[Sally’s PoV]
Running into no more monsters, I arrive back at the main camp just as the night sets in. The little pup is still following me. I see that Elizabeth is the first one here, with wet hair I figured that she had been bathing. Seeing me approaching, Elizabeth waves and as she gets up, she looks at me and steps back with some fear.
“Are you okay, Sally?”
“Yes, Alisha told me I’m like a monster right now, don’t mind me.”
“No no, that’s not the problem, your fangs are showing, it just freaked me out for a moment.”
Using my tongue to feel the two teeth that had extended, I could still feel them. No idea why but I’ll just leave them. No harm if they showed or not, plus I’d need to use them later anyway.
Putting the panther at my feet, I grab my sword and start skinning the beast. Hearing, and ignoring, a gasp of shock from Elizabeth, I pull the blood drained skin off as I start getting the meat from it. Hearing another yelp, I cut off a small piece and handed it to the pup. Smiling as I watch it chow down, I rub its head then return to cutting the rest apart.
Soon, Alisha returned, with a large amount of wood in a sack on her back, a big boar-like monster and a panther like the one I brought back. The moment the blood from these two hit me, I couldn’t take my eyes off them. I could feel that hunger coming back up, I wanted to drink the blood from those monsters again. Gulping, I pointed at the boar that Alisha was holding, who tilted her head and put the boar down near me. Rushing to the boar, I kneel and plunge my teeth into it, letting a growl out as I drink.
Not minding my surroundings at all, I continued drinking, this monster had richer tasting blood than the panther, it was delicious. As I drained the last of the blood from it, I released my teeth from it with a gasp, finally feeling sated. Licking the blood from my lips, I slowly remembered where I was. Looking at Alisha who looked confused and Elizabeth who looked shocked, I found I didn’t mind if they saw what happened. Alisha shrugs and just says “I guess you drink blood now, I’ll make sure to hunt something bigger for you next time.” Nodding, I sat down and continued cutting the panther while sometimes giving a small piece to the pup, who was now sitting on my lap.
Olivia and Gray returned as I finished skinning my panther, they had similar reactions to my fangs, Olivia being way too interested and Gray looking a bit confused but more accepting. Noticing the pup on my lap, Olivia pets its head and asks me “Is this your bonded monster?”
“I don’t think so, I just found it after I killed this panther.” Shaking my head, I look at the pup who is now looking at everyone with some curiosity.
“You can bond with it through the System, just ask the System to help you bond with the little guy.”
‘You can do that with the System?’ Thinking so, I look at the pup and decide to just try it out right away. Prompting the System to bond with the pup, I see a message appear.
[Level 1 Silverback Pup is accepting of bonding with you. Would you like to form a blood oath?]
Confirming this with the System, I feel a cut appear on the back of my hand as a fingernail size blood drop came from it as something similar happened with the pup. Soon, the two lots of blood combined and separated, one landing on the back of my hand and the other on the pup's head. A strange symbol formed from the blood and then faded.
[You have bonded with the Silverback Pup, would you like to name it?]
Thinking for a second, I give it a name. “Pup”. As I say this, I see the monster's information update.
[Level 1 Silverback Pup, Pup]
[Due to being bonded, Pup’s level and stats have all been reset to Level 1.]
‘Wasn’t it already level 1?’ Speaking, Alisha told me about being able to check its status as Alice landed on my knee and looked at Pup as Pup looked at Alice.
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Pup
Male Silverback Pup
Level 1
Experience: 0/3,000
Skills: None
Spells: None
Bonded to Sally through the use of Blood Oath
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Smiling, I see Pup and Alice start playing by either pecking Pup’s head lightly or pushing his paw on Alice’s head. Seeing the two start playing, I look at the night sky, feeling the cool breeze on me, thankful I’ve been able to live to this point and thankful for those around me. I hope you’re watching Chloe, I wish you could be here with me.
[Alisha’s PoV]
Looking at Sally, I was a little worried. She seemingly has accepted her monster side, resulting in needing to drink blood. I was okay with that, I was just concerned about what happens if she can’t drink blood for long periods of time, would she attack us then? Well, we’d handle it at that time so it's fine. Continuing to set up the fire as Gray and Elizabeth worked to skin the corpses we brought back, Olivia watched us with interest. Making conversation I decided to ask her the question that was on my mind.
“Want to join us for a bit? After we handle our issues we can help you look for your village thing.”
“A village is a smaller city, Alisha.” Speaking up, Elizabeth informs me. Not sure on how small a village would be, I looked at Olivia who was thinking.
“Do you guys really plan on heading into a dungeon?” Nodding in response to the question, Olivia then shrugs and says “I don’t really have anywhere else to go, so why not, it seems exciting and I’ll get some stories to tell! I’ll join you guys, but I won’t get involved in your feud with the humans.”
That’s fair, I wasn’t expecting her to jump on board with fighting against the humans. “In that case, let's start preparing. We need plenty of food and water, we don’t have many supplies like bandages or healing potions, so I decided to ask Olivia about her healing.
“I can heal over time, I’m not able to instantly heal wounds. I can cure poisons, like with Noodles, but there are some poisons I won’t be able to treat. I also need to have physical contact with the person to heal them, and since I use a bow it’s not easy to treat others during combat. I only have 1,000 mana as well, so I need to be careful of how I use my healing.”
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Nodding, I got the jist of what she was saying. Combat healing would be very difficult, so we needed to be careful…well, we generally were in combat.
“Oh, and you need to be careful of different class enemies. You have Guardian-class, usually only one that acts as the dungeons boss, but you have other classed monsters like Elite, Champion, Demonic and so on. Unlike regular monsters, they’re more dangerous and may have unique abilities.” Saying so much within a sentence, Olivia looked like she was enjoying telling us this. Hearing a smacking sound behind me, I see Elizabeth with her palm on her forehead.
“I actually forgot to mention that. There is also the chance for things to mutate to become higher class or just different monsters altogether.” Nodding, Sally, Gray and I took in this information. This may be more dangerous than we thought, but it was a good chance to get stronger and get newer equipment, like my Elven Armor. Seeing as Olivia hasn’t commented on it, I guess she knew it was a quest reward, or maybe it was a different type, she wasn’t wearing this type of armour.
“Let’s get started with preparing, we should head to the dungeon next daylight.” Speaking up, Sally oddly takes the lead.
“I disagree, I think we should rest. You three may have recovered by tomorrow, but I still feel exhausted, my muscles feel oddly tired.” Elizabeth chips in. Not sure why she’s still sore, Olivia informs us why.
“That’ll be due to the healing magic. Healing magic isn’t all powerful, it just speeds up your regeneration to heal, but the downside is that it can tire you out depending on your injuries. The poison did a lot of damage internally to you guys in that short time, you’d want to rest after being healed that much.” So that’s how it was, healing magic worked in a way I never expected.
“S-so we should u-use this time to make sure w-we’re completely prepared, maybe we s-should get as much s-smoked meat and wood to take with us.” Hearing Gray’s suggestion, this might be the best way forward. We also don’t know what to expect, so doing this would work wonders for us. Hearing monsters roar in the nighttime, I look around but nothing is around us, it was off in the distance.
“I’ll take the first watch, I’m feeling full of energy!” Sally starts the fire as we start cooking the meat. After eating, she starts walking around the makeshift camp with Pup while we start smoking more meat. Leaving the meat to smoke, Olivia, Elizabeth and Gray go to rest while I take care of the rest. Once properly smoked and stored, I get up and use my sack as a pillow, falling asleep as soon as my head is down. Maybe having a day off would be for the best.
***
After resting, we used the time to start preparing ourselves. With Olivia helping me, I tested out my wind magic, and the new spell I had acquired, Wind Explosion.
[Wind Explosion.
Detonates the wind around you, causing a strong gale to shoot out in all directions. Power depends on mana used.]
“The System helps you with casting abilities if you need it as I’m sure you know, but it also will recognise your efforts if you were to create new abilities or learn an existing one. I’m not too knowledgeable on how it works, but the System won’t just give you the spell for nothing.” Nodding to Olivia’s comment, it was as Teacher Lee had taught me. “Just be inventive, it’s not easy to just create spells, you might fire off a “new spell” but it won’t be recognised by the System. I don’t know why either, I hadn’t done my schooling before I appeared here.”
“How’d you arrive here anyway?” Sally, who was with us trying to figure out how to use Blood Magic, asked this question. She hasn’t had much luck with using it, at most having a drop of her blood floating next to her. Frowning, Olivia shakes her head.
“I…I don’t know. I was on patrol with my party, we camped out for the night and before I knew it I was here suddenly. The most I can remember is when patrolling things suddenly went dark and there was some pain.” Seems there is a mystery as to why she was here. We’ll find out in the future either way.
After some more practice of using my wind magic in different ways, we head back to the makeshift campsite. It’s odd being active outside at night. What is even more odd is the comment Olivia said earlier. Where she is from, that village place, daylight lasted for nearly 13 hours! Why does it only last 4 hours here? Looking out into the distance, I remember in Crater there was a huge cliff that seemed to go into the sky. Olivia mentioned there was nothing like that where she was. Shrugging it off again, I settled down.
While we were practising, Gray and Elizabeth had been gathering wood, food and water. Seeing the sacks that were filled to the brim, it seems like they were done as well. We had been practising throughout the daylight, so with our preparations done, it would be time to head to the dungeon. They had also made a small storage area by moving some rocks and branches around the orb to block it out of sight and put our excess stuff like the fabrics and seeds in the hole under the orb. Looking at the map, from our location it would take about an hour of full running to reach the entrance to the Temple of the Blood God.
This was the moment. Elizabeth and Olivia said that we could potentially reach level 20 if we can get through the entire dungeon, I was quite excited by that prospect.
“About our party set up, Sally should be up front with Gray backing her, both of you can keep monsters distracted and off the rest. Olivia you’ll be acting as support from the back, shoot those at make it through Sally or Gray. Alisha and I will be the attackers, we’ll be responsible for killing monsters. We’ll try and cripple some for you guys to get experience as well.” Bringing this up to us, Elizabeth looked around and smiled. Thinking it was a good plan, Olivia also gave some input.
“I’ve never done dungeons, but I’ve always heard they are really dangerous. People generally don’t go into them because of that, even if they’re rich in rewards, the only reason people would even go in is because of materials or rare plants that you can’t find outside. The biggest thing I remember being told was to always take your time with them, since monsters can overwhelm you very easily.”
Thanks to Elizabeth and Olivia, we knew how to prepare ourselves for the dungeons. Knowing we could run into obstacles like puzzles or trials allowed us mentally prepare too. We continue to talk about the dangers we could expect, like the different class of monsters or how we would rest once inside. After resting, daylight finally arrived.
Equipping our sacks, I made sure my Elven Armor was on correctly and the gauntlets fit well. Alice was on my head while Sally carried Pup in her shirt, with her arms wrapped gently around him. With that, we head off, not taking our time and making haste mainly out of nerves. Soon, we arrived.
Arriving in front of a giant obsidian temple, the dungeon doors were there, no inscription on them but something that looked like blood dripping off it. My System provided the information to tell me this was indeed the Temple of the Blood God. Taking a breath, I look around at everyone, seeing them steeling themselves, especially Olivia, she had come even though she didn’t need to risk herself for this. It seems the chance of finding interesting things and having stories to tell was quite important for her. Taking another breath again, we headed towards the doors and with Sally using both hands, opened the doors and we headed in.
A burst of stagnant air mixed with the smell of fresh blood hits us as we enter. I see Sally perk up and then look disgusted. We were a bit worried about how to handle the situation for Sally and had tried our best to bleed monsters for her in case we couldn’t get anything inside, seeing her reaction it seemed she found the smell of the blood in here disgusting. Looking around, we were in a large dark room, with obsidian walls and floor that had streams of blood from them, with chandeliers and lanterns for lighting. In the middle of the room, there was a huge pool of blood, where the blood from the walls and floor flowed to. With no idea where it was all coming from, I looked around and found there were a lot of hooded figures and monsters wandering around the pool.
[Dungeon Quest: Blood for the Blood God.
You have entered a temple for the Blood God. Heretics run afoul of the natural order, all in the name of their God, the Blood God. Put an end to their heresy and conquer the dungeon’s final Guardian.
Failure to conquer the dungeon by leaving will result in all experience from the dungeon being drained from you.
Rewards are determined by your performance. Current performance ranking: F]
A quest for clearing the dungeon? Performance ranking? Looking at Elizabeth and Olivia, they too looked confused, must’ve been something they didn’t know about. Looking at the enemies, they were all level 13 to level 15. Taking a look at the hooded figure, their information came up.
[Level 15 Blooded Heretic]
There were some of the Blooded Heretics who were level 14 or 15. Looking at the monsters next, they were strange slugs, with large gaping mouths lined with hundreds of teeth.
[Level 13 Life Leecher]
Don’t want to have that thing latched onto me. They haven’t noticed us yet, and taking advantage of that Sally starts looking around to see where we should begin. Looking around the room, there were about a dozen Blooded Heretics and about thirty Life Leechers. Seeing Sally nod, I look at her and she smiles. “I see something like stairs on the other side, but I feel like there is something in here we need to do.” Not sharing that feeling, I decided to trust her and left her to lead us. Sally takes the lead, with Gray behind her, Elizabeth and I side by side behind Gray and Olivia who stuck to the shadows of the walls, and like this, we approached our first lot of monsters.