Rise of the Living Forge

Chapter 121: Things change

The dungeon had changed.

There was no other way to look at it. It had only been a few minutes and a few rooms since they’d started their way back out of the dungeon, but the one they stepped into was most certainly not the one that they’d passed through.

Normally, that wouldn’t have been all too big of an issue. As everyone knew, dungeons were neither alive nor dead. They opened entrances for monsters to enter to collect magical energy from death.

It wasn’t like they were going to wait around to be completely empty before things changed. As long as nothing was in a room, it was liable to shift. There had been reports of some dungeons transforming themselves into mazes once people entered, but those were largely unsubstantiated.

Normally, the worst that happened was that a room looked different and had a new pathway running through it. The way out was still usually there.

That was exactly what had happened. A new tunnel had formed in the rightmost wall that led down, faint orange light glowing from far into its depths.

Fortunately, the exit remained where Arwin remembered it to be, beckoning him and the group onward. He would have taken it. There was just one small problem that was turning his attention more toward the other path – the dead adventurer lying in a heap in the middle of the floor.

And it wasn’t just any dead adventurer. It was a nearly ungeared one. All he had on him was an empty sheath and his street clothes. That definitely wasn’t a good sign. Nobody walked into a dungeon like that.

Arwin knelt beside the man while the others spread out, drawing their weapons and looking around warily, most of their gazes sent toward the exit that the man seemed to have dragged himself from.

“Stabbed from behind,” Arwin said, studying the wound that had dispatched the man. The only wound he had, aside from a red rub line around his neck. It looked like the blow from a large dagger or a short sword, and one that had gone close enough to the heart to give the man time to run, but not enough to save himself.

It also doesn’t help that he ran in the wrong bloody direction. Why’d you go deeper into the dungeon instead of away from it?

“What kind of monster doesn’t eat the person they kill? And where’s his weapon?” Reya asked, her eyes darting around the room. “Did it hear us coming and go into stealth?”

“I don’t think it was a monster that did this,” Rodrick said. He joined Arwin in studying the dead man. “That’s a blade wound. Someone ran him through.”

“Probably why he’s got nothing on him. They took his gear,” Arwin said with disgust.

Reya’s lips curled down, but she didn’t even look slightly surprised at the thought of people killing each other in the dungeon. It probably wasn’t any less brutal than what she’d grown up used to. Anna just looked sad. She shook her head and closed her eyes, muttering a prayer under her breath.

“Scum,” Lillia said.

“He might have run deeper into the dungeon trying to escape,” Arwin said, rising and looking over to the new pathway leading from the room. “But… Olive, didn’t you say it was pretty hard to get in here as a solo adventurer?”

“Yeah,” Olive said. “I had to wait until basically the middle of the night, and even then it was difficult. Took me a day of just standing around like an idiot.”

“Meaning the chances of this guy having actually been on his own are pretty low,” Arwin said.

“Probably,” Olive said.

“His friends could be dead up ahead,” Reya said.

Rodrick knelt by the passage leading toward the distant orange light. “They might have. Or they may have gone this way. Look.”

There was a scuff of blood on the ground that looked like it had come from the bottom of a boot. Someone had definitely headed down the path.

“That was just the one that stepped in his blood. There could be more, and that might belong to the person that killed him, not his allies,” Anna warned.

“Could have been one and the same.” Arwin’s lips pressed thin and he drummed his fingers against the top of his thigh. “Then again, the people that killed him could also be above us somewhere. We no longer know if either path into the dungeon is clear.”

“If there are people from his group left, should we try to help?” Reya asked. “They could be in trouble.”

Arwin nearly said yes on the spot. His throat tightened around the words, strangling them before they could leave. He’d made a promise to himself.

I can’t save everyone.

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He certainly couldn’t save the man on the ground before him. There was no way to tell what he’d been thinking. Hell, the man could have betrayed his own group and been put down because of it. He didn’t know.

When he’d been the Hero, he could have charged forward without a care in the world to find out. But that was then. He wasn’t the Hero anymore. Arwin had other responsibilities – a duty to his friends and group to make sure they survived.

His jaw set.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to be a coward. I won’t throw them into a fight they can’t handle, but if there are people fleeing in that direction, we might be able to help them. Any adventurer below Journeyman isn’t going to stand a chance against us. We aren’t full on energy, but aside from my missing greaves, I’d say we’re probably in shape for a fight.

“It’s up to all of you,” Arwin said finally. “I believe we could head down and investigate what happened carefully. If it looks like too big of a threat, we can back out – but it depends on all of you.”

“The blood shows him running in this direction. If people survived, it’s likely they kept going this way,” Rodrick said with a nod toward the orange glowing passage. “If they didn’t, then we’re liable to run into whoever did this on the way up. Our chances are actually better if we head in pursuit of possible survivors. We’d have a numbers advantage.”

“Agreed,” Anna said.

“People that kill other adventurers deserve the sword,” Olive said. “I say we hunt them.”

“Hunt seems like an apt word,” Lillia said with a nod. “Rodrick is right. We’re equally as likely to meet the killers either path we go down, so we might as well take a bet that there are others alive and follow after them.”

Reya nodded, and that was that. Arwin summoned his armor back around him and let Verdant Blaze take form in his palms once more.

“In that case, down we go,” Arwin said. “Stay silent. Let me lead – if anyone feels anything at any point, let us know. Finally, if we meet others, I don’t care what the reason is, our lives over theirs. Hear them out, but if they try to attack, show no mercy.”

And then down they went. It was the brightest passage that Arwin had traveled through so far in the dungeon, even though he couldn’t actually tell where the light was coming from. The faint orange glow seemed omnipresent and unchanging.

Sweat started to form on Arwin’s brow as they continued on. It grew warmer the deeper they went. The walls turned craggy and dark, going from grey cobble to a pitch-black glossy obsidian with startling speed.

After around five minutes of travel, Rodrick caught their attention and pointed at his ears, indicating that his enhanced senses had picked up on something. They all fell silent to let him listen, and Arwin moved to the side so he could take the lead.

They set off again a second later. This time they moved even quieter than they had before. The look on Rodrick’s expression didn’t make Arwin particularly optimistic about the chances of any survivors. He certainly wasn’t rushing them down to save anybody, which either meant he was being cautious or there was nobody left to save.

It was a minute before Arwin started to pick up voices as well. He couldn’t quite tell what they were saying, but their notes echoed through the halls as if to herald their arrival. Heat prickled Arwin’s nostrils and the distant smell of acrid sulfur.

The voices grew louder as they continued and the passageway finally came to an end before a pair of stone doors. A key jutted out from a hole on the door, having already been used to open it. While the door had been opened, the angle they stood at in the tunnel wasn’t quite right to see into the room beyond it.

Coiled on the floor beneath the key were the scraps of a metal necklace– and resting against the door was a short, middled aged woman. Blood trickled down her armor from a deep gash in her neck and her glassy eyes stared lifelessly into the wall.

The necklace looks like it might have been what caused the red line on the previous adventurer’s neck. They ripped it off, maybe? Doesn’t look like this woman got robbed, but whoever did this is definitely in the room beyond these doors.

“…here somewhere,” came the voice of a man from somewhere within the room.

A female voice voiced their agreement. A few seconds passed. Nobody else said anything. That obviously didn’t mean there were only two people in the room, but it was a strong reason to assume there probably weren’t a lot more.

Arwin and the others exchanged one last glance. Nobody gave him any signs of wanting to turn back. They likely outnumbered their opponents. And, even if they didn’t, Arwin was fairly confident in their powers.

He stepped forward and peered through the open door. The room beyond it was nothing like the previous ones that had been in the dungeon. It looked like it had once been a workshop. Strange tools littered the ground and surrounded oddly shaped bricks of metal. Thin rivers of lava ran through grooves in the floor and collected in a pool at the center of the room.

At the back end of the room was a locked chest, and huddled in front of it were two adventurers. A man, easily seven feet tall and clad in heavy black armor covered with sharp spikes stood beside a woman about half his height. She wore plain robes and carried a wooden staff similar to Anna’s.

The woman also had a short sword at her waist. Arwin wasn’t an expert at analyzing deaths, but the blade looked to be just about the right size to have run through the man he’d seen before.

Still… two people, and nobody showed signs of being killed by the big guy. Nobody had massive wounds at all. That means he probably didn’t even fight. That’s odd. I can’t imagine it would be much easier for two-man groups to get down here than four-man groups.

There was only one way to find out. Arwin stepped forward – and a gray blur slammed into him from above, where it had been hidden by the frame of the door. Bands of metal the thickness of his forearms wrapped around his wrists and forced Verdant Blaze from his grip, sending it clattering to the ground.

Magic hummed through them and the woman turned together with the man by her side, cocky grins on both of their faces.

“I told you I heard a rat coming,” the woman said, tapping her staff on the ground.

“I never doubted you,” the armored man replied. “Looks like there’s even more for the two of us. Good thing we don’t have to share anymore.”

Guess that answers the question of if the others were part of their group or not. Doesn’t seem like these idiots have noticed the rest of my team either.

“Any last words, big guy?” the woman asked, nodding to her larger companion as he drew his blade. “I won’t remember them, but he might.”

“Yeah,” Arwin replied, raising his bound wrists to his mouth. Team or not, there was no need to take risks. He took a huge bite out of the shimmering metal, jaws tearing through it like butter. It didn’t taste half as powerful as the magic that had been in the gargoyle he’d eaten. He could eat trash like this all day. Arwin swallowed and took another bite, freeing his hands and sending the rest of metal crashing down by his feet. “Your magic tastes like shit.”