Chapter 33 – Dread Menace of the Guild

We returned to the dungeon the same way we left.

Immediately I was informed by my half-elven slave of her growing hunger. What a slaughter-blocker.

Another teleport to some unattended guild corner and we saw the mess hall being quite busy. Although surprisingly the queue at the bar was not that long now. Elfin was tasked yet again with picking our meals, while I reserved a corner of a table for us. There was some noisy customers at our table, but they ignored me and I ignored them in turn. Not that there were better places as the whole mess hall was.. a mess.

A waitress spotted and came up to me, but I pointed to Elfin queuing up. I explained she was ordering for us both. She shrugged and grabbed the empty mugs of what used to be some kind of stinky beer.

Apparently everyone here liked to enjoy their dinner with alcohol. The beer itself looked muddy and had a filthy froth instead of white bubbles. I secretly hoped she would not order me one of those.

After it was finally her turn ordering she tried to come back and hand me the remaining money. We would have to wait for food a few minutes.

Surprisingly the terms “minute” and “second” were common with Earth units. If I were to start counting time in prayers or candles along with those ridiculously colorful triple-hours I would go mad.

Her passage through the crowd was welcomed with whistles and a few slaps when she squeezed between tables. She tried to avoid them, but mostly failed. I noted down every one whether they succeeded or not and teleported their shoelaces away. For those who had none I stripped them of their belts.

There were no noteworthy artifacts among them (shoelaces were especially disappointing). I simply teleported them onto one of the guild’s golem’s head. Now it had many wonderful dreads.

Good luck retrieving that punks.

Anyway it was just the start of my revenge.

“Are you alright? Did they hurt you?” I asked Elfin and tried to show some genuine concern despite knowing she could have incinerated them if she so wished.

“Not more than the jackrabbits in the dungeon,” she replied and our table went mad with laughter.

One of the guys even went up to one of the offenders and retold it. He got shoved back in response, but when the sex offender tried to avoid the retaliatory punch and stood up.. his pants fell down. Should have worn shoes with shoelaces.

“Master, he forgot to tie his belt,” she whispered grinning.

I winked at her and replied:

“Forgot his manners and forgot his belt indeed.”

She glanced back at the man and probably noticed his belt was missing altogether.

“Did master..?”

“I have no clue, but let’s take a look at the golems once we leave,” I said and winked.

She looked happy with that, so I stopped with planning more punishments.

One of the waitresses brought us our meal, which turned out to be a thick stew poured onto some kind of barley and a single side dish of boiled carrots. I inspected the dishes and laughed. Meanwhile my stomach turned into a knot.

“Is this your idea for a morbid joke, my cute lady elf?” I asked.

Indeed we happened to have two bowls of jackrabbit stew before us to eat. The carrots were the perfect cherry on the top.

“Master Lynx, while it is indeed hilarious I figured we should try the meat at least once before deciding whether to sell or keep them,” she giggled and replied.

Someone was in a really good mood. I guess she had no qualms on eating something we were just fighting an earth hour ago. How different from myself. I never had the pleasure of starving so it might also be that.

“Oh, all right. Makes sense,” I replied, “Mind if I nibble on some carrots as well?”

She pushed the small plate towards me instead of reply.

Once I managed to swallow some meat it turned out to be quite tasty. It did not taste like chicken though. More like an actual rabbit. Between the stew, barley and carrots we shared it was a pretty satisfactory meal.

Also fortunately Elfin did not order any of those filthy beers everyone seemed to be enjoying. Instead we had two glasses of juice, which were surprisingly more expensive than alcohol.

We finished it all up and left the hall.

“Thank you, master,” she said out of blue.

The entrance of the Guild was once again guarded by a pair of massive and massively defaced golems. They were now even more ‘hairy’. I pointed to them and said:

“What a wonderful hairstyle and sense of fashion. You rock, dudes!”

“Master, are those?”

“I wonder who put them there. Maybe some jealous master?”

“Thank you.”

“Next time just slap them back. Be careful to avoid those that are stronger and do not retaliate with flames indoors. Until you get more control of them anyway.”

“Yes, master. They are all free people though. Is master sure I can retaliate?”

“Yes, that is an order. Or rather just defend yourself.”

That was disgusting. I was boiling with rage yet again. As if I would let anyone hit you. Maybe it is culturally inappropriate for the slave to hit back those lechers, but I will be damned.

“Thank you,” she thanked me for the third time.

I shook my head to clear it.

“Are you ready to venture back into the cellars?”

“Sure, but I will be running low on mana shortly.”

“Just tell me when it is critically low. We still have to dismantle the jackrabbits and the best place to do that is the dungeon itself.”

This time we did not bother with the gatehouse and directly teleported into the middle of the first floor. It took about an hour more of grinding to deplete Elfin’s mana tank to minimum safety levels. I just hope there is no negative correlation between completely emptying it and its rate of growth. As we have learned from our encounter with the bear couple it was a dangerous thing to do in this world’s wilderness. Maybe a dungeon would be a more civilized place, who knows?

Alas emptying my own tank with my current rate of regeneration would be hard to achieve.

We sat down and started to skin the animals slash monsters. We removed the horns as well as the pair of front teeth. Intestines and other guts were separated. I might try livers, but hearts and kidneys were beyond my ability to stomach. I also knew a nice dish to be made of intestines and stomach, but I would not risk such thing with no modern medicine and the quite unclean conditions we were working with.

Fun fact – the stomachs and intestines of rabbits were totally empty, but they were still there. They had no function whatsoever or the rabbits were being starved on this floor prior to capture.

Blood spilled throughout was quickly absorbed by the floor. It was more like it was porous then disappearing altogether. We had already determined that nothing would vanish in our immediate surroundings or anything we had put on plates. Larger scrap we discarded away from us took a while to disappear.

This was quite eerie. Was someone constantly watching us and determining what to absorb? Was the dungeon sentient enough to do just that? Distinguish what it should take and what it should not?

Also the place we had stopped in was off the main path, but it was definitely not a safe zone. Those would only be the entrance and exit on this level of the dungeon. It was done with premeditation, partially to check whether the dungeon would spawn more monsters on top of us. It was definitely known that on some of the lower floors monster would wander around. The list of such monsters and floors was compiled by the Guild. The very place between me and Elfin was where there was a mob spawned previously. According to my minimap the path behind us was filled back up after about ten minutes.

Our current location remained monsterless much longer than that. The Dazed Jackrabbits pretty much remained in their spawn points. If I had too much time on my hands I could draw a useless map with accuracy of spawns up to a decimeter.

Speaking of which one dot representing an explorer was headed in our direction.

“This dungeon is unnatural. The way the monsters behave and appear is purely artificial. Remember that when we do some field-work in the future,” I told Elfin.

She nodded.

“We are about to have a guest in our Butcher’s corridor.”

“Should I prepare for a fight?”

“Not likely to happen,” I said and then sighed, “scratch that. Our guest is bringing a Jackrabbit with him.”

In more game-like terms that stranger was pulling a mob train onto us. I was too lazy to get up and prepared a couple of throwing knives on my lap.

A tattered kid turned around thew bend and dashed towards us. I would love to describe a ferocious monster chasing him, but it had slammed straight into the wall. Those stupid furbags, eh.

The boy stopped when he saw us. He was carrying two dead jackrabbits by their ears. His only weapon was a sturdy stick and a worn-down bronze knife. His chaser stared at the wall absentmindedly, apparently still alive though bleeding around the horn.

I motioned with my throwing knife for the kid to move aside. When he did I threw the knife, which ended right in rabbits head. Bullseye! Well not exactly, but close enough. My skill for throwing daggers was already at Level 2 and my daggers were of highest class. In other words it was not that much of an achievement.

The face of the boy seemed somehow familiar. He bowed to us.

“Esteemed seniors, have you seen a party going through this corridor?” he asked.

“You are the first person to stumble on our dismantling operation. Do I know you from somewhere?”

Elfin silently stood up and retrieved my kill in the background.

“Seniors had me guide them through Ythall twice already,” he answered.

“You are correct. What is your name, lad?” I asked.

“They call me Sam, sir.”

“What are you doing in the cellars, Sam? If you cannot deal with a single Dazed Jackrabbit you should not be here,” I scolded cum advised him.

As far as I know the Divine Dungeons were places where mortals could get stronger, but this was Sam seeking death itself. I was doubtful how a dazed critter could offer any resistance to Sam, but he was running away from it.

“Ah no, sir. I followed a party and took the spoils they left to rot. High adventurers do not collect Jackrabbits.”

From this I surmised that there is probably much better loot on the lower floors. Parties without a porter or simply with no weight and volume reducing items like my Storage would have to leave some cheaper stuff behind. This kid must really be poor to be forced to do something so dangerous.

“You are scavenging after them? How deep do you venture?” asked him Elfin.

“Normally I go up to the stairs and then wait for the returning parties in the safe room and follow them to the exit. Unfortunately this one moved to quickly for me to follow and I lost them somewhere. I think they did it on purpose once they noticed me.”

“To lose you?” Elfin continued questioning, clearly shocked.

He nodded with sadness.

“An asshole-ish thing to do indeed. That is why fellow humans or rather adventurers in general are often more dangerous than monsters and traps in those cellars,” I said matter-of-factly paraphrasing some knowledge from isekai novels.

“Master, can we?” she asked.

I think she implied teleporting him to the exit. Or maybe she meant just escorting him back?

“Escort the lad back?” I mentioned the later, “when we finish our dismantling, sure.”

“Thank you,” they spoke in unison.

I went back to detaching the horn of the rabbit.

“I can help you, sirs!” Sam interrupted us, “I can dismantle them!”

I raised my head.

“What do you want for it?” I asked.

“Nothing, sire. Just helping me with returning to the surface is all I can ask for.”

How humble.

I had no choice but to accept such a generous offer.