Chương 19: [LD-1] 18. Rescue

XVIII Rescue I stared at the text hovering over the heads of the five students, all of whom looked up at me with a mixture of hope and fear.

'The highest is level three.' Which was about the lowest level enemy you'd find on this floor. I glanced away.

'I got lucky.' Had I spawned on this floor, too, I would've been like them—a hunted animal with no other recourse but to hide for dear life. A figure moved at the edge of my sight. Down the hall, Kiba crouched beside the corpse of a student. The ambient light of the moss basked their body in emerald light, like some deity was gracing their journey into the beyond. Their head was smashed in past recognition. Kiba dug through their pockets for anything useful. My chest contracted.

'Or would I have been like them?'

"Hey, uhm…Joy, was it?" The one speaking was one of the boys. The one that was level three.

"Yes?"

"Thanks for saving us." He bowed.

"We're in your debt."

"Don't worry abut it. Anyone would've done the same." It was easy to forget that we were all just kids. None of us should've been placed in this scenario. Despite waving away his thanks, Rick bowed lower.

"I would like to ask you for another favour." My brow rose.

"If it's within my power." He nodded.

"Our group was one of the first to enter the dungeon." Which was surprising. If they'd been that early, they should've had the highest chance of being killed already.

"You hid somewhere?" I asked.

"A bunkered room some corridors away from here. We figured out too late that it was a storage room of sorts that they frequented." I grimaced. A bunch of level ones trapped in a room when a bunch of goblins walked in?

'I don't want to know how that place looks right now.'

"How many of you were there?" Kiba asked, returning to my side. He wasn't holding anything, so the corpse must've not had anything on them. Rick frowned.

"…around thirty students? Lily did a headcount, but more people joined later. It's part of why we were discovered early."

"Lily?" I said.

"Lily Pedante," Nina, one of the girls, said. Her long hair had fallen in front of her face and partially shielded her expression. She rubbed another girl on the back, then added: "The little sister of the student council president." The girl she was consoling whipped up at me.

"Can we please go help her?" Moisture welled up in the corners of her eyes.

"She lured away a bunch of monsters to save us." Her voice hitched, and she sobbed, eliciting the other girl to rub her back more fervently. If she lured away a bunch of goblins by herself, the president's little sister was dead…but I didn't have the heart to tell the weeping child that. I turned to Kiba, who'd listened to the entire thing with his eyes half closed and arms crossed. He met my gaze.

'Getting the others first would be for the best,' my expression conveyed. He nodded.

'But that will take more time.' Indeed. We didn't even know where the cafeteria was. And though I'd written Lily off already, she and Alexa were from a noble family. Kids like that started training when they were old enough to walk. There was a non-zero chance… My lips pressed into a line. But Kil wasn't ready to be summoned yet. We'd be going in alone and blind. Some quiet seconds passed. I sighed.

"Did you see where she ran off to?" All of them shook their heads. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Well, then there wasn't really much for us to do, was there—"I can pick up her scent," Kiba said. I swallowed my thoughts.

"When you couldn't pick up my scent?" He rolled his eyes.

"It doesn't work if the target is next to me. We'll need to return to that bunker." Here, he turned to the others, who shrunk back like he'd struck them. No one would want to return to a breached hideout. Especially not when they'd seen their friends and allies die there. Rick balled his fists.

"I'll take you there."

"That's heroic," I said.

"But you'll all need to come with. Unless you plan on hiding in here again until we return." Taking them with us would mean more bodies to defend. However, leaving them behind was just offering them to the jaws of whichever predator found them first. That realisation settled into the party's bones, made them shiver to their cores. Rick rose to his feet, followed by the others.

"We'll be in your hands." The hallways blended together. Roots burrowing through the paths were nothing more than potential pitfalls. Each unchecked corner was a barricade a goblin could be hiding behind, every flicker of light enough to shock the nervous system. Had Kiba not been walking at my side, I would've stopped once or twice to catch my breath. As it was, the white fang paced beside me like a guard dog, his every enhanced sense locked on catching the faintest sign of our enemies.

Behind us, the five terrified students clutched their hearts. Normally, either Kiba or I should've been in the back bringing up the rear, with the others in our middle. However, Kiba and I were not tanks, so we couldn't keep the front safe alone. And if one of us died, the others would not make it out, anyway. Rick had a basic warrior class with a skill that increased the force behind his attacks.

Two of the girls had a class that was good at identifying archaic objects—a luxury class that guilds venturing into shadow realms would pay well for. Of the remainder, the only class that could help us was that of Robert. As a light mage, he had a skill that could form a barrier. But whatever limited use the students had was further minimised by their level. They simply couldn't keep up with what this floor had to offer.

'We need to power-level them.' But to achieve that, they'd need to do most of the fighting. A dangerous endeavour. Especially without a healer. I'd been looking at Kiba while I was thinking. He turned, caught me staring, and raised his brow. I shook my head and looked away.

"We're reaching the bunker," Rick whispered. So I took Cull in both hands. Our steps became even more measured. Our breathing more subdued. A broken door blocked part of the entrance to a room at the end of the hall. Blood painted the surface. I peered into the shadows and could already make out the bodies splayed out within the room. A nauseating wave of stink hit me a moment later. I resisted the urge to cover my nose.

"Stay close—" The girl Nina had comforted lurched and rushed to a nearby wall. We waited until she emptied whatever contents remained inside her stomach to continue.

"That's not thirty bodies," Kiba said, leaning inside the doorway.

'How is he not affected by the smell?' My eyes were watering! I did a quick second count. Disregarding the dead goblins, there were six corpses in the storage room.

"The others must've made it out," Rick said. Hope entered the undercurrent of his voice. I did not squash it.

'I get why they didn't recognise this.' Even knowing in advance that it was a storage room did not stop me from hesitating to call it such. There were some bones and sticks strewn around, but that was it.

"Can you really smell anything like this?" Nina asked. She had propped her entire sleeve up her nose. Kiba side-eyed her, did not answer, and turned away. I chuckled to myself. The amount he'd spoken in the last hour made me forget his personality. He really wasn't keen on talking to others. Like, at all. The white fang paced through the space, stepping over a few bodies as he did so. He stopped near a pair of broken glasses and crouched.

"Same colour as those of Alexa," he whispered. Rick approached his side.

"Those are Lily's." Kiba put the glasses under his nose and sniffed twice. The third time, he took a deeper tug that made his nose flare. Then he rose to his feet and nodded at me. I hurried after him. Lily's trail led us to a broken hallway. Literally. Halfway through, the invasive system of roots and nature disappeared, together with the tiles making up the compound. What took their place was a layer of earth held up by wooden support beams.

'Looks like a mineshaft.' The view outside the windows didn't hint at us entering an underground, though. With the moss gone, we would've been shrouded in a cloak of darkness if not for the torches fastened to the walls every few steps. The firelight fell and coated the skeletons littered along the road in a warm hue. My hands tightened around Cull's hilt.

"They're not human," Nina whispered. The skeletons were too big to be that of a human being.

'Some kind of rat creature?' Not all the skeletons were of the same type, though. Perhaps— Kiba pointed ahead. The sound of metal hitting rock roiled over the walls. We quickened our pace and turned around a bend. The pathway opened into a chamber. Pink minerals poked out of the walls, which illuminated the interior instead of the torches. Flashes of magic missiles transcended their radiance. The bolt flew from behind a set of boulders and mud walls.

About two dozen students crouched behind the battlements and fired at a creature somewhere in size between a hobgoblin and a brute. The beast raised a staff, the gem at the top gleaming, and wove a cloud of shadows into a thick layer that blocked all the attacks. [Hob Warlock - lvl. 16] My stomach contracted. That was a higher level than the brute. The flash of a metal tip overhead drew my gaze. There was a gallery. Multiple entrances on the second floor fed into more tunnels.

Goblins poured out in droves and either leapt down to join the fight or strung their bows. That's where the threats to our lives should've ended. A transparent crystal hovered in the centre of five metal beams shaped like fangs. Unnatural power rippled through the sphere like mocking laughter. Was that… the dungeon core?! Before I could consider the ramifications of that thought, the warlock cast a lazy glance over his shoulder. Its sight lingered above Kiba's head, then turned towards me. Its nostrils flared.

While rotating back to the other students, the warlock spun its staff at us with an offhand swipe. Darkness gathered and congealed around the gem, which swallowed the light bouncing through the chamber. By the time my heart had skipped five beats, the shadowbolt covered half the width of the tunnel and devoured the space between us.