Kami's descent was fast. He had no time to use one of his wishes to counter or break his fall.
He landed hard on the ground. The force he felt after falling causing him to lose consciousness a few times for a couple of seconds. After recovering he stared up into the sky at the darkness where he once was.
Even though he was slightly worried for their safety, he knew Tama didn't get to use aura and that she was tough enough to handle being thrown like a rock. He thought they were alright... probably. But he soon drifted his thoughts from them to himself, the party got split up and it was him that got removed from everyone else, he knew this was a problem. If everyone else had gone down a few levels and he ended up being above them, the monsters stood no challenge. But if he is beneath his teammates he can only do one of three things: wait, try and get back up or adventure on.
Everyone except him had taken food from him but not water. He did not know how far down he had descended and as a result couldn't work out how long it would take for them to get to him. If it was longer than 7 days, the girls would end up dead from dehydration.
Pyria had explained what happens when a dungeon or labyrinth is cleared to him. When one is cleared, all people within them are forcibly teleported out and the dungeon or labyrinth gets removed leaving huge wholes within the ground.
Kami was unaware of how far down he was but he knew this didn't change the objective, in fact. The beastman throwing him down their sped things up. He definitely skipped a huge chunk of levels.
Kami was going to clear this dungeon how he originally planned to. Solo.
He finally decided to get up after thinking about his situation for a good 5 minutes and the second he moved he was greeted with a dark red glow that lightly lit up where he was. He could see perfectly and knew where he was. He was on the very last floor. In front of him was a giant metal door with engravings showing men with horns and a long tail worshipping a large shard crystal. He approached the door and pushed the heavy door open slowly.
It was a small room made almost entirely of red leather with a black casket in the middle. Kami walked up to the casket and began to open it. He saw a bright red light emerge from out of the casket. Inside he saw a man. Kami staggered backwards shocked.
"Aah, how long has it been. A couple centuries?" began the man in the casket as he stepped out "Thank you for freeing me but, I am no kind man. In fact if I was kind I wouldn't of been sealed" he laughed
"What?" Kami said spoke slightly scared
"Oh, I haven't introduced myself. I am the demon lord Asmodeus, but most know me for being amongst the 7 deadly sins" he voiced
"A demon lord, AND a 7 deadly sin"
"Yes, yes I am the king of lust. You may either grovel before me and wish to become my subordinate or die a slow and miserable death, though my power hasn't all returned yet I am sure I can deal with you how I am"
Asmodeus looked like a human dressed in a black suit with a white tie. The only difference was his sharp nails and the pair of goat horns that spiralled out of each side of his head. He had a handsome face that could cause any women unaware of who he truly was to lust after him.
Kami was too shocked to move, the aura of Asmodeus was enough for even Kami who has no magic or aura training to notice. Even though he was weakened he brought a huge amount of fear into Kami.
"Work under me or taste despair?" Asmodeus laughed
Kami quickly pulled out Asura.
"You made your choice" he sighed. "Although I am currently to weak to use my sin against you, my physical strength will do"
Asmodeus began to walk towards Kami confidently prepared to oppose Kami who tightly gripped Asura in his right hand.
Meanwhile, Tama was fighting the beastman with her aura on equal terms. Each clash between the two sent heavy shock waves reverberating throughout the floor. The hair and skin of the beastman began to shed and singe more each time he engaged in combat with Tama. With the use of aura from Tama they were equally matched, but with the fire aspect from the aura, Tama had the tactical advantage. Liliana did not leave Tama to fight alone, although she was behind the beastman and couldn't deal a lot of damage as its skin deflected her arrows, she was able to attack the few soft spots available. Pyria stood in awe unable to do anything.
With a supreme amount of precision, she sent two arrows deep into the flesh behind the monsters knees and heels incapacitating it. With this, Tama was able to land strong blows onto the beastman's head which dented it severely. The threat that had flung Kami down to the final floor of the dungeon and tossed Tama away had been defeated. As the monster evaporated, it dropped the beastman's arm which Tama picked up happily planning to use it to upgrade her giant gauntlets.
The battle between Kami and the demon lord Asmodeus was not all roses and flowers as the battle Tama and Liliana had with the beastman. Kami was going all out against a weakened deadly sin who was completely equal in strength with him.
The once beautiful red leather room now looked like it was hit by a tornado. Slashes from both sides were present from the floor to the ceiling just from the two having a battle. It was truly a clash between country calamities.
"Oh, you are good. If I could use my sin or Fuwa on you though this would be a different story. In fact if I had any magic or aura, this would be completely one sided" Asmodeus cursed as Kami parried the nails of the demon.
They were both aware that the victor could only be decided by a slip up or a difference in skill. Kami smiled after realising this. He hadn't used any of his wishes for the day yet.
"Asura make me an expert swordsman, and whilst your at it make it so I can fly, I don't want to fall from a height similar to what I jumped ever again"
"Two wishes, understood. Wishes granted."
Though there was no increase in strength whatsoever, Asmodeus seemed to think there was. There were less wasted movements, no there was no wasted movements anymore and Kami's creative mind employed a trick.
Flying allows a person to move freely in the sky at fast speeds and you aren't limited by weight. As Asmodeus attempted to push Kami to his knees with his hands, not only did Kami equalise this like he was doing before, but he began to slightly fly to shift the tide of battle, the demon was caught completely off guard. Now the demon was slowly being brought to his knees as Kami began to fly higher and angle himself better. When Asmodeus was completely brought to is knees and Kami was directly above him, he began to speed up.
"You may rid me of this world for a while but I cannot be permanently killed by the hands of a simple human like yourself" Asmodeus bellowed somehow still with a full tanker of confidence. "I am will materialise once more and I will hunt you down until you are dead, body and soul"
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Straight after that Asmodeus' arms gave in and Kami cut off his head. The being dissipated into the air leaving behind a red key with a goat engraved within it. Kami recognised the goat as the symbol of lust and assumed there were 6 more of these keys which lead to something, as per usual, Kami was completely correct.
After picking up the key Kami felt the whole dungeon shake. With no time to even process his fight he was teleported to the entrance of the dungeon. But what was once the dungeon had been replaced with a huge whole going down farther than his eyes could see, the bottom was cloaked by the darkness.
Kami met the trio of girls. They shared the events that transpired after they were separated. The girls were shocked to learn that Kami had fought a demon lord and won, they were told he was weakened but they still found it hard to believe. But they knew they had to otherwise they would still be within the dungeon.
Kami thought back to Asmodeus' last words the whole way back to the city of Jura. A demon who was amongst the 7 strongest there was vowed to eradicate him from this world, and he was putting up a tough fight for Kami without his sin and spiritual power. Kami was by no means weak but the thought of being unable to match a full power demon lord scared him, and since he planned on collecting the rest of the keys he decided to call sin keys, he had to get a lot stronger than he already was. His base form wasn't cutting it no more.
The instant they entered the city there was commotion. Murmurs of there return filled the city. Whenever adventurers set off to conquer a dungeon, word spreads fast and the whole city knowing was a result. What matters isn't whether you are going to conquer a dungeon or not, it's whether you return or not. Most people who set off never return and yet here a group of four had just beat an A rank dungeon that many A rankers have died in all as B ranks. This was huge. Their return spread like a wildfire reaching anyone with ears.
The group soon arrived in the guild hall, they sat down and everyone began celebrating their return. It was unnecessary to tell Alice that they had completed the quest, them being alive proved it. Some like Nabras and Oboros refused to believe only they cleared it, others excepted it easily.
"Check your coins" shouted Alice from the front desk.
They did. What they saw proved they had grown, on each coin that had previously shown a large 'B' had now been replaced with an 'A'. They were all mid A ranks with Kami being the highest out of them all.
Pyria suggested becoming a permanent party. They all agreed and after a while realised they would need a name to call themselves. After a few bad names were passed around they found one that stuck, Styx. Suggested by Kami to reminisce of his own world. Styx came from the river Styx in Greek mythology. One of the 5 rivers of hell and both a God and a river at once. It was a large river that was black in colour resembling ink. It was fatal to any mortal that touched it. He explained this and told them that each of them were fatal to anything they touched making Styx a good name.
Though they were sceptical about whether he was telling the truth after all there are no Greeks in this world or any mythos that resembled what he said, they took what he said to heart regardless and from then on they were known as Styx, the group who conquered a dungeon.
There party was going to stay together however they were not, Tama and Kami had been summoned by the military and Pyria had to leave to go somewhere. They all promised to get back together at some point but they never gave a location.
Tama and Pyria left almost immediately after this, though Kami had another month before he was to be summoned by the military, Tama was already an officer and a relatively high ranking one at that.
"Kami, your strength has been recognised by Tama. I will put in a good word or two for you at HQ" Tama announced. After a few months of being with her he had seen where her confidence comes from: being a Major in the army as well as being a country calamity. Any one of those would be enough to make a normal person believe that they were a king and Tama had both.
She quickly left the area, Pyria said her goodbyes and left briefly afterwards.
Now all that were left were Kami and Liliana.
"That Tama, I can't believe she knows how to use aura" began Liliana "I think I'm going to learn myself
"From the school she was talking about?" he questioned
"Yeah, I am a town calamity which is pretty good, I have been content with that but since what we are gonna be fighting is gonna be getting stronger than what we have already fought and I could barely give support let alone kill anything, I think this is necessary"
"Tutelage in the school is free if you are a city calamity and above but can't use aura at all if you join the military right?"
"Yes, whilst that is true the military only except people who are at least a city calamity, if you try and apply and you are not they will just tell you what you can do to get stronger which is learn aura. However things controlled by the state such as the school notify the military of anyone who becomes or is a city calamity who isn't part of the military already. You have to serve a minimum of a year in the army so I will be there anyway, it's just that I have to pay to learn aura"
People who are city calamities already and the military don't know about them all originate from towns and villages, as they aren't within the city walls, things work differently and they don't have to tell the government their disaster level, although this rarely ever happens for two reasons: they don't really have a reason to leave their town or being a calamity higher than town is just rare in general.
They both talked a bit more about getting stronger for Styx a bit and Kami offered to pay for her school fees as he had a huge amount of money anyway. She excepted happily. Kami pulled out a platinum coin from his pouch and told her that all of that was hers. She looked ecstatic. The reason being that per year, the school fees were 2 gold coins. Most people spend 2-3 years learning aura there so that was at max 6 gold coins and as platinum coins are worth 100 gold coins, she has 94 gold coins to do as she pleased.
If the value of these coins were to be translated to real life, a single gold coin was worth 1000 dollars and a platinum coin would be worth 100,000. Most people have never even seen a platinum coin. Kami was somewhat aware of the value of each coin but he had so many he didn't care.
They talked for a while longer and it ended with Liliana heading to the entrance to the city to go straight to the Aura school to learn. They were going to meet in a month and she promised to at least have some aura by then.
Kami went to the Vrelei inn and had to deal with people asking how the dungeon was and various other things about him. However he had a problem or so he thought. He had free residence in the inn for a month. It has been 3. He wanted to know what happened to the room he was staying in although he had left nothing inside.
"That room is now being occupied, we checked to see if you left anything inside which would've been moved to storage but there wasn't any. However we still have available rooms you can stay in at for a piece of gold and 6 silver per month" the bartender of the inn explained
Kami agreed and gave the money, he only paid for a month as he was only going to be here for another month.
During this month Kami actually did a lot. He broke down 10 of his platinum coins and went around to towns that were under frequent attacks and paid the money for more weapons, better training and if needed better defences. Naturally Kami couldn't walk into a town and tell if monsters frequented the area just by going into the towns so he completed quests and whilst doing them he looked around for more monsters and went to nearby towns and offered financial support.
He lost a lot of money and the quests didn't make up for it at all but that was the plan, lose a lot of money. He could've easily gambled a lot of his money away and lined some random nobles pockets but that would not be of any use to the people who needed money the most, the poor. After doing this for a while news of his actions spread throughout the whole of Brunay and he was known as Kami The Benevolent Saint of Styx.
During this time he decided he was going to need better armour and invested in some. Whilst he was doing this the blacksmith told him about the tiers of armour and weapons there were: normal, unique, legendary and God. there were common and uncommon within normal and rare or ultra rare in unique. The blacksmith had up to ultra rare equipment which was for a blacksmith was equal to those in the capital city. Most blacksmiths can create normal equipment and collect unique equipment to sell.
Kami had bought ultra rare lightweight armour and planned on buying a legendary sword from someone at some point. God equipment cannot just simply be crafted, it requires multiple sets of legendary equipment to be fused together to craft and can sometimes end in failure, it is extremely expensive and if your blacksmith isn't skilled enough you lose your money.
A lot of money needed to get a bunch of legendary weapons and even more to craft a God weapon, it was quite obvious that since Kami was trying to burn out all his money this was on his agenda. He would need to find a blacksmith that didn't just have legendary equipment to be sold but could also craft it as well, an interesting challenge for him.
For the remainder of the month he took on multiple quests and continued to hand out money until the 10 platinum coins were finished.