently... it hadn’t reached us in the night?

Which was... unexpected.

“...The deity is running late... should we continue delving?” Xavier asked Heinrich, and after a few moments of discussion, we decided on moving on.

We didn’t know why the deity was late—after all neither the spiders nor their webs had been a problem for us. They were, while annoying, quite easy to overcome after a bit of effort.

...Though we may have had an easier time thanks to my potions but... a deity would surely have their own ways of overcoming some spiders’ webs of all things, right?

Afterall, a single deity would easily have centuries of, if not millennia of, experience under their belt.

So, if they couldn’t even navigate through some webs... could they even be considered a deity?

Not that I’ve met many deities in my life... but the ones I’ve seen always seemed to have the right answers for the right questions, and problems.

But it seems that I am the only one worrying about the deity and its whereabouts as everyone seems to have forgotten about it after we started our delve into the floor -3 once again.

I remember us walking around the test rooms last night, and killing a few of the weaker monsters, but we retreated to the rightmost stairway in the floor after half an hour, and spent the night there, like what the note Heinrich left for the deity said.

The monsters on this floor were the same as the other floors, yet different.

The golems seemed sleeker, and looked like they had been actually crafted by people instead of being replicated by the dungeon.

And the undead in this floor were different then the other floors in their variety.

Of course, the familiar undead humans, elves, and even a few gnomes and dwarves were present, but there were also undead monsters that looked to be made out of grafting the bodies of animals and man together.

With some undead also having... golem-like parts?

We had seen a few undead humanoids, whose races we could never make out, that were grafted from the chest onto animals which we found in the forest above, like wolves and deer, and animals that weren’t in the local fauna, like lions.

Some of these undead had parts of their bodies removed and replaced with metallic parts, like spears and swords instead of arms. And some of the other more... “normal” undead had parts of their bodies encased in layers of rock, which made me wonder if the golems we had been killing had remnants of people in them, but we could not tell.

Everything here was... disturbing to say the least. I had seen my fair share of dead people, being an ex-adventurer and all, but not once in my life did, I think that I’d see something like... this. Whatever this is!

And to say the least that we were getting the cold feet was an understatement.

The demon in the goblin village we had to fight had been enough excitement and fear for a lifetime for us all. But this?

We had to report this to the church! This was surely the doing of Death and his vile followers!

The moment we saw the goblins here, we should’ve just left immediately and gone back to report this to the church!

But we couldn’t now due to the damned magical contract we had to sign for the deity to let us into the dungeon!

Don’t get me wrong, I am... not all un-grateful to it, as it saved mine, Heinrich’s, and Lazarus’ lives.

But it does not change the fact that it is just an abomination that we should let the church deal with.

But the only person that can physically report this, Heinrich, is keen that either the Imperium, or the church has something to do with this place!

This... his thesis or whatever just doesn’t make sense!

Not to forget the fact that he doesn’t let us read every note he finds, and that he is getting less and less keen on sharing more information with us as we delve deeper.

He told me the reason that he wasn’t talking about his findings was the possibility of there being a loophole the others could use in either his, or the deity’s mana contract.

Which is... while not unfounded, as I’ve seen before how easily some badly made contracts could be voided, still feels a bit weird as the contracts he showed me seemed pretty impregnable.

And the contract given to use by the deity, which were while clearly neither created nor signed by it, had been made by something strong, were impregnable as well. As far as I know that is.

And while I’d be more than happy to let him act like this as... well, he’s always been a bit weird... even though we first met when he was in his thirties and when I was 9 and he is now 50 and—

What I want to say is, I can give him some slack for being a bit weird normally, as while he is 50, half elves live for around 150 years while elves live for 200, and taking into consideration that he has a lot of elven blood in him, he’ll eventually grow out of this phase in his life.

But the situation we’ve found is anything but normal! And him acting this distant so suddenly is weird as well!

He should be talking to us more and explain what’s going on but... it’s not really like I can blame him.

He is clearly stressed as much as we are, and the fact that the rank of the monsters in the dungeon are steadily rising doesn’t help either.

In the last floor, we met 1 or 2 monsters that were F rank, nothing that concerning as most of them were still G ranks who could be dealt with just a good wack.

But here, while there are still quite a few G ranks, the number of F ranks have definitely skyrocketed, and have gone past their numbers.

We knew that this would happen sooner or later, as every floor lower gets progressively harder as there is just more mana in the air for the monsters to absorb, but with the added tension of these weirder monsters, and us having a clearer picture of the situation we are in?

It makes our situation that much worse.

Though, thankfully, the floors are still not threatening enough that we can’t just waltz through them, and into the stairways, and escape easily.

But in one or two floors, the dungeon will be all but easily traversable, and we will have to leave the dungeon for good.

...Or we will spend more time tracking back and forth through the dungeon for a few more days until our time is up, and the deity forces us to leave.

Hopefully though, we will leave far before that.

But before we can go up and leave, we need to go deeper.

So, that’s what we did... not that I was much of a help as I hadn’t fought for so long that I was basically useless in any fighting we had.

But the others were strong enough that my help wasn’t needed anyways, and after a few hours of doing some surface exploration of the floor, we went down to floor -4.

Which was mostly the same as the floor above it, with the only difference being that there were seemingly only F ranks, which made it the only floor where we had to tread carefully.

Though after a few more hours, we retreated to the stairways to have another meal and discuss what we should do now.

Should we push deeper, or should we star exploring the floors we were on further.

“...I know that we are at the level where the dungeon is getting dangerous for even us, but we zhould go to floor -5 to at least see what’s in it.” Heinrich said, which was to be expected from him.

Others were though... not so keen on the prospect, which was understandable as, if we made a rough guess from how quickly the ranks of the monsters rose in the dungeon, the next floor should have E ranks showing their head.

Which would actively put our lives at risk as, while Elise and Xavier were E ranks too, Elise was focused more on scouting from afar, and, while Xavier was more tanky than her, he was not enough to defeat E ranks monsters by himself.

“...Do we even need to go deeper though?” Lazarus asked, which made us all turn towards him.

“You seem to have found what you brought us here for, seeing as you are not wiling to reveal too many details to us. So... do we even need to go a floor lower?

“Doing so will only endanger us while not providing any tangible benefit.” Lazarus finished and... I think this is the only time I’ve heard him say something even remotely correct.

But Heinrich persisted, even though he knew of the dangers, and said that we didn’t even need to do our normal exploration of an hour or two, and we could return after only a few minutes of doing a threat assessment for the next expedition he’d lead into the dungeon, and it’d only take a few minutes at most.

As simple as going in, and going out.

“...I am not sure about how I feel about this.” I said, which made other’s heads turn towards me.

“What do you mean?” Heinrich asked.

“Well... I’ve just... been having a hard time keeping up in this floor. So, I just don’t think I’d be a good idea for me to go down. If you guys are going to only take a few minutes to look around, should I just... stay in the stairways?” I asked.

They were not... really warm to the idea as separating in a dungeon was a really, really bad idea.

Even though they may leave me in a “safe” area.

But after a few minutes of discussion, we decided to split the group into 2.

The first group consisting of Xavier, Elise, and Heinrich would quickly move into floor -5, explore around for a few minutes to half an hour, and come back.

The second group, consisting of me, Lazarus, and Xylene would basically just sit in a stairway connecting floors -3 and -4, so no wandering E ranks or stronger in floor -5 could come encounter as randomly.

After we moved into a stairway leading to floor -3, group one bid their farewells, and quickly moved to do their thing.

Not that Xylene liked the idea of separating as she just saw it as... her being pulled out of action for no reason....

I literally have no idea how this battle maniac is lower ranked than Xavier, but you know what? That’s probably a blessing in disguise.

The biggest blessing I’ve ever seen even! All 7 of the great gods, Lunara, and the 4 Great Spirits must’ve all come together to bless us like this!

“Shorty please stop talking so much, you are going to draw the monsters to us...” Lazarus remarked as Xylene wasn’t exactly being quiet...

“What do you mean!? I am being quiet!?” She said, clearly screaming.

And they started another round of quarrelling that... I’d have to stop; otherwise, monsters might actually come here.

“Okay you two, calm down for a—”

*Creak~*

As we were worrying about monsters being drawn to us, the door started opening with a creaking, and Lazarus immediately picked up his bow, and knocked an arrow in it, while Xylene moved in front of him, and I behind them.

And we stood on the stairs for a moment, ready to escape the moment Lazarus fired his arrow, and we saw what we were facing.

And a moment later, the door fully opened.

*swoosh~*

Lazarus’ arrow flew through the air, and hit whatever was trying to come through the door.

*clank~*

Though as it hit the monster, a metallic sound rung through the air, and the arrow dropped to the ground, and we got ready to just run and fight the monster in the stairways, where we had high ground, but before we could start running upwards, a familiar sound came from the door.

“Don’t get heated up, it’s just me.” The deity said, and started squeezing through the door.

As the deity came into our full view, I saw a very, very un-familiar form.

It still had the branches and dried leaves of the deity we were accustomed to, but instead of 2 big red eyes, the deity now had dozens upon dozens of small black beads across its body, which were visible through the gaps in the... armour it was wearing, which was fashioned from the metallic parts of the monsters in this floor, and the one above. And was being held in place by what seemed to be branches, and fangs which had been pushed through the plates of metal, and into the deity’s body, lodging themselves in.

And a few spears and swords were also lodged into the deity’s body, but I could see a mass of branches and... flesh covering them, and connecting them to the deity’s body?

The Deity had also managed to find 2 pairs of... “Normal eyes”, which had been undoubtedly looted from the corpses of animals in the forest, and was looking at us with them.

And the mere sight of the deity made me as uncomfortable as always, not that I said anything about it to the others, and tried to keep my face as composed as possible.

“Wait a goddamn second...” The deity muttered.

“Where are the other three? Did... did they fucking die while I was gone?!”

... Okay, we should probably start explaining a few things.