Chương 34

We walked for a long time now. The corridor stretched like a long, long snake. I felt normal ground above us, but filled with undead or creatures in various states of zombification, which I found pretty creepy. At some point, the entire group asked me what was wrong with me, because I was looking at a horned zebra spasming, convulsing on the ground as the rot slowly spread across its body. We had to go back and forth a little in order to make sure that the C4 was distributed properly.

Honestly, so far the stronghold was less impressive than I had imagined it. There was a lot of messy undead lying around, but none of them were really— I stopped myself, because we arrived in front of a sudden expansion of the corridor, so big that King Pussycat could have fit lengthwise from wall to wall. The double doors had written on them, in Gothic characters: The Lab.

"Is this the boss fight?" Alice asked.

"I'm not sure," I replied, looking at the double doors.

"The door makes it look like a boss fight," Lucas said.

"Well, let's just stay on guard for this, then." I got close and used the Sphere of Intuition, and I saw many, many cages in the meager range of my Sphere, and inside of them—"What the fuck?" I muttered. Then I looked at my wristwatch. It was 10 p. m. I looked back at the door.

"What's up?" they asked me. Feeling a little anxious, I lied.

"Let's see. Let's see what's inside." I opened the door — and by opened, I mean I just placed my hand on one of the double doors, and they magically slid forward, opening completely and slamming to the sides of the walls loudly. Despite that, inside of what was called the Lab, not a peep, not one sound came from the vast amount of cages all around. There must have been three hundred or so cages, from a quick count I made in my head.

I got close to the first cage, and Lucas, who came up beside me, said in a low voice, so as not to be heard by the others, who were in a similar state of shock, "John, I think that God actually exists." I turned toward Lucas, and then I looked back inside the cage. There was a — and God forgive me if it actually exists — cat girl. She was a fully human woman, probably six feet tall, with very long legs, half-naked, with just some furry cat ears on her head.

But when I squinted, I actually was like, wait, those are not cat ears. Those are—"She's like a lion cat girl," Lucas whispered.

"Lucas," I frowned, and then I just raised my hands, pointing at the devastating, tragic situation of what looked like an entire tribe of cat girls — and cat men, I suppose — imprisoned in this undead laboratory.

"No, I agree," Lucas said.

"We have to save them all." Looking at the man, I praised his ability to keep the humor going. I liked it.

"You know, you can still be funny and joke around in these moments," I said, to appreciate the man. I felt like maybe I gave him too much shit.

"I'm not joking, John. If I have to give my life for these girls," Lucas pointed at the cat girl, "I will. I will fight gods for this. I'm turning into Kratos to save the cat girls, John."

"Lucas, you're repeating my name, and you're scaring me," I said.

"Good, because we have to save the cat girls, John. And if we don't save them, I'm hunting you to the end of the world." At this point, I just walked away from Lucas and started going through the Sphere of Intuition, looking at every cage. Every cage held either very fit men or women — lion ears on top of their heads, otherwise perfectly humanoid.

"Is this," I wondered out loud, "because it's night?" And then I raised my wristwatch for everybody.

"Oh," Marcus exclaimed.

"That makes sense. But the hyenas turned into very ugly gnolls. I wonder why—""Are you comparing us to gnolls?" I turned sharply when I heard a female voice from one of the cages. I got close, and I saw a muscular woman with her arms crossed, barely covered in rags, looking at me.

"Miss," I frowned.

"I, um, don't wanna insult you. We're here to help." She deadpanned at me. Then she looked at me from head to toe with a scrutinizing gaze, which made me feel way more naked than she was.

"I would love a little snack," she said, opening her mouth and showing me some sharp teeth. They were mostly human, but her canines were very fangy.

"Well, I am not a snack." I smiled.

"Maybe you are," Alice said, laughing and coming to my side.

"Miss, uh, we are with King Pussycat."

"Who?" She frowned.

"Who's that? What's that ridiculous name?"

"Um, right. I gave him that name. So, your king — the one that was abducted by the undead, that has been brought out to, like, power this, uh, insane undead boss that would have brought forth ruin for everything. Amon, I think was his name." She now frowned at me and grabbed the cage's bars, the steel making a creaking sound that made me take several steps back.

"Are you talking about my husband, King Regulus?" Stolen novel; please report. Oh, so Regulus was his name. I didn't know what to tell her now. This woman was probably six-five, and she had just almost broken metal with her bare hands. And she was my pet's wife. Now, I wasn't sure how a woman would react to her husband being literally somebody else's pet. And another fact popped into my mind. She was in humanoid form, which I supposed might very well be her actual form.

Whereas King Pussycat — well, King Regulus — was in animal form, potentially because I had fed him the Pet Biscuit, or maybe because of the undead doing something to him. All of this made me suddenly very nervous.

"So, you know my husband?"

"Well, miss, um— uh, you haven't told me your name."

"My name is Zosma. Well, um— and I am Queen Zosma, for you."

"Queen Zosma. I might as well tell you what happened." And so I recounted the story, and I tried really hard to emphasize what King Pussycat — Regulus himself — had told me.

"I wish," she said, "I wish I could be out of here to bite your throat. But sadly, all of that sounds exactly like my husband."

"Yeah. And so we came here, Queen Zosma, because we would like to save your husband. He was poisoned by, uh, the Widow's Tears. I don't know if you've ever heard of the poison. And I would really like to help him survive the day. We don't have that much time. If I may also be honest, without your husband, my people are doomed. He promised to help me in this war that's coming, and…" Queen Zosma looked around and showed me, with her hand, the rest of the cages.

"This is what remains of our people. We have been slaughtered while in an inferior form, forced on us by this tutorial. My husband is gone and has been made into a pet — a dying pet. Why do you expect me to do anything for you? The magic of the undead keeps me chained here. These cages are nigh unbreakable."

I was actually just looking at the cages with my Sphere of Intuition, and I saw that there were runes inscribed all over the place, with one bright rune sitting just in front of a corner bar and clearly shuffling mana across the rest of the cage — which made me think about a little plan. So, this woman was clearly mad at me because I turned her husband into a ridiculous pet called King Pussycat. Which, I get it. If someone made a pet of my wife — even another woman — I wouldn't be very happy.

I've still gotta say, I have yet to find the solution to the problem of not having a wife, so maybe that's a thought for later. But I had a way to maybe get a little help for what was coming next, and so I told Queen Zosma, "Your Majesty, how about this? I'm sure that soon enough, monsters — well, the undead — will come here and try to kill us all. We are feeble, um, and not that strong."

"For once, I agree with your words," she said, looking straight into my eyes.

"How about I free you, and you help us?" When I said that with a straight face, she looked at me for a few seconds, blinked, and then started laughing with a booming, deep laugh.

"You think you can bend these bars for me? Do you know who I am? I am the strongest warrior of my tribe, and I can do nothing." I made a quick turn, and I said, "Huh, interesting, right? So, if I were to free you, would you say you would be open to helping us with this and to saving your husband?"

"If you managed in a thousand years to do something like that, I might very well become your most trusted aide," she replied with a laugh.

"All right." I smiled, and then I used my spear to just nick the big rune that was powering the cage, and something suddenly shifted. The bars lost their luster, and Queen Zosma's eyes went wide. Next, I smiled at her, and I pointed at the bars.

"You can do the rest, right?" She jammed her hands between the bars and then pulled them apart. The metal screamed but opened without a problem, with a few bars being snapped right off. She walked forward, standing in front of me. I tried to look at her face, craning my neck, since I was at a very inconvenient height at the moment. I could also now see her level. [Queen Zosma - Level 25 (Boss)] She was higher level than King Pussycat, which, now that I thought about it, made sense.

Wasn't it like the female lions — the lionesses, the pride, I think it was called — hunted for the big lion or something like that? Like, the big lion fought some fights. I wasn't actually sure about this. I didn't like those kinds of documentaries that much. But I knew that Queen Zosma was really, really intimidating, especially when I saw that on her hands, a giant set of claws had just come out of her fingers. Well, to be more precise, her fingers had just turned into claws.

She looked at them and said, "The enchantment that was taking my power away is broken." Then she looked at the other cages.

"The liches have put a grand spell around all of them. It pervades the entire castle, and—" I took the scrolls out of my inventory.

"This spell," I said. She snapped her head back and looked at them. I realized in that moment that I appreciated that she wasn't really too physical with me, or snatching the scrolls out of my hand. With someone this overbearing, one would expect some manner of disrespect, but she seemed very polite for a giant lion woman who could shred me to pieces in a second.

"May I?" she asked. And I handed her the scrolls.

"There are four scrolls," she commented, clearly reading the items' descriptions, and then gave them back to me.

"So, you're here to put an end to the spell that affects my subjects and many other creatures that are not humans."

"I mean, I was— I came here for my friend, uh—" I was about to say King Pussycat, but then I just said, "your husband. I swore that I would help him and his subjects. So I'm here for you guys and the poison. If, while I help with that, I can save other innocents, it's even better, right?" She looked at me like I was an alien. And to her credit, I was — at least to her. And she lowered her head, closing her eyes, muttering something about stars. Sounded like a prayer.

And then she immediately said, "Many humans were brought here." She squatted down until we were face to face.

"The undead captured many Havens, and they turned all the humans. They brought them here and modified them. Some were made into Death Knights."

"Yeah, we met those," I frowned.

"Um, I am very sorry. I didn't ask your name," Queen Zosma suddenly told me.

"Uh, John. You can just call me John."

"Sir John," she said. She's tremendously consistent with her husband, I thought to myself.

"Sir John, I am sorry for your subjects. But the undead come from a mostly human stock. Humans have a soul that makes for excellent stock for future undead. It is because of its malleability. It can be turned into many things, unlike my people's souls. I'm afraid to say that is why my people here are still alive. They haven't served the purpose yet. They will be turned into those undead by those scrolls, by the end of the tutorial on the first floor.

But now," she said, and I saw all her muscles flexing and rippling, "I shall help you. And we shall save my husband."

"So, you know where the antidote to the poison is?" I asked, hopeful. She nodded.

"There is a powerful boss in the room ahead. First, we have to kill the liches. And then there is a head lich — extremely powerful." She turned to the cages.

"I wish I could take my fellow warriors with me. But I shall fight this creature alone."

"Well, not alone." I smiled at Queen Zosma.

"How about we lend you a hand?" General Skullthrax was watching and laughing out loud. Did John really think that their liches would have made the mistake of not sedating or poisoning their damn strongest warrior? General Skullthrax laughed wildly. John, you are a fool. There were only Xivitz and Count Vorthug in the hall at the moment, despite General Skullthrax having just said to his servants, "Go call everybody back here. We're having another feast right now. John is about to damn die.

And I will turn him into the strongest Death Knight we have. I will let the Death Knight corrupt his equipment, and he shall become the worst nightmare of humanity. He doesn't even realize how strong he currently is. Have you seen how he fought, like a fool? He doesn't even know how to lean into his skills. And now he has fallen into my trap, and he is about to die."

"Yes, Your Darkness," Xivitz commented.

"Finally, your plans are taking effect. I must praise your ingenious trap. It will surely kill this pathetic Diver John." General Skullthrax slowly and robotically turned toward Xivitz. And then nodded uncertainly after the lanky undead had spoken.

"Yes, it will."