16 | You call yourself a guild?

Keen coughs up, blood gushing out of his mouth.

Vi approaches him, but flinches in the presence of snakes ensnaring his body. All of them are poisonous and biting through his clothing. She didn't notice how, but a bolt is stuck halfway on his chest.

"Wh — What happened?" Vi looks around.

She sees Eron jumping from one of the passageways at the third level. The monk follows him while chanting his next skills. One of Shina's familiars carries Justine via his well-attached explosives backpack while she conjures a levitating throne seat to aid her descent.

Edward and the snake charmer stay on the third level. They don't seem to be non-participating.

"Lion's Den Guild?" Vi clenches her teeth and readies her poisonous dagger.

Eron chuckles, then looks at Keen with despise. "That's what you get for being arrogant, kid."

"That looks painful," the monk taps his pewter staff on the ground and casts <Accelerated Effect>.

Shina casts her <Maiden's Robe> once again. "You should have simply avoided conflict."

"What did you do to him?" Vi exclaims while pointing the dagger to Eron, who proceeds before Keen and removes the gold ring from his grasp.

"I see that you found the item we were looking for. Astounding," Eron smirks and glances at her lasciviously. Saliva is starting to drip on one side of his mouth.

Seeing that talking to him is pointless, Vi weighs the options to escape the disadvantage. If she could somehow free Keen from the horde of snakes binding and supplying him with poison, she can bring him to Elise or her mentors.

'Just like he did.' She steals a glimpse of Keen. He is showing no response.

The enemies outnumber them. It doesn't necessarily mean that the two of them should only choose to engage enemies all the time. Escaping is always an option. Especially with her mentor out of commission. She is just level thirteen and has no active skills to cast. Plus, the Lion's Den guild obviously have higher levels than her.

"I guess, this makes it a win for us," Eron steps closer to her. The clank of his heavy hexagonal shield screams its being impenetrable. "Come and I'll show you the thrill of being in my guild."

Vi smiles, feigning her dropping guard. "You call your group a guild?"

"We're here to satisfy a higher level of enjoyment that the real world cannot hope to give us," Justine pulls out a sword with its blade covered in enchantments.

Shina commands one of her familiars carrying a red scythe to guard the portal. She instructs the other to protect her.

"Some of us can be considered prodigies in our chosen expertise, but more people prefer to call us outcasts and freaks." The monk casts a skill called <Matter over Mind>, which makes Vi collapse on her knees.

Vi forces a sarcastic laugh, struggling to put up her weapon. "Why start giving out your sad and tragic backstories now?"

"Let's see if you can still joke around while I play with you in our base." Eron puts the shield on his back. He then shouts to his guildmates standing from afar. "Scour this sad boy's Item Bag for me later, Rudolph!"

The snake charmer waves a hand without showing any emotion. "Of course, bo — "

A bone lance suddenly pierces his stomach. The strong impact carries his body to the dungeon wall where the weapon buries itself halfway.

"Rudo — " Edward leaps back and casts his improved detection skill <Increase Sensitivity> but still fails to fathom the unnoticeable presence of his assailant as his face is smashed towards the wall beside Rudolph.

Eron's group quickly form a defensive position with the sudden commotion from the third level. The monk is about to do another incantation of a sutra when he notices his words are coming out oddly.

"Nimrod —" Shina, with her mana detection, turns to the monk and gasps. She casts <Cocoon of Zenith> as fast as she can upon realizing their support's tongue has been sliced off.

Eron curses while putting back the shield in front of him in a defensive stance. When the large metal drops on the ground, the guild leader slowly looks down and screams as he sees his right arm on the ground.

Justine panics and tries to run towards the portal but Shina's familiar stops him shortly with a threatening stance using the red scythe. He screams as he remembers Shina cannot undo the existing commands to her familiars once she enters the <Cocoon of Zenith>. "Shit!"

"Hosh —" Nimrod covers his mouth with both hands. Being heavily reliant on him for support and healing skills, the Lion's Den guild members do not fancy the use of healing potions. When Eron sees him taking out a Greater Healing Potion for recovering his tongue, the guild leader runs amuck towards him and grabs it with his other arm.

"Aaaah! Give me that! This pain...it's excruciating!" Eron removes the potion's lid with his mouth and pours all of the contents to his amputated arm. The wound stops bleeding, but the lost arm isn't regenerated.

The muscular guild leader then remembers that the monk has regeneration sutras, which cannot be spoken well with his tongue cut off. His moment of greed has led to the certain failure against the enemy they cannot see.

"What do we do, boss?" Justine runs back, but now towards Vi.

"You should be studying at home and making friends at school." Keen appears before him.

In confusion, the teenage boy aims the Exploding Curse Sword at the red-clad man whose hands are only on his pockets.

Shina catches her breath when she detects the aura of Keen standing before their explosives expert. His murderous intent is all over the place, resonating with other humanoid figures resembling him. They seem to be attached by small red threads thinner than the hair and can only be noticed with high-mana detection skills like hers. "This guy...is out of our league. He's a monster."

"How can this be?" Justine's hands tremble. When he snatches a look at the person under Rudolph's binding skill, the humanoid figure they believed was Keen turns into a shadow that fades into nothingness.

"What the — " Eron witnesses the same.

Keen looks over his shoulder without even bothering to see the obviously scared expression in the guild leader's face. "So killing other Transfers is normal to you, although you know people die for real when they die in this shit of a game?!"

His expression is calm, but his words are filled with anger.

"Are you still humans?!" Vi supports him, standing up with a bone lance in one hand and a poisonous dagger on the other.

"Unforgivable." Keen disappears in one blink. Strings of red liquid forming a web pattern fall down to all Lion's Den guild members in lightning speed to end their lives.

◎◎◎

A faint voice echoes indistinctly as a silhouette hovers around Eron's hazy sight.

'Am I dead? Is this my punishment for not trying to listen to the hearts of other people? For not giving enough effort to hear them out?' He cannot feel his body at all.

'Perhaps I really deserve this fate. I trampled upon the lives of others like they didn't matter. In fact, I was turning them into empty beings like myself. I'm the worst scum.'

Two silhouettes now appear before his blurred vision.

"Eron!" Rona's voice abruptly brings his body to an adrenaline rush.

Eron's eyesight becomes clearer and he can already see the cat beastkin and Nimrod waiting for his wake.

Rona embraces him, almost to the point of suffocation. "I thought you were dead."

"I'm not?" He looks around and notices Rudolph, Edward and Justine are also staying with him in the cave. Their eyes have dark bags underneath. "What happened?"

"Our minds were attacked by that red-clad. We think he is a wizard rather than an assassin. His mind illusion was so effective," Nimrod taps one side of his fist on his other hand's palm.

'An illusion?' Eron looks around for a second surveillance.

"Where's Shina and Arlan?" He brushes off some dust from his hair.

Rona pulls away from him and reaches for his hands. "Shina seems to have avoided the mind illusion with her high mental defense and followed those two willingly. Though in secret, I think."

"As for Arlan..." Rudolph trails off.

Edward clenches his fists. "His murder by our hands is not an illusion."

Eron looks at the hands holding his while collecting enough strength. "I guessed as much."

"The illusion was cast the moment we stepped out of this passageway." Nimrod clarifies. He also adds that when they came back to their senses, the two assassins, along with Shina, were already gone and the legendary item Clone Ring was nowhere to be found.

Eron doesn't care about that item anymore. The pressing concern is how they will be able to escape the dungeon unscathed. A horde of Lesser, Elder, Greater, and Shamanic minotaurs are patrolling the portal's perimeter. With an attack force lessened by two, they would need to adjust their strategy.

"Let's all survive and get the hell out of this dungeon and Esprit itself," he grits his teeth.

"Of course," Rona smiles.