Dante’s Immortality – Chapter 50

Upon slipping into the ground, the first thing that he realized was that the ‘grass’ was just a thin layer that blocked a cavern lying underneath. As he sunk, there were a few uncomfortable moments.

The first was when his mouth and nose were covered, making it close to impossible to breathe. He could still get in tiny amounts of air through the strands of grass that covered him, but by the time his mouth was once again exposed he was lightheaded and close to passing out.

When his nose was finally exposed… he wished it hadn’t been. Never, in his life, had he smelt something so putrid.

The second uncomfortable moment was when he was underneath the grass, but still connected to it. The cavern was completely dark underneath, he couldn’t see how large it was, and he couldn’t make some form of light with mana manipulation because the plant was disrupting his mana. So, he just hung there, awaiting the moment when the grass finally released him and allowed him to fall to the ground… which hopefully wasn’t a long drop.

He still couldn’t see or hear Jared or Arron and didn’t try to look for them either. The last thing he needed was to struggle and get even more stuck.

And his last worry was ‘it’. Whatever that was. He just needed to cross his fingers and hope that thing wasn’t directly below him waiting.

A few minutes later, he finally felt himself slip free.

Before he could even really start to fall, he Blinked downward. Stopping himself from building momentum, and potentially stopping any fall damage.

Two Blinks were enough to take him to the floor, or what he hoped was the floor. It felts like he was standing on large bags of mush, and every step seemed to penetrate through the mush, and make the smell so much worse.

Dante began to move, knowing he needed to act quickly. It made sense that he would make it through the grass first, he was the first to fall into it. But Jared and Arron came right after him. So, he began to walk through the darkness, not wanting to make a source of light and give himself away. As he walked, he stumbled forward when his foot caught on one of the bags of mush and it gave slightly.

Curious, Dante reached down to try and move it. It was long and heavy, even with his high strength it was awkward to carry, but he managed to pick it up. After making that discovery, he began to pile the bags of mush over himself, completely covering the entirety of his body from view.

For some reason, it was several minutes later before he heard the first person drop down. Then a few silent minutes after that before the other one fell.

Arron was the first to speak. “Fucking predatory dungeon just about suffocated me, and now I have to deal with this fucking smell?”

“This wouldn’t be happening if you hadn’t tried to capture him by yourself.” A light flickered through the cracks between the bags that covered him, illuminating the entire room. “These damn corpses are disgusting.”

Corpses?

The sacs couldn’t be corpses… they were far too inflated, and corpses didn’t smell this bad. Even if they were rotten. He began forcing all of his willpower into holding back his bile.

Jared seemed to be similarly struggling. His voice was nasally as if he was pinching his nose. “Speaking of Andrea’s pet, where is he?”

Arron snorted. “The idiot is probably off getting himself killed trying to escape from this place. I don’t know why you didn’t tell him this was a dungeon.”

Arron’s accusation seemed to annoy Jared. “That was exactly what I was trying to avoid, the last thing we needed was him getting hurt while trying to conquer a predatory dungeon by himself.” Jared paused to let out a sigh. “This dungeon seems old, it may be more dangerous than we thought.  Let’s go, who knows how far he got with that damn skill of his.”

The two of them walked out of the room, making everything go dark, and Dante sat in the pile of bodies for several minutes to make sure they weren’t lying in wait for him.

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When he was convinced that it was safe, he threw the bodies away from him. Taking deep, gasping breaths of the slightly less putrid air.

Then, creating a small ball of light through mana manipulation, he lit up the room and looked around. The room was far worse than he could have imagined. It seemed like the floor was made up entirely of the bodies, and that didn’t change through the narrow corridor he saw across the room. There must have been hundreds in just the first cavern alone.

Not only were they all inflated until they were barely recognizable as human, but they were also a sickly green color as well. The corpses didn’t even bleed where they were punctured, it was like the blood just congealed into a strange fleshy substance inside of their bodies.

They had called this dungeon a predatory dungeon, and it wasn’t hard to see why it was named that. It seemed like such a waste though, all of the bodies were just rotting away for no reason.

Mentally forcing himself to concentrate, he stalked through the corridor, which led into another large room.

Other than the bloated corpses and the dozens of essence crystals scattered on the floor, the room was completely empty. It seemed that the two of them had been in such a hurry they hadn’t bothered to collect them… yet.

He had no problem with it though, he hurried around the room, picking them up and quickly crushing them before moving on carefully to the next room, where he beheld a similar scene.

Repeating the process, he crushed all of the crystals before moving on again. He had made it through a total of six rooms like that before finally catching up to them.

Hearing the sound of fighting ahead, Dante extinguished the mana he used for lighting and carefully crept forward with two new blades in hand.

He waited in the shadows of the corridor, blending in with the corpses by laying with them on the ground. What he saw was horrifying. The two of them weren’t fighting dungeon monsters, they were fighting human like creatures.

Or what were once humans. Dante grimaced as he looked at them, the dungeon’s monsters were nightmarish. Their skin was deathly pale, and they all looked starved. Which might not have been so bad, but something about their lack of any hair and the loud screeching sound made them even more terrifying. They screamed ferociously as they ran toward Jared and Arron.

He was more than happy to allow the two of them to handle all of the monsters.

Ignoring Arron, who he had already fought, Dante observed Jared and his fighting tendencies.

He was right to have been wary of him, unlike Arron, who seemed to rely on both speed and strength, Jared solely focused on offense. Every time he swung his weapon, a monster died.

That wasn’t what made Jared so scary though, what made him scary was the distance between him and the monsters he killed.

None of them were even in range. Jared swung his sword through the empty air, but something across the room would be cut in half anyway.

If he were fighting Arron alone, his chances wouldn’t be that bad. In fact, he was confident that he could kill Arron, he just needed to do it before he recovered with his healing ability. But Jared was a different beast altogether. His one saving grace was that the two of them had to capture him alive, which was probably what had led to his success so far… If Jared had used that skill on him while he was fleeing, things would have ended badly.

After all of the monsters died, Arron swaggered over to Jared. “This is the eighth room since we entered. Given the location, the next room likely holds the dungeon boss.” He patted Jared on the shoulder. “It is somewhat likely that we already missed the boy.”

Jared looked somewhat peeved at Arron’s close proximity. “Yes, as I said three rooms ago, we should have gone back to check under the corpses.”

Arron threw his hands up in mock surrender, a cocky smile still on his face. “What can I say? You were right of course. I think that the best thing for us to do would be to split up. You head back to take care of the boy, I’ll kill the dungeon boss.”

Dante perked up. If the two of them split up, his chances of success would increase exponentially.

Jared snorted. “As if. You go and look for Andrea’s pet, this entire mess is your fault. I’ll take care of the dungeon boss.”

Arron’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t be such a stingy bastard, you already have an active dungeon skill.” He motioned down to Jared’s sword.

That grabbed his attention. He didn’t even consider that the skill Jared had used was from a monster crystal, it was so powerful.

Instead of replying, Jared tightened his grip on his sword and jumped away from Arron. Just narrowly managing to dodge a surprise attack from Arron’s sword.

As Jared flew through the air, he flung out his sword in a vertical slash. Slicing the air and directly attacking Arron from a distance.

Arron seemed to be ready for the attack though. He spun, coming away from the unseen slash unscathed, then lunged at Jared. His surprising speed seemed to take Jared off-guard because he effortlessly slipped in and cut a deep slash into Jared’s side.

Dante’s eyes narrowed as he watched the two, beginning to pump his swords with world essence. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but was more than willing to take advantage of it.

Jared hissed in pain, then viciously punched out with his free hand, attacking Arron with an unarmed fist.

It had to have been a skill from his Classification, because the damage he inflicted on Arron was massive. Arron’s entire chest crumpled, and the sound of bones breaking filled the room as Jared’s fist connected and Arron coughed out blood.

The residual force of the blow flung Arron’s body back like a ragdoll, toppling end over end until it finally came to a rest on the cavern floor.

Amazingly, not only was Arron still alive, but he was even laughing shallowly. “Fine… you get… the damn boss.”

Jared was silently glaring at Arron, holding the deep wound in his side to stop the bleeding.

Dante took a deep breath. If there was a time to act, it was now.