It's Just Not a Good Dungeon

Over the next several hours, the adventurers got all the bodies, living and dead, out of the room. I saw Bode approach Maxwell, face grim, and I saw the way Maxwell’s face shuttered. He hung his head and nodded. I looked away, telling myself that we had at least rescued one of his daughters, even if it didn’t look like her summon had made it... Alive was still better than not… probably…

It didn’t make me feel any better.

I took a look at the bodies of those who hadn't survived. They were drained of not just blood, but any fluid at all, and from the various positions many of their dried husks had been left in, it seemed clear that they hadn't gone peacefully. I hoped with all my heart that Maxwell had stayed beside Clara the entire time and not looked at these. He didn't need to know what kind of suffering his other daughter had likely endured in her final moments.

The healers spent the day diagnosing the living. They were suffering from malnutrition to a small degree, but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as we’d expected. None of the survivors woke up, but we were able to get fluids into them, and the healers were carefully nursing them back to the point where at least Alicia and Nero should be able to recover.

“We found something you should see,” Bode told me that evening.

I cocked my head to the side curiously. I’ll be right back, Master. I received no response, so I rose and followed Bode into the room. We were alone. He brought me to the back, and he showed me a hole in the wall.

“Those things bored a hole into another layer,” he told me.

I peered into the hole and saw that the tubes had reached as far as I could see into that layer of the dungeon. There were huge bundles of them here and there. “What’s in those?” I wondered. They were too large to contain humans. Had Nero been consuming monsters as well?

I suddenly became aware of something pressed against my neck. “Don’t move,” Bode murmured.

I didn’t.

“Your Master’s the one who did this.”

An uncharacteristic rush of anger went through me, there and gone in an instant. The force of it was so intense that in its wake, I felt drained. Though I found the anger itself frightening, I was grateful for the resulting calm. “What makes you think that?”

“It’s just a suspicion,” he admitted. “But there are three survivors, and the healers have already figured out why they're alive. One of them cast a spell or used a Skill that let them absorb nutrients from other living things, and they used it to keep themselves and two others alive by eating everyone else. As for why your Master specifically? No human could have made this hole.”

“No? Why not?” I wondered. I agreed with the healer's explanation of events, but I didn’t know what the hole had to do with anything.

“Because a dungeon’s floors don’t connect logically. People’ve tried blasting through to make a straight path before. You could try making holes in a hundred different places, and it might show you another floor in maybe two or three of them if you’re lucky. Whoever cast this… spell… or whatever it was… There’s no sign that they tried any other spots. Just this one.”

“Okay.” I waited for him to bring this about to a rational conclusion.

“You’re Demons with LUCK UP. Between your senses and your luck, you'd be able to pinpoint the connections to other floors.”

“That seems like some very shaky reasoning,” I noted, feeling unfairly judged. If I could make holes like this that let people skip floors, I'd market it, and I was sure my Master would, too. Clearly, this was a one-time event. “Anyone can get lucky.”

“Are you going to try to say that either Clara or the other girl did this?”

I started to shake my head, then hissed as the blade cut my neck. I didn’t bleed, but it still hurt. “No. Clara wouldn’t have sacrificed her sister, and Alicia would have sacrificed herself. You’re right that Nero’s the only one who would have done it, if one of those three did it.”

“But you don’t admit that he did it?”

“No.”

We remained there for several moments. Finally, the sword lowered. I stood and turned slowly to face him. He remained tense, ready to kill me if I tried anything. Honestly, I thought I stood a decent chance of escaping, if that was my goal, but only because there was a hole to a different floor right behind me. I doubted I stood any chance against an A-ranked adventurer otherwise. “If I Assess your Master," he asked, "what will it tell me?”

“That I’d prefer you not do so.” I sighed and did my best to look non-threatening since I was, after all, a complete non-threat. “What do you want from me?”

“I want your promise that you won’t hurt or kill any members of this party.”

I blinked, confused. “Okay? Sure. I promise.”

For some reason, this made him confused. “Say it, then.”

“I promise that I won’t hurt or kill any of this party,” I said, feeling even more lost.

Bode sheathed his sword and gave me a bemused look. “You agreed to that awfully easily. I thought Demons were supposed to be more careful about making promises.”

“They should be,” Yuulen, the leader of Witches Five said, appearing suddenly. Stealth. I hadn’t even realized we weren’t alone. I should think about finding a way of detecting that. “What makes you so confident, little Demon?”

Confident? It was like we'd suddenly started speaking different languages. “Well, I didn’t want to do that in the first place, so I don’t see a problem with promising not to,” I said slowly, in hopes that it would somehow make them understand my words in the way I wasn't understanding theirs. I tried to figure out what was going through their heads. Were most Demons super contract lawyers or something? Were we bound to our promises or something? I didn't feel as though the promise had changed anything, though. Weird.

Bode and Yuulen looked at each other in silent communication. At last, Bode groaned and nodded. "Fine." He looked back through the hole, expression grim. “The healers’ve told us that if that spell hadn’t been used, everyone would have died. So legally, you and your Master aren't in any trouble. It's distasteful, but given the situation, we can't exactly object. Normal people probably won't be so accepting, though, so you'll have a hard time in Flint in the future.”

"Understandable," I said. Then I hesitated, a horrible thought coming to me. “Do you think they’ll remember what happened?” I asked, voice small. I didn’t want Alicia to hate Nero.

“I have no idea,” Bode said with a shrug. He studied me and snorted. “You make for a very poor Demon.”

“Well, I’m new to it, after all,” I muttered. “It’s not like it comes with a handbook.”

“Doesn’t it? You weren’t born one?” the leader of Witches Five asked, sounding interested.

“That doesn’t seem to be a prerequisite,” I said truthfully. I suppose I was 'born' as a Demon in this world, but that was nothing compared to the decades I spent as a human first, and Nero had been born a Demon.

She hummed thoughtfully and considered me. “Bode, I think we should keep her Master's identity a secret.”

“You don’t think they're planning anything?”

I objected to the suspicion in Bode’s voice, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.

The leader of Witches Five shook her head. “She’s that boy’s summon, correct?”

“According to Assess.”

“Then I would guess that the summoning pulled her through when she was too young to understand what she is properly.” She held up her notebook and tapped it. “Her Master was listed as a Demon Lord Candidate, confirmed by Straits, so he’s only just become a Demon. They’re just two idiots who ended up in a poor situation.”

Bode grimaced and sighed. “I hate working with you.”

“Feeling’s not mutual.” The woman beamed up at him as though he wasn’t nearly twice her size. “One day you’ll adore me the way you should.” She patted his arm gently, then glanced at me. “Run along, little Demon. I doubt your Master will wake up any time soon, so I expect you to continue working with us as we clear this dungeon.”

The healers kept us there for another three days, during which they constantly monitored their three patients. One healer came to me and quietly asked about the Illusion on Nero, and I reluctantly allowed her and only her to see him without it. She clicked her tongue, had me help her clean him up, and then told me that if I kept the Illusion up, she’d make sure no one else cared for him. Apparently, she didn’t care about anything except her job, and I appreciated it.

Eula, the wind mage, had fully recovered without issue, and Heather was fine. The three survivors didn’t wake up, but their vitals were good, and the healers didn’t think there’d be any complications if we had some of our stronger party members carry them. Justice agreed to carry Alicia and Nero, while Maxwell carried his daughter.

As we made to continue our exploration, suddenly, some of the rocks we’d broken through rolled together and formed a little golem at Maxwell’s feet. I blinked, surprised. I hadn’t even suspected. I looked around nervously. Elementals were a little scary. Maxwell froze initially, but then he smiled in pure relief and bent down to scoop it up and place it on his head, where it clung carefully to his hair. “That’s Jeanie, Clara’s summon,” Maxwell told me. "She's going to be okay."

“Hi Jeanie,” I said, giving the Earth Elemental a small wave. “It’s cute.”

Maxwell laughed weakly. “Both my daughters’ summons were. Teddy and Jeanie. A Dandy Lion and an Earth Elemental… They were strong, though.” He abruptly clamped his mouth closed, and I looked away as he struggled to master himself again.

“I’m sorry.”

He didn’t reply. That was fine. I didn’t know what else to say, so I was glad when someone called for me to come eat a Shadow that had decided to test if our party was still dangerous.

The sixth floor wasn’t the floor Nero’d sent his…whatevers… through hunting. We encountered a new monster on it. “Oh, ew, Meat Heaps,” the leader of Witches Five said. She glanced at me and gestured toward the hulking pile of rotting meat lumbering about. “Those are manmade monsters.”

“What?”

Yuulen sighed. “Once the world registers a new type of being, it can appear in dungeons. If you create a new breed of pig, for instance, a pig-producing dungeon might start producing that breed. These things are why all the civilized nations have banned experimental breeding of monsters. They’re what happened when someone attempted to make an edible meat monster.”

I watched the Meat Heap walk toward us. It moved with large, squelching movements. It was shaped like a golem, but the material of its construction made it far grosser. Yuulen wrinkled her nose. “Flame Arrow,” she intoned. The spell thudded into the Meat Heap’s chest and exploded, setting the whole thing alight. “You have to burn these things or destroy them in one hit. Even the smallest uncooked piece will grow into a new one. This whole dungeon is composed of things you have to destroy. Where are the drops? The materials? There’d better not be something useful at the end. I wanna just shut this dungeon up and never look at it again.”

I tried fighting a Meat Heap, but I didn’t have any fire attacks. “Devour,” I tried. The Meat Heap fell apart, so I managed to kill it, but then I immediately threw up. We had to go back to dousing the lights for the rest of the day, because the Meat Heap’s magic made me so sick I couldn’t eat Shadows.

I didn’t try eating any Bloomshrooms.

The seventh floor was much like the sixth, but when we entered the eighth floor, it was dead. There were only Shadows and Bloomshrooms, because Nero had eaten all of the Meat Heaps. I shuddered. Hopefully, that wouldn’t have any ill effects on them.

I had to say, though. Monsters aside, the dungeon was pretty at times. We walked through halls lined with stalactites and stalagmites, and crystals glimmered from every wall. The stone itself came in a rainbow of colors, and we sometimes passed underground lakes and rivers that let off a faint glow of their own.

Sometimes, the path grew narrow. We had to walk single-file at those times, which was nerve-wracking. If we put me at the lead, we were in danger if we came across a Meat Heap, and if we put anyone else in the lead, we were in danger if we came across a Shadow. The solution we went with ended up being to have me ride on the leader of Please Daddy’s shoulders, since he was strong enough to carry me like that for long distances and had fire magic.

“Ah, the name was a drunken decision,” he admitted to me after he’d asked why I disliked him so much and heard my response. “My girlfriend and I came up with it… she quit a few years back, but we never got around to changing the name, so…”

I wasn’t sure that made it any better, but so long as he wasn’t doing anything creepy, I could ignore it.

On the tenth floor, we encountered something new to me: a mid-dungeon guardian.

“UGGHHHH! This place is the worst!” Yuulen cried. She didn’t even let the guardian, a ginormous beast called a Colossus, attack before she started hurling fireballs at it. Her party followed suit, each with their preferred element, while their summons worked to hinder its movements and defend their Masters. The rest of the A-ranked parties hung back and watched, taking bets about the fight.

The Colossus looked terrifying to me. Unlike the Meat Heaps, it was fast. It was at least as fast as I’d been as a cat, but it was the size of a house. Each time its fists hit the ground, they left craters. And yet the members of Witches Five dodged it easily. I felt the difference between C-rank and A-rank keenly. Would I one day consider monsters like this nothing more than annoyances?

“Luna?”

My mind immediately left the fight. I rushed back to Justice, who was just setting Nero down. My Master staggered slightly, and his healer stood beside him, casting support magic to strengthen him. Nero stared at me for several moments, then looked down at himself. My Illusion still concealed both the markings covering his body and his wings. He nervously wet his lips and opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. I was relieved to see that his tongue looked properly tongue-like, and I probably stared for a little too long. Justice nudged me. 

“Master,” I said, unable to think what to say. I knew if I tried to say more, I'd end up babbling, and I'd probably say any number of stupid things. Rather than risk it, I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around him carefully. My face only came to his ribs, but that was fine. He returned the hug, trembling.

There were cheers and boos from behind me as the fight with the Colossus ended, but I didn’t turn to look. My Master was awake, and he recognized me. That was all that mattered to me.