Damn. Those fuckers were really tough. She could slice through stones with that attack. It was so annoying that she almost had to use her Berserk to overcome the slightly stronger—though still normal—mob.

  Although, the keyword there was almost.

  “Stop it for a second!” I shouted, thrusting my hand into the pouch strapped to my thigh.

  Curling into herself for a brief moment, Aisha suddenly spread her arms wide and released an earth-shaking, draconic roar which knocked loose chunks of earth from the ceiling and walls, causing them to rain down around us.

  The Woodknight and the last Woodman froze on the spot while I remained completely unaffected by her Piercing Roar. Quickly making sure that I landed a few deep enough hits on the branch-headed freak, I tossed an orange vial at the stunned Mr. Swolebark.

  With the aid of my Telekinesis, the vial of acid soared over Aisha’s head and shattered against the Woodknight’s chest. The corrosive substance began sizzling immediately, releasing a lot of smoke. We watched as the acid ate through its armor in the blink of an eye, revealing the ashen main body hidden beneath.

  Aisha didn’t let the chance go to waste and launched a powerful thrust right into the gap the acid had created in its armor, puncturing the monster easily this time. She stabbed as deeply as she could; the tip of the axe stopping only after running into the inner side of the armor covering her opponent’s back.

  Withdrawing it with style, she glanced at me. I nodded while gesturing with my eyes at the dead Woodmen lying around my feet. She had nothing to worry about on my side. So far, at least.

  A loud thud captured Aisha’s attention and she turned to the front again just to catch a small cloud of dust rising from the ground where the heavy body of the Woodknight had just fallen over. Our oversalted soup and her thrust, which appeared to have grazed the Sprout, was a fatal combination for the poor guy.

  “Looks like help won’t come that soon,” I commented. “It must have been a forward party.”

  “Hopefully that stupid seed falls for our scheme and assumes that we came from this side. It would make our neighborhood much safer,” Aisha responded, coming toward me.

  “We will see. Right now, we need to get our firewood before it disintegrates. The forge won’t run on gas. Uhhhh… At least I don’t think it will? I suppose I should have checked on that, first.” I chuckled to myself.

  “If this gas works in a similar way to how dwarven cities distribute what they often call spicy air, then that would certainly cost you a small fortune just to keep the flame lit. Wood or coal is a much better option. Especially when we have an almost infinite supply of the former.” She smiled at me charmingly.

  “Now I’m curious. I wonder how much my gas bill would spike if we did that. Would what we earn in D-Dollars be enough to cover it? Would someone get suspicious after noticing a single apartment consuming an amount equivalent to an industrial factory? Ugh, I won’t be able to stop thinking about it.”

  Aisha let out a hearty laugh and slapped my back a few times. “Less speculating, more chopping. We have quite the cargo to haul back home.”

  “I have a better idea. Pile the bodies on top of the Woodknight. We should be able to transfer them with you, through my ability. Technically, it’s just wood, right?”

  She raised a brow at me. “Smart. I won’t need to sweat my tits off that way. Although, I will miss you washing them for me in the shower.”

  I chuckled, shaking my head. “We can arrange that anyway. Come on, before more firewood starts popping out of the walls.”

  We quickly did as I’d suggested and I sent Aisha off with the piled-up wooden corpses. My bright plan worked, and she dropped them in the middle of the apartment, before returning to me.

  Since we still had one use of Summon Bonded and Recall Bonded each, allowing me to teleport Aisha once more for a full round, we decided to delve a bit deeper to gather some more firewood, if any more of the walking kind was hanging out near our crib.

  Chapter 23

  An Unexpected Friend

  “How far are we going?” Aisha asked, taking a sip of water from the bottle I had passed to her.

  “We explored a little bit of this level the last time, and I don’t think we should move too much farther, but let's try checking out the lower floor. I remember seeing a descending path somewhere around here,” I answered, taking it back from her.

  “Good idea. We should be careful, though. These kinds of arrangements, with multiple layers or floors, often have different surprises awaiting trespassers. It’s not a rule, of course, but I’ve seen enough to assume so right from the start.”

  I nodded. “Sure. That’s quite logical. If we somehow end up walking closer to the Seed, it’s only natural that things will get only worse. Our opponent is a bit more versatile in this environment than the Kobolds were back in the caverns.”

  “Damn right. I hate monsters that can utilize the terrain to their advantage. You never know when another Woodman will jump out of a wall right at you. Any bright ideas, or useful spells, that would let us detect them early?”

  “Nothing either of us could utilize at this moment.” I shook my head. “And such consumables or artifacts would drain our account in a flash. Forget about the forge, we would be living on scraps until the next clear.”

  Aisha shuddered in front of my eyes, grabbing her arms. “Gods forbid… That would be insufferable…”

  “Yeah. We—”

  “I can’t imagine life without sushi…”

  I snorted and rolled my eyes. But of course, that was what had been on her mind. Seriously, how big of an addict could you become after trying something out just once?

  My drakan companion chuckled softly at my reaction and I stepped closer to land a light slap on her tender ass.

  “Enough joking around. I expect my guard to be ready to intercept any possible threats at any given moment. Remember, failure means no more sushi for you. Ever. For obvious reasons.”

  She hastily saluted in a serious manner. “Yessir! No one shall harm the sushi provider!”

  I shook my head with a smile as we finally reached the passage I had mentioned earlier. It clearly led below, descending in a slight spiral at a mild angle. The aesthetics remained pretty much the same as we carefully walked down.

  After around three minutes of going downhill, we reached flat ground once more. A more spacious chamber welcomed us, still made of hardened earth and decorated by luminescent moss. I was glad that at least this one detail hadn’t changed. It didn’t affect the enemy, but made it much easier for us to spot things.

  “Which way now?” Aisha glanced between three possible exits.

  “Let me just mark this stuff on the map… and pick whichever you feel better about. We won’t be delving too deep this time, anyway.”

  “You are the leader here. You decide,” she replied, resting her axe on her shoulder.

  “Fine.”

  I pulled out a small throwing knife from the bandolier strapped around my right leg and laid it down in my open hand. With a light push, I threw it into the air just slightly above my palm and used Telekinesis to send it spinning.

  The little blade made a few circles before it lost momentum. I gestured with my head towards the exit closest to the direction the tip had ended up pointing towards.

  “Neat. Do you throw parties?”

  “For you? Double the price.”

  Aisha snickered and we began heading out. From the sizable, earthen chamber, we entered a decently tall and wide corridor. Tree roots broke the surface of the mud now and then, fortunately belonging to actual trees, and not their blood-thirsty, evil cousins.

  Even so, we eyed each twisted wooden limb with suspicion. You never knew when those bastards would turn on you. There could always be a silent impostor among us.

  Fortunately—or unfortunately, since we were looking for them, this time—no Woodmen or Woodknights crossed our path. It was always like this. Want to move silently and undetected? Here’s a whole army. Want to seek out and find your enemies? Have fun reaching the endpoint without a single fucking living soul in sight.

  I swear fate was just like printers. It could smell when you were in a rush.

  “Crystals,” Aisha pointed out the change in scenery.

  “Oh. You are right. And they glow too.”

  She snorted. “Are you sure your organization isn’t rigging your Dungeons? It’s the second time in a row, in a beginner’s Dungeon no less, that we’ve stumbled across something valuable. At least I think it is. Is it?”

  I passed her and walked up to a pointy, glass-like shape that stuck out of the nearby wall. Similar to the Lumerus Moss, it gave off a faint radiance in rainbowy hues. It didn’t shine per se, but it did glow softly.

  A few pokes revealed that it wasn’t embedded in the hardened mud too firmly and I was able to pull it out. This particular piece of crystal was about the length of my hand, while its thickness was comparable to about three fingers banded together. It was generally rough, yet it still had a somewhat naturally polished shape.

  “Peculiar… I can sense mana inside…” I whispered to myself.

  “Mana? They are Mana Crystals? You are a walking treasure finder, I kid you not.”

  “Let’s not be too hasty. The amount is minuscule. I can only notice it thanks to my exercises related to Telekinesis. We need to find more, to be sure, but they might be just your common shiny rocks that soaked up some mana during their lifetime.”

  Arriving closer, Aisha peeked over my shoulder. “Still, that means there has to be a source somewhere in this Dungeon. Or had to be. Even if they aren’t worth much, it’s a good sign.”

  “I’m starting to suspect that the moss wasn’t like this initially, either. It has much better capabilities when it comes to absorbing things from its surroundings than these.”

  “Didn’t you say that it was Lumerus Moss?” She raised a brow at me.

  “It could have evolved from some other random moss species. It’s not like it only begins existing as Lumerus Moss and doesn’t appear in any other way.”

  “I guess. I’m no weed expert. Best I ever did was grinding some herbs I’d bought on the D-Market into dust and turning them into a healing salve for when I burned my ass in a pool of lava.”

  “Me neither but bits of lore still slumber peacefully in my mind until some trigger brings them up. Anyway, let’s continue. I’ll collect a bunch of these, and we can study them thoroughly after we get back.”

  Tucking the crystal into one of my pouches, I turned around and followed after Aisha, who had already started walking further into the tunnel. Other shiny formations didn’t appear as often as I wanted them to, only showing up once every five minutes or so, when we noticed them poking out from the ceiling, the walls, or even the floor. Not all of them stuck out as far as the first one.

  Luck was clearly on our side, though, as we found a bigger cluster a good fifteen-minute walk from the first crystal. I knelt down to dig it up, using my handaxe while Aisha stood guard.

  The moment I lifted the mesmerizing chunk out of the dirt, however, something flashed underneath it and sped towards my face.

  “Fuck!” I cursed, stumbling back and falling on my ass.

  “Enemy attack?” My Berserker friend gripped her weapon tighter, readying herself to strike whatever had come after me.

  I opened my eyes, which I’d closed when I covered them earlier, to find a fist-sized ball of pink floating right in front of my head. A pleasant hum accompanied it as it pulsed softly, expanding and shrinking ever so slightly, as if breathing.

  “A Pixie?” Aisha raised her brow at the tiny entity.

  The Pixie in question hovered in the same spot for a few moments longer and then began circling me, making laps around my entire body. After a few rounds, it flew over to Aisha and repeated the motion, before finally returning to me and stopping where it had initially hung in the air.

  “I never thought I would get to see a Pixie in my life.” I chuckled. “But, this explains a lot. It’s definitely not alone. Their presence might have been what influenced the moss and the crystals. Pixies are a pure form of mana, if I remember correctly.”

  “What was it doing under that cluster, though?” Aisha asked. “Do they like to rest in such places? Is this how the other crystals and moss got infused with mana?”

  “No idea. Maybe it was sleeping or some—”

  I paused when the Pixie made a few lively loops and darted towards the pack of crystals that I had dropped when it surfaced earlier. It disappeared behind the shiny rock, and then partially peaked over the edge, showing a tiny fraction of its body before it was gone again. That popping motion repeated a few times.

  “What is it doing?” Aisha wondered out loud.

  “It’s… hiding?” I took a guess.

  Immediately, the Pixie rushed to my face and cheerfully spun around in vertical circles, leaving an adorable afterglow behind itself, which constantly formed a half-ring. It was kinda cute.

  “It can understand us?” My partner came closer and squatted next to me.

  “Seems like it,” I replied. “So, you have been hiding? Why?”

  The glowing ball stopped spinning and hovered in the air without much movement. Then, it zoomed towards one of the walls and began creating the shape of the number eight near its surface. Aisha followed it to take a closer look.

  “I think it’s pointing at the root here. Were you hiding from the Woodmen?” She glanced at the Pixie.

  Again, it made cheerful vertical loops. We were now sure that it meant to convey something akin to a confirmation.

  “Woodmen should find it almost impossible to wound Pixies, as they can only deal physical damage. Unless there’s something that I don’t know about,” I commented.

  “Yeah. And these little orbs are way too fast for them to catch. Why were you hiding so meticul—ah, wait!”

  As she was speaking, our new friend rushed away from her, soaring through the air in the direction we had been heading towards a few minutes earlier. I quickly stood up and dusted off my butt.

  “Let’s follow it. Carefully, though. I don’t think it’s a trap, but that doesn’t mean this Pixie can’t accidentally lead us into one,” I suggested.

  “Agreed. I’m really curious about it. All the Pixies I ever stumbled onto during my first life were rather wary. This might be fun. I always wanted to befriend a Pixie.”

  “Weak to cute things?” I smirked.

  Aisha elbowed me in the side, making me chuckle in a slightly strained fashion, and we jogged after the fleeing pink orb.

  Thankfully, our guide was aware of the limitations our fleshly bodies put on our movement and slowed down a little. It still zoomed forward at quite the pace, but it doubled back any time it flew a bit too far out in front of us.

  We kept our guards up the whole time. It was exciting, for sure, but we were still in the middle of the enemy’s territory. Who wouldn’t be curious about the place a Pixie led them to? We, for sure, wanted to at least check it out. It might turn out to be another jackpot.

  Five minutes of walking at a fast pace later, the Pixie came to a halt right before a T-section. We quickly caught up to it.

  “What’s wrong, buddy? Forgot the way?” I asked our guide.

  It floated towards the tunnel on the left, then back to us, and then hastily hid behind my back. I glanced at the pink orb over my shoulder. It kept hovering by my belt, much less lively than just moments ago.

  I locked gazes with Aisha.

  “It looks… scared. Or worried, maybe. I think it wants us to go that way,” she nodded at the left tunnel as she shared her thoughts.

  “Same here. It feels a tad ominous, though. Let’s take this slow; it has to have a good reason for acting like this.”

  Aisha nodded and took the lead. The Pixie remained behind my back as we made our way through the passage it had pointed to, clearly not wanting to be in sight. I guess it could technically hide itself inside me, but maybe it didn’t work like that. Hell, what did I know?

  After a while, we noticed some noise ahead. Quite a few things grazed over the earthen floor, releasing odd sounds. We were pretty sure those belonged to the Woodmen, considering the characteristic brushing and scratching. Some faint creaking and wooden thumping soon confirmed our assumption.

  Aisha neared the edge of the wall and took a peek around the corner. I could see her brows furrowing from the side. She looked around for a few seconds, glancing to the left and then at whatever was in front of her, before moving back several steps behind the corner.

  “What is it?” I asked in a hushed voice.

  “I… don’t know…” she answered with an unsure tone. “The Pixies… are in… cages?”

  I frowned too. “In cages? Do they have special artifacts or what? Pixies should be able to phase through any normal metal or wood, or at least squeeze between the bars.”

  “Take a look for yourself. I can’t grasp what is happening.”

  Prompted by my companion, I switched places with her, moving closer to the entrance of the chamber before us. Just like she had, I very carefully peeked around the corner and my eyes instantly widened.

  A fairly spacious room extended out in front of us. Numerous pillar-like structures rose from the ground. They looked somewhat like crude bird cages, the ones you might see in old cartoons, made of gold or brass and standing on a single post. In this case, they were made of wood, obviously, and weren’t nearly as beautiful.

  Another difference was that there were no birds or other animals inside the cages. Instead, each cage held a Pixie. Somehow, dozens of floating orbs had been caught and were currently imprisoned by the Woodmen in this chamber. For some reason, those Pixies looked weak and distressed. They obviously couldn’t simply phase out of their prisons.

  The Woodmen themselves seemed different from the ones we had met before. They weren’t like the Woodmen grunts, but neither were they Woodknights. Their bodies were much spindlier, and had a dark green tone.