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My eyes darted to the corners and to the ceiling. I remembered the shadow horrors that liked to blend into hard-to-see areas. Actually, I'll do one better. I cast a [Light Orb] that glowed bright enough to light up the corners of the room. It was still broad daylight outside but the difference in light levels made it hard to see all the dark spots a monster could be hiding in. The loud thumping from upstairs continued. Walking through the house made my palm feel sweaty on my sword grip.

Once I was sure that nothing was going to surprise us from behind, I walked further into the house. It was a rather spacious house with multiple rooms on the first floor. It wasn't some kind of apartment building like I had been expecting from the size of the place, it must have been a house for someone pretty affluent and their family. We walked through the kitchen but there wasn't anything useful there from a glance. There were some vegetables but they had been left out and were wilted now. They weren't as rotten as this building was starting to look but also not something anyone would want to eat either.

After a few minutes of searching, we found the stairs. Like the rotting wood of the walls, they also looked like they were decrepit and falling apart. Not very reassuring for something that needed to hold your weight. The continuous heavy thumping of whatever was upstairs and the sturdy-looking stone supports built into the walls gave me enough confidence they wouldn't completely fall apart when I climbed up them.

I peeked up the stairs and into the second-floor passage. There was light up there, probably from windows, but I couldn't see much else from where I was standing. I glanced at my two party members. Morrigan had small pearls of fire floating around her staff and Bella was tightly holding her scepter in front of her like a mace, ready to defend herself.

I crept up the stairs, careful to keep my sword in front of me and my hand against the wall to brace myself in the event something decided to run down the stairs just as we were going up. When I reached the top of the stairs I peeked around the corner and saw what looked like a hugely fat monster with bloated rotten flesh, making the disgusting creature look more like a zombie than a demon. It was obvious at a glance that it was a demon though, it had large twisted horns and its body exuded the same kind of miasma demons carried.

I frowned, I wish I had a shield right now. This monster looked like it would be challenging to fight. It was heavy, I didn't want to try to block its attacks head-on but that would make it hard to control the fight without leaving the other girls open. I backed off before the monster noticed me and leaned in to whisper to my party members.

"The monster up there is big, I'm not sure I can hold it in place. Could either of you stop it from moving?" I asked.

Morrigan looked around, likely looking for what mana was available. Bella examined the wood for a few moments before looking disappointed.

Morrigan was the first to whisper a reply, "The only mana that's around right now is fire and I don't think I would be able to do much with earth on these floors. I could maybe try to pin the monster in place with earth spikes. It's not something I've practiced much but it shouldn't be all that different from using ice for the same purpose."

I looked at Bella next who shook her head. "There's nothing here for my magic to latch on to. Short of throwing poison at it, I don't think I could do much either. Should we wait for the others?"

I considered it for a moment. It seems none of us were well suited to fighting inside these buildings but the monster didn't actually seem that strong to me. Maybe there was merit in the stone spikes idea, the floor seemed sturdy enough to take it despite how aged the wood was looking.

"I can help!" Mimi's voice was enthusiastic but thankfully quiet enough not to carry. "I can help you stop it from moving while we fight it, we can attack it from both sides!"

I wasn't too worried about Mimi but we hadn't practiced fighting in a group before. I had to admit the confidence I was feeling from her through our bond was infectious though.

I decided to trust her. "Okay, let's do it. I'll go in first and try to grab its attention. After that, you try and disable it from behind."

Bella took a step away from me and Mimi flowed out from her place around my neck. A moment later her eyes hardened into the faceted gems they once were and her arms formed dangerous-looking downward-pointed blades that connected directly to her hands. She reminded me somewhat of a praying mantis, pretty cool but I could tell that it would be really unnerving to someone who wasn't as familiar with her. Maybe it was a good thing Silva wasn't here with us right now.

Once everyone was ready I stepped through the door. I wasn't making much noise but once I got a certain distance from it the monster turned right towards me like it could suddenly sense my presence.

The monster had a face that looked like it had melted, the skin on its face had pulled away from its skull and hung like a disgusting sheet that pooled into a blob around its neck. Its toothy mouth opened and the thing screeched, thankfully it wasn't near as awful as the banshee from earlier. It began to hobble toward me with loud thumps every step but it was surprisingly slow. I sidestepped the monster and slashed its side, getting a good hit in right at the start. Mimi was now behind it and slashed at the back of its legs. Mimi was fast, making the comparison to a praying mantis all the more apt. She was cutting the monster with lightning-quick slashes but the monster's hide was too thick for her to penetrate more than superficially. The attacks did gather the monster's attention though, even with its melted expression I got the sense it was pissed.

The monster roared and flung itself around trying to catch Mimi with its fat arms but Mimi dodged and stepped outside the range of the monster's attacks without any trouble. Mimi was faster than I was, she had probably put a lot of her stat points into speed. I cast [Blade Waltz] and took over the task of trying to disable it while Mimi kept its attention. A quick mental nudge and the two of us were in sync, swapping tactics in an instant.

With both hands on my sword I had enough leverage to cut deeper into the monster's legs than Mimi could. I was searching for a tendon to cut and hacking away at the flesh and muscle hiding them from me. Mimi seemed to be a master of holding its focus. Each time I would slash through its leg while looking for a way to disable it, Mimi slashed and stabbed into the monster's body, taking its focus back from me in an instant. While we were fighting the small pearls of fire exploded into lances that shoved into the fat monster and faded to nothing before they could catch anything else in the room. I know magic fire was more controlled and wasn't likely to burn the building down unintentionally but that knowledge didn't make the flames that splashed off the monster any less reassuring. I trusted my party though, Morrigan knew what she was doing so I didn't spare it another thought.

I got a particularly good slash in and it caused the monster to stumble and fall to one knee. Mimi reacted to the opening by trying to skewer the monster's eyes with her blade arms but the monster was quick to protect its face with the thicker skin of its arm. The monster had a much worse time protecting itself from me while blocking her attack though and I took the opportunity to shove my sword deep into the back of its neck, severing its spine and killing it instantly. I received the kill notification before I could even pull out my sword.

[Your party has defeated a hungering corpse]

The monster slumped forward dispersing into a large burst of miasma that quickly faded away. On the floor where the body had slumped was another miasma orb about half the size of my fist. Maybe the size of a large marble? I picked it up and looked at it. There was a lot of miasma coming off of this one too.

"Mimi, is this something you could eat?" I turned to her in time to see her blades flow back into her regular hands and her faceted eyes soften back into her normal red ones.

Her brow furrowed as she looked at the orb. "I don't know why but my instincts are telling me not to eat it. I have a feeling it could make me sick, or worse..."

I nodded and looked at it again. Why was it giving off so much miasma? The normal elemental orbs that Mimi ate didn't leak mana like crazy this way. This felt like something different.

I turned to Morrigan. "Have you ever seen anything like this?" I held the orb out to her, she hesitated but decided to take it.

After a moment of intensely looking at it, she eventually cocked her head to the side. "Strange, I haven't seen anything like this before. It looks like a demon core but it shouldn't be leaking this much miasma. I was worried I would absorb some of the miasma leaking out of it but it's burning off into the air like a candle instead."

"What do you normally do with demon cores?" I dug through my pack to find a small bag to store the two demon cores. I didn't want them mixed in with my other stuff.

Morrigan scratched the back of her head. "Churches can usually purify them and use them as foci. Even the churches that aren't as focused on hunting demons take them so it's pretty well known. I don't know how they would react to this one though. It could be because of the other weird stuff happening with the demons in the area but I don't know. Normally finding something like this wouldn't be too worrying but things have been quite strange lately." She looked at Mimi who smiled and waved back.

I put the two orbs away and stood up. "Let's keep looking around a bit more. Most of the miasma has faded here but we should still be thorough."

There was one more floor to check so we continued to look around. The top floor was littered with blood stains but I didn't see any bodies. With a name like hungering corpse, I can guess where they may have gone.

While we were looking around the top floor Bella suddenly stopped and turned her head towards the wall. The motion caught my attention but I didn't see anything. She was just staring at the wall.

"What's wrong Bella?"

She paused but shook her head after a few moments. "I don't know, I think I heard something here. I think there's someone on the other side of this wall."

Morrigan walked over and put her ear to the wall before gently knocking on it. "It is hollow. There could be something back there. Do you think it's an enemy?"

Bella hesitated before shaking her head. "No, I'm not sure why but I think whoever is in there is hurt and needs help."

I nodded. "Okay, let's look around and see if there's a passage or something."

The three of us split up and started searching for a secret door or a hole or something. There wasn't anything obvious like bookshelves or cabinets around but I traced the edge of the wall in one direction while the girls looked around the other way.

"Lilith! I think I found something," Morrigan called from the other room.

Her finger traced a thin line in the wall that was behind a couch. We pulled it aside but didn't see anything that looked like a lever or button. Pushing against it didn't seem to do anything either.

I turned to Mimi. "Do you think you could tear through this wall? Maybe by eating through it?"

Mimi tilted her head and smiled but before she could reply Morrigan appeared from around a corner. "Hey look!"

I walked over and saw her holding a thin sheet of wood with writing on it. There was a diagram with a caption that described the order you traced magic along the door.

"It looks like it's written in some kind of code. Do you think this could be related to the door?" Morrigan asked me.

I froze. "Wait, you can't read this?"

Morrigan's brows furrowed. "You can?"

I took the thin piece of wood and focused on it. Just like when [Sightspeak] translated languages for me, I could read both versions of the caption. The cipher as well as the intended meaning.

"Well shit..." Looks like I'm a codebreaker now.