Walking out of the cavern with nearly depleted Mana as he needed to open the exit he sealed, Dante found himself feeling defenseless. "We should figure out another way to get in and out of this place." He growled, and Alicia, who was on his back, smiled. "Hopefully we find another Blessed who can use destruction magic."
"I know..." He looked around and could only see the souls of abominations around. "Do you think we should leave marks leading to the cavern in case someone stumbles on them?"
"This dungeon shouldn't have abominations smart enough to follow human instructions, so that should be safe." She pointed at the wall. "What about engraving?"
"That's a good idea." Dante approached the wall and, using his finger and magic, engraved a simple arrow that points directly back to the cavern base. But after just an hour of walking, they already reached a second, even more massive cavern. This one was hundreds of meters wide, had several layers with a massive hole in the middle, and was illuminated by countless glowing mushrooms on the walls.
Dante looked down with Alicia, and they could immediately see a lot of dead abominations scattered on the damp ground far below them. Other Blessed must've had a large fight here not that long ago. "Should we go down? If we do, then we won't be able to climb back up." Alicia asked and Dante sighed.
"So much for a temporary base." He jumped down, Alicia screamed, and they slid all the way down until he crashed on the hard stone. "Why would you jump down?" As she cried, he stared back at her. "I'm fine, and I didn't jump. I slid down."
"I'm on your back! Be more careful!" She growled and then punched him on the back of the head. "And what about your knees and hips? That was a several-meter-long slide!"
After bickering and arguing for several seconds, they finally decided to calm down and started looking around. Among the corpses of the abomination, there were several dead Blessed. This was the place of a massive battle, as there were tens of abomination corpses.
As they walked around and inspected them, they noticed that the some of the abominations were slashed in half, just like the ones they found in the cavern, so whoever did that had survived.
"Some have several wounds on them, some are cleaved cleanly in half, but some have burn marks." Alicia inspected the abominations as Dante dealt with the corpses of the Blessed, dragging them out of the mud and into the back, where they could bury them. But as he was doing that, he noticed something strange.
On the wall, behind a large pile of crumbling rock was a single pristine soul burning faintly on the edge of fading away, and Dante recognized it. "Alicia!" He cried and rushed back to carry her.
"What's going on?" She gasped as he lifted her up without asking for her permission. "Rain is behind the wall, and I think she is dying."
Alicia's eyes opened wide as she stared at the wall. That looked like a cave entrance that had crumbled. "What?" Dante dropped her beside the wall and immediately got to work, moving the big stones by hand and pushing the crumbling ones with magic.
"Don't rush! You'll cause another cave-in." Alicia stayed on the lookout to make sure no abomination was around, and after several minutes of constant digging, Dante finally managed to create a stable hole through the rubble that he could crawl through.
"RAIN! RAIN! ARE YOU AWAKE!?" As he shouted into the hole, he could only see faint electric sparks in the darkness. "Damn it!" He crawled through and reached her.
She was in bad shape, bruised; her armor was torn open, and the amount of blood on the ground was just horrifying. Beside her were two dead achesouls that were fried, and looking closer at her legs, they were trying to eat her and got electrocuted.
"It wasn't those two... they must've come to eat her after she collapsed..." Dante mumbled as he hesitated to touch her. But then, a spark of lightning jumped out of Rain's head and took the form of a tiny ball that buzzed around her like a terrified bee.
"You're her spirit?" Dante ground his teeth. "I can't understand what you want to say, but fuck it!" He reached down, grabbed Rain, and could immediately feel the deadly current roaring through his entire body... but it didn't hurt him as badly as he thought.
^I see...^ Dante smiled as he carried Rain toward the hole he dug. The spirit must be helping him so he can get Rain the help she needs. This has given him one crucial piece of information about Rain. Her spirit has its own personality and isn't just a source of power.
When Dante dragged Rain out and got her to Alicia, she broke down crying. "This is horrible! How could she have ended up like this?" She immediately got to healing her, and only then recognized the extent of Rain's injuries.
"Dante! If you aren't getting electrocuted, then take her armor off. There are several spikes lodged into her abdomen and thighs." He blinked a few times, sighed, and immediately got to work.
Seeing her wounds with his own eyes, he could only laugh. "She is a monster." Rain had suffered from several large cuts, so she burned them with her lightning to stop the bleeding. She must've also left those spikes inside her body so she wouldn't bleed to death.
"Stab wounds, cut wounds, damaged organs, burns, seven broken ribs, a collapsed right lung, severe blood loss... It's a miracle she survived until now."
Alicia first got Dante to pull one of the spikes, healed that wound, and then used the spike to puncture a hole into Rain's chest to drain the blood out from around her collapsed lung. She then healed the new hole. That alone had consumed more than half of her mana, so all she did next was heal several of her broken ribs.
After that, Alicia needed to rest for almost an hour and had Dante cover Rain with his cloak to keep her warm.
When Alicia finally recovered her magic, she went back to treating Rain. Finished healing her ribs first and then got Dante to pull the spikes lodged in her body one after the other as she healed the wounds.
But this was where Alicia ran out of mana again, and coincidentally Rain woke up as well. She growled in extreme pain, but the first thing that drew her mind was that she was naked, with Dante washing some of her wounds.
"You... bastard!" She growled, and he stared at her with a tired face. "Really? Are you going to argue? Your armor was in the way."
"That hurts..." She slowly turned her head, seeing Alicia, who was sitting in her wheelchair with her eyes closed, trying to recover her mana as quickly as possible. "I'm glad... she is still alive."
The tiny electric spirit started buzzing around her head, and Rain smiled. "I made you worried, Biri."