On the other side, I looked around and saw that I was with only Sailhin and Paeris. I felt Mezu’s weight firmly on my shoulders which was a relief If he was him with anyone else, it probably wouldn’t be the best way to start things off.
“Oh great,” Paeris swore turning away from me again.
“Don’t be like that,” Sailhin said.
“It's okay, it takes some getting used to is all, Fluffy if you eat quickly when my arm regrows, I’ll give you a snack or two, okay?”
I heard him gobble up my arm.
“How long will it take?”
“I think the fastest so far has been around an hour. But honestly it just depends.”
Paeris started fishing around in his bag.
“How many times a day do you do that?”
“Ideally, about four times a day and if he’s hungry at night he will snack on his own. But that’s only for my full arm. I sometimes give him my hand or my fingers for a snack. Or if he actually fights then I have to give him my arm even if I’ve already given him his normal meals.”
The two of them just stared at me, I noticed Paeris was holding a bandage roll.
“Are you a healer?”
“Yeah, oh we should go over everyone’s classes I guess.”
“Yes, you can do that, now please let me put a clean bandage on that,” Paeris said coming over.
“It’ll just stop bleeding soon anyway?”
“It’s for my own sanity, there’s no reason for me to use my mana to help something that will heal itself, but I can’t just let you walk around with a used bandage covering your severed limb.”
“Okay.”
He started to take off my bandage.
“So, our party consists of one tank, two fighters, two mages, and one rogue. What are you?”
“Technically I’m a summoner but if you just count me as a fighter, it would be easier. Fluffy only really fights against humans or things he hates.”
“Alright, well I’m a fighter I use a spear as you can see, and Paeris is a mage and uses his bow as his staff.”
I tilted my head a bit confused.
“It’ll make sense once you see it, than if I were to explain it to you. Anyway, Dodger is our tank with Brick being the other fighter. Lefty is a rogue and Dot is also a mage.”
“She’s a mage?”
“Yeah, she only gives buffs strictly when necessary but prefers to deal damage herself. So Paeris will do all of the support.”
“I thought you just got together, why do you know so much about each other?”
I felt Paeris stop and saw my arm bandaged properly for once and looked at it a bit amazed. My half-assed bandage jobs were only for my eyes before, but this was a proper job. Well, he’s a healer, I guess it’s not too much of a surprise.
“At the center, they have the ability to summon different dungeons, they act as training for us. We’ve run through quite a few dungeons to actually see who we would work well together. It would be reckless to not check compatibility before climbing.”
“Then why did you agree to climb with me?”
“Because they would have kept us there for longer if we didn’t take this chance,” Paris said then stood quickly and smiled oddly “It’s not that we don’t appreciate them helping us out like that, it's more that it's mostly humans. Being an elf surrounded by all that it’s a bit uncomfortable at times.”
Sailhin laughed, slapping him on the back, “it's mostly because elves attract the attention of both the male and female gender despite our own. And Paeris here has standards.”
“Don’t make it sound like people were chasing after me.”
“What do you mean?”
They both looked at him.
“Well, you’re half so it might not be the same thing, but for some reason humans have this weird fascination with us. Humans are attracted to us regardless of who they are attracted to otherwise.”
“So, you know I’m half.”
It didn’t matter if I still didn’t understand what they were talking about, they knew and just casually mentioned it.
Paeris and Sailhin shared a glance before she nodded.
“You don’t have a mana core… and I’ve never met an elf without mana. I’m not saying they don’t exist but if they did, they would never be let out of their house if they even were allowed to live.”
That wasn’t the answer I was expecting.
“We don’t care though. Elves that live outside of the high elf capital have nothing against half elves. They just wouldn’t shelter one if a high elf came looking. Their authority doesn’t mean much towards that outside of the country though.”
There was a ding and the world built itself around us. It wasn’t the time to continue the discussion.
“Oh, dammit we didn’t get the chance to explain the floor a bit,” Sailhin said while looking around.
A banner appeared ahead of us.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Floor 26: The Baroness’s House of Dolls
Description: In the Alvedia kingdom there was a baroness who made her fortune by owning the favored hand-crafted doll shop of the nobles. Each doll was meticulously designed by her and was a status symbol among the elites. After her death, however, each noble family suffered a loss from the dolls. Nobles called it a curse left by the dead baroness on each of her dolls. They were all rounded up and thrown into her mansion and set it on fire to get rid of them. This house, however, refused to light. Adventurers were tasked with entering the house and finding a way to destroy it.
Completion Requirements:
Find the Adventurers, destroy the mansion
Completion Progress:
Adventurers Found 0/6
Dolls Defeated 0
Mansion Destruction 0%
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“It's not too complicated, but our trainers gave us some tips so that we could get through it faster.”
“Why?”
It was still strange that a guild was helping get people to climb without requesting anything from them. Well, Kayden said he’d see us on the fortieth floor, so at least they didn’t ask for anything just yet.
“They haven’t told us much, just that if we make it to the fortieth floor we’ll know. I guess they want as many people as possible to climb for whatever reason. But at the end of the day, we get to climb so there’s nothing we can really do about not knowing their intentions at the moment.”
“Oh look, you’ve met someone as generally uninterested as you,” Alcoroth muttered in my ear, “it would’ve been useful if they actually knew something. Well, you’ve just met, they could always just be hiding things from you.”
Yay, more commentary I couldn’t exactly respond to.
“Well, what did they tell you then?”
“The location of the adventurers and the way to kill all the dolls.”
“Isn’t the whole point to just go around smashing the dolls?”
“They regenerate, so it’s not the most important thing to do. We already have a plan so no need to worry.”
That’s great, this makes things so much easier, if they have plans for all the floors we’ll be climbing pretty quickly.
“So, what’s the plan?”
There was a loud crashing noise.
“Well, Dot and Lefty will find the magic core of the mansion. Brick and Dodger will be getting the attention of all the dolls by going on a rampage.”
“Well Dodger will go on a rampage and Brick will watch her back,” Paeris corrected.
They must have discussed this through many times. Probably had plans for if they weren’t paired up in ways, they were normally comfortable with.
“And we will go find the adventurers. They’re already dead so we just need to get a personal belonging from each of them. Now, let's be as quiet as possible. Just follow us okay?”
I nodded and we made our way down the hallway.
“This will only be for a few floors though. Some of the floors change each time someone enters it, so they didn’t bother telling us any specifics. And this should be one of the few floors that we actually get separated on.”
“They appear to be prepared, but we’ll see how well these next few floors go.”
Alcoroth’s comment was as I expected, why compliment them for statements that haven’t been proven yet?
The mansion seemed to be in decent condition. There wasn’t any paint chipping from the walls, and there wasn’t any damage to the wood flooring. I flipped my sight on and saw that there was a pulse of activated mana within the walls.
It was rhythmic but I couldn’t see the originating source yet. If Dot and Lefty were going to the magic core of the mansion, that must be it. There was a break in the pulse by a statue and they stopped in front of it.
“Alright, there should be a slide behind this one,” she said in a whisper.
She felt around the statue while Paeris went a few steps further down the hallway, keeping his bow ready. We heard a few more bangs from somewhere within the mansion. Mezu whined a little. I had to agree with him, doing this sneaking around wasn’t too fun. But if their plan made things go by quickly, we should be able to make it to a floor that was more fun than this.
I had spent so long fighting against other people, fighting against monsters would be a fun change. I heard a click and looked back at the statue to see it now leaning forward and that there was now an opening in the wall.
“I’ll go first, do you mind following after Paeris?”
I shook my head.
She gave a quick smile before sliding into the hole. Paeris went after her and I sent Mezu down first before following.
The dark ride was oddly long, but Mezu giggling the whole way down made up for it. There were twists and turns here and there before I shot out into a room that was dim but much brighter than the tunnel. The room was completely open at one end, the rusted and broken remnants of a barred wall were in the floor and ceiling.
“Yeah, if you look at him like that, he really is cute, but I can’t get the image of him eating his arm out of my head,” Paeris was saying to Sailhin in elvish.
Mezu ran over to me beaming, bouncing on the balls of his feet. I’m glad he enjoyed it, cause the whole thing made me uncomfortable. It was disorienting and I had started to smell something about halfway down. Now that we were here that stench was even stronger.
I covered my mouth and nose with my hand but if we came across any dolls, I’d have to be creative or just deal with the stench.
“That would be the adventurers,” Sailhin said.
“Great, how much further?”
There was a loud bang and some cheering. Sailhin went to the entrance of the former cell and looked around. Paeris stayed by me though.
“We have to wait a bit, if we go now, we’ll be discovered by the dolls and have to deal with them.”
Luckily, they switched back to common, I wasn’t sure how much I should reveal to them just yet. I just spent a lot of time with an elf, but the calmness I felt around Alrick was not here with them. It was disconcerting, who was Alrick? If that was even his name. Hopefully, I’ll get more comfortable around them as we climb, but right now I wasn’t sure if I could take their word about being okay with me being half elf.
“Did you not tell Kayden? If you don’t want people to know we won’t say anything to the others.”
“I just didn’t correct him. I don’t completely trust him especially since I know he’s been hiding his appearance.”
“You saw that too? You must be pretty far along in your sight. Did he tell you though?”
“No?”
Did they know because he told them?
“I noticed his earring when we met, they’re made by dwarves and are rather expensive. He has a decent reason for doing it, I don’t want to think about what he’s had to deal with in his life. Most dark elemental-kin end up in slavery.”
Sailhin looked back at us and waved for us to come. When we looked around the wall corner, we saw a couple small dolls with a dark red glow about them run down the hallway perpendicular to the one the cell opened up to.
“We should be able to go now.”
She left though heading in the opposite direction, and we followed her until we found some stairs. As we made it to the bottom and the cheering and bangs become distant, there was a large shudder that radiated in the walls and floor itself.
“Wow, they already made it to the core.”
I looked at the pulse in the wall after what Paeris said and saw that the glow had dimmed considerably.
“We need to hurry up then.”
We went down the hallway, there were lanterns equally spaced along the walls lighting up the way. We didn’t have to go far before the stench was almost completely unbearable.
I gagged almost throwing up my breakfast.
“Just stand watch here, I’ll go get what we need.”
Paeris went further and turned into a cell. In a few moments, the banner appeared showing the count of adventurers found updated.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Completion Progress:
Adventurers Found 6/6
Collect Belongings 4/6
Dolls Destroyed 35
Mansion destruction 14%
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“I guess Dodger’s just destroying anything in her way at this point,” Sailhin chuckled.
The belongings updated to be completed before Paeris came back.
“Let’s go meet up with Dot and Lefty,” he said.
They took off on a light jog back down the hallway. I followed them and as we were getting further away from the smell back to where we started, there was yet another tremble in the building.
“It’d be great if she finished it off before we got to her.”
They continued down the hallway past where we arrived and turned to the left where we saw the dolls run before.
“It is efficient. Though, with it like this we are unable to see their skills firsthand. It is a shame.”
He wasn’t wrong, we had just gotten here, my arm had barely regrown, and we were already this far into the completion. The next floor would hopefully give us more of a representation. But if that fourteen percent had mostly been done by Dodger, and the thirty-five already destroyed was done by both of them I don’t think we were in for too much of a surprise.
The stench had almost completely gone now, and the hallway had opened up quite a bit. I could tell that we had been running on an incline for a bit now, and soon the brick floors changed into a dirt path, and we were in a tunnel instead of a hallway. There were bits of wood on the ground, and I looked back to see the remnants of a destroyed door on its hinges still attached to the wall.
As we went further the glow and the amount of veins of mana in the walls grew. The actual light also increased, and it wasn’t long before I heard someone curse in dwarvish and the tunnel opened up into a large cavern.
Dot stood with her staff in her hands a large magic circle writing itself in the ground beneath her.
It was Lefty’s voice that was cursing as he fought against two large teddy bears with glowing red eyes and bloody matted fur.
Lefty wasn’t being overwhelmed, but he seemed to be more focused on trying to keep them away from Dot than he was trying to destroy them.
Paeris drew his bow and muttered something in elvish. A glowing arrow appeared in position and when he stopped muttering, he set it loose. It hit Lefty who cursed yet again.
“I wanted to finish before they made it here.”
He said that in dwarvish loudly, annoyed.
“Let’s give a hand, it seems the barriers on the core are stronger than we anticipated, Dot’s going to need some more time,” Paeris said drawing his bow again.
Sailhin already leaped from our outcropping into the crater below. There were two levels, one where Lefty, Dot, and the dolls were and one slightly deeper where a large crystal sat. All the mana veins were connecting there and surrounding the large crystal were three layers of webbed mana.
“I’ll watch your back, fighting with someone I don’t know isn’t a good choice.”
“Fair enough.”
I stood so I could see down the hallway and watch the fight in the crater.
Mezu sat at the edge watching too, he was swaying back and forth. At least he was entertained on some level.
“Sailhin! At least let me have one!” Lefty shouted at her in common.
“That one’s all yours.”
Her spear pierced through the head of one of the bears. She pulled it up and through it. The fabric ripped, and instead of the fluffy contents I expected, there was a dark red glow. Tendrils of mana pulled the fabric back together and the bear turned around again.
Dot’s circle seemed to be complete, and a warm orange and brown glow came from it. She pointed the staff at the barrier and there was another quake as it shattered. The circle didn’t disappear though, and the next two layers were soon broken as well. Large quakes followed each in quick succession.
“I’m almost done! Get a fire spell ready!”