Belli Mundi - Chapter 43
Soon they found another pair of cats, with another single cat that intervened right at the end of the fight. Luckily they were just finishing off the first two, so they didn’t have much of a problem with the one cat that tried to intervene.
With a total of eight void cats, this had been the largest amount of cats they had faced in a single day up till now. Luckily they hadn’t even been injured in any of the fights, thus they could continue on.
Soon something strange occurred. When they found the next cat, it was once again a single specimen. A single cat wasn’t that weird, the strange thing was that the cat tried to retreat as soon as it noticed them. Staying on guard, they hurried after the cat. The cat was incredibly fast, making them almost have to run full tilt.
Right at the moment they would have to give up, or risk being so out of breath that they wouldn’t be able to fight, the cat suddenly moved in a completely different direction.
“There.. must be.. something.. there.” Jasper huffed, out of breath.
Moments later they found out why the cat went off in a different direction. If they hadn’t seen the cat move as it did, they would’ve just kept on running straight on. As it was, they only barely managed to avoid falling down a hidden crevice. Erik was the first to stop, and when both Deon and Leophon crashed into him, it was only Deon’s quick reaction to grab his belt that prevented him from diving head first into the crevice.
The others had enough time to stop before they crashed into the three fighters. Then the apologizing started from both Deon and Leophon, but Erik stopped them immediately.
“Quit it guys, I wouldn’t have seen what I saw if you hadn’t almost tossed me down there.”
“You don’t mean..?”
“Hell yeah, the dungeon entrance is down there!”
After that everyone wanted to have a look, but Jasper managed to have at least half of them stay on guard while the others had a look. After everyone had looked, they started to discuss what they needed to do next.
“We should get back to the city to report this. This dungeon needs to be under guard as soon as possible, it’s way too close to the populated parts of this country.”
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“I agree, but we still don’t know anything about the dungeon. We should investigate a bit further.”
“The risk is too big, what if we die? We need to get this information back to command as soon as possible!”
“Can we at least explore the first floor a bit? The first floor shouldn’t be that much of a problem.”
“Well, I guess that the first floor isn’t that dangerous. But we won’t go deeper than that!”
Having sorted that, the squad started to look for a way down into the crevice.
After carefully checking both sides, they finally found a safe way down on the far side.
It looked like dozens of creatures had already used this spot to get up, so they knew that it was possible. Jasper went first because, as he claimed, he needed to show the right example.
Luckily there were no surprises on the way down, and soon they were in front of the dungeon portal.
Ready for everything, they entered the portal one at a time. Even without acknowledging the system message, the fighters moved to the left and the right of the portal to let the next ones through. As soon as the first three fighters were through, they moved a few paces forwards, making room for two archers. After that two more fighters entered, with the other archers and the mages after them. Once again, Sam took up the rear, and entered last.
Only after the entire squad was through and in formation, they took a look at the systeem message:
You’ve entered the Voidbane Dungeon
“Okay, what the hell? It’s the same as outside!”
Indeed, the first floor of the dungeon was almost an exact copy of the forest outside. Only the portal wasn’t in a crevice here, but against a sheer rock wall that split a part of the forest off from the rest.
“Guys, look at the forest on top of the rock wall, there might be something interesting up there. Why else would it be split off of the rest of the forest?”
“Might be, but we’re not here to explore every single little thing in here. We shouldn’t even be in here if you ask me!”
“Lucky us that we won’t ask you!”
While the two of them were bickering, the others kept their guard up. That proved to be a good thing, as something appeared and immediately attacked the three fighters in the front.
Luckily it was only one monster and wasn’t a danger for three fighters. After killing it, they saw that it was some kind of beetle.
“That was easier than the cats outside, but they came from here, didn’t they?”
“Yeah, but remember that this is only the first floor. The cats are probably a third floor monster.”
“Hrmph okay, but what was it? Would be good to know which monsters are roaming about on the first floor.”
“Well, it’s a beetle, so a void beetle? Or would it be a shadow beetle? No clue, we’ll check it when we exit the dungeon. Just make sure you don’t dismiss your messages when we exit, otherwise you might need to look through every message after we get back to Veritas.”
“Well then, let’s go! I’m tired of this forest.”
“You do know that the forest outside is pretty much the same, right?”
“...”