Author's note:-

Things you need to know:

1. D'sue Personality.

2. Dust's character.

3.------- ability.

There is one more thing, but let's see if any one could figure it out.

(This is an unedited version.)

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Third Person P.O.V:-

She got on his back and he carried her out of the open space into another long and winding tunnel. Who knew how many more tunnels there were but the thought of having to pass even more of them was a scary one for them. They just wanted to kill the boss and go back home now. This cave was too tiring and eerie. Though the monsters were nothing special but most of their exhaustion came from the geography and topology of this cave system.

Martha clung to his back like a koala and didn’t let go. Because he was using his hands to support her weight, the feeling of getting touched though indirectly and not do properly was making her blush over and over again.

If her face was red before then it was going deeper shades for ever second that she rode on her back. She knew it was the one and only time that they were together but she didn’t wanted to let this moment go, so even though she felt a bit embarrassed by the situation that she was willingly submitting herself into she still didn’t let go.

‘How great it would be if the time stopped here right now with me on his back and him carrying me. How great it could be if the tunnel never ended and I could walk beside him forever.’ she thought.

But like every other dream, her dream also broke and after they crossed a slight but long slope leading them to the next level, in that seemingly hot tunnel. After getting out of the tunnel, they were greeted by Enco ‘The Assassin’ and Dust ‘Earth mage’ who were standing in front an insanely huge tunnel.

The entrance to the next tunnel which was in front of them was massive. It was greater and bigger than all and every other tunnel and open space combined. Martha saw that she had to lift her head straight upwards in order to see the roof. She guessed that if she tried to measure it, then it will probably come out to be between 30 to 40 meters of height.

Then her eyes traveled back from the roof to look back at their fellow part members and cause of luck or something, but her eyes meet with dusts, who was also looking at her. Whilst Martha’s eyes turned big and round from their unusual eye contact but comparing to her opponent had no change in her expressions or her stature. Where Martha’s eyes had a traces of confusion in them on the other side Dust’s eyes were like a hunter they had a murderous aura and a sharp glint in them.

But the confusion in Martha’s eyes slowly turned into mockery and then a smile slowly crept on her face. Now it was Dust’s turn to get confused, ‘why is she making such face? And, what is she looking down on me for?’ There were no such thoughts in Dust’s mind, but a single expression on her face that showed everything that she was thinking, ‘I don’t care’ was what was clearly written on her face and actually she really didn’t care about her at all.

Martha was confused because she couldn’t determine how they had gotten here earlier than them; While Dusts was confused because she saw her riding on the knights back. Even though she didn’t want to say anything or react anyway to her but unexpected to her, he uttered an ‘Oh!’ subconsciously.

Martha shuddered once when she heard that. She didn’t want to refute her or anything but she still turned and jumped down from his back. She coughed once before she started walking on her own feet again.

Dust found it amusing to see her acting like a child that she was. But the knight couldn’t help but be surprised when she suddenly jumped of his back and started walking again.

“What happened why ar…” his speech was interrupted in the middle when he saw that her always smiling face was right now devoid of any expressions and she was literally staring at the mage on the other side of the room.

He sighed and looked away from her. He was happy that she had jumped down from his back on her own accord. It was okay to help people, knights are there to help others but he knew that all of these peoples were criminals, backstabbers and corrupt. But no matter how cruel, blood thirsty, or arrogant someone was he couldn’t take his attention away from someone who sick and almost burning up because he is a knight.

For him Knights are heroes, knights are the Light that destroys the darkness. Knights are the support of the needy and are destroyer of evil. So, he helped her because she needed him, but if didn’t have fever in the first place then he would have killed her if the opportunity provided.

So instead of asking her the reason for her sudden action he thought of decreasing the amount of sparks that were flying between them and greeted the other team saying, “How was your travel? Did you encounter any monsters or traps inside?” he could only hope for the other person to reply to him. He wasn’t acting out of consideration for them both but because he knew they would need the help of everyone to land a land slide victory against the cave queen.

Dust shifted her eyes from Martha and looked at D’sue and then she went back to play her staring game with her. The knight looked between them both before he sighed once and said, “We didn’t encounter any traps though there were two ants waiting for us in the open space and with each others help we killed both of them. As for what they dropped, one of the deformed ants dropped a pair of normal size eye pieces and the other dropped a pair of antennae before disappearing into the void.”

When Martha heard him say ‘we’ she blushed, and a lovely smile blossomed on her face. Dust watched her expressions changing and found it amusing. She saw how Martha was blushing at the knight’s praise, but found no such reaction or abnormal reaction from the knights behavior. It was as if he was unaware of everything that was occurring around him and he was playing house inside his own territory or he was another one of those muscles heads. She looked between them and squinted. She understood that both of them were strange. Both stranger and weirder than the each other, but she couldn’t put her finger on what was so strange about them.

Even if she figured out what really happened, she still wouldn’t have given a dam about it. For her all of the conflicts and turn of events that she was facing were of no importance to her. And everything that has been happening from the start till now has been nothing but amusement for her, a moment of escape from the creepy atmosphere of the cave.

And in response to the knight’s questions she replied, “We encountered no traps, but one ant in the tunnel.” Then she looked towards the fire mage and spoke, ” The light from your torch wasn’t effective enough so I couldn’t see anything but before it even got near us it was killed.”

To her straight and without detailed answer he got flustered and words automatically came out of his mouth, “what! How?”

She pointed towards the assassin and said, “Even though I couldn’t see them coming towards us, but he could. So when it came a little too near us, he disappeared for some time and then reappeared back again, but this time with a head in his hand.”

*Gulp*

D’sue looked toward the assassin and swallowed a mouthful of saliva that had formed when he heard the tale of Enco encountering the ant.

But the story was not over yet as Dust again relayed the situation and continued on speaking,

“After that when we got near the exit of the tunnel he saw another ant which was sitting in the middle of the tunnel without moving. Once again I couldn’t see anything other than the space around me, cause the torch had just too little radiance. He looked back at me once, and then dissolved into inky shadow, disappearing into nothingness in front of me. I was stunned thinking what really happened, and when I was about to yell out to him, I saw slight movement in the area behind that ant. He came out of the ground and once again beheaded the ant with his dagger and came back.”

D’sue eyes had almost dropped out of his eye socket by the time she finished telling them everything.

He knew Enco was powerful, his display of skill in the jungle had already showed that, but it looked like he became even powerful after entering this dark and life devoid place. But he was happy, happy that those bad and evil guys were not the only powerful guys inside here, but someone like him, someone who worked to protect others and has a noble character was also here to help him fight if those other villains tried to do anything suspicious.

He hurriedly asked her if the ants dropped anything, but to her questioning she only moved her head left to right in denial. ‘So not all monsters drop something huh’ he thought.

They were all present there and the only ones absent were the people who should have arrived here the fastest of them all.

He was curious to know where their captain was, so he couldn’t help but ask the mage whether James had come out of the Tunnel or not. But to his question the mage only answered with a no. she said when they arrived here no one was present here at that moment, but they also didn’t know whether he had traveled ahead of them and was going to fight with the queen alone or not.

They waited for some time thinking that the middle tunnel must have been a dead end and they remaining members must be traveling through one of the other tunnels to reach here and that was what taking them so long.

They kept on waiting for him and after about fifteen minutes they saw a shadow stumbling out from the middle cave.

They all moved at once when and hurriedly closed the gap between them and the shadow. But when they got closer to it, what they saw left them horrified.

Their captain who they thought to be the most powerful of them, was stumbling around everywhere like a drunk, but the difference was that he wasn’t exactly drenched in alcohol, but in blood completely. His clothes were ripped apart and his upper torso armor was almost nonexistent. His sword that he kept beside him all the time was cracked from everywhere. When he entered the open space he saw them running towards him, he smiled looking at them before he fell down on the ground with a thud.

Sir! Leader! Their cries, which were enough to engulf the whole cave, rang out inside the room. James who was still conscious, even after all that he had gone through, shoved his head up and saw his team mates worrying for him. He couldn’t help but willed his body to move, which after some struggle did.

Martha, who was already near him moved even more fiercely, she swiftly got behind his back and helped him sit down. He thanked her and looked toward everyone who were standing beside him.

“What happened to you? Why are there so many scars all over your body? What the hell happened inside that tunnel?” D’sue couldn’t suppress his fear and he spoke as he panicked and his voice started trembling. He removed his sack from his waist and pulled a red bottle out of it before he simmered most of its content on James body and gave him another to drink which he unconditionally accepted and drank.

“We were ambushed.” He said while drinking the content of the bottle. “When we entered the tunnel, we saw that it was completely empty. Because we knew that the torch would only hold out for so long therefore we rushed toward the exit to the tunnel.” After saying that he moved his sight to look at the roof, “But who knew that they would be waiting for us in the open space. Because we were too careless, we left the tunnel and entered the cave without checking for monsters and just as we did we saw how big a mistake we had made.” He gritted his teeth after saying that and willingly clenched his fists tightly.

“There were ants inside, so many of them that they were almost everywhere. They surrounded us from every side and blocked the way in and out of the tunnel. We knew that to survive we had to fight, it was now or never, and we just did that.” His eyes turned bloodshot thinking about all that he had to endure to keep his life.

Others were sure instead of tears blood would start flowing from his eyes if he didn’t calm down, but they couldn’t stop him from expressing his grief, “I killed some while protecting Roby and he killed some, while I was protecting him. Like that we continued to kill the ants and when only five were left something happened. And only after fighting them for a long time, could I defeat them all.” he said while looking he still looked at the ceiling, feeling his energy draining away while he gradually became more and more exhausted.

Every single one of them was left flabbergasted. What happened in the tunnel that he went inside? They didn’t know. They only knew that two people entered the tunnel and only one of them came out from it..

Ah! Said someone before everyone eyes go fixated on him. D’sue remembered that he didn’t go alone in the tunnel, Roby ‘the archer’ was also with him. He looked back toward the tunnel that he came out of, but he saw nothing else inside it other than some drops of blood making a trail, from inside the tunnel till here.

He looked back at their leader and asked, “Where is Roby?” when others heard him say that, they also remembered that he wasn’t alone in the tunnel and there was also an archer who went inside with him.

James who was still looking at the ceiling, didn’t even turn his head to look at the Knight. With his face devoid of expressions, but with eyes full of grief he said, “There was one ant which never came down from the roof when other did to start the hunt. It waited for the perfect opportunity and just when I left Roby alone in a proper and secure place, to deal with the remaining ants…. He got his neck snapped in two by it, and there he died fighting with the ants.”