261 - - gateway to the decaying dragon

"Nothing or ......"

The entrance was deliberately concealed, and there was even a trap to attract a swarm of troublesome watchmen.

Moreover, inside, a formidable monster with strange skills was waiting for them.

No wonder Thor had high expectations.

However, after a careful search of the room, all that was left were red patterns on the floor and walls.

When I rubbed my hand over the reddish areas, I felt a rough texture, and when I licked my fingertips, I could faintly taste the taste of iron.

It was like dried blood or iron sand.

"Thor, are you ready?

"Tor, are you ready yet?"

Only their faces peeked out from the entrance, and they called out to us, Sora and Moo.

The hidden room was indeed too suspicious, so I asked the three of them to wait outside.

Since there were no new traps and no physical or mental effects, Thor turned around and called out to them, judging that it was safe to do so.

"Yeah, you can come in now."

The moment Thor replied, the girl and the child pulled their faces back as if in unison.

Then, as if in sync, they let out a giggle.

Thor exhaled lightly and turned to face the wall, and again they both turned their heads and called out to each other.

"Thor, can we go now?"

"To-chan, are you done yet?"

"So, that's enough."

Turning around quickly, the two men hastily hide behind the wall with panicked looks on their faces.

Then they let out another joyful little laugh.

"Tor-chan, you're so black and white!

"Kuhuhu, it's red!"

Apparently, it is amusing that even Thor's body looks reddish against the red walls.

Even such an eerie room seems like a fun playground to Sora and Mu.

"Hey, you two, don't disturb Mr. Thor.

"Yes. You caught me, Moo-chan.

"Hide and seek, I'm so excited!"

After leaving the empty hidden room, Thor and his friends checked the room to the southeast, but found nothing new there either.

Now that the map of the thirteenth floor was completed, the group proceeded to the lower levels.

The 14th floor was even colder.

There was an invisible heaviness in the air, and the sharpness of the body was somewhat sluggish.

The cheerful Moo and Sora, however, seemed to be unaffected by the cold.

"Okay, let's take a quick turn on this floor, too!

"Oh!"

We started our search from the north side, which was completed in no time.

"Oh, another big room."

"Wow, there are a lot of people here!"

As Thor and his team headed north along the passageway, their steps were blocked by the now-familiar iron bars.

Behind the bars was the scene we had seen so many times before, a large number of monsters roaming around in a large prison.

"It looks exactly the same as the one on the upper floor. I thought the prison ended at the thirteenth floor."

The contents of the prison have changed, however, and the prisoners on this floor are now gray-robed, evil spirits.

Many of them were bent over, which might mean that they were all old men.

"I don't see any mechanism that would allow us to open the bars from here."

"Then the only way to get in here is to fall down from the upper floors."

The thirteenth-floor dungeon was so crowded that there was not enough room to go all the way around the room.

Even if there was a pit, there was a great possibility that we had missed it.

Thor and Yuri looked at each other silently as they realized the reason why they had no choice but to enter the prison again.

A stairway to the fifteenth floor might exist in this nasty prison.

But Thor and his friends' fears were soon unfounded.

In one of the innermost rooms on the south side, which they reached after reaping the steel dolls, they easily found a staircase leading down.

This one, however, was also barricaded.

"We are saved, but we are not so naive after all.

"Is this the end of the second level?　Now we just have to defeat the dragons on the fifteenth floor somehow, right?"

Zoldamarg, the dragon of the rotting corpse.

That's it. It's a long name.

It is a famous dragon mentioned in the medieval history of Japan. There is an anecdote that it was captured and imprisoned in this dungeon because it was harmful to people.

"Heh!　You didn't kill him?"

Yes, because they can be collected for a long time when they are alive.

Yuril casually tells her the cruel truth, and Sola rolls her eyes.

Now, the only remaining obstacle to meeting the famous dragon is the iron bars in front of us.

Thor and the others split up to investigate the not so large room.

"I don't see anything that looks like a cavity behind the wall.

"The floor is also clear!"

"Then, I guess the suspicious part is this corner."

In one corner of the room, a black pillar stands embedded and very prominent.

In the other three corners, there were indentations as if the pillars had been removed.

"It doesn't seem to be moving at all."

"There's just a little gap, isn't there?"

"Well, I'm stumped. Hmmm,...... what is that?"

"What's wrong, Sora?"

"Moo-chan?　Where's Moo-chan?

Sola's eyes changed color and she looked around to see the child who had disappeared before she knew it.

Behind her, she hears a small giggle.

The girl turned around in a hurry and let out a huge breath of relief.

Then she bursts out laughing just as happily.

"Oh my God, you hid in there!　You scared me!"

"You found me!"

Moo was hiding in a hollow in the corner across from a black pillar.

His small body was completely contained, and he fit in as if he had been arranged.

"I feel at home in such a small place, don't you?

"Hey, Sola-chan, it's all black here, too!"

"Heh?"

The child pointed to a spot directly above himself.

Sola tilted her head and approached the child, who stuck his face in the hollow and looked up at the ceiling.

"Oh, it's red, Thor!

"Which one?"

Thor peeks in to check as well.

The red pattern on the ceiling was a perfect square.

"Could this be the butt of the pillar?"

"Yeah, it looks like it."

"This one is blue."

Ulil, who had already guessed something and was moving, peeked into the hollow of a different corner and reported back to us.

Another corner was white.

"Hmmm...this means that a pillar has been pushed up to the ceiling..."

"Then does that mean the black columns will lift as well?"

"But I don't think I can move it by pulling on it."

In the first place, it is impossible for a person to lift a vertical stone pillar, which has no part to put a finger on, by human power alone.

"Perhaps, but something must have triggered it. It is still a theory, but I think the color may have something to do with it."

"Red ......, like that red hidden room?"

"Yes, do you think there were other colored objects?"

Time was pressing on, so Thor and his friends decided to retire to the tenth floor stairwell.

The next day, they went straight to the stairwell on the fourteenth floor and found that the number of corner pillars had increased to three.

"Only the white pillar is still lifted up."

"Let's go back to that red hidden room for now."

After dealing with the steel doll guards that are rushing toward us in the same process as the day before, we peek inside the red room.

On the far wall of the room, a red ghost stands alone.

"It's reoccurring, isn't it?"

"Well, let's go back and check it out."

The red pillar remained intact.

I quickly disposed of the scythe-using monster by going back and forth, and returned to the front of the staircase again.

"Oh, it's gone."

"Then, I guess it's a definite condition to defeat them."

"Hmm, blue, blue, blue, I've seen that somewhere..."

"I remember Moe. There was a blue one in the hall!

"Oh, that's it!"

The blue columns were shared by the steel dolls on the twelfth floor.

There were too many of them to be confused, but Sora and the others had seen that only one of the warning type stuck to the ceiling had a strange bluish tint.

"Could the white pillar be the escaping warden?"

"Maybe that's it."

The monster that opens through the stone coffin was wearing a white military uniform.

The white pillar has remained up from the time we first came to this staircase room until now, so it fits the condition.

"So that leaves the black pillar."

"If it's not moving, that means it's a monster we haven't killed yet, right?

At these words, Thor and Yuril looked at each other silently again.

Leaving the room, the group headed north at a brisk pace.

When Thor found the person he wanted, he exhaled deeply and scratched the bottom of his chin.

"So this is how it's going to be. I'm really not that naive."

Inside the great prison on the fourteenth floor.

In the crowd of gray robes, a shadowy black one was quietly mixed in.