Ch.33
We'd never gone past Floor 12 before.
Floor 13 smelled different. The stone was darker and the air had a weight to it, denser, humid, and the Dungeon's glow was dimmer down here. The corridors were wider but the ceilings were lower, which meant more room for monsters and less room to dodge. Lili had mapped the floor layout from Guild records before we came down. She walked with her routes memorized and her crossbow loaded and her pack riding high on her shoulders.
Welf kept his greatsword loose in both hands. He'd been quiet since we passed the Floor 12 entrance. The Middle Floors had a reputation and he knew it.
"Stay tight," Lili said. "Lili will call formations. Bell-sama takes point. Welf-sama takes rear."
"I'm rear guard?" Welf said.
"Welf-sama has the widest weapon. Rear guard covers the most corridor."
He couldn't argue with that.
Floor 13 was manageable. We cleared a chamber of Hellhounds and a corridor of Almiraj without slowing. The monster crystal drops were larger down here, heavier in Lili's pack, worth more at the exchange. Floor 14 was the same but denser. The spawns came faster and from more directions. Welf caught a Silverback that tried to flank us through a side passage, and Lili kited a pack of Imps into my Firebolt range where I dropped them in two shots. Lili's commands were sharp and we followed them because she was right every time.
Floor 15.
A Minotaur came through the entrance of a wide chamber as we crossed it. Tall, horned, dark-furred, the same species that had chased me through a corridor on my first day in this body. The same monster that Ais had cut in half while I sat in a puddle of blood.
I put the knife through its throat on the first pass.
The Minotaur dropped. Its knees hit the ground and it toppled forward and the crystal in its chest cracked on impact. I pulled the Hestia Knife free and wiped it on my pants and Welf was staring at me.
"That was fast," he said.
"They telegraph the charge. Watch the left shoulder. It drops before they lunge."
Another one came from the far corridor. I let this one get closer. Sidestepped the horn, cut the hamstring, and put the knife through the back of its neck as it went down. The whole thing took four seconds.
I used to run from these. Bell's body used to shake at the sound of them. Now the sound was a tell and the charge was a pattern and the Falna buzzed warm in my spine after each kill, eating the excelia.
Welf handled a Hard Armored that came through a side passage while I was finishing the second Minotaur. Lili collected both crystals and added them to the running tally she kept under her breath. Her brown eyes tracked me when she thought I wasn't looking.
Floor 16.
The corridors narrowed. The Dungeon's glow was amber and dim and the spawns were unpredictable. A group of Lancer Beetles came from ahead and we fought through them. Their shells were hard enough that Welf had to pry at joints and I had to use Firebolt at close range, the bolts punching through the carapace at the seams. Lili's crossbow bolts bounced off the front armor but she found the gap between the thorax plates from behind and dropped two of them with precision shots that Eina would have called impossible for a Level 2 supporter.
We pushed to Floor 17.
The corridor opened into a long passage, wider than the floors above, the stone walls streaked with mineral deposits that caught the dim light. We were two hours past our usual turnaround point. Lili hadn't called the retreat yet, which meant she was pushing the margin on purpose.
The noise came from behind us.
A rumble. Low, building, the sound of many bodies moving through stone corridors in the same direction. I stopped. Welf stopped. Lili's ears went up.
"That's a lot of footsteps," Welf said.
I knew what it was before I saw it. Pass parade. One group drives a monster horde into another party's path. I'd seen it in the anime. I knew what came next.
"Run," I said.
"What-"
"Now. Forward. Lili, fastest route to the next floor."
Lili didn't ask why. She read my face and she ran. I grabbed Welf's arm and pulled him and behind us the corridor filled with the sound of charging monsters. Minotaurs, Lancer Beetles, Hellhounds, all stampeding in a mass that shook the stone under our feet.
We ran. Lili led us through a side passage, then left at a fork, then down a slope that was steep enough to slide. The horde hit the intersection behind us and split, some going straight, some following. The ones following were faster than the ones that weren't.
I turned and fired a Firebolt down the corridor behind us. The bolt hit the lead Minotaur in the chest and it folded but the ones behind it trampled over the body and kept coming.
"Bell-sama! Left!"
I went left. Welf was ahead of me, his greatsword on his back, running full out. The corridor branched again and Lili took the right branch and I followed and the stampede noise was fading behind us, the horde splitting further at each junction, the density thinning.
We slowed. My breathing was hard. Welf's was worse. Lili was breathing through her nose, controlled, her crossbow still in her hand.
"Pass parade," I said.
"Deliberate?" Welf asked.
"Yeah. Someone drove that at us."
"How do you know?"
"Monster hordes don't run in one direction on their own. Dungeon spawns scatter. That was herded."
Lili's eyes were sharp. "Lili noticed the same thing. The herd pattern was artificial."
A sound from the passage behind Lili. Fast. Clicking on stone.
The Lancer Beetle came through the side corridor at full speed. I didn't see it until it was past me. It hit Lili from behind and its horn punched through her backpack strap and into the wall beside her, pinning her against the stone. The horn was through the strap and the leather and the wall. One inch to the right and it would have gone through her ribs.
Lili made a sound. Short, sharp, cut off. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was open and the beetle was pushing forward, its legs scrabbling on the stone, trying to drive the horn deeper.
I grabbed the beetle with both hands. My fingers closed on its carapace and I pulled. The shell was slick and hard and the beetle weighed more than I did but the Falna was singing in my arms and I ripped it off the wall and threw it and it hit the far corridor wall and its legs kicked once and I was on it and my hand went through the cracked carapace and found the magic stone and crushed it.
The beetle dissolved. My hand was bleeding where the shell had cut it. My other hand was bleeding too. I was kneeling on the corridor floor with monster dust dissolving around me and my hands were shaking.
Not from the fight. From the inch between the horn and Lili's ribs.
Lili was still against the wall. Her backpack strap was torn. The hole in the stone where the horn had been was the size of my fist. She slid down the wall until she was sitting and her hands were in her lap and she was looking at the hole.
Welf was beside her. "You okay? Lili?"
"Lili is fine." Her voice was steady. Her hands were shaking.
I stood up. My knees were unsteady. The corridor ahead sloped downward and the air coming from below was different. Cooler. Wetter. A breeze that shouldn't exist underground.
"We go down," I said.
"Down?" Welf said. "We're on Floor 17. Down is Floor 18."
"Floor 18 is a safe floor. No natural spawns. We rest, we recover, we go back up when the horde has dispersed."
Lili looked at me. "How does Bell-sama know Floor 18 is a safe floor?"
"Eina told me." True. She had. I'd also watched Bell learn this on a phone in another life, but the fact held.
We went down.
Floor 18 opened like a sky.
The ceiling was gone. Or rather, it was so high and so covered in crystals that it looked like a sky, blue-white and glowing, the light coming from everywhere and nowhere. The floor spread out into an open landscape that shouldn't exist underground. Trees made of crystal grew from patches of earth. A lake sat in the middle distance, its surface catching the ceiling light. Grass. Actual grass, green and soft under my boots.
I'd seen it in the anime. The screen hadn't done it justice.
Welf stood at the edge of the entrance and his jaw was open and his greatsword hung from his hand like he'd forgotten he was holding it.
"What the hell is this," he said.
"Under Resort," Lili said. She was already assessing. "The safe floor between the Upper Floors and the Deep Floors. Monsters don't spawn here naturally. There's a town on the far side of the lake. Rivira."
I led us to a crystal tree near the lake's edge. The tree was pale blue and translucent and it gave shade that was cool and clean and the grass underneath was dry and soft. I set my pack down. Welf collapsed against the trunk and closed his eyes. His shirt was torn across one shoulder from where he'd clipped a wall during the run.
Lili sat down against the tree. Her torn backpack strap hung loose. The cut near her right eye was bleeding. Shallow, from the beetle's horn scraping past, but it was running a thin line of blood down her cheek.
I crouched in front of her.
She looked at me. Her brown eyes were clear. Tired. The shaking in her hands had stopped but her knuckles were white where she gripped her crossbow.
I put my hand on her face.
My palm against her cheek, my fingers curving around her jaw. She was small enough that my hand covered most of the side of her face. Her skin was warm and dirty and there was blood running from the cut and I wiped it with my thumb. A slow drag across her cheekbone, collecting the blood, clearing the line of red from her skin.
She leaned into my palm. Her eyes closed. Her body settled against the tree and her weight shifted into my hand and she was breathing out long and slow.
"I'm okay, Bell-sama."
"You almost weren't."
Her eyes opened. Brown and steady and close to mine. My thumb was still on her cheek, the blood smeared on the pad. Her hand came up and her fingers wrapped around my wrist and she held my hand against her face.
"Bell-sama's hands are shaking," she said.
They were. I hadn't stopped.
"Lili is worth shaking over," she said quietly. "Lili will take that."
She let go of my wrist. I pulled my hand back. The blood on my thumb was drying. My hands were still shaking and I put them on my knees and pressed down until they stopped.
Welf was pretending to be asleep against the tree. His eyes were closed but his breathing was too even and his jaw was working. He'd learned this from the church basement.
The crystal ceiling above us glowed. The lake was still. Floor 18 was quiet in a way the Dungeon never was.
I sat down next to Lili. Our shoulders touched. She didn't move away. The Falna hummed warm in my back, absorbing everything. The combat, the panic, the inch between her ribs and a horn.
The crystal light caught the blood on my thumb and turned it dark against my skin. I wiped it on my pants.