Arlene studied the neko girl in front of her. The way she shifted in her folded legs, leaning ever closer to hear the secret. The way that dotted eyes of her staring seemingly straight into her. They were manifestation of her strong trait; Curiosity. Anire’s smile stayed grinning. Arlene couldn’t get a proper read on her.

  Doubt seeped into her mind. Arlene hesitated. She was about to bring another person to this world beneath the mundane. One she barely understood herself. Her eyes shut. She took a deep breath and focused on her. This person before her was going to travel with her.

  “Anire.” She said. “Can you promise me something?”

  Anire nodded.

  Arlene eyed to her companion. The one who introduced her to this world in the first place. Wattyson was more interested in surviving the battle with the many strawberry vials he gulped down.

  “Alright. Like I’ve said earlier, I think this might connect to the dungeon’s mess. I…” she paused biting her own lip. “I decided. Anire. Are you aware of beings that stay hidden among us?”

  Without waiting for her reply, she quickly threw her hands up.

  “I’m not talking about demon that pretend to be human or other races. Or a shapeshifter... though now that I’m aware of this hidden world, I’m not so sure what came first.”

  “Do you know of… like fairytale beings?”

  She eyed Anire who had a chin raised, interested in the idea.

  “Fairytale beings? Like fae? Aren’t they fairy?”

  “No not that. Think blood sucking people.”

  “…Demonleech?”

  “No, not demon. Think not demon.”

  “Vampire?”

  “Yes. Vampire. They do exist. I,” she paused trying to conjure up the appropriate words. “I faced them before. In the village of Tamare before coming here.”

  Anire sat straighter. Her hands drumming on the floor. She let out a small hum. After a brief quiet only accompanied by the hammock’s swings. She finally let out.

  “…They do?”

  Arlene noted on Anire’s expression. That grinning smile was gone, replaced by neutral look. Then there was a small frown on her constantly gazing downward and glancing left and right. Her fingers were tracing on the floor—writing letters and numbers. She was giving off an impression of something ticking inside.

  Not willing to let the question hang, Arlene replied. “They do, and they are everywhere.”

  “Everywhere?” Anire echoed. “That implies you’ve met some?”

  Arlene nodded. “I did. One of them, we killed. The other we met in the dungeon.”

  “And how are they any different? These vampires?”

  “I only fought one, but they are stronger in strength and speed. I’ll be honest, Anire. I only know the surface level. Whether they are much, much stronger or more deadly. I do not know.”

  She avoided mentioning Wattyson into this.

  “What I knew is what I told you. All those fairytales? They are real. They are just watered down version meant to scare children.”

  The grin was slowly returning to Anire.

  “By the timing of you telling me this, I assume… you came across one in that dungeon? You said so earlier, you met one in the dungeon.”

  “Yes, but that one we met was our allies—our party member in that dungeon. That Moonless virus and the Eastern Kobold story we told you? All of them are half-fabricated. It was also a supernatural. Werewolf.”

  Anire’s grin set fully now. “Shame your party burned that corpse to cinders. I would love to test on it.”

  It immediately triggered Arlene’s worries; that Anire would throw herself in for scientific curiosity. Arlene shifted closer to her.

  “Listen to me.” She spoke firmly. “I don’t know much about them, but I do know enough. They are dangerous. A scream from one of the werewolves was able to set me, the Chosen One, into primal fear. Not even the Dark Lord was able to do that.

  “And we’re talking about one already corrupted in that dungeon. Imagine what would happen if there were a squad of them? For the sake of yourself, please… don’t think about testing on a corpse. Not until we understand more about this ‘hidden world’.”

  She wasn’t sure if Anire understood her. If anything, this might’ve lit a fire within Anire.

  Anire’s grin sharpened.

  “How could I not, Arlene? To think there exists entity that could do such a thing to you, yet they live hidden among us. A layer of our world hidden from the public. No. I cannot say no to the amount of testing I could do.”

  Her finger drummed as she traced a circle repeatedly.

  “Think about it! How do they work? What kind of mana do they hold to hide themselves? How can I, who spy on people daily with a binocular and with the ability to see the threads of mana itself, never notice it? If their mana work differently then what is their threshold? Their pool of mana will surely be different. Their,”

  “—none of that matter if they are going to kill you!” Arlene interrupted her as she held onto that drumming hand. “Or-or they are going to do something worse to you. I don’t know, but I know they will! These people are adamant on hiding themselves, Anire! Think! What would happen if they discover someone know about their world? These paranoid entities will wipe out everyone. You and then your family or any other people you’re close with just to keep themselves a secret!”

  She continued with her alarm voice lessened softly. “Please, I need you to live if you’re going to travel with me… or not at all. I still need you to live. Be the new genius of our age or something with your research. Just live safely and smartly. That’s all I ask.”

  Was this the right approach? Arlene wasn’t sure. Would Wattyson be harsher to ram the point in further? None of those mattered. She said her pieces. If Anire pushed back, she would continue to counter it. She didn’t want to depend on Wattyson who was on the hammock completely minding his own business.

  Silence fell again with Anire looking at her, but at the same time wasn’t. She noticed her eyes were absent. Anire was in her own head now.

  “…Noted.” Anire said with that same grin, but in a softer tone. “If you truly mean it, then I won’t.”

  Relief washed over Arlene. She had expected more retorts from the neko girl.

  “However,” Anire continued. “I want to know more.”

  Arlene straightened herself. Of course, there was always condition.

  “Like what?” She asked wanting to get straight to the point.

  “About the supernatural, obviously~. If you’re going to speak to one, I want to be nearby.”

  Arlene could see the smile on her face, one side already stretching as far as her ear.

  “That depends. Can you contain yourself?”

  “I think I can, therefore I will~.”

  “Is that all?”

  Anire chuckled. “No. If you were to encounter another entity of one, be it dead. I want to take a look at it. For my research.”

  Arlene studied her. The way she settled back into her usual self over this newfound knowledge of the supernatural. It was unexpected, yet expected at the same time. She didn’t think Anire would take it in so well and immediately shifted to how she would ‘test’ on them.

  That curiosity drive of Anire was what Arlene needed to keep her eyes on the most. If Anire was to travel with them, she needed to keep her close at all time. Not to mention, Anire might escalated her experiment more on Wattyson, the Anathema of supernatural.

  A clap snapped Arlene out of her thoughts.

  It was Anire putting down her notepad on the floor with a force of a slam. She was leaning to the point of crawling, and writing pages after pages.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Arlene~” she called out. “Tell me. Why do you think this is related to the dungeon?”

  Her head snapped back up. She spoke fast.

  “A dungeon that didn’t change from its rebirth. Wall’s shiny while floor’s dirty and then vice versa the deeper it is. Then it just changed its surrounding to metals and machineries. The monsters like the slime was able to morph something it shouldn’t know. Interesting. Interesting indeed.”

  Arlene felt Anire muttered out loud more to herself than to her.

  Anire finally slowed down and gazed to Arlene.

  “Do you really think; the dungeon was interfered by the Supernatural?”

  Arlene shook her head.

  “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t say it’s out of the equation. There was a werewolf in Floor Forty, but… Floor usually end by Fifty. If it was truly hijacked by them, why would there be a werewolf in Forty? Add the fact it was corrupted.”

  Her voice trailed on. She wasn’t sure of herself if they were truly coincidence. She peeked to Wattyson which he too shook his head. She gave a quick nod to him.

  “I don’t think so. Perhaps it’s more to do with the corrupted blood reaching all the way here from the Far Tundra.”

  Anire clicked her pen as she listened to Arlene, writing and drawing in those pages. She quickly

  “It bugs me, Arlene~. What do you mean by corrupted? Not the corrupted blood, I know you’re talking about demon’s blood, but corrupted werewolf? How does that work?”

  She leaned slightly in.

  “Does that mean the supernatural can be infected by corrupted blood as well?”

  It was something Arlene wasn’t sure either. Wattyson likely knew but he didn’t tell her yet. She glanced to him, but he quickly turned his head away. Was he just enjoying this? Or he wanted to see how she would go about this?

  She thought back to what Wattyson explained about the werewolf. The way they were aligned with a dead deity, Gaia, and how their entire existence was a slippery slope—couldn’t live in urban area due to their heightened sense, and couldn’t live with nature as that would just accelerate their madness. That was the corruption in that werewolf in the dungeon.

  However, she didn’t know the full mechanism behind it. Whether it was part of a curse or part of their system. To explain something she herself couldn’t understand fully yet, Anire would poke hole in it easily.

  She scratched her neck. Her eyes darted all over her. “About that,” she said meekly.

  “I believe they weren’t infected by demon’s blood. I think it has to do with their physiology.”

  Anire raised her brows.

  “Physiology?”

  Arlene nodded.

  “Yeah. It’s something I too do not fully understand, but there is aspect of it I do. Supernatural are magical beings that run on mana too. Mana I do not understand yet since you said you never seen anyone differently, but I’m convinced they do and that their mana is reactive.”

  She continued, searching for any threads to tug to pull this explanation off.

  “You can think of it like animal preferring certain environment. Werewolf is like wolf right? Wolf is in the name after all. If an animal that doesn’t prefer living in city area for example for too long, they’ll be agitated right?”

  Anire listened earnestly. She spoke finishing Arlene’s explanation.

  “Hence why they are agitated and then grow feral? That makes sense, but you say they are people to begin with right? Are you saying… when they grow feral they resort to animalistic nature?”

  She didn’t let Arlene answer.

  “Of course. It is the same as people with emotion. They revert to their primal urge when they can’t control themselves and that reveal a person’s true nature.”

  Arlene let her continue to mutter, nodding to everything she said. It was better for her to arrive at whatever conclusion that was.

  Anire continued.

  “What did this ‘werewolf’ look like? Did they act like a wolf? A very big one?”

  She quickly drew what she thought a werewolf look like and showed it to Arlene. A big doodle humanoid, muscular like an ogre with furs all around like wolf, standing upright full with a tail.

  “Did that werewolf, though corrupted, look like this?”

  Arlene covered her mouth quickly to hide the sudden smile. That doodle relieved her though the tension remained.

  “It doesn’t look like that. It didn’t have a tail.”

  She corrected, gently brushing the notepad down.

  “If memory serves right, it has big bulky torso with muscular arms. The lower body however was small like that of a human.”

  Anire leaned back with her brows raised.

  “Like a human? How does it support its own weight? The body distribution shouldn’t allow it to be bipedal with small legs. Unless…”

  She quickly drew another doodle, but didn’t raise it for Arlene. The doodle now sported the werewolf aching forward with both arms used to support its weight.

  “Werewolf move like that of gorilla?” She bit her the corner of her lip. “Interesting… To think such being would be more primal than I expected.”

  Arlene quickly threw her hands around.

  “Now hold on! I’m not sure if that’s the standard for every werewolf, but what you drew there is the same posture as the one we fought.”

  She said before quickly correcting herself. “Corrupted one.”

  The neko’s ear flapped to Arlene briefly before to the hammock.

  “Does Wattyson know about them?”

  Arlene glanced to Wattyson too. He wasn’t looking at them if anything he was quiet. Head turned away and his chest raising slowly. Oh, he was asleep. The hammock creaked gently, carrying him in a gentle flow.

  “Yes,” she said. “We fought that werewolf together.”

  Anire’s ear flicked back to Arlene. She stopped her writing to face Arlene fully.

  “Fighting?” She echoed. “Of course. You both went into the dungeon after all~ You and the other people there.”

  She shoved her notepad away, and her pen thrown to one of the basket, letting out a small thud. She stood up to open the window, allowing the cold air to flow in. The conveyor’s belt outside flooded in with sound of boxes shifting one pace at a time like they were climbing up stairs.

  Then her eyes set on those slime cores they brought her.

  “…I can’t work on these anymore.” She somberly said. “They are inert. Best I can do with them is like making it act like a magnetic glue whenever I push mana into it. Wait… mana. Right!”

  Her eyes perked up as they returned to Arlene.

  “Did the werewolf use magic? It had to right? It’s a supernatural being!”

  Arlene responded by standing and stepping to her side. She took one of the core and juggled them playfully.

  “I am the Chosen One.” She affirmed herself. “I have fought since I was sixteen and endured the countless attacks from the Dark Lord and safeguard many from their relentless assaults.”

  Her eyes shut to contemplate, to remember, to forge on. The people she saved, the one she lost, the Hero Party, and the Dark Lord and his ‘Heavenly General’. The titles she didn’t remember what it was exactly.

  “Yet even I don’t know what kind of magic or spells those supernatural use. They are… foreign to me and to what the Dark Lord’s Legion utilize. They are not demon origin, that’s for sure.”

  She put the core back down.

  “I can tell you what I saw, but I can’t tell you if it was magic or not. It didn’t exactly speak as much as it did howling and growling. That was probably its way of casting magic.”

  The constant tapping of Anire’s finger onto the steel table and her seemingly tilting her head with that same grin. She didn’t answer, but Arlene took it as confirmation to proceed.

  “It growled, then part of its body grew strange,” she tried to recall. “Part of its injured body turned into wood. I don’t mean it looked like wood. It was literally wood. Fire was leaving lingering ashes and burnt smell on them.”

  She felt a weight in her chest.

  “What came out of it were specks of white—moths. There were many flying toward me. I tried to erect a barrier, but Wattyson dived into me. We narrowly missed it flying straight above us. I got up soon after and watched where that swarm went. It dissipated and all I saw was a hole so cleanly cut through the pillar you would think it was like that by design.”

  A heavy sigh let out. “I didn’t want to think what kind of power it was, or to speculate if my barrier could’ve taken it head on. And… that’s all I ever see it uses in term of magic. The rest were pure strength.”

  There was another form she wasn’t quite sure if it was magic related. That primal fear set into her from its roar or just at the sight of it. Wattyson had explained it as a form of delirium—a fear ingrained inside everyone’s since their ancestors. She held back from telling Anire about it.

  Her finger traced along the core again, rolling it back and forth. Her throat caught slightly.

  “I believe that werewolf was… probably just a guy that went into that dungeon and lost himself. Corrupted. Then it went on to slaughter dozens in Floor Forty alone. I’ve never seen the casualty list myself, but I’ve seen them in that medical tent.”

  Her free hand went to hold Anire’s. Her gaze steadied with her.

  “I have an offer for you, if you’re willing. Do you want to come into the dungeon with us? To reach Floor Fifty and clear it?

  “I cannot promise what you’ll find in there is promising to you or useful in anyway, but I don’t want to leave it half-finished. I did my job killing that werewolf, but I still think the bigger culprit is still within that dungeon, just deeper.”

  She studied the neko girl. The way her hair frizzled from the sudden touch and her ear vibrated, yet her face was unchanging. That dotted eyes remained wide open and the grin stretching from ear to… ear.

  Part of her thought Anire wouldn’t accept it. The werewolf was dead, burned to cinder. Now she was asking her to go with her and Wattyson again just to clear it and a promise there might be something of interest.

  Anire answered.

  “Ok.”

  A sense of déjà vu flooded Arlene. A simple answer affirming to her request. Her mouth hung open but quickly shut.

  “Ok? Just like that?!” She yelped out in a controlled volume. She didn’t want to disturb the sleeping cryptid on the hammock.

  Anire shrugged and placed another palm over Arlene’s holding hand.

  “I was the one who said yes to you when you first invited me to travel with you.” Her voice turned playful. “I was already robbed of going to that dungeon once and missed all the interesting beats. I won’t miss another, especially when I’m with the Chosen One herself.”

  Her eyes shot to Wattyson.

  “With the interesting specimen too. Besides, the fact this dungeon isn’t transitioning right already intrigued me, Arlene~”

  She brushed Arlene’s off. “So, my dear party leader~ When will we set out?”

  Arlene’s smile returned fully.

  “Alright,” she glanced briefly to He of the hammock then back to Anire. “How about tomorrow? I need to consult with well,” she jerked a thumb back. “Him.”

  Anire chuckled with her coat sleeves covering her mouth.

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. His dear significant other is the one dragging him back there.”

  “I’m not his girlfriend.” Arlene retorted with a monotonous voice.

  “Right~ Obviously.”

  Anire turned around to her bag on one of the table. She was already zipping around, pulling out cabinet drawers and shoving vials and potions into the bag.

  “I’ll prepare my stuff~.”

  Arlene watched her with doubts.

  “Prepare? Doesn’t your bag have that rune-tech to just grab one from here?”

  “Indeed it does. Teleportation for items sure is handy, but I rather have one on hand rather than having to fiddle with the numerous crates the rune-tech is attuned to.”

  Anire tilted her head to Arlene. Smiles widened and showing bit of teeth.

  “I don’t know how long we’ll be in there. The battery likely won’t last. Then again, I can just have you charge it, O’ Great Chosen One, infinite mana holder and effectively unlimited battery.”

  It got Arlene to roll her eyes. She left Anire to her own device and shift her attention to Wattyson.

  “Anire,” she called. “I don’t think I can wake him up and… well it’s already nearing evening isn’t it? Mind if we crash the place for the night?”

  “Oh, of course of course~” Anire said, rubbing her sleeve hands together. “I don’t mind company. I’ll prepare a room for you!”

  Arlene relaxed her shoulders. “Thank you, and one more thing.”

  “Hmm~?”

  “No experimentation or observation on Wattyson’s void mana, not without his consent.”

  Anire clicked her tongue barely audible enough, but Arlene could still hear it. “Of course. I’m a very ethical person after all.”

  “Ethical,” Arlene muttered. “Then I’m the Empress of Avalevd entirety.”

  She turned and walked out of the room.

  “It’s decided then.” She said back a little louder than her indoor voice. “We’ll go back tomorrow. For now, where’s your kitchen? Let me make us something.”