Chapter 209: (4/9): Escape from the Dungeon

The survivors of the original expedition were still exhausted and out of mana from the grueling battles they fought to survive in that cave where they holed up until the recovery team arrived. 

Research by the arcanists found that being sealed did not merely render the hunters unconscious, but also closed them off from outside mana and put them in a mild form of stasis, preventing their bodies from recovering naturally. As such, most of their wounds could not be healed earlier while they were unconscious, and now must all be treated after waking it. The huge workload stretched the capabilities of the few healers in the team to its limits, and by the time Ismelda sounded the call to retreat, only the most serious of wounds had been healed.

Aside from the physical exhaustion, every hunter suffered their own emotional scars. With half of the original team wiped out, almost every party had someone missing, and those who didn’t still lost people they knew after traveling together and fighting side by side. 

Even the Fleeting Leaves were not spared from this fate. Alayna, the elven knight that served as the party’s frontline alongside Eva and Marion, was killed during one of the many waves of golems that struck the trapped expedition. 

When Kagriss asked Eva how she died, Eva had been tearful and everyone from the Fleeting Leaves grew silent, especially Eva. After casting a glance at her brother, who stared at his feet in a depressing silence, Eva leaned up and whispered in Kagriss’s ear, her voice choking with every sobbing heave of her chest.

“Alayna … she died protecting my brother…”

Camilla was not very familiar with the rest of the party outside of Lavitte, so it took her a moment to place Alayna, but when she finally managed to remember what Alayna looked like, she knew why Alayna had been the one to die instead of Marion.

Alayna had been the elf that was always sticking near Marion the same way Lavitte and Eva remained near each other. They had been lovers. It was little wonder that Marion looked so guilty with himself and was especially crushed by Alayna’s death, more so than any other member of the party.

Although every member of the original expedition bore scars of their own, when the time to retreat came, each of them fought as hard as any other. The force of nearly two hundred, led by Ismelda, crushed through the waves of golems that the dungeons sent at them. 

Progress was slow but steady. Using sheer numbers, the party dismantled the golems as they came with any means possible as they passed through the tunnel. Hunters with blunt weapons waited in the second line and cleaned up the golems that the first line left behind, crushing to little bits every oversized piece of stone that looked like they might hide a core. The final line covered their boots with mana and ground the remaining smaller pieces to dust.

No piece was spared. No part of any golem was left untouched.

The hunters’ march of destruction could not be stopped.

With such a brute force method, casualties were unavoidable. Most could be healed and sent back to battle, but others were too seriously injured to be effectively treated and had to be carried on the backs of the backline. Rarely, a hunter died outright, but unlike before, their bodies were recovered.

The march took them through the winding tunnels, each step fought for with hunters’ blood. Eventually, the number of golems became so great that Camilla and Kagriss returned to the front lines. 

Since Kagriss’s magic was relatively ineffective at destroying golems, she mainly acted as Camilla’s support. When Camilla ran out of mana, she gave Camilla some of her own. When there were too many at once, she tied down the monsters while Camilla smashed through them.

Combined with Ismelda and Beitra’s heavy offensive, the four of them made sure that the brunt of the golem tide never reached the main force. Without them, the hunters could never hope to make it out. If they were not who they were, they’d never survive such a dangerous position at the front.

But all three of them had the same advantage: hurting them and having those wounds remain for any period of time was really, really hard. 

Camilla had her regeneration combined with Kagriss’s dark healing and support. She also made some trips to the backlines for blood to supplement Kagriss’s mana. Ismelda did the same, and her natural skill made it so that she was rarely hit. Beitra had enough of a field advantage from being a powerful stone elemental fighting in a mana-rich tunnel that he simply overpowered and nullified everything the increasingly-smaller golems threw at him.

To avoid giving any one hunter anemia, Camilla varied her victims. As it was Camilla’s first time drinking blood from a lot of different people, she did not know whose blood tastes best, but she quickly found a knack for it. 

For vampires, other than body type, personality also seemed to affect the taste of the blood and the blood mana she extracted from it. The more similar they were to Kagriss, the better the blood tasted.

However, to not betray Kagriss, she decided to just close her eyes and have Kagriss pick for her, only for Kagriss to choose the same people she’d pick. When she asked Kagriss why, the reply she got was, “Why would I be jealous when I’m the one you’re basing your likes on? I’m not like them. They’re like me.”

With no arguments, Camilla accepted the arrangement.

After what seemed like days of continuous fighting, although everyone knew that it hadn’t actually been that long, the golem tide finally stopped. It was abrupt. One moment, there were dozens of golems surging at them. 

At first, everyone including Camilla were suspicious, but when several minutes passed, 

After a and they reached the grand hall filled with sculptures of the race that Camilla now knew to be flugels.

Now that she had context, she wanted to stay and look a bit more, but as soon as they entered the hall, Beitra visibly shook and his image of an immovable boulder that stood against all enemies crumpled.

He held up his hand. “Everyone, this is the hall. Look straight ahead! Do not look at the walls!” he shouted. “I repeat; do not look at the walls, or no one can save you!”

Despite her exhaustion, Camilla almost laughed at his reaction, although she did not show it on her face. However, she couldn’t resist whispering to Kagriss through their bond, pulling her closer even though she didn’t need to. “Pfft. Look at him. He’s so scared.”

“Heh. Can you blame him? The last time he was here, he had a massive headache and as far as I’m concerned, he had to be carried out. I doubt he’s feeling too proud about this.”

“Right?” Camilla covered her mouth, subtly hiding her smile. Even though she didn’t know any of the deceased personally, knowing that some of those hunters behind her died from the golems that she let through wore on her. She thought that after getting through that failure of a campaign that she’ll be less affected by the guilt, but it’s gotten no better.

She was lucky that she still had Kagriss to joke with and use humor to take the edge off the stress. 

Kagriss read her thoughts. She squeezed Camilla’s hand and didn’t go any further since they were still in public. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “You already did everything that you could. Even if a few golems got through, things would be so much worse without you and anyone that blames you is out of their minds.”

“I know that. I know that deep inside, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling that I could do better. What if I was a little more thorough…?”

“You still can’t do anything about the ones that Ismelda and Beitra let through. The only thing you can do is to let it go.”

Camilla pressed her lips together. That was easy for Kagriss to say, but it was hard for her to just let go of the guilt. It took her an unknown number of days locked in Victoria’s dungeon, a change in race, and a whole different worldview to stop thinking about the campaign. The scale was admittedly smaller here, but she blazed the path and people died in the path she created all the same. However, she said nothing.

Sensing that she wasn’t satisfied, Kagriss tugged on her hand, grabbing her attention. “I’m sorry for reminding you of all this, but if you really can’t let go, then smile. Smile and do your best to believe in that smile. I heard it helps.”

Camilla nodded and forced herself to smile. She tried to think of things to smile about—Kagriss by her side, how they’re almost out of the dungeon, the help that she was going to receive from Victoria soon after this mission, seeing Elyss again. Even further into the future, there was that little cottage or cabin, or whatever they end up choosing as a hideout… lovenest. 

All those things made her want to smile, and so she did. As long as she filled her mind with thoughts of her hopeful future, she would not have enough space to think about the bad things.

She smiled.

“That’s the spirit.”

Camilla kept right on smiling the whole way through the sculpture room. Instead of just twenty people that remained to fight off that titan, almost two hundred people returned. The sound of boots stomping on the polished ground that was clean of all debris that might’ve remained of their battle against the titan raised everyone’s spirits.

So many boots, so many survivors. Even if a lot of people were lost, hearing the presence of so many people allowed them to live in the illusion that their friends were still alive—that they were returning from their mission full of success.

Perhaps they did bring back some members of the original expedition, but by all measures except the technical one, the mission was a failure. Two hundred hunters set out to find and retrieve a hundred hunters, but by the time the hunters marched through these gates once more, less than two hundred remained.

“You’re forgetting that a lot of people that came with us left.”

“That’s still a lot of people dead. Speaking of those people, what do you think they’re doing?” Camilla asked. She shot a glance toward Cadaelia who was looking straight ahead like everyone else. Because of Beitra’s warning, almost no one except her and Kagriss dared look around. Especially daring people did sneak a peek and they immediately got a mild headache, forcing them to look away. 

Even Ismelda was no different. Camilla watched as Ismelda looked, flinched, and averted her gaze.

When Camilla approached the gate that should lead to the way out, the gates opened by themselves. At this point, no one was surprised by magical doors. They just wanted to go out.

The moment the door opened a crack wide enough to fit a person through, a face appeared. Camilla went on guard, but Cadaelia’s eyes widened as she recognized the person.

“Drolik! You’re still here?”

The man called Drolik waved at her and at Beitra. “Boss, you’re finally out! We’d always believed that you’d make it back to us!”

“We?” Beitra asked.

It soon became clear that only three people from the group Cadaelia sent out before the titan attack still remained. They kept watch in shifts, waiting. The rest already left and went to seek reinforcements from their home city Trista. However, the round trip was very long.

“They’re not back yet? How long were we inside?” Beitra asked, furrowing his brows.

“I don’t know, boss. Felt like days, but it could be weeks past that tunnel.” Drolik was in the middle of waking up the other two, and when the people saw the tunnel that Beitra dug out on the way in, everyone groaned.

It was just tunnels, tunnels, and more tunnels.

Thankfully, the tunnel this time was without danger, and everyone made it out safely in hours. When they finally reached the entrance, it was noon, and a few hunters collapsed from having been forced to stay awake while on the verge of exhaustion, while even more weeped at their survival after such a grueling fight. But, while some survived, others didn’t, and those that didn’t make it out were wept for.

Then came the time for each party to total their losses and return home. 

While Camilla and Kagriss were returning to Celrantis with Ismelda, Lavitte and the rest of the Fleeting Leaves were heading back to Dianane. Kagriss smugly hugged goodbye with Eva while Camilla pulled Lavitte aside for a talk.

It was the first time they spoke together since Lavitte first left on that ill-fated joint commission. At that time, Lavitte had been in the position of power, being the leader of an established party on top of being a decent hunter himself.

Now, their roles have been switched. Camilla had fought and borne the weight of an entire alliance on her shoulders while reaching heights far greater than Lavitte could hope for.

Whereas Lavitte had looked upon Camilla as near equals, he now looked at her with a reverence that made Camilla shift in her shoes. 

“You don’t have to act like that around me. I’m just a normal hunter…”

“No, I still must thank you for saving all of us,” Lavitte said. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can repay you with, but if there’s anything that you’d ever want us to do… Well, we owe you our lives.”

Camilla let out a small laugh. “Well, I won’t refuse. I don’t like people owing me favors, so I’ll cash in now. Remember Lucienne?” she asked.

Lavitte nodded, looking guilty. “Sorry for trying to poach her…”

“It’s fine, it’s fine.” Camilla waved away his apologies. “Here’s the thing. She decided to stay behind and join your team and left on good terms. She took those two girls with her and are currently staying in Dianene. Do you still have room for them in your party?”

Even if Lavitte wanted to change his mind, Camilla wasn’t going to give him a chance to.

Luckily, Lavitte had no intentions to and he nodded without hesitation. “We’ll gladly take her in. I haven’t seen her fight, but I feel she’s around the same level as the rest of us, and she seems to be quite gentle and agreeable—”

“True enough…”

“Kagriss, are you eavesdropping.”

“Yes.”

“—so I feel she’ll be a good fit. Besides, a new slot in our frontline for our team formation just opened up.” Lavitte closed his eyes at the memory of Alayna and Camilla put her hand on his shoulder in an attempt to comfort him. “...anyways, we’ll be glad to take her into our group. Despite our poor performance this time, I promise that I won’t disappoint her. She won’t regret it.”

Lavitte was acting way too humble for Camilla’s liking. She just wanted Lucienne to be treated as an equal by Lavitte’s party. Hopefully Eva will see to that, since she is close to Kagriss and by extension Camilla herself.

“Is there anything else?” Lavitte asked.

Camilla hesitated. She had no idea about the time frame since the dungeon messed everything up, but she decided to give it a shot. “If you ever happen to see two tall holy mages and two smaller ones, please look after them for me. If you can, please notify me of them. They’re very important to me.”

Judging by the time, if they hadn’t spent too long in the dungeon, then Fleur, Anne, Arvel, and Justin should be about to arrive at the border soon, even on foot. As all four of them had never been to vampire territory, they’ll need a guide.

Although Camilla had no idea if they'd pass by Dianene, she had no other options.

Lavitte nodded. “I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for them, and spread the word too.”