[https://i.imgur.com/4yzZvCn.jpg]

Fwoooosh!

Lio had conjured up a wall of flames that halted the advancing monsters and burned them to death. He was breathing hard, and every fire spell he casted was less hot than the last.

He was still running, while I was still riding on his back. I pressed my body against his back, rearing my head down in sorrow. All of this happened because of me. If I wasn’t so pushy, nobody would be in this situation. I still didn’t know if Kueler and Fiar were still alive.

The monsters still chased us, but with fewer numbers. That was a good sign for us, but not very good if that was due to the rest hunting down or feasting on our remaining party members. I didn’t want to even think of that possibility, though.

Lio had run deeper into the dungeon, and there were no longer the mysterious stone structures. We now traversed a long corridor common in dungeons. This area was normally called “the choke point” or the narrowest part of the dungeon. Its name suggests that either the monsters or the adventurers could take advantage of that area.

We walked down the choke point, taking note that there was no resistance in this area. It was strange, considering we were inching closer and closer to the heart of the dungeon. The scary part was the increasing likelihood that a dungeon master would reveal themselves. We’ve already encountered one at the Dungeon of the Dead, and that wasn’t a good experience. He was just way stronger than us. If the dungeon master of this place happened to appear, we wouldn’t be in a good state to defend ourselves.

Lio continued to strut down the corridor, huffing as he did so. I felt his chest rise and fall with every breath he took. He was getting winded, and I could see his hand shaking. Those weren’t good symptoms to have about now.

It was magic exhaustion. Lio had been firing off fire spells nonstop since he shot off that Cautery spell to save us. It was just spell after spell that shot out of the tip of his staff, squeezing magic energy out of him like water coming out of a wringed rag.

The corridor was quiet. This was the longest we had been without encountering any type of foe. It had both of us on edge, especially my worn out master whom I was still piggy-backing on. I was already out of magic energy, so Lio running empty on it too would be horrible. There was no way we’d fight off any monsters that would eventually appear. More so, we wouldn’t be able to save our friends.

“Charliette.” Lio stopped in his tracks and pulled at his shirt collar as a way of airing out his body.

“Lio…”

“I’m running pretty low on magic energy.”

“Yes, I know.”

“And if we keep this up, I’ll eventually run dry and we’ll be killed.”

“Yeah… I know.”

“So we need to find someplace we can rest. Someplace where these monsters can’t get to us.”

I stared down at his hands. His fingers twitched and his palm had a flushed red color to it. Those were not the hands of a mage with strength. It was the hands of a tired, cornered mage.

Despite all the issues that came our way, Lio still stayed head strong. Even when I cried and beat his back, he quickly regained his composure with the single goal in mind: survival. Nothing mattered anymore but survival. No coins or money, but to get back home safe.

One last thing I think the two of us forgot to consider was that we’d be in pitch darkness once Lio runs out of magic energy. As of now, he maintains a flame that hovers over the tip of his staff where the orb sits. But once he runs out of magic energy, that flame would be extinguished. Our only source of light would be gone. And I was pretty sure these monsters had night vision.

That problem made it even more apparent that we needed to find safe shelter quickly. There wan’t any shelter around us, though. No buildings or structures in sight.

Just as we scared ourselves with the possibility of being left in the dark without any safe haven, I felt something tickle the back of my leg.

Huh?

I turned my head and shook my leg instinctively. All that I could see were rows of dagger-like teeth protruding from the ground. Then the lips of a monster, then its entire snout. That monster was coming right out of the ground. Right through our shadow.

“Wah!” I threw myself off of Lio’s back in sheer terror. Had I stayed on, it would have surely clamped down on my leg. But I dodged it. “Lio! Behind you!”

By the time he snapped around, the monster had just gotten its legs out from the ground and was mobile. It gritted its deadly teeth and made the meanest growl. Its red eyes were the very picture of death.

“Flame spear!” Lio shouted, quickly firing off a fire projectile shaped like a spear at the monster. It skewered it and sent it flying down the corridor where we’d come from.

Then it happened again. Monsters rained down at us from the ceiling. They were there the whole time. They just waited for the right time to strike.

“Stay close to me!” Lio yelled, firing off magic spells at monsters that rushed me. They were shot down and dead in seconds.

I had to get close to Lio, since I couldn’t really defend myself. The problem was that the monsters were doing their best to separate us. They divided their forces in a way that one group would keep Lio busy while the others would attack me. This splitted his priorities between protecting me and defending himself.

These monsters were clearly strategizing this time. They were using their intelligence to their advantage, something that most monsters lacked.

I had thought what made these monster’s deadly and feared among those who’ve heard of this dungeon was their strength as individuals and their sheer numbers, but that was just scratching the surface. I finally understand exactly what made these beasts fearsome. It was their intelligence. They weren’t ordinary monsters that charged right into the enemy like fodder. They actively strategized and countered the strengths of their foes.

They understood that Lio had the ability to conjure up immense firepower with each spell strong enough to wipe out their entire pack. So they responded by separating their groups and using me as the hostage in a way. That way even if Lio fired a strong spell, the divided groups made it impossible to wipe them all out in one shot. Unless he were to somehow get the two divided groups together.

I pulled my dagger out of its sheath on my waist, which was bent and chipped from our previous battle, and held it in front of myself. The other group of monsters were rushing me, and there was no guarantee that Lio could protect me, so I had to do it myself.

“Idiot! Don’t fight them, come back to me!” Lio yelled at me once again.

He was right, I didn’t know what I was thinking. I can’t allow them to separate us. Then it would be over for us.

The monsters of the first group had finally come into contact with Lio, and he blew them away with what looked like a smaller variation of Cautery, known as Charbolt. But that spell wasn’t enough and some slipped past him.

They targeted me, as I desperately ambled over to my master. They had the agility of a racehorse, and the power of a lion.

“Grrrrr!” The monsters opened their mouths to show off their killing devices, sharpened teeth, each one as pointy and sharp as swords. They left a trail of saliva behind them. They had no intention of just killing me. I’d be their food, and they’d eat every part of me until I was just bones.

“Lio! Some slipped by you!” I called out to my master, but he was preoccupied. A third group, which I had not accounted for, had descended from the ceiling and attacked him. He was fending them off with fire magic that pushed them back. His fire was no longer hot enough to finish some of them off in one hit.

Lio immediately darted his eyes to me. “What? Shit!” He turned his staff to me. “Duck!”

I didn’t just duck, I dropped to the ground prone as a bolt of fire whizzed over me and struck a monster right on the forehead before it could chomp down on me.

“Rrruuu!” More came for me. Their battlecries echoed throughout the battlefield, only contested by Lio’s scream every time he shot out a spell.

One bounced from wall to wall like a circus freak, and landed right in front of me. I could just feel the bloodlust emanating from it.

“Lio!” I squeaked. He was being pushed back by the ever increasing army of monsters, but he still had time to react. He swiveled his arm around, and the end of his staff aimed at the fiend.

Bang!!

The end of his staff lit up, and a beam of fire was launched at its target. Its corpses landed on top of me.

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Another monster had pounced on me, landing its paws on my lower back as I still laid on my stomach prone on the ground.

I shifted my body around as fast as I could, then shoved my dagger into its chest with all the strength I could muster. I shoved it deeper, and it howled in pain. That monster also fell on top of me, lifeless and its blood pouring onto me.

I couldn’t pull the dagger out of its body, it was stuck, which meant I no longer had a weapon in case Lio couldn’t save me. This was bad.

Two heavy monster corpses had pinned me to the ground, and another group was emerging from the shadows. I had to act fast, or I’d be easy picking for them.

“Lio!”

My master turned to see me drenched in blood and with two corpses stacked on me. His face lost all color. “Is that your blood? Or…”

“I’m good! Just please get these corpses off of me.” I saw the monsters getting closer, so Lio didn’t have much time in the first place.

But we were once again fooled. Another group of monsters had appeared from behind us and flanked Lio. There was no way he could help me now.

I tried pushing both bodies off of me, but they were just so heavy. Both of them combined were probably just as heavy, maybe even heavier than I was. So I had no hope of pushing them off of me with the strength I currently had and my injured arm.

The group that were already rushing towards me, somehow lost their bloodlust, though. Their fangs no longer showed, and their dribbling saliva stopped. It was as if their appetite ceased on the spot.

Just as I was expecting them to eat me, since Lio was way too busy fighting a battle on two fronts, they ignored me and ran off towards the structure area of the dungeon.

What? They just ran over me without giving it a second thought. Was I no longer on the menu? Did all the blood on me make me inedible? Or was it maybe…

I had a theory, but I had to test it first. As monsters were running right past me, I pulled out a hand that was pinned under the monster corpse, and held it out in the open. The monsters stopped dead in their tracks and saliva yet again began seeping out of their mouths. Then I stuffed my arm back into the cover of the corpse, and it ran off as if nothing happened.

Again, I shot out my hand right in front of a running monster, and it also stopped and stared at my arm with bloodlust. Then once again I hid it under the monster corpse. The monster dashed off without hesitation.

In.

And out.

In.

And out!

This was like a game of peek-a-boo. Actually, it was exactly peek-a-boo, which confirmed my theory. These monsters couldn’t see the corpses of their allies, which was why they couldn’t see me. I was hidden under the corpses that sprawled across my entire body.

This was it. This was our ticket out of this shitshow.

“Lio! These monsters can’t see the corpses of their allies! Hide yourself with the corpses!” I yelled.

Lio’s eyes darted about the ground scattered with monster corpses. He tilted his head and his face reduced to a perfect nonplus expression. My words must have bemused him somehow.

I was sure he was asking himself “Will that really work?” I didn’t know how it worked, but I could guarantee him that my theory was nearly a fact. These monsters, once dead, are wiped from the face of this world in the eyes of their comrades.

As Lio fought the incoming monsters, he still glued his eyes to the big bodies of the monsters. Beads of sweat dripped down his face, shimmering in the fire light. I saw him clench one of his hands, which shook immeasurably.

Then he brought both of his hands together on the base of his staff, pointed it at his foes, and yelled “Charbolt!”

All the pursuing monsters were blown away, but not for long. Lio needed to discard his uneasiness if he wanted to live. This was not the time to be timid about covering yourself with corpses. He had to trust me.

Lio took a deep breath. He had to think fast before more monster reinforcements could arrive. If that happened, I wouldn’t be able to help.

“Fine!” He spewed out the air in his cheeks and got to the ground. There he hoisted corpses onto him, all with a grimace on his face.

The group of monsters came just as planned, and they ignored both Lio and I. They ran right past us and sprinted down the choke point back to the dungeon’s starting area. They didn’t so much as get a whiff of our presence. Just as I expected.

The two of us were on the ground, staring at one another as monsters zoomed in between us to their destination.

“Charliette…”

“Shush…” I whispered to him. We confirmed that they couldn’t see us. But we didn’t know if they could still hear us. Being loud and careless may just blow our cover.

In response, he quickly wrapped his hands around his mouth.

When it seemed we were in the clear, Lio was the one to get up and get the corpses off of me. He then picked me up and placed me back at my rightful place at his back.

“You were saying something before, Master?” I gave him a glare when he finished securing my on his back.

“Oh yeah… that… Thank you, Charlotte. You’re a lifesaver.

“Heh, I could say the same for you.”

We were safe, for now. The next step was shelter.

We were going to walk off, but Lio caught sight of something interesting. A monster’s attack had ripped out a bit of the wall, and a lightsource seeped from the gap it made.

“Hm? What’s this? Something in the walls?”

“What is it?” I tried to look over his shoulders to see, but he wasn’t making that easy.

“I don’t know.” My master took a few steps back. What was he planning to do?”

He gripped his staff tighter than I’d ever seen him grip it. I felt heat oozing from that orb sitting on its tip, enough to make me sweat a bit.

“Cautery!” he screamed, and blew a hole in that wall.

This was our shelter! Welcome to the Glaciare flat! Fit with a one bedroom, and zero baths of course! Best of all, it was free! No rent payments needed.Worst of all was just how dark it was. There was only one light source in the right corner of the little room in the wall.

After Lio made sure no monsters were ambushing us—yes, that included look up at the ceiling any monsters this time—he set me down inside the wall and blocked the hole with stacked up monster corpses. That should hide us from them.

He must’ve noticed how much darker it had gotten once he blocked up the hole, so Lio tried to reignite the little flame he had always maintained. But he couldn’t. The spell failed.

“Argh!” Lio collapsed to his knees in front of me. He had finally run dry on magic energy. One more spell would probably knock him out for sure. “Sorry, but I can’t give us more light.”

“Mhm. You’re fine.”

Speaking of light, there was a small light source coming from one of the corners of the room. When I focused my eyes on it, I noticed something.

There was a treasure chest just sitting in the corner, blocking the only source of light we have in the room. It was made of redwood with metal plating around its edges.

“Lio look!” I crawled like a toddler over to the chest. Oh what’s going to be in it? Gold coins? Silver coins? I made enthusiastic grunts while making my way to our fortune. Kueler and Fiar wouldn’t die in vain.

A huge smile was on my face. I reached up to the chest’s top and lifted. The contents inside were shown clearly to me.

“No!” I dropped back to the ground. “No, no no!”

“What’s wrong Charliette?” Lio had made his way over to me. “Did you find anything?”

I threw him the thing I found. One silver coin. Just one. Inside of that huge chest, one silver coin remained.

“This is it?” He flipped around the coin in his hands.

“Yeah, some adventurers must have gotten to it first. Gah!” This revelation destroyed me. Did we nearly lose our lives, even lose close friends, for nothing? All that effort, just to realize that others got there first? I ruffled my hair in frustration. No matter what happens, life would never be nice to me.

They must have blown through the wall like Lio did, but tried to repair it afterward, which explained the various cracks in the wall that nowhere else had.

“Lio, why didn’t you go back to save Kueler and Fiar? If we’d saved them, then lives would not have been lost finding something that wasn’t here in the first place.”

Lio sat down beside me, both of us leaning against one of the walls next to the chest. “Do you remember what I told you when you first brought up going to this dungeon?”

“No.”

“I said I wasn’t going to throw my life away for coins, and neither were you. If we went back there, we’d surely die.”

“But couldn’t you have casted a Cautery spell to save them again? You were more than capable of blowing away the enemy.”

“There were enemies coming at us from every direction. There’s no spell in my arsenal that has enough strength to wipe out enemies all around me. Even if I did use Cautery, I’d be left defenseless against the monsters in the other directions.”

“What about Flame Wave? Doesn’t that cover all around you?”

“Yes, but that’s more like a trap, not a very powerful spell.

“What about Flame Spear?”

“That spell doesn’t even cover all around. Listen, the point I’m trying to make is that I can’t save everyone. That’s just not feasible for one person.”

“But—”

“We're not even one hundred percent sure both Fiar and Kueler are dead. They could very well be alive.”

That was right. I already knew that. But for some reason, I had already treated them as dead people. It was almost as if I had subconsciously given up on their survival. It was truly ridiculous for me to feel bad about indirectly killing people who might not be dead.

Yet. Keyword was ‘Yet.” The longer we left them by themselves, the higher the chance they might actually die for real. Even Lio struggled against the endless hordes of these monsters. There was no way they stood a chance in the long run.

“We have to save them, then! Before they die for sure.” I tried to get to my feet, but Lio grabbed me by the shoulder.

“I’m out of magic energy, so we’re not going anywhere. None of us can fight right now.”

I sat back down. How long were we going to be in this hole in the wall like rats? We made the foolish mistake of not bringing rations too, having that hopeful assumption that we’d only take a day. So much for that.

I patted my famished stomach, which growled back at me like a feral dog. I looked up to Lio reaching a hand towards me.

“Give me your hurt arm.”

“Er, right.” I let him take my wounded arm with his gentle fingers. I hadn’t really put any priority into healing that wound. It didn’t hurt much anymore, and the bleeding pretty much stopped. It was just a flesh wound, no serious veins hit.

But Lio wanted to patch it up, so I consented. He pulled out a roll of what looked like bandages and wrapped it around the gash on my arm. Despite being a seasoned adventurer, his hands were so soft and benign. He did all of that with a tender disposition. Never had he been this gentle or showing this level of clemency with me.

“Okay, and done. Sorry, I had nothing to clean your wound with, but the bandages will luckily prevent any infections.”

“Thank you, Master.”

He nodded at me and shoved the bandage back into his pocket.

“I never thought you’d carry around bandages wherever you go, Master.”

“A good adventurer is always prepared for anything. Stuff like this happens on the daily in the life of an adventurer. And would you cut the crap about calling me master?”

“But you are my master. A good student honors their teacher.”

“But we’re friends! Just call me Lio.”

Lio must have found our banter entertaining because he broke into a wide smile and chuckled softly. His gold eyes seemed to sparkle even brighter.

“No way! I’ll continue calling you Mast—”

“Meow! Mew!”

What the…

Lio and I straight away aimed our heads at the faint lightsource right behind us, right behind the chest.

Something meowed. Don’t tell me a cat was here…

The two of us took caution while slowly looking over the chest, and we found the lightsource.

“Mew!”

The light source was the cat. A black cat sat on the cold stone ground and began grooming itself with its tongue. On its forehead was a red stone that shone bright enough to light up that little corner the cat was at.

“What?” we both said in sync. Well... You don't see cats in dungeons often.