Book 3: Chapter 62 (1/2)
Tafel exhaled as she glared at the sight in front of her. A series of corpses lined a path, leading up to a few mounds of ice that contained still-alive creatures inside of them. A diminutive figure stepped up to her side and nodded. “Well, it looks like Vur was definitely here,” Alice said with her hands placed on her hips. “But what’s the deal with the ones at the end? Actually, no, what’s the deal with the bears that look like they’ve been eaten?”
“He … probably ate them,” Tafel said, cause Alice to make a face. Tafel’s brow furrowed as she pursed her lips. “I wonder what they taste like.” She crouched down by the first corpse and poked around for some fleshy bits that Vur hadn’t completely cleaned off the bones with her finger. When she found a piece, she stripped it off and popped it into her mouth.
“Well?” Mr. Skelly asked as he wrapped his arm around Alice, who had turned away from Tafel with a pale face. “How is it?”
“It tastes like iron, but it’s salty too,” Tafel said as she stood up and wiped her bloody fingers on the thigh region of her robes. “Overall, not that different from an actual raw bear. It might even be tastier if you enjoy the taste of that.” Her forehead crinkled. “Which Vur does.” She walked over to the frozen bears near the end of the hall and tapped on the surface of the ice, causing the bear’s eyes to roll towards the sound. “And this is how he was taught to preserve food by his mother. We could probably leave them here without issue.”
“Our contractor’s a savage…,” Mistle said as she hovered near Tafel. “These poor bears.”
“They’re monsters,” Tafel said with a snort. “It’s not like they have any feelings. And they’re made of blood too, so I doubt they can even feel any pain. If anything, the creatures in this dungeon are all a type of golem created by some perverse magician who’s probably the final boss. They’re very rare, but it’s not like an artificial dungeon is impossible to create.”
Alice slipped out from Mr. Skelly’s embrace, walking with her head held high to avoid looking at the eaten corpses on the ground. Unfortunately, she was too short, and the bones of the bears were on her face level. So she bashed them aside with her shield, clearing a path to the door at the end while walking around the frozen mounds. “How far do you think Vur got?”
Tafel’s expression darkened. “Even if we run, I doubt we’ll catch up to him before he reaches the final boss.” She pushed open the door. “Unless the dungeon’s like a labyrinth and he got … lost….”
Seven bloody people stared at the intruding demon. They were sitting around a table with utensils in their hands and cooked vegetables on the plates in front of them. After examining Tafel, they exchanged glances with each other and stood up. A few reached underneath the table while others walked towards a cabinet, but in the end, all of them pulled out some kind of weapon.
“…Did Vur get lost in a completely straight line?” Alice asked, raising an eyebrow.
“He….” Tafel bit her lower lip. “Maybe…? He’s Vur; the impossible becomes possible for him. Like getting lost where no one else possibly could.”
“Or we can use logic and conclude that the door has multiple exits,” Diamant said. After being discovered by Tafel and Alice, he had reverted back into the form of a ball of light. Unfortunately, Alora wasn’t around to discover the secret of canceling a polymorph. “Close the door and open it again. We might be able to find the path Vur took.”
“Got it,” Alice said as she shut the door just in time to block a bloody arrow. There were a few thudding sounds as multiple attacks landed on the door. “Now I open it again?”
“Yeah,” Tafel said as she readied her staff. “I’ll block any attacks that come your way.”
Alice nodded as she prepared her shield as well. Then she kicked open the door. The sight was exactly the same, and a bombardment of bloody spells flew towards the group.
***
“Is it just me, or is it a little loud back there?” Stella asked, turning her head almost a hundred and eighty degrees behind herself without moving her body like an owl.