Chương 31: [LD-1] 30. Private Mission

XXX Private Mission Both sisters took off their glasses. Alexa snarled, balled her fist over the table—but did not strike it. Lily put her face in her hands and whispered: "You're not pulling a fast one over us, are you?"

"I wish I was," I said.

"Why…" Alexa took a deep breath.

"Why didn't you tell us sooner?" My face fell.

"I wanted to avoid discouraging the others." I could've told her when she was escorting me and Roland's group back to the cafeteria. However, for that, I would've had to pull her to the side while we were going through the dungeon. That would take more time and put the others at risk. Her gaze paused on my face. She exhaled.

"Sorry. You're right. Our goals won't change, regardless of what we need to face." We could go after the Realm Core instead of the Red Skull's extermination. But we'd still need to get past the candidate to get to the core, if things went remotely as expected.

"Was there anything else you saw on the third floor?" Lily asked.

"There was an army of orcs," I said.

"I didn't catch all of their levels, but they must've been above level fifteen." They grimaced. Even that was double the level of our current fighters.

"And one more thing," I added.

"There was a…talking goblin. His name was Rhaast. He saved Kiba and me." Their brows rose.

"Saved you?" Alexa said.

"Yes. Before you ask, I have no idea why. His status showed a question mark when I identified him."

"Question…" Lily trailed off. Alexa leaned her forehead against the back of her hands.

"A question mark is strange, but not a problem in and of itself." Lily and I glanced at her.

"It merely means they're not a random monster. The orc lord's status wasn't hidden, right?" I shook my head.

"Then either the goblin is the true leader of the Red Skull tribe, or he's from a different clan with more backing that gave him an item to hide his status. The first scenario would be what worries me most for our situation." The second just meant there was a monster clan out there with resources—that was something the world was already aware of. The two sisters waited for me to speak again, but this time, there really was nothing else for me to say.

"Thank goodness." Alexa rose from her seat like it was on fire.

"Are we telling the others?" I asked, also rising. Her finger paused on the edge of the table. The quiet in the cafeteria hummed in our ears.

"No," she whispered. …it was immoral to keep this information from the others—everyone had the right to know what they were getting into. But Lily nodded, and I looked down. The choice was hard, but it must be made. My eyes caught on a discarded wrapper on the floor—one of a protein bar. We'd rationed and divided all of our food and drinks.

"Did Kiba get his share?" I asked. Lily's hair whipped side-to-side while she cleaned her glasses.

"His portion is still there; the person on watch tried to give it to him, but he rushed upstairs without listening to a word they said."

"Was he hurt?" I asked.

"Too dark to see. But they said he growled at them when they tried closing the distance." I sighed.

"Where is it? I'll take it up." She pointed to a nearby table. A bar, a piece of chocolate, and a bottle of water. The bottle was only a quarter of the way filled. Should I come with, Master? The Great Kil will protect you from the werewolf-man! I chuckled.

'No need. Your qualities are better spent keeping watch. Char will protect me.' Kil huffed. Char, if I see so much as a single scratch on Master, you're in trouble! The crystalis wasn't there to respond, but something stirred faintly within my soul. Moonlight pierced through the gaps in the dirt covering the windows and added to the faint luminance of the moss. In another place, I would've wondered if I was walking up the staircase to heaven. You might be reading a stolen copy.

Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. Whimpers reached my ears before I crested the last step of the stairs. My steps slowed. I held my breath and listened. The whimpers were quite soft. More of a groan slipping past the lips than an active cry.

'Is he asleep?' I stopped at the top of the staircase, stared out into the shadows, and whispered: "Kiba." His groans did not stop. Neither was there the sound of someone turning. The lighting was incredibly dim up here—the moss growth was sparse—so deep shadows covered the gallery, disrupted only by the moonlight. I let the sound guide me and stopped right beside a silhouette curled up on the floor.

I bent over and put the food down somewhere near his head—just out of reach, so he'd not knock it over if he rotated in his sleep. Then I rose to turn around— A sharp cry had me jerk to a stop. I looked over my shoulder.

'He's trembling…' The image of the two of us in the storage room rushed back into my mind. You smelled like Livana Lillies, he whispered. Our estate has a field of them that I fall asleep in all the time. I sniffed my shirt. Yeah, that remained a no. … But I could still feel his heartbeat against my own. The slow, paced rhythm. One that was calm and at peace. So I knelt beside him.

'What are you doing? This is ridiculous.' Despite the protest of my conscious thoughts, my hand reached out. My fingers travelled down the length of his arm—I brushed areas of hardened moisture and tears in his shirt—and found his palm. It was soft and warm— His fingers locked around my own the moment we touched. His groans and cries, which were like thunderbolts striking on a quiet night through the gallery, lessened. They did not vanish, but they lessened. And so I stayed crouched in the darkness.

Screaming muscles dragged me out of my sleep.

"Ugh," the groan escaped my lips. I rolled…and stopped when I hit something soft. I blinked and let my eyes adjust. A strip of cloth covered me. I hesitated to call it anything but that. The dirty brown rag looked like one of those things you'd see islanders in movies wear around their waists.

"Good morning, Master!" Kil called. He floated up the staircase. The stairs made me remember last night.

'Ah, I fell asleep.' That hadn't been the plan—I was supposed to head down after a while. But then I supposed I didn't have much of a choice with how I had exerted myself.

"How embarrassing…" I sat up and wiped the side of my mouth. It was a little wet.

"I hope I wasn't drooling."

"You were drooling about an hour ago when I came to check!" Kil said cheerfully. I let my head drop.

"Thanks for letting me know, Kil."

"No problem!" A soft snort. I searched for the food items I'd left Kiba and found that all of them were gone.

'Thank goodness.' At least he didn't leave on a hungry stomach. I still wasn't happy that he went out by himself, but at least he wasn't starving.

"You should get ready, Master," Kil said.

"The others are preparing to head out."

"Give me a minute." There wasn't anything as sophisticated as a bath. However, a few of the students had discovered a room nearby that had an intact faucet with running water. Someone else had found a bucket. Add one and one together, and I was doing my best to clean up by splashing myself with cold water.

"This is hell," I whispered, stumbling back into the cafeteria.

"The preparation for the Hallowed Forest is worse." I glanced to the side. A group of boys was doing their best to terraform the ground and create a few defensive structures in case we were ambushed again. One of them chuckled at me.

"Heard it from my brother," he continued.

"Said it was the worst two weeks of his life."

"Hallowed Forest?" I blinked.

"An expedition our upperclass seniors go on in the middle of the year to prepare for Gravesite." When my expression remained the same, he waved me away.

"You'll hear of it when the time comes."" If the time comes," another laughed self-deprecatingly. That earned him a half-hearted slap on the shoulder.

'Gravesite…' Sounds ominous. I left the boys behind and headed for Alexa. She was calling out orders to the other students, making sure everyone was aware of what their goals for today were. Multiple teams were waiting to head out. Each with a dedicated frontline, melee, and ranged damage dealer. Besides our team, only one other had a healer. She didn't actually have any healing abilities but had a skill that allowed her to reduce the pain someone felt in the moment.

I smothered a chuckle as I imagined a recruiter of a guild asking: 'What's your special ability?' And the mage going: 'Ibuprofen!' A deep sigh came from behind me.

"Now I finally understand why they proposed a breeding program. Healers are too rare." The blond I adored the most and his two followers entered my view. [Techno - lvl. 9] [Engineer - lvl. 7] [Steelheart - lvl. 8]'Huh, not bad.' They must've killed quite a few enemies while escorting the others. There was no other way for Shota to be that high of a level. My brows touched my hairline as I registered his words.

"Breeding? Are you serious?" His shoulders touched his ears.

"My clan voted against it, for what it's worth." I turned and found Emily. Kil had floated into her arms a mere second ago. She sat on a bench with her eyes closed, lips quivering while she smiled. Kil squirmed in her hold.

"Uhm, supplicant, what are you—" the eyeball squealed as Emily almost squished him. The cry made her gasp and cover her mouth.

"Kil, oh my, I'm so sorry! Did I hurt you?"

"The Great Kil cannot be hurt!" That's what he said, but he hurriedly slipped out of her grasp. I glanced back at Shota as Emily mumbled her apologies again. Evans minutely shook his head while Douglas crossed his arms, the tall boy bored by the entire thing.

"Are you guys ready?" Alexa approached.

"We are," we said in unison. The halls directly around our base were deserted, so we had to travel deep into the floor. I exhaled the remaining hurt in my muscles—Alexa was right, moving was doing me good.

"I think we've cleared most of this floor," Douglas said. Despite his words, he held his shield arm high and ready. Our team had a goal: to kill as many hobs as possible and level. Preferably, all of us would reach level fifteen. It was a wonderful goal. A much needed start to face a candidate. But I had a personal mission beyond that.

'Only use your weapon.' Unless the situation called for it, I'd forego relying on my skills to kill enemies. I'd told the team as much so they could adapt their battle strategies. But it was easier said than done. Halfway between the entrance to the third floor and the cafeteria, we ran into a squad of goblin grunts. Weaklings that would blow over if our group so much as glanced at them wrong. And yet—'Shit.' Char stretched out his arm right as the ivory dagger was about to sink its dirty teeth into me.

A haze passed through the grunt's eyes. Then the beast whirled on the crystalis. I grimaced as I cleaved off the grunt's head.

'Using Cull in the halls is hard.' Not only were the pathways narrow, but I also had to worry about not hitting my teammates. That, and there were too many factors to note during combat to refrain from using skills completely.

"You're having trouble keeping up in your mind, aren't you?" Alexa said after we dismantled the group.

"There's a lot happening at once," I confessed. She patted my shoulder.

"Happens to everybody. Remember what I said yesterday?"

"About the essence of combat?" Her glasses tipped.

"Let me add another key to that: figuring out which step you need to take. That decision-making process takes place up here." She tapped the side of her skull.

"No amount of preaching or practice will help you train that part. Only fighting more battles will. So keep at it. Think as you're fighting and predict." With that in mind, we headed further into the dungeon towards the chamber we'd fought the warlock. Enemies spotted, Master, Kil called out in my mind.

'Composition?' Two hobs and some grunts. Standard. Nothing out of the ordinary. Cull twirled in my hands. I'm rooting for you, Master! I cracked my neck.

'Thanks.'