Chapter 66

  Kanabo

  It takes us a while to get all of us back on our feet. Ayre and Korrigan are fine, but Leuke and I are in bad shape.

  “I thtill have a fathe, iegh?” I lisp and slur as Ayre helps me up to my feet.

  Again, Ayre averts his eyes from said face. “I mean, technically, you can’t not have a face.”

  That bad, huh?

  “...Otthui” I elven swear.

  Ayre turns red, but it finally gets him to look me in the eye. “I’ll let you off with a warning this time, but only because it sounds like you’re spitting more than saying anything, and the whack you deserve would probably finish you off.”

  “Thanh oo, ohither.”

  “I'm not your sister!”

  “Oi saie ohither!”

  Ayre takes the gun from my hand, fishes out a healing clip, slams it in, and flatly shoots me in the face. Then, after a pause, twice more. He clearly mulls it over, starts to turn away, then wheels back and shoots me three more times.

  It's a weird sensation to feel my jaw pull itself back together, and there's a brief, maddening tickle-itch in my teeth. I work my jaw over good and thorough and gnash my teeth a few times.

  “I'm glad you're getting more comfortable with shooting my gun, Ayre, but save some bullets for Leuke, too.”

  “If we ever want to get you to stop talking,” he replies as he returns the weapon to me, “we're clearly going to have to take extreme measures. Wiring it won't suffice.”

  I give my best friend a bright, sweet smile. “We Heroes are tenacious.”

  “I can think of other appropriate words.”

  “Are they in Elvish, too?”

  Ayre turns away rather than entertaining my question. “Come on, we're going to need your help getting that tree off of Leuke.”

  Korrigan looks up at me tentatively as we move toward the downed holy tree. “... Hero Remmi,” she starts, and it’s a bit of a jarring reminder that people actually use my title, “what was that thing?”

  For a change, I take a moment to consider my words, my expression serious. “Like I said before, it’s the enemy. It’s the very essence of the Corruption, the … oh, what did they call it?” I take a moment to send my mind back to the term Xuhitana used, long before Ayre and I actually encountered the stuff. “The Darkness. That was the Darkness that has covered the Western Demesne and the Heroes were summoned to fight. Or one aspect of it, anyway.”

  The pale girl frowns, not disapprovingly, but at the memory of that terrible Phantom. “You two didn’t seem very good at fighting it.”

  All I can do is sigh in acceptance of the criticism. “Unfortunately, Heroes aren’t created at full strength. We have to grow like anyone else, we just have an easier time doing it.” I motion back the way we came with my thumb. “Remember when I called the sword ogre the dungeon’s level check? Well, we Heroes just got level checked. And we didn’t measure up. Not at forty percent power, anyway.”

  Ayre gives me a worried look before moving around to the other side of the tree. “That thing was so powerful, Remmi, I’m not sure having three more Heroes would have made that much of a difference. It just would have made the fight drag on longer, not altered its course.”

  “Yeah,” I agree, looking down at the tree as an excuse to not meet their eyes. “Yeah, we’ve gotta step it up."

  I break the topic by leaning down to check on Leuke. He’s not responsive, but I don’t see any pools of blood. I place my index and middle fingers against his neck. There’s a pulse. I then lick my fingers and stick them under his nose. Air flow. He’s alive and breathing, he’s just unconscious. I’ll bet that regeneration skill he’s got is already mending everything. We’ve just got to get this tree off of him so it can do its job.

  I look across to Ayre. “I don’t think, even if all three of us knew Empower, we could get the tree off of him with brute force. The size of this thing, it must weigh five, six, eight tons! Maybe more!”

  “How do we do it, then? We can’t just leave him here.”

  I cross my arms and hold my chin with one of my hands as I consider the problem. “With a lever, I could probably roll it, but that would just be like rolling a crusher over Leuke.” My eyes light up as I give a snap of my fingers. “I’ve got it! We leave the tree right where it is!”

  Korrigan and Ayre look at me like I’m crazy. “What?!” the elf demands. “I just said we can’t leave him here!”

  “I didn’t say we were,” I counter, shaking a finger at him. “We’re absolutely taking him with us. Captain Anara and Rune would never forgive me otherwise. We’re only leaving the tree here!”

  “How are we going to get him out with the tree on top of him, Remmi?!”

  I give my foot two stomps. It’s not the hard clack of stone that comes back, but a muffled whump. “The trees are off of the floor tiling. We’re standing on dirt! The dungeon structure may be unable to be destroyed, but dirt? We can move dirt! We’ll just dig out the ground underneath him, the big tree will hold itself up, and we pull him out! Piece of cake!”

  Korrigan is looking back and forth between us like she’s trying to figure out who’s winning a game of beer pong. “How are you going to dig out all of that dirt? Do you have a special bolt for that, too?”

  But I just grin and reach into my bag, watching Ayre’s expression fall as I pull out our two camping trowels.

  “Oh, come on, Remmi! I hate doing this stuff!”

  I toss one of them over the tree to him. “Get to scooping, Ayre! You are, after all, the strongest person still on their feet!”

  He sighs, but grips the shovel, anyway. “I should have left your jaw hanging off of your face. There’s only one thing about your ideas that’s worse than how crazy they are …”

  I beam back and grip my shovel, as well. “How often they work!”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Ayre is looking about done with this dungeon … so maybe his snippiness is because he's missing the creature comforts of being back in town. I'll have to be nicer about my jokes from here on before he snaps and gets really angry. Or maybe he’s just worried about us, that would be sweet. Or maybe he really does just hate shoveling.

  Regardless of Ayre’s feelings, we plug along without further complaint, burrowing out the ground underneath Leuke. I even get into a nice rhythm and start humming a little mining song while I work. I can’t see Ayre’s reaction since we’re on opposite sides of the tree, but he doesn’t say anything about it.

  Soon, we reach a depth where Leuke shifts and the tree doesn’t, and we go a little further just to make sure he won’t catch on anything.

  “Alright, that should be far enough,” I declare, setting my spade aside. “I’m going to get under his arms and pull! If that’s not enough, I’ll use Empower!”

  And it works! It takes no small amount of tugging, but I’ve soon pulled the Swordmaster Hero out from underneath the tree. Despite my earlier criticism of Ayre for wasting healing bullets, I opt to use my healing spell. It’s far less efficient, but I don’t know how his armor might interfere with the bullets, or what kind of damage they might do to the armor.

  After a while of ministrations, Leuke’s eyes flutter open and see the three of us huddled around above him, his back against the tile.

  “... We lived?” His first words aren’t exactly heroic, but I can’t say I blame him.

  I answer with a wide grin. “Nope! You’re in Heaven and surrounded by angels, that’s why we’re so beautiful! But seriously, sorry about leaving you on the cold, hard ground. I wanted to prop your head up on Ayre’s lap because, obviously, best thighs here, but I didn’t want my best friend to get skinned alive by Anara, Rune, and whoever your third girlfriend is.”

  My comments are clearly too much for him right off the bat, and his face twists in confusion as he processes it. Meanwhile, I’m blatantly ignoring the glare Ayre’s giving me. Times like these call for levity, and darn it, I’m going to deliver!

  “Hah…?” he asks intelligently.

  I try to channel Yorin for my best motherly smile. “Don’t worry, the crisis was averted, so it’s not important!”

  “... Right …” Leuke pushes himself into a sitting position as he rubs his head. “So what happened to that thing?”

  My face jumps back to beaming. “Ayre and Korrigan saved us!”

  Ayre’s glare wilts immediately, and Korrigan looks up in bewilderment at the idea.

  “We did?” the girl asks.

  I nod emphatically. “Yup, sure did! The Phantom was just about to finish us off when they grabbed its attention! That bought me enough time to purify the dungeon core, and it shot me a pissed-off look and buggered off.”

  That sets alarms off in his eyes as his body tenses, and he immediately starts gripping for his sword. “That thing got away?! It’s still alive?!”

  I sigh and put a hand on his shoulder. “Calm down, Leuke. It’s gone and can’t come back, not here, not anywhere in this region. We’ll probably run into it again, but for now, we’re safe.”

  I watch him force a deep, stabilizing breath and wonder again what in the world the other Heroes ran into on the western border. This level of panic isn’t normal, not for someone like Leuke.

  “Besides,” I continue as I draw my hand back again to shrug, “it wasn’t like there was anything we could do to stop it. We didn’t really have the means to actually put it down. Heck, Leuke, we could barely fight it.”

  “From someone who got to watch from the outside,” Ayre contributes with a frown, “I’m not sure I’d call it a fight.”

  I shoot him a pouting glare. “Shush. Not helping. And if you keep frowning like that, you’re gonna give yourself wrinkles!”

  While Ayre takes a shocked moment to explore the edges of his cheeks with his fingers to check the veracity of my accusation, I put on a brighter expression as I turn back to Leuke.

  “On the upside, it can be fought! And we got a whole bunch of pity points from the Essence System to help us do exactly that!”

  Leuke’s eyes focus on something invisible in front of his face. “Oh, right, I got a notice about that.”

  “We got points, too,” Korrigan pipes up. “I’ve never gotten so many at once!”

  I glance to her. “How many did you get?”

  “Fifty thousand!”

  I nod, then, and turn to Ayre. “Twice the percentage as with the monster nest,” I mention, and he bobs his head back in reply.

  “It must be because there’s two Heroes here,” he guesses, “so we’re getting multipliers off of both of you.”

  That makes the little oni girl’s eyes light up. “You mean non-Heroes always get bonuses like that when the Heroes they’re with do?!”

  “Yeah,” I confirm, “but it’s less than what we get, about a quarter of the value. You’ll get enhanced point gain in general, too, but,” and I make a stressed face, “that’s kind of a temple secret, so I’ll need you to keep that bit to yourself. I only tell you at all because you’re going to figure it out when you don’t make as much away from us.”

  She gives a solemn nod. “I’ll stay quiet, I promise. I just thought the points I was gaining was because of the dungeon.”

  “The multipliers stack,” Ayre informs her. “Between constant dungeon raids and doing them with a Hero, I’m probably breaking records for growth speed. Or would, if there was enough time to spend the points back down fast enough to keep up with it.”

  I nod again, this time directly to my friend. “We’re going to need to take time for that now. We can’t be caught off-guard like this again.”

  But Korrigan speaks up again, this time with a frown. “About that, how do we get out of here? We’re at the end of the dungeon, but there’s no way back up that hole.”

  “A way will open after we finish meeting with the dungeon core,” the elf provides. “It’ll put us right back outside the entrance.”

  “Wait, really?!” It’s Leuke that speaks up, and it’s easy to forget this is probably his first dungeon. “That’s amazing! I thought we were going to have to rock climb back up!”

  “Thankfully not,” I reply as I get to my feet and dust my knees off. “I think you might be the only one to make it.”

  I go over and heft the large, metal club up off of the ground where it fell when the dungeon boss was defeated by the Phantom. It’s longer than I am tall by at least a foot, and seems beaten out of cold iron. Even with my one hundred strength, the thing’s heavy.

  The others follow me over, and there’s a moment of silence before Korrigan asks, “That’s going to Hero Leuke, right?”

  I look to the girl, raising an eyebrow. “Does it feel like we’ve earned it?”

  She looks to the ground at that, and the quiet returns.

  “Yeah, I don’t think so, either,” I agree, and heft the thing up over my shoulder.

  “What are you going to do with it, then?”

  “I’m going to give it back.”

  Without further comment, the four of us make our way over to the portal. Ayre and I step in without hesitation, well accustomed to this step. Leuke and Korrigan pause at the threshold before following us in.

  I stop before the brightly glowing orb, then bring the kanabo around to sit in both of my arms. “Hey, sorry for the mess outside,” I open. “Your dungeon’s really great. It was a lot of fun, and challenged us in ways we’ve never been challenged before. Keep up the good work.”

  To this day, I don’t know if the orbs can actually understand my feedback, but I feel compelled to say something about it each time. Maybe it’s just a waste of time, but it feels important to me.

  “In fact, uh, we want to come back sometime, if that’s okay. Because …” I lean forward and set the boss’s weapon on the orb’s altar. “... Honestly, we didn’t earn this. We got here in time to watch your last line of defense fall to Corruption, and then we couldn’t stop it, either. We’re all still here, you and us both, because I got a lucky shot.”

  I shake my head and stand up straight again. “I don’t want to rely on a lucky shot. So we’re going to get stronger, and one day, we’ll come back here again, and we’ll earn this properly. Oh!” I dig around in my bag and pull out some more Essence meals, then lay them around next to the kanabo. “And make sure the ogres get these, tell them thanks for taking care of us. And the trial halls were so much fun.”

  I step back toward the others, and Ayre guides Korrigan forward while Leuke steps up next to me. The other two follow the lead from Ayre and myself as we all bow to the orb.

  “Thank you very much, Ogre’s Grotto Dungeon Core!”

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