After the mysterious voice said its line, another voice came to Heloisa's mind.
She was with her eyes closed but suddenly felt that she wasn't in the cave with the others anymore, but she did not dare open her eyes.
The voice was a more playful and younger one than the one that brought the informations. It was a female voice and sounded like someone who had just met an old friend after years of separation.
[My, my, dear one. Took you long enough.]
((Huh? Who are you?))
[What? Don't tell me you forgot me already.]
((I'm sorry, but I have no recollection…))
[Ugh, you humans… always so untrustworthy. You forget things too easily. Not content with dying too fast, you never remember the promises of long ago.]
((What do you mean, dying too fast? What promise did I make?))
[Don't worry, dear one. I'll make you remember. For now, it's enough for you to know that you belong to me. I will claim you when the time is right. For now, just remember that I am Yakozen, the Radiant Night Fox, and you are my priestess.]
After hearing those words, Heloisa's mind went dizzy, and she felt her whole body going limp, as if she was falling into an infinite abyss.
After some time of falling, she managed to open her eyes.
"Heloisa! Helo!!!"
Marina was holding Heloisa's head on her lap, and everyone was surrounding her, looking very worried.
"Guys… did I fall?"
"Helo, you just scared us to death!!!!"
As Heloisa sat up, Marina hugged her, crying. The three boys just looked at each other and smiled.
"What happened?"
"You know, I'm the one who should ask you that question. What did you do? You just knelt there to pray, then that voice sounded in our head, and you fainted. Gladly, it was for a short time, but I almost had a heart attack!"
"There, there… you're such a worrywart, Ma. I'm okay. I swear."
"Then why did you faint?"
"Some other voice came to talk to me… it was really weird…"
Heloisa told the others about the dialogue she just had with the voice that called itself Yakozen.
"So you're a priestess! So cool!!! If anyone of us would be a healer, it could be no other than you!"
"I don't know about that, Ravi. I don't feel any different from before. I don't think that I'm an actual healer or anything."
"Did that voice sound like the one from the Spirit Fox we fought earlier?"
"No, Ma. That fox had a masculine voice and was solemn and sober. While this one… was a female voice and younger. And she sounded very mischievous."
"But, if you are a priestess… doesn't that mean you should know at least something about the god you're a priestess of? Like, basic liturgy, rituals, that kind of thing?"
After Ravi's question, Heloisa thought for a little bit, trying to find something in her memory, but…
"Nope. I got nothing. I wouldn't even know how to pray properly. Not even a 'Lord's Prayer' equivalent, nothing."
Marina clasped her hands cheerfully and proposed…
"Okay. If you don't remember anything, staying here won't do any good. Let's keep exploring. I bet that we'll learn more things as we move forward."
Everyone agreed, and soon they went through the exit on the northwestern side of the cave.
Just as they were walking through that exit, Ravi asked.
"Marina, aren't you going to draw the map of this area?"
:::
After heading back and waiting for Marina to map the stretch that they explored today, they finally resumed their walk.
They crossed another corridor, reaching a new, small cave. It was completely empty, so they moved forward again.
"It seems that both caves that lead to that door are empty. I wonder why that's the case."
Marina muttered, more to herself than to the others, but everyone heard.
"Maybe those empty areas before the door are meant to give us a respite before a boss fight?"
Everyone stopped and looked at Ravi, who just said those words.
"Huh? What?"
"I sincerely hope that you're wrong this time…"
"That makes sense… it's really a common practice of level design."
"Oh, fuck."
"Please be wrong, Ravi."
Heloisa, Carlos, Henrique, and Marina reacted to his idea with worry in their eyes. A boss battle was not something they wanted to face.
After all, everyone loves the idea of being isekaid until they have to fight a boss battle in which death is literal and not just a loading screen.
"Anyway, that's not a concern at this moment. Let's focus on what we can do right now."
Marina quickly diverted the topic and continued walking forward on the new corridor.
:::
Soon they arrived at a big cave that had a pillar in the center. It had three other exits, besides the one they had just entered from, making it look like a big hub. [M]
But the most shocking thing they found was the corpses of two dead kobolds on the ground.
They looked like something had sucked their blood dry, and there were signs of a struggle. Marina walked around and found a couple of arrows scattered.
"Guys… why haven't those corpses turned into pouches?"
Henrique's question startled everyone. That was, in fact, the question that was in their minds.
Marina was the one to first dare to touch the corpses and look at what they were wearing.
One of them had a little bow, and the other had a crude spear, but both were too small, designed for the body of a kobold that is less than one meter tall. They wore tattered hide clothes and had nothing else with them.
"Ravi, here, a spear for you."
"That's not a spear, Marina. That's a skewer for barbecue, at max!"
The spear was not only very rudimentary, but the tip was wooden, hardened on fire. It didn't even have a stone point, much less a metal one. And all the arrows Marina gathered were the same.
Watching the scene, Carlos walked to Marina and presented a hypothesis.
"Would it be that the monsters that die only become a lootable pouch if we're the ones who kill them?"
"It might be… they really don't seem to have anything of worth with them. But well, now we know that there are kobolds somewhere around here, as well as bloodsuckers. And that this hub was the place of a recent battle."
Marina looked around, trying to find more clues, then added, pointing to the exit that they were about to enter if they were to keep following the 'always turn right' dungeon exploration method.
"I think that the kobolds came from that direction. And that other entrance to the left of where we came from seems to go back to a fork we passed by earlier. Which means that that other entrance is the path to the bloodsuckers' lair."
"And what do you think we should do, Marina?"
Carlos walked to her side, looking at her expectantly.
"Well, if each lair will have another piece of the key to that door, then we have no options but to fight both sides. Maybe we could talk our way out with the kobolds, but I don't know if communication is possible. What do you think, Helo?"
"If talking is possible, I would prefer to… But, somehow, I feel that we wouldn't be able to understand each other's language."
In fact, Heloisa was having a deep sense of revulsion about those kobolds. She didn't know why, as she's always been a caring girl who loved all living beings, even the ugly and despised ones like spiders.
Why would she develop this nauseating feeling about another living being right now?