Sargon was wandering through the 4th dungeon floor. The layout has changed and he was completely lost, this however, did not stop him from getting a good number of cores. Although the cores were not the reason he came here today; he had to find his companion.

He heard a group of adventurers approaching him from behind the corner, this was clear from all the clanging and clattering their equipment were making. The four adventurers seemed familiar; he had seen them before. They were clearly an advanced party and probably were coming out of the raid of sorts. Their rucksacks were full of loot and their armour and weapons were speckled with dirt and blood.

“Hey!” Sargon waved at the adventurers “Did you happen to see a horned rogue type? She wears a grey cloak and uses her tail as a weapon?” He asked hoping that they had seen his companion.

Instead of a polite reply, he has got shoved by a man’s armoured shoulder, that man had only one side of his body clad in robust armour. “Move!” The man shouted.

Sargon looked confused at the elf walking behind the man, expecting some explanation for the behaviour he did not deserve. She just scoffed at him, so he lowered his head and moved away from the adventurers to not to get shoved again.

“Lad, if your partner did not get out yesterday… They are good as dead. Happens a lot to newbies so be careful, alright.” The gruff sounding voice startled the boy.

Sargon looked up at the one talking, it was the culprit of all the clanger – a heavy armoured dwarf.

“Yes!” Sargon shouted out as a soldier would for no good reason.

The dwarf patted his shoulder and moved along the path to the surface. Sargon patted the sore spot, the pat felt more like a blow and let a sigh out. “There is no way she would perish so easily.”

Demi-Ura mentioned of being accustomed to living in the dungeon so he was sure he will find her. He continued to walk along a path and took one of five branching paths at random. There was no point in considering which one to take since he was lost and it did not matter.

As he went along a path he had scattered remains of dungeon ants which were rapidly dissolving into thin air. He followed a trail of carnage hoping to find someone. Another adventurer perhaps, so he could ask about his missing party member.

After a few metres or so he saw a figure squatting in the shadows. By the looks of it, it was consuming the ant’s flesh. Sargon grimaced in response. The ants could be eaten but their meat was foul and bitter, it was a starvation food.

It took him a few more steps to recognise who that shady figure was.

“Demi-Ura, I have found you at last.” He said it in all smiles but then frowned again “Why are you eating that?”

She spat half chewed chunk of ant to ask “Got cookies?”

“About that…” No wonder she liked those so much if all she ate was foul flesh “No.”

She glared daggers at him for a moment but then went back to her normal neutral look.

“Thought so.” She said before resuming to slurp the flesh out of the ant’s legs.

“I had to get healed and it was expensive, but you don’t need to eat ants. I brought some food for both of us.”

He pulled out a sack containing a generous amount of hard bread. There was a lot of it since it was a lot cheaper compared to luxury biscuits.

“Here.” He offered a portion to her.

Instead of grabbing the food as Sargon would have expected she dropped two small pouches on the floor. One was small and made of leather, the other one was a tailored sack like the one he used to store monster cores.

Sargon was surprised, he thought she did not have any equipment. And there was no way she had found it even if she had lost it, the dungeon layout changed after all. However, he did not think about it too much.

“What is inside these?” he asked all curious.

“Buy cookies.”

He opened the leather pouch, it had some Shekels in it. The amount was not too much but enough to feed a person for a whole week. The other pouch had a good amount of monster cores.

“Is this the stuff you lost and somehow found?” He asked while double counting the coins. The value of coins was enough to buy a nice serving of sweets for Demi-Ura.

“No.”

“So did you find it somewhere.”

There was a short pause followed by “…No” she did not sound very confident about her answer.

“You know what, it does not matter. I will buy cookies and some other food with that money tomorrow, but for today lets us work on our cooperation and teamplay skills.”

He attached the leather pouch to his belt but handed the other one back to Demi-Ura. It was hers and he wasn’t a mule to carry her burden.

“One more thing.” Demi-Ura pulled out a dagger from who knows where and was handing it to Sargon. “For you.”

It was a well-made dagger molded from one of the ores found in Babel. It even had some decorative carvings on both the handle and the blade. It was an image of coiling serpent.

Sargon hesitated for a moment before taking the dagger. He thought that she would have a better use for it, but he did not want to be rude at refusing something which was clearly a gift.

“I… I did not expect this and I don’t really have anything for you.”

“You can buy it later. Lots of cookies.” She said with a nod and motioned to follow.

Sargon strapped the dagger under his belt and ran to catch up with his companion. She was not waiting for him; so much for the teamwork.

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…

The two were killing a swarm of ants. It had two warriors and two dozens of little workers. Sargon slapped the [Warrior Ant] with the flat of his coa stunning it while demiura used [Confuse] on another one to keep it away from Sargon.

“[Slice]” Sargon put his other skill to use to get rid of the small monster who tried to swarm him and his companion.

He was fine, but a bunch of monsters slipped trough towards Demi-Ura. Sargon felt lucky that he didn’t have to worry too much about her. Unlike most casters she can handle herself in melee.

Sargon jabbed his dagger to the stunned ant’s skull killing it instantly. He did not bother to retrieve his dagger and went straight for another [Ant Warrior] while it was still confused. He approached from a side and jabbed his blade to its neck separating the head. Apparently, they had a weakness, if he positioned his weapon right, he could cut their head easily by targeting their narrow necks.

He turned around to help Demi-Ura with the smaller ants, but there was no need to do so. She took care of them by slashing at them with her tail. Sargon was more than happy to have someone like her with him. Not only she was more experienced and still formed a party, but she also was not too critical about his lack of skill.

It was his job as a warrior to make sure that none of the monsters slipped past to attack a caster, and he failed at it. Demi-Ura did not scold him for that or look scornfully and he felt thankful for the understanding. However, if his companion was weaker all of this might have been a different story and Sargon was painfully aware of that.

They harvested the cores and moved forward into one of many chambers within the dungeon. It was a dead end but there was something laying in the far end of it, or to be more precise – someone. That someone was dead, laying next to what looked to be an impromptu campsite. Sargon approached carefully to inspect the body.

It was a young lad, not too much different from him. The body had multiple sharp stabs at the back, the clothes and ground were died brown in dried blood. From what he could tell It looked very much like an ambush. Sargon concluded that the poor thing probably got lost when the dungeon changed and made a camp for the night only to stabbed in the back by one of the monsters. But then he realised that it seemed a bit odd because the body had no signs of being eaten and there weren't any stabbing monsters in this flor, as far as he was aware.

“So sad, he was a newbie adventurer just like me. And by the looks of it, he had no party either.” Sargon remembered how dangerous it was to explore alone.

He paused for a while to pay respects.

“Shall we take what he no longer needs?” He asked gauging Demi-Ura’s reaction knowing that it may not sit well with her.

“No.” The answer was clear and short; her reaction was as neutral as ever.

Sargon signed feeling a smidgeon of guilt of asking something like that but Demi-Ura was not finished.

“He has nothing anymore anyway.”

“How would you know? Do you have a skill or something like that to be able to tell?” Sargon wondered. “And are you implying that it would be okay to take his belongings after all?”

“No skill but I know.” She shrugged and continued “You can check yourself.”

Sargon wondered if she changed her mind about corpse looting and it was her way of saying he can do it.

“Well, he won’t be taking the money or cores to the afterlife so I am sure the fellow here does not mind.” He tried to justify his actions.

He went through the clothes and the body but there was nothing on, absolutely nothing of worth. Almost as if everything was taken beforehand. Sargon scratched his head out of habit making his hair dirty.

“I don’t think the monster killed him.” He concluded whilst turning back to Demi-Ura.

“Why would you even think it was a monster?” An oddly cold voice responded to him.

Sargon would rarely hear her say so much, she was unusually talkative today. A shiver ran down through Sargon’s back. He didn't like the idea of adventurers killing other adventures. However, he was not ignorant, he had heard of stories of such crimes. The crimes like these often went unsolved. The Dungeon Tower Babel was a dangerous place and not just because of the maze-like tunnels and monsters.

“I guess I wanted for it to be monster and not a fellow person.” He reasoned.

“People kill people.” Demi-Ura shrugged once again stating it as if it was just a part of her reality.

Sargon remembered her claims of not ever leaving the dungeon.

“Did you see many dead people here?” He was curious. For him, it was his third time. The first two were just unlucky accidents much like this one but not in the dungeon.

“Hundreds… More.”

“That many!” he got surprised. But then it made sense, she had been here for years. The next question he wanted to ask was if she had to kill someone. However, he didn't because he did not feel ready to know that, especially if the answer was yes.

Demi-Ura gave him her signature nod.

“Oh, I guess it is better if we don't dwell on subjects like these too much. Come let’s go somewhere else.”

They went to a particular chamber and headed down the stairs leading to a lower floor.

Without giving it too much thought Sargon reached the floor 5.