Chapter LXVI - Saving (part 2)

The sun is about to reach the top of our heads, so the second bell should ring any time soon. Before heading to the inn, I stopped by a food stall on the street to grab some food to eat.

I bought a cooked chicken, along with the light vegetables to eat along.

After grabbing the meal, I went back to the inn and ate it by myself. Then I quickly prepared and headed back out to see my friends.

They are... currently having a quite painful mission.

It's a Yellow ranked mission. The mission was about doing a check on a possible threat of double dungeon in a Green ranked dungeon.

The fact that they haven't returned in three days, simply means that something has happened. Something bad.

.

The room… was rather dark.

And yet, the poem continued.

"The darkness… is never ending.

Oh lady, how I could never see your beauty shining.

Not since I falling.

Darling."

A very… horrible poem.

"Dude. That's terrible."

"Yeah! Think of some better words, Hod!"

Two other female voices… mocking the poem. 

Despite the darkness on the room, the mockery continues.

Both Cony and Valey just mocked Hod for his terrible display of poems. His vocabulary is just... sad.

"I'd like to see you do better, Cony!"

Hod challenged Cony as he tried to defend himself. With great pride, Cony stood up and closed her eyes.

"Oh, the darkness that defies me...

Why can't you make things easy…?

I have not seen peace in days of many...

Oh, the animosity..."

The room was silenced for a while, but then a mock came from a boy's mouth.

"What the hell does 'days of many' means??"

Hod asked mockingly, mostly as a revenge. The others, however…

"It's beautiful!"

"It has a meaning!"

Everyone clapped their hands to Cony's poem, leaving Hod being shot horrifyingly by Cony's grin. Hod turned his gaze away, trying really hard not to admit his loss.

Right now, they are in the middle of the dungeon, specifically inside a certain room. They had been stuck inside the dungeon for three days now. After all, this dungeon is just way too big.

The reason for this was that the dungeon is a lot like a maze. The paths were devious, and sometimes impossible to go through. There are plenty of cliffs too, and most of them are quite fatal if you slip.

And then there's the monsters. Arthropods.

Most of them are only Green ranked, but their numbers are great. And some of the Blue ranked ones can shoot out poison spit, which no armor can handle.

They haven't encountered a higher ranked one, but it is still highly possible here. They saw some signs, like a gigantic hole that was ten times larger than the size of the biggest Blue ranked Megapede, which was considered the largest one in the dungeon. 

The size of the Megapede is as tall as a grown man, and with the length of around eight meters. Yet, they were able to spot a giant hole ten times the width of the Megapede.

They were sure that something else entirely lives in this double dungeon. And now, they are simply too afraid to continue roaming the dungeon, so they stopped exploring completely and stayed for a while to hide.

Most likely, this monster is the one that opened the double dungeon. It could be the one who connected the two caves together, since it can create many new gigantic paths and such.

This was all of course, the theories made by the group. They haven't really seen the giant monster themselves, but knowing the existence alone is a high possibility, they are too afraid to go and find out.

And now they are just sitting on a closed area, away from all the threats.

"Say... are we going to be able to leave this place soon, or are we just going to find the 'Bludavour'?"

Cony named the unknown monster 'Bludavour'. It's a name she came up with on her own. Everyone else disagreed with naming it, but she had been calling it that since the beginning, and everyone else somewhat grown accustomed to it.

"Well, we are going to leave... Probably."

"What do you mean 'probably'??"

Cony shouted at Hod. Hod has been... different for a while now. Like something had happened to him, that he even grew a slight beard on his chin.

"Well, we aren't going to stay here forever. The Office will send out a protocol after four days we are gone, and we will be saved."

Hod explained to them, and they already know about that.

"Yeah! And that's… when, exactly? I don't even know how long we had been down here."

"Most likely, that's today."

"Really??"

"No."

Hod received a good punch on the upper arm, but he can only cry and laugh.

They had a good amount of food supplies on their magic rings, thankfully. They were able to survive for days inside the dungeon thanks to that emergency supplies.

But supplies will eventually run out. If the search team doesn't find them, then they will be forced to either leave the dungeon or die to hunger.

"Then?? When are we going out again? I'd rather die fighting Bludavour than dying of hunger."

"Same here."

Barett stood up. He was resting for a while now, since they had been walking around the dungeon for days.

"I'd rather die fighting than by hunger."

"Okay then. It's our funeral."

Hod stood up and pointed at the exit. Cony also stood up, followed by Valey.

"Let's either leave this dungeon, or die fighting the monster."

They all finally gathered the courage to stroll down the dungeon again, and they left the hidden safe zone. The double dungeon was like a high difficulty maze, where not every path is possible and it's possible that there is no path at all.

There are also the threat from the arthropods, and the unknown Bludavour.

In any case, it's a difficult choice. But they have chosen to fight.

At least… until they saw the monster in person.