Midori clamped her hand over my mouth the instant the scream clawed up my throat. Midori's hand was cool against my lips, smelling faintly of oil and smoke. The scream died there, smothered between my mouth and her palm.
Okay, in my defense—now seeing one of those monsters for the first time wasn't on my medical curriculum, and I fully understood why Midori had tried to stop me from seeing one back then when we were initially attacked.
We had been following the howls for a long while now (I want to say… half an hour or so?), and the pack that we had been following had suddenly become quiet, all except for the shuffling of leaves and clawed feet.
We were hiding just out of view behind some trees that looked rather deliberately placed by the devs around a clearing. The air here was damp and heavy, smelling faintly of moist moss and wet bark. The leaves shivered overhead, whispering secrets that made my skin crawl. This encounter was probably coded to happen…
Either way, we must've been noticed somehow, as a sound grew closer, like wet sniffing or someone trying to inhale through a punctured lung. It was paired with unsteady, menacing footsteps.
I trembled behind the ragged, ancient trunk of the massive tree we laid prone, only somewhat obscured by undergrowth. That breezy bush to my right looked as if you could see right through it if you looked hard enough, and the small feathery ferns and the like didn't do anything for us at all....
Lilith somehow looked steadier than me.
Then, a large humanoid head poked out from the clearing, towering above us. It looked… twisted. Its teeth had been sharpened into razor points like needles, and its ears had stretched backwards—like a grotesque mimic stealing features from an elf. Its eyes were almost invisible, little black pinpricks against pale, sickly skin, the colour of curdled milk.
What scarce light that made it from above crawled over its body, reflecting off the wet sheen of its beady eyes. A long, slobbery tongue flicked from its open mouth.
I froze as it tilted its head and sniffed the air.
Opening its horrid mouth, it screamed. The sound tore through the clearing like a siren made of broken glass. My bones buzzed, my teeth ached, and I could almost feel it crawling inside my skull.
My brain short-circuited. A scream ripped out of me before I even knew it—
"MMMMMPH—"
Luckily, Midori moved faster than thought, probably saving us all from a respawn. She spun, practically throwing herself on top of me, both hands clamping down over my mouth again.
Unluckily for us, however, the monster heard my scream, and its head snapped toward us.
A claw like a set of blackened knives tore into the bark just above our heads, and little bits of the dark wood flitted down like flies, sharp and sticky with sap. The bark's raw, natural scent filled the air, mixed with the creature's foul breath.
Oh. Oh fuck. We were dead. We were so dead.
Please don't see us, please don't see us—
I could feel my pulse pounding against Midori's palms. Her hand trembled slightly, and I could hear both our hearts thudding in uneven sync—hers quick and shallow, mine a frantic hammer in my chest. Every breath I took sounded too loud, and I could almost feel them reverberating inside my head.
For what seemed like millennia, the creature loomed over us, close enough that I could smell it. Metal and rot, metal and rot, mixed with a tinge of acrid smoke…
I almost choked.
Then, as if the devs were answering my prayer, the monster's nightmare fuel-ish face withdrew itself, and its footsteps receded back into the clearing.
Midori stayed where she was, her entire body pressed over mine, holding me still. I was trembling so badly she probably thought I was having a seizure.
And right then, I got it, why she'd tried to hide it from me earlier when we'd been attacked.
And here I'd thought she was being overdramatic, but really, she was just being kind—devs, you really outdid yourselves on this one…
Phew.
Eventually, the forest quieted. No breathing, no rustling—just our heartbeats and the faint metallic click as Airi's gauntlet shifted.
"…Looks like we found their den," Dame Airi murmured.
Wait, hang on.
Back up.
I barely registered Dame Airi's words—true, we'd found our objective, but...
...
...I was too busy only just realizing that Midori was still on top of me. Her thighs were bracketing my waist, and her warm and shaky breath brushed my cheek.
I trembled, this time because of a completely different reason. Heat began washing up my face like I'd just emerged from a sauna as my heart began to pick up its paces, jumping to monitor-level peaks.
Mmmmmn… ///
The weight of her pressed down, grounding and dizzying all at once. Midori's faint lily scent, mixed with the light smell of her body and sweat wrapped around me. I couldn't really breathe, but she smelled so nice… God. ///
After a while Midori finally pushed herself off, rolling to the side. She glanced down at me, eyes unreadable. "You're red, Ms. Hiyomi."
How could she even see that? It was dark as hell. "A-Am I?"
She didn't answer. Just stared at her own hands—long, elegant, trembling slightly. Her expression shifted, unreadable. My mind went straight to panic mode. Oh no. Did I—oh god, did I drool on her hands?
"I-I'm sorry, did I—did I get saliva on you? I'll wipe it off, hang on—"
She raised her hand to her lips—
—And licked it.
…Bwoof.
My face went nuclear.
"W-Wh-What are you doing??? It's unsanitary, and—"
Midori licked her hand again, then delicately lifted it to her face, sniffed it and smiled.
"I—" I covered my burning face with both hands. "I don't—why—oh my god—why are you—" (Okay, that's definitely an indirect kiss, right? That counts, doesn't it? Wait, why am I thinking that—stop, Hiyomi, you shouldn't think about that—)
When I peeked through my fingers, I could see that Lilith was absolutely watching not-so-discreetly. She had her hands over her eyes as well, but the gap between her fingers was, uh, suspiciously wide.
The moment I turned, she yelped and actually covered them for real. "I-I wasn't peeking! Do you two, uhm, want some privacy or—"
"Nope!" I squeaked. "We're good!" (We were not good.)
I tried to shake off the burning sensation from my face as I crawled forward, sticking my head just past the tree line. There, under the shadow of a half-collapsed, tilting, and rotten shack, yawned a huge tunnel burrowed into the earth in the middle of the clearing.
The tunnel breathed—a low, stale exhale that smelled of rot and wet stone. A faint, echoing drip came from somewhere deep inside.
The wood of the shack had long worn away, weathered through countless years. I could see insects crawling in the rotten wood while moss and vines had made their home in the carcass of the building.
The shack was large, perhaps the size of a smaller townhouse. The front wall had all but been eaten through, and the entrance to a massive tunnel raked with claw marks and twisted footprints led up to the ground like a not-so-inviting maw.
Lilith gulped. "...What now?"
Dame Airi drew her rapier, the steel whipping to her side.
"We go scout it out."
"S-Shouldn't we go back for reinforcements? If everything down there was like what I saw earlier, then…" I shivered.
"No, Doctor, though I understand why you're worried. Any more personnel, and we'd just have a higher chance of being discovered. Besides, if we lead a force into an area while we don't have an understanding of the terrain, that'd just be asking for a disaster."
She turned around, her pink hair flowing behind her like ribbons in the dark. Lilith gave me an unsure look, shrugged, and scurried after her.
I paused at the entrance, following with Midori a bit later.
- - -
[A couple minutes later…]
The first thing that I noticed was that it was quiet. Way too quiet, in fact, compared to the howls and cries that we'd been tracking at the surface. It felt wrong, pressing in on us from all sides.
We'd been following the howls and shrieks of those things all the way down here, each one echoing through the forest canopy like metal dragged across glass… but the moment we started down the tunnel, everything stopped.
I'd expected the noise and cries of the monsters to worsen, to bounce off the walls and hammer at our skulls, but instead, the world muted itself. Every sound we made—the crunch of soil, gritty gravel, and swirly dust under our boots, the rattle of gear, even the rasp of my own breathing—came back to us hollow and distant, swallowed by the dark.
The air felt… stale. Cold, damp, and full of a faint metallic tang that clung to the back of my tongue. I wasn't sure if it was blood, iron, or just my imagination. If it was blood, then whatever it was from had long since…
Just thinking about it made me want to throw up.
The second thing that I noticed was that it was dark. Very dark. Like—"trip over your own feet and die in a pit" dark. (Or, you know, your future. Kidding! …Probably. Jokes aside, I hope you're doing okay…)
Luckily, Lilith was on it.
"Templar's Sight," she whispered. Her pale ribbons of hair lifted with the faintest shimmer of mana before falling still again. A cold, silvery light rippled through the air, and for a split second my vision fizzled like static before everything settled into shades of grey.
The spell washed the world clean of color. The stone around us glowed faintly, and our outlines—my hands, Midori's braid, Airi's sword—were tinted in subtle moonlight hues.
[Templar's Sight] was a spell that I remembered from the base game, belonging to the Priest class. It allowed those targeted by it to see in the dark to some degree, and allowed enemies seen to be marked—effectively giving the seer wallhacks on their targets for a few seconds.
Its higher mana cost made it expensive to use at lower levels, but its long duration made up for it. Lilith probably used it instead of a light spell so we didn't end up wandering through the dark with a giant 'hey, we're here!' sign floating over our heads.
We crept forward, single file, boots scuffing softly against the packed earth. The tunnel widened as we walked, the ceiling drawing back like a throat opening into a larger chamber.
Then, we stepped out into a cavern.
Eventually, we emerged into a cavern, with conveniently placed stalagmites and boulders. They looked an awful lot like hiding places designed by the devs…
There was another entrance to another tunnel, but I still didn't see any monsters. I guess we'd just have to go further down…?
We all carefully stepped into the cavern, skirting behind stalagmites and boulders. The center of the cave was suspiciously empty…
As soon as my foot left the tunnel behind us, a shimmery blue-faded translucent wall sprang up, blocking off our retreat. Not a moment later, a notification window popped up, followed by a soft chime:
———
Warning: You have entered the dungeon [Alexander's Madness]. You cannot leave without defeating the boss or respawning.
Recommended Level: Lv. 20
Highest Level Player in your party: Lv. 3 [HA_MDwastaken]
Highest Level NPC in your party: Lv. 25 [Dame Haneul Airi, the Commander]
Full Party: Lv. 25 [Dame Haneul Airi, the Commander], Lv. 24 [Midori, the Receptionist], Lv. 3 [HA_MDwastaken], Lv. 3 [Lilith_OHC]
———
My eyes scanned the prompt before locking on to the recommended level. My eyes shot up to Lilith. She looked back at me, eyes wide.
…Recommended Level, level twenty, and we couldn't leave until we either defeated the boss—yeah, that's totally happening—or respawn (die).
Needless to say, neither were great options.
…We were level three. Dame Airi and Midori were over the recommended level, but… would we just die instantly? Seventeen levels underleveled.
Holy fuck.
How was this balanced? It was a quest linked all the way back to Midori's dilemma with how to sort potions, for fuck's sake. How did I get myself into doing a level twenty dungeon?
…There has to be some other way out, right?
I pressed against the blue wall.
———
You cannot leave without defeating the boss or respawning.
———
Ah, fuck.
Well, no use panicking… we were screwed either way.
I shared a look with Lilith as Midori pressed her hand against the translucent wall next to me, examining the barrier thoughtfully.
"...Well, looks like our exit's sealed. What should we do, Haneul?"
Her eyes flicked back toward Dame Airi, who glanced around the cavern, to her hands—which I noted were trembling—and back to us. A glimmer of determination worked its way to her eyes.
"We finish what we started. We found the source of them all—now, we need to find whatever's creating them and destroy it."
She whirled around, keeping hidden behind the boulders as she pressed forward through the cavern.
Midori followed quietly, leaving me and Lilith to bring up the rear.
"H-HA…MD, do you think we'll be able to… Y-You know…" Lilith whispered to me.
It took me a minute to realize she was talking to me. Come to think of it, I'd never told her my name… "Ah. Sorry, were you talking to me?"
"Y-Yes…"
"Well… Midori and Dame Airi are well above the recommended level, so I think as long as we leave it up to them, it should be fine… right? Or at least, we can hope. This is still a story quest, so I doubt they'd throw anything super crazy at us…"
Lilith nodded. "R-Right."
"I guess we'll just have to wait and see—"
*CRACK—crumble, crash…*
I was cut off by a stalagmite snapping, swiftly followed by hysterical laughter and Midori's voice, strident with warning.
"MS. HIYOMI! WATCH OUT—"
"Mmmn?"
Something distorted above me in the pale grey haze of [Templar's Sight] —then the air split open with the crash of thunder underwater as a shadow blurred through the gloom like a streaking meteor, a rush of motion too fast for my brain to catch up.
Then I saw the curved, obsidian claws gleaming, slicing through the air toward my face.
The world of Lucidia Online seemed to slow around me.
I could hear the whine of displaced air, the scrape of its talons as they pushed off from roots and stone. My pulse hammered in my ears.
Oh—
Oh, shit—
I barely managed to lift my arm before the thing came crashing down.
The last thing I saw was a monstrous shape framed in the ghostlight mark of [Templar's Sight], flashing all teeth and hunger before the world erupted in a deafening crash and everything went white.