Lately there hadn’t been much activity in the dungeon after the last incident, most considered the raving lunatic of an adventure to just be another kid who snapped in a dungeon, nothing particularly rare, but the effects in the dungeon that coincided with the mad mans words kept a lot of adventurers away for a time.

Now Lucifer’s was paying close attention to a small group wandering on his first floor, his mana was low at the moment and he used these times as a break and usually filled it with watching adventurers.

The group consisted of only a four people, all rather tough looking men, not particulary buff per say, but more along thelines of wirey strength a labour gets after years of hard work.

Lucifer couldn’t identify any particuar specialisations from the men’s attire or weaponry, so he guessed that these people were low level adventurers who frequented the low floors for hunting deer and boars.

It didn’t take long for Lucifer to spot the newbie of the group, judging by how his head swiviled around the driery dungeon like a panicked deer, Luicifer could confidently say this was this particuar mans first mission inside the dungeon, or second at most.

It didn’t take long before the first fight if you could call it that. They tracked a young boar to its den from it’s obvious tracks, completely oblivious to the quarter dozen boar tracks who's owners were old and smart enough to avoid leaving in plain sight.

Incompetent tracking aside they managed to quickly subdue the young boar completely unharmed, their expierence with this particualr enemy and their spears meant their prey never posed a threat.

However, Lucifer and the group noticed the newbie freeze up once combat started, it wasn’t a complete freeze, but the thousand yard stare coupled with the fumbling movements on the obviously worn in spear gave him away.

The man looked imbaraed after the fact, mostly because he wasn’t in any real dangert to begin with, but the other men were good sports aobut it conforting and joking with the man. The oldest man consoled “Don’t worry aobut it kid, there are actually very few people born for combat, Lay over there pissed himself the first Panther he fought, froze up like a newbie too”

The man Lay protested “hey that was Panther drool not piss, didn’t you see how close it got”

Another countered “I’ve never heard of a Panther spitting at someone before piss-boy”

Lucifer reminisced back to his army days, you could never tell what you would do in a shit hitting the fan situation untill it happens, the big confident guys often freeze up in their first life or death fight and its usually the quiet guy you didn’t notice before that becomes the competent fighter. Apparently those with expectaitons of what they were getting into, the so called experts, were the first to die as their worldview shattered amongst the blood and guts of their buddies.

Lucifer watched the young man fight a few more times and rolled his eyes when the man started to boast about his combat ability. Lucifer would stay as far away from guys like this as possible, especially when he knew they would be fighting together.

Having seen enough Lucifer decided to remove this overconfident newbie, he silently though ‘all it would require is two boars in the wrong place at the right time’

The party slipped through the underbrush cutting down obstructive branches, they followed another pair of animal tracks in the damp soil leaving deeper footprints of their own owing to the boars strapped to their backs, blood dripped from these corpses numerous wounds spreading the scent of blood too far for pray to be caught near and almost far enough for predators to make it dangerous, luckily they were still on the first floor so there was nothing that could threaten this group, or so they thought.

“can’t we go somewhere more open, it will be hard to fight here” remarked one of the larger men as he pushed aside another branch blocking his large frame.

“not all of us are as fat as you Gerald, we can fight in here just fine” replied another to the amusement of the group as he gestured to the surrounding trees.

Gerald snapily rebuked “not all of us are tiny like you” and held up his pinkie fingure in jest.

This continued for some time until the leader told them to shut up because the tracker could tell the prey was near.

The tracker was on one knee carefully observing the surroundings with a frown on his face. Something about this animals movements seemed unnatural to him, like it was leading the group to this confined place.

The more he looked at the area the more certain he was, the thought that someone may have laid an ambush with fake pig tracks crossed his mind.

Just as he was going to warn the group he heard the bushes next to him rustle and tusks followed by an angry pig burst from its hiding place.

The group was always prepared for a scared animal to charge them if they accidentally cornered it, the dense vegetation made this event an inevitability, so once the boar bust from the foliage the group were already sending attacks towards it, but the trackers head was already low and dangerously close to the boars hiding place.

Spears met fur slowing it slightly and the pigs thick skull met with the trackers head right on the temple. His leather cap did little to reduce the impact and he was sent flying away unconscious. Serveral members of the group called out to him as they vicously attacked the boar, but they received no response.

The new guy saw the attack and wanted to help, however, the thunderous crack of skulls froze him in his tracks, the man he was just talking to the experienced man who he counted on to keep him safe during his first dungeon experience, died, just like that.

He could hear the sound of the pigs screams as it died under the assault of spears, it was deafening, he could the mans crushed skill in Grotesk high detail, as if he was close enough to lick it.

He didn’t even notice his shaking hands, or the now all to similar sound of bushes exploding behind him.

The group tried to get to the dazed man in time, but just like before they were a step too late. The boar shoved its head between his legs and threw its head back using its front legs.

The newbie yelped as he was lifted into the air unexpectedly and hit the ground thankful that he didn’t break anything.

After a short battle the second boar died just like the first and the two remaining men looked at the newbie just sitting there. He had large gashes running up his legs and thighs. He asked, aren’t you going to collect the boars as he gestured to the downed animals.

One of the men started towards the newbie, but his shoulder was caught, he turned around only to see his party member shakes his head with a grim expression, he sighed then simply started tying the boar's feet together with cordage and soon the two able-bodied men walked away carrying today catch.

Meanwhile Lucifer was chuckling to himself, he didn’t expect to get the tracker too. A Lucky bonus.

He heard rustling behind him and turned his gaze away from his mana screen, he was surprised, not by the fox girl awake on the bed behind him, but Selenia was standing behind him.

Selenia asked, “why do you use that magic when you can see it with your dungeon senses” as she took a quick glance at Ahri before glaring at Lucifer.

Lucifer casually replied “the more time I spend inside a physical body the better as far as I’m concerned”

Ahri rubbed her eyes and with a twitching left fox ear she asked “why did they leave that man there to die”

Lucifer replied “because he was in shock, well, dying so to speak so there was no reason to try to save him. They were too far from the entrance to get him out of the dungeon with those wounds and I doubt any of them knew healing magic”

“shock?” asked Selenia.

“its like a mental affliction that affects people with large amounts of physical or mental damage, its the bodies way of trying to save itself by blocking off anything unnecessary. For example he won’t feel pain, which is good for when your being mauled by a bear, but not so good for anything else.

Another thing it seems to blocks is any outside thoughts, this is good because you're not thinking of the wife and children of the man you just killed in the middle of battle, but again not so good because everything becomes so clear when you're in shock--”

“that's a bad thing?” interrupted Ahri.

“as I was saying, everything becomes so “clear” so to speak that anything and everything seems perfectly reasonable while your in shock. That man was thinking about the loot from the boars and blocking out anything else, so if they tried to help him get to a doctor he would probably fight them while trying to follow his “perfectly reasonable” line of thought. We used to call this tunnel vision”

Selenia remarked “I remember several people doing such strange things during my adventuring days, although we just assumed it was some sort of craziness before death. But you can heal them and they will go back to normal after some time, the priests like to say that its a demon taking hold onto a weakened soul”

“Hmm,” Lucifer remarked, “the priests would say a lot of normal accurances are the work of demons wouldn’t they, it helps with the whole believabilty thing”

“I don’t think going crazy is exactly a normal occurrence” replied Ahri.

Lucifer chuckled and refuted “crazy is precisely normal, because normal people aren't supposed to get into life and death fights, they don’t cope so well. For example that new kid who was in the dungeon, every fight he would get into his body would become stiff from the adrenaline dump taking all the blood away from his extremities, again good for bear maulings, not so good when he is trying to do precise practiced movements, this threw all his training out the window. Second he got tunnel vision, the sight kind, so all he could see was the thing directly in front of his eyes and nothing else, and finally what got him killed was his hearing was hypersensitive, to the wrong things. He was so inexperienced in combat his mind focused on the sound of the boar in front of him instead of his surroundings, if he was more experienced then he would have had plenty of time to get out of the way, unlike the tracker who was much closer to the boars hiding place”

Selenia added “Ahri you’ve trained as an assassin and a mage, so you're unfamiliar with what the adventurers go through, it usually takes a few years of adventuring for someone to be considered a veteran, and that's if they live through their newbie days.

The adventurer guild tries to stick a few veterans with newbie teams to keep them alive, and one of their main jobs is to keep an eye on the flank and call a retreat if the situation becomes dangerous.”

For the next several hours the group talked about their various experiences, until Selenia changed the topic and asked, “anyway, I originally came down here to ask what you were going to do about the person who escaped the dungeon and why don’t you get Ahri pregnant, not necessarily in that order”

Ahri’s ears perked up and Lucifer sighed before answering “you sure know how to blind someone in a conversation… Well the answer to the second question is something I decided for several reasons while I was still human, and --”

Ahri quickly said “you mean reasons that don’t apply to the current, dungeon you”

Lucifer wryly smiled and replied “I still don’t want children”

Ahri added even quicker “but they can just be my children, you don’t have to have anything to do with them”

Lucifer remarked “but they will be in my dungeon won't they, and I’m sure you will quite upset if they fall into a spike trap of some sort--

Selenia rebuked “awfully specific!” as she glared at him.

He continued “so since you wouldn’t want them to die (cough by spike trap) then I would end up having to make sure they don’t die, aka taking care of them”

“then I’ll live outside the dungeon with the child” said Ahri. “and come into the dungeon to find you” she added quietly.

Selenia saw that Lucifer was unmoved so she added “we both know Ahri is going crazy and not in the temporary manner like we were talking about earlier, a person in her condition would have been impregnated in days if not hours of receiving the beast gods blessing, its not natural for her to be without child… so unless you want her to go insane or worse die, I would suggest getting busy”

Lucifer watched Selenia's expression carefully and appreciated the slight blush upon the mention of “getting busy”, he wanted to know why she was acting this way and what she got out of it. Her next words filled in this information for him.

“besides if she dies Merlin might turn into an enemy and side with the Magedom in the hopes of keeping his University safe”

Lucifer laughed “A dungeon being forced into siring a child for political reasons by its slave, how interesting” then added “you know even if I do decide to impregnate her she will just be pregnant with the seed of whatever my current “host” is right, my real body is actually a rock and thus cant have a child”

Ahri absentmindedly said “golem baby” with a strange expression.

Selenia looked like she ate some sort of bug as he face scrunched up into something Lucifer couldn’t quite describe, he teased “Selenia, I wonder why your so interested in my sexual affairs, are you perhaps “interested” haha” causing her expression to turn into a more readable expression he could recognize, embarrassment mixed with anger and probably a few other things.

“I’ll consider it” said Lucifer after a short silence. Then he continued “as for the other thing, I have decided to reveal myself to the world”