-Chapter 19- Flaming Tunnels I

Arthur Leywin P.O.V.

-*One Year Later*-

A year has passed since Lilia and I began our journey as adventurers with Jasmine and Adam. We have so far explored plenty of dungeons and some we did separately, I managed to take it on alone but since Lilia is a conjurer she needed someone to join her. Since then she has risen to the rank of B-class, I still am A-class but am approaching the number of merit points to take the AA-class examination.

Adam and Jasmine however have progressed to the AA-class adventurer gaining a gold adventurer card. Adam managed to learn how to use water magic thanks to me, I had taught him a few techniques and theories but he seemed to catch the idea on his own. It was thanks to that that he passed the exam. Meanwhile, Jasmine had picked up a few new wind techniques helping her advance to AA-class.

Word has gotten around about two masked adventurers exploring dungeons with Jasmine Flameworth. Unsurprisingly Adam wasn't mentioned since he isn't popular but some word has been spreading about him. It wasn't long before the names Note and Flow was being talked about in most adventurer hotspots.

We are currently on our way to the next dungeon raid. The dungeon we are heading to is called the Flaming Tunnels, It is a B-class dungeon. I had done some research on it before we accepted the deal, the most common creatures that inhabit that dungeon is Flame Salamanders, C-class mana beasts that spit liquid that burns through bone. Simply wrapping yourself with mana should be enough for us to keep ourselves protected.

We don't know who is in the raid squad so we will find out when we get there. Ignoring their speed, the mana beasts are easy to take down. So a large skilled party of adventurers isn't needed.

But what we see when we arrive is way less than what we were expecting, looking at the meet-up spot in front of the dungeon entrance was one single person.

He was a rather skinny guy with little muscle, he was decently tall maybe around six feet tall, his hair is a pale orange color and ash and dust were laying in his hair as if he had just fled from a house fire. He had freckles and a devilish smirk on his face, he wore tinted goggles over his eyes so I could barely see his green-colored eyes. On his back sat a large bag, reminding me of a moose sack from my old world, (If you don't know what it looks like it was the bag Jack had in Titanic, It was also used in WWII by Sweden.) The bag looked filled to the brim with stuff that I couldn't possibly imagine.

He spots us and in a giddy voice yells out "Hey there! People actually came. I wasn't expecting this many people to even bother reading my request."

This confused me, why wouldn't people read his requests. People went looking for dungeons to raid all the time, did people dislike him?

"It's a pleasure to meet you, I think we should start with introductions before we continue talking though."

"Ah, good idea little guy. Here I'll start," He excitedly lifts his hand and points at himself saying, "I am Derek Beige (Yes the color, you think of something better, I can't exactly name him Derek Yellow. Those of you who know color theory will understand what's gonna happen from the yellow hint), I am C-class hunter, my choice of weapons are this whip I have here and explosives."

This guy was getting weirder the more he spoke, A hunter? And only C-class at that, and what's with the use of bombs? Those are used in this world? Wouldn't they be expensive and bad to use in a party environment?

Jasmine cuts in once he finishes speaking, "Wait a hunter? Not a mage? Are you not awakened?"

Wait this guy didn't have a mana core?

"NOPE, I haven't awakened a mana core so I can't use magic at all. None at all, zip, notta, not in the slightest." Derek says in a very extra way.

"Welp, are you guys gonna introduce yourselves?" He asks.

I sigh realizing we are gonna be exploring a dungeon with this guy.

"My name is Note, A-class augmenter, I am dark yellow stage. The main weapon is a sword and I use Fire magic."

Looking at him he was amazed to hear what I had said, I don't know what amazed him though.

Lilia introduces herself next, "Flow, B-class conjurer, I recently reached the light red stage. My main affinity is with water magic."

Next jasmine, "Jasmine, AA-class augmenter, Wind attribute." She lazily introduces herself.

"Adam, I am also an AA-class augmenter, I wield a spear and water attribute." Adam confidently introduces himself.

"Perfect! Ok not that we introduced ourselves let's get going!" Derek immediately begins marching toward the entrance and starts descending into the caverns.

We all follow although not happy about our new temporary party member. Reaching the first floor we look around.

The Flame Tunnels are a collection of tunnels that spread out covering a large area, There are different levels of tunnels. We are currently on the first level/floor, the number rises as we descend further down. We will only see very few flame salamanders here and the number we find will raise the further we go down.

We begin our venture through the tunnels, Derek begins speaking about how he would normally explore this place.

"I used to explore this place a lot, I would come here because the salamanders can be used to create my bombs, I even drew maps of the tunnels. Those would sure come in handy right now, too bad those were taken from me by some weird hooded men, those guys were weird they had weird tattoos on their back. Maybe they were a gang of some sorts, huh, hey hey, are you guys even listening to me?" Derek was rambling away about his past experiences adventuring, I'm sure no one else here was paying much mind to his ramblings. After a while of listening to his voice, it was starting to sound rather annoying. He was a nice guy don't get me wrong, just... He was too open with things I guess.

Looking around I look at the crystals that illuminate the tunnels, It was amazing how there were crystals that illuminate coming in contact with mana like that if it weren't due to their very dim glow making them not convenient enough to light up a large room these would probably be used way more often in larger cities.

If it weren't for the mana beasts roaming around these kinds of places would be fun to visit as simply a tourist attraction, most of these dungeons look like scenes from a fantasy book series.

Soon enough I heard a strange noise, I enhance my hearing by using mana to listen in. Sure enough, I hear a small swarm of creatures approaching the area. "Get ready everyone," I warn the others of the approaching enemies. We get into our normal battle position, Jasmine and I in the front with Lilia behind us with Adam guarding her. Derek got into his battle position in front of Lilia and Adam with his whip out.

After a few seconds of being prepared and suddenly what looked to be a Flame Salamander shot out of the darkness leaping at me, I respond first and upward swing my sword (Not the rapier) cutting the salamander in half. Dozens more come running out, they were the size of a small dog so they could move fast and plenty of them could travel around with each other like ants.

We all began fighting with the Flame Salamanders, but as the fight went on I noticed they didn't look right, they were the wrong color. Yes although some of them were their normal color, the rest were this weird purple color, some of them only have a few patches of their red skin remaining as if they were still in the process of evolving somehow. We fought against them which proved to be a more difficult task than imagined, it was had to believe these guys were C-class and not B-class.

Finishing the fight with me driving my sword into the back of the last salamander pinning its corpse to the ground, I pull my sword out of the dirt. Now that the battle was over we had time to think about what just happened.

Derek had already begun crouching down to inspect the Flame Salamander's bodies. He seemed like an expert so I decided to ask him what he think had happened.

"Looking at them they sort of look like they've been corrupted by some disease or maybe they evolved somehow like the natural selection?" Derek says if this was confusing to him maybe this was a problem.

He rummage through the corpses of the Flame Salamanders and try to find their beast cores, it turns out only the ones that were either fully red or still had some red patches left had beast cores, the entirely purple ones had no beast core within them.

Now, this is just ridiculous how could things like this happen. They didn't have beast cores, did they somehow turn to dust when they died?

"Come on we should keep going, we can't stay in one place like this." Jasmine states.

Getting out of my endless thoughts I agree and we continue our exploration of the dungeon. We soon reach the second level, there the tunnels are a lot darker but nothing that augmenting our eyes with mana couldn't stop. Derek solved this problem for himself with his little goggles, they somehow let him see in these dim tunnels, or so he says. I didn't bother to ask more since most of what he says is starting to sound crazy.

We continue walking until I hear a snap under my foot as if I stepped on a stick. Looking down beneath my foot I see some kind of cloth that had gotten itself caught on the dead vine I crushed under my foot.

Kneeling and picking up the cloth I inspect what was on it, It had some kind of marking on it meant to symbolize one's military squadron, similar to my old world. It didn't remind me of anything I saw in Sapin, or even anything in the Dicathen history books. It gave me a bad feeling so I decided to pocket the cloth to look at it more at a later date.

We decide to continue forward and venture deeper into the tunnels (Don't get any silly ideas you heathens)

We soon come across a swarm of dead Flame Salamanders, they were stacked up in a pile next to the wall. I guess this could simply just be explained away by previous adventurers. But why would they take the time to move them into a pile?

We decide to walk past them but when we take a step near them, the floor begins to give out. 'A pit trap?!'

Before I can fall I stab my sword into the wall and catch myself, I climb back out with the help of Jasmine and the rest who hadn't fallen in since I was leading the group. "Thanks, that could have been dangerous."

"Who would have set up a pit trap here?" Jasmine asks.

"Could they have been trying to catch the mana beasts in it?" I ask.

"Trapping mana beasts is used but traps like this aren't that successful with mana beasts like salamanders. Plus they would have disarmed or filled in any traps they set when they left the dungeon." Derek explains while doing the cliche where he pushes up his glasses, but instead, he is wearing goggles.

"This is just becoming a bigger and bigger mess the deeper we explore."

I turn to the entire group and decide to ask, "Is it worth it to continue exploring this dungeon? Or should we just return back and report what happened to the guild?"

I look to the other members of my party to see what they will respond with, either to continue moving or cut our losses and turn back.

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