Chapter 2

“Maaaan, that boiled spikemadillo was soooo good!”

“Flattery won’t get you anywhere this time, Helen” Norton pointed a finger at her, then finished off nailing part of the camping set to the dungeon wall.

“Alright everyone, time to make a little stop” he said. Now the two sleeping tents were set, the firepit was done, and all the equipment, save from our armor and weapons, was stuffed in a third tent designed specifically for that, with water and fire-proof materials that also kept everything inside cool and dry.

A real camper’s wonder.

“Speaking of which” Norton accommodated himself near the fire, warming off his hands. “Where’s our magician?”

“Anne’s down on the girls’ tent. Looks like so much spellcasting finally took its toll on her. She’s Mind Blank.”

“Snap.” Mind Blank, huh? She used too much will and now here brain’s temporarily shut down to make up for it. Well, it’s no wonder after we cleared a spawn room. If she weren’t there, we’d have gone through much more trouble…

“That’s a shame” he said. “Well, we’ll camp here until she’s fully recovered. How much would that take?” he turned to Helen, who was grinding her daggers with a sharpstone.

“Don’t ask me” she gestured with a dagger. “I’m not a mage. Half a day, maybe? A couple of hours? With the amount of recovery spells she used, I bet it’ll take max four hours.”

Then you do know.

Whatever.

“Since we’re on it” I said. “Why don’t we start processing the corpses? It’ll be a waste, letting it rot and all. Oh, though I guess it’d disappear anyways.” When left alone for enough time, the dungeon would swallow the bodies of the monster it once created. It probably used them as raw material for new spawns and self-repair.

“That’s an excellent idea” Norton said. “Since you were the one who had it, why don’t you get started with it? Helen and I will join you after we get some sleep.” Helen gave him a thumbs up, then looked at me. “Sorry, rookie, but it looks like you got shot in your butt.”

I sighed. Of course it would end up like this. I was the stupid one, I didn’t see it coming.

“Alright, alright, I’ll do it. But you guys owe me one!”

“I’ll buy you a drink when we get out of the dungeon. Good night!” And then, Norton snuck on his tent, and Helen on hers (actually they were shared tents, but you got me) and I was left alone with the big processing knife and over fifty bodies to work on.

“I’m glad Norton burnt the rest of them to death…”

I took a moment to examine the knife with detail. I had seen Norton and Helen use it sometimes. Anne was… let’s say handwork wasn’t her forte, and leave it at that.

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“This thing is really specialized, isn’t it?” The handle, on first, was really long. Like a broadsword’s. Probably made so that you could use it with both hands if you were dealing with though monsters or similar. The blade was curved twice, making a neat S shape of sort. There was a part of the blade that was saw-shaped, and there was a little gizmo in the middle that allowed the mount another blade, then you could use it as a scissor in case of need.

“Really specialized” I repeated.

First, I’d start with the spikemadillos. They were fewer, like ten or twelve, then I’d get to the kobolds.

The only part you really wanted from a spikemadillo was their shell. The rest… You could sell the skin and flesh, but it wasn’t anywhere as efficient. Cows were raise for that.

“Let’s see…” If I remembered correctly, you had to slice the thing’s throat without actually cutting it’s head off. That was easy. Then, make a vertical cut across the chest and belly making a T shape, open it in two halves. That was easy, too. Taking to guts out was nasty, but it was like sniffing roses compared to the earlier guts shower I went through. Monster cores were useless in this floor depth, so I didn’t even bother to search for it.

I couldn’t remember anything else.

“Let’s see…” I wiped my hands of blood and reached out for my notebook. I wrote anything from battle strategies to recollection bits in there. I think I noted the process somewhere along here…

“Here it is.” I put the handbook in front of me. “It says: ‘stab the skin in the slit between the shell and the rest of the body, as horizontal as possible, then slice the skin attached to the shell out following a circular shape’ huh.”

I did as told, and before I knew, the whole thing was out.

“Neat.” The rest would be repeating this in the other spikemadillos. The rest… We would tell Anne to cast a purge spell on it, if it wasn’t gone by then.

The thing with the kobolds was simple. The only valuable thing you could get from them was their claws, and I wasn’t so stupid as to need a handbook of instructions to do that…

“Hmmm?”

I was ending off with the last kobold when I noticed something.

I was looking at one of the stone walls. We hadn’t noticed before but… were those claw marks?

Huge, claw marks. And judging by how clean the cut came off, sharp as hell, too.

“I’m starting to think camping here wasn’t such a good idea” I said. We had to go, immediately. It wouldn’t do us any good to stay here.

“Norton, Helen, wake up! We have a to~”

My head beated. It was a strong palpitation, as if my brain was trying to run out of my skull. It was so painful I had to cut my phrase short to hold it with both hands.

This is bad. Bad, bad, bad, so bad!

Again. This time, my whole body. My soul. Beating so hard it looked like my frail body would crack and blow any second. Let everything escape. Go safe. Out from here. Anywhere else.

I was going crazy. My eyes bulged. Rotating inconsistently, trying to run out of their sockets. Out, you’ve gotta get out!

It was the only thing I could think of. The feeling came in and went out fractions of seconds. Run! Escape! Out of here! But I couldn’t run. I couldn’t escape. In my heart I knew. My soul knew. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t run, because I was…

‘Dead. It’s dead. He is mine, his death is. Nothing can escape. My claws, so sharp. My mouth, thirsty. Thisrsty. Blood, I want, blood! BLOOD!!!’

And then, as if to confirm my destiny, accept the end of my existence, I froze. Everything froze, and it was strange because there was something burning on my chest, a scream that wanted to get, out but it couldn’t because there was this knot in my tongue. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t run. All I could do was looking upwards, trying to face fate. Death. It was, as it said. Impending doom approaching.

My eyes moved up. Slowly, quietly, like a lamb led to the slaughterhouse. No will to fight. Slowly taunting the ground, thinking ‘This will be my tomb. My flesh is rotting here, my bones turning to dust, and I can see. I can see, I don’t know why, but I can.’

My eyes moved up.

And the Beast looked down on me, like the butcher in the slaughterhouse.

Embrace death.