Chapter 129 One Is Alive
"it...., it..., it is okay..., Nadea..., everything is going to be fine".
Dana said, trying her best to get over her fears so she can have the will to calm Nadea down and relieve her of her own fears.
When she regained consciousness after the monster had made her temporarily unconscious, what she saw was a crying Nadea and the bodies of the dead Dire Hammer members with their stench starting to fill up the place.
She had no idea for how long she had been unconscious for, and when she asked Nadea, all she got from her is continuous water flushing down from her eyes.
"Da....Da.....,al....ll.....D.....D"
Nadea embracing Dana, wailed out heavily while trying to force her words out despite the fear tightly gripping her heart.
"it is okay Nadea, the monster is gone now, it cannot do anything to us anymore".
Dana and Nadea resorted to consoling each other, to give themselves the solace needed in overcoming their fears and getting out of the cave alive.
"ki...ds".
"!!!"
Dana and Nadea's consolation moment is cut short when a voice rang out in their front filled only with the dead bodies of the Dire Hammer members.
"ki..ds".
"who...., who is there....."
Dana mustered out courageously, grabbing her rock from the ground and pointing in the direction the voice came from.
"kids, it's me, uncle Dexter".
"uncle Dexter?...."
"yes, uncle Dexter".
"what happened?..., we thought the monster killed you...."
Dana hesitant to move near the voice, especially with the darkness endowing them.
From where she was standing, she questioned how Dexter was still alive when the monster had clearly killed him.
"yeah I thought so too, until I found myself still breathing that is. Come on, i need help getting up. My internal organs are a mess right now".
Dana decided to go help Dexter. Staying there in fear would do her nothing, she thought.
She traced his voice over to where he was, and saw his body laying on the ground with his head buried into the wall. Dexter's hands were on the wall trying to push his head out of it.
"uhuhmm...., are you okay".
"do I look okay to you? Help me get my head out of here will you".
"Nadea...."
Dana knew she could not push Dexter's head out of the wall all by herself, and so she called Nadea for help.
Nadea heed on Dana's call for help as she wiped the tears off her face and got up to assist her.
They each took hold of Dexter's leg, and in unison they pulled it as hard as they could.
"you kids are going to have to pull harder if you plan on getting me out of here".
"we are trying our best here uncle Dexter".
"well your best isn't good enough, put more backbone into it will you".
Dexter said with his voice sounding very coarse and unfriendly towards Dana and Nadea. His voice got to them and they pulled even harder, grunting and gritting their teeths until his head was out of the wall.
"huff, huff. Damn, any minute longer and I would have died of suffocation in there".
Dexter says, resting his back against the wall and inhaling the air as deep in as he could.
"mister..., you are hurt".
Nadea pointed to the side of his stomach with an open wound and blood circulated at its sides.
"i will be fine. This much injury won't kill me".
When he finally took control of his breathing pace, he started to reminisce his engagement with the monster and how he ended up in this state.
Dexter remembered getting ready to attack the monster together with Riley until he was ambushed without any notice.
The monster barraged him with a lot of blows in a span of seconds of him just taking the hits and being two slow to fight back.
He recalled the monster producing out a spike from his palm and stabbing through Dexter's sides giving him the injury Nadea pointed to.
When he was done with him, the monster forcefully dragged his body over to the wall and started bashing his head with it.
All this, with Dexter not being able to move a muscle and only his body feeling the recollection of blows accumulated in it. After the monster was done with him, Dexter had already lost his consciousness and only just regained it.
"damned monster. He was toying with me the whole time".
Dexter says with resentment worn boldly on his face. Being trashed around and toyed with by a monster isn't something he feels good about.
"what about my teammates".
His vision still blurry and hindering him from seeing their bodies layed on the floor and covered by the darkness not far off from him.
"the....."
"its okay kid, you don't have to force yourself to say it".
Dana's hesitation in telling him what happened, was enough to inform Dexter that they had been killed by the monster.
"things like this are what one must prepare for as an adventurer, losing the partner you had just shared your morning breakfast with".
His eyes filled with sorrow and pain caused from losing the two members he regards as his family.
Dexter and Riley were orphans who grew up having to look out for each other's back. Promising to be an adventurer team with their name known worldwide.
It was shortly after their debut that they met with Caren and recruited her into their team. Since then, the three duo had walked the vague line between life and death together, shared and fought with each other only to end up reconciling.
Caren might be a pain in the ass for Dexter, not to the point that she would wish her gone forever, not like this.
"sorry Riley, Caren. For not protecting you both and for letting you go first before me".
Dexter took a moment of silence to honor the death of his comrades before getting himself back up.
"we need to get out of here fast".
Dexter says, picking up Dana and Nadea and placing them on his back. He attached his hands to the wall so he could use it to climb his way out of the hole.
"mister, what about your wound?..., they will only get worse if you strain yourself more".
"like I said kids, an injury like this will not kill me. More importantly, we need to get out of here and warn the guild. To let them know that in this dungeon, lies an existence that poses a considerable threat to humanity".
"there is one thing I do find disturbing. How did you guys escape not being killed by the monster? I can't imagine a monster sparing kids simply because they are kids. All monsters are heartless cruel beings with no remorse or thoughts for anyone other than themselves".
"their main existence, is to trash and wreck as much havoc as they can before they are put down. Sparing a bunch of kids, isn't what a monster does, because they have never done so before".
"did it perhaps not see you guys, and hence why you lived".
Dexter inquired from the kids, still climbing up the walls with them on his back.
"i don't think that is it uncle Dexter. The monster came to us after it was done k...."
Dana having trouble narrating on how the monster had killed Caren before it made his way up to them.
"so it saw you both".
"yes mister, it grabbed Dana when she attacked him, and punched her in the stomach before letting her go".
"hmm..., it saw you both and still spared you?..., how strange".
Dexter thought, knowing full well what a monster is capable of doing, and the events of not killing the kids being an attribute never once seen in a monster.