"Like hell I would know." Dante shrugged and stood up. "You're the expert on spirits, not me." He threw a glance back at Alicia, who was just waking up. "I'll get us some hot water. Help her up."
As Dante filled the tub with fresh water and heated it up, Rain helped Alicia out and got her back into the wheelchair. When Dante finished heating the water, they washed, heated what remained of yesterday's meat for breakfast, and headed out.
The caves were like Dante remembered them, endless and annoying. Countless tiny cracks, abominations that show up out of nowhere, and a lot of cold and water everywhere.
"This place is sickening... if not for those glowing mushrooms, we would've gotten lost ages ago." He sighed, and Alicia, who was on his back, smiled. "With all of those abominations, food, as disgusting as it may be, is plentiful. We can endure the cold and water. If the dungeon is all like this, unless we run into a Cursed abomination like the one Rain faced, we should be fine."
Rain looked around, "Say, is it just me or is the place a little bit less cold around here?"
The two immediately looked back at her. "Please don't say that... I know it's cold, but what would we do if this place turns into a volcano?" Dante mumbled, and Alicia immediately smacked him on the back of the head. "You also shut up!"
Two hours later, Alicia smacked him once again as they stumbled upon a burning hot cavern that had a small lava stream passing through it. "Now look at that..." Rain smiled, and Alicia could barely hold herself from swinging at her. "You also started this..."
"It's hot and humid, like a sauna." Rain looked at the flowing lava and dense water mist, and then her smile quickly faded. "This will feel nice to relax in for a while, but... how long do we have to spend in here? I can't see an end to this cavern."
Dante looked forward. "I hope not for long; we'll suffocate easily in here." His eyes suddenly opened wide, and he dropped Alicia. "Abomination ahead!"
As Alicia fell, she summoned her wheelchair and landed right on it. The moment she looked forward, Dante and Rain were already ten meters ahead of her, rushing at what looked like a charging caiman with legs as long as a cow's legs.
Just from the look of it, Alicia couldn't tell the rank, but she was certain that one wasn't a mere beast. "Careful! It's powerful!" Alicia shouted as she summoned her crossbow and aimed it, but to her surprise, the Abomination was already dead.
Rain had shocked it with a stab of her electrified rapier and Dante finished the job by stabbing it through the eye. The exchange itself lasted less than two seconds.
[You have Slayed a Thermal Lizard]
[Soul Harvested and Cleansed]
[Soul Harvest: 17/666]
The abomination was just a Mundane Monster. Dante stood still for a few seconds and sighed. "That was a quick one..." He looked around and confirmed that there were no more nearby abominations.
Rain looked at him with a cold face for a second, and then shifted her gaze to the dead abomination. "True, this one was slow, weak, but tough."
"It's just hard skin, probably so it can withstand the heat." The two walked back to Alicia, and she stared at them. "You two are monsters..." She had never expected that there were Blessed out there who could easily dispatch an abomination so fast.
"As Alexander once said, it's easier to kill a Mundane Monster than a Scarred beast." He smiled, and Rain added from behind. "He is right. If our weapons can hurt them, then it's almost no different than hunting animals."
She looked at them as if they were the actual monsters, having ended that poor abomination's life before it could even make a single sound. The poor thing.
Dante carried Alicia on his back and then kept moving deeper into the cavern, and the heat only got worse. First, it was just warmth and humidity, but eventually the heat became so unbearable that it felt like walking beside an open forge.
Soon, they found two corpses belonging to two other Blessed, and Dante could remember seeing those two back at the dungeon's entrance. From the look of it, they had succumbed to the heat.
"We probably should get going, or we'll end up like them." Rain shook her head as she saw Dante picking up the two Blesseds' tags. "Death must be respected. I'll take their tags back."
"You strangely care about the dead?" She sighed, and he stared back at her. "I think it's strange that neither of you two cares about the dead." He took the tags and stood up, picked Alicia up again, and they kept moving until they found several abominable corpses cooked and diced on the ground.
Looking at the huge wounds, it was clear that the same person who cut the abominations in the earlier caverns was the one who did this. "At least one beside us is strong enough to survive. Look at how those are cut, bones and all."
"Must be a heavy hitter... like Alexander." Rain pointed, and Dante nodded. "I really hope it's him. He is strong, so I don't think he'll just die."
They kept moving for a while until they finally found a tiny cavern at the side of the endless cave. It was boiling hot like a sauna, but... it didn't have any lava and had a stream of cold water passing through it... so it was perfect for camping.
That wasn't Dante's thought alone, as they could see clear signs of people having camped here before. The tiny room's entrance was manually dug, the ashes of a fire were in the corner, and several beds were dug in the stream of cold water.
Dante put Alicia in the cold water so she could cool down a bit. He started working on closing the entrance to keep the heat away, and Rain rushed to grab them a meal.
Soon enough, Rain returned with a dead red achesoul and gave it to Alicia to butcher. She then went to cool down in the cold water, as the heat outside was just unbearable, and in the meantime, Dante had managed to sculpt something nice with earth magic: a tiny hole in the wall that he could easily open with one droplet of mana and get access to the lava outside.
When Alicia was done, Dante cooked the meat using a flat stone on the lava to save on mana, and they had their fill before going to sleep in the cold water. Like yesterday, poor Dante had to sleep between the two, and he could barely get a lick of sleep.
Then, after hours of sleep, they woke up to the loud clanging of steel and bestial roars of abominable creatures. A fight was taking place right outside their camp.