Chapter 32: Fire Breathing Salamander
From coming across a giant goblin with a club that looked like it could smash anyone of them to bits with just a single swing, the team had gone to battling really violent average-sized lions and then raging red-eyed monkeys.
At the moment, the team was funnily enough fighting a bunch of angry Rabbits, the usually cute creatures this time being carnivorous and extremely quick on their feet.
"Stick together, don't let yourself be lured away from your partner" Kate shouted as she stood back to back with Noel and Jeric while the rangers once again remained paired up together.
For this battle, with Blake's consent, Kate had assigned Yula to stick with him.
Though the goblins had been fast, they were nothing like the rabbits which with a single hop could shoot through the air and blinding speeds.
Kate saw that in this situation Noel on his own could not protect Yula and so had given her to Blake who shared her views and had a personal space that was quite literally a no go region for any of the creatures they had encountered since they entered the dungeon
While the rest of the team butchered a bunch of demonized white rabbits increasing the pile of corpses around them, Yula who was nestled beside Blake occasionally shot out waves of a green light at her teammates, healing them of any significant or minor injury.
"Though low-level dungeons are known not to have treasures and are instead used for training and preparation to face greater dungeons, perhaps this dungeon has some treasure that Kate knows about.
Perhaps the treasure is guarded by a powerful monster and if that is the case, then I can see reasons why these other floors have been quite weak so far."
With his hands in his pocket, Blake tried to see if he could figure out Kate's true motive for coming to this dungeon and most importantly wanting him here at all costs, even at the cost of offending him
A few minutes later, all the demon rabbits had been killed and after an hour of rest, the group headed for the next floor.
Headed from one floor to the next most times involved moving to the other side of the floor and then entering or cave or maybe evened in diving to the bottom of the lake, it all depended on the kind of dungeon as lower level ones were easy to navigate while higher ones were a real nightmare.
For the next floor, all the team had to do was enter a cave, walk some distance and then pop in a new floor this one being very different from the previous ones they had gone through.
The four previous floors had all been filled with forest, and bushes with the occasional small watermark, but the current floor the team was on was a dry rocky terrain filled with tall reaching rocks that stretched far into the distance.
"A canyon" Roy muttered and though no one commented on his words, everyone accepted that this was the best definition for where they were.
With the sun shining high in the sky and the occasional eagle cry, if the team didn't know they had walked into a dungeon, they would think they were actually in the real world.
"Hmm I can't see the end of the dungeon" Roy muttered once more and this time his words were met with nods and mutterings of acceptance.
Blake who was at the back looked at the huge canyon before them and immediately began wrecking his brain for what kind of monsters could dwell here, and he had just begun imagining fire-breathing salamanders crawling all over the rock when Kate called him.
"Blake, do you feel it"
As someone who had been fantasizing about creatures that could pop out and attack them, suddenly getting the question of whether he felt something threw Blake for a complete loop and it was only thanks to his time of silence and lack of empathy back on earth that he maintained his composure and a second later spoke.
"How much of it do you feel"
"What the hell is this woman talking about, the only thing to feel here is the hot sun which makes me feel like I have ants on my body" Blake cried in his head as he calmly asked Kate his question.
Of course, with Blake's reputation and strength, Kate took no offence to him replying to her question with his own question and dutifully replied him without the least bit of suspicion.
"Though it's faint now, I feel like the deeper we move into into the dungeon the stronger the mana becomes," Kate replied getting only a nod from Blake but she wasn't bothered by this and went on speaking.
"Now that we can actually feel the radiating man, I think it is okay for us to assume that we are close to the dungeon core which will be on the last floor and I'm estimating that we are just three floors away from it.
"Make that two" Blake said, Kate and the rest of the team who had been silently listening to their words nodding their head.
Blake's words about it being just two floors were total crap and the only reason he had said that was to add a bit of glamour to his falsehood, sure he might be wrong and his perfect image would be ruined, but if he were to be right, he could imagine his reputation receiving a +50 points reputation within the team.
"Ehh Miss Kate, the canyon seems to be divided in two, which path do we take" Yula asked her words drawing everyone's attention to a problem which they hadn't noticed.
"We will split" Kate said and while her words invoked fear in the team, Blake was instead sent on alert.
"It seems she has begun making her move."