Lucifer was waiting for the group to head in deeper before he struck, however, the group started leaving the dungeon after they saw "the door". He could tell they were relatively strong by the amount of mana he could see in them, his current body would probably break down before he was able to kill them all if he tried, so sent a message to his remaining forces instead.

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Several minutes later the group heard something moving in the underbrush ahead. When they were entering the dungeon to seek information they avoided combat to hide their presence as much as possible, but now they had what they needed and they weren't very deep inside the dungeon so the enemy was weak.

The woman leading the party drew her spear and thrust into the moving plant. A satisfying crunch was heard from the other side of the bush and she pulled back her spear in preparation for another attack. When nothing came she used the spear to move the plant and found a giant ant course with a neat hole in its head.

Just as one of the men was about to compliment her clean kill a black panther appeared from the shadows, this caught the group completely off guard because there was nothing there to hide such a large predator.

The group was skilled so the nearest man was able to raise his shield in time. Fangs and claws behind several hundred pounds of muscle collided with the shield pushing the man back. The two men nearest him tried to attack the enemy while supporting their ally, but it used the shield as a springboard and lept away. The Leap caused the shield bearer to finally lose balance and fall down.

After the panther jumped it disappeared into the thick foliage leaving the men by themselves. One person kept a lookout in case the beast decided to come back while the other helped the fallen man, he remarked "got put on your ass b--". The same yellow eyes had just seen were underneath his sitting ally, before he could warn his friend the panther sank its fangs into the man's neck, then it pulled the man down into the shadow it was emerging from.

Once the man was dragged halfway into the shadow-world Kuro closed the opening cutting the man in two, instantly severing any chance the man would live.

One man yelled "it's hiding in the shadows, bitch if you're not going to help fight then at least light a torch so it can't come from beneath us. The woman begrudgingly retrieved a light crystal from her pocket and illuminated the area.

Several seconds later a thump was heard behind them, when they turned to look they saw the body of their ally splattered on the floor, with limbs twisted in strange angles and bloody entrails explosively ejected from the corpse.

The body had obviously been dropped from hight and as they looked up the woman saw a large spider holding a web. Before she could move it used its extended front limbs to wrap her in the premade web and pulled her into the canopy.

Once she was above the low branches the leaves cut off the light from her crystal leaving the two men in the dark.

The second man was pulled into the ground from a shadow while desperately trying to light a torch, and the last man was toyed to death by the large cat.

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This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Lucifer gave his compliments to Kuro for such an excellent job, he was beginning to think she was too strong for the third floor.

Then he entered a small room with a single cell. Inside the spy was sitting there with a rather blank expression and didn't even react when he entered. At first, he thought she may have killed herself when she was captured like some sort of spy movie, however, he could tell that she was still breathing.

Her appearance was plain, red hair brown eyes a meh face and small breasts, her only redeeming quality was her warrior's physique.

Lucifer found this woman strange, first, she helped Selenia, a complete stranger. Second, she didn't help her allies during the attack, which was not to Lucifer's tastes although he could think of a few men who liked the Amazonian type.

While he was thinking she looked up and asked: "are you the dungeons servant?"

The question caught Lucifer off guard for a moment, but he plainly answered "no, I'm the dungeon", which was a shock to her leaving her mouth hanging slightly open.

Lucifer asked "so who do you work for"

She laughed dryly and replied "can't say"

"can't or won't" he questioned.

She looked him straight into the eyes and said "both"

This answer intrigued him, she said that she "can't" tell him, which either suggest that she thought her employers could get to her here, or there is some sort of magical shenanigans going on. So he simply asked, "are you magically forced to stay quiet on the subject" trying to keep it as vague as possible.

She stayed silent with the same blank stare.

Lucifer took that as a yes so he opened the door and grabbed her head which caused her to tense up, but she didn't try to resist which made things easier.

He started the binding process and once he got a good look at her soul he noticed there was already bindings in place. They looked like small black symbols forming snakes slithering and wiggling over her soul, occasionally a symbol would disintegrate which took the rest of the line along with it, however, another snake would catch some of the dead writings and use half of its body to repair it, then it would slowly regrow its own symbols again.

Lucifer hadn't seen any magic like this before, but he could see that it was sloppy. He could see that the little snakes were repairing themselves using the mana from the woman's body, so if Lucifer simply cut off the supply of mana the symbols would naturally degrade. it would be incredibly painful to cut the soul off from the body, but Lucifer was relatively sure she would live.

But relatively sure wasn't completely sure so Lucifer spent the next couple hours questioning her, most of the questions couldn't be answered, but the ones she was able to answer painted a very grave picture for Lucifers future.

The Magedom which was the most powerful entity on the continent was aware something was going on here, they didn't know of him yet, but they knew that something extremely valuable was here, the sudden invasion of the Duchies army told them that through their spies.

When he asked her what she thought they would do to him if they found out about him, she replied "most likely they would capture your core and imprison it into creating special materials forever, and if they couldn't capture you they would destroy the entire dungeon just to make sure the other countries couldn't have you".

By the end of the interrogation, Lucifers shoulders were drooping and his expression matched hers. He nonchalantly grabbed her again while telling her: "a woman you saved earlier wanted you to live so this is your only chance".

Lucifer didn't really care whether she lived or died by this point and simply forced his soul bindings over the top of hers, she didn't resist so his easily slid into place, but when they made contact with the strange symbols they reacted to each-other.

She screamed out in agony, Lucifer concentrated on the resistance from the strange magic for a moment before it gave way and disintegrated. Lucifer coldly spoke to the twitching woman on the floor, "you are Selena's problem now"

The woman was left alone in the room wondering why the name sounded familiar.

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Ahri was waiting for the interrogation to finish and saw Lucifer coming out of the room, she was about to go up to him and found out what he learned when she noticed his expression and froze.

Just before he left without her she worked up the courage to ask him whats wrong. He simply replied "I'm tired" before leaving.