Chapter 160: Chapter 152 – Farenlight’s Den II

Chapter 152 - Farenlight’s Den II

Claire heaved a heavy sigh as she looked between her bloody fist and the dead lizard that had stained it. She was on the dungeon’s tenth floor, but she had yet to find anything that even came close to threatening. The strongest local she found was a level 86 gecko-like monster, and it was weak enough for Lia to have killed it in a single strike.

“This is boring.”

“Yeah…” Ears drooping, Sylvia hopped off her mount’s head and poked the dead monster with her paw. “The floors are tiny! I thought they were gonna be way bigger, like they are back home.”

Each of Llystletein’s floors had been tens if not hundreds of kilometers across. They took hours to navigate, even with all the correct routes and locations in mind. Farenlight’s Den’s', on the other hand, were tiny. Despite knowing nothing of the layout, it had only taken them two hours to go from the first floor to the ninth, and another ten minutes to break through to the tenth, and they were not the only spelunkers to demonstrate competency. While some struggled, many of the other parties were breezing through hordes of monsters and collecting their corpses, likely to sell for a quick buck. Weak or strong, all the monster hunters shared a similar key feature. No matter what they were in the middle of, be it combat or a meal, they would regard any passersby with suspicion.

Claire was just as cautious. Her eyes wandered around, following the various groups whenever they drew near, courtesy of Durham’s education. He had often spoken at length about his time as an adventurer, regardless of whether she wanted to listen. One of the few lessons that had stuck was that adventurers and outlaws were often one and the same. The latter ruffians would kill others out on the roads, while the former would conduct their crimes in dungeons instead. They would often hunt each other within the magical confines, sometimes for glory, and other times to steal goods or equipment. And while they would certainly obscure their identities, the rulebreakers were not the only ones to cover their faces. Those of the fairer sex especially, like the catgirl and the lyrkress, made sure to keep their looks obscured.

Both were wearing hooded leather cloaks with places for their ears. Claire’s had the usual slits cut into them, so that her disproportionate head decorations could poke out the sides, while Lia’s came with a pair of cat ear-shaped nooks. Sylvia was the only one without a matching outfit; the tailor hadn’t been able to provide anything for her vulpine form.

“Did you use to live in a dungeon, Sylvia?”

Lia sheathed her blade and rejoined the group. There were a pair of lizards behind her, both of which had been split right down the middle.

“Yup! A really big one.” She spread her front paws as wide as she could. “That’s where I met Claire!”

“Which dungeon was it?”

“None of your business.” Claire kicked a bludgeoned corpse out of her path and continued down the hall.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“It’s okay! Don’t worry about her. She’s just really cold until she suddenly warms up to you.” The fox leapt towards her usual spot, but Claire ducked out of the way before she landed. Though it seemed as if the poor furball would crash into one of the dungeon’s dirt walls, she nullified her momentum right before impact and landed directly on target. “Nice try!”

“Stupid fox,” mumbled the snake, under her breath.

The catgirl smiled wistfully with her hands clasped behind her back. “I think she might just like you a lot more than she likes me.”

“She was like this with me at the start too! I’m pretty sure she even thought about eating me.”

“What!? That’s s—” She stopped herself mid sentence by way of muting herself with her tail. “Errrm… I mean, why would she ever want to do that? Just look at how cute and fluffy you are!”

“I know, right!”

Their casual conversation continued until they reached the stairwell that marked the end of the floor. Unlike the others, which had been completely unobstructed, it was blocked by a series of chains. There was a device by its exit, but no guards, not even golems or demonic sentries.

“It doesn’t look secure,” said Claire.

She approached the magical fence and carefully looked it over. Its links appeared to be hooked straight into the dungeon’s wall and connected to the magic circuit that ran throughout the labyrinth. An oddity to say the least. The magical subspace was meant to cleanse itself of foreign entities—the magical implant should have long been devoured.

“It’s very secure, impenetrable, from what I’ve heard,” said Lia.

“Impenetrable?” Claire grabbed one of the chains and gave it a tug, but it didn’t seem to want to budge or give. “I doubt that.”

Lia smiled. “Well, you’re welcome to try. I think we should probably head back now anyway. It’s getting a little late, so we can go ahead and do that once you’re given up.”

“Okay,” said Claire. “But we go deeper. If I manage to break them.”

“Sure,” said the catgirl.

“Uhm… Lia? I don’t really think agreeing is a good idea. Claire’s kinda really dumb about being reckless and stuff, but I’m pretty sure she doesn’t make bets she doesn’t think she’s gonna win. Even if she’s kinda deranged.”

“I’m not reckless,” said Claire. “Or deranged. You’re deranged.”

“No I’m not, and yes you are!” The furball balled her paws into fists and lightly drummed them against the back of the other halfbreed’s head. “You’re the most reckless person I know, and it always makes me super worried because you always jump into stuff without thinking it through!”

“See? Now you’re hitting me for no reason. Deranged.”

“Well, reckless or not, I don’t think she’s going to be able to get through those chains,” said Lia, with a giggle. “They’re enchanted with a powerful contract spell designed by a well-learned celestial.”

“It’s called Archimess’ Cipher,” said Claire.

The spell was one that members of the nobility often used to lock up their valuables. It required at least two devices, each of which had to be enchanted by a ritual mage above level 40. Through the power of Flitzegarde, one would be christened the lock and placed in an eternal statis, while the other would be designated as the key, and the only solution thereto.

“Oh, that’s the thing Al used on the box he gave us! Well… kinda. I’m pretty sure he messed with it a bit and made it so it’ll open once the conditions are right.”

There were a few versions and derivatives of the spell, including one that would allow for keys to work on multiple locks and additional keys to be designated even with the locks nonpresent, but they were more difficult and required mages with a far greater degree of experience. Claire had been far from meeting the requirements herself, and as such, had never committed any of the specifics to memory. All she could recall was a vague memory or two of Allegra ranting at length about magi and job security.

“You know it?” asked Lia.

“I know a lot of things,” said Claire.

Despite her lack of study, she remained aware that most considered the cipher perfect and unbreakable. It was even designated by some as a law, a rule that simply could not be broken by mere mortals.

The effect that kept the lock immutable was fueled by a spell. Circumventing its defense was as easy as draining it of all the magical power that sustained it—a supposedly impossible task. Mages could only control their own mana, and tools enchanted with deterministic effects could not simply be exhausted. A ridiculous amount of magic was required to make the locks immutable, but it cost none for them to maintain their stable states. Once elevated by the goddess of order, they would sit in an alternate plane that prevented them from being affected through any ordinary means. And that was precisely why the lyrkress was confident she could affect them.

She drew her divinity from the shard in her chest as soon as she confirmed that essencethief could not be immediately applied. Rather than expelling the searing aura, she moved it around within her, through her circuits, with most of it concentrated in her hand. The magical framework that spanned her arm was alight; her golden spark was put on full display as she stole the power that fueled the covenant.

She wasn’t able to take all of it. The magic’s last vestiges almost seemed to reject her, to shy away from her touch and escape the tips of her thieving fingers, but it was at least weakened enough for her to rip it from its fixture.

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“You did it!” cheered Sylvia.

“Huh!? How!?” Lia nearly jumped out of her skin as she craned her neck towards the chain. Unlike the fox, who had been watching in earnest, the catgirl had chosen to place her faith in the cipher. Her eyes had been focused on her rapier, which she was polishing with an old, dusty cloth.

“I win,” said Claire. “We’re going deeper.”

A small smile appeared on her face as she watched the startled catgirl shift her gaze between the chain and its broken links “That… isn’t supposed to be possible.”

“I told you. I’m fiercely intelligent.” She cracked the chains against the dungeon’s dirt floor and left a deep scar. “And the mage that made this wasn’t.” The rogue wasn’t quite satisfied with them just yet, so she grabbed one of the many daggers hidden beneath her cloak and affixed it to the furthest link with a block of ice. “Now let’s go.”

Leaving the still appalled catgirl where she was, the lyrkress put her hat on her head, and turned into a lamia to slither through the fresh gap. The other side of the doorway was hardly impressive. Like every other part of the dungeon, it was made of nothing but dirt tunnels, their walls lined with perpetually glowing torches.

“Wait, Claire, come back! We really shouldn’t! I have no idea what’s down there!”

“I don’t care. We made a bet. Hurry up.”

Lia didn’t immediately comply. She looked between the half-broken chain and the door before sighing and reluctantly crawling through. “Alright, but we’re going back if we run into even a bit of trouble!”

“We won’t,” said Claire.

It took three turns for them to find their first monster. Like everything else in the dungeon, it was a quadruped with its body covered in scales, but while most of the other reptiles had been similar to species she knew, their most recent discovery was entirely foreign. It had no real head, its neck had been replaced with a gaping, toothy hole, and its tail was a cube. A towering cube three times the length of its meter-long body.

The massive glob of scales and flesh was not easy for the creature to haul. It dragged along the floor and greatly limited its speed. Each of the supposed lizard’s steps took an eternity to complete.

Adding to the confusion was the monster’s relative neutrality. Unlike the dungeon’s other inhabitants, it didn’t run or attack on sight. It casually glanced in their direction, waited for a brief moment, and continued along its way, as if their presence was none of its business.

The premature departure made Lia, who had drawn her weapon and called for battle formations, look like nothing but a fool, a fact of which she was well aware. She held her position for a moment, but buried her face in her free hand as soon as the realisation sank in. Still, her embarrassment was exposed. Her whole face was red as a rose, and hiding her cheeks had done nothing to conceal her blush.

“We don’t have any formations. We never figured them out,” said Claire.

“Please stop rubbing it in,” groaned the kit.

“It’s okay, Lia! We all mess up sometimes, and I think you’re better off safe than sorry,” said the fox.

“Thanks Sylvia. That’s very sweet of you.” Lia smiled at the fox before shooting the lyrkress a miffed pout. “It’s a wonder how you’re always so cute and upbeat, when you hang around that negative Nancy all the time.”

“I’m not negative. You’re just an idiot.”

Unlike the encounter-adverse catgirl, the snake-moose saw no reason to allow the enemy’s retreat. Moving past the vanguard, she bolted down the hall, tracked the monster with the radar in her mind, and chased it down. Its lack of eyes did nothing to stop it from realising that it was being pursued. Leaping into the air with a start, it detached its oversized tail and bolted away at a lightning fast speed. Claire tried to magically seize it, but the sudden acceleration threw her off. It was able to round a corner and vanish before she could get it in her grasp.

Her first instinct was to investigate the severed appendage, but a set of warning bells went off in the back of her head when she approached it. Frowning, she opted instead to move back to her previous position and observe it from afar.

“What happened? Is something wrong?” The soldier was still halfway down the hall. Seeing Claire with her back against the wall and her eyes around the corner, she shifted from a casual walk to a light jog, only to fall flat on her butt.

For once, Claire was not at fault for the catgirl’s lack of balance. The perpetrator was a massive explosion. The hall containing the lizard’s discarded tail was flooded with a pillar of flame that turned its sandy dirt to glass. With a sky-shattering roar, the inferno burst past the intersection and flooded the other side of the corridor, stopping only as it hit the far wall.

“What did you do!?” asked the catgirl. She looked between the half horse and the still lit flame, her eyes as round as plates.

“Nothing.”

“It can’t have been nothing!”

“It really was nothing! The lizard’s tail exploded all on its own,” said Sylvia, who had been watching from atop the lyrkress’ head. “But holy crap… I can’t believe it had that much power in it. That was like a full fifty thousand mana.”

“You can tell?” asked Claire.

“Mhm! Remember what I told you about my tail being super sensitive?”

“Mhm?”

“Well… I know what a hundred thousand feels like, and it was about half.”

“Did you just say it exploded on its own?” The catgirl pulled a book out of her bag and started skimming through it. “Now that I think about it, I think I’ve seen those somewhere…”

Through the corner of her eye, Claire was able to make it out to be some sort of diary. Most of its entries had dates in chronological order, and many were accompanied by sketches of monsters shown to her by bards aplenty.

“I think I found it.” She stopped after getting about a third of the way through the book and turned it around to show a poorly drawn, tailless rendition of the monster that had just escaped. “My sister fought some of them a few years ago. It says here that it’s a klimgor, and that they’re not that tough, but they spook easily so you need to be really careful if you want to harvest the ether they keep in their tails.”

“Oh, that’s neat! Is your sister an adventurer?” asked Sylvia.

Lia flinched. She recoiled a bit at first, but soon forced a smile and nodded. “She was, a few years ago.”

“Wow… she must be super famous if she has her own book. You should intro—”

Claire clamped a hand over the vixen’s mouth. “Enough rambling.” The fox looked down at her to complain, but she slowly shook her head, and signaled with her eyes that it was better not to pry. “Let’s go chase it down. Before it gets away.” The catgirl didn’t respond, so Claire gave her another prod. “Is there anything I need to know, Lia?”

“R-right…” She looked back down at her book and adjusted her day-old glasses. “It says here that they aren’t very good at attacking, but they’re extremely fast and hard to capture because they blow up their tails as soon as they notice you.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Turning into a centaur, Claire rounded the corner and dashed down the hall. The tiny arsonist had managed to stall her, but her catgirl tracker had it pinpointed. Run as it might, it wouldn’t be able to escape her. Not within the dungeon’s tiny confines.

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