After Cerion and I had rested, we decided to finally enter the core of this dungeon, the city itself. No more monsters had come out to the gate since we had killed the ghostly knight, and with some luck, he wouldn’t respawn for another week at least. Because of this, my partner and I felt confident in taking a look inside.

We gradually approached the massive gate, keeping an eye out for any movement. When we had reached the gateway itself and there still hadn’t been any interruptions from monsters, we entered the city.

Once on the other side of the gate, we found ourselves surrounded by townhouses made out of gray brick. The lanterns on the sides of the cobbled street gave off an eerie blue glow, illuminating the city.

As we headed deeper into the city, I started to become slightly nervous. Normally, some monsters would have jumped at us by now, but instead, we were greeted by a deathly silence, which had continued even after we headed through the gates. The buildings around us were unsettling as well.

Cerion and I decided to investigate the city from the basics and entered the houses on the sides of the street, careful of any movement, to prevent a possible ambush.

It was difficult to describe them, but they all had one thing in common: they were impractical. By that, I mean that they didn’t really seem like they fit the purpose that houses were normally built for. The multi-story townhouses on the side of the street certainly looked like they had been pulled right out of an actual city, but on the inside they were empty. If that was all it was, it would be fine, but the arrangement of the rooms of the houses didn’t make any sense. Some were simply one big room with no separation between floors, while others only had hallways that connected like a maze.

One house actually had a miniature layout of what rooms were supposed to look like carved into the floor, and one had all of its rooms upside-down, in the sense that the bottom floor had ramps to the upside-down windows, representing what the attic should have looked like.

“Did the dungeon make these?”, Cerion had asked at one point.

“It feels like a child playing with blocks, this city.”, I had murmured back.

It really did feel like that. Like the dungeon didn’t really know what houses or cities were for, but that they looked somewhat like this.

I had to give the dungeon credit for its efforts, at least. This was an impressive building project.

After a while, Cerion and I decided to stop investigating random buildings and explore the city further.

We were heading to the clock tower as our end goal, but discovering what else hid in the city first felt like a good idea to both of us.

After a few more minutes, we entered a street that had two small buildings at the end that stood out from the rest. Unlike the other gray, unremarkable buildings, these actually looked like they were real, because they were made out of wood and white stone, resembling what an actual house would look like back in Reito.

They both looked like shops. They had large signs above their gates, one depicting a large bread, while the other depicted a steak.

“The local… butcher and bakery, I guess?”? I said.

“It… seems so.”, Cerion had replied.

It was a little strange how much these two buildings stood out from the rest of the dreary city. Despite the constant downpour, these little shops seemed full of life.

Cerion and I carefully approached them, step by step. When we were halfway down the street, a sudden shout caused us to duck behind a wall. We peeked out, only to see a large, comically fat ghost appear from the butcher shop, wearing typical butcher garb and wielding a cleaver.

Instead of approaching us, however, he was walking to the bakery, shouting all kinds of obscenities that just came out as garbled ghost-speak, waving his cleaver around in anger.

From the bakery, his twin emerged. Another giant ghost appeared wielding a dough roller as its weapon of choice. It matched the butcher's infuriation, causing the situation to escalate. Before Cerion and I could grasp what was happening they flew at each other and started swinging.

Cerion and I had to stifle our laughter as the two started to whale on one another with their weapons. Unfortunately, neither seemed to be doing any damage to the other, so setting up against each other wouldn’t be as fruitful as I was thinking.

Wordlessly, I looked over to Cerion.

“Do you want to intervene?”, he asked.

“Well, yeah. They don’t seem to be higher than tier 3 and they don’t look very skilled, so we should be able to handle them. Even if they change their minds and decided to gang up on us, we can win.”, I replied confidently.

Cerion grinned. “Same strategy as last time?”, he asked.

“Sure, though we should probably summon first, just in case the battle becomes a little hectic. There’s two of them this time, after all.”? I replied.

Cerion nodded and started gathering the rain that was pouring down around us, slowly shaping the serpentine form of Alia. Meanwhile, I used some normal dark mana to create Revan’s black skeleton. We kept them calm over our bonds after the summoning, and informed them of our barebones plan. Revan seemed on board with our straightforward strategy, though Alia gave us a judgemental look, before scoffing.

“Sorry for not making a three-page plan for each monster encounter, Alia.”, I said snarkily, with a hint of humor.

This just made her turn away even more, though. Cerion shook his head in exasperation.

With our preparations done, Cerion and I reappeared out of the alleyway. The two ghosts were still going at it, neither tiring of their futile conflict. Deciding that the guy with the sharp weapon would be the most dangerous, I apparated behind him as I drew my sword, starting up the old mana-gathering-and-expelling routine as I did so.

Right as I brought my sword down on the butcher’s shoulder, the baker’s eyes gleamed red. Before I knew what happened, a rolling pin flew at my face at an unimaginable speed. I ducked under it just in time, though it still grazed the side of my head, nearly cracking my skull because of the immense physical strength of its wielder. I was determined to finish my attack, though, so I pushed through the blow and felt my sword sink into the butcher. The baker’s eyes glowed red again, before a flurry of blows was sent at me. I pulled my sword out of the shoulder blade to block the supersonic rolling pin, before deciding to make some distance by apparating. Right as I reappeared a few dozen meters away, next to Cerion, a massive gray brick flew at me. I simply couldn’t react in time, but thanks to my intangibility it flew straight through me. As I focused again, I noticed that the baker’s eyes finally dimmed, losing their red glean.

Now that we had started our attack, the two monsters finally decided on a temporary truce between one another and focused on us. Both Cerion and I were quickly becoming aware of how dangerous our opponents actually were. The baker had shown immense speed and strength and even predicted where I would reappear after apparating.

We prepared ourselves for an onslaught of attacks, ready to call on our summons at any moment, but even after a solid minute, nothing came. I mean, sure, the monsters kept chasing after us, swinging their weapons, but they simply didn’t have any impressive techniques, skills or speed to deal with us. Even the baker’s previous vigor was gone.

“I think that baker got enraged when you attacked them. We should test that.”, Cerion proposed.

“Poking the dragon, eh? I like the way you think.”, I replied, smirking.

Cerion and I split up, both of us keeping the attention of one monster. The baker was chasing me, so this was the perfect opportunity to test his mettle. I drew a sword arc at him with overloaded sword, before dashing at him with [Aura step]. He nimbly dodged the first, but screamed out in pain as my sword plunged into his neck. Right as I prepared myself for the baker’s rage, I felt a sharp pain from my back, as a cleaver dug into my torso, shearing cleanly through my armour and nearly splitting me in half. Instantly, I withdrew by apparating and kept my body parts attached, letting dark form do its work. I called for Revan, and noticed both him and Alia appear from nearby. They were just in time too, because the butcher was running at me, barehanded. It seemed he had thrown his cleaver at me after I attacked the baker.

“Arthur, are you okay?”, I heard Cerion shout, as he rushed at the red-eyed butcher, blocking his approach.

“I’ll heal in less than a minute, don’t worry. It seems they get enraged when you attack their partner. Just focus on blocking, for now, we’ll counterattack after I’ve healed.”, I shouted back.

By now, the baker had rejoined the fight, though he couldn’t cause much damage unless he got enraged himself, it seemed. We continued our defense for a few dozen seconds as I healed, my body slowly regrowing the flesh and bone that had been split. Revan kept blocking any projectiles the butcher threw by jumping in front of it. It turned out that Revan was actually rather sturdy, because he kept blocking bricks and boulders. Meanwhile, Cerion combined his water skills with Alia’s water shields, to hold off its physical attacks. After a while, I was ready to enter the battle again. The butcher had stopped its enraged state, greatly alleviating the pressure on Cerion and our summons.

“Let’s focus on the baker first, after he's dead we can kill the butcher.I’ll attack first and then focus on defense, then we’ll keep switching.”, I proposed.

“Sounds good!”, Cerion had shouted back.

With a determined grin, I activated the curse mark on the butcher. Unfortunately, it was too risky to use my maelstrom, because the enraged butcher could run in and enrage the baker at the same time.

Instead, I resorted to using the tactic that I had used against the ghostly knight, and started creating sword arc after sword arc, gradually turning up the intensity. My half-moon-shaped black blades flew at the lumbering ghost, cutting into him by the dozens. He dodged many, to be sure, but he simply didn’t possess the same speed and ferocity as before, so many hit him cleanly, cutting into his fat body. They left deep cuts, since ghosts weren’t immune to my mana-based attacks.

Right as my first projectile hit, I canceled the usage of my next skill and redirected my mana into my dark form to block the incoming cleaver that the butcher swung at me. His speed was impressive, he had crossed the distance between Cerion and me in one big leap, or flight, rather.

What followed next was me pushing my novice swordsmanship to its limits. I put [Berserker swordsmanship] through the paces as I tried to keep up with the quick array of ever-fluctuating blows that the previously unskilled butcher threw at me. I brought my blade up to block just in time for each blow. After what felt like an eternity, the ghost turned its head around and dashed away from me so quickly a gust of wind erupted. In the distance, I could see Cerion put up a defense as the baker’s arm had been torn off. The severed limb fell to the ground and dissolved into a puddle, causing the baker to scream.

As I saw the butcher's offense speed up even more, I knew that I had to press our advantage right then. I apparated near the baker and swung horizontally at his neck, decapitating him. I held out a small bit of hope the butcher’s rage would stop, but of course he just screamed to the sky, instead. His whole body became red now, because of his fury.

I dashed forward as the giant hulk was distracted and left a new curse mark with a small cut on his thigh, as I dashed past him. I had to put a new curse mark on him after all, since I had abandoned my old one when I had placed one on the butcher. I could only keep one curse mark at a time for now.

Unfortunately, the butcher’s rage didn’t diminish. Once he was completely red, he stared at me and bared his ghostly, transparent teeth. With a smirk, I activated my overloaded maelstrom, throwing all of my aura-controlled mana into the skill. Quickly, a number of black spinning blades appeared around me, just in time to tear an incoming piece of road apart.

“Cerion, he’s focused on me! Charge up a cyclone with Alia!”, I called out. Cerion shouted back in the affirmative, so I prepared myself for a long minute of pain. I commanded Revan to approach the butcher from the back and sink his fangs into his neck, but the ghost just swung around with his cleaver, breaking Revan’s skull into pieces in one blow. I grunted. Revan was a tier 2 summon, after all. While a class holder like me or Cerion might be able to fight above our tier, for summons, the rules were a lot more stringent. They couldn’t just pull ridiculous skills out of thin air, after all.

Before I knew it, the butcher was on top of me again. When he encountered my maelstrom, he tried to ignore it at first, only to be nearly cut apart. Good, it seemed its constitution didn’t rise when it became enraged, unlike its strength and dexterity.

After that, it decided to try to cut into my defenses with its cleaver. This seemed to be futile for a while, but eventually, my mana output couldn’t handle it anymore. His cleaver cut straight through my maelstrom, right at me. With a blast at my feet, I dodged backward with Aura step. Once I had regained my footing, I just reactivated my maelstrom, rinse and repeat. Four separate times, the butcher and I went through this process. It was a little humiliating to run away over and over again, but I successfully stalled for time and left a lot of wounds on my opponent's ghostly body in the process.

Eventually, I was relieved to see an incoming storm of water mana, heading right for my enraged attacker. He didn’t even bother to dodge, too focused on me, and was cut into pieces by Cerion’s attack, devoured by the stream. By the time the skill fizzled out, only a puddle of water was left. The ghost had perished and joined the stream in the end.