Chapter 148 - Fallen Leader

Lily crept through the empty halls of the Titans Helm guild building. Ever since their return it had been like a ghost town.

She stopped by the corner and peeked around it, her eyes scanned the room. Careful that she wouldn’t alert anyone, she kept her footsteps light and swift.

“What are you doing?”

“Gaaahh!!!”

Olivia stood at her friend's side and tilted her head as the woman dressed in silky clothes jumped in fright.

“Shhhh!! I don’t want the leader to hear me coming through here.” Lily placed a finger over her lips.

“The guild leader? I don’t think that’ll be a problem…” Olivia’s head fell with a grim stare.

A burst of voices entered the room from around the corner, and both Olivia and Lily peeked around to see what had happened.

A young group of adventurers, all of which belonged to Titans Helm, had walked in. Their cheery expressions and hearty laughs were ignorant to the gloomy silence of the room.

It wasn’t until they were deep into the room that they noticed their guild leader, Adder, sitting on the couch. He was alone, his head hung sullenly in the shadows of the room.

With all the drapes closed, there was barely any sunlight in the room. Any normal person would have disappeared into the darkness but it was his distinct snowy hair that gave him away.

The group's good mood quickly faded and they tried getting out of there as quickly as they could. It was already odd for him to be in the common room but with everything that was going on, it only made it ten times more dangerous to risk him noticing them.

They rushed for the door but weren’t able to get out without his words reaching them.

“What a bunch of disappointments…laughing and giggling like snotty children. Go do some quests and at least try to act like members of this guild!”

Two of the adventurers lowered their heads and walked to the door but one wasn’t as submissive. He stopped his friends by the shoulders and faced Adder from across the room.

“Why should we, this guild's on its way out anyway. Everyone knows Titans Helm’s ratings are the worst in the city, if it weren’t for your main team, you’d barely be a pillar. Face it, this place is a dump and nobody wants anything to do with it.”

Adder jumped to his feet, his eyes glared daggers at the young man. Overcome with rage, his pupils shrunk to the size of marbles and two fists were tightened at his sides.

“You little brats…”

The other two adventurers backed up their friend, standing at his side with worried eyes.

“Actually, sir…we’ve all been thinking and we want to quit the guild.”

“Yeah, we’ve gotten like zero work since we got here and everyone’s so on edge all the time.”

“We’ll handle the paperwork at ASH but we’ve already cleared out our stuff here. See you never, leader.” The young man added.

The door closed behind them and Adder’s mouth hung open. His bottom lip trembled as he watched the doors shut. He wanted to say something, scream or even hit the wall but…it all felt pointless.

The light that poured from outside died out once the door closed and Adder sunk back onto the couch. His head lowered and the gloomy air had returned.

Lily gripped the fabric against her chest so tight it looked as though it would break. Her face scrunched up as she watched him sulk, unable to say anything.

“Oh, leader…”

***

The drake had fallen and experience points were distributed. It was a lot more than what we’d gotten from other monsters but with it shared between the three of us, it still lost a lot of its value.

I had to take into account the amount of contribution we made, if someone were to do a lot more of the work than others then they’d get most of the Exp.

From what I had observed, this fact wasn’t necessarily only for damage. Veldor delivered the final blow but aside from that, Arga did the most damage and she still got less experience than I did. On the other hand, I got more than her without dealing much damage at all.

I rubbed my chin as the stats of our party were displayed in front of me.

I might not have to steal the kills, after all, if I use this fight as a basis then it means providing support also works. As long as I contribute to bringing it down, I’ll get experience points too.

“So depending on our formation in fights, we can all grow stronger at once.”

“Hey Rei, what’s the holdup?!”

Arga stood over the drake and waved to get my attention. I quickly snapped out of it and dismissed the screens of light.

I nearly forgot that I still had to handle the body.

“Sorry bout’ that, I just had something to confirm.” I held out my hand, “Devour!”

{User has successfully absorbed the Ice Drake}

{Ice Drake skill tree has been added, new skills are available}

“Woah, not bad…ice based skills seem pretty rare. They don’t connect to anything other than the dragon skill trees.” I observed.

{Skill: Frost breath, has been learned}

{Skill: Misty veil has been learned}

This Frost breath skill looks pretty similar to Dragon's Roar, whereas this Misty Veil thing is completely new…

My eyes hovered over the info screen.

{Misty Veil: Create a veil of icy air to hide your presence from both enemies and allies}

“This could come in handy with sticky situations, the only problem is that it’ll blind Veldor and Arga as well.”

“Get anything good?” Arga asked.

Her head tilted slightly as she and Veldor waited for me. Neither of them knew about Uriel or the system but it seemed that they were understanding how my skills worked a little better. I’m glad we were past that awkward phase of having to explain myself for everything, I felt like the trust between us had grown. Well…for the most part.

“Yeah, I got two new skills from it.”

“Two skills?! You’re seriously an odd case through and through.” Veldor’s head dropped in defeat.

“Well that’s not all, we still have the drops from that monster,” I stated confidently.

With the effect of my inventory, none of us had to carry those weighty drops anymore. I simply waited to see what we got and if it was good, I’d add it to the inventory, if not, we’d chuck it or sell it back home.

{Drake fang obtained}

{Drake ice scales obtained}

{Eternal Ice fragments obtained}

Eternal Ice…?

It’s an item I hadn’t heard of before but to be fair, I had never reached an area like that. We were dealing with monsters and terrain I hadn’t even heard of.

I’ll take a deeper look when we’re back in the city. Let’s focus on levelling for now!

“Items all look good, they’re stored safely. Should we move on?” I asked.

“Bout time, I'm freezing from standing on this bridge. I needa smash something and warm up, quickly!” Arga reached for her sword still lodged into the bridge and yanked it out.

Her blade was lodged in pretty tightly, the moment she forced it out, a crack flew off the sides of the bridge. The ice shook and all three of us were on high alert. It was obvious from our expressions, we all knew what was coming next.

We looked over to the other end of land but we were still quite a ways away. We had half the bridge to go before getting back on stable footing.

More and more cracks appeared around us and ran under our feet. A worried look grew on their faces as a chunk of ice broke off from under Veldor’s foot. His body shifted off the side of the bridge and was carried away.

Arga reacted quickly and grabbed onto his hand. He managed to escape the fall by a second and wouldn’t let go of her hand once he was pulled back up.

“The bridge is collapsing, we need to run!”

“Ya’ think?!”

The end of the bridge from where we came had separated from the land. We barely hung on as the entire structure leaned over to one side. The end we were meant to head to was thrown into the air and our section of the bridge was heading for the void.

The endless chasm that didn’t seem to have a bottom came uncomfortably close as the back end of the bridge broke off and crumbled.

Without another word, we all raced for the other end and ran as fast as our bodies would allow us.

**************************************************

Author note:

Hey everyone, 

In commemoration of the Awesome fight between Eshner and Rei, I commissioned an artist to draw Rei and his cool glowing eyes. I had this done weeks ago and posted it on my Patreon. So if you'd like to see more artwork and updates on Dungeon Eater in real time, then please consider checking out the Patreon. I've made the picture visible to the public and will also post it on my X account and Honeyfeed gallery page