Vvy turned around and saw the yellow light of a flashlight. Ronnie ran up to him and grabbed his arm and dragged him to the others. The predator recovered, took the bullet out of its body, and jumped forward six yards. The sniper dodged a blow to the head and released Vvy and jumped to the side, simultaneously raising the muzzle of the rifle and aiming. Took another shot. A smoking cartridge fell to the ground. Gunpowder smells filled the area. The monster growled and shook. It touched the wall with its hand and the tunnel seemed to come to life. Stone spikes flew at Ronnie. He used “Furious Rhythm” and dodged the many attacks. Now it seemed impossible to shoot back, but he did not give up. Magic walls, of course! The sniper estimated the trajectory of the ricochet by eye and fired another shot. The bullet bounced off the ceiling, hit a couple of spikes, a wall and flew off into the darkness. Next shot missed its target as well. A fresh attack. Sharp stone needles whizzed down on Ronnie from the ceiling. He made a roll and ran back another couple of yards and crashed into the wall and cursed.

The Furious Rhythm continued for another thirty seconds. Ronnie fired a few more shots and the last one caught up with the enemy and hit it in the head. The ten-round magazine was out. He reloaded his rifle. The chthonic monster bent over from the slight stun and growled. It teleported and kicked Ronnie into the wall, but he stayed on his feet. The creature did not retreat. A one-handed sword appeared in its hand. Several cutting attacks had to be blocked by the body of the weapon, fortunately it withstood. This time, the sniper, bypassing the spikes, retreated to Vvy’s side, shouting to him: “Are you going to fight?” The tank could not even answer. He could only lie there and watch the battle.

Ronnie caught the chthonic monster by making a false weapon raising. When the creature was in front of his face, he dodged a cutting blow to the head, hit it in the face with the butt in response, pushed it away with his foot and shot it in the knee. The bullet ricocheted and almost killed him. The creature made a dash forward, pushed the sniper’s puny body away. While he was flying back, it teleported behind him and aimed the blade at his spine. Ronnie hit the ground with the butt and stopped half an inch away from the tip. However, this did not help him much. The monster jumped on the wall and kicked him in the side. The sniper flew off and crashed into the cobblestone. Barrett fell to the ground. Suddenly, he saw a red-purple fog thickening around him. The Top Secret leader noticed this too and raised his eyebrows and cracked his mouth open in surprise.

Is this what Latludious was talking about? He thought.

Ronnie turned around and saw a curse trap on the wall, exactly the same as in the forest. Vvy and the chthonic monster looked at him curiously. When the fog cleared, nothing happened. The creature spoke something and went back into the darkness. The spikes and the barrier wall evaporated as if they had never existed.

Ronnie walked up to Vvy and dragged him along the ground. When the group reunited, Illyseh brought the tank into combat readiness. The Top Secret leader stood up and asked:

“Why did only Ronnie come back to help me?”

“They believed you were much more skilled than you actually are,” Illyseh replied.

“I suggest we stick together next time."

Latludious and Faolandan wrote to the leader in the PM that they were not allowed to return. Ronnie did not listen to the order. Vvy took off his helmet and spat viciously on the ground.

“So that’s how it is... Without me,” the tank spoke in a rough, low voice and pointed a finger at Yleen, “you’ll all go down at the first boss you meet. If you have something to say to me or accuse me of something, then say it now. Otherwise, I don’t understand the logic of your actions, and it is also likely that the players won’t either when they see the recording of our march.”

Yleen walked up to Vvy and put his hand on his shoulder and looked into his eyes:

“I’m sorry. We made a mistake and I’m the only one responsible for it. As a leader to a leader, you have to understand me. Choosing between five and one, the answer is obvious. But it won’t happen again.”

Without realizing it, Vvy calmed down and turned to Ronnie and thanked him and asked:

“What was that mark on the wall?”

Latludious forthwith knew what he was talking about and looked at the sniper and asked:

“That mark we met in the woods?”

“Yes,” answered Ronnie. “But it didn’t work.”

“It didn’t work?”

“I don’t know why it didn’t.”

“Did it release the mist?”

“Yes.”

“And nothing?”

“As you can see from my non-purple eyes.”

Yleen and Illyseh listened intently to the conversation and wrote a couple of comments to each other.

“Where is the monster?” asked the healer.

“It left,” answered Vvy, “right after it saw that the mark on the wall didn’t work.”

“Fucking Ronnie,” said Faolandan to himself, struggling to contain his anger and frustration.

“Is something wrong?” asked Illyseh.

Faolandan walked over to Ronnie, grinning like a hungry dog, and said:

“What are you hiding?”

The sniper did not even look at him and pulled out a recovering syringe and stuck the needle in his shoulder.

“Are you going to ignore me the entire mission?”

“You’re not in charge. I only talk to them.”

“Since when?”

“Since you pissed me off.”

Yleen ordered to move on and end the meaningless conversations. Yet less than half an hour later, the group saw two humanoid monsters hanging from a rope in the tunnel. They somewhat resembled actual players, but the fundamental difference that struck the eye was the absence of sexual characteristics and six and a half feet height. The eyes were extinct, black. There were no clothes. Long hair. Strange lines carved the whole body, dried up and ugly, as if empty riverbeds. The skin was gray with abrasions. A blackened pool of blood was on the ground. An eerie sight. Latludious narrowed his eyes and said:

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“Do you think there’s a connection between the statues in the secret passage and them? It seems that a sapient underground race used to live here.”

Illyseh came closer to the corpses and examined them. He used the ‘Oratio’ spell and after a while said:

“They died a hundred, maybe two hundred years ago. I can’t say for sure. In terms of body structure, this world largely converges with the Earth. As for the connection with the statues, I have my doubts.”

“Why?”

“Appearance. With the help of my spell, I can restore what the corpse looked like when it was alive. They have an impressive body, muscular, without flaws. About these hollow lines along the chest, abdomen and shoulders... hmmm... interesting. These places, like the palms, were apparently used to create spells, absorb and transform mana...” Illyseh turned with a worried look and, after a pause, finished the sentence, “and they still do it. I dare assume that during their lifetime, these guys shone like a Christmas tree. But that’s what scares and fascinates me the most. Look at my hands. See the streaks where the veins are?”

Everyone reached out to look.

“We can see, but yours are not so clear,” Yleen said and looked at his hands and added. “I have nothing like that at all.”

“Because you don’t use magic. The more often I use spells, the more clearly they appear to me.”

“It turns out that two very strong magicians are hanging in front of us.”

“You’ve got it right. Very.”

Latludious moved behind the others and looked at his palms. That’s right, he thought. Why didn’t I notice it before?

Illyseh grunted and continued to answer the magician’s question:

“I think it is unlikely that a sculptor would hide such handsome men behind such gloomy armor. It seems to me that there is only one explanation for this: for him, such an ugly appearance was the norm. Just to match the underground inhabitants. These two differ from them. Remember what the mouth of those looked like and compare with these. Is there a difference?” The healer sighed and looked at the ground, gathering his thoughts and continued. “Maybe these guys were fleeing from a war or a natural disaster here, stumbled upon representatives of the underground race by chance, and they hanged them. The human or animal body adapts to the environment from generation to generation. These corpses have obviously lived on the surface for a long time. They even look like us, the players. And we, in turn, become like them. I would say very much.”

The healer continued and pointed to a small hole in the stomach from which the intestines were hanging out and said that parasites that live in our body ate them. “While we are alive, our immune system blocks them, but after death, nothing prevents them from having a party.” He also added that the brain and heart were also partially eaten, as the analysis showed. “The eyes were most likely pecked out by the Mornazhars. There are no traces of larvae and flies. It is also amazing that the bodies have not decomposed after so many years. Apparently, this is because after death their bodies continued to absorb mana, which seems to slow down the passage of time for them. The detail is incredible.”

“Why do we need this information?” Faolandan asked, writhing from what he saw. If he were in reality now, the gag reflex would work, but the game mechanics did not allow him to do this, so he only felt severe nausea.

Illyseh inserted a scanning chip into one corpse and added:

“Still no clue?”

“No.”

“You should read the game lore more carefully.”

Latludious suddenly froze and realized what Illyseh was leading to all this time and voiced:

“We are incredibly lucky to find these corpses…”

The healer nodded, and the magician continued:

“In this world, many races have lived for hundreds of centuries, or even more. Their bodies, although they resemble human ones, but the difference is on the face. If we understand the differences, of which, as I understand, there are few, we can change our body, increasing the productivity of magical skills. Either magically, surgically, or in some other way, to connect their strengths and ours. The characters in Guns and Magic are based on a person who is used to living on Earth, and their bodies have adapted to life on Thalack.”

“You’ve judged everything correctly. I think the further we go, the more we’ll learn about the story of this underground world. I guess we’ll find a lot of interesting things. At the end of the campaign, I’ll return to the fortress and examine the corpses in the laboratory. Using the data from the scanner, I’ll be able to recreate an accurate map of their bodies. Let’s go.”

“I hope we can find someone alive, too,” Yleen said.

“Don’t count on it too much. Even if we do, we can’t talk. Corpses, at this point in the game, will give us more information.”

Faolandan spoke in a quiet voice:

“What are the chances that the developers knew we would meet the corpses and have someone with us who would come up with all of this?”

“I see no point in asking rhetorical questions. Let’s go.”

The group continued to move forward through the dark tunnel. Ronnie was in his own thoughts, and when he came to, he looked around for Barahu and remembered that it was gone, surprised at how attached he was to this never-existing animal. A floating white light illuminated their path in the darkness. Illyseh was writing something down in an in-game notebook. Faolandan wrote in the Top Secret group chat how machine guns and assault rifles were becoming more and more useless and only worked on weak monsters. If this kept up, he and Yleen would just become dead weight, if they were not already. A year from then, there would be no one in their right mind who’d rather have a machine gun than magic. Guns needed modifications. Even the Barrett could not compete with spells.

A couple of hours later, Latludious stopped. Before him a new challenge: an open black gate, behind which there were three large tunnels, at the entrance a sign in an incomprehensible language. The magician turned to the others and said:

“Which tunnel is the main one now?”

Yleen stepped forward and answered:

“The closer the tunnel is to the exit, the better the air in it. Besides, we would have felt a draft. All three directions have no hint of an exit or a main road. They are exactly the same. I don’t believe I’m going to say this now, but I suggest we split into groups of two players.”

“How do we split up?” asked Vvy.

Yleen asked for a minute to think about it and wrote to Illyseh:

As long as we have an influence on them, we need to use it. You go with Ronnie, make sure he doesn’t betray us at the last moment. Besides, a healer won’t interfere with a sniper’s work. You have a good synergy. I’ll go with Latludious. He is the brain of their organization. We have to monitor him. In addition, we’ll be able to clear hordes of weak monsters in order to advance further and learn more about this place. Vvy and Faolandan will go together. Maybe they’ll be able to fight back during the battle. I don’t know. But because of their uselessness, they’ll not cause us many problems.

Yleen made his assumption out loud - he was silent about the details and thoughts he had written earlier. Faolandan disagreed and erupted in indignation.

“What are you dissatisfied with?” Asked Yleen.

“Tanks can contain monsters, not kill them. My DP doesn’t do any damage. The deeper the dungeon, the more dangerous it is. We will be useless. Let Ronnie go with Vvy. I’ll go with Latludious, and you will go together. That way, we’ll have a better chance of getting through the dungeon.”

“Have you forgotten, machine gunner, that we are on a scouting mission? We don’t need you mopping up monsters and bosses. If you encounter a dangerous creature, then run past it or go back. We’ll all report on a group chat. We don’t get into trouble. Our lives come first, scouting comes second. Scan the area every mile traveled, so we’ll see where all the tunnels lead and where everyone is, write down traps and suspicious places in a notebook. We’ll need this when we send the army here.”

Faolandan hit the iron gate with all his might and cursed:

“Stop watching us! What do you suspect us of?”

“Vvy and Latludious are aware. Ask them. This is the decision of the supreme officers. You can resist and go back with the ‘enemy of the race’ debuff, or you can obey orders."

Latludious looked at Vvy, who wanted to stand up for his comrade, and shook his head. Then the magician opened the Top Secret group chat and wrote: Remember the rule: don’t get into trouble and wait, the opponent, because of inexperience, will tighten the noose around his neck, and we’ll only push the chair at the end.

That’s not the way you interpreted it.

The meaning doesn’t change.

Vvy approached Faolandan and nodded to him and said in a humble and quiet voice:

“Come on. Everything is fine.”

Illyseh, standing behind everyone, said in slow and drawling words that made everyone yawn:

“According to my guess, there are at least two races of sapient demi-humans in this dungeon. If you meet the representative, try to establish contact and wait for others.”

Everyone agreed. Illyseh and Ronnie went to the left tunnel, Vvy and Faolandan to the middle, and Latludious and Yleen went to the right. Half an hour later, the Lord ordered everyone to quit the game and return seven hours later, after sleeping. Even though they split up, if anything happened to any of them, everyone had better be online. A new phase of the exploratory quest began.