(Inaudible voice)
"—Farlen! Can you hear me?" A deep voice bellowed from behind him, snapping his mind back to the present.
He slowly turned from the bottled ship on the shelf, a nervous smile tugging at his lips.
"Ah… haha. Sorry. My mind wandered for a bit." He quietly muttered as he slowly walked back to the desk, each step soft against the wooden floor. "And I think your office is very welcoming. The ship—I like it."
He rested his hands on the chair's top rail, and he fell quiet, his gaze now focused on the bearded burly guildmaster seated across the desk.
"Pay attention this time. You and I have important matters to attend to after this." Said the man, averting his gaze from Farlen's gentle yet piercing yellow eyes.
"Of course. Please go ahead."
"Two days ago, another adventurer fell victim—apparently to a slime this time. That makes him the eighth in the span of a week. Our dungeon isn't the largest, and it never had monsters beyond the capabilities of our resident adventurers. So the rise in casualties is cause for concern."
Farlen nodded along as he reconciled the information being divulged with the little that befell his ears a day prior.
"One day it's an idril, the next, a dragon. Why would a dragon even be inside a dungeon? That's a claim that's quite difficult to believe. If there truly was one in that dungeon, this town would have been eradicated and that would have been another matter entirely."
"Hm. Could it be a fallen playing tricks on them? Or maybe the monster gave them such a fright that they imagined the dragon?" Farlen asked.
"Perhaps. Regardless, this is beyond what any third-rate adventurer can handle."
The guildmaster pulled open the top drawer, retrieving a small sack that jingled as he placed it on the desk.
"Wow." He muttered.
"Given your rank, this might be thought of as…low pay. However given your arrival on such short notice, this is the most I can do at the moment. 90 silver coins."
Farlen slowly nodded in understanding. "Enough pay for a second rate. It'll do just fine. You'd like to avoid any future fatalities and I needed something to break my boredom. This will work out just fine for the both of us."
The smile on his face and the gentleness in his words successfully calmed the guildmaster's nerves. For a hero to accept such little pay was a miracle. His exceptional skills demanded higher pay, hence why majority of his missions tended to be handed out by the royal family or individuals with staggering amounts of wealth.
"You have my thanks." The guildmaster stood and reached out his hand.
"Don't worry, guildmaster Drek. This problem will be history by the day's end." Farlen added, as he shook his hand. "As for the pay, I'll come by to retrieve it after confirming the matter's been dealt with."
"Of course. Best of luck."
With a nod, Farlen turned and left the office.
As he descended the stairs, the murmurs in the reception floor grew quieter. All eyes were on him. Many, seeing him for the first time.
Without stopping, he exchanged quick pleasantries and was soon out of the guild.
The sun warmed his skin. The streets were extremely packed with vendors and hurried passersby. Children shouted at each other from rooftops, and a boy toppled from one onto a vendor's tomato stall, crushing some products beneath his weight and drawing furious shouts. That would be resolved in anything but a quiet and calm manner.
The scent of freshly baked goods and roasted meat drifted through the air. Some locals stepped aside, bowing or calling greetings as he passed.
From within a two-story shop window, three girls called his name. Looking up, he brushed a hand through his hair, and struck a playful pose, earning their laughter and amusement.
"Good day ladies." He said as he continued walking, the girls' inaudible voices being drowned out by others in the market.
The walk to the dungeon should've taken fifteen minutes but took nearly thirty; every few steps, someone stopped their beloved hero. And since the dungeon was closed to all but him, he didn't mind the delay.
The building encasing the dungeon came into view. The entrance was fairly deserted aside from a few adventurers passing time, as well as guards ensuring no one unauthorized made their way in.
Seeing him approach, the guards straightened up.
"Good morning, Mr. Hero!" One called as he bowed deeply.
Another grabbed the drunk man's shoulder as a third scratched his head and apologized. "Sorry about that. He's had a bit too much this morning. Please pay him no attention."
"Oh. No problem at all."
The first guard, now repeatedly bowing and laughing was dragged away by the other.
"Uh, would you mind lending me the sword on your belt?"
The guard blinked, pointing at his weapon.
"Yes, that one. I had to rush here and left mine behind. Better to have something than nothing, right?" His smile was disarming, and bent the moment to his favor.
As the guard unstrapped it and handed the long sheathed blade over to him, Farlen made a point to ensure him he'd be getting it back and that he was grateful.
And with that, he disappeared into the dungeon.
The building itself, wasn't the dungeon. Inside lay a small cave, which inside, stretched far deeper than it first appeared.
"Luminot."
A sigil flashed and vanished, and pale orbs of light bloomed. The gems that seemingly grew out of the wall, glittered, making Farlen's surrounding's a bit brighter.
"Alright! Time to do this."
He stretched, gave his sword a few test swings and headed deeper.
Before long, he came across his first foes—slimes. Despite their very harmless appearance, their quick leaps and corrosive acids made them deadly. Bouncing off the walls and ground, all five slimes lunged at him. His sword still sheathed, he effortlessly ducked and weaved, knowing one mistake would melt him alive.
He thrust out his hand; a sigil flared, and a wide beam of light erupted, vaporizing one slime instantly. Still, without a word and repeating the same motions, nothing but a faint acidic steam remained.
"Hah! That was a good warm-up."
He exhaled—distant growls echoed from further inside the dungeon.
He sprinted toward the noise. The growls and snarls grew sharper. A den of Iron clad wolves was up ahead, and having caught his scent, they'd started closing in.
Stopping in his tracks, sword in hand, he stretched out his free hand. A sigil flaired, then the air dimmed. The wolves came to a grinding halt, their snarls breaking into startled whines as their eyes quickly dulled.
Bending the light away from their vision, he had severed their sight.
He dashed towards the closest wolf, and with a swing of his sword, the blade cut cleanly through its neck.
The remaining ones ferociously snapped and thrashed blindly, their claws scrapping the stone beneath them. He moved through them in swift arcs of steel, each slice and jab ending in a dying howl that echoed through the cavern.
When the silence returned, he flicked blood from the blade, sheathed it and pressed on further and faster.
The next group of monsters appeared. Goblins. These were far easier to deal with compared to the wolves and using his combination of his blinding attack and sword skills, he ran through the goblins in no time.
After walking further, and further into the dungeon, he hadn't come across any other monsters.
"That's odd. I thought there would've been more goblins or wolves showing up by now. No slimes, and no silver-fanged spiders either." He muttered to himself as he stood to catch his break. At the depths he had reached, the gemstones on the walls were glowing by themselves. Not as brightly as his magic, but they allowed for some decent vision.
"Okay—this is definitely odd. I should've come across something by now." He repeated, several minutes later. As he approached the corner, something registered in his vision. A gray gleaming blob, was on the ground a few inches away from a wall. It was bigger than the slimes he'd previously dispatched. In fact, he'd never seen such a slime before, and for an instant considered it being the reason he came to the dungeon in the first place.
Sword in hand, he stretched out his hand, and silently shot off a beam of light again. It engulfed the slime, which shrunk, and shrunk and finally exploded.
Looking at where the slime had been, small blobs had splattered across the ground and walls. The scattered slime quivered, then began sliding together, merging one by one. The puddles progressively fused into a single swelling mass, the air filling with a faint hiss and sour scent of acid.
His eyes focused on the scene ahead of him, Farlen watched as the blobs fused, growing larger and larger.
The slime was regenerating!
"Lancel!"
Seven orbs of light lined up above him. Flaring into spears, they streaked forward, striking with a thunderous crack, blasting dust through the corridor.
As the air cleared, he waited. Too long.
A growl reverberated from behind him. Turning to look, his eyes darted to the ceiling and locked on to the amber pair staring back at him—looking, down at him.
The thing crouched there, claws digging deep into stone and its mouth curled into a defiant grin. Three pairs of limbs clung to the rock—the uppermost like a hairless ape's, knotted with muscle; the others feline, ending in talons that scraped sparks. A crown of black spikes ringed its head like a perverse mane. The creature's gray hide blended perfectly with the dungeon's ceiling making Farlen consider the thought of having unknowingly walked past it. But he quickly dismissed the thought.
The creature seemed to braced itself to lunge at him.
"Hey, hey!" Farlen muttered as he took a step back. "Raising the level this high so quickly isn't okay…" he continued with a strained smile.
"Lancel!"
The idril dropped, a blur of claws and sinew. His light spears tore through the air, shattering the ceiling it had been clinging onto a moment before. Farlen caught himself on a conjured gust, boots skidding across the floor.
"Clockwise! Blessed artifact!"
Orbs of light circled above him, spinning into a blinding halo. And the air around his sword seemed to shimmer from the heat it was producing.
A beam lanced toward the idril.
It leapt out of the way, bounding from wall to ceiling, the beam chasing it like a living spear. For a creature of its size, its agility was unreal.
He moved back as the idril came closer and closer. A magic sigil formed at the tip of his finger, and with a smirk, he muttered, "Try this on for size."
The light around the monster folded in, vanishing from its eyes. It shrieked, blindly clawing at nothing. The beam of light it had been dodging slammed into its side, driving it into the wall. The air started to stink of seared, rotting flesh.
Farlen, seizing his moment lunged at the monster, sword raised and ready to strike, but the idril started to convulse and lurched backward.
Its body began to bubble.
"…What—?"
Stopped in his tracks, Farlen watched, a chill running down his spine as the flesh on its head and shoulders swelled, splitting open as something massive pressed from within.
The idril's flesh continued ballooning, swelling and splitting with wet pops. From within the melting hide, something massive forced its way out. Limbs thickened. Wings tore open spraying blood like rain. The neck elongated until the horns brushed the ceiling, scales forming in waves of dark iron.
"This can't be real…a chimera?" He exclaimed, his voice shaky. "I get it now. So they weren't wrong."
Mustering up some courage, he turned and made a quick dash. Given its size, he couldn't get past the creature as its body filled the tunnel from wall to wall. Blinding it would do nothing; even without sight it would find him by scent alone and bite him in half with ease.
Having gotten a safe distance away, he stopped and turned. The dragon, not having moved an inch looked at him, almost as if in anticipation.
"This is going to be tough. I was not prepared to take on a dragon. No a chimera. Why and how does that thing exist? The knowledge needed to make this thing shouldn't exist in this day and age."
He glanced at his hand. "I don't know if my mana will be enough. Damn it! I should have brought a tank along with me. Or anyone else for that matter."
Behind it, the creature's tail scraped across the floor. A slow deliberate motion. It was testing him.
"It's all or nothing."
The creature inhaled.
"Lancel! Anti-clockwise! Anti-clockwise! Blessed artifact!"
Two rings of light formed, one around the dragon's neck, and another its torso. As they spun, the dragon's scales were peppered with searing beams. The air filled with the smell of burning stone. The beast's roar shook the cavern.
He lunged the sword at the dragon, carefully aimed at the dragon's eye. Steel met flesh; the beast howled, thrashing and smashing its head against the ceiling. Dust and chunks of stone fell to the ground.
"Anti-Clockwise!"
A third ring of light blazed around its head, hammering beams into the wounded socket. As the dragon's head lowered, its jaws opened up, revealing two rows of teeth in each jaw. Further down its throat, and yellow glow built up to a furnace heat.
Farlen's lips twitched into a grin. "Gotcha."
The orbs of light still hovering above him shot off smaller beams of light aimed into the dragon's maw—but the creature snapped its jaws shut and barely managed to duck. The beams ricocheted off its armored back, scattering into the walls.
"This can't be real." Shaking his head, Farlen watched as the dragon lunged forward, body rippling and the dungeon seemingly swallowing its bulk as it moved.
Its neck, wings and tail violently folded away as if being dragged into an unseen hole. As the last scale disappeared, only a black mass remained. Humanoid and with no discernible facial features. It edges blurred like smoke against the stone.
Farlen, froze. Sweat ran down his temple. His breathing grew heavy. The lights he'd summoned guttered, one by one.
The creature, now before him, couldn't be named. It straightened, unfolding to its full height. He didn't see it move; it was simply now upright, facing him. It had no discernible facial features, yet he felt its gaze—cold and searching. Perhaps that had something to do with his elevated heartbeat.
Fear.
Real, paralyzing fear.
He'd felt it before. But always for others. For the guardian who might not return, for comrades who may fall—now, the terror was for his own fate.
"C-c-c-c-clockwise…" A single sigil weakly flickered at his fingertip, then died.
The shadowy figure spread its arms out, as if wanting to embrace him. Darkness bled outward, swallowing the floor beneath him. It reached his boots, his knees—
As he looked up, one last time, he wondered, "So this… is what they felt."
The world went black.