Ch.15
Lili suggested Floor 10 on our third run together, and I said yes because I'd been waiting for her to ask.
She pitched it casually while we were clearing Killer Ants on Floor 7, her voice doing the practiced-eager thing she used when she wanted to seem spontaneous. "Sir is getting stronger every day. Lili thinks we could handle Floor 10. The magic stones are worth much more down there."
"Sure."
She bent to pick up a magic stone and her backpack shifted and her fingers moved inside the front pocket. Fast. Practiced. She palmed two small pellets and slipped them into the sleeve of her glove without breaking the motion of reaching for the stone.
Monster lures. I'd been watching for them since we entered the Dungeon.
She didn't know I saw. She was good at the sleight of hand, good enough that a normal adventurer focused on combat wouldn't have noticed a supporter's fingers moving during loot collection. But I'd known what to look for. I'd watched this play out in the anime, and the timing was right. Third day. Growing trust. Deep enough that the swarm would be dangerous.
I let it happen. I'd known this was coming since the morning she'd approached me outside Babel, and I'd decided then to let the betrayal play out. Be standing there when it did.
We descended. Floor 8, Floor 9. The corridors got wider and darker and the bioluminescence shifted to the deeper teal I'd gotten used to from my solo runs. Lili was quieter than the first two days. Less chatter, fewer compliments about my fighting. Her eyes went to the corridor ahead more than they went to me. Her backpack straps were adjusted tighter than usual, the pack riding higher on her shoulders, ready to move fast. I'd noticed that on the walk to Babel and said nothing.
On Floor 9, we ran into a group of Killer Ants that came at us through a side passage. I cleared them with the Knife and a single Firebolt while Lili collected stones in the aftermath. She was efficient, professional, quiet. Her dog ears twitched at every sound from the deeper corridors. She kept glancing toward the stairs down.
"Floor 10?" she said. Careful. Measured.
"Lead the way."
On Floor 10, she dropped the first lure during a rest stop.
I was sitting on a rock ledge, drinking water, watching a crack in the wall where a purple moth egg sac was pulsing faintly. She was organizing the backpack and her right hand dipped and came up and a pellet rolled under the stone outcropping beside us. Invisible unless you knew to look.
The second lure went down during a fight with a pair of Orcs. She placed it behind a wall crack while I was mid-Firebolt, her timing precise, her back to the explosion so the light wouldn't show her hand moving.
The swarm hit us three corridors later.
Orcs. Six of them, funneling through a junction, drawn by the lures. They came in pairs, the front two already at full charge, and behind them the clicking rush of Killer Ants pouring from the walls in a carpet of black chitin. The corridor filled with bodies and noise and the deep bellow of Orcs building momentum.
I moved.
Firebolt through the center of the Orc cluster. The bolt punched through two and scattered the rest, and the explosion shook dust from the ceiling. Knife out, into the gap. The third Orc swung its fist down in a hammerblow and I sidestepped it and put the blade through the soft spot under its jaw. It dissolved around the Knife. The fourth came from the left and I spun and cut its hamstring and it dropped and I finished it on the ground. The Killer Ants came in behind the fallen Orcs, swarming over the dissolving remains, and I swept them with a second Firebolt that cracked the corridor wall and sent fragments of bioluminescent stone spraying across the passage.
The fifth Orc caught me. Its fist clipped my shoulder and I staggered but kept my feet, and the Knife went through its throat before it could follow up. The sixth turned to run. I put a Firebolt through its back.
The corridor went quiet. Dissolving monster remains hissed on the floor. My Mind stat ached behind my eyes but the well wasn't dry. My shoulder throbbed where the Orc had connected.
Lili's hand was in my pouch.
Her small fingers were inside the opening, wrapped around the coin bag, pulling it out. She'd moved during the chaos, used the noise and the flash to close the distance, and her hand was in my pouch and her dog ears were flat and her eyes were calculating and she was already shifting her weight to run.
I caught her wrist.
Her fingers froze. The coin bag was half out of the pouch, her hand still gripping it, and my hand was wrapped around her wrist. Her bones were thin under my grip. Each one distinct.
"You don't have to do this," I said.
She looked up at me. Her gold eyes were wide and her mouth was tight and every muscle in her body had gone rigid. She was waiting for the hit. The shout. The part where the adventurer she'd robbed grabbed her and slammed her into the wall and took back what she'd stolen. Canoe and Ged had taught her that script. Every adventurer she'd ever conned had run the same one.
I held her wrist and looked at her and waited.
Neither of us spoke. Dissolving monster remains hissed around our feet. A Killer Ant leg twitched in the remains pile beside us.
"Let- let go-" Her voice was thin and high and had none of the third-person composure she used as a shield.
"I know about Soma Familia." My voice was quiet. "I know what they do to you. I know what Canoe and Ged do when you bring back whatever you've taken. I know they take it from you and then they hurt you anyway."
The composed supporter act split open. Underneath was fear, raw and young, the kind that came from hearing your secrets named by someone who shouldn't know them.
"How- how does sir-"
"And I know you're better than this."
Cinder Ella flickered.
A ripple ran across her body, her outline blurring for a half-second. The brown hair wavered and turned chestnut. The gold eyes shifted to a darker brown. The dog ears vanished and what was left was a Pallum's face. Small. Round cheeks, brown eyes too large for her head, and an expression of naked terror that the disguise had been hiding for her.
Then the magic snapped back. Brown hair, gold eyes, dog ears. Chienthrope again. But I'd seen. The real her.
I let go of her wrist.
She ran.
I let her go. She bolted down the corridor toward the upper floors, her backpack bouncing, her legs covering ground faster than I'd expected. She disappeared around a corner and the sound of her footsteps faded.
I stood in the empty corridor with monster dust on my boots and the imprint of her wrist on my palm.
I collected the magic stones. All of them. Then I headed up.
Canoe and Ged were waiting at the Floor 5 junction.
I recognized them from the anime. Big adventurers, both. Canoe was the larger one, broad-shouldered with a face that had been broken and reassembled without much interest in the result, wearing mismatched armor and carrying a mace like he meant to use it on a person. Ged was thinner, rat-faced, standing behind Canoe's right shoulder with a short sword and the posture of someone who only fought when the odds were already settled.
They were blocking the corridor. Two more Soma Familia members lounged against the wall behind them, watching with the disinterest of people who'd seen this before.
Lili was behind them. She'd stopped when she saw them, pressed against the corridor wall with her backpack pulled tight against her chest. Her dog ears were flat against her skull, tail between her legs, and she was shaking.
"Hey," Canoe said. He was looking at me, not Lili. "You're the new one. The white-haired kid she's been running with."
"Where's the take?" Ged said. "The girl owes us this week's cut."
"She's with me," I said.
Canoe grinned. Teeth missing on the left side. "That right? See, the thing is, the girl belongs to Soma Familia. Whatever she earns goes to us. That's the arrangement."
"The arrangement is over."
He laughed. It was an ugly sound. He stepped forward, mace shifting in his grip.
"Kid, I don't think you understand how-"
I hit him.
My fist connected with his nose before he finished the sentence. D-rank Strength behind the punch, weeks of training with a Level 6 behind the timing. The bridge of his nose collapsed under my knuckles and blood sprayed. He went backwards, hit the corridor wall, and slid down it with his hands on his face making a sound that was mostly blood.
Ged drew his short sword. I looked at him. He looked at Canoe on the ground, at the blood, at me. He put the short sword away.
The two Soma Familia members against the wall hadn't moved. One of them looked like he wanted to be anywhere else.
"She's with me," I said.
Nobody argued.
I walked past them. Canoe was still on the ground, cupping his ruined nose, blood running through his fingers. He tried to say my name as I passed. It came out wet and muffled.
Lili was behind a pillar. She'd moved during the punch, ducked behind the nearest cover and pressed herself into the stone. Her arms were wrapped around her backpack and tears were running down her face in silent lines. The crying was the kind that didn't make sound, because sound got you hurt. Her dog ears were pressed so flat against her skull they were barely visible, and her tail was curled tight around her ankles.
I crouched down in front of her. She was smaller from this angle, tucked against the stone, and the Cinder Ella disguise was flickering again at the edges. Her real face surfacing through the Chienthrope mask in patches. Chestnut hair at the temples. Brown eyes where the gold wavered.
She flinched. Her eyes searched my face through the tears, looking for the catch, the price of what I'd just done.
"Come on," I said. "Let's go home."
I held out my hand. My knuckles were red and swelling from Canoe's face. My palm was open.
Her fingers were cold when they closed around mine. Small enough that my hand covered hers completely. She gripped tight, tighter than she needed to, and I pulled her to her feet and she didn't let go.
We walked to the surface. Past Canoe. Past Ged. Past the two members who watched us pass and said nothing.
Lili's hand stayed in mine the whole way up. Through Floor 4, through 3, through the upper corridors where the bioluminescence faded and the first traces of surface light came through the Dungeon entrance above us. Her grip never loosened. Her fingers warmed slowly from my hand, and by the time we reached Babel her palm was damp and her knuckles were white.
The afternoon sun hit us at the entrance. She squinted and raised her free hand to shade her eyes and she still didn't let go of the other one. The plaza outside Babel was busy with adventurers coming and going and nobody looked twice at a white-haired boy holding a small Chienthrope girl's hand.
"Lili." I stopped walking. She stopped too. Her gold eyes, still wet from the crying she'd done behind the pillar, looked up at me. "We'll figure it out."
Her chin trembled. She nodded once. Gripped my hand tighter.
We walked home.