Chương 85: 1-84 Hopscotch

"Fuck that slimy elf," Josef concluded after Marla took off, hauling her unconscious comrade with a strength born from fear. He felt just slightly bad about having intimidated her into answering their questions.

"I am all for cursing Vasaj, but what for?" Zippa tilted his head questioningly. To his side, Bezzo was intensely glaring at the ground, working his jaw as if holding back a harsh answer. The younger reptile had probably also figured out the very same issue he had taken in the information they had just received. If they could trust Marla's words, and she had looked far too scared to lie, then Vasaj had known a lot more than he had let on.

The elf had set up contracts not only with independent dungeon delvers but also with proper adventurer teams. His target group was easily summarized as anyone with monetary troubles, or those like this woman, who already owed him money. He had offered to erase debts, and no small amount of coin if they joined the expedition and stuck close to the knights of Sanctum. Then, whenever the dungeon's winding paths allowed for it, usually when patrols were formed to search every floor, they were to strike.

As far as whittling down their forces went, that was a sound enough plan, even if it involved far too many people for Josef's own taste. With that many moving pieces, there was a much too large risk of a leak. But either the elf was sure about the sway he held over these folks, or he somehow didn't see a need to be concerned about the possibility. That strategy immediately invoked memories of some of their findings on their way down, in particular the armor they had found left behind at the scene of a fight.

Maybe there had been more knights than adventurers in that fight, resulting in one of the metal suits getting left behind? The much more concerning part was the instructions he had given them on how to continue after taking out their quarry. They were to don the armor of the felled knights and follow after the main force at a distance. From there, they were supposed to wait for an opportunity to engage and wipe out Sanctum's forces after they had lost enough troops.

An opportunity they were assured of would be there and impossible to miss. How would he know that? And why specifically request them to get that silver armor? They didn't even attempt to infiltrate the main group, pretending to be returning knights. Not that he suspected a chance for that to work anyway, but there should have been no reason to dress up otherwise. Except for the part where that armor apparently protected against the influence of that white mana, at least to some degree.

"That guy somehow knew about this beforehand." Josef laid out the idea he had arrived at, seeing as Bezzo didn't bother taking over the explanation.

"And he didn't care to warn anyone about this creepy magic in advance."

"But why?" Zippa looked more confused than angry. He shrugged.

"I guess most would not take a job with untold dangers, no matter the debt. No idea why he didn't warn me, though. Not like I would have turned around."

"Maybe he didn't expect you to be that mad," Bezzo deadpanned, much to his brother's amusement.

"Aren't you even crazier for following a madman?" Josef gave the reptile a wry smirk, causing him to turn away with a groan.

"Anyway, it sounds like there's a mess waiting for us downstairs." For a moment, nobody moved, as if waiting for someone to speak up. After several seconds passed, Zippa broke into a cackle as he threw an arm over Josef, dragging him forward.

"You hear that lack of objections? We're all crazy here." He wasn't wrong about that, Josef noted. No matter how bad things got, he was committed to seeing things through. For Cana and her little Coco. Zippa was clearly, similarly dedicated to him, and his little brother, grouchy as he may be, would not leave his side in turn. Linda, meanwhile, was apparently going down a path of vengeance against Sanctum, for better or worse.

Walking down those crumbling hallways, he realized that there likely were no other people who would willingly push forward under these conditions. Marla had told them what waited below, and her words didn't paint a pretty picture. When she arrived, a fight had already broken out, and she joined the fray in the back, hoping to coast by with little effort. She didn't exactly word it like that, but her reluctance to fight was abundantly clear. For a while, that apparently worked well enough.

While the hired troops were a ragtag bunch, they held a few figures that suppressed Sanctum's knights exceedingly well. Vasaj must have made sure to reel in at least a few quality mercenaries for his ploy. That was until the bishop did something to turn things around. He had barricaded himself in the boss room, and nobody knew what exactly had happened in there. However, at some point mana began to pour up the stairs, flowing in such vast quantities that it was visible to the naked eye.

From Marla's description, he knew it was the very same mist that invaded all of these floors. After that, those knights sworn to Sanctum went completely crazy, fighting wildly with no regard for their own lives. Even some of their own forces went mad, assaulting their closest allies. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Almost as if they had turned feral, even though that shouldn't have been possible for the elves among them.

With the battle turning into a bloody stalemate, the woman had finally decided that she had had her fill, and ran from the fight. Unfortunately, the fanatics weren't willing to let anyone escape, and one managed to slip out of the fight to hunt her down. If it hadn't been for that other guy, Karrus, she would have died up here, unable to face the knight on her own. She didn't know why, but the man must have pursued both of them when they left the battle.

Josef certainly felt happy for saving the man, even if he had picked a poor target for his heroics. Moving along as fast as his magic vacuum allowed, which was slow enough to annoy Linda, even though they could almost jog along, they entered the next floor. What even were walls? Clearly just a suggestion, according to what they found. Whatever solids were attached to the floor below barely counted as a railing, reaching only about as high as their knees.

Everything else was taken up by a blank void, which loomed over them more threateningly than ever. Getting close to the border of their path, Zippa eyed the small, fractured wall with suspicion.

"Is it too late to mention that I'm afraid of yawning voids?"

"You looked fine in that last boss room." Josef pondered loudly.

"We don't even know what happens if you step away from the path. Maybe it's as solid as a wall, or we can walk across the darkness and cut corners."

"That room at least had a floor!" The reptile shivered from head to tail.

"Well, you can go ahead and try. I'll stay right here on solid ground." Stepping up right next to the reptile, he teasingly called out.

"No balls." Slowly stretching out an arm, he extended it all the way without feeling anything strange. Then, he kicked at the wall and sent a few rocks tumbling. They fell far and without a sound, only disappearing when they got so far his eyes couldn't pick them up anymore. Finally, he moved about some of his mana streams, probingly flailing them through the dark. They encountered not even the smallest trails of mana. There really wasn't anything securing their path.

The void surrounding them was just so very trippy that it looked like it had to be something solid. Finally, he stepped back, feeling slightly nauseated. Perhaps the brain wasn't meant to process being surrounded by actual nothingness. A part of him felt like Dusty would have loved this place.

"So what? Damn mammal…" Zippa grumbled, sounding not the least bit upset, but clearly tense. He had taken some decisive steps away from the edge while Josef experimented, standing dead center on the path.

"Do you need me to hold your hand through this?" he asked, only half joking. The reptile turned up his snout haughtily.

"No… maybe. I can deal with this. Probably." When they continued, however, Zippa immediately fell in line behind him and put a claw on Josef's shoulder, as if needing something to hold on to. Which caused a lot of dismay from Pretzel, who had to move aside her own head to make space. His silly snake was quite possessive of her shoulder spot, even though she was already comfortably wrapped around his torso. Though all of his familiars seemed to share that obsession.

Even Sprout had dominantly taken over the other shoulder, literally growing on him. Zippa wasn't the only one concerned with the surrounding void, however, as even Bezzo obviously got the creeps after they descended another set of stairs, only to find the wall gone entirely. It was hard to tell from a quick look over his shoulder, but he was sure he spotted him hanging onto his brother's tail. Unfortunately, even with all the walls gone, they had no easier time finding their way to the next stairs.

Even standing at a corner, they could not see the path through the darkness. It was a bizarre phenomenon, and he grew more concerned about the path ahead. Would they even be able to reach the next boss floor, or would the dungeon just dissolve in front of them? The next floor held the answer, sending a chill down everyone's spines as they emerged onto it. Even their immediate path was affected, with small cracks and gaps running across it.

Josef felt the claw on his shoulder draw blood, but fixed the damage without a comment. He couldn't fault his friend for that.

"Are we really going to…" Zippa gulped loudly. He placed a hand on his friend's, patting it calmingly.

"It's fine. Those gaps are too small for you to fit through, Zip." Surprisingly, Pretzel even voluntarily unsummoned herself, returning to Josef as she was clearly not a fan of where they were going. Sprout whined in a manner that told him she very much wanted to follow the snake, but couldn't. Sure, things looked a little alarming, but now he felt like everyone was overreacting. Or was he the odd one out to feel comfortable surrounded by the void? Maybe it was an effect of his mental resistance?

He did gain it from traveling through a void, after all. They barely even recognized the next stairwell, as without walls and half the stairs missing, it was just a slightly more structured path downwards. From there on, their journey turned into an impromptu session of hopscotch, much to everyone's dismay.

The gaps weren't exactly large, and his point about Zippa not fitting through still held true for the most part, but having to jump over patches of void, no matter how small, was still an unnerving feeling to most of them.

"How are you so calm about this?" Zippa complained from behind him.

"This is terrifying!"

"It is," he agreed.

"But it's also kinda… thrilling."

"How much further is it?" Linda asked all the way from the back. The noise her armor made on every jump was a constant companion.

"It depends," Bezzo replied wryly, "on whether those stones back there were stairs." As it turned out, tracking their own progress had become progressively harder as the amount of dungeon around them reduced. Still, they progressed smoothly, and eventually, all counting became obsolete, as they rounded a corner right into a fight. Catching a magic projectile hurtling their way with his streams, digesting it before it could even get close to striking one of them, Josef took stock of what they had encountered.

Apparently, both the knights and adventurers had been hard at work, creating stable footholds to move about on. Using earth to form platforms was an obvious enough solution, though the ones standing on more fragile elements like ice left Josef feeling somewhat concerned. As he stared into the room, all action seemed to still for a moment, as combatants and newcomers eyed each other.

Then, on the other side of the battlefield, he spotted the unmistakable, black-scaled mass that was Onyx, with the slick elf wearing an elegant suit right next to him. Only the bishop was nowhere to be seen.