บท 25: Different
Making their way back to the entrance wasn't a problem, at the pace they were moving now, the group of four should be able to make it in much less time than it had taken them to get where they now stood.
"It's coming back!" Cassi could hear the rustling and grinding of this thing's hard body against the stone as it crawled above their heads.
Moving around swiftly and with great intent, this wasn't like a rat moving around in the attic, this thing had a clear idea of what it wanted to do and why, you could just tell by its movements.
The redhead being the only one able to hear it coming from far away, she guided her teammates so that they would turn their back to it.
By all means, it seemed like it was alone thankfully, nothing else was making any noise.
Suddenly stopping in a corridor to their right, it threw something at them from the darkness, not a brick but a mass of something putrid crushed into a ball.
Tahnee peeled it off her shield with the point of her spear as it stayed stuck there, oozing some sort of oil and reeking impossibly bad.
This went on the entire duration of their run back, the unseen creature would just throw whatever at them, be it pure stench manifested in physical form, or bricks and rocks that could definitely knock someone out, though it seemed like the creature wasn't throwing them hard enough to truly make use of their weight and sharp angles.
If it hadn't been consistently aiming for the head of Lynn and Eppie, who didn't have the luxury of a helm, they might have thought that it was just trying to chase them off.
Still, there was more fright than danger, they made it out of there in one piece.
The monster veiled by the dark stopped its assaults when they got close to the exit, crawling away and never coming back.
"What the hell was this?" Lynn questioned, her breathing a bit ragged from all that running, the fact that there was dust floating in the air inside of there didn't help her poor stamina.
"Hell if I know! That thing ate your bolt like it was nothing!" Cassi jumped in place, her helm falling out of place and getting in her vision.
"..." Tahnee wasn't shaken.
"Calm down everyone, did any of that stinky crap get onto any of you?" Eppie took control of the conversation.
Everyone shook their heads, Tahnee had blocked every single of those reeking projectiles perfectly, her shield still had some of the oil-like liquid sticking to it.
"I've never seen something like this…"
"It's consistency is so great that it looks like black worms, ugh" Lynn stepped away from this thing whilst Cassi just started poking at it with a stick.
"Alright girls, I'll take care of informing the guild, I'll tell them that we investigated what we thought was a cave and that the instant we entered the dungeon, we got attacked, alright? Don't tell anyone we tried to loot a dungeon without reporting it!" Eppie spoke calmly to Lynn and Cassi, Tahnee wasn't going to be spilling any beans unlike them.
"You know what, don't talk of the dungeon at all, don't even speak the word, if someone asks you about it, refer them to me, no matter how weird it looks or sounds, understood?" everyone nodded to their leader's pleasure.
She led the way as they went back to town.
It was still quite a shame that they hadn't found anything at all in there, it had been nothing but corridors and hallways, there hadn't even been any rooms to explore.
Without any other monsters apart from this thing that attacked them, it seemed likely that this was a dead dungeon, something of no value except to those that liked the aesthetic.
_____________________
Loimos wasn't exactly certain what those four creatures had been, his memory had been filled with information on certain species for some reason, but he didn't have much description of them.
Unlike for the monster tribes that had dwelled below, it seemed to the skeleton that knowing about them was important, goblins had been filled with terror at the mere sight of him, his presence inspired them the fear of death.
It hadn't worked in the least on those four however, clearly, the resistance and strength of those above ground was on another level compared to his previous victims, by a large margin it seemed.
Even his rot seemed less effective, as though everything that had been below the ground had simply been of lesser quality, the grass, the trees, the inhabitants…
The air wasn't the same, after waiting for the four women to leave, he peeked out of the dungeon, illuminated by the bright sunlight, it failed to blind him.
The sun was definitely much different here, it seemed huge, yet, he could tell that it was certainly much further than the replica he had destroyed.
Its light was warmer, more benevolent to those it casted radiance upon, but somehow, also hostile to him, as though trying to pierce right through his skeletal body, he may only know bits and bits about most things due to the random memories he had been gifted with, but he knew a whole bunch about his own kind.
Some undead were allergic to the natural light, some to light in general, some would even be instantaneously burnt to a crisp for merely allowing one streak of light to touch them.
Some of the dead were even weakened or unable to operate during the day, even if they were in the pits of darkness, the simple fact that the sun loomed in the sky was enough.
Loimos didn't suffer from such a weakness, in fact, he could tell that as far as weaknesses went, he didn't have any, apart from his susceptibility to life force.
He retreated back into the dungeon, he still had much ground to cover on this floor.
He couldn't simply venture to the outside when four random, peasant-looking, somewhat advanced apes were simply that much stronger than him.
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