“Hey man, just wanted to ask… did you really have to kill off that girl?” The mage holding the staff asked the plate armored warrior.
“Huh? What else can I do? She was shooting off arrows and kept aiming for me. She pissed me off,” the rugged man answered with an annoyed expression.
“But come on, she’s got such a big rack. Couldn’t we just have some fun after taking out the other guys?”
“Ugh, just ‘cuz you got no game doesn’t mean we’re gonna rape every single girl we come across,” One of the lightly armored men said with a tsk, pointing at the staff-wielder. “Maybe if you actually had some balls, you wouldn’t be whining like a little bitch now.”
“I don’t know, she seemed like the kind of girl the Chainlords might be interested in,” The other lightly armored man said, brushing his scraggly beard. “If we played it smart, we could’ve sold her off for some gold.”
“Ugh, dammit, now you tell me!” The plate armored man groused in response.
“Can you shut up already? I’m trying to finish a meal and talking about sex makes me sick,” The last mage, the wand-wielder, snapped back at the other men while tearing apart some jerky with his mouth.
“Is it me or are all the mages just fucking weird when it comes to girls?” The first lightly armored man said with a smirk to the other, responding with a dirty chuckle.
The mood around the party seemed lighthearted to the point where one wouldn’t expect them to be murderous louts at a glance. But the words brought Aidan’s soul to a boil with disgust, especially as their own souls were riddled with a sense of raw contempt that made him want to hurl.
He was starting to understand bit by bit about human nature through the people of this world, and he could understand it all through sensing their souls with Sense Vibrations. He didn’t think he could find out whether one was evil or not, but perhaps he could find out how people function on a psychological level through the use of Sense Vibrations. It was an odd feeling, and it made him more and more conflicted as he kept comparing the guys who so casually talked about murdering a group of adventurers in a dungeon to Nina who bound other people through slave contracts.
He just couldn’t find any parallel. Maybe there was something wrong with Aidan, but he just couldn’t compare these louts to Nina the more he listened in. It was almost the same as the siblings beside him, whose souls were roused with anger and disgust for being forced to listen to the group.
Obviously they were still in the same room, completely invisible to the party’s eyes. As for the reason why they were still there listening rather than just leaving the party to themselves, there was just one thing that was stopping Aidan from moving on.
He knew for certain that the one in the lead was part of Red Riot, the group that kept harassing their store and, according to Nina, knew something about the quartz gem he still carried. He was hoping to learn something more from the group, and listening in to their conversation was the first thing to do now that they got the chance to be front and center in their current position.
Unfortunately they listened to some more dribble, casual locker room talk that made Haley’s soul look like she was ready to hurl. For Van’s part, nothing but smoldering anger plagued him, probably because he was born and raised to treat his little sister with respect unlike the louts near them.
They didn’t just talk about ravaging girls, but also spoke tales of them going around and being a nuisance to pretty much anyone with a pulse. It was possible that there were more adventurer parties sneaking into the dungeon, hoping for some decent treasures that the Red Riot were hoarding. If that was the case, then the watcher Aidan saw before they entered the dungeon wasn’t some guard blocking the exit, but rather the one relaying information to the gang perhaps hiding within so they could ambush them.
If that was the case, they were clearly using the desperation and greed of the adventurer parties for their own ends, taking them down without a shadow of hesitation and taking everything they own, their lives included.
An extremely messed up way to get some income, but it was, to his own shocked honesty, a decently good idea to do. If any guards were to hear that some adventurers died because they entered into a dungeon where a notorious gang resided, they weren’t going to do anything about it. After all, they knew the existence of these gangs residing in their city and they didn't even bat an eye. Some even outright joined them on the side.
Aidan continued to listen up until the lead man finally spoke after their short rest.
“Alright, let’s head out,” The man in red said, calling the others and hearing them moan in displeasure. “Eric, you good on your mana?”
“Yep,” The man with the wand, Eric, stood up and scraped off the crumbs left behind from his rations. “But are we really heading back? I don’t think the guy is smart enough to know how the quartz works.”
Finally the wait was over. Aidan listened intently, ensuring that the siblings kept quiet along with him as he strained his ears for the information.
“The guy just up and disappeared after pawning the gem,” The lead in red said. “The top brass wants to make sure we find him and bury him. He’s a guard that’s supposed to be in a rotary patrol into the dungeon today, and we haven’t found jackshit. I don’t want to go back and get an earful if we don’t find the guy.”
“Yeah, me neither,” One of the lightly armored men said, both hands resting behind his head. “Didja hear how the Mad Dog just ripped that guy apart when he fucked up on their latest raid? I don’t wanna end up the same way.”
“You guessed it,” The lead replied, pointing an accusatory finger. “So if you don’t want to end up being the target for his wrath, I suggest you wise up and start looking harder.”
“All I’m saying is that the guy isn’t working with an entire deck of cards,” The wand mage argued. “For all we know, he might have sold it off and quit his job. We could be doing this for nothing.”
“Well, let’s at least pretend we give a shit,” The lead said. “Anyways, I ain’t going back ‘till that guy’s gone. He’s already pissed off as it is.”
Aidan pursed his lips from the information being given. It looked like the guard that Aidan killed was currently being searched for, and the unfortunate Red Riot members are charged with finding him and ending him. How they thought the guard would be skulking around in the dungeon currently in the Red Riot’s turf was beyond Aidan, but who was he to ask questions that didn’t matter in the end? The quartz in question was in his bag, so they were shit out of luck anyway.
Considering that they were on a mission to find him, it didn’t look like they planned on divulging any further secrets regarding what the quartz is used for. He was just about to tell the others to follow suit and get out of the large room before the staff-wielding mage raised a hand.
“Hey, Mark?” The mage asked the lead in red. “I’ve been getting this funny feeling for a while now… can I do a quick spell around here?”
Aidan paused midstep to listen in. As far as Aidan knew, he didn’t sense anything else other than themselves in the room. There were no monster groups as far as he could know around them either, so he grew interested in what the staff-wielder was trying to say.
“Huh? Sure, but what is it?”
“My Mana Sense is tingling for a while now,” The staff wielder said, standing up and raising his staff up. “I think there’s something around here. Dispell!”
The mage suddenly shouted, his staff reacting with a glow on the top end where the wood gnarled at the top. It released a wave of glowing white across the room, traveling around in a circle as it reached the walls.
The moment that glowing white circle hit the team, Aidan felt his own spell dissolving into particles, unveiling their bodies and making themselves reappear in an instant. The moment they showed up, the party looked straight at the group with widened eyes.
“I-I knew it!” The staff-wielder shouted, pointing at them. “I knew there was something going on!”
“Shit,” Aidan cursed.
“Fucking spies!” The lead shouted, unsheathing a sabre from his holster and pointing at them. “The fuck you waiting for?! They listened to everything we said. Kill ‘em!”
The party immediately readied, their hostility rising to a fever pitch as they aimed their killing intent towards the group. Aidan was just shocked that a Mage could learn that kind of spell that would disrupt his own magic.
It was possible that it was a spell he learned like how he mostly learned his own spells, but that was pointless to think about. Right now, several armed men were coming at them, the mages at the back readying their spells.
“Shit, shit, shit!”
Aidan cursed multiple times as he slammed his hand down to create a wall of stone to protect them from the assault. The spells hit them first, a flash of fiery red and a sudden chill running through them as each hit their target.
“Ahh!” Haley screamed, her bow in hand, but her hands were trembling too much to do anything.
“Aidan, keep a look out for my sister!” Van shouted, unveiling his magic sword that Haley gifted him and ran out beside the wall.
He charged in, tackling the entire warrior team as he first slashed straight at the lightly armored men with his Magic Slash. That certainly caught them off guard, the man getting hit straight across the chest and falling down.
Using their confusion, Aidan slammed the stone wall in front of him. Spikes flew out of the walls, taking down both the lightly armored and the plate armored men both and making them fall.
The lead in red, Mark, swooped in fast towards Van and slashed upwards. His sword glowed in red before it suddenly exploded in power, knocking Van’s raised buckler to the side with ease along with him. Aidan scanned the man before recognizing that the level surpassed him.
Warrior, Level 19.
Oh, come on!
Aidan wanted to take down the most dangerous person in the room, but he recognized the two mages charging up for another spell assault. He thought about using his shortsword, but instead kept using the earth below to create more spikes to target them instead.
He had a plan in mind, and seeing the mages react with barriers with ease got him to enact it. He slammed his foot down, creating a wave of earth that traveled across the room, creating a large wall that obscured most of the Red Riot party.
Then he made his sword fly behind the wall outside of their vision. At the same time, Van used this to duck behind the lead in red before he got hit with another one of his skills, smashing the stone completely. Encouraged by the sudden wall, Haley stepped back a few steps and pulled an arrow from the spatial bag she borrowed from Aidan, aiming it high and launching an arrow.
Aidan quickly saw that it missed, but that got the men to run around in a panic from the sudden strike of an airborne attack. While all of this was happening, Aidan used Sense Vibrations to pick up on the location of the mages, then made his sword fly up over the wall and plunged it back down.
The sword pierced right into the mage’s head, and before the wand-wielder could react in time, the sword pulled itself off the mage and thrust into the wand-wielder’s stomach, piercing him right through.
“Fucking hell! A flying sword!?” One of the men shouted after witnessing both mages taken down at once.
“It’s the Mage! Take him down!”
Before Aidan could use the sword to take the rest out, one of the warriors charged right where he was at, crashing through the wall with his plated armor covering him. Aidan couldn’t dodge in time and was swept up by the plate armored man, both arms entrapping his whole body and crushing him from within.
“There you are, you little shit!” The plate armored man sneered, putting more strength into his embrace and crushing Aidan whole.
His entire torso and arms were squeezed, feeling something buckle under them while his organs were ready to jump straight out of him. Aidan tried to command his sword, to make the earth beneath him pierce the warrior, but his focus kept getting shifted from the pain of his body being turned to paste.
In his peripheral vision, he spotted Van getting teamed up by the two light warriors, with the lead in red heading straight towards the trembling Haley who kept shooting arrows at the guy, but each one failed to hit. It was the truth when she said that she barely used the bow despite being an Archer.
He struggled to think up a plan. The pain was becoming too much to bear. When hope was beginning to drop and his mind replayed back his mistakes, he sensed something furious in the distance.
Perhaps it was his increase to his Perception, but he could sense it more strongly than before, reaching his senses. It was something massive, and also extremely familiar. It was close, but nowhere near where they were. That made Aidan hatch a plan that he might actually regret.
But it was either take another gamble, or end up getting killed along with the entire party. He had to act now.
Using the barest necessity, he commanded the earth to take itself apart, right behind him. The others quickly caught on, thankfully stopping their incoming assault on his party members as they watched what was going on. At first, nothing really happened, just a big hole in the wall to the adjoining room.
That was where they were wrong. Aidan didn’t plan on using the stone to interrupt them. He only made a hatch for that creature to show up. And it did.
Big bulking hands shot out of the hole, pulling itself out with a jump and a roar that could shake the heavens. It landed with a thump, bringing its arms up and thumping its chest in a show of dominance. The Cave Dweller Prime made its appearance, and it was hungry for destruction. It searched the room for its prey, and caught sight of the ones closest to it.
Of course, it had to be Aidan caught up in the plate armored man’s embrace.
“W-What the fuck?!” The man shouted, letting go of Aidan which got him to react quicker than thought. He lunged away, his shortsword flying to his hand to aid his escape. To his surprise, his body was lifted faster and flew across the room, right before the giant Prime landed on the plate-armor man.
“N-No! Someone! H-Hel–”
Before the man could even scream, the Prime pounded its fists down and crushed him underneath. Blood exploded outward, drenching the scene around them, followed by a roar that could make the earth rumble.
“Fuck!” Mark shouted, turning to the others. “Get away! It’s the Prime!”
“Don’t have to tell me twice!”
The men all scrambled, but with the stone wall still made around them, it obstructed them from the following exit. The Prime jumped towards the group, aiming to take down as many of them like it did with the first. Aidan used the sword to help himself move around quickly, reaching to the siblings who gathered together once the first man was down.
“Grab on!” Aidan called, and he let out his hand to grab Van, with him carrying Haley with him.
Obviously the sword couldn’t handle that much weight, but that was fine. All he needed to do was create his own little pathway out of the room, obscuring themselves and the Prime at the same time.
He had no intentions of fighting against the creature, instead wanting to get the hell out. He could hear the screams of the men calling out for help, only to get snuffed out of existence after a mighty blow that shook the room. His body ached, but he forced himself to run with the siblings behind him as he made his way to the exit.
They got out of the room, landing themselves into the next corridor with rapid footsteps. They kept running, ignoring every possible pathway that Aidan sensed had monsters in it to get away as quickly as he could. The roars of the beast were drawing nearer, showing that it was already trying to search for them. Did it already kill off the Red Riot party?
They couldn’t even last long against that thing even with their high levels?
The party in question all ranged above level 15, which were decently higher than their own party. As he ran, he definitely considered upping his physical stats some more. There was no point in boosting his main stat if it did nothing to help him survive.
Though the increase in mana did save his ass. He was flummoxed at this point.
“Shit, it’s coming. What do we do?!” Van shouted, his face dripping with sweat, his armor jumbling about while running at full sprint.
“G-Guys!” Haley shouted, panting hard as she fought to keep up. “I can feel something! Over here!”
“There’s no time for another treasure!” Van shouted.
“Wait,” Aidan suggested. “If we get there, we can lead it into a trap!”
Hearing that, Aidan and Van followed Haley’s directions, making several turns around the now cavernous structure, no longer sharing that pristine flat surface from the earlier floor.
Soon they turned one more time to see a vast hole that expanded several miles wide. An actual waterfall was there, falling into the abyss below. Aidan checked to see if there was anything here, but there was no room or even treasure in sight.
“What the–it’s a dead end!” Van shouted.
“I-I don’t know! This is the place where I feel that tingle!” Haley looked behind, a look of terror in her eyes as the roars magnified from the echoes around them. “Oh no, it’s coming!”
“...We gotta jump,” Aidan said, pointing down at the hole beneath.
“Are you crazy?! We’ll die!” Van shouted.
“There’s a waterfall, then that means there’s water underneath,” Aidan said. “I can feel it too. We can survive.”
At least, he hoped so, unless the water was made of something dangerous. Van still looked at him as though he had totally lost his mind. The roars became louder, as well as the thumping shakes that they could all feel at this point.
“What do we do?!” Haley shouted, directing her question to Van as Aidan already made his plan.
“Ugh… fuck! Haley, grab on!”
“Let’s go!”
With that, Aidan jumped in first. The siblings followed after, Van holding his sister tight as they plunged into the abyss below.
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