Chương 80: I Hate Dungeons

The road descending beneath the cliff behind the northern market looked less like a road than an old scar. Footprints overlapped across a slope where snow and mud had frozen in turns. Sled tracks from hauling goods mixed with heel marks from people who had slipped while fleeing. There were even signs of loads thrown aside in the rush to escape monsters. Kichan looked down at them and frowned.

"I don't know why, but I hate places like this." Riphiel spoke carefully beside him.

"You may still turn back." Instead of answering, Kichan smelled the air blowing from the crack in the cliff. Damp stone. Old grain crumbs. Something cold and metallic rising from far below. A thread of hot steam mixed through it all. The name fit: a storage cave. It smelled like a place people had excavated and used for years, then suddenly lost the ability to enter.

"The stone?"

"Inside."

"Then we go." The entrance below the cliff was an arch two or three times a person's height. Worked stone formed the outer edge, while natural mountain rock showed beyond it. Broken crates, dried bundles of roots, and shattered pottery had been swept across the floor. It looked as though people had tried to drag everything out in a hurry and abandoned half of it.

Three demihuman craftspeople from the market stood at a distance once they reached the entrance: a bear-like man with one torn ear, a mole-like craftsman whose hands were caked in stone dust, and an old fox-like man with a nose red from the cold. None of the three trusted Kichan's party. None retreated either. They had no one else to trust or send. The old fox spoke to Riphiel in a stiff voice. She translated.

"This was originally a winter storage cave. They kept dried meat, roots, medicine, and ice in separate compartments. Then one day, the inner floor collapsed and opened a deeper passage. Monsters began coming up afterward." Kichan pressed the entrance floor with one foot. The stone seemed solid, but there was a hollow feeling beneath it.

"If they came from the collapsed floor, they lived here first."

"Most likely." Argaon looked up at the entrance and made no effort to hide his frown.

"I dislike narrow places." Kichan turned at once.

"You're coming too."

"The reward?"

"Your dinner." Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

"Three bowls."

"Two."

"Then I shall wait at the entrance." Kichan tapped the back of Argaon's calf with the wake-up rod.

"Come with us. If something big appears, you can take a hit or two."

"Your calculations are wrong."

"Another half bowl." Argaon considered it, then nodded.

"Two and a half. If it tastes poor, we renegotiate." Riphiel swallowed a sigh between them.

"I had hoped never again to watch a dragon negotiate dungeon admission in bowls of dinner."

"You've already seen it."

"That is the problem." Kichan waved her off. There were more important things to check. He opened the magic bag and examined the giant monster's shell pieces and heat sac. Still warm. It was fortunate he had wrapped another layer of cloth around them to protect the other materials. Dust clung tightly to the piece of dragon horn.

"Dust. Don't drop that." Dust hugged the fragment with two legs and twitched the rest. It already treated the thing as property from its own warehouse. The first few steps inside were ordinary. A little farther in, one side turned cold and the other hot. The left wall chilled their fingertips, while heat from a crack on the right warmed the back of their necks. Breathing felt as though the air inside their lungs had split into two temperatures. Kichan slowed. Transparent stone pillars stood throughout the cave.

They looked like ice but were not. Pools of black liquid gathered beside them. They moved like water, but held heat, so faint steam rose whenever anyone approached. Most of the old storage shelves had collapsed, but their structure remained. Deep channels had been carved into the cold side. Separate, shallow drainage trenches ran through the warm side. Kichan followed the paths with his eyes. He saw where heat entered, where cold gathered, and what had once kept the two apart.

Whoever built this place had put serious thought into making food last.

"Hot and cold separation." Riphiel raised her head.

"You understand it?"

"Anyone can see it. Keep the cold stuff cold and the warm stuff from cooling too fast. Like a half-broken refrigerator." The demihuman craftspeople did not understand all his words, but they saw his face change. The mole craftsman, who had stood frightened at the entrance, took his first step inside. He pointed at the cave floor and spoke urgently. Riphiel translated again.

"They emerged near those black pools. The creatures gnaw the stone pillars, ruin stored meat, and mix the ice compartments with the drying compartments." Kichan crouched at the edge of one pool. Its surface moved thinly like water, but warmth surged up when he brought his fingers close. Valkyrie slid down his wrist and formed a small film of water. One drop of the black liquid struck it and popped.

"Not oil. Not water." Argaon gave it a cursory glance.

"Liquid seeped with heat from deep underground. If left alone, it absorbs other scents."

"You can't eat it, right?"

"I would not recommend it." A long scraping sound came from within. Something was slowly grinding stone from the other side. It was not alone. The noise repeated behind a pillar on the left, beneath the broken floor on the right, and near the ceiling of the deeper passage. It felt as though tiny teeth were eating the storage cave from every direction. The saber-toothed tiger growled, the fur rising along its neck. Valkyrie pushed the scale shield forward and leveled the small spear from behind it.

Dust hid behind Kichan's shoulder, still clutching the horn. Riphiel half-drew her bow and lowered her breathing. Kichan rolled the wake-up rod once in his hand.

"More than one." Stone scraped again in the darkness, closer this time. One transparent pillar trembled, and a shallow crack appeared on its surface. Steam from the edge of a black pool was pulled to one side. Frost immediately spread on the other. The boundary between hot and cold compartments shuddered. Kichan's expression hardened further. It was the look of someone who could not walk past a system ruining food.

"Ah. I really hate that." Argaon asked,"The dungeon?"

"No. The things eating the partitions." A stone shell slowly emerged from the darkness. A second and third shadow moved behind it.