บท 33: Wanderers
In the matter of a few minutes, Zane and Azakiel arrived at where his Servant had disappeared. On the way, he'd recalled his other soldiers, but several more were lost along the way. Only Dahrka and five Taken Hunters remained, with all the rest's signals suddenly cutting off with no sign of struggle or a fight.
What was even stranger, was the fact that nothing seemed out of the ordinary where Zane was. It seemed like the average subway platform, gloomy just like the rest of this place. The air was moist, and the atmosphere humid. Apart from that, there was nothing particularly remarkable about this area apart from the few puddles of water on the floor.
Judging from what had happened, Zane had two possible conclusions. One, the boss of this Dungeon was not confined in a room, but rather already roaming the annals of this subway station. If that was the case, then things would be quite dire. But given the evidence, Zane did not think that was likely. After all, several of his Servants who had been far away from one another died nigh simultaneously, on multiple occasions. Unless this boss had teleportation abilities or could somehow kill from extremely long ranges with wall hacks, that was impossible.
Which led him to his second conclusion—that the monsters here were of an unknown archetype, unheard of before. These creatures were able to suddenly assassinate others without them even noticing, and possessed a fair amount of intelligence as well. But if that were the case then… for a D-rank Dungeon, this was going to be quite difficult.
Zane narrowed his eyes. What kind of creature could remain that discrete? Right now, the entire room was filled with Zane's soldiers. Even if the monster was invisible, it wouldn't be able to hide—it had to have a physical body, after all. And if it wasn't on the ceiling nor hiding amongst the crowd, then… there was only one place it could be.
Slowly, Zane glanced towards the ground—more specifically, the puddles of water that were found everywhere inside this Dungeon as a result of leaking pipes. But what if that was just a ploy? What if… these 'water' puddles weren't really just water at all?
And the moment Zane did so, he saw it.
Despite the illumination above his head, there was no reflection in the puddle. It was a small detail that almost no one would see unless they paid close attention, but Zane's [Eye of the Abyss] allowed him to perceive and highlight even the tiniest of clues.
There was no doubt about it. This was no normal puddle.
The instant that realization flashed across his mind, a sharp hand suddenly surged out of the water, and jabbed straight towards his face. Eyes widening, Zane quickly reacted, pulling out his daggers in an instant and swerving to the side to evade the attack before cutting the arm straight in half.
Easily, his blades sliced through the watery limb like tofu, and the sharp hand fell towards the floor through gravity before turning back into a seemingly-normal pool of water. Then, it began slowly ebbing towards its main body, like cell division but reversed.
Immediately, Zane realized what it was trying to do.
"Trying to resurrect? In your dreams."
Quickly, he unleashed a blast of purgatory angelfire towards the ground in an attempt to evaporate the water, but to his surprise, the puddle simply absorbed his attack like a bubble and dissolved the flames into nothingness.
"Impossible… it's capable of even eating my purgatory flames?"
Those flames were inherited from an angel itself. How was this weird organism able to just eat it up like it was nothing?
To answer that question, Zane immediately used his System to inspect the puddle on the floor, which had now been revealed as a Dungeon Monster. In other words, it could be inspected. Since the System worked with the host's mind, only after the host determines that it was a monster will the System also recognize it as one, and analyze its information.
But unfortunately, what Zane found was hardly useful.
[Loch Wanderer]
[Type: Other]
[Level: 18]
[Class: Grunt]
'Type… other? What the hell was that supposed to mean?'
Before Zane could think on the matter, however, all around him, a Loch Wanderer rose up from each of the four puddles on the ground and transformed into their humanoid shapes, remorselessly tearing through several of his Taken Servants that were unlucky enough to be standing right on top of them. Immediately, he ordered his Servants to fight back, but their weapons passed harmlessly through the creatures' bodies. The parts that they managed to slice off merely crawled back to their main body and reformed, leading to an never-ending slaughter of the Taken Hunters.
"Tch… this isn't good."
Realizing that his numbers were dwindling, Zane gathered up all of his Servants, and bolted from the room back the way he came from. He couldn't afford to lose any more soldiers—storing them all back into his shadow, he made his way through the empty subway station, keeping a close eye on the ground for any puddles.
They were everywhere.
From the pools on the ground, no matter how small, came these iridescent, transparent water creatures, with bubble-like bodies that absorbed whatever Zane threw at them. The situation was dire; none of his attacks worked, and the only fact that Zane could find relief in was that these monsters did not move very fast.
They were, however, incredibly smart. Almost… too much so.
"—?!"
Suddenly, from Zane's left, came a sharp gust of water that shot out from a pipe lining the wall, catching him by surprise.
'You can even hide in pipes?!'
Of course they could. They could turn into puddles of water at will, after all. Who was to say they couldn't lie inside a pipe? A miscalculation on Zane's end.
Quickly, he ducked his head and passed through underneath, but in doing so, found himself straight at another puddle. From the water came shooting another arm, aimed directly for his heart. Despite being made of water and being virtually intangible, its attacks were deadly—and quite fast too, contrasting directly with their overall movement speed.
"Shit—!"
Right before the tip of its hand could drill through his chest, Zane used [Teleport] to get away with just a slight graze. Any deeper than that, and his heart would've been skewered.
"That… was too close," Zane muttered. "But as it would seem… I'm not quite out of the fray yet, huh?"
Unfortunately, due to the urgency in the situation, he couldn't decide where to teleport to—and glancing around, he realized that he was surrounded in a four-way intersection—the conjunction that had escalators and stairs leading to the different subway platforms. From all directions, the army of Wanderers limped towards him, humanoid bodies featureless. Apparently, they had forced him here on purpose.
'This level of coordination… it's almost frightening,' Zane thought, gritting his teeth before looking at the ceiling and contemplating.
'Tch… there's no other choice. Blindly teleporting is a bad idea, and I could end up suffocating myself if there was nothing but debris up there. But… there really is no other way.'
He knew the layout of this subway station fairly well. If the Dungeon version of it was completely identical to the real-world one, then there should be a few fast food restaurants above this floor, intended to provide quite bites to passengers waiting for their ride to arrive. He didn't know where exactly he'd end up, but it should be in one of those places.
This was a gamble—and one he was forced into taking.
'Well—this isn't my first rodeo.'
As the Wanderers drew nearer, Zane steeled his resolve, and [Teleported].
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