<~> CHAPTER 59

The first thing I recognized when I stepped foot onto the seventh floor was the dry arid warmth of the late afternoon sun and the gentle breeze of a high-elevation mountaintop. This floor looked like the top of a desert mountain, not too dissimilar from my home. It was warm, but not hot, so it might have been spring or fall. My paws stepped into the gravelly dirt and I looked around at the desert plants. Everything looked both similar to my home yet oddly alien. There were clumps of trees that looked a bit like mesquite but the leaves were a bright orange and red. There were also small green bushes that dotted the landscape with bright blue flowers with long petals growing on them. They looked so interesting that I would have remembered the plants if they grew natively where I lived.

("Helena? Is something the matter?") Luna asked.

I turned to see that Luna was watching me look around while the others were taking a break and drinking some water before we headed out. Piper was in the middle of teasing Aria while Maxwell watched with amusement.

("Nothing's wrong,") I replied. ("This place just reminds me of home. I was on a mountain very similar to this one when I was attacked by the umber wolf at night. It's odd seeing a place that looks so similar to my home yet very different at the same time.")

She nodded and stepped closer before taking my hand. ("I've always thought this floor was a bit dry for my tastes but the wind is nice. I enjoy more woodland areas to places like this. Would this be the kind of place you would like to live?")

I shrugged. ("It reminds me of home but it's not like I would need to live in a place like this. If you'd prefer a place in the woods, I don't think I would argue,") I teased, drawing a blush out of her. ("What kind of place would you like to live?")

Luna smiled. ("I think I would be happy anywhere that had kind people. The place itself is a bit less important to me. Maybe a large city where wandering beastfolk aren't treated with as much suspicion. I do like the rain though, so probably not a dry desert like this place,") she said looking around the area.

("Yeah, it didn't rain a lot where I lived. It mostly rained in the summer. But when it rained, it poured. It would even flood the streets sometimes.")

("The dungeon city above us is in a forested area that rains often. It's a bit colder than I like sometimes, especially in the winter, but at least you can bundle up or build fires. That beats being stuck in the heat like on the eleventh floor.")

("Does it snow?") I asked.

("Only in the deep winter, and not often. It's pretty nice. If you can handle the rain anyway.")

("It sounds nice. Hopefully it isn't raining when we finally get out of here.")

Luna chuckled. ("With your luck it will be.")

"Hey you two, are you ready to get moving?" Piper asked.

"I'm ready to go," I replied and I turned back to Luna to see her nodding.

"Great, this floor shouldn't take long but you might want to watch your step. We'll be heading down the trail so it can be easy to ...."

I turned to Luna who looked at me thoughtfully before saying, ("It can be easy to slip?")

I nodded and turned back to Piper. "I'll be careful not to slip."

"Great, let's get going," she said before heading back to Maxwell and taking her place just behind him on the trail. Aria went on ahead to scout for us while I guarded our rear.

"What kinds of monsters are on this floor?" I asked Luna while practicing their language.

("Large lizards that spit acid, small dog-like things called Coyotes, and more hawks like on the tenth floor. None of them should be much trouble but try not to get hit by the lizards. Piper can heal the acid burns, but it takes a lot of her mana.")

I shuddered. ("After the slimes, I don't want to get any more acid burns. That was terrible.")

Luna nodded. ("The acid isn't as strong as the slimes, believe it or not, but because your regeneration didn't hold up well against the slimes, you might not want to eat the lizards this time either. Their blood is acidic too. One of our earliest jobs in this dungeon was to collect a ton of their blood as an alchemy regent. It took us a while but it paid well, we still have a good relationship with that alchemist and he gives us a good deal on some of our supplies.")

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We continued to walk down the trail for a while without running into any monsters. The trail we were on branched off in several places and wound its way around the rocks and trees. If we were heading up the mountain it might have been a challenge to pick the right trail but on our way down it was easy to figure out which way we should be going. With the wind on this floor, my new whiskers didn't help us, but we didn't really need it anyway.

The first monster we ran into was a hawk dive-bombing us again, but it was quickly killed by Aria who was a great shot with her bow. I was actually kind of amazed to see her nail the hawk mid-dive, it seemed effortless. She offered me the corpse to eat but when I looked at it I frowned. My instincts weren't screaming at me to eat it, it was probably too similar or even the same as the hawks that attacked us on the earlier floor. Since I had it anyway I decided to give it a go and eat its heart out anyway and we confirmed that I didn't get anything new from eating additional hearts from the same kind of monster, even if it was on a different floor.

We just continued on but this discovery left Luna lost in thought and she didn't notice the coyote that was stalking us until I called it out from everyone. "Wolf behind us!" I unfortunately didn't have the word for coyote yet, even though I could recognize the difference. Aria was quick to shoot an arrow at it, but the coyote dodged the arrow before it had even been loosed as if it knew what was about to happen.

The coyote leapt at Luna but I dashed in its path just in time to bat it out of the air. The coyote yelped and rolled, but it scrambled back to its feet. I hadn't had time to do anything but knock it away with my claws in the time I had to block for Luna. I could feel the warm heat of Luna's magic collecting behind me, but I knew from experience that it would take a little while before she could cast it.

Another arrow whizzed by but the coyote dodged it again, as if it knew the attack was coming. Piper dashed forward and slashed at it and managed to clip it on the side just as it had dodged the arrow. A second coyote dashed out of the brush ahead of us and slammed into Maxwell's shield. He had been blocking from that direction, he must have seen the other one before I did.

I dropped my axe and dashed forward again, even managing to score a good hit, but the moment I connected I heard Luna's voice ring in my head. ("Helena dodge!") I jumped back and just after, Luna released her magic and caught the coyote in her exploding fireball. Right after that, I heard the other coyote yelp and when I turned I saw that Maxwell had bashed the other coyote with his shield right into Piper who had stabbed her sword all the way through its chest.

Licking my lips I turned back to the charred coyote and looked over at Luna. She just chuckled and nodded toward it, so I began to sink my teeth into the coyote. The meat tasted a little bland but okay. It wasn't completely devoid of mana but it wasn't as rich as the misty wolves were. At least the meat didn't taste weird like the misty wolves. I bit into the heart and swallowed it in a few bites. I shivered as I felt the mana flow into me but I didn't seem to get anything particularly noticeable. It looked like these would be another mystery for the pile, perhaps I would get some form of precognition to dodge projectiles like they had done. At least this one didn't mess up my legs or something equally annoying like the bloody rabbits had.

When I finished up I turned around to the gruesome sight of Maxwell pulling the coyote's teeth out one by one with pliers. I almost gagged and had to look away.

Aria suddenly laughed. "That's what grosses you out? We watch you eat raw monster meat all the time and you get grossed out by Maxwell pulling its teeth?"

"I had a bad experience at the... teeth doctor as a child," I grumbled back at her.

She shook her head and chuckled as walked past me to collect her arrows. "Oh, by the way. The word for those monsters is coyote not wolf. I wasn't sure if you didn't know they were different or just didn't have the word for them. You only ever come across one or two of them at a time, unlike wolves."

I nodded. "I did know they were different, but didn't know the word. Thanks."

She laughed. "No problem." She examined one of her missed arrows. "Still intact after hitting a rock and bouncing off. These things are made of good metal." She cleaned the dirt off of it and returned it to her quiver.

We had to wait around a little while for Maxwell to pull all the teeth from both coyotes. Apparently they sold really well despite the relative ease that they were to fight. It had been the first monster he had stopped to collect something from in a while. It made me wonder why coyote teeth were more useful than misty wolf teeth, but I wasn't going to bother asking. Just thinking about the bag full of animal teeth he was sliding into his bag grossed me out.

Once we were moving again I bumped Luna with my shoulder. ("So what were you thinking about when the coyote attacked? You seemed to be thinking hard about something at the time.")

She looked at me for a moment then shrugged. ("I was just wondering why you only get something out of unique monsters. You don't get anything from second or third hearts even when you try eating them. I'm just a little curious why.")

("Nothing makes sense about this power,") I replied shaking my head. ("Why me? Why do I keep the glowing eyes when I'm human? Most of the other changes haven't left as much of an impact on me, so why was the umber hound different? Did it do something to me? Was it because I accidentally drank its blood? Or was it because I came to this world at all? All I remember is falling through the ground and passing out. When I woke up I was stuck there and tortured until I turned into an umber hound myself. Am I even partially human anymore or am I something else entirely?")

Luna looked at me sadly and patted my shoulder. ("I'm sure that we can find someone who might know more about what happened to you when we reach the surface. We might need to be careful who we talk to, but someone probably knows more about what happened to you up there.")

I reached up at scratched the back of my furry head, careful not to cut myself with my sharp claws. This form feels so natural to stay in now. Before I felt like I was overcompensating because I was scared, but now things are different. This form feels like me just as much as my human form does.

We continued on for another few hours, only running into more coyotes and a few hawks. We still hadn't come across those acid lizards but I was a little scared to. What if my instincts insist that I try and eat its heart even if its acid blood burns me? I shivered at the thought. I'll just have to try to redirect my instincts toward something else. It wouldn't be the first time I managed to ignore them, even if it was hard.

About halfway through the floor to Maxwell's estimation, we decided to make camp and tackle the rest of this floor after we rested. We found a decent spot under some of the trees that were partially shaded despite the sparse foliage. It might be a challenge to sleep in the daylight but at least it wasn't that hot here.