by Virlyce
“It is?” Vur asked, his eyes lighting up. Sobs and wails came from the bathtub as Alice and Tafel smacked the poor red woman with their shield and sword.
“That’s right,” Mr. Skelly said. “Without the support, the tank won’t have the confidence to charge in. If the tank is unconfident, then the damage dealer won’t be able to do their job properly. Because you’re here, everyone can fight in their optimal condition without fear. You’re the pillar that holds this whole party together.”
Vur coughed twice as he dusted off the front of his pants. His chest swelled as he smiled. “Of course. It’s only natural for a dragon to take on the most important role.”
“You’re impressed too easily, Vur,” Stella said, poking her head out of the rose tattoo. “Don’t forget, as the most important person, you deserve the best loot from the dungeon. And if you don’t need the loot, feel free to give it to me. Your soul could use some more furniture. And I could use a weapon to rid myself of a pest called Mervin since you won’t do it.”
“Phew, this dungeon’s easy despite the fact that it’s a white-ranked one, don’t you think?” Alice asked before Vur could respond. She wiped away beads of blood and sweat from her face with a handkerchief. The red woman was lying in the tub, unmoving, the tub half-filled with red liquid even though it was empty before.
“We’re just getting started,” Tafel said. “Don’t relax. What if there’s a room with twenty of these things and half of them can cancel out magic and the other half is freakishly strong physically?”
“Well, that’s when we’ll rely on our awesome support, right?” Alice asked, smiling at Vur.
“That’s right,” Vur said and nodded. “I’m awesome.”
Tafel sighed and muttered, “Please stop inflating his ego.”
“Were the next two monsters supposed to be children?” Alice asked.
Tafel nodded. “According to the knights, they’re supposed to be, yes.”
Alice frowned. “It doesn’t feel right to beat up kids even though I know they’re monsters.”
“Just think of them as adult goblins.” Tafel shrugged. “We know for a fact they respawn anyway. It’s not like we can actually kill them. And doesn’t it seem like they don’t have brains or thoughts? We can just think of it as harvesting vegetables.”
“The logic you go through to justify beating up kids…,” Alice said and shook her head.
Tafel rolled her eyes. “What? So you think we shouldn’t conquer the dungeon?”
“I didn’t say that.” Alice readied her shield as she walked up to the door on the opposite end of the bathroom. “I’m starting.”
“What’s wrong with beating up kids?” Vur whispered to Mr. Skelly.
Mr. Skelly tilted his head. “There’s nothing in Grimmy’s code of honor about that?”
“No.”
“Hmm. Well, some people think children are small and helpless and shouldn’t be harmed,” Mr. Skelly said, nodding his head as Alice shoved open the door to the next room. “But those same people hunt and eat small and helpless and cute animals like pigs and rabbits and chickens, so take what they say with a grain of salt.”
Vur scratched his head. “Then it’s okay to beat up kids?”
“I didn’t say that,” Mr. Skelly said. “But I didn’t not say that either. You’re smart. It’s up to you to decide.” He patted Vur’s back and followed Tafel into the next room. It was an empty one with two children made of blood sitting on the ground, facing each other. They were drawing lines on the floor tiles with their fingers, leaving red streaks behind. There were a few ‘X’s and ‘O’s drawn in the spaces between the lines. The room looked like it had been furnished before, but the knights probably took everything away judging by the scuff marks on the walls and tiles. In the back, behind the two kids, there was another door.
The two kids raised their heads at the same time and turned towards the approaching party. Their mouths open and closed, but no sounds came out. They huddled together and stood up, retreating to a corner of the room, crouching while shutting their eyes and hugging each other.
Alice’s expression darkened. “Yeah, this doesn’t feel right.”
Tafel’s eyes wavered as she bit her lower lip. “Maybe we can … go around them?”
“Just because they’re taking the shape of children doesn’t mean they’re actually children,” Mr. Skelly said. “Look, it seems like that one is ready to cast a spell.” Alice, Tafel, and Vur stared at the huddling children. There were no movements other than a few tremors that rippled across the bloody surface as the children sobbed. Mr. Skelly shrugged. “Or so I thought. Looks like I was wrong.”
Tafel sighed as she lowered her staff. “When we leave this dungeon, I’m going to give those knights a stern talking to. Look at how badly they terrorized these two.”
Images of Alice and Tafel bashing and slashing the sobbing bloody woman in the bathtub surfaced in Mr. Skelly’s mind. “These two are a serious threat to our progression, you know? What if we’re ambushed from behind at a crucial moment if you leave them alone? What if we’re forced to retreat by the boss of this dungeon, and one of us dies when one of these kids attacks us on the way back?”
“I don’t like killing kids pressed into a corner, alright?” Tafel asked, gritting her teeth. “I already have bad experiences with—”
A roaring sound cut Tafel off as an icy breath blew past her head. The breath struck the two children in the corner, freezing them inside a solid block of ice. “There,” Vur said as he wiped away an icicle from his lips with his hand. “Now we don’t have to worry. We can just unfreeze them later if you want.”
“What if they null-magic the ice away?” Mr. Skelly asked as Tafel’s mouth open and closed, her expression changing repeatedly.
Vur snorted. “There’s nothing magical about a dragon’s breath like there’s nothing magical about a snake’s venom. It’s all natural. You can’t null-magic something that isn’t magic.”
“And you know this because…?” Alice asked, raising an eyebrow.
Vur’s eyes half-closed and his head lowered to look down on Alice. “It’s in the name. Null-magic. Cancels magic. It’s not null-everything. Duh.”
“That’s not what I was referring to!” Alice shouted. “How do you know a dragon’s breath isn’t magic? How did you spit out a dragon’s breath in your human form if not through magic!?”
Vur shrugged. “I’m a dragon, so it’s natural.”
“…Let’s move on,” Tafel said, grabbing Alice’s shoulder before she could bicker more with Vur. The demon dragged the guild master over to the door and pointed at it, her gaze avoiding the giant block of ice in the corner.
“My party’s insane,” Alice muttered as she kicked open the door to the next room before positioning herself behind her shield. When there weren’t any attacks, she peeked her head around the side of the shield. Four bloody people were sitting at a square table. Their hands were stretched towards the center of the table, scrambling red tiles between them. Loud clacking sounds echoed through the room as the tiles knocked against each other. A few moments of tile-scrambling passed before the bloody people stopped. Then they rearranged the tiles into neat rows that they placed into the shape of a square. One of the bloody people made eye contact with Alice after setting up the tiles on the table. The two stared at each other, and the other three bloody people turned their heads to look as well. A long moment of silence passed. Alice swallowed as she reached forward and grabbed the door’s handle, slowly pulling the door shut as the four people watched.
“What happened?” Tafel asked. She wasn’t able to see anything in the other room from behind Alice’s shield.
“I don’t know,” Alice said, her brow tightly furrowed. “It felt like I was interrupting something. Can we conquer a different dungeon instead? One with ogres or goblins or things I wouldn’t feel bad about beating to death.”
Tafel raised an eyebrow. “Weren’t you the one who wanted to come h
ere?”
“Yes, but I mean, ugh, fine, whatever,” Alice said, shrinking under the gazes of Vur, Tafel, and Mr. Skelly. “Fine, fine, fine. Sorry about this, red guys.” She readied her shield and kicked open the door to the room before charging inside.
The four red people, two men and two women, stood up at the same time. One of the women retreated to the back of the room and reached behind a bookshelf, pulling out a wooden staff, while the other three people reached underneath the table and behind their chairs, equipping themselves with wooden weapons just in time to clash with Alice. A metal tower shield and a wooden buckler collided as Alice and one of the red men smashed into each other. With a grunt, Alice dug her heels into the ground and pushed outwards, but it felt like she was trying to shove down a wall. The red man pushed Alice back and swung its arm upwards, sending the diminutive guild master flying into Tafel, who was in the middle of casting a spell.
“Urk!” Tafel caught Alice before the guild master could hit the ground and righted her with a gentle push of her staff. “Careful.”
Alice snorted. “How does that make any sense? He used a buckler and I used a massive shield, yet I was the one sent flying?”
“That’s because you’re tiny,” Tafel said. “It’s physics.”
The red man with the shield puffed its chest out and pointed at Alice with its index finger before twisting its arm, retracting its finger and giving her a thumbs-down with a wide smirk on its face. Alice’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head as she slammed the bottom of her shield against the ground and activated her awakening, her eyes turning yellow as claws made from aura sprang out of her hands and feet. A tail and a pair of lion-like ears appeared as well, adorning her head and bottom.
“Hey!” Tafel said as Alice charged in and clashed again with the red man, more evenly this time. Neither side budged as they both pushed, Alice grunting while the red man squelched. “Don’t fall for the tank’s provocation that easily!”
While Alice was distracted by the man with the shield, the red woman with the staff unleashed a salvo of bloody arrows that passed straight through its companions and pierced towards Alice and Tafel. Tafel waved her staff, and a wide portal stretched across the air, eating all the arrows. A moment later, the portal disappeared as Tafel pointed her staff’s end at the group of red people. The other man had finished arming itself with a pair of swords, while the other woman pointed a crossbow at Alice’s feet.
“Inferno!” Tafel shouted, channeling her mana into her staff, skipping the casting sequence of her spell as the jewel at the end of her weapon glowed with a red light. Flames roared out of the gem and engulfed the man and woman with the swords and crossbow, but a moment later, they stopped as Mr. Skelly struck the back of Tafel’s head, cutting her spell short. Tafel stumbled forward, nearly falling onto her face. She whirled around and glared at Mr. Skelly. “What the heck!?”
“Are you going to burn all the books?” Mr. Skelly asked, pointing at the bookshelf that the woman with the staff was standing by. “We came to the dungeon to gather the books! It counts as a loss if you destroy them even if you win against the blood people.”
Tafel groaned as she opened a portal beside herself and stuck her red staff inside. Then she pulled out a different staff made of black metal that had a blue gem embedded on its tip. “Then I’ll have to freeze them? At least Vur proved ice was effective on them earlier.”
Vur scratched his nose as Alice let out a roar and shoved aside the buckler-wielding man, knocking it to the ground. She pounced forward and whacked the crossbow out of the woman’s hand with her aura tail while blocking two swings from the sword-wielding man at the same time. “Should I be doing something?” Vur asked and tilted his head. The four elementals were still glowing around him, giving out buffs to the party.
“No, you stay right there,” Tafel said as she pointed her staff at the buckler-wielding man, who was climbing back onto its feet. She gritted her teeth and ejected a massive icicle from her staff that impaled the bloody man, launching it back and pinning it to the wall. Before she could celebrate, the man lightly tapped the icicle with its buckler, and the ice disappeared. A wide smirk appeared on the man’s lips as it pointed at Tafel. Then, like it did to Alice, the man gave Tafel a thumbs-down. Tafel’s expression darkened. “I’m not going to fall for such cheap provocations.”
The man paused. A second later, it reached forward with its buckler-wielding hand as well and gave her two thumbs-down with both arms at once. Tafel’s expression darkened even further. “Like I said, I won’t—”
“You already fell for it by responding!” Mr. Skelly said, shoving Tafel to the side as wooden bolts flew towards her. They pierced through his armor, but as a skeleton, he took no damage from the blow. “You’re too relaxed. Pay attention! Do you think you can take it easy because Vur is here?”
Tafel bit her lower lip. If Mr. Skelly had been a being made of flesh, he would’ve suffered serious injuries to save her. “Sorry,” she said as her expression hardened. “You’re right; I was taking it easy. Alice! It might get a little chilly in a short while, but bear with it. Mr. Skelly, defend me as I channel my spell!”
“What do I do?” Vur asked, pointing at himself.
“Nothing!”
Vur pouted. “This is boring.”
Tafel pulled Chi’Rururp out of a portal and planted it into the ground by her feet. “Dual cast blizzard with me, Chi’Rururp.”
Tafel and her sword chanted while Mr. Skelly went forward to engage the buckler-wielding man in battle. Alice slammed the man with the swords into the staff-wielding woman in the back, canceling out another salvo of bloody spells, before lunging towards the pair, whaling on them with her shield. The woman, who had the crossbow knocked out of its hands, ran to its weapon and retrieved it. The woman nocked an arrow, looking for a suitable target to shoot. Alice was moving too fast, and Tafel was partially shielded by a sword. The woman already knew arrows had no effect on Mr. Skelly from the earlier attack. That left Vur, who was sighing while staring up at the ceiling. A wooden crossbow bolt flew towards Vur and split into three midflight. One bolt struck him directly on the forehead, the other on the center of his chest, and the last on his thigh. All three arrows snapped in half upon impact as if they had struck a metal wall. The woman stared at Vur with a dumbstruck expression, not even reloading the crossbow, as he rubbed his head and frowned at the broken projectiles by his feet.
Vur glared at the woman and stomped over. It tried to take a step back, but an overwhelming pressure locked it into place as a rune appeared on Vur’s forehead. He stopped right in front of the bloody person and snatched the crossbow out of its frozen hands. Then he bent his knees and undid the strap that was holding the woman’s quiver, taking the crossbow bolts as well. “These are mine now.”
The woman nodded, its mouth hanging open, as Vur turned his back and returned to his place near the entrance to the room, fiddling with the crossbow. Tafel’s voice increased in volume as she slammed the butt of her staff onto the ground. “And on the thirteenth day, the world was consumed by ice and snow. Blizzard!”
Alice’s aura tail stiffened as mana surged out of the gem on Tafel’s staff, radiating outwards like an explosion. The ice-cold mana washed over the room, coating everything it touched with a layer of frost. Alice shivered and shook herself off, shattering the crystals forming on her skin. “You said it’d be only a little chilly!”
“You shook it off, didn’t you?” Tafel asked in reply. “And it’s not done yet.”
Icicles blossomed like flowers from every surface with frost on it. They grew in size until they were as large as infants before exploding into clouds of snow and hail. Wind picked up from underneath, whirling around and around, turning the room into a snow-filled landscape. The bloody people’s movements were stiff as they struggled to wipe off the snow accumulating on their partially frozen bodies. Alice had retreated towards Vur, taking shelter underneath Sheryl, who was canceling out some of the effec
ts of Tafel’s spell.
A moment later, another wave of ice-cold mana radiated out of Chi’Rururp, slowing the bloody people’s movements even further. The snow and hail in the room became thicker and thicker until it was impossible to see anything other than white. Tafel picked up Chi’Rururp and stuffed it inside of a portal along with her staff. The two blizzard spells ended and the snow and hail died down, revealing four frozen red statues sticking out amongst a snowy field.
“I hope you didn’t damage any of the books,” Mr. Skelly mumbled as he dug himself out of a pile of snow. He shook himself off and took off his helmet, leaning forward and patting the back of his skull with his hand to knock snow out of his eye sockets. Once his vision cleared up, he tapped the frozen buckler-wielding man. “It seems like he couldn’t null this spell, eh?”
“I figured if Vur could freeze those children, then I could freeze these adults,” Tafel said with a nod. “I think I’m starting to understand how null-magic works and how to counter it. The icicle I shot at it before was created through mana, so all he had to do was disrupt the flow of mana within to destroy it. But blizzard creates lots of ice and snow to drop the temperature. The only way to cancel out blizzard would be to destroy each individual snowflake to prevent the temperature drop. At least, that’s my theory.”
“Speaking of temperature drops,” Alice said and clutched her shoulders while shivering. “Am I the only one who’s cold!?”
Vur shrugged. “I feel fine.” Despite standing in the middle of the blizzard without moving, there wasn’t a single speck of snow on his skin, in his hair, or covering his pants. “The snow melted before it could touch me thanks to Sheryl.”
“You’re welcome, Vur,” Sheryl said, the red orb of light hovering around him flashing twice.
“I’m undead,” Mr. Skelly said. “Cold and heat are foreign concepts to me. After being dead for so long, I forgot what they felt like.”