Chapter 14 – Down The Hole.

“That was an annoying pile of rust.”

“You mean corroded, right?”

“Just shut up about that already, let’s just get out of here!”

“If you so please, Madam~”

The archer from the group attempted a very formal bow, or at least something resembling it. His lack of training in such matters made his performance rather stiff. The team leader Livi sighed and delivered swift punishment to her party member by kicking his leg. Instantly, the man recoiled in pain but luckily most of the damage was taken away by his shin protector.

“Ow…Not the shin…”

“Stop playing around, let’s get that gauntlet that monster left and get out of here. I bet Dedrick probably got lost somewhere in the dungeon again.”

“Aye, he should have caught up to us by now.”

The dwarven warrior responded after extracting his halberd from the undead creature he had just defeated. A few of them made it over the bridge that their target had fallen from. While they intended to capture the entire creature, it was sufficient to bring a part of its body to present to the guild as proof.

“It doesn’t look much better than the metal from the other living armors, can we even sell this for more than a silver coin?”

“I don’t know, it had a strange name to it, never heard of a Twilight variant, maybe we can sucker in one of those alchemists.”

“Those guys? Yeah, those idiots love to pay good coin for these unique monster parts.”

Livi dislodged the gauntlet from the sticky net that it had been stuck to. After looking at it for a moment, she shrugged and tossed in into a bag that was carried by her warrior friend, Reistel.

“Let’s find Dedrick and grab whatever else we can from this low-rank floor, but it probably won’t be anything worthwhile.”

The trio soon left with their spoils and left the fallen living armor behind. In their minds, this was the end of their mission and after reporting their findings to the guild, they would be done with everything.

“Hey, Keyon, what are you waiting for? Let’s go!”

Livi spotted her archer party member looking at the seemingly bottomless pit without moving and eventually moved over to confront him.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know but I didn’t hear the voice of the world.”

“Oh? Do you think it might still be alive?”

“I’m not sure, this pit is deep, it could be out of range for me to get any experience or perhaps I didn’t do enough damage for it to count?”

“Hm…Well, not like we can do anything about it now. We’ll just report this to the guild too.”

Both of them glanced down but eventually retreated to the path they came from. Even if the monster somehow survived, it was much too weak to pose a threat to most adventurers. All the group of adventurers could do was relay this information and then collect their reward. They didn’t care about what the guild did afterward, nor did they concern themselves with the safety of other adventurers who might be in danger.

*****

‘Somehow, I’m still alive? But… I might not be for long…’

For a moment, Rusty found himself falling into the deep and dark gorge that seemingly had no bottom. While he didn’t quite reach the bottom and his fall had been cushioned, he still found himself in a dangerous position. At some point during his descent, he collided with something that softened his fall. It was similar to the sticky net that had ensnared his gauntlet but it was on a much larger scale.

He couldn’t move and just like before, was stuck. The fall had dislodged some of his armor pieces, and he was missing one of his legs. His armor had somehow survived the fall but had become cracked in a few places. While he was still alive, a big problem was approaching and it looked rather hungry.

A creature emerged from within the darkness. The absence of any light didn’t pose a problem for Rusty, as he was still just a piece of living armor. He perceived the world differently than humans, and even in fully darkened places, he could still see. This creature was quite large and slowly crawled toward him on its eight legs. It resembled some of the bugs he used to kill to gather one experience point, but it was much larger and looked much more dangerous.

‘What should I do?’

He tried to wrestle himself out of the sticky net but was unable to move. His movements seemed to only irritate the large spider creature that was approaching, as it shook the web he was entangled in. When he looked around, he noticed that he was not the only one there. Many other creatures that had now turned to skeletons or were wrapped up in the netting were present. Perhaps even the adventurer that he had caused to fall into the chasm had made his way down.
‘There is something different about this creature… it doesn’t feel like it belongs here.’

One particularity about this monster was that it felt different than the dungeon monsters he had previously encountered. Within the dungeon there was a type of sense of belonging, it was a sort of barometer that every creature there had and it helped him distinguish between his allies. It seemed as if this thing was not born of the dungeon, and it wouldn’t hesitate to tear his body apart.

To make things worse, this spider monster was already munching on Rusty’s missing leg. He could see his sabaton vanishing into its gullet. He knew that these creatures normally preferred to munch on more fleshy monsters but this one seemed to have an appetite even for metal. Considering that he couldn’t move at all, this seemed like the end of his adventures. Just as he had managed to escape the group of adventurers, he was now going to really perish again.

‘Will I lose my levels and evolution?’

He was not afraid of death, as the two previous times he was just reformed as the same corroded armor. However, after gaining many skills and experiencing his first evolution, he was unwilling to simply give up. An emotion akin to pride began forming in his metallic form and he could not be sure if reviewing was even an option. For some reason, he felt that the dungeon’s influence was a lot weaker here and that if he accepted his fate now, all of it would end.