15 The Ruined Fortress of Roha Vala, Part One

Neve took slow, steady breaths as she looked around. The hot air she inhaled almost stung to breathe.

It was suffocating.

She had no clue what she was supposed to do in a situation like this. What attitude was she supposed to take? Was the right mindset to simply ignore the intimidating appearance of her surroundings or should she have moved under the assumption that even a sudden gust of wind hitting her the wrong way could be fatal?

For safety's sake, she decided to go with the latter for now.

Lava burst into the air from the left and Neve flinched.

[Couldn't have sent me someplace that looked more pleasant, huh? No, they just had to send me to the dark, haunted-looking lava castle. Nice,] she sighed.

The healer took out her staff, trying to keep her guard up in case an enemy lurked nearby.

[The system said the recommended level for this place was level 50. I... am not even close to that,] she noted. [So, yeah. If anything takes me by surprise, I might actually die in one hit.]

She shook her head, pushing that thought out of her mind.

[No, no,] she told herself, [Like the system said, I'm stuck here until I kill the boss of this place. Even if I ignore literally every single other potential fight aside from that one, that's one thing that I'm guaranteed to have to fight. So, it's best if I start trying to come up with a plan right from the start.]

Before she could do that, though, she did want to see what kind of monsters awaited her in this dungeon. As she'd found out in the past, that wasn't always a good indicator of the type of boss that she could expect to find later, but it did work well enough sometimes.

There were none so far, however, as she walked toward the castle's gates.

The structure was tall and imposing, bathed by a red sun amidst a bloody sky above. Neve wiped away a strand of her sapphire hair that had gotten stuck to her forehead due to her sweating so much. Whether she was doing so due to the heat or because she was just that nervous was impossible to tell.

The walls around her carried scars of battle. Parts had been broken down. Arrows, swords, and old corpses were spread out around her.

[Conventional equipment. I guess I won't be seeing anything too weird, no?]

After a short walk, she ended up standing at the castle's front. A pair of elegant black doors waited just a step away for her to push them open.

"... Just walk in. There's nothing else you can do, right?"

With those quiet, unconfident words thrown out in a mumbled sentence, she placed her hands on the castle's black gates.

Steadying her breathing, she entered the fortress.

Behind those great doors was nothing but captivating darkness. She could faintly make out the outlines of a few items, a long table with some silverware on it, and a couple of mannequins directly at her sides, but nothing beyond that.

Quickly, she cast {Candlelight} and got a better view of the space she'd just entered.

[Hm... Gaudy as shit.]

The first room in this dark castle showcased a table so long it stretched from the door she'd just opened to a ramp of at the back. It was crafted just like a set of stairs, with railings at the sides, but had no steps.

She found the reason for that immediately.

There were multiple paintings here depicting flamboyant people with snake-like lower bodies.

Neve narrowed her eyes at the images.

[Oh... Snake people? What the fuck are they called again, lamias? Is that what I can expect to fight here?]

Just beneath those paintings, there were faceless mannequins holding swords lined up along the walls at the sides. Interestingly, they did not have legs, but each one had a giant sphere under it.

[... The weapons they're carrying look pretty real. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that these things could come alive at any moment. I can't see levels over any of their heads, though, so they may not have been activated just yet.]

An old chandelier hung above the table, looking like it was going to fall any moment now.

[Ugh,] she grimaced, covering her nose. [It smells like an old library in here. At least it's a pretty straightforward first room, though.]

Slowly, she took a step forward.

Walking along the table, she made sure to check the corners behind her, just to be absolutely certain that she wasn't about to get jumped.

[... If you think about it, most of the attribute points I've gotten from leveling up are invested in my Arcane. So, in reality, I basically have the endurance of a level 1 or level 2 player. I'm probably going to die from the first hit I take. Fuck me.]

Suddenly, something in the room shifted.

Neve stopped, holding her staff out in front of her with widened eyes.

[What was that?]

Of course, her eyes went to the mannequins first. It did not seem like any of them had moved, though.

[Did I just imagine it?]

She nearly slapped herself for thinking that.

[No, what the fuck are you saying, Neve? Are you gonna ask whether it was just the wind next? What are you, an NPC???]

She still couldn't see any levels, though. So, despite the fact that something had certainly moved, she couldn't do anything about it.

Inhaling slowly, she swallowed and tried to make her way to the ramp at the back.

[Just take it one step at a time and keep an eye out. This is a dungeon, so there are obviously going to be enemies around here somewhere.]

She tried to walk as silently as possible, but every individual footstep she took felt like she was stomping on the ground. As she walked past a mannequin holding a spear, she swore that its head moved slightly.

Freezing in front of it, Neve stared the inanimate object down for a couple of seconds and kept going.

[... I already hate it here.]

Before long, however, she finally reached the ramp.

There were two paths she could take from here, with the ramp splitting to form two more ramps that led to the east and west.

Figuring that it didn't really matter where she went, she took the left path and continued her slow, gradual walk through the area.

[Okay, okay,] she thought, inhaling sharply. [So far, so good. I guess I was a little too paranoid. I mean, it's not like they're going to send enemies after me as soon as I walk in, right? Yeah, I should probably calm down a li-]

As she stepped onto the second floor, her right foot landed on some sort of hidden button.

[What?]

She looked down and then looked back up as she saw the wall opposite her open.

Three rifles were lined up, aiming straight at her.

She didn't even have time to blink.

All three rifles were fired. The one in the middle hit.

The impact was so strong, it sent Neve flying back through the air. She landed on the part of the staircase where it split off into two paths.

"...!"

She couldn't breathe.

Reaching down, Neve felt a gaping hole just under her chest, between her breasts.

[I'm dying.] She coughed up some blood. [I'm bleeding.]

With her hands shaking, she grabbed her staff, which had fallen a couple of feet next to her.

With it, she cast Healing Ground immediately.

At that moment, the final conversation she had with Carson came back to her mind. A healing spell this weak wouldn't save her on its own.

So, in addition, she did now what she maybe should have done back then to give Carson a better chance of making it. She cast Sacred Ground as well.

The logic behind it was that if bleeding out counted as "taking damage" then Sacred Ground would help with it. She wasn't too sure that was the case but, she was quite literally dying. She had to try.

Staring up at the ceiling, she remembered that she also had her potions.

"Eghh..." It was tough to raise her right arm, but she forced herself to do it, even if her body didn't want to listen.

[Come on, come on, come on...]

Looking through her inventory, she pulled one of her Minor Healing Potions out. The flask, containing a dimly glowing red liquid, fell beside her with a "dink".

She lifted the thing and brought it to her lips, but found the flask had a lid on it.

[You fucking...! AGH!]

Desperately, she unscrewed it and finally poured the contents into her open mouth. Choking on the liquid as she tried to swallow it in time, the effect was immediately noticeable.

[Ah,] she breathed in deeply as she felt her wound repairing itself faster. Throwing the flask away, she sprawled out her arms and lay there until she healed up. [Thank fucking God, ah.]

How long she was there for, she did not know. What she did know was that now that she wasn't dying, her senses were slowly able to focus on other things. She felt her robes soaking up the pool of blood under her body, and she picked up on the minty scent coming from her own breath after drinking the potion.

In addition, she heard the creaking to her left that had, apparently, been there this entire time, and she simply hadn't picked up on it.

[Huh?]

She turned to look at it and soon realized what kind of mess she was in.

Two of the mannequins had begun moving, rolling around the table in search of trespassers.

If she had to guess, it was only because Neve was on her back, laid out, that the enemies had not seen her.

Above their heads, she saw:

Level 51

MP: 150/150

Level 52

MP: 200/200

Neve took her eyes off them and went right back to staring up at the ceiling.

[Fuck. Me.]