Chapter 449: The Sun
Inside the crystal tower, they found a dungeon. But not a dungeon composed of natural habitats, one that seemed entirely made up of maze-like caverns with only one way in and one way out.
Even looking for the edges of the dungeon proved futile, as all they found were walls of dark purple crystal, so close to black the color would appear so without light.
And then there were the denizens.
Monsters clearly made up of mundane, corrupted creatures and strange dungeon denizens. They stalked the halls, as if perpetually hungry, attacking the group as soon as they neared, swarming and biting things with terrifying shrieks and moans.
Despite her role, they found no adventurers that Janice could charm and kill. Only the corpses of some, and something worse than corpses for others. Corrupted people, their bodies bloated and torn. Most were slow stalkers, but some were so far gone that they were covered in spikes and pulsing, poisonous veins.
It fell to Rain and Lucifer to take those poor souls down. The worst were those who retained enough human thought to use cries for help to lure them, repeating the same screams or words over and over. The monsters didn’t attack them, but they did gather where the corrupted people were to wait in ambush. Eventually, the group ignored all cries unless they discovered it was the only way to advance.
By Janice’s counting, there had to be at least fifty stories worth of floors going up, but as with "normal" dungeons, the inside was far larger than the outside, so there was no telling how many floors they had ahead of them. They assumed they were near the top because they scratched the floor numbers into the exits and entrances, and now they were at forty-seven.
Rainier brought down his blade on the skull of a massive raven-like monster, spilling its insides in a plume of purple-green blood.
Unexpectedly, the corpse continued thrashing, even in death, pulling Myrti onto her belly as the chain of her kusarigama was tugged away.
"Drop your weapon!" Rain shouted as he leaped in, stabbing for the cluster of corrupted veins that indicated where the monster’s heart would be.
Myrti quickly obeyed, rolling away from the beast and cradling her scraped arm as Rain stabbed and stabbed until the body stopped moving.