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Early Morning - Early Spring : Dungeon of Christopher

During the night, Hannah and her elf friend couldn't sleep. They both sat there in total silence for the beginning of the night.

A couple hours after the sunset, the elf woman finally asked if she could go tend to Jack, the dumbass from earlier.

Not long after, she came back, dragging a muscular man with an extremely broken arm and chest across the sand and dirt.

-Wow, he actually lived.- He was truly lucky that his shiny and expensive looking armor absorbed most of the impact.

Once she started treatment though, I stopped paying attention and focused more on my magic.

After that, the night passed in what felt like a mere second. I ended up getting pretty absorbed into my magic and lost track of time.

Once sunrise came around, I got up and brushed the sand off Ilios and I.

“Good morning Ilios..” I lightly petted him as he stretched.

Looking over at the group of adventurers, I noticed that Jack had woken up.

His arm and entire torso were heavily bandaged but he was still in pain. He kept wincing from even the slightest movements, but that wasn't surprising.

The part I found most shocking was that he was still angrily glaring at me.

Seeing my look of disappointment, he went to say something but the elven woman quickly covered his mouth. "Sorry sir.. he still isn't in the right state of mind.. please forgive his arrogance.." Her face was pale and covered in worry.

"You know you’re free to leave right?" My irritation started to show a bit.

I was sick of seeing Jack's face, his angry glare made me want to punch him but I held myself back. -Without armor to save him, a tap would kill him..-

Looking away from them, I noticed Hannah wore an anxious look. "Haah.. Well, Hannah. Shall we go?"

She immediately hopped up to her feet hearing me talk. "R..right away.."

As we walked towards the cave entrance, Jack and the elven woman finally stood up and started leaving in the opposite direction.

As they walked away, I noticed that Hannah gave Jack a look of disgust.

It was so genuine that it caught me off guard. -Aren't they adventuring in a group together?- "What's with that look?"

Slightly shocked that I noticed, she turned back to me a little embarrassed. "Sorry.."

"What are you apologizing for?" My confusion was genuine.

"Sorry.. it was just out of habit.." She looked down towards the ground out of embarrassment before continuing into the cave.

As soon as we walked in, she mumbled something to herself and formed a small ball of light in front of her.

"So, what do you know about the monsters in this dungeon?"

She quickly tensed up a bit. "Well.. this dungeon is one known for its quantity of monsters so they only start around B rank but they are in large quantities.."

"And you said towards the bottom they are likely S rank?" I glanced back at her.

"Y..yes.. at least we assume so.."

-Sounds fun..- "Do you have a map by chance?"

"Ah, yes actually!" Her anxiousness faded for a moment as she pulled out a wrinkled piece of paper.

"Do you mind if I look at it?" I reached over as if to say it wasn't an option.

Almost immediately, she set the rolled up map in my hand.

Taking a moment to look at it, I noticed it was really quite huge.

It was mostly just a single long pathway, but it had tons of short side passages. "What are these little offshoots?" I pointed at a short passage on the map.

"Those are called camp sites.. sometimes adventurers will take several days to explore a dungeon so they need a safe place to camp out and rest. Instead of camping in the open, they dug out these small rooms and layer the outside with light magic to camouflage the opening or close it up with earth magic. "

-Ah.. makes sense I guess..- Turning back to the front, we quickly continued down the dark cave.

Several minutes quickly passed and we still didn’t come across a single monster.

-What is going on..- There were signs of monsters all along the floor and walls but we hadn't seen a single one.

Even Hannah was getting noticeably more antsy and on edge. "Where are the monsters.."

"Are there normally monsters by now?" I glanced back to see her nervously looking around.

"Y..yes.. We are well inside the first section.. we should be in rock lizard territory.."

As she said that, I sensed something up ahead with my aura. -Is that a rock lizard?-

It looked like a common lizard, just gray with stone-like texture and around a meter long.

"So what rank are rock lizards? B?"

"Yes.. they are each B rank.." She didn't seem to notice the lizard but she was still anxious.

Walking closer to it, I noticed it started keeping its distance from me. -Is it afraid of me?- "Hey Ilios, go kill that lizard."

Ilios quickly shot me a happy glance and trotted forward.

Watching through my aura, I watched as Ilios ran up behind the lizard and bit into its tail.

*Squeal* *BANG*

The lizard wailed in pain before Ilios threw him into the wall.

The impact completely obliterated the lizard. Its body simply exploded when it hit the wall.

To my surprise the wall didn't shatter, but instead stayed firm with only a few of the lizard's bones digging into it. -That's some really sturdy rock..-

Coming back up to my side with a happy trot was Ilios wearing a look of satisfaction.

“Haha, good job buddy.” I reached down and patted his head for a second.

He gave me a smile as his tail continued to wag.

-He’s so cute..- A warm smile slowly crept onto my face till I noticed Hannah.

Behind us, her face was completely pale and covered in fear.

“Is something wrong?”

She immediately stiffened up as if she didn't expect me to say anything. “N..no s..sir..” Her voice was shaky.

“Good, let's continue then.”

Not long after that, we finally started seeing other monsters, the issue was, they were all dead.

There were simply hundreds of mangled monster corpses lining the ground of the cave.

As I stepped over a mutilated corpse, I raised a question. "Is it normal for monsters in dungeons to fight each other?"

Hannah's face was covered in anxiety and worry. "Well.. yes.. but not like this.."

Pretty much all of the monster bodies on the ground were covered in similar, random wounds meaning they fought each other in huge groups.

It made less sense the more I thought about it, but as we got deeper into the dungeon, I started noticing a pattern.

The big piles of corpses were at the back end of each 'section' on the map.

According to Hannah, these sections marked the territory boundaries of each type of monster.

What seemed to be happening was that the monsters in each section tried to run deeper into the dungeon, entering other monsters' territories and getting killed before the monsters in that section did the same.

-What were they running from then?- It wasn't until I thought back to the rock lizard from earlier that it clicked.

-Are they running from Ilios and I?- It felt like a bit of a stretch but it was entirely possible.

Continuing further into the dungeon, we were finally approaching the end of the mapped sections.

The mana density had been steadily increasing as we walked deeper, but as we entered the unmapped section, there was an extremely sudden increase in it.

-Are we finally getting to the bottom?- I was honestly getting sick of stepping over endless corpses and wanted something interesting to happen. Luckily though, through the dense mana, I sensed several fairly strong auras.

A smile slowly crept onto my face as I noticed more and more. -Great timing..-