Chapter 4: Master hunters.

"All right. On the fifth fucking floor again, it's gonna be a bitch to get to the 30th again..."

"Don't complain, remember it was your fault we ran out of portal scrolls to get back to the last floor we were on..."

"I said I was sorry..."

"Cut the crap. At least check if you can find the treasure chest and open it, at least if we go to the 30th floor again. We'll take whatever we can find and sell it."

"What do we do with the monsters?"

"You know that because we've reached level forty all of us, monsters won't even come near us because of our strength, so don't waste your strength."

"Alright alright. Let's look for treasure and go back to the thirtieth floor again, it's still a long way to the hundredth floor."

A group of four very striking looking people were present on the stairs of the dungeon. Mentioning their level and the current floor they were on, Rakhaly heard the voices, but decided to follow a plan that he formulated in his head, to pretend to be a weak monster and be ignored.

It would not be at all intelligent to be level eight and face four individuals of level forty.

"I'm telling you. If we did this every time we went deeper, we'd be rich!"

A young man armed with metal armor, a shield and a mace spoke, his voice ragged and animated indicating his good mood and unfortunately also his greed.

"Do you know how much Gnash we would earn with all the weapons, armor and other things we find?"

"I do and I'm aware of it, right now our bank accounts are so inflated that I don't know what to spend the money on and the stores haven't received an upgrade for a while, which makes it hard for me to spend the money."

"You could give money to the new adventurers. They need good equipment and some morale to start this."

"No offense, but giving money away to these useless people? Wouldn't that be like shaking hands with someone who has no arms?"

"Wow. That was really offensive."

"What do you think happened to the two groups that ran out of here?"

A golden-haired young woman, holding a bow, interrupted the conversation of both subjects.

"Hmm. Now that you mention it, I have no idea, but one of them mentioned a different skeleton."

"According to what he clearly said, they found a skeleton which had a blue glow in its eyes, which knocked out one of the members of the first group and then the other two of the second."

"Very little information and yet if such a thing were to exist. I guess it would be like a mini-boss or some monster that collected experience...what the hell?"

The older man, dressed in armour with hair, claws and teeth, stopped to admire the ground momentarily, looking at the shattered corpses of a few creatures.

"Fiiiiuuuuu, damn it. Something really tore them apart."

"According to what they said. It was that this skeleton stepped into a teleportation trap and who knows what floor it was sent to.

"I'm afraid not too far... Look over there, near that chest."

The four adventurers looked to the far corner of a room where the aforementioned skeleton was located with shining eyes, which now bore a shield and weapon.

"By the gods, they didn't lie. That guy looks totally different from the other skeletons. Even the ones on the 19th floor are not well equipped."

"What's he doing with that chest... watching it?"

"No... he's inspecting it, he probably wants to open it."

"So... he's an adventurer who died in the dungeon and it consumed his soul turning him into that?"

"I doubt it. If he attacked the other two groups it means he has no intention of becoming an adventurer again and the chest probably brought back memories of when he found them and opened them to take their contents."

"I hadn't thought of it that way... but without keys or burglar locksmith equipment, those chests can't be opened."

"You're right, but I'm afraid that chest is not a chest, it's a mimic."

"A mimic!?"

"Yes. Look to the side, the chest is breathing slightly and there's a little crack on the side which shows his teeth, that skeleton is history. As soon as he opens that chest."

"Let's see, if this skeleton is like you say, a "deceased ex-adventurer" this one should also know about mimics."

Rakhaly stared at the chest, noticing the extremely slight movements it made, also noticing the flow of ether in the air. Like a smell that only dungeon creatures would give off from their bodies.

"..."

Without much thought. Rakhaly placed his skeletal fingers on the top of the chest with the intention of opening it, feeling the teeth of this chest.

"Look. He's going to open it, he's totally fucked!"

The skeleton slowly lifted the lid of the chest with one hand, strangely holding the shield it was carrying in the other.

"Hey... what's he doing with that shield?"

Opening the chest a couple of inches further, it slams open, revealing a pair of arms, but it's immediately interrupted by a powerful blow to the shield by the skeleton, leaving it stunned.

"What the hell?!"

"Did he just hit the mimic with the shield?!

"A goddamn shield bash... Damn, that's a level 15 squire's skill."

Rakhaly's sword easily entered the mimic's mouth, descending to his interior and destroying his internal organs, which lay inside the chest, the mimic slowly became just another monster killed by the hands of the skeleton.

"All right. Boss, what do we do now. Kill the skeleton or be on our way?

"I don't see a problem with the skeleton...I mean it's on the fifth floor and some low level group could take care of it, I really don't feel like fighting and wasting my strength on something that I don't even know what level it is.

"I feel sorry for him, if he's an adventurer who died in the dungeon, we'd be ruining his second chance at life."

"...I'll be honest with you. I don't care, do what you want. I want to get to the thirty-fifth or thirty-sixth floor by the end of the day and hopefully find a portal scroll."

"Meh. I'll pass on this, I have nothing against the bonehead and he'll most likely keep going down the dungeon floors like us, so he could die at the hands of other monsters."

"I'm going to the boss, I want more exp, and on the fifth floor I won't get anything, and the skeleton equipment isn't worth it either."

The group slowly disappeared further into the dungeon finding the stairs to the sixth floor and Rakhaly added a new item to his body.

{Semi-Oxidized Steel Helmet}

EXP: +155

"...Well..."