Chương 36

Despite Oliver's suspicions that the vampire had been lying in wait to ambush them, the cellar's secret door remained unchanged from his previous visit. He triple checked it, even feeling along the wine rack's edges, but found nothing amiss. Oliver turned to address his companions in the wine cellar. Best to clear up a few things now.

"Ben, are you with us this time?" Oliver asked the drone.

"Any interference?"" For now, I see no problems on my end. You can hear my response, correct?"

"Yes." Oliver opened the secret door and stepped inside.

"Both of you stay quiet while we walk through the secret tunnels though. There are peep holes into several rooms along the way which means people might be able to hear you through the walls. Just because the rooms are dark doesn't mean there aren't vampires inside. For them, light is a luxury used to view color, not a necessity for daily life." The eye slits on Kiki's helmet brightened.

"You mean, there are vampires inside the—""No." Oliver shut down that line of thinking immediately.

"I don't know how you survived outside for eight hours alone, but you're cocky if you believe you can recreate the feat while inside the castle. The [Blood Manipulator] we just fought was a mid-level threat, at only level 59. And if we fought more than one at once, I doubt we would have survived." Wanting to end the argument there, Oliver entered the secret door. Kiki muttered under her breath, but followed without complaining too loudly. Rather than walk in the dark again, another idea popped into Oliver's head.

He reached for his newly acquired ring and activated it for the first time. The Ring of Lycanthrope hummed and warmed as he felt the magic take control. He immediately collapsed to the stone ground. His throat swelled, his vocal cords warbling and shifting, allowing only a croak free from what would have been a full fledged scream. Crippling pain tore through him as every bone in his body snapped and readjusted its structure. His skin burned, as if seared off and dunked in a salt water vat.

Something pulled on the front of his face, ripping it forward and he felt his eyes melting and reforming. Oliver genuinely thought this might be the end of him. That his quest reward had been swapped out for a cursed artifact. He was doomed to an existence as little more than a glob of malformed flesh like the one he'd met in the dungeons. Then the pain disappeared nearly as quickly as it had appeared. While it had felt like an eternity, Kiki hadn't even finished turning to face him during his transformation.

To her perspective, it likely lasted little more than a second. Gasping for air and shaking from the memory of pain, he lifted himself to his feet. He now stood lower to the ground. On all fours. It felt like he was balancing on the tips of his fingers and toes rather than resting on his heels. He raised a hand, now a paw, and saw the enchanted ring that transformed him still on his finger. Well… toe now, he supposed. His eyesight had improved, so technically his objective was a success.

Unfortunately, Oliver had never given much thought into what becoming a wolf might entail in the short term. As he shifted around to look back at Kiki, he felt a pressure at his chest alongside a riiiiipe.

"Did you just destroy your shirt?" Kiki asked, the eyes on her mask narrowing at him and raising her neon blade for light.

"Yes. I did." Oliver's voice was huskier, his tongue foreign in his mouth. But at least he was still capable of speech.

"You want me to pick up all the stuff you dropped?"

"That would be nice of you." Unexpected inconveniences aside, the wolf body felt sharp. As if all his senses were heightened to their max. He could smell the scent of boiled blood from the fight earlier both on Kiki's armor and his remaining discarded clothes. The neon light from her blade was a beacon in the darkness, his eyes barely able to glance in that direction without blinding himself for several seconds. His back legs stepped out of his boots and he felt the cold stone under his feet.

Only his tricorn hat remained perched on his head.

"Let's find a place to hide a cache of equipment," Kiki suggested as she picked up his bag and clothes.

"I'm not a maid who'll lug all your shit around."

"Just carry it for ten minutes," Oliver said.

"I'll need to put it back on once we enter the castle's dungeon." He was not looking forward to the sensation of shifting back into his human form. He held onto naive hope that the more he transformed, the less painful it would become. Every account about their transformations he'd heard about and from werewolves went against that optimistic wish, but he still clung to it. Technically, he wasn't a werewolf so maybe…

"If you're just going to transform again, why did you bother to do this in the first place? Just stay human." Rather than explain himself, Oliver grunted and trotted forward down the secret passageway. Cursing, Kiki chased after him with his gear stuffed under an arm. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. His body felt surprisingly natural as he moved. Every step increased his understanding of the body substantially.

When he reached the fork in the passageway, he slowed to a stop and examined his surroundings. Unlike his last visit through the path, he had a better sense for what was around him. Not only did his eyes adjust to the low lighting, now that he was further off from their earlier bloody fight he could properly pick up on scents previously obscured to him. Pausing in front of a peephole, Oliver raised his snout and took in a strange scent. It was foul and a bit familiar. He approached the peephole and peered inside.

At first, he saw nothing of note. An empty room with a door on the far side. The stink was on the floor, but he parched through that scent and his nose directed him to look up at the ceiling. Hundreds of bats clung to four support beams that lined the ceiling. They all slept, completely unaware of his existence. Then he realized what the scent on the floor was. Bat guano. Wrinkling his nose, he continued on. Kiki pressed him about the room's contents, obviously gunning for another fight.

Wanting to make as little noise as possible, Oliver simply replied, "bats and shit." While they walked, Oliver eyed Kiki. He hadn't noticed it before, but her samurai armor was significantly more dinged up than he remembered. There were dozens of scratches and he noted that the trim neon lighting no longer functioned, though perhaps she'd done the rational thing and turned them off on purpose.

Regardless, it seemed that while he'd been in his sanctuary, she hadn't gotten out of her scuffles completely without damage. He sped up, trotting down the tunnel with his nose deciphering the different paths and rooms. The passageway that led to the library smelled of old parchment, paper, and binding glue. The path to the dungeon reeked of death, decay, and old blood. But… there was something else there too. He raised his snout and sniffed again.

Underneath the dungeon stains, he thought he smelled the hint of metallic materials. Not like an old rusty tool. Those were prevalent enough but this specific metal under all of the filth smelled clean and unadulterated. If he wasn't specifically seeking it out, the scent would have gone utterly unnoticed.

"What's wrong with your face?" Kiki asked, catching up to him.

"Did your nose break?"

"I might have found the server room," he replied. He lowered his snout.

"Or something similar to it. Keep up." Arriving at the dungeon entrance, he remained in wolf form and asked Kiki to open the secret door. He needed to stay in this body until he was able to track down the path to the servers. The cell was unchanged from his previous visit. That was a major relief. He'd likely attracted a lot of attention by slaying their warden and torturer so Oliver had been worried the vampires might lock down this cell and use it as a trap. It seemed they were unaware of the entrance here.

"Stick with me," he growled to Kiki as he nosed the cell door open. An eerie silence loomed as they retraced his steps. Gone were the heavy breathing, whines, and mutterings of the monstrosities. It only took a minute of checking his surroundings as they walked to realize where the noise had disappeared to. Some of the monstrosities remained in their cells, mutilated further and either unconscious or dead. Others were missing altogether.

Didn't take a genius to tell the vampires had been displeased by their guard's death and the werewolf child's escape.

"Nasty," Kiki muttered as she glanced in a cell with freshly flayed skin spread out like a rug.

"Bad way to go. Though far from the worst I've seen," Oliver replied.

"Your biome sucks." Oliver grunted.

"Part of me is surprised you're not a higher level with so many horrible things to kill. But the other part is surprised you're alive at all." Oliver was spared having to respond to the comment as they came in on the torture chamber. The scent of metal led him back in here. He made a face as he attempted to sniff the air. It was foul in here. The reek of death stronger than anywhere else. Circling the room, Oliver realized that it had been in use after his departure.

We puddles of blood with dismembered bits of flesh floating in them were scattered across the uneven stone floor. Someone had butchered creatures here a mere hour or two ago. They were lucky to have missed the torturer. With the overwhelming reek of blood and rot, it took Oliver a few minutes to locate the path forward. Under a table in the corner was a trap door, camouflaged with the stone flooring. That discovery out of the way, Oliver decided his time as a wolf was at an end for the day.

A deep breath, and a horrible sensation of pan later, Oliver stood back on human legs. He took a deep breath. It still stank, but his muted human senses barely noticed after suffering a wolf's olfactory senses.

"Pants on." Kiki tossed his clothes at him. He caught them as they smacked into his bare chest. Oliver dressed himself quickly, not wanting to get caught by a torturer while half-dressed. He found himself missing his enchanted black jacket. He'd only had the enchantments for a day, but the jacket itself had been with him for nearly a year. This spare one wasn't nearly as nice. It was older, taken from a mausoleum, and smidge too small for him. While he laced up his boots, Kiki bent down and lifted up the trap door.

Even in human form, the immediate reek made Oliver gag. Kiki, protected from the scent via her helmet, laughed at his reaction.

"Come on, don't be a baby," she teased.

"A bit of sewage never hurt anyone."

"That's definitely not normal sewage," Oliver got out. He had to breathe through his mouth.

"And, even if it was, sewage definitely has hurt people."" I must concur with Oliver," Ben said from Kiki's pack." This is not a sewer system. Not a standard one, at the very least. There is no obvious exit and, as far as I am aware, vampires need not relieve themselves. Their bodies are hyper efficient at using the nutrients of blood. The thralls carry out their own excrement by hand as part of a morning ritual."

"If not a sewer, then what?" Kiki asked. Oliver realized the answer immediately. He remembered what that book he'd stolen had said in its secret coded message. Seek. Under. Disposal. Beneath. The. Death. Lies. The. Answer. Live. And. Escape. Youngling.

"This is where the vampires dispose of their dead. The server is under there."