The Underground Dungeon (2)
Kayak swallowed dryly and licked his cracked lips.
Very slowly, he turned to look at the archer, Emerson.
Catching Kayak's eye, Emerson gave a small nod, dropped to the floor, and pressed his ear flat against the stone.
"No good. It's not coming from the first floor."
Emerson had kept his ear to the ground for a long while, tracing where the vibrations were coming from, before rising to speak. The source of the tremors wasn't the first floor — but that didn't mean the problem was solved, either.
The door leading back out to the entrance had sealed itself shut, and the party that had been lingering at the rear was already grunting and straining at it, but the door showed no intention whatsoever of opening.
"It won't open from the outside either. Kayak, what do we do?"
A quick-footed archer from the rearmost party darted over and whispered to Kayak.
That left only one conclusion to draw. Something had forced the door shut, and it wasn't letting them out. Which meant, in the end, that unless they brought that something down, there was no way out of here.
Fear began to settle over the adventurers, slow and heavy.
Somewhere in the pitch-black darkness, something unknown was prowling, and in the shadows beyond the reach of torchlight, monsters were lying in wait, watching for their chance. The lesser monsters were one thing — those could be managed somehow. The real problem was that nameless something roaming this underground tomb.
Fear is contagious.
The terror of a massive, unseen enemy seeped into the adventurers in an instant.
"K-Kayak. What do we do?"
Every gaze snapped toward Kayak at once. Of the forty adventurers who had entered the underground tomb, Kayak outranked them all in both grade and experience, so in a situation like this, they naturally looked to him as their leader.
"...Let's get organized."
Kayak strained to keep his composure. The moment your calm cracks — no matter the situation — you die. If ever there was a time to stay level-headed, it was now. Surrender to panic, and fear would devour you in seconds. And that, he could not allow.
—Though maybe it had already devoured him.
"The stairs down to the second floor are on both s—"
"Hey, Kayak. Shouldn't we be getting out of here?"
Emerson cut in with an irritated voice. In a situation like this, escape came first, didn't it? He couldn't understand Kayak muttering about second-floor stairs as if they were actually planning to go down.
Kayak glared askew at him. He knew kobolds were a complaint-prone lot, but times like these made it grating. Brat.
"Listen, Emerson. The door has to open before we can escape. You're not seriously suggesting we smash through stone brick, are you? If your bow can break it, I'll eat my words."
Emerson scrunched up his face and shut his mouth. Stupid kobold.
Kayak swallowed his irritation, fell silent, and organized his thoughts. An underground tomb was an underground tomb for a reason. This structure, with its stone brick walls sunk deep beneath the earth, would collapse in an instant the moment those bricks started giving way.
"We fight. We beat that demon bastard to death, and then we escape. That's the clearest answer there is."
Kayak spoke quickly, then looked back and forth between Alec and Yona. His gaze settled, quietly, on Yona's bone-white face.
"W-what? Why are you looking at me like that, lizard?"
Yona flinched but didn't look away. Her lips had gone pale with fright, yet she managed to keep up a decent front all the same.
"Alec. Yona."
"What? What is it?"
"We split the party. Two groups. You go down opposite staircases. Rendezvous on the second floor of the catacombs."
The underground tomb was circular. The first floor was laid out like an exhibition hall, all corridors, and taking the stairways at either end down to the second floor finally revealed the catacombs where the tombs themselves lay.
"Once you're down, whichever side reaches it first engages it head-on while the other hits it from behind."
"Hold on. Wouldn't it be better for all of us to just take one staircase down together?"
Yona pressed a hand on Alec's head and argued her case to Kayak. Forty or not, most of them were Bronze Rank, with only a handful of Silver. They weren't exactly formidable, and splitting even that force in two — did anyone really like their odds?
It seemed smarter to her to bunch up, descend as one, and hit it all at once. But Kayak shook his head.
"We don't know what it is. Judging by the sound of it moving, it's no ordinary beast. You think that thing can't sense us coming? What happens if it's waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs when we come down, Yona?"
Only then did Yona fall silent.
Kayak grinned and gave her cheek a light tap.
"If we split up, it's forced to choose a side too. One group engages it while the other strikes from behind — that might actually give us better odds. Don't you think?"
"...I guess that's true."
Kayak looked down in silence at Yona as her head drooped. A healer who'd clawed her way up to Bronze Rank — a genuine rarity. She'd registered as an adventurer alongside Alec and had come back alive every single time since. Her skills were solid.
"We split the headcount in half. I'll take point with one group. Alec leads the other."
"Well, damn. My hands are shaking, honest."
The torchlight stained the corridor's stone brick red as the party pressed slowly forward. Every time the light drew near, the lesser monsters squealed and scrambled backward to flee — and the ones that misjudged their direction and bolted toward the adventurers instead were minced into ground meat before anyone could blink.
Alec walked with his shield raised straight and true. Just behind him, Yona followed, careful to keep the torch's flame from catching on her Holy Shroud.
"You'd better make it out of here alive, you hear me. All of you."
"What for? We get out and then what?"
The adventurers, sunk in a clammy dread and dragging their heavy feet along, said nothing. Only Alec and Yona kept up their idle back-and-forth.
"I'm going to grope those tits of yours whenever I want."
"Who said you could?"
"You were a man. Show a little generosity, come on."
"Hey, if I went around groping your dick whenever I pleased, you'd be pissed too."
"Wouldn't, actually? Sounds pretty great to me."
"You're out of your damn mind."
Yona's hand rose on pure instinct to smack the back of Alec's head — then lowered again. This wasn't the village. Her own life was riding on Alec holding the vanguard; this was no time to let her hands wander.
"We'll be all right, yeah?"
"We'd better be."
Truthfully, Yona was terrified. Three years. She'd thought she'd suffered every hardship there was by now. But the moment she climbed past one ordeal, the next one reared up, bigger than the last.
"Stairs."
From below, all that drifted up was the constant thudding of the thing prowling around — not a single sound of steel meeting steel. Had the other party not gone in yet either? And where, exactly, was that thing down there?
The stairs sat right at the farthest edge of the torchlight's reach. Some dark liquid was splattered all over them, and for some reason they seemed more ornamented than on her last visit, so Yona craned her neck to peer down at them.
"...Aren't those... corpses?"
Yona pressed her face right up against Alec's ear and stretched her arm out to point.
Alec went briefly dazed by the peach scent that came washing off her — then followed the line of her finger.
"Yeah. Corpses. Human ones."
There was no mistaking them for anything else. The lower halves were gone without a trace, nothing but torsos remaining — no way they were still living.
"Probably those investigators who came down before."
Alec raised his shield again and advanced. The other adventurers, catching their exchange, tightened their grips on their weapons one by one. They already knew the investigation team had been wiped out. They understood full well what it meant to descend below.
The closer they drew to the stairs, the more the torchlight illuminated. Only then did the ornamentation clinging to the stairs come into focus.
Organs.
What had once been vivid red innards had long since blackened, scattered carelessly across the floor — and at a glance, they looked almost like... decoration.
"Huuurgh—"
Yona turned around. A fresh recruit — a Stone Rank adventurer registered barely days ago — was retching, his face drained white. The greenhorns had swaggered along this far, but a sight like this wasn't something you just swallowed easily.
...Can't blame him.
There was still no sound of fighting below, so they had a moment to spare. Yona gave Alec's shoulder a couple of pats and walked over to the young adventurer.
"Scary, huh?"
"I-I'm sorry, I... huuuorgh!"
The thought that Yona had come all this way because of him had the recruit shaking his head over and over — except the vomit kept coming, and he couldn't even manage that.
Yona gently rubbed his back, patting it in slow, steady rhythm. The soft thud of her hand filled the corridor, small and quiet.
"It's all right. Everyone's like this the first time. I was too."
Not that my stomach's exactly settled these days either.
"Don't die. Just don't die, and that's enough. Got it?"
"Y-yes... I under... stand..."
He seemed to have barely calmed down.
"Hey, Yona. Let's head down."
"Why do you always have to use that tone with me?"
"Nothing."
"You're sulking. What are you sulking about all of a sudden, huh?"
"I'm not sulking. Hey, everyone, check your weapons. Moving out."
The torchlight began to move again. With a skittering, skin-crawling shriek, the lesser monsters scattered from the light, and the adventurers descended the stairs into the floor below with faces set in stone.
The stone steps were still sticky — thick with that clinging, viscous film.