Chapter 26: An Enlightening Conversation

My face looked as if it was sculpted from stone as I stared at the man in front of me. It seemed that my guess was correct. This mysterious fellow was not entirely human. Or he might not have been human at all. I was a little bit annoyed that he only saved me because I would be useful to him. Although I had figured out the reason as to why I was still alive, I wasn’t that pleased with the answer. I was expecting something more along the lines of I noticed your strength and thought it would be a waste to have you die here or something. But I guess not.

He also said that he had need of someone who was still alive. The fact the he knew I was alive seemed odd to me. According to my title, I should have an undead aura around me, masking who I truly was. But the person in front of me had seen through it instantly. Was the aura not as effective as I thought it was, or was the person in front of me just that powerful?

As I was thinking this, another question arose from my mind. What was the person in front of me? He could be an undead, a mimic, or even some type of monster. The possibilities were endless. I was hoping that he was some type of undead since he would more than likely show me a little more favoritism than he normally would. Or maybe he would kill me because I wasn’t actually an undead. Either way, I still wanted to know what he was.

“Uh, so what is it that you want me to do? Also what exactly are you and your kind?”

Although I was hearing him out, that didn’t mean that I was just going to do what he said. He might have saved me, but that didn’t mean that I would follow his every order. I didn’t even know the man!

“I actually only need you for one thing. There is a specific item that I would like you to retrieve from a castle that is above the sewers. The only problem is that everyone in this dungeon is stuck here because of the final boss. As long as the final boss is alive, no one will be leaving this place.”

Huh. So it seemed he needed me to retrieve an object of some sort. I didn’t really know why he couldn’t just do it himself since he seemed capable of doing much more than retrieving some measly item. I wouldn’t even be able to do what he wanted me to do since he was trapped in the sewers same as me.

One thing that intrigued me was that everyone inside the sewers was stuck also. I had assumed that I was the only one. I guess I was wrong. I was also left a little confused by this so I asked the man the question that was on my mind.

“If everyone in this sewer is stuck here, then why haven’t they all joined together to kill the final boss to escape? I don’t know how strong the final boss is, but I would’ve assumed that would be the first thing everyone would try to do once they realized that they were trapped down here.”

It was the only logical thing to do after all.

“If only it was that simple. For one thing, most of the creatures here don’t speak the same language. Even if they did, they survive by feeding off of each other so an alliance would be highly unlikely. As for the final boss, no one even knows where it is or what it looks like. All we know is that it has to be powerful since it’s the one that’s trapping us here.”

Oh, that made sense. You couldn’t really work well with somebody if you couldn’t understand them. I had assumed that they could just understand each other, but I was wrong. Hell, the only reason I could understand the bats was thanks to my necromancy and undead prophet skill.

The tidbits about the final boss were disheartening to say the least. No one had even seen the final boss yet. How big was this sewer? At first I thought it was just a bigger than average sewer, but now I’m starting to think that it might be a world of its own. A size that my mind couldn’t even fathom.

“How come no one has found it yet? I mean I know it has only been a couple of days but still. No one has seen it? Not a single person?”

It was hard to believe that not even a single person had seen it. If that was true, then I could kiss my dreams about escaping quickly goodbye. I might end up being down here for god knows how long. Even if I somehow miraculously found the boss, I would still need to be strong enough to defeat it. And doing all that would take time. Time that I would have to sacrifice. My parents just had to get by somehow as I struggled to get through this dungeon.

“The reason no one has found the final boss is because hardly anyone is looking for it. Instead everyone is too busy fighting each other and trying to establish dominance on all of the other creatures. It’s ridiculous if you ask me.”

As he talked the man threw up his hands in frustration. I guess he didn’t want to be down here as much as me. Maybe even more.

“What about you? Have you tried looking for the final boss?”

The moment I said this, the man looked at me as if I was idiot. Hey, I was just asking.

“Yes, it was the first thing I did once I realized I was trapped in here. Although my search never managed to get far because of these inferior creatures. Normally I would be able to kill them easily, but their bosses make things more difficult. I would be able to kill them all if I could just fight one species of monsters and their boss at a time. However the moment I defeat those set of monsters, another type of species will come to attack me. And then another. Soon I won’t be able to do anything but be boggled down by their numbers. It’s utterly ridiculous.”

Man, this guy had it tough. Although he wanted to escape and find the final boss, the monsters around him wouldn’t let him. One thing that shocked me was how nonchalantly he talked about killing the bosses. I couldn’t even see the bat boss’s level so I couldn’t even imagine how strong the person in front of me was.

As I thought about what the man told me, a look of confusion spread across my face. Something didn’t seem right. When I had been exploring, I had been attacked by monsters, but they didn’t intentionally seek me out. If anything I was the one who was seeking them out. But according to the man in front of me, every time he tried exploring he was attacked. Did these monsters have a grudge against him or something?

“How come the monsters attack you when you try to look for the final boss? I mean I have monsters chasing me, but not like you. Even the bosses themselves come looking for you.”

I could hardly fathom the bat boss looking for me to fight. I would be killed immediately and instantly. I probably wouldn’t even be able to damage it.

“You won’t believe why. Its cause of some stupid agreement that all of the bosses had made. No creature who is a boss may hunt creatures that are several times weaker than it. This is so they don’t lose most of their species toward one boss. The thing that irritates me is that even though I’m a boss, I don’t have any subordinates. Like what the hell. I mean my power helps me with it, but it still bugs me. And so what if I killed a few of the weaker monsters. It’s not like they were worth something anyway.”

Whew, that was a relief. It seemed that I didn’t have to worry about monster bosses roaming the halls and looking for weak prey. Their agreement made sense because monsters didn’t grow on trees. If they kept on losing a lot of them, there wouldn’t be any to take their place. This was probably why the bat boss didn’t participate in the battle between the giant rats and the bats. Everything was starting to make sense now.

It also turned out that the man in front of me was a boss. The only problem was that he didn’t have any subordinates. I made a mental note not to talk about his lack of subordinates since it seemed to be a touchy subject for him. He also mentioned that his power helps him somehow which made me quite curious. Thinking about this made me wonder what type of creature he was. I don’t think he ever responded my question about it either.

“May I ask what kind of power you’re talking about?”

A few seconds went by as the man stared at me with piercing eyes. It seemed as if he was mentally debating on whether to explain to me or not. I met his stare with a blank one of my own. He was either going to tell me or he wasn’t. Either way there was nothing I could do about it. After a few more seconds of silence, the man spoke.

“Hmph. I guess I can tell you since I saved you with this same power after all. In case you didn’t know I’m a vampire. And being a vampire gives me certain perks. One such perks is the ability to control animals such as rats, bats, or wolves. This is what allowed me to save you. By taking control of the rat that was attacking you I was able to stop it from eating you.”

…..Oh……

So the man in front of me was a vampire! I knew he had to be something like that since he said he needed someone alive and not a lot of things fit the being not alive slot. I was a little bit irritated about how he casually said he was a vampire. If I wasn’t an undead prophet, I would be shocked out of my mind. I had brought corpses back to life so learning about a vampire wasn’t all that surprising.

Thanks to the man’s generosity, I learned some important information about the race of vampires. Similar to the stories I had heard, vampires could control animals such as rats, bats, or wolves. Two of the creatures on this list were in the sewers right now. I could already see how useful this skill would be down here. This skill was also the one that saved my life. If the vampire hadn’t taken control of the rat, I would’ve been eaten. That was not a pleasant sight to visualize.

One thing that was bugging me was why didn’t the vampire just control all of the rats and bats? Even if he couldn’t control them for long, he could always make them attack each other and watch from the back. This way they would be too busy fighting to care about him and he would be able to look for the final boss. Or if he was feeling good, he could kill them all in one fell swoop. At least that’s what I would’ve done.

“If you can control bats and rats, then why aren’t you controlling the ones in the sewer? If you do that, most of your problems will be solved.”

There had to be a reason he hadn’t done what I had just suggested. Vampires were able to live for centuries, and wisdom came with age. I highly doubted that something this obvious would just go right past his mind.

“If only it was that easy. Since I trained in my other vampire skills, my skill for controlling animals is quite low. Not only that, but the bosses of these animals make it harder to control their animals. If it were anywhere else, I would be able to easily control them. But since it is down here, the process is quite hard. But even though its challenging, it’s still possible. If I concentrate I can control a good bit of them, but only for a limited period of time.”

Based on what the vampire was telling me, controlling these types of animals wasn’t even that hard. The only reason it was challenging this time around was because of the boss. If the vampire managed to defeat the boss, I would assume that the creatures under it would be forced to obey him. Hmm. That was something to keep note of in the future.

I also learned that this was most likely the weakest skill the vampire had. Even though he said his skill level was low, it seemed pretty powerful to me. The most rats I had fought at once were around five, not counting the battle where I had been forced to run away. If I was able to control even half of them, the battle would be a piece of cake. I could force them to fight each other and then kill any that survived. Hwaah. If only I had that skill.

“So what’s the plan? I know you want me to do something for you, but that won’t be possible until the final boss is defeated. And that will be pretty hard to do until the whole situation about the bosses trying to kill you dies over. ”

I planned on working with this vampire….for the time being. The moment situations turned grim, I would leave. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to kill me if I just hid in the bat base since the bat boss was so near. I could just hang out with the undead general until the vampire finally gave up on me. And even then I would just have to get stronger until I was able to fight the vampire on equal terms. But none of this would happen as long as things went smoothly so I wouldn’t need to worry about it until later.

“I have a couple of ideas. The first thing on the list is to make you stronger. The task that I want you to do requires you to be stronger and to have certain skills. I will help you with this since you are doing the task for me. The second thing is to deal with the bosses in the sewers. We have a couple of options. The first is to kill all of them, which will prove to be quite challenging. The second is to make an alliance with them, which might be just as hard as the previous. The third is to do a mixture of both. Kill the ones we hate and keep the ones we like. If we make them our allies, they will be able to help us when we fight the boss.”

Nice. One of his ideas was quite beneficial to me so I couldn’t really complain. Becoming stronger was exactly what I wanted to begin with so it was a win-win situation. And since he was a vampire who had lived for hundreds of years, or so I assumed, there were tons of things that I could learn from him. Maybe meeting this vampire was a stroke of luck.

The next thing he suggested deal with the final boss. Before we could deal with it however, we had to deal with the various bosses that were in the sewers. We could either annihilate them or we could persuade them to fight with us. Either way had its own problems. If we annihilated them, we wouldn’t have to worry about them attacking or backstabbing us. But if we killed all of them, we would be fighting the final boss by ourselves. If we persuaded them to fight with us, we would receive their help when we tried fighting the final boss. The only problem with this was that there was still a small chance of betrayal.

Hmm. This would be a hard decision. If I chose the wrong one, then I might never escape this sewer. But what chose was right? Were these the only choices I had? Time passed by slowly as I racked my brain for answers. What was the right move to take?