Chapter 76 – Crimson Adventurer

“7th level, this place looks the same like all the other levels.”

“Wasn’t that hard to get here, not long and we will reach the 10th level!”

A group of young adventurers that looked to be in their late teens were going through a dimly lit path. It was a group of four people, two males, and two females. The girls had lighter armor on them while the two men had heavier. It looked like the two were warrior types while the other were the more nimble variant.

“Don’t get overconfident Rudy, you always had a big head.”

A girl with neck length brown hair called out to a red-haired boy. He was the person that mentioned the 10th floor of the dungeon they were in. The whole party here was composed of humans with the girl that spoke out at the front. She was in the middle of kneeling down and looking at an out of place floor tile.

“Never bad to have confidence!”

The young man chuckled back while looking at the girl on the ground. He could see her moving her short sword towards the floor tile. The ground here looked like it was made from large square-shaped rocks that were just dropped into position. They weren’t very even but they were enough to let people move through them without stumbling around.

“Did you find something Keira?”

The other girl from the party called out, she had a bow in her hand and a similar short sword to her side. Before she could prod for more answers she heard a strange noise coming from the side. The moment that Keira poked the rock slab enough a couple of darts shot out from the wall. With no one walking forward the darts impacted the wall on the other side with no one getting hurt.

“Just a small trap… there are a few more of these ahead so give me a minute.”

“Take your time but we need to hurry, we only have a few hours till sundown. The trip back will probably take us an hour from this level.”

“Can’t we just go through, those things don’t look that deadly to me.”

The other male moved forward. He was the largest person here at over 190 cm of height with a more robust build. He was heavily armored, with a shield and sword combo.

“Why do we have to only have meatheads in our party…”

The girl that was disarming the trap moved up while frowning. The girl with the bow just shrugged without saying a word.

“Go ahead Miron, I’m sure the poison in those darts won’t be a problem. Hope that discount steel armor will be able to hold out.”
The armored man looked at the girl named Keira and then over to the darts that were embedded in the corridor wall. They looked quite sharp and also punched through the hard wall surface cleanly. The man gave out a grunt before backing away, probably not sure if his armor could take it.

“That’s what I thought…Sansa, please watch my back.”

The girl with the bow nodded, her hair was long and obsidian. She had a more eastern look to her. She stood watch with her bow drawn while staring into the distance of the long corridor. At the end of it she could see some kind of opened gate. It looked similar to the entrance of the Albrook city dungeon. The girl knew that that type of structure indicated something, there could be monsters or treasure behind it.

It took the girl named Keira about twenty minutes to get rid of all the traps. The party of four was now standing at the end of this passage. The guys moved forward with the later, heavier armored one at the helm. He had his shield up and with his sword in hand, he was inching toward the unknown area.

“There might be monster’s inside, be careful.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Rudy complained from the side but followed closely after the main tank of the party. After venturing through the larger opening at the end of the corridor the party ended up in a wide-open area.

“Nothing in here?”

All of them entered after looking around from the entrance. The room was large and it also had a high ceiling. They could also see another opening with a gate. It looked like another there was another tunnel past this room and nothing else.

“Only one exit?”

Keira commented while looking around. There wasn’t anything in here, no monster remains or signs of other adventurers. Not like any of those would be left for anyone to see. After about half an hour any untouched body would start to vanish. This group of young adventurers knew this fact but none of them had ever witnessed it first hand.

“We should go, probably other people came through here and the monsters didn’t re-appear.”

It didn’t look like there was anything in here. Keira looked around but she didn’t seem to see anything out of the ordinary. She decided that it would be best to just move on and hurry it up.

“Might just be a dummy room, you find them from time to time. These dungeons are large, not all of the rooms have traps and monsters in them.”

“Thank you for the lesson, Professor Keira.”

Rudy replied while chuckling, the brown-haired girl stomped her foot in anger a bit but then just moved towards her party members. The two warriors moved to the front of the party again while the two girls trailed slightly behind.

“Wait…”

They were about halfway through the room before the girl noticed something.

“No… quickly, run for the tunnel!”

Keira called out while bolting towards the exit on the other side of the large room. There was a faint clicking sound, soon after the whole room started rumbling. The walls started shaking around, small openings in the walls closer to the high ceiling started to open up.

The other three adventurers were a bit surprised by their friends’ reaction but they quickly ran after her. Before they could reach the exit a wall of rock slammed down, Keira was just quick enough to run into it. She started banging on it with her fists but the wall was far too sturdy to be broken. The party of four was clearly trapped in here as the opening that they came through was also sealed by a similar wall of hard stone bricks.

“We are trapped… this was a trap…”

“Hey Keira, I thought you were supposed to be good at detecting traps?”

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“I don’t know… this trap is different… there was magic involved, I can’t sense magic traps yet!”

Keira and Rudy started shouting at each other while the two other party members looked around. They could see the holes opening up wider till they were about human-sized. They looked large enough for them to go through but before they could explore that possibility they heard a hissing sound coming from those large holes.

“You two stop arguing! Enemies are coming!”

The two turned around and were quick to spot what their archer friend meant by that. Out of those openings in the walls, monsters started to appear. The first thing that this party of adventurers saw were bright red eyes, eyes that were reptilian in nature.

One of the monsters dropped down to the ground, its clawed raptor-like legs caused the ground to crack. The creature that they were looking at was reptilian in nature, it’s body was coated with crimson leathery scales. It was the height of a smaller human at about 170 cm but some of its companions were slightly larger.