Chapter 43: Chapter 43: Hunting for Foxes

“Um… no, nothing here either…”

“N-No sign back here!”

“Hells… okay, okay, more doors further down. Glass you take the left, Elise you go right, I’ll-”

“Prim, c-calm down, we need to stay together.”

“C-Chk… chkchk.”

The crafter was frantic like the others had never seen her before, rapidly pacing around the hidden passage they’d ended up in from the secret entrance. The hall was long, empty, and dark, unmarked doors on either side leading into various parts of the fortified mansion around them that servants would presumably be needed to attend to.

It had only been a few minutes since they’d been separated from their hot-headed guild leader, the other three all holding Prim back from jumping straight down into the waiting maw of the enemy guilds below after her.

“I know, I know, we can’t just separate more, but…”

“I-I’m worried too, okay? But worrying ourselves is j-just gonna make it take longer to find her. So just… just b-breathe for a minute.”

“Right… right, yeah, gotta calm down, you’re right. Stay focused and all that.”

She inhaled long and deep, drinking in the frigid air as she’d forgotten even the cold around her, bundling her jacket tighter to her. She squeezed Silk against her chest, the tiny spider just as beside themselves with worry as she’d been since Monica had fallen.

“Mm… you didn’t really seem the worrying type… are you both…?”

Prim took a moment to process his question, Elise reaching the point of realization first as she immediately fell into the same immensely worried expression the crafter had just been wearing.

“…W-W-W-Wait, you’re not right? Or are you? You are, aren’t you, with her?? O-Oh god, I’m sorry I had no idea, I-”

“Stop stop stop, slow down, stop getting weird ideas…! I’m just… worried about her, okay? I don’t want a repeat of the last time I tried protecting her from something and just got in the way…”

“…mm, right. That one was… my fault, sorry.”

“No no, it’s fine. All in the past yeah? I’d rather worry about the future right now.”

“…r-right, yeah, right there w-with you.”

Elise breathed a bit too heavy of a sigh of relief, the remainder of Primonilise resuming their search as they cautiously peeked into room after room after room, the four of them digging through anything they could find as they searched for their lost kitsune.

Silk alternated between frantically skittering ahead and burying themselves into the tiniest nooks and crannies they could find to search for her, and needing to be carried along by one of them, losing all energy in their body from overflowing concern and worry.

“You… Y-You both think she got away, yeah…?”

“Hm…? Of course she did, why…?”

“You’re a lot more positive about this all than I thought you’d be.”

“Well, I’ve seen her fight enough… she’s not too threatening I guess, but… she’s good at running from things, and she’s really hard to hit too… none of those players felt looked faster than me, and she’s faster than me, so she should be okay.”

“I… suppose that’s meant to be praise?”

“Mmhmm. I kinda wish I’d joined another guild so I could fight her again…”

Not a shred of worry in their body, Glass followed along, too busy being lost in daydreams to really help them search too thoroughly.

“I’m sure you could rile her up enough for a rematch after this all, she’s not exactly hard to provoke.”

“H-Hey, she’s not that bad… I mean, I don’t think she is, a-at least.”

The hallway just stretched on and on ahead of them, seemingly no end in sight as the party kept searching, doing their best to keep their hopes up that they’d find her before anything happened.

It felt like they’d been going for hours, time stretching on and on with no sky above or changes in the scenery around them to mark the time as they trudged along.

“…Wait, do you hear that?”

“Mm… not really… no, wait. There’s… something, over that way…?”

“Oh, y-yeah, I hear it too now. Sounds like… banging? M-Maybe people are fighting somewhere over through there?”

“Too echo-y to just be fighting though, unless everyone is using hammers and pickaxes right on the walls.”

“Magic maybe…?”

“Chkchk…!”

The team mascot perked up quickly as the noises quickly grew from distant pops and cracks to loud, dull bangs and booms, the ground shaking under them as they walked.

“Geez, it’d have to be a lot of it. Feels like the whole castle is crumbling in…”

“Is it getting louder? Or… closer…?”

“W-Wait, yeah, whatever it is, I think it’s c-coming towards us.”

“Okay, let’s stay calm. No way anyone knows we’re back here, so we wait for them to step into view, and…”

“...ambush? That works for me, yeah…”

“Mmhmm, n-no use rushing ahead.”

They fell into formation, Prim and Glass flanking either behind Elise as her shields were raised together, just far enough apart to let her still see ahead as she slowly advanced towards the approaching sounds of combat, Silk peeking through the crack as they put up the most threatening front the plushie-like monster could manage.

All of it seemed to be leaking through a single remarkably nondescript door ahead of them, the door frame rattling like it was possessed as the sound was now impossible to ignore, like a jet engine was struggling to take off in the room beyond here.

“We all ready here?”

“Mm… always.”

“S-Same here…!”

“Chhhk chk…!!”

Shields braced and aimed forward, the door barely given the space to open fully as they waited, a mixed air of nervousness, excitement, and mystery billowing over them.

The noises grew closer and closer, the time between them growing even shorter until it was almost a constant, unending cascade of deafening sound, the door in front of them looking as if it was ready to shatter like glass.

All four of them waiting patiently, nervously, cautiously, expectantly.

Eventually, the sounds stopped, silence settling in over the empty hallway, the creaking entrance before them falling silent and motionless once more.

None of them moved for a long while, glancing back at one another as their complete and unwavering focus on the approaching threat began to wane, even if only just slightly.

“…i-is it gone?”

“I… guess so?”

“Should we… go make sure…?”

Silk had scuttled out between the metal slabs shielding them all, impatiently kicking at the door as whatever had been approaching simply fell silent.

“Chk! Chkchk chk chkchk!!!”

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Elise, dropping her fortified stance, crouched low to reassure the spiderling, lightly petting them to try and calm the agitated arachnid down as they banged at the door in front of them.

“Easy, little guy, n-no worries. It’s not coming this way, so don’t-”

Any words following after that were completely lost, as the brief interlude of total, empty silence was filled to burst in an instant, a blast like lighting washing over them as the entirety of the wall ahead was ripped apart, debris firing off in every direction down the hall as the rush of heat turned ice to rain.

And with the entire wall blown wide open, a lone body sailed high overhead, a black-clad, twin-tailed mage dressed in half-scorched robes as they blew themselves forward, a warpath of equally leveled walls trailing behind them as they ran forward.

The flying fox caught just a single glance of the party below as she rocketed past, only barely registering the rest of her own guild before making equally short work of the next wall in her flight path, blasting straight through it as well without slowing her explosive advance by even a moment.

Behind her stormed a sea of bodies too densely packed to be identifiable beyond the primary mass pursuing her, storming through the piled rubble that had previously composed two entire wall, none of them even noticing the party standing behind the miraculously still-standing door.

The explosive entrance and stampede passed as soon as they’d come, the rest of Primonilise left stunned in place, brains still left buffering.

“…was that…?”

“Mmhmm… seems like like it.”

“I… g-guess she’s safe…?”

Another long, hanging silence, explosions trailing off in the distance.

“…we should go after her, right?”

“O-Oh, right, yeah.”

“Chhhhhhk…!!!~”

Silk hadn’t even waited for the rest of them to follow, already bounding ahead after their partner as the others broke into a sprint behind them, chasing after their retreating warhead of a leader.

----------------------------------------

“Hazard… Flash!”

The rocket-propelled kitsune blazed ahead of the crowd behind as brittle, long-frozen walls crumpled like wet paper in front of her, rushing faster and faster into the dungeon as even the fastest of her pursuers struggled just to keep her in eyesight.

A bold few continued assailing her with their own gap closer skills to cross the widening gap between them, most of them swiftly regretting the choice as they were tagged by the high-volatility cloud before being detonated along with it, a steady stream of points pouring into their guild’s coffers from the free kills.

Unfortunately, not every pursuer was quite as easily dispatched.

“Divine Wings!”

Angel’s wings made of condensed light flapped close behind, carrying a gold-wreathed Paladin beneath them, neither poison nor explosion deterring their pursuit as the single-minded leader of Night Castle chased her down.

“Don’t you ever take a hint…?! Silkshot!”

She shifted her weight mid-flight, hanging upside down as she turned backwards, firing off wads of sticky silk at her painfully glistening aggressor, aiming for their wings and trying to knock him out of the sky.

The globs of spiderwebs smacked against the crystalline wings, gunking up the fragile contraptions as they quickly fell out of sync, their graceful flight now hobbling and struggling to stay afloat behind her.

“Gah, vile fiend…! You’ll not avoid me forever…! Smite!”

As they slowly began to fall back down to the floor below, they uttered one last skill, throwing their axe forward with all their might as it soared right towards her, the mage too locked into position midair to try and dodge.

Already flying away from it lightened the blow somewhat, trying to at least roll her body away from it to reduce the impact as much as possible as she was knocked from the sky as well.

Both of them tumbled from on high, the hordes behind them too far to even notice much as they were both focused entirely on one another.

The two of them slammed hard into the ground of the last room she’d explosively opened up, a massive central space with crossing pathways and overlooks intertwining every which way.

Granz crashed onto a bridge leading east and west several stories off the ground floor, Monica managing to aim her crash landing enough to skid to a halt on the bridge above, a long staircase hugging around the wall connecting the both of them together, the floor below too far down to clearly make out from where they stood.

“Hell… just gotta keep… gah!”

Monica tried to lift herself upright again, not wanting to slow down enough for anyone to catch up… and just as swiftly fell right back down, a deep, nasty gash tearing through where that axe had met her leg making running completely out of the question.

“Great, just what I needed. R-Restore…”

She bit her lip, the wound stinging as she tried to patch it up even slightly. After a few moments of healing, she managed to at least stand up, cursing like a sailor under her breath as she limped forward, searching around the tall chamber for any kind of exit.

The only exit from the level she’d landed on lay directly in front of her, a single large wooden door, inlaid with almost uncannily familiar gold and silver metal inlay.

Directly in front of her lay the dungeon’s boss room, untouched and uncleared.

Even as injured as she was, still separated from her guild and under direct pursuit of several hundred blood-hungry players, this was what she’d been searching for this entire time. The only piece of irreplaceable content here worth racing for.

She hobbled forward as quickly as she could manage, trying to ignore her countless scrapes and bruises as she made for the doorway.

But as fast as she was, the path was cut off before she could reach her goal, a lone battered, bruised, soot-stained Paladin reached the stairs in front of her, standing themselves firmly between her and the boss room, their armor nearly as damaged and dented as their pride was.

“You’ve- haaa… -nowhere left to run this time, Spider Queen…!”

“Still…?! I’ve met mosquitoes less annoying than you…”

“Retreat is not a word in my vocabulary, fiend, and I don’t plan to make a repeat performance of last time either!”

She peered off the side of the platform, trying to weigh her options. Sure enough, all the lay below were more weaving bridges and stairways, already atop the highest pathway in the towering room, leaving her no way to get around them.

Worse still, the sound of approaching stampeding footfalls grew deafening once more, the rest of the players that had been on her heels for so long now starting to stream into the room with them both. They first few reached the base of the interwoven pathways, starting their ascent towards her.

In her condition, a 1-on-1 was bad enough, but dealing with the entire swarm while she could barely even stand, let alone run…

““Phoenix Crash!””

Twin streams of fire ripped through the head of the mob below, unsuspecting players being crushed and immolated both.

“B-Bodyguard!”

Behind the racing flames came a veritable wrecking ball, crashing through the remainders of the players trying to chase after the Spider Queen herself and casting several dozen of them into the foggy abyss below, a dangling wad of webbing dragged along after as they fired off slowing projectiles haphazardly into the mob.

The trio forced their way to the front of the pack, pushing and fighting there way through the rest as they blocked off the ascent from them all.

“Moni, you up there…?! If so, then… just keep going, okay? We’ve got this all handled here!!”

Prim’s voice echoed up towards her, through the sounds of combat already breaking out as the rest of Primonilise held the line below, doing all they could to keep the heat off of their overwhelmed Gloom Mage.

“You… stupid idiots, heh…”

Slapping her cheeks, she turned her attention back to the threat in front of her, massive axe once again in the Paladin’s hands as they slowly stepped forward.

With everyone else fighting for her sake below, she couldn’t hardly keep running.

She pulled a pair of mana potions from her bag, ripping the corks out with her teeth as she downed them both, tossing the empty vials into the void below as she readied her staff and steeled herself.

“Fine, you want that damn rematch so badly? Then let’s dance, holy boy.”

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