Death Comes In Many Forms 2 (1/2)

The giant rat’s head was mercilessly splattered against the rocky ground. Bits of its brain and skull flew everywhere, staining the floors and walls of the ‘Green Zone’ tunnel. Bogon grimaced at the pointless mess he had just made. Lifting his left foot, he shook it a few times in a futile attempt to shake off the filth, but to no avail. He gave up and settled for scraping off the remains of the former rat from the sole of his armored boot.

He sighed dejectedly. Even if he could kill the monsters here by simply stepping on them, they were still a nuisance. After all, no matter how weak an opponent was, washing off the blood and guts from his metal greaves still took the same amount of time and effort. The same could be said for the rest of his full-plate steel armor, but at least the small creatures in this weak dungeon were only tall enough to stain his lower half.

The short, muscular dwarf turned his head towards his human companion.

“Look Val, Ah’m tellin’ ye this job’s a waste of our time!” he complained for the upteempth time.

“You’re free to fuck off at any time, Bogon. You’re the one that insisted on following me here,” she retorted. The black-haired black-eyed woman was too busy inspecting the remains of five giant rats around them to pay attention to his whining. “Besides,” she continued, “it’s not a waste if I can find the cause of all these disappearances.”

“I’ll give ye the cause! Bloody greenhorns dunno what teh fook they’re doin’ in here! They get full a’ themselves and end up in some rat’s belleh!”

“It’s not that simple. The mayor said they’ve lost more people in here in the last two months than they have in the last two years combined,” she answered back without averting her gaze. “Something must’ve snuck in here. Something besides the sudden influx of Mimics. If I find it, it’ll do wonders for my- Ah, I mean, I want to do my part in helping the newbies grow!”

Her eyes shone dangerously for a second before she tried to change her words. Bogon sighed again. That woman’s eccentricities were always grinding his gears. If she wasn’t a promising spellcaster he never would’ve even bothered with her.

But she was. And he needed her help for his next quest. He had hoped to dissuade her at first, but that hope was now rapidly deteriorating. After all, he just saw her true intentions shine through her facade. She obviously took this as more than a simple job.

Bogan suspected she was hiding something ever since they teamed up two weeks ago. He also had a pretty good idea what that ‘something’ was - the musclebound dwarf was sharper than he looked. However, he also knew better than to poke his nose into this strange woman’s personal business. A Necromancer isn’t someone you want as an enemy.

“How can ye be so sure it’s not them Mimics that showed up recently?” he offered in desperation.

“The Mimics here are young so they’re very weak,” she explained. “Their HP is only about 20 or 30. One good hit from any offensive Job and they’ll be at death’s door. A Wizard or Rogue would probably one-shot them with a bit of luck.”

Once word got out that Mimics have started appearing here, the various adventurer guilds took action. They made a serious effort to educate and caution their newcomers about the new threat. After some time, those monsters became less and less of a threat. In fact, they actually ended up being more popular than the actual wooden chests they were trying to imitate. People these days were honestly disheartened when the box they attacked turned out to be just regular wood. They needed to defeat monsters to raise their Job Levels, so an easy kill was way more welcome than a scrap of worthless loot.

Most of the newbies even stopped looting the disappointing boxes entirely. A chest would disappear into dust soon after its treasures had been pilfered, so leaving it like that was a sign to others not to waste their time and effort on it. It was a sort of unwritten rule among them.

In fact, one such example was in this very tunnel, right next to Bogon and Valeria. A simple, unassuming box, closer to a crate than a treasure chest stood against a wall. The rounded wooden lid had been cracked and a long, straight dent was clearly visible on it. Someone had obviously already tested it with an axe or sword.

Valeria, having finished her inspection, stood up and turned to her annoyed companion.

“These numbers go far beyond simple carelessness. At least 45 people have gone missing recently, most of them reportedly seen heading towards this area. Whatever’s doing this is right here, and I’m going to find it! I’ll be fine on my own once I get my familiars ready, so can you seriously fuck off now?”

“Haaaah. Fine Val,” said Bogon dejectedly. “Ye win. Ah’m goin’ back ter town. Hit me up once yer done, aight?”

“Pay’s good this time, right? I’m not working for peanuts again.”

“Ye’ll find out later,” said Bogon while pulling out a Portal Key. He gripped the fist-sized stone with a bit of force, causing it to break and crumble to white dust. The dust swirled around him for about a second before there was a flash of blue light. The armored dwarf Warrior was whisked away back to the Waystone outside the dungeon’s entrance, leaving behind only a puff of white smoke.

“Finally!” spat out Valeria. “What a jackass! Why’d he even come here if he was just going to complain?! Now I can finally do what I came here to do. Heh. Hehehe! Uhehk hehkk hehk hehk!”

Now that the nuisance was gone, Valeria’s face twisted into a wide smile so crooked that it was completely mismatched to her lovely face. She cackled maniacally with a mad look in her eye. She was excited - she couldn’t help it. A new type of low-leveled monster was the likely perpetrator of this disturbance. Probably something that lost its way and snuck in here looking for easy prey. Valeria could not wait to get her hands on it.

She cackled for a solid minute before she was able to calm down. Her face quickly adapted the ‘cool and collected’ facade she had been wearing whenever people were around. She needed to be mindful of others. This was still a popular dungeon, so it was actually rather common to run into newbies who were still doing their first quests. Valeria had been one of those same newbies less than a month ago, but she stuck to a completely different part of the labyrinthine cave system. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that she got lucky.

She straightened out the black Apprentice Robe she was wearing. It was a low-cut, short-sleeved dress-like garment with a knee-length skirt. The edges of the skirt and the sleeves were decorated with black frills. Black leather bootlets with slightly raised heels led into fishnet stockings that continued up her pale legs, all the way to the lacy underwear hidden beneath her skirt.

On a whole, this outfit was entirely mismatched with its name. It didn’t look a single thing like the chaste robes one would expect a Priest would wear. That’s because the ‘Robe’ in the item’s name simply referred to its magic-boosting Attribute bonuses and effects, rather than the actual style of the garment. Truthfully speaking, the only thing that set Valeria apart from the prostitutes in the nearby town was the pointy wide-brimmed hat and the faint stench of rotting flesh.

“Status,” she chanted. A series of windows appeared at the forefront of her consciousness. She quickly verified the information.