Chapter 31

It took longer to find a place to settle than I thought. Any time we ran into more than one enemy, we went another direction. It made traveling very slow. It also felt like this 5th floor might be about twice the size of the 1st floor, but without comparing the maps I had no way to tell for certain if it was true.

We ended up taking out two more zombies, and Lydia went up to Swordsman level 4. Whatever skills she was gaining, I wasn’t aware of them. I felt a bit frustrated not knowing what she had. For all I knew, she had a super special spell that would be able to wipe out all our enemies without danger. Well, that wasn’t likely. Each fight went the same way. She would swipe, I’d heal, and then she'd swipe again. Since her first attack, she hadn’t been hurt once and seemed in surprisingly good spirits.

“This room… it’s familiar,” I said as we entered a cathedral looking room. “Close that door over there.”

I pushed to close the stone door we walked through and then went to help Lydia close the other, which turned out to be way too heavy for her, even with all her force. She blushed as I held my hands over her head and helped her push. With luck, we managed to get both doors shut and locked. This was the end of day two for me in this dungeon. We were at a cathedral that looked very similar to the one I had seen on the first floor. Perhaps there was one of these on each floor of the dungeon.

I pulled out supplies from my backpack. Lydia’s had been abandoned as she ran from the zombies, so we only had my supplies. She thanked me to the point of tears when I offered to share with her. Did she think I was going to let her starve? Well, I only had a week of provisions for one person. Assuming it took a day each level to get back out, that was a 4-day journey. We could barely make it. That last day we’d both be starving. I didn’t hold back rations though. We needed our strength if we wanted to make it, and I barely knew the meaning of eating light.

Lydia got the campfire going quickly and started taking some of the rations and cooking them. I offered to cook, but Lydia insisted on doing it to show her appreciation. I set her job to Cook. Maybe she’d get experience for it then. I greatly anticipated having a girl make food for me. Of course, I had eaten at restaurants before, but this would actually be my first time eating food prepared by someone who wasn’t my mother, and she wasn’t much of a cook.

“What is that?” Lydia asked as I approached a wall and found a familiar mural there.

“It’s the story of this dungeon,” I said, glancing at the pictures. “Eh? This is a different story!”

“Can you tell me the story?” She asked, her tail swishing and her eyes curious as she stirred a pot of stew.

“Hmmm… this story is about a pair of siblings. There was a brother and his sister.” I explained. “The brother always vowed to protect his sister, and the pair were very close. You see, their mother and father had died in a war, and while they were allowed to live in the village, they only had each other to depend on. Then, one day, slavers came to their village. They were animalkin and it was an animalkin village, and the slavers attacked it to steal slaves and sell them. The brother tried to run with his sister, but she wasn’t able to keep up and fell behind. The slavers caught her, while the brother could only watch helplessly from his hiding spot. He failed to protect the last family he had.”

“And then?” Lydia was leaning forward, her ears perked up.

“It sort of just ends there. He left to seek the power to get vengeance on those that took his sister and enslaved her. There is something about raising an army to fight the humans, but that’s it. I suppose we need to find the next cathedral if we want more of the story,” I said uncertainly.

“We definitely must!” She responded excitedly, grasping the spoon in her hand like a weapon.

I just didn’t understand how it fits with the first part of the story. That was a simple tale. If this was all Mina’s tale, then was Mina the sister who was kidnapped? Was this how she ended up a slave? I felt like it was a puzzle, and I was just missing a few pieces to understanding the whole story.