Chapter 100: 94: Horns

You, Elza, and Epsilon back off from the splash-zone where the creatures landed from above. Alpha is already behind Gorrazsh, which leaves the orc and Rosetta the closest to the enemies.

You cast [Summon Imps] and before you even see the imps appear, you command, “Give us some light, will you?”

Eight small fireballs light up, no greater than fires from dim torches, but enough to actually see what is going on now.

Gorrazsh wipes away the liquid shit from his eyes so that he can see the new enemies. Three gory humanoid bodies rise from the filth. The slimy consistency slowly slides off their bodies, the creatures snarl and look around, clearly unaffected by their surroundings. Gorrazsh doesn’t even bother trying to unsheathe his trademark swords. He wouldn’t even be able to unsheathe them properly if he tried to—he already barely fits in the narrow tunnels. Instead, he proceeds to clobber one of the creatures into a bloody pulp with his bare knuckles.

Similarly, Rosetta quickly realizes that she too has little space for her claymore—she’d end up scraping the tunnel bricks with her claymore, which would considerably slow her attacks. So, she takes a page out of Alpha’s playbook and switches to a staby-staby, impaling technique. The first creature that she runs through the chest objects to that action with growls and snarls, but is unable to do much else, especially after Gorrazsh knocks its head off with his fists.

The third creature jumps at Epsilon, but Elza fires a beam from her hand, freezing its upper body mid-jump. Epsilon easily dodges to the side and the creature falls like a rock into the liquid waste, splashing on Epsilon up to the waist.

“Ugh,” Epsilon grimaces. The half-frozen corpse remains submerged, showing no signs of movement underneath.

The first creature that Gorrazsh pummeled still shows signs of life if this existence can be called that—the humanoid meat reduced to a pile of broken, misshapen limbs with a broken head, pressed against the, no, into the brick wall. Rosetta finishes the job by jamming her claymore right through the creature’s face.

“Right, let’s hurry further before even more of those things drop down,” you say, while Rosetta and Gorrazsh finish dealing with the gory corpses.

“What about the succubus?” Elza asks.

“If Eisheth gets taken out by whatever resides in this capital”—Rosetta says as she pulls her claymore out of a gory corpse’s face—"then the rest of you have no business being here.”

“You have no idea,” Epsilon says with a foreboding tone.

“Enough,” you say. “Eisheth made her chose. We can only hope she knows what she’s doing and doesn’t get herself killed. Gorrazsh will cover our flank with three imps behind him for vision. Elza, stay ahead with three other imps, feel free to freeze the first enemy you see. The remaining two, stay with me.”

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And with that, guided by the light from your imps, your party treads ahead through the sludge. Each of your steps disturbs the contents of the tunnels, stirring and raising the stench to unbearable levels. Elza keeps her nose closed with her two fingers. Not that it does much good. You know this since you did the same thing and helped approximately not at all.

“Can’t you just freeze this place over, so that we don’t have to be stuck thighs-deep in this filth?” Epsilon asks Elza.

“Ugh, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consider it,” Elza speaks with a distorted voice from her nose holding, which manages to force a smile out of you despite the situation. “But I can’t risk wasting my energy in such a way in case there’s more trouble ahead in these tunnels. How long are we going to be stuck here anyway? Rozette, was it? Do you know?”

“Rosetta. And, unfortunately, I did not go out of my way to visit these sewers last time I was in the capital, so it is hard to say,” Rosetta answers. “I do know that they go under the whole capital and are interconnected, so as long as we choose the paths that slope up we should be able to reach the central fortress itself.”

If there is any good news from any of this is that you, quite surprisingly encounter no new enemies here so far. And, by navigating the maze of crossroads and splitting paths by always heading whichever way leads upward, you seem to make good progress, and the level of toxic sludge recedes the higher you go.

Suddenly, Elza stops and whispers, “Up ahead.”

You see it too. A motionless, rough dark silhouette up ahead, braced against the tunnel wall, half-submerged into the waste.

“Careful, and slowly,” you say, and you approach the figure slowly together with Elza and five of your imps, followed by the others close behind. As more of the light falls on to the figure, your heart skips a beat when a pair of bent horn-like features sticking out of the head of the figure. You take two hurried steps ahead before you see more clearly and freeze in place. Those aren’t horns. The horns you remember were much thicker. Those are a pair of bunny ears, though barely recognizable as they’re covered in a thick layer of the sewer sludge along with the rest of the body.

The figure itself is skinny even with the extra layer of shit on it. It’s a body of a man. Then the figure moves its head, ever so slowly. It looks at you with lifeless eyes. Though not the white eyes of the corpses walking above. They’re the eyes of a broken man, but a man still among the living. A man you’ve seen before.

"N-no way," Elza gasps.

He’s barely recognizable, his features have sunken in. But it’s him. It’s Xi.

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