Chapter 76: In The Imperial Dungeon

Along a wide corridor of black stone slabs, Azrael and Alina are walking side by side as they explore the third floor of the dungeon under the Imperial Capital of Siafran. This dungeon is known as the Siafran Imperial Dungeon.

The dungeon beneath the imperial soil is classified as a maze-type dungeon, the same as their dungeon on the floating island. It has six floors in total, and it is the dungeon with the most floors ever known in Western Revoria. It used to be the second largest dungeon in the region until the massive dungeon in the Tontheo Forest suddenly disappeared.

Even with six floors, this dungeon’s size is still pale in comparison to the dungeon on the floating island. While Azrael’s dungeon is measured to be more than a league deep, the deepest floor of the imperial dungeon does not even reach a tenth of a league below the surface.

From Azrael’s speculations, he assumes that this dungeon is around two hundred meters deep, which is not even half of the height of the ceilings of the sixth floor of his dungeon. But even with this size, the dungeon generates income for the majority of the adventurers in the imperial capital.

As new adventurers of the Siafran, Azrael and Alina dive into the dungeon to see how much they can earn today. With bloody blades in their hands, they sure have hunted quite a number of monsters in this dungeon.

"A giant spider in that corner," Azrael notes.

"Let me handle it."

After detecting a monster’s presence, Alina lunges herself forward with a dagger in each of her hands. When the three-meter-long tarantula-like monster shows up, unsuspecting of Alina’s superhuman speed, she has slashed her blades and easily chopped three of its right limbs.

Shiieekk!

As the gigantic arachnid loses its balance, Alina quickly steps back before thrusting her palms at the severely injured monster. Once a magic circle conjures before her palms, Alina immediately unleashes a spell to quickly finish the monster off.

"Wind Spear."

In her words, a lance of sharp and violent swirling winds flies at the spider’s head at an astonishing speed, probably maxed at less than half the sonic speed. In an instant, the Wind Spear hits the monster’s head before it pierces through it like paper.

The head explodes like a water balloon, and pieces of its flesh and exoskeleton scatter around. Alina has deployed a barrier around her immediately after casting her spell, blocking any piece of flesh and blood to smear her garments dirty.

Shortly after that, another giant spider runs through the same corridor to attack Alina. Alina quickly senses its hostile approach and prepares to take it down by thrusting both her hands at it before firing up her spell.

"Fire Lance."

A spear of spinning flames is unleashed from her magic circle, and it is flying fast at the incoming arachnid. Before the monster can react, the fire lance has pierced through its head before coming out to the other side of its head. Its internals are fried, and the spider’s life comes to an end.

"You took them out so quickly, probably within a breathspan," Azrael compliments her. "You are quite good at speed casting, while I am not as fast as yours."

"Thank you, Azrael. This is the result of the mistress’s tutelage. I know that you can be better than this latter."

"Well, I intend to learn more than speed casting. There’s this ritual casting and also this silent casting and many more ways to cast magic spells. But Claire won’t teach me those yet unless I fully master speed casting."

"I wish you good luck." Alina smiles. "Let me dismantle these giant spiders to take their silk sacks."

"Okay."

Giant spiders have little valuable parts that attract adventurers, like the eyes, which are mostly used for medicinal purposes; exoskeletons for light arm protection; and the silky webs used for making high-quality fabric.

As Alina is preparing her daggers to extract valuable parts of the monsters, Azrael hears some voices from behind. They come from a party of four male adventurers who seem to be going deeper into the dungeon. They are quite far away, but Azrael can still hear their conversation.

"—I heard that the prices for cockatrice have gone up again. That goes for other monster meat too."

"Yeah, it has something to do with the current war with the kingdom," one man replies. "They are probably rationing it to the military."

Cockatrices? If I remember correctly, they can be found on the fifth floor and below. They must be veterans.

"Hey, there are some people up there." As if it was a cue, the members of that party suddenly stop talking and start walking normally.

Even though the party is around a kilometer away from them, the man in the front, who seems to be the party’s leader, notices Azrael and Alina’s presence despite being obstructed by the black walls of the maze.

Azrael is surprised that someone is able to have awareness of that range. Not even Alina can detect presences beyond the range of a third of a kilometer radius.

On his radar, Azrael read the man’s mana as blue, the same with Alina’s. But Azrael is skeptical about it and suspects that he should be more than that, possibly a purple-cored. He might be suppressing his mana like he currently does.

As the party is getting closer to their location, Alina is done looting the spiders. Azrael then takes the silk sacks before pulling them into a leathery magic storage bag hanging on his waist that Claire provided to them.

A magic storage bag is an item that contains more space inside. The bag he is equipped with is modeled to have a space roughly equivalent to half a cubic meter. Since the items are not stored in a separate place or dimension, the bag weighs as much as its contents, but it is not a problem for the majority of adventurers.

"Well then, let’s wrap it up here," Azrael declares. "I think we collected enough loot to serve us for days."

"I understood," Alina says. "The magic storage bag is almost full, so we better get this to the association."

After hunting dozens of monsters, the pair is about to leave the dungeon on their first day as adventurers. With the map of the third floor of this dungeon in his hands, Azrael leads the way to the surface.

The more they walk, the closer they are to that party of adventurers. The two parties eventually cross paths several minutes later.

"..."

As they walk past one another, Azrael sneaks a glance at the members of the party as he finds them suspicious. To his surprise, the adventurers are eyeing not only Azrael but also Alina.

There is nothing special in the party except the black-haired man in the front, who seems like their leader. He is as tall as Azrael, and his back is broad. His body is rugged and his eyes are dark blue and sharp, which speaks volumes of his experience as a warrior.

The air around the party is tense and intimidating. Just as Azrael thought earlier, this party must hold a strong presence in the association, especially their leader. Azrael assesses him to be as strong as a greater dragon or even more.

As Azrael is inspecting them, he sees the leader stare at Alina and then the side of his lips curve, which infuriates Azrael internally. But when he comes to inspect Azrael, the man undoes his smirk before clicking his tongue for whatever reason.

"Tsk."

After that brief moment, the adventurers turn their heads forward and never look back again. Once they are far enough from them, Azrael finally opens his mouth.

"What the hell was that?" he wonders before he turns around to Alina. "Are you alright?"

"I’m fine. It is just that... that man’s stare is kind of creepy."

"I don’t know what is up with them, but they are suspicious as hell. Better to stay out of them."

"Yeah."

Afterwards, Azrael and Alina walk their way to the surface as they kill monsters along the road.

◆◇◆◇◆◇

On the third floor, the party of adventurers Azrael just crossed paths with, stopping near the stairs to the fourth floor to rest. As the leader is leaning against the wall, one of the men raises a question.

"Boss, why did you not fight that man when you have the chance? You are eyeing that woman, aren’t you?"

"Yeah. That one is a fine woman, boss. Knowing you, a womanizer, a widowmaker, you could have killed that man to get whatever you wanted."

Upon his question, the others nod in agreement and wonder. The man’s face is serious, and he does not seem to be bothered by their words. A moment later, the man finally gives his statement.

"Don’t be fooled by the looks, boys. Had I fought that man, I would be dead by now. That would go the same to all of you."

"!!!"

The whole party tenses up when their leader utters those words. They have known him to be one of the strongest among Siafran adventurers. That is why they react so much knowing that a random man could actually be stronger than him.

"Wait, that man is stronger than you?"

"There is no doubt about it. My guts are telling me not to engage in a fight with him no matter what."

"But who is he, actually?"

"That’s what I have been thinking about. He looks like a rookie adventurer to me; his face has traces of naivety to it, but there is something I cannot tell about him. He might pose a threat to us. It’s better to report it to the boss."

"That big boss, boss?"

"That big boss." The man utters his sentence with such emphasis on it.