Time was running painfully fast as I made my way through the seemingly never-ending tunnel leading to the Nursery. Each minute I wasted in this utter darkness would increase the chance of another catastrophic clash between my monsters and the members of the exploration raid happening without me being anywhere close enough to stop it from escalating any further.

I knew the men who had been caught by the lava fox’s attack were still alive as I had personally seen the blessing’s flower mark on their forehead and the flash of light that had stolen them away, but I could by no means say where exactly they had ended up and how they were doing. I had a very good idea due to the blessings description, yes, but it was by no means certain.

The sole room that wasn’t risky for them to be in was the prayer room, especially now that they were heavily weakened by the revival process. There was still the chance that they had ended up outside the dungeon’s bounds, but that much was rather unlikely given I could, other than tasking a gatherer with doing it, in no way, shape, or form influence the area surrounding the mountain.

The sound of quickly approaching footsteps forced me to forget about the invaders for now, as both Marisa and Alfred were now closing in on me, a ball of fire the size of a head hovering just behind their heads and casting its warm light onto the surrounding rock walls.

I could only sigh as they reached me, who had to rely almost entirely on my sense of touch alone. Sure, there were my instincts as a dungeon in play as well, which at least told me which direction to find the prayer room in, but that was by no means enough to beat their literal running speed.

Marisa made no secrets about what she thought about me leaving. She scolded me for the better part of a minute before reluctantly taking my hand. Before I knew it she was already dragging me towards the nursery room she had never placed a foot in before herself - not that there was any way for her to miss it given the tunnel leading there didn’t have a single room, crossing, or side arm for her to become lost in.

Before long, we had already reached the nursery that awaited us with its seven wooden houses, a small pond, and a lonely geyser. But despite the room being almost entirely empty, Marisa quickly realized just what she had found herself in.

“Is this the nursery,” she asked for confirmation. “The one you told them not to touch?”

I nodded to her question, before taking the initiative and leading her towards the furthest away house, the only one surrounded by a miniature landscape. A thick cloud was shielding the foxes’ home from view, but not for long, as it soon gathered itself into a shape I knew all too well.

The soon-to-be father wagged its three tails as it watched us approaching, before slowly making its way over to us, its paws not once touching the stone- and dirt-covered floor. When it reached us after a few moments, Alfred couldn’t help but take a step back as the intense heat of my monster was almost impossible for him to deal with.

Marisa didn’t seem to share this issue. She readily greeted the fox with open arms, only for it to run right past her and towards me instead once it had reached our small group. The monster greeted me with soft licks and the warmth of its own body, before jumping around us in circles, more than happy to see me again. And somehow, the sight of the fox frolicking around was lifting my ill mood quite a bit, thus helping me prepare for the task lying ahead of me.

Soon enough I was making my way towards the passage leading to the neighboring prayer room. There were still about a dozen thick mithril bars barring me from entry, but I simply circumvented them all by digging a second tunnel right next to the existing one, giving us easy access to the site.

I looked behind me, making sure that both my friends and the obsidian fox were still at my side, before taking a deep breath and making my way into the prayer room.

My eyes quickly darted through the room, searching for any form of danger, but nobody was awaiting me with any sort of weapon. The only humanoid silhouettes I could make out were lying on the hard ground right next to the statue of Cilia and I, protected only by a layer of rather unexpected clothes.

Letting out a big breath of relief I made my way towards the men who had very obviously received the Mark of Cilia, given the long, fluffy tails and big ears they now had, all of them coming with black or white tips respectively.

A smile grew on my lips as I examined the outfits the men had been gifted with. One of them, a young, blonde man, now wore a long, white tunic that had a family of five foxes with big, watery eyes embroidered into its soft-looking fabric, the slightly older-looking man lying right next to him instead wore a long, hooded robe made from thick, reddish-brown fabric that came with slits both for his newly gained tail and his big, fluffy ears.

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The black-haired guy that was sleeping closest to the statue was quite lucky in comparison to them, having gained a genuine set of thick, beige gambeson, the trousers once again featuring a hole for a tail, this time secured by big, brown buttons. The gambeson looked relatively normal in comparison to the other sets of clothing, that was if one overlooked the black outline of a nine-tailed fox that had somehow found its way on both the man’s back and chest, making him look like a knight serving a noble’s household.

My eyes wandered to the last member of the group, who lay a little further away. This man, too, wore a fox-themed outfit, although one that seemed rather odd even in comparison to the other three. Soft, thick fabric was covering him almost entirely. It came in three colors; a vivid orange, a pure white, and a deep black. The visibly oversized design had its arms and legs end in black while also giving the man a white belly, with a hood waiting to be pulled over his head that came with a set of fake fox ears that could seemingly be used to hide his real ones for reasons I couldn’t quite grasp, only the tail being uncovered and free.

Seeing all these weird patterns and shapes, I couldn’t help but ask myself whether or not it was Cilia that had caused all of this to appear. Doing something like this seemed to fit her personality somehow, but for all I knew the clothes could also be the result of the blessing having a mind and weird sense of humor on its own.

“They- they are alive?!”

I turned towards the voice, only to find both Marisa and Alfred already on the ground next to one of the men, seemingly checking for his pulse and breathing. They did the same with all four of them, letting out a big sigh of relief each time they found what they were looking for.

Soon, the two of them had already begun trying to wake the men up, first gently by calling out for them, then by shaking them by their shoulders. Marisa even went as far as launching a flurry of healing magic at the men, which immediately had them wide awake. It only took them two minutes at worst to bring them to their senses. Now, every single one of the four was trying to grasp just what had happened to them and where the weird outfits had come from.

“Cilia has heard your prayers,” I offered. “She has decided to give you a second chance.”

The men stared at me wide-eyed, but they soon looked at each other, easily spotting the similarities between their new appearances and the ones of Cilia, myself, and Marisa. All four of them were now fox kin, for better or for worse. And given that they had at least been honest in their prayers, I couldn’t help but put a certain level of trust in them, even if it required me to lie a little.

“The goddess has blessed us,” the man wearing the fox costume asked, seemingly still having some trouble believing my claim. “But-”

“Come back when you are stronger,” I cut short his next question. “This is not worth throwing away your life for.”

All four of them were staring at me in disbelief, not having expected my rather harsh but even more so true words. It was only when I was about to turn around and make my way towards the volcano room to deal with the raid, that one of them dared to speak up.

“What about the others?”

I couldn’t help but sigh, having no idea how to de-escalate the situation from where it was currently at. With several of the adventurers presumed dead and others never having received the blessing in the first place, the raid was both in shambles and doomed by this point, meaning I couldn’t possibly leave the issue to resolve itself either. Doing so would only further fuel their anger.

I wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of them believing they were forever losing friends and comrades left and right either, especially not since such a fact would taint Cilia’s image quite a bit, which was the exact opposite of what I wanted.

“I might need your help with them, especially your leader…”

I took a few deep breaths before roughly explaining my idea to the four of them, causing them to first nod and then to fall silent as if waiting for their comrades to make the first step and decide whether or not this was the right way to go about it.

Despite them hesitating at first, it barely took longer than a minute for the men to approve of my plan. All four of them agreed to follow me back into the dungeon’s depths, encouraged by my promise that no further harm would befall themselves and any of their friends.

Satisfied with this result, I quickly closed off the shortcut to the nursery room again before leading our group of seven toward the tunnel connecting the prayer room to the rest of the dungeon.

The men needed some time to get used to their new bodies, finding them to be both slightly imbalanced thanks to the tail and weaker than their former ones, and it didn’t help either that all of them lacked shoes.

Despite having found some semblance of trust in me, the paladins were still wary of the obsidian fox that followed after us, having never seen or interacted with that type of monster before. But even with it being largely unexplainable and unknown, the men knew that it was easily stronger than the lava beast that had caused their blessing to activate in the first place. They could consider themselves lucky they were on the same side, albeit temporarily.

Still, the paladins showed no hesitation at all now, as there was simply too much at stake for them to leave matters up to a full stranger like me. A meeting with their leader to discuss things over may be exactly what was needed to find a common ground between our interests as well, while also having the added benefit of preventing a full-on war between the kingdoms from sparking into existence.

As for how Aspen would react to my offer or rather demands? Only time would tell.