Chapter 79: Embracing Danger (Patreon)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RjQa17L__z3emzRd56iNDqHxqYRDAEz8jFqm-JMy8p8/edit?usp=sharing

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"What's that?" Velic asked as they froze in place. They all turned to Marvenal, who shrugged and shook his head.

But then there was a follow-up noise, one that Cayden had no trouble recognizing: a high-pitched scream, echoing through the dungeon.

Cayden had heard many screams throughout his life, each with its own unique sound and tenor. Screams of laughter, from kids playing behind the orphanage. Screams of anger, between couples who didn't realize how thin the walls were of their apartments. Screams of fear, from novice adventurers who were less prepared for the danger of dungeons than they thought they were.

Yet this was a different scream, one that Cayden had only heard rarely, but was indelibly carved into his memory from the time he'd hidden with his sister in an overgrown berry bush.

It was a scream of pain.

"What are you doing?" Velic asked, and Cayden turned to his roommate, surprised to find him so close. Somehow, without realizing it, he'd pushed past Marvenal and taken three steps toward the source of the scream before the first echo had faded.

It only took a moment, however, for his conscious mind to catch up and agree with what his unconscious mind had already decided.

"I'm going to help," he replied simply. He moved to squeeze past Velic, but Velic shifted to stand in Cayden's way.

"That tunnel leads to another region. You go over there, you could cost us our ranking," he said, and held up the orb as evidence. While it still glowed primarily baby blue, there was also a tinge of green mixed in – a sure sign that they were near to another region of the maze.

Cayden's glare sharpened, and he opened his mouth for a scathing retort, his frustration with Velic bubbling over.

But a moment later he closed it again, and his gaze softened just slightly as he stared at the noble boy's slightly shaking hands.

Velic was a young, sheltered noble – older than him physically, yet so much younger in experience. Though this world's standards were different, he wouldn't have been considered an adult on Earth. And despite their time spent together, Cayden didn't truly know him – but he did know a bit about his background.

He was the firstborn son of a duke, one of the most powerful men in the kingdom. While he was privileged to receive automatic admission into Delver's Academy, Cayden had no idea if he actually wanted to be there. Peer pressure and reputation forced pretty much every noble into the academy, with ridicule and dishonor as the rewards for those noble families who didn't attend. It was quite possible that this test was the first time Velic had been in combat without any immediate supervision from someone much more powerful.

Cayden delved for many reasons: to get stronger, vengeance for his parents, and to prevent what happened to his family from happening to anyone else, with the academy as a means to those ends. And all three of those ends demanded Cayden find the source of the scream and help kill whatever was causing them. Yet, his teammates, he realized, might not be driven by those same motivations – and that wasn't necessarily wrong.

[New Skill Available: In Another's Shoes (Passive): Gain an intuitive understanding of different perspectives, allowing the user to better discern the motivations of others.]

Cayden dismissed the notification with an annoyed grunt – what a time to get offered his first social skill – before he gently, yet firmly, placed his hands on Velic's shoulders and moved the smaller boy out of his way.

"You don't have to come. But someone could need help, and I'm going." He heard spluttering from Velic, but Cayden was already gone, squeezing by Delphia and then sprinting down the corridor from where a new cry of pain was echoing, leaving his team behind.

The cry quickly faded, but several thumps echoed through the dungeon to replace it. It wasn't a perfect means of navigation – Cayden could only tell the general direction of the source of the noise, and the nature of the dungeon meant there wasn't a straight path there. But fortunately for him, each time he arrived at a fork, it was always fairly obvious which direction the sound was coming from. He would get there eventually.

And after only three minutes of running down corridors, dodging past, and sometimes through, the grasping claws of esprits that reached out for him, eventually finally came.

As he'd run, the corridors and nature of the maze slightly changed, the passageways getting wider with some slight discoloration and scratches marring the walls. It was confirmation that he was entering a separate section of the maze, an environment more suited to whatever monsters called this region home, and the room he finally emerged into was the final evidence of that change.

It was a wide room, completely square as far as Cayden could tell, about a hundred feet across. Wide painted pillars stretched from the floor to the ceiling every ten feet of the room, forming a grid of close to a hundred pillars making up a disconcerting design with the way they seemed to move in and out of line with each other depending on where Cayden was standing. Yet for all that the room was so different from anything else Cayden had seen in the maze, it held his attention for less than a second.

He was more occupied with the occupants of the room.

The first to draw his eye was the monster: so different from anything he'd ever seen before, if it hadn't been for his monster traits class, he wouldn't have known where to start.

With the way greyish cloths wrapped around its somewhat-humanoid form, it looked similar to a mummy, a low-leveled undead-type monster that wouldn't be any trouble for anyone but the greenest of adventures. Unfortunately, it very obviously wasn't a mummy. While some of the cloths remained wrapped around its 'body', the ends of the cloths shot out from it like projectiles, shooting through stone pillars with dangerous ease. The longest of the wraps extended thirty feet from its body with the shortest being only a few feet long, but as Cayden watched the longest retreated while the shortest shot out, reaching further than the previous longest as it punched through another pillar.

Were they somehow part of its body? The way they wiggled like tentacles in the air made Cayden think it might be an 'eldritch' class monster, an extremely dangerous and unpredictable type of monster that could only be found in a single A-ranked dungeon in the kingdom. It certainly shouldn't have been in this dungeon, much less during a test of academy students.

The cloths over the monster's chest parted, revealing a black, gaping maw – out of which rocketed a dozen spikes, each longer than Cayden's arm, which shot across the room, exploding through any pillars that got in their way. None were directed towards Cayden, but he still instinctively ducked as stone crumbled and the dungeon rumbled, the source of the noise he'd been following finally revealed.

And finally, through the dust of crumbled pillars that clouded the air, Cayden saw the other source of noise that had guided him: two girls huddled behind the base of another pillar near the edge of the room. One was bleeding copiously on the floor, one of the spikes of the monster embedded fully through her chest. She was either unconscious or dead; from the way the other girl huddled over her, Cayden believed – hoped – only unconscious. The other girl was frantic as she held a potion in one hand and seemed to be deciding the best way to extract the spike from her companion with the other.

Belatedly, Cayden realized he recognized both of them.

The girl with the spike through her chest was the gorgon girl from his frontline combat class, the one closest to Cayden when it came to passive defenses and who had been adamant about frontliners tanking hits for their teammates. And the girl crouched over her was Marrianne. Which meant...

Cayden scanned the room one more time, and this time noticed the adventurer who was engaged with the monster: the princess, dodging around pillars and flipping over shooting cloths that attempted to skewer her, moving faster than Cayden had seen anyone save Ignar move.

He was knocked from his stupor by a small form rushing by him, and he flinched back and raised his claws in preparation. Only to be surprised to see Delphia sprinting past him toward the wounded girl, uncaring of the chaos of the rest of the room.

Cayden blinked. He hadn't expected any of his team to accompany him, and he hadn't heard a peep from Delphia as she'd followed. He turned and looked back toward the corridor he'd run down, half expecting Velic and Marvenal to be waiting there as well, but was met only with an empty tunnel.

Oh well – Delphia was already more than he'd expected, and he refocused on the task at hand. In the few seconds he'd been distracted with Delphia's arrival, the monster destroyed several more pillars with its shooting cloth projectiles. The princess seemed effortless in her ability to stay ahead of the attacks, but Cayden knew she couldn't keep it up forever. The pillars that she used for cover were slowly being destroyed, and he could see how over half of the pillars surrounding the monster were already gone as the princess worked her way in a circle around it. And from Elise's explanation, Cayden knew the 'sacrifice stat' skills couldn't be used indefinitely. Eventually, either her mana or the skill's duration would run out, and her dexterity would return to normal, leaving her helpless in the face of the monster's attacks.

Cayden had no idea where the instructors who were supposed to be monitoring the test were, as this was obviously beyond what students should have been expected to handle. But Valeria didn't have the luxury of waiting for assistance much longer. She needed help now.

So, after taking a deep breath, Cayden stepped forward and activated [Taunt].

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Hey everyone! Sorry for the slow chapters -- this one is a bit shorter to get back into it, but the next one is longer, and I'll have it up in the next few hours.