27 Into Darkness

Feeling a sense of drowning wash over his mind, Kameron turned to his side while expelling water from his mouth. Coughing a few times while taking a few breaths in between he realized he hadn't died just yet.

"Saltwater is disgusting.." he mumbled as he slowly looked around to observe his surroundings. The surroundings were by glowing stalactite-looking rocks. Seeing that he was also next to a pool of water. He figured he had gotten out of that a while ago since his clothes weren't dripping wet.

Remembering the reason he had gotten into this situation, he quickly turned his head to the opposite side of his body but was startled in the process causing him to crawl backward a bit.

The reason? It was most likely the female sitting with her legs crossed beside him. Her eyes closed as if she was asleep. This was further supported by her steady breathing and silent reaction to him waking up so loudly.

Calming down after a few seconds, Kameron sat across from her with his legs crossed and observed her appearance.

The girl had almost greyish blue skin and gill-like features on her neck. Her hair faded from a black at the roots to a neon blue color almost a third of the way through on towards the tips. Her face was small and extremely beautiful, and her body was looking plump in the places Kameron could observe from his position.

It helped that she appeared to be wearing something that seemed like a strapless bra that was only tied around the back.

It made it easier for him to scan her body as he observed her. Noticing the black tribal markings extending from her shoulders to her arms, he instantly thought that was cool.

There is nothing cooler than a girl with tattoos in Kameron's opinion.

Though the one thing he wanted to see were her eyes, Kameron has a habit of looking into the eyes of girls he met for the first time. This was to see if she had nice eyes and compliment them before anything else.

After a bit of time, he saw the face of the girl twitch. This startled him a bit and made him a bit nervous as he kept watching her as she slowly opened her eyes.

Meeting her dark blue eyes with his own, he was about to offer a greeting until she frowned and instantly shifted her hand towards him as a massive amount of water element gathered before her palm forming a sword.

This caused him to quickly use his hands to propel himself up as he jumped back a few feet away from her while equipping his swords. At the same time, he heard her say something with lowered his mood quite a bit.

"Don't look at me, demon…"

"And why shouldn't I?" he responded not knowing why was defensive.

"You and your evil race have no right to look at me."

"Just because I'm a demon?" He asked, thoroughly confused as to why she directed his hate toward him if he clearly saved her.

"I already helped you not drown in the water you swallowed so just go." She said as she slowly stood up, giving a better view of her appearing to Kameron.

The girl seemed about the same height as Kameron and wore what seemed to be a pair of shorts that stopped at the middle of her knee while a sort of half skirt looped around her back, covering her bottom from looks if she turned around.

What Kameron failed to notice before due to her hair covering it, was her pointed ears that resembled a certain race.

"Your ears look similar to those of the elven race."

Hearing his comment, the girl's expression darkened as she got into what he assumed to be her fighting stance. "Going to try adding me to the number of my people that your race has already killed huh? We'll give it a try and see what happens…'"

"You need to calm down and stop assuming things!" Kameron retorted as he began getting annoyed that the presumable elf girl in front of him kept mentioning reasons to continue directing hostility to him when he has done nothing but help her.

"And you need to leave!"

"You are really rude to someone who helped save your life." Kameron laughed for a few seconds before stopping with a slightly angered expression on his face. Putting away his swords, he began walking deeper into the cave without bothering to deal with the hostile girl anymore.

"We are already even so don't expect me to repay you extra!" She shouted as she debated following him. While it was true that she had already repaid her debt to him, from what she had discovered earlier while she walked around after waking up, Kameron was walking down the only clear-cut pathway.

Groaning to herself for being rude to the only person in this situation with her. She decided to follow him from a distance since she didn't want to be left alone in such a place.

…

..

.

After walking for what seemed to be about twenty minutes, Kameron turned around to check and see if the elf was still following him. He had noticed her trailing him earlier with his map but since he didn't want to waste time arguing with her he simply kept walking through the rocky corridor. The smell of seawater had disappeared at this point so except for his clothes and the elf behind him, it smelled fine.

Stopping in the pathway while looking at her, he wanted to wait for her to catch up before trying to start a conversation with her.

"Why did you stop?" The girl asked as she stopped a good distance away from him.

"I am waiting for you to get up here so we can walk and talk."

"I don't want to talk with you."

"Stop being anti-social and get up here, I am clearly not being hostile to you so calm down."

Listening to his words, the girl thought about it and began understanding that she has been a bit too hostile to him. Kameron has been nothing but nice to her, nothing about him reminded her of the information about demons she knew of so realizing she was being unnecessarily rude, she tried making amends while stepping toward him.

"I apologize… let's just converse while we travel. I won't be mean to you anymore unless you give me a real reason to be…" She said as she lowered her head slightly.

"Fine, let's go…" Kameron said since he too was getting tired of the shuffling of feet being the only thing interesting as he explored this cave, other than talking with Ina about what to do when he got back to the village.

Walking side by side, the two continued onward into the pathway. They didn't talk more than before but eventually, they will open up to each other and talk about something...hopefully…

A few minutes later it became noticeably darker and colder within the pathway.

"Hey… it's getting colder…" the girl said as she began rubbing her arms together, it was the least she could do since she didn't have much clothing covering her body.

"I can't feel enough fire element around us to make a flame for us either… I wonder why…" Kameron pondered as he activated his eyes of the spirits, he had previously deactivated them within his dungeon as the mana from the surroundings was gathered to begin spawning monsters in the deeper floors. This made everything bright and "misty" so he stopped the ability in order to see normally again.

Going back to the current situation, he saw significantly fewer fire element particles in the surroundings compared to the earth and water element particles saturating the area. The wind element was fairly normal in abundance.

Seeing a larger flow of mana going deeper into the ever-darkening pathway, curtesy of the less abundant glowing stalactites, he stepped forward and stopped in front of the elf girl.

"It looks like the mana is flowing heavily down the path we are headed, it can explain why it is getting colder as we keep going."

"I see, what do you want to do then? We can go back and try swimming out the way we came."

"That's even if we can find how we even got into that water pool…

"So you are suggesting we go down this path? We don't know where it'll even lead"

"I think it's better than walking another hour back the other way just to fail at swimming out of here…"

Watching as the girl stared at him with a pondering expression, he was about to suggest she could take a rest.

"Let's take a mom-"

(WATCH OUT!)

Reacting slower due to his guard being lowered, Kameron failed to raise his sword fast enough as the newly created water sword from the elf in front of him trailed in an arc towards his skull.