<~> Chapter 31Using light manipution I vert the already cast [Light Orb] into a [Fireflies] spell to spread out the light evenly rather than having a siern light. With my current magic force I’m able to spread the lights out about 16 feet from myself at a detly bright strength without it creating a strain on my magic regeion. I don’t really o use magic for anything else right now so I keep this out indefinitely without any issues.

  Man’s eyebrows rose a little when she saw the extent of my ability to project my light magic, as well as the brightness of the light. She probably picked up on the fact that I had plenty more than the base 10 magic power you get from unlog the stat.

  “I didn’t know you were a mage Lilith,” said Man.

  “I’m not much of one really, all I really use is light magic, ritual magid one illusion spell.”

  “It seems you have some magic power though, I wouldn’t have really expected that.”

  Torien cut in, “Lets focus. This is the first room sure, but we’re still in an unexplored dungeon.”

  “You’re right, we should be taking this more seriously. Alright, I’m going to go in the front. You two in the middle and Torien in the back.”

  “Wait, shouldn’t I be in the front to check for traps?”

  Ah… right. I feel a little flicted on this. On one hand Torien supposedly has some skill at spotting traps, oher, because of my css I have 400 lubsp;I don’t know how that really equates to finding traps but I still feel more fortable being in front. Still, she trained for this and I haven’t.

  “You’re right. In that case, Man you’re the rearguard. Bel your job is the same as normal. Torien go first but stay within my [Fireflies] spell as much as possible. I’ll follow you at a short distance so I grab you or pull you back if needed.”

  I got an “Uood!” in unison from the group. Now that we’re finally on the same page we decide to start walking towards the open portcullis. Torien proceeds forward in a pretty unfortable looking crouch walk that leaves her close to the ground. In that moment I had the odd sensation of recalling the words of a friend I couldn’t remember, “Nobody ever looks up.” naturally the odd thought made me pay more attention to the ramparts and ceilings above us as we proceeded.

  Every now and then I peek back at the girls and they seem alert and ready to intercept anything that will e. As we’re about to ehe inner courtyard I see something strange. “Everyone wait!” Everyoops and starts searg their surroundings but my eyes are locked on one spot. I see something akin to a human face with dark eyes blending into the stones in a shadowy er ihe gatehouse.

  “[Light Orb]!” I create a ball of light and throw it at the fa the wall. I don’t really know what I was expeg but it wasn’t the horrible screech I got iurn. The wail was so loud that everyone except for Man covered her ears in shock.

  Man’s face twisted in disfort but it didn’t disrupt her from sending the spikes of ice that had been cirg her staff from shooting forward into the hideous monstrosity that nded in front of us.

  The creature was a fged monster with limbs that were bent back at weird ahe forelimbs looked like human arms bent in the wrong dire but with metal bdes protruding out of the fingers of its hand. Its back looked like the back of an emaciated old man with visible bones showing through its wrinkly skin and its legs were long, thin, and i like, giving it the impression of a praying mantis. The most disturbing part of this monster was its face however.

  Its head was turned upside dowe the creature being on all fours. It had bck hollow looking eyes with dark fluid leaking down its forehead. The face had a mouth that en showing a set of rottih in the humanlike mouth with a tohat was dry and shriveled. When I shot the light orb it had burned a mark into its shoulder after the monster avoided taking a shot to the face.

  In a split sed the monster jumped forward lunging at Torien who was still in the lead so I jumped forward to intercept. My sword sshed toward those metal cws and whewo collided it created the wail of metal oal. Torien took the p back closer to the rest of the group before starting to no arrow.

  The moarted to pull its arm back away from me but somehow my sword had caught its hand in an awkward way that tangled in its cws. The monster was impatient however and it violently ripped its hand away losing a finger and a k of flesh. I rayed with its blood while desperately trying to keep hold of my on. The creature stumbled back from the self-inflicted pain and screeched that horrible scream at us again.

  I winced but I was somewhat more ready for the awful sound this time. I lunged forward while sshing at its face but it pulled ba time to only receive a shallow scratch across its grotesque face. The creature was now more wary of me and began to s my allies perhaps to locate a more suitable enemy. However at that momentary distray instincts screamed at me to strike. I sshed forward as I drew in closer and mao lop off its left hand, the formerly undamaged one.

  The creature screamed and began to rise up onto it’s hind legs as another volley of icicles stabbed into its chest. Immediately after which, an arrow hit it dead on in its left eye. It lurched bad tried to grab the arrow with the stump where its hand used to be and instead hit itself in the faog it back against the wall.

  I didn’t want to get any closer to the rampaging monster so I tried casting light magic at it again, ting on the magic to burn it once more. “[Light Orb]!” I yelled as I cast the spell. It moved about as fast as a softball but when it hit, the creatures skied as if it had been spshed with boiling water. A moment ter another arrow buried itself into the creature’s chest, about where a heart might be, assuming it even had one.

  It was unclear if Torien had actually dealt the final blow or if it was a bination of our efforts but the hideous monster fell forward and nded with a loud thud apanied by the snapping of arrow shafts that broke against the stone ground.

  “I don’t see any more threats but I didn’t see that one in the first pce Lilith!” Bel yelled out.

  I cast anht orb and moved it across the ceiling of the building looking for any more discrepancies but found nothing. After a few moments of everyone searg the area in all dires we finally rexed enough to decide we were no longer utack. Just afterwards a notification came through.

  [Your party has defeated a Shadow Horror][Bck Cat has increased from level 1 to level 2][Light Magic has increased from level 2 to level 3]

  “What the FUCK was that thing?” I yelled in disgust.

  Man of all people was the ohat was iing the corpse of the mohis time, the girl seems shy about talking but not about messing with corpses. There was a tense silen the air until she finally revealed her findings.

  “It is a shadow-type demon.”

  “That fug thing is a demon?!”

  There is no way I’m a demon if that creature is what demons look like here.

  [in of Succub alters Race: Succubus (Demon) to Race: Succubus]

  Bel turo me with a shocked look on her face. I quickly link to her using [Soultouched e].

  -- “I just thought about how there was no way I could be a demon if that thing is what demons are like in this world and [in of Sucbsp;altered my race.” --

  -- “Okay wow, hearing you talking in my head feels really strange. Anyway, not having demon pstered on our status will be useful if we’re ever appraised by someoh a high enough appraisal skill. It’ll still look suspicious but they won’t jump to demon this way.” --

  “What are you two staring at each other silently for?” Torien asked puzzled.

  I drop the link and respond, “Ah, nothing. We've just talked about what demons might look like in the past and we were really shocked now that we’ve entered one for the first time.”

  Man had finished digging a fist sized blood red crystal out of the chest of the demon before walking away from the grotesque creature. “This crystal will be plenty enough to prove we ran into demons. They’ll automatically t our inal quest a success if we take this back to them. Demon subjugations, especially with a duhat likely spawns them are super high priority information.”

  I nod. “I’d rather not fight another one of those things if we avoid it, lets get out of here.”

  We return to formation and head back the way we came only to discover a haunting sight. The portcullis we walked through wheered the gatehouse had lowered itself some point after we came in. Even worse, it looks like the s that are normally used on a pulley system to open and close the gate were now destroyed. A pile of rusted s now lie in a heap o the shut gate that was trapping us inside of this demon ied dungeon.

  “Fug hell.” I said looking at the broken s and the heavy portcullis.

  Torien looked at us with a grim expression. “I guess our only option now is to find another way out or defeat the dungeon.”

  I sigh. “That monster was rge but none of us got hurt. Still I wouldn’t want to try to fight more than one of those things.”

  Man scratched the back of her head before adding, “Normally in dungeons there is one or two individual monsters early on that ter show up in groups. There’s no way of knowing for sure that we’ll be fighting multiple of those things ter but the ces are high.”

  “ we go out of the gatehouse and scale the outer wall to get out?” I ask.

  “It’s possible but very dangerous to do that. Sometimes the dungeon allows for that, sometimes the duakes that as ‘cheating’ and spawns hordes of monsters or some other threat to retaliate,” Torien replied with her grim expression.

  Man cut in, “The gate log behind us might be the dungeon’s doing, in which case trying to scale the wall would definitely be cheating. I think we should give up on that idea.”

  I nod in response. From the sound of it, it’s not worth the risk. We brought our rations so we shouldn’t be worried about food. In fact Bel and I don’t actually o eat so our rations would likely st twice as long. The problem is that we didn’t bring bed rolls or anything since we didn’t expect to be trapped here.

  “I think our only real option is to try and clear the dungeon.” I only got silen respo looking around everyone seemed to agree.

  "This is all my fault," I thought to myself. I just want to get a look at a dungeon and now we're trapped here. The handle of my sword tightens in my grip.

  “Well there is some good news,” Man said. “This dungeon is probably a pretty young one. Even if the monsters are difficult it might actually not be that rge. It might not be too difficult to clear in a day or two assuming we hahe monsters we e across okay.”

  “Okay, at least that. As much as I’d like to keep procrastinating we should move forward.” I recast [Fireflies] so we could have somewhat sistent light but now I was beira vigint sihe shadow horror hid so well in the enviro.

  We walked past the rapidly deteriorating corpse of the shadow horror and into the first bailey.

  Saine

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