Chương 15: Seriously? A Duskrat?

A Duskrat?

Lio walked through the narrow alleys of the third Ring, his bare feet silent on the cold cobblestones, the moon high above him. His hand moved to the Death's Breath pendant beneath his shirt. It was ice cold now, all its energy spent. The backlash had been worse than he had expected, his heartbeat still felt irregular, his fingers numb at the tips, and his vision was still tinted red from burst blood vessels. But it had worked. Three agents eliminated. One compromised and bound to his service.

And no trace left behind for headquarters to find. That last part was what Death's Breath had really been for. The domain it created—a thirty-second window where all physical changes to inanimate objects were recorded and then reverted—had wiped everything clean. The tracking sigils the operatives carried, the data they'd been transmitting, even Liatra's post-mortem psychic burst. All of it had fired within the window and collapsed with it, leaving nothing for anyone to detect. The only loose end was Berland.

He'd admittedly surprised Lio, so the sigils had already probably reported his death. Headquarters would definitely notice one operative going dark. But with Scillo's sigil still transmitting, they'd reach out to him first before doing anything drastic. And Scillo wouldn't give them anything useful. The contract Lio had written ensured that. It worked differently from the organization's Binding Oaths. Those were, in his opinion, awfully crude.

He'd learned the technique he'd used from a dying Delver he'd found on one of the earlier loops. She'd spent her life studying the contracts Delvers made with Ghenna's creatures, and she'd found that the actual binding came from something called Identity, which was a single word, written in an ancient language called Eigo, that captured what a species was at its most fundamental level. Eigo was different from any normal language. While the common tongue described things, Eigo commanded them.

Writing "fire burns" in common tongue served as an observation. Writing it in Eigo made burning part of fire's nature. In theory, that made it the most powerful thing in existence. But in practice, it required a perfect conceptual understanding of whatever you were defining. Lio personally believed only a god could use something like Eigo. But luckily, Identity words, once found, worked reliably every time. The human one was "Perceive," as humans existed in the act of perceiving.

Every drive they had flowed from it—self-preservation, fear, hope, belonging. Which meant you didn't need to compel a human to do anything. You just needed to make them clearly see the gap between compliance and refusal, and their own nature did the rest. For Scillo, who valued his own life above everything else, the choice had been obvious. Lio reached his building and climbed the creaking stairs to his apartment.

He had accidentally left the door slightly ajar from when he'd dragged Berland's corpse out hours earlier. He pushed it open and stepped inside. Everything was as he'd left it. Lio quickly stripped off his stiff and darkened clothes, throwing them carelessly onto the floor. He then uncorked a bottle of spring water and poured it slowly over his hands. The water streamed down, washing away the blood and splattering down, forming a thin pink puddle on the ground. Walking over to the bed, he slipped under the blanket.

Closing his eyes, he let the physical exhaustion from Death's Breath finally hit him. He would have a busy day tomorrow. ◈◈◈◈ Lio was already awake when the first muted grey lights of dawn began filtering through the grimy window. He hadn't really slept. His body had gone through the motions, but his mind had kept working throughout the night. He'd been thinking hard about the strange symbol on the Binding Oaths, and where it could've possibly come from. But it wasn't anxiety that kept him awake.

He just didn't like sleeping. After all, sleep meant dreams. And dreams, for Lio, meant a world full of trauma and madness. He'd learned, after a few hundred loops, that it was simply easier not to. On the other hand, the irregular heartbeat, numb fingertips, and bloodied vision from Death's Breath's backlash had mostly settled by now. He still felt painful aches all over his body, but nothing that he couldn't handle. Lio lay there for another minute, staring up at the water stain on the ceiling.

It looked like a hand today. He sat up. This time, the motion was easy to do. There was none of the earlier paralysis that had gripped him yesterday morning. Lio swung his legs off the mattress and stood up. Finding his Delver gear where he had laid them out the night before, he put on each piece in the order he'd laid them out the night before. Lio then grabbed the Adamantine knife from beneath his pillow and tucked it into his belt. Finally, he gathered the supplies.

The three waterskins—two still full, one half-emptied from yesterday's searching—went into his pack. The two remaining loaves of bread followed, both now thoroughly stale and hard. Finally, the climbing equipment. He paused, mentally inventorying what he was missing. He hadn't had time yesterday to make his usual rounds properly. Under normal circumstances, he would've acquired several more items by now, like medicine or a lantern.

He'd also wanted to pick up a specific herbal compound from a vendor in the second Ring. But it was fine—he could find what he needed inside Ghenna. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. Lio shouldered his pack and looked around the room one final time. He probably wouldn't be back here again, until this loop ended. He walked out. ◈◈◈◈ The city was rather quiet. At this hour, the streets of the fourth Ring were as close to silent as Crater City ever got.

A few early vendors were setting up their stalls, but other than that, there was nobody else out. Lio walked quickly, his boots that he wore instead of being barefoot making a steady sound against the cobblestones. The temperature had dropped significantly overnight. Whenever he breathed, a thin mist dissipated in the air. He turned onto a wider street, moving toward the third Ring. The transition was more noticeable in the early morning, the buildings becoming much less dilapidated and the streets much wider.

The trash and debris was also cleared more regularly here, leading to a much fresher smell in the air. As he passed the Brass Lantern, he glanced over at it. The building sat exactly as it always did. From the outside, it was completely unremarkable. There were absolutely no signs of last night. Seeing that the domain had been thorough, Lio kept walking. By the time the Union building came into view, the first hints of proper morning light were beginning to appear.

The familiar banners hung from the second-story windows, their bold lettering still proclaiming their enthusiasm for safe descents. And there, standing at the base of the steps with her arms crossed and her head tilted slightly, examining the banners with an expression of mild interest, was Ophila. She was already in her Delver gear, the brown and black uniform with its riot of colorful stitching, and a paletot coat draped over it.

Her strawberry blond hair had been braided back, though a few strands had already escaped to frame her face. A pack sat at her feet, stuffed to the brim and bulky. Lio slowed down significantly. Then like a switch being flipped, his expression changed. The corners of his mouth moved upward, the set of his shoulders eased very slightly, and in his eyes the dead flatness retreated, replaced by the small warmness of life. He couldn't afford to scare her off. So he wore the mask, and continued forward.

Noticing Lio approaching, Ophila's face brightened up as she jogged over.

"You're early!" she said, with a bright smile.

"I got here at five-fifteen thinking I'd beat you, but then I started wondering if you were going to show up at all and started getting a little worried." She paused.

"You look kind of terrible, actually. Did you sleep?"

"Yes," Lio said.

"You aren't very convincing." He gave her a look. She sighed.

"Okay, I won't push it." She reached down and hoisted her pack onto her shoulders, then looked at him with those gold-ringed eyes.

"Are we going straight to the entrance, or do you need to pick anything up first?"

"Straight to the entrance."

"Perfect." She fell into step beside him as he passed, matching his pace.

"I've got three days of food and water if we're careful, medical supplies for basic wounds, rope, and a lamp with extra oil."

"Three days should be more than enough to reach Trestfall," Lio said. That was the name of the permanent settlement located on Floor 3, the main forward camp for Delvers. There, they would be able to get the supplies they needed for their deeper descent and things not available in Crater City. Ophila looked at him.

"Is it? I don't know how much the landscape has changed since I last went down."

"It will be if we don't waste time on the upper floors."

"Hm~" As they walked, she patted a specific pocket on her pack.

"I also got the things I need for my rune." Lio gave her a curious look.

"Like what?"

"You'll see." She glanced sideways at him.

"I assume you've got your knife?"

"Yes."

"Good. I've noticed you seem very attached to that particular knife. It's pretty ugly though." Lio shrugged.

"It gets the job done."

"All the best things are ugly," Ophila agreed, nodding sagely.

"My first pair of Delver boots were absolutely hideous, but it saved my life three times."

"How does an ugly pair of boots save your life three times?" Lio asked. He couldn't care less, but he imbued enough curiosity into his tone to sound polite.

"First time, a Spine Crawler on Floor 4 grabbed my ankle and its claws just slid right off the leather because it was so thick and stiff." She counted off her fingers.

"Second time, I had to kick through a rotted wooden door to escape a cave-in. Normal boots would've been too soft. Third time, I threw one at a Duskrat that was about to bite my partner's face off. It knocked the poor guy out for good." Lio looked at her.

"A nice boot wouldn't have been heavy enough." She explained. There was a brief silence.

"You threw your boot at it?" Lio said, raising an eyebrow. Isn't a Duskrat the size of a house?

"I threw my boot at it," she confirmed.

"And it worked!"

"Wow." As they walked, the first Ring's fortified walls slowly appeared out of the haze, the tall and formidable stone architecture looming above them. And in front of the entrance platform, stretching back through the checkpoint and spilling out into the first Ring's main street, was a line. A very long line. Ophila slowed down, her eyes traveling from the front of it all the way back to where it ended somewhere around the corner of a guild hall.

There had to be sixty, maybe seventy Delvers queued up, all waiting for the platform guards to log their descents in the morning registry.

"Oh," she said in a worried tone.

"The last time I went into Ghenna there wasn't that much of a line…" She shifted uncomfortably.

"How long does this usually take—""It won't take long," Lio interrupted, already walking past from the line. Ophila squinted in surprise, then hurried to keep up.

"Where are you going?"

"We're gonna take a shortcut." She glanced back at the queue, then at him.

"Well… is it a legitimate shortcut?"

"It'll get us into Ghenna."

"That's not what I asked." Lio said nothing, and just kept walking. Ophila made a small sound of frustration, but still followed. As they moved along the side of the line, Lio looked over at the assembled Delvers out of habit. Most were unremarkable, all people he had seen and interacted with in the previous loops. Near the middle of the queue, he spotted William. The boy looked significantly worse than he had yesterday in the Union Hall, the alcohol having clearly caught up with him overnight.

He was standing with the same group from the bar table, all of them looking completely out of it. William himself was staring straight ahead with a glazed and bored look, tapping his feet impatiently on the floor. Then his eyes drifted sideways and landed on Lio. His gaze immediately cleared up, replaced by a wariness. His shoulders pulled back slightly, and he took a small unconscious step closer to his companions. Lio held his gaze for about a second, then looked away.

Further up the line, closer to the front, two figures caught his attention briefly. They were both people he didn't recognize, meaning that these people had diverted from their original paths. The first was a tall woman with close-cropped dark hair and a very lean build. She stood completely still in the queue, almost like a statue. A pair of unusual iron gauntlets covered her hands, the metal etched with curling red marks.

Beside her, a heavyset man with a shaved head and a broad, honest face was eating something from a wrapped cloth, chewing with great contentment, entirely unbothered by the wait. Lio filed the two anomalies away without breaking his stride. Perhaps these guys were part of the other teams the mysterious organization had sent? He turned down a narrow alley between two buildings, the walls close on either side.

"Through here," he said. Ophila ducked in after him.

"Where does this go?"

"It's a shortcut."

"And we're allowed to use it?" Lio glanced back at her. She sighed.

"Right. Okay, fine. Lead the way.