Into The Caverns

"So. What am I supposed to do with this?" Kaalsuo pondered while laying on the hill. He was completely taken by surprise when he saw the Mauser C96 by the side of his bed.

He did know that the chances of it being a prank would've been in the realm of impossibility due to the fact that the world around him was absolutely devoid of modern technology.

Kaalsuo concluded there would be no particular reason to develop any kinds of technology if magic existed in this world. If someone needed to cook in the middle of nowhere, they would've just ignited a fire with the flick of finger.

Even so, he knew that this gun was for sure the real deal.

If he were to think of an alternative to the firearms in this world, he would presume that arrows enchanted with magic would've been the perfect equivalent. Judging by some interpretation of magical arrows by mangakas and novels, these hypothetical arrows would've had the velocity of any round in general.

However, according to the said interpretation, these arrows additionally would've been omnidirectional meaning that it could maneuver freely without being tied to the bonds of physics.

Nonetheless, Kaalsuo was significantly disappointed at one particular thing. He had been just been given enough bullets to fill the stripper clip, loading the gun. However, the gun had already been loaded in the first place thus in reality, he really had none.

Kaalsuo figured that he should just leave that matter alone for now and just enjoy the fruits of life without responsibilities.

"Might as well head inside for now." Kaalsuo concluded as he glanced at the far distance of an incoming heavy storm approaching. Of course, he didn't want to sit idly and get soaking wet and did just that.

He slowly strolled back into the house to notice that his father had finally came back home from his occasional 'trips' based on the fact his beloved greatsword was placed by the side of the wall.

The overall appearance of the greatsword was nothing fancy as it resembled your stereotypical edgy huge sword which would take an incredibly built man to lift. The edges of the greatsword seemed to be rather damaged and overused. However, Kaalsuo presumed that the damage to the sword would be nothing as he noticed that it had a strange enchanted hue around the edges of the sword.

"Oh hey, Kaalsuo. Did you miss me?" Alsram talked casually as he exited the outdoor shower which was essentially just a small yet deep pond.

Kaalsuo shook his head which made Alsram slightly disappointed. He had just finished raiding a stronghold of bandits infamous for plundering and committing mass murders on innocent villages and longed to visit his family during those dreadful days.

Alsram and his companions didn't suffer any casualties during the raid. However, the raid was extremely chaotic and brutal as dozens of bandits were slashed and diced either by friendly fire or Alsram and his companions themselves.

Nonetheless, Alsram actually did visit the family more frequently than normal before the raid. He just forgot about all the visits he had done and assumed that the last visit he had recently done was at least 4 to 5 months ago which lead Kaalsuo to shook his head.

"You don't miss me?" Alsram pretended to cry which made Kaalsuo slightly cringe at sight. To Kaalsuo's perspective, it looked as if a middle aged man with a body on par with a Greek god suddenly started crying in the most fakest attempt ever.

"No." Kaalsuo responded, leading to Alsram continuing the act which irritated Kaalsuo a bit. However, Kaalsuo knew what he was doing therefore he couldn't really be irritated for real.

Kaalsuo then proceeded to hug his father in an attempt to ease the situation. He really didn't want to cause any more unnecessary problems during that moment. Although it was technically not a problem to begin with.

"Oh, so you really miss me huh?" Alsram said while patting Kaalsuo's head. Though, his hand was incredibly huge which made the sight of him patting Kaalsuo's head quite goofy.

Kaalsuo then tried to stop hugging Alsram and unfortunately, he couldn't as Alsram then lifted Kaalsuo and sat him on both his shoulders by the head.

"Hey, little dude. Wanna go outside?" Alsram suggested, wanting to stroll around the flat hills with Kaalsuo for while. Of course, Kaalsuo declined by shaking head and told that a storm was coming to the house's direction. Albeit, with some gibberish as Kaalsuo couldn't help but mess up pronouncing some words due to his unfamiliarity of the language.

However, Alsram perfectly understood what Kaalsuo meant and insisted anyways, leading both of them into the outside.

"Kaalsuo, you see that storm?" Alsram questioned Kaalsuo with him responding with a nod.

"That's actually not a regular storm. It's the Fex, a violent looking storm which is actually just calm when you experience it.

It's also some kind of a signal informing that the snowy season will come in a matter of days. It's gonna freezing soon but considering your cold attitude, I think you'll like the cold." Alsram let out a small chuckle and continued his speech.

"How do you identify it from a normal storm? You just have to look at the top of storm to see some kind of aurora thing. You can see it now, look!" Alsram pointed at the majestic crimson aurora resembling like waves on the calm peaceful sea. It also seemed to have tiny noticeable sparkles on the aurora which added to the beauty of the storm.

"Damn, that's cool." Kaalsuo commented on the aurora whilst watching as the aurora waving about. It was his first time seeing some graceful natural phenomenons besides the magic he had seen from Schiessemann and his student, Zwischez.

"By the way, the Fex is rumoured to be the last storm to ever rain in front of one's eyes before tragedy. Just tell you a fact." Alsram said as he gazed at the storm.

"This reeks of death flag." Kaalsuo thought at the fact which had came out of absolutely nowhere. However, he shrugged the unnecessarily anxious thought off. He had no reason to believe and apply random anime prediction shit into his life.

* * *

Alsram was currently having a conversation to one of my companions. Though, the companion wasn't involved in the raid as he was stationed near the gates of the valley in case of a sudden counterattack.

There were no counterattack therefore the companion was in absolutely great shape. Supposedly, he even had a beer with some travellers venturing into the valley. Albeit, this was just the information Kaalsuo acquired from eavesdropping the conversation.

Kaalsuo easily obtained information from Alsram and his companion's conversation as he was placed by the side of the seats they sat on. However, the conversation was nothing too special.

The two adults were just having conversation about some random miscellaneous stuff such as the companion finding a stash of barrels filled to the brim with wine.

Kaalsuo did obtain knowledge about the companion's name which is a common name in the valley according to his dad's teasing on his companion.

The man's name was Assaen. Unfortunately, his name didn't live up to Kaalsuo's expectations of him being an assassin. Too bad, his occupation was the same as his father's.

Although he wasn't an assassin, he wore a dark hooded coat which extended all the way to his feet. Essentially becoming an accidental broom. Alsram joked that he would've just needed Assaen to walk slowly, gradually bringing the dirt and dust along with him.

He resembled like your average joe just minding their business. His build wasn't too particularly muscular nor was he skinny as a skeleton, he was just balanced overall.

He didn't have a particular good hairstyle due to the unfortunate fact that he had absolutely no hair to begin with. Thus he was indeed bald.

Overall, Assaen's appearance seemed on par with side characters that'll never appear ever again. It's like the author purposely made a lousy description of the character just to forget about the character a day later. Strange isn't it?

"Well, everyone. Let's go sightseeing a huge cave!" Alsram declared by shouting moderately loud yet clear for everyone in the proximity to hear.

The people that were present during that time was fairly low as there were only Kaalsuo and the two barbarians. Regardless of that, it really didn't matter as they were just visiting a cave.

Alsram grabbed his sword by the blade and swung it in the air for him to shortly afterwards grab the sword by it's hilt. Assaen on the other hand, opted to do absolutely nothing and just relax on the seat.

"Let us embark to our destination!" Alsram tried to hype up the mood and to no avail, it did utterly nothing at all. However, it didn't demotivate Alsram's enthusiasm about the short trip to the cavern which indirectly loosened up the atmosphere a bit.

The three dudes were about to begin their trip when suddenly, another dude appeared out of nowhere.

"Hey! Wait for me!" Zweschez shouted whilst waving to them in the distance. He hurriedly sprinted to the group's location and arrived there unexpectedly quick for a magician.

"Now that things are settled, let's get on with it."

* * *

"Damn, this cave is actually more enormous than I initially thought." Kaalsuo commented about the entrance to the cave. His size dwarfed compared to sheer size of the stalactites and stalagmites as the stalactites would've at least been 10 meters in length.

However, it was a huge pain in the ass to traverse the rough terrain inside the cavern. Every step that Kaalsuo had to take needed to calculate in his head whether if he'd fall or slip at next step. To make things slightly worse, the cavern was home to some species of ants which was the size of fucking rats.

Kaalsuo really disliked insects. Primarily, insects that could inflict harm to his precious little body. When he saw those rat sized ants, he was immediately determined.

Determined to cause mass extinction to the oversized ant population of the cavern. He didn't care what the world's protection laws of certain species were. He just wanted violence.

Of course, in his current state, he couldn't commit mass genocide on the ant population just yet. There was one alternative that he could use which was his pistol. However, Kaalsuo didn't want to waste some fine bullets against just oversized ants. That would be unnecessary.

"Why are these ants so big..?" Zweschez asked while casually incinerating the ants along the way.

"Honestly, I don't know." Alsram responded to the question while casually slashing dozens of ants along the way. In fact, the two had killed so much ants in such a short duration that they could create a 5+ meter tall pile of dead ant corpses.

"Damn, I envy them." Kaalsuo thought as an ant leaped onto his head and repeatedly attempting to bite his head but alas, it did absolutely nothing. Although the ants were oversized, it seemed that the biting force of the ants were as weak as a grandma in her 150s if that was even possible.

"Is that a stream right there?" Zweschez pointed to the far distance of his findings.

To Kaalsuo's perspective, he had no clue as to where Zweschez was even pointing at. However, using his hearings, he could definitely tell that there were noises of water coming from ahead in which Zweschez had pointed to.

However, the supposedly stream wasn't actually just a stream. It was far bigger than what a stream was supposed to be as it seemed to be quite the river. Though, the waters of the river seemed to have some kind of dark eerie feeling to the waters. Kaalsuo knew that the river wasn't actually that deep but the waters that created the illusion.

"Careful guys, the waters here are extremely fast although it looks calm." Alsram warned the group about the danger. He took a random rogue stick from the ground and pointed half of the stick into the water. He then pulled the stick back out to show that the stick had in fact been 'corroded'.

Too bad that didn't stop Kaalsuo from throwing rocks down the river. He just couldn't stop his act. Once he saw water and a couple of rocks, he knew he had to get things done.

Unfortunately for him, Alsram caught notice of Kaalsuo's unusual behaviour and swiftly distanced Kaalsuo away from the rapid waters of the river.

"Okay guys, we're approaching the more scenic section of the cave!" Alsram proudly announced to the others.

Unlike the previous section which speciality was just tall spikes, the current section was definitely more stunning. The reason for it being stunning is due to the fact bright sparkling crystals were scattered throughout the section of the cavern. All of the crystals had a different color from each other which intensifed the stunning aspects of the cavern.

However, Kaalsuo was really indifferent about the section. Each of the crystals illuminated light based on their color, albeit bright or dim. Unfortunately for him, the mentioned crystals were scattered practically everywhere which made the room so fucking bright that Kaalsuo could feel his pupils burning in sight.

Luckily, his poor eyes adapted to the light level quickly. If his eyes didn't somehow adapt, he would've kissed his eyes goodbye.

"I-It's... so bright.." Zweschez commented about the overly bright surroundings. He tried to cover his eyes from lights by casting a shadow on his eyes with his hands. In fact, Kaalsuo could feel the mana around Zweschez's eyes presumably to protect his eyes from the light rays.

"You'll get used it in no time." Assaen assured him. Though, it was ironic for the man to assure Zweschez as he too was using some kind of trick to protect his eyes.

The group walked to one of the main attractions of the cavern section which was the floating crystal.

It was a fairly huge crystal, around the size of Alsram's Greek god body. The crystal was the shape of a bipyramid with all sides of the polyhedron a different color from the rest. Due to the multicolours, the light emitted from the crystal would result in the crystal becoming some kind of disco ball. The only thing left to complete it would be unnecessarily loud edm or dubstep music.

Additionally, it would actually be safe to spin around the crystal slowly like a disco ball.

"I think we've seen enough for now, let's go to the last and final section of the cave." Alsram concluded as he waved the others to follow him.

However, during the period the group headed to the section, Alsram seemed to grow wary about some unknown thing. He even changed his footing to be more stealthy and less to be spotted. Unfortunately, the group would've one way or another hindered the man regardless of the footing.

Assaen too was starting to feel that something wasn't right thus he took out his daggers which seemed to be dripping with poison. Preparing for battle.

"What's happening?" Both Kaalsuo and Zweschez asked the same question, just worded differently from eachother. The two guys were catching on the sudden change of behaviour.

"Quiet! Something's coming."

Something began to approaching the group in what seemed to be heavy armour judging by the metal noises. It was also either speaking in an unknown language or uttering unknown animal sounds.

"Hide in this ditch!" Assaen whispered as he signalled everyone to head to his location. Surprisingly, the ditch was perfect for everyone to caught a glimpse of whatever was approaching.

The sounds of the unknown being approaching quickly began to intensify, signalling that the being was in fact coming to their direction.

As the sounds finally reached it's peak and reached the group, nothing appeared at all which confused everyone during that period. The anticipation of the unknown being approaching became so high yet so confusing.

"Huh. What just happened?" Alsram questioned, not expecting for the unknown being to dig it's way to their location and stab him by the right side of his abdomen. It slowly became from suspicious to run immediately.

Alsram then held off the slashes from the unknown being and even landed a hit on the being. However, it didn't really inflict any harm on it as it seemed to be unresponsive to hits.

Alsram didn't know whether he was fighting an unknown heavy armoured knight or a creature thus he opted to swinging his greatsword straight to it's abdomen. As he did that, something shocking occured.

The creature severed it's own abdomen on command to avoid the devastating impact from the greatsword. It then backed off a couple steps away from Alsram and rejoined with it's lower body part.

It was beginning to become clear that the creature indeed wasn't human at all. Kaalsuo figured that the creature might be an undead due to the fact it literally just severed itself and lived to tell the tale.

However, Alsram wasn't going to let the undead live to tell the tale. He immediately rushed towards the undead's location and swiftly threw the greatsword on the undead like a javelin. The undead tried to dodge the definite devastating blow but to no avail, it still struck the massive portion of it's body regardless of its efforts. In fact, almost all of it's lower body were now gone.

In addition to that, the impact from the greatsword caused extremely huge damage to the armour. It seemed that the armour was really poor made and could barely withstand a single blow. The reasoning behind this was due to the evidence already in front of them.

Scattered throughout the ground were dozens of metal debris from the armour. Some of the debris that could be seen would've been essential to the protection of the undead. However, the armour did the opposite of what it was originally meant for.

Also, the heavily damaged armour exposed what kind of creature was underneath. Below the armour seemed to just be your normal boring skeleton undead. It was no wonder that the skeleton was absolutely losing to the battle. However, the group still didn't know how the boring skeleton managed to dig straight to their location like a mole.

"Let's get on with it." Alsram casually spoke with a hint of aggressiveness to intimidate the skeleton. Just like before, he rushed towards the skeleton as fast as humanly possible. However, he didn't grab his greatsword as he opted to completely turn the skeleton into dust with his special move.

He then babbled some words Kaalsuo couldn't clearly hear and thrusted his entire right arm onto the helmet of the skeleton. In a blast, the skeleton which was standing right there a second ago was now disintegrated into dust alongside the armour with it.

"Well. It's over I guess." Alsram said, scratching the back of his head. Upon those words, the group slowly exited the ditch slowly and cautiously.

"We need to get out of here fast before we have to fight another unnecessary battle. Judging by the skeleton, a dungeon somehow opened in the proximity of the cave." Alsram concluded as he immediately urged the whole group to follow him.

On the way out of the cave, Kaalsuo caught a glimpse of a mineshaft which seemed to rather hidden by the sparkling bright crystals. Through, he felt like it was useless to ponder about a random mineshaft when his life was in danger.

* * *

"Hey dad, what was that mineshaft earlier?" Kaalsuo asked his father although he figured that it was just a mineshaft with the purpose of mining the shiny crystals. Thus he expected Alsram to answer with the same answer one way or another.

"Mineshaft? There's no mineshaft here." Alsram responded, confused as to what Kaalsuo was talking about.

"The actual mining operations of crystal are to the east of this Valley. There's not supposed to be a mining operation here. It's probably some dude taking the opportunity mining the crystals here." Alsram added to the information.

"Huh. Strange"