Shovels In Spades

Izumi Hara kept her silence as she watched the quiet one of the two Spanish men approach the masked individual.

She, her sister, and their two friends, had been stuck in this dungeon for days now, too afraid to answer the question after what happened when... well, when one of them actually did.

This newcomer had a great deal of power in his voice though and made even her want to answer the question she'd been asked so many hours ago by now. She was hopeful for what was to come even if she couldn't understand the foreigners.

"Puerta, ¿qué beneficios recibiría en caso que decida matar a mis compañeros?" the Spaniard said in a questioning manner. What he was questioning, she had no clue.

Hara chided herself mentally for not bringing along another teammate with a translation item or skill. 'Maybe we could have come to an agreement of sorts like the stranger has too if we could communicate... If only Yamamoto-san wasn't such a fool...'

She tried her best not to think about the corpse laying behind her and her companions. He was the first person she'd killed with her own hands, after all. It wasn't a pleasant topic to dwell on for her mental health, especially since he was starting to rapidly decompose.

"Enrique!" the woman of the other group screamed, returning Hara's focus to the Spanish and the stranger. "¡No respondas! Como líder, es responsabilidad de Jorge asumir el mando, ya sabes. ¡Respondiendo primera le estás justificando!"

'Líder.' The woman had thrown those words around a lot when talking to the larger and more irritable man Hara had noticed. 'A title, maybe? It sounds similar to English's 'leader'... At least I now know one of their names. Enrique. It's a name I recognise. There was a famous singer called that, wasn't there? Enrique Igloo or something.'

"Response: The high kingship of New Earth."

'Ambitious man. He asked what he would get like the masked man did?' Hara thought. She saw the masked stranger shake his head softly while Enrique's companions seemed dismissive of such a notion as him being a monarch. 'Poor quality friends though we are hardly much better in some regards...'

"Sí, lo haría," Enrique replied resolutely. "Yo... lo haría. Es sólo hipotético como dices, ¿no? No es que importe," he added as he looked towards the masked man with hope in his eyes.

Nodding in response, the newcomer replied, "Yes, that's right. Just think of it as a survey of sorts. It's far less serious than you're all making it out to be. I'm far more worried about more combat tests, personally."

'Say that again when you get attacked by someone you thought was a friend over what you call a 'survey',' Hara retorted from within the silence of her own mind. 'I can agree with him on his second comment though. That was no easy fight in room two. I worry what Room two has in store for us...'

'I do wonder who he really is... He's no one normal, for sure. The way he carries himself and his cold logic too... He's an experienced mercenary or dungeon delver. Maybe both. Should I risk an identify? His status could contain very crucial information should he turn on us,' she thought, weighing the pros and the cons.

Hara was relatively cautious by nature but she recognised that risks needed to be taken at times to ensure her and her kin's safety. That was exactly why she was here in this dungeon with her team. Well, what was left of her team at least.

'This wasn't meant to be a tough mission. Go in, find the missing team, escape or clear the place if it was a dungeon. Maybe the fight in Room two is what's spooked us so much and made us not want to answer that question we fear the answer to,' Hara wondered before coming to a decision.

'Shinobi's Identification,' she invoked mentally.

Her skill was a powerful version of identification that was a grade above even Higher Identification which was already rather uncommon. It would show her full statuses and anything the statuses' owner had tried to hide.

Another useful part of the skill which she had avoided telling her teammates thus far - even her little sister - was that it gave her a small piece of advice for how best to assassinate someone.

Very useful when it came to dungeon inhabitants, she found since it worked on all organisms, even plants, oddly enough.

The masked man turned to face her for a moment while the Spaniards began shouting at one another again though with the second man in tow as well.

The serious individual nodded at her slightly then turned back to ensure the other group didn't get too violent. Hara felt chills at his composure. 'He could tell...'

Not a moment later, her vision was obscured by several system notifications.