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Chapter 43

The Shadow Rabbit, as I came to call it, was the other monster on this floor. Nonaggressive, it remained in the shadows and fled the moment you attacked it. It had very little strength, but it was extremely fast. The only way one could defeat it was to kill it in one hit. If you didn’t have Life Sense, you wouldn’t be able to pinpoint its location at all. If you didn’t have Lydia’s speed, you’d never be able to kill it.

I located a rabbit and then switched to Cook and allowed her to attack. We only knew if it struck after her sword struck the ground. Fortunately, the weapon seemed to have a magical property, as it didn’t get too banged up using this method. Three out of four times it’d move before she struck or she’d flat out miss. That meant every fourth time led to the death of a rabbit. Unfortunately, their experience was also crappy. If I wasn’t starving, they wouldn’t even be worth hunting in my opinion.

Sense Life was very useful but had its setbacks. I realized that life was indistinguishable, so I couldn’t tell the difference between a rabbit and a Living Armor. However, Living Armors were constantly moving, whereas rabbits tended to remain in one spot, freezing when we got near them. Through that method, I was able to see where rabbits and Living Armors were around the dungeon. I could avoid congested hallways without needing to get near them. Our mobility in the dungeon increased drastically.

“There is one right there,” I said, pointing and switching to Cook.

Lydia always attacked without question. She was a lifelong slave, and it showed with her obedience. When this rabbit died, this time, there was something left over when the body melted away.

“F-fur…” I looked at the black fur… realizing that after all that work, I hadn’t managed to get any food.

“Can you sense life below us?” Lydia asked.

I shook my head. “No, I guess the dungeon floors block that.”

“What should we do?” Lydia asked once again for my direction.

I shook my head, “Let’s try a little longer.”

After killing ten more, we found another two pelts of black fur.

“This is pointless.” I sighed. “Let’s just try to make our way down to the next floor.”

Lydia ran ahead boldly and attacked an armor. I hadn’t been paying attention until the moment she killed it.

{Cook has increased to level 4.}

{You have unlocked the Cook Skill: Purify food.}

I had left my Cook job active.

“Are you freaking kidding me?”

My words weren’t aimed at the level at all. Rather, sitting where the Living Armor had fallen apart, was a fully cooked, tasty looking piece of turkey drum the size of my arm. I walked over to the drum and picked it up. I sniffed it. It smelled fine.

A Living Armor had a turkey drumstick? I used to play Castlevania back in the day, and I seemed to remember that you could find turkeys in the wall. Was this one of those kinds of things? Up until now, the Living Armor had not dropped anything, but now it dropped food when I had Cook equipped.

“Purify Food!” I made sure the food was edible before splitting it with Lydia.

After that, we started fighting more armors, and soon we had enough turkey drumsticks that we didn’t know what to do with them. Although we weren’t a step closer to getting out of the dungeon, we were no longer desperate. With light, food, and water, we could hold out for rescue. In the meantime, I decided we might as well keep pressing forward.

Chapter 44

Level eight consisted of skeletons only. However, it had two different types of skeletons. One was a swordsman much like Lydia. These fights would have been dangerous, as Lydia fought at about the same level as a single skeleton. However, after adding my Divine Aura, attacking with Harm Undead, and/or switching to get Party Status Up, Lydia was more than capable of taking them out. The second type of skeleton wore a robe and chanted magic. These guys actually fell quicker if you could get to them, but if they were allowed to fight from a distance, their spells were scary and dangerous.

I made sure to use Cook with both of them, but neither dropped anything considered food. Fortunately, we had several weeks’ worth of drumsticks. As long as I remembered to cast Purify Food on them daily, they also remained fresh. They were just as tasty as the moment they were made. Were they even real food, or were they magic? I decided not to ask any questions. It’d only give me a headache.

Both skeletons dropped bone dust. I picked it up and had a pretty large stockpile that kept growing. I considered learning alchemy, but with only two ingredients so far, I really doubted I’d be able to accomplish anything. Thus, instead, we just kept killing and working towards the next floor.

Lydia’s Swordsman had increased to 13 now, and I was a level eleven White Mage. My new White Mage spell was Detect Magic. It was an active skill, not passive, unfortunately.

“Detect Magic,” I muttered to myself.

Usually, detect magic was met with a dead ping. Rather, I felt nothing except a faint impression of magic when it came to my backpack and Lydia’s sword. They were the only items with any magic properties, and they weren’t strong either.

The reason I was casting Detect Magic regularly was that I was looking for some kind of portal to lead us back up to the surface. We had been down here for nearly a week now, and we were almost certainly left for dead. Although they’d eventually send a group down to whip out this place, that could be another month or more before that happened. Neither of us wanted to wait down here for another month.

“A ping!’ I let out a cry as I felt an abnormal magical resonance.

“Master?”

I let out a cough. “Ah…I mean… we have something that is showing magic. It may be a portal out of here.”

The pair of us headed in the direction of the magic, and it got stronger the closer we got to it. It also seemed to attract skeletons, and the last few batches were difficult to take out. I had to cast Group Heal in order to distract the mages while she took out skeleton after skeleton. When everything was said and done, I was looking down at a platform.

“It’s a trap,” I said, mostly muttering to myself.

“Yes, Master… it does resemble a magical trap.”

“If we trigger it, it could be a portal to send us somewhere else in the dungeon. Or… it could conjure up a fire, or spikes, or something else to kill us.”

“Would Master like me to test it?”

“No… it’ll probably be one use. We’d need to go together or risk being split up.” I sighed.

This was a literal life or death decision. If I was wrong about this trap, death was almost a certainty. Even if I was right and it transported, who knew where we would end up. It could put us down deeper, in a harder section of the dungeon.

“Should we do it?” She asked.

I sighed, grabbing her and pulling her close and stepping onto the trap. “If I don’t go, I’ll never know,” I said.

Light sprung up around us, and I was delighted to feel something akin to the teleportation from before. The room we appeared in… was another cathedral with yet a third mural. We had managed to travel even deeper into the dungeon. Damn.

Chapter 45

This cathedral looked like the biggest cathedral yet. It had a more ominous feel than the previous ones. However, the most notable feature was there was a stairway heading down right there. I already didn’t know how many floors down we were, and this lead down even more. I decided to ignore that for a moment.

“Let’s close the doors,” I said, “We don’t know how strong these mobs are. They could kill us in an instant.”

Lydia nodded, and the pair of us worked to shut and lock the stone doors. Only the ominous steps down were still open. As soon as we closed the door, I heard a gong sound.

Doooooong…

It filled the air was a warning noise. The blood drained in my face. I turned and grabbed the door, trying to open it again. The door did not open. Lydia and I used all our force, but neither of us could get the door open at all.

“What’s going on, Master?”

“Ah… I have a guess… but I hope I’m wrong.”

“Master?” Lydia was looking at me as if I held all the answers.

I could only sigh. “If I’m not mistaken, we’re on a boss level now. This cathedral is the entrance to the boss room, and by closing the door, we’ve initiated the boss fight. Even if we wanted to wait to be saved… it won’t happen.

“What do you mean?”

“These doors are shut. Even if someone fights their way down here to our level, they will be blocked. Those doors will only open one of two ways. We defeat the boss… or… it defeats us!”

Lydia didn’t cry or look scared. Rather, her hand tightened and a look of determination appeared on her face.

“This is… the last boss before we can leave, right?”

“This dungeon is young. I suspect so given the impressive cathedral size, but there is no guarantee this is the final fight.”

“Should we go?” Lydia asked nervously.

“No, we have time. Let’s start a fire, eat, and rest. We want to be 100% in this fight. With luck, it’s something undead and we can make short work of it.”

Thus, we sat down and started a fire. There wasn’t really any cooking when it came to the turkey legs, so I just cast Purify Food and then we ate right away. I was still feeling a bit restless though. We usually fought monsters until we grew tired enough we could barely move, and then set up camp. It had been a while that I didn’t need to worry about monsters around every corner. A good night’s rest would do well for both of us.

“This one has a new mural! Can you read it?”

I could only give her a wry smile as she sat expectantly. The mural was really just images, no writing. The story I told was entirely based on my interpretation of the images. She could just as easily look at the images and reach her own interpretation. Ah, whatever, her tail was swishing cutely and I was interested in the rest of the story too. This could be the last piece.

“This story doesn’t have the girl in it at all,” I said with a bit of surprise. “Rather, it fallows the brother.”

“The one who failed to protect his sister?”

“Yes…” I nodded. “It explains how he went to a powerful dark priest, who gave him the power to seek his revenge.”

“Dark priests are corrupted priests that deal in illegal jobs.”

“Illegal jobs?” I asked, curiously.

“Thieves, bandits, assassins, shadow mages, any job the church has ruled dangerous.”

“Necromancers?”

She nodded. “Those that have these jobs are considered evil.”

“You know… you have the Thief job.”

“Eh?” Lydia’s expression panicked. “That… it was one time! I was hungry… that’s…”

“Well, I mean, it wasn’t active. So, to become a thief, you must meet a dark priest.”

“Not exactly…” Lydia responded. “Every time you steal, you can increase your thief skill whether it is active or not. It is when it reaches a high level that it becomes set. However, if a priest sees you with a bad job, they might set it and punish you. It’s the equivalent of a life sentence. As a slave, it’d be ignored for me, but I may have trouble getting a job through a priest if I was free in the future.”

“So… for normal people, the highest-level job is the active job? That would mean, most people start out as a commoner. Then, if you steal enough that Thief increases over Commoner, you become a thief.”

“Yes… without a priest, that is how all jobs work. However, it is easier with a priest.”

Interesting. Simply put, the second form of leveling worked whether you equipped the job or not. While killing monsters only leveled your active job, if I cooked, Cook would increase on its own, albeit not as quickly. For most people, Commoner was always the highest level, seeing as they were born that way. It made it really difficult to switch your job. Even if you blacksmith every day, you were also a commoner and that had a major head start. The only way to bypass this was with a priest’s Job Switch skill, except priests wouldn’t touch certain jobs they considered evil.

“What about the story!” Lydia puffed out her cheeks.

“Ah… sorry… I was distracted.”

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