The anger hadn’t left my body for even a moment, but a bit more logic had graced my mind a few moments after cutting off the circulation of the man before me.

  If nothing else, getting information from him won’t be too possible if he is unable to speak. I released my grip a bit and after spending a few moments coughing up a lung he began to speak desperately.

  “…I don’t cough…know where your family is…!”

  That obviously wasn’t good enough for me.

  “Then why are you here? There is no way they would’ve allowed you to just snoop around our home like this.”

  “I don’t know man, I don’t know! It was empty when I found it and I’m just trying to survive like everyone else!”

  Something wasn’t adding up. The place was empty? That didn’t make much sense. I don’t think I was gone long enough for the entire place to be abandoned and new folks to move in after that.

  And even if that did happen, shouldn’t more lava people still be here eliminating anyone else who came close? Is it possible that they all left to head to a different town or city after destroying this one? That quickly?

  No…I was missing something.

  “…What happened?”

  “Look I don’t know much alright? All I know is, there was a massive fight, and a lot of explosions and lava…a whole lot of lava...a lot of people died and almost everything was destroyed.

  “I know a good amount of the survivors ran into that snake Dungeon to try and escape but that’s it man, that’s all I got. I’m not a fighter so I just hid as best as I could until it all blew over.

  “Even now I was only here looking for something to eat and then you showed up.”

  By the time he was done talking I had already released his neck from my grip. Realizing that while I was still angry at him for essentially breaking into my family home, it wasn’t like he had anything to do with their disappearance.

  But the lava people did.

  And it was them who deserved the full brunt of my anger. Not the man before me.

  I looked towards him still rubbing his neck and looking towards me with a hint of fear in his eyes.

  Sigh

  “I’m not sure if anything survived the damage but help yourself and then leave.”

  I watched as he nodded carefully towards me and I walked away.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Whether he took everything that remained in the house for himself didn’t matter to me. None of it mattered at all if the people who lived there couldn’t be found. But thankfully, I was given a lifeline. One that I would chase until I couldn’t anymore.

  I wasn’t sure if the members of my family were apart of the group who went into the Dungeon, but I didn’t have any other leads at the moment so I had no choice but to go myself.

  All I can do is home they successfully made it inside, but there was a problem with this as well.

  The Dungeon was instanced.

  Apart from the immediate party that entered at the same time, another group would only enter their own instance of the Dungeon. But what the hell else was I going to do? Stay outside and just hope the come out eventually?

  No…I couldn’t.

  Perhaps if I didn’t already experience another Dungeon suddenly opening up to a different shared space then maybe I would’ve made a different decision, but for now I think I’ll take the risk.

  So with that being said, I began making my way toward the Dungeon, and although I could see a whole lot farther now, seeing that a lot of the houses were destroyed, it wasn’t all of them, which is why it wasn’t until I neared the dungeon that I realized there were people there.

  But not humans. More red people. An entire group of them. Only they were all in black armor. None of the regular red people were present.

  But that is not what gave me pause. Among the group of black armored red people, there was a lava one. I would not miss that obsidian scaled armor anywhere, and it appeared as if sneaking up on them would not be an option, because that individual, a woman, not the same man I saw before I entered the Dungeon, spotted me and quite literally watched me approach the group.

  There wasn’t necessarily a smirk on her face, but the calm confidence she projected bothered me, as if my approach would not shake the hold they had here. As if there was nothing I could possibly do to cause her any form of worry, let alone fear. And that bothered me.

  But beyond that, it also helped to firm my decision of entering the Dungeon myself. They were waiting here. Waiting either for anyone else to try to enter or for those who did to come out. Meaning if, per chance, my family was to exit now, they would simply be walking into the lion’s den.

  This was unacceptable, and honestly part of me was itching for a fight. So I didn’t bother trying to converse with them. I didn’t bother trying to think of any elaborate plans, nor did I hide my approach in the slightest. They already saw me. Instead, I would give them the fight they were looking for right here, right now.

  “Crushing Descent.”

  The second the words left my mouth, I felt a large chunk of my mana leave my body and spread into the air all around me while still being tethered to me in some way, and it spread far farther than I thought it would.

  Enough to cover the entire street where the Dungeon was situated and over the entire group of red alien bastards guarding the entrance of the Dungeon.

  I was initially only hoping to take care of some of them that were closest to me so I could get a direct path toward the lava one with minimum interference. But I would take this too.

  And then the descent part of the skill happened. In a flash, gravity seemed to turn on its own head as the pressure that was infused into the air slammed into the back of all those present, of course with the exception of myself.

  And every single red person apart from the lava wielder slammed into the ground with so much force I could see blood leaking from a few of them. And even the lava wielder was not entirely unaffected. Her eyes widened, her teeth gritted, and her fists clenched as her knees buckled and shook under the pressure laying down upon her.

  I suppose that was enough of a welcome.

  Since I was not some evil villain who would sit here and watch as the main character fought back against my skill and not pile on the pressure to eliminate them once and for all.

  I took off from where I stood, spear gripped in my hand. While the gravity was still pressing down on all those before me, I raised my spear above my head and roared out as I slashed it forward, more anger coloring the tone of my voice than I intended.

  “OCEANS MAW!!”