It was now the morning of our second day in the dungeon. Since it was my shift I was the only one awake. Although Alua could easily detect any presence in this dungeon even while sleeping, she still included guarding shifts in our training.

Actually, I was happy about it, it gave me some time to spend on my own and even though I couldn't train my demonic attribute, I could still meditate about it to increase my affinity.

Right now I was meditating about Suffering, trying to unlock the Hellflame attribute.

I always considered pain only a distraction, something I had to tame to reach the maximum efficiency, but now this was coming back to bite me in the ass.

I needed to make Suffering a part of me to gain the attribute, and although the divine attributes and those created from them were very subjective and their concepts could be approached with different perspectives, creating different variations of the same attribute, I still couldn't grasp the nature of that concepts.

I recalled all the moments I suffered in the past, which weren't few, but I couldn't feel anything about them anymore if not disgust for how weak I was; I also tried to think about children starving in Africa or the Jews during the second world war but although I could feel rage, I couldn't feel pain.

I then thought about what would have happened if I didn't get up after Ron beat me up, a humongous amount of rage pervaded me, and for an instant, I also felt an ache in my heart.

I tried to ignore everything else and focus on that fleeting sensation, but it soon faded, leaving only the desire to destroy Ron.

I sighed.

I watched the pocket watch and saw it was time to wake up everyone.

I sighed and then woke everyone up.

--Jane's pov--

After I woke up, I sat beside David while eating some dried meat.

“How are you?”

He asked me.

“I'm fine...... for now.”

“You don't have to worry, I'll make it so this subjugation ends up without troubles.”

For a moment the image of David rolling on the ground while Mark was killing the enemy flashed in my mind.

Lately, I've been starting to doubt David more and more, relying on him has been giving me peace of mind for a while now, but lately, I've been feeling more and more anxious about him.

I thought again about his troubles with leading the party and for an instant, I thought about asking Mark the same thing I asked David, but I knew that David was a better leader......

'No, that's not it.'

I knew it wasn't a problem of efficiency, it was a problem of trust.

I couldn't trust David, I tried to talk to him about me and to know more about him, but with scarce results, he didn't seem willing to let me know anything about him. He didn't even tell me how he wanted to free us from Hoss' influence.

I believed he was able to do it, what I didn't know was if he was going to abandon me halfway through it.

The idea of being abandoned and cast away terrorized me.

If I was going to be cast away it was better to change sides.

Right now Mark and David seemed to be competing for the leadership of the party. David told me about the novels he and Mark used to read, the ones where the protagonist was transported to another world like we were, and both of them seemed to think they were one. Both of them were very daring during fights, and David's plans, as good as they were, were always risky.

Both of them always wanted to be the one in control of every situation and both of them ever contemplated failure. I mean, we do have our guardians protecting us but those two were daring to unbelievable degrees.

I was sure that Mark would accept to protect me if I asked him, after all the protagonists of those novels usually had a harem with them, but I didn't want to take that step yet.

After all, I preferred David's approach to problems to Mark's, Mark was too naïve, he trusted anyone and never thought too much about things before doing them, while David doubted everything and anyone and thought carefully about every action.

It was still too early to give up on David, but I preferred to be defeated with Mark than to be left behind by David, for now, I wanted to at least start to approach Mark.

After I talked with David for a little while I moved near Mark and started talking with him.

--David's pov--

After we finished our breakfast, we resumed our exploration of the caves.

We encountered a couple more elementals and then reached the second area of the dungeon, the mushroom caves.

This area was once the outskirts of the city, somewhere around here, the Shovos had some small facilities cultivating mushrooms and breeding small animals and, after their disappearance, the mushrooms grew in all the outskirts of the city and monsters started inhabiting the area.

The mushrooms and the animals weren't for them though, they were for their guinea pigs. Deep in the dungeon's depth, there was an abandoned Shovos research facility, where they used to experiment on living beings, some even summoned from other worlds, like humans for example.

Such facilities could be found throughout all the five continents and one of them was the one where Claire, the hero of humanity were summoned and then escaped from.

Shovos were incredible beings, their magic abilities were good enough to allow them to summon beings from other worlds relatively easily, but in the end, they were defeated all the same. Their bad mana efficiency made them ill-suited for prolonged battles and although they were all talented in all the four elemental attributes, they couldn't use martial arts and the divine attributes. In the end, the humans demonstrated to be more adaptable, prospering in every kind of place, rapidly growing in numbers and using more attributes than them, some of them unknown to the Shovos.

We continued to advance through the caves, paying attention to all our senses, fearing enemies could come from outside the range of our lights.

In this part of the dungeon, there were also some light mana and quite a few dark mana in the air due to the monsters living here, so the elementals didn't tend to come here.

For a while we only encountered small monsters feeding on the mushrooms, some similar to armadillos with rock as armour instead of keratin, some similar to eyeless lynches.

It was good manners among adventurers to not kill monsters that didn't give you an amount of experience suitable to your level of strength to not steal preys to the weakest adventurers, so we couldn't kill them if not to eat them; I would have killed them anyway if I were alone though.

After a while, Oliver came back to us and said:

“There is a large cave ahead, there two rock bulls and three rock cows are eating mushrooms.”

Rock bulls were one of the species that resulted from earthen animals adapting to this place after the destruction of the Shovos, they weren't the strongest monsters of this part of the dungeon but they were still completely capable of killing us if underestimated.

“We'll kill them. Let's advance some more, then we'll create a trap.”

We rapidly advanced for five minutes through the small cave we were in, and then reached a much more spacious cave.

It was too dark for us to see how far it extended forward, Oliver said that he didn't reach the other side too, but soon after the bulls and cows he saw a tower, probably the rest of a human fortification since Shovos didn't build towers.

I prepared the ambush at the entrance of the small cave we were in and then went ahead to lure the bulls. Rocks bulls were usually much more aggressive than cows so usually charged ahead leaving them behind, I was counting on that to keep the numbers on our side.

I turned off my magic lantern and relied on Dark vision to see in the dark while gathering dark mana under my shoes to not be noticed.

Rock bulls and cows didn't have eyes, they used earth magic to sense the ground around them through their hooves and also had tougher skin, more strength, and harder horns than normal bulls, they were also more aggressive due to their new monstrous nature telling them to hunt for souls' fragments.

I got near them and then launched a Dark bullet. I hit one of the bulls, but it absorbed the shot without breaking a sweat and then started charging at me with the other bull.

I started running towards the small cave, enhancing my legs with fire while wishing I managed to master Shadow Leap, the opposite of Flash Leap, the technique Mark used yesterday.

I arrived in my position and prepared myself.

I was positioned on one side of the entrance while on the other side was Jane, she was quite worried about being at the front of the battle but I managed to convince her.

We were both spreading a layer of mana of our best attribute on the ground, eliminating the other types of mana in it and making it imperceptible to the bull since it could only perceive earth mana. We left earth mana only in a narrow path in the centre, barely big enough for one bull to pass.

In that narrow corridor, there was a rock obstacle low enough for the bull to jump over, and over that there was Mark, guarding Oliver and Erian.

I waited for the first bull to come, it rushed over to the corridor in the centre, not able to use its perception to its fullest during a rush, and thinking there was only a void beside it.

It jumped the obstacle and, at that moment, I used the fire enhancement technique on my eyes to enhance my reflexes, and on my arms, while holding with both hands my sabre infused with dark mana.

Then I slashed down, cutting one of the bull's front legs off.

The bull crashed on the ground before Mark, moaning in pain.

I smiled fiercely.

'Love this melody.'

I hurriedly raised my hands again waiting for the second but I didn't make it in time and only slashed its flank.

The second bull fell to the ground anyway for the unexpected pain and for the small layer of magic water created by Jane to make the ground on the landing point slippery.

Mark jumped on the first bull and swung his bastard sword with both hands, breaking its skull right away.

I then jumped on the second and used my stiletto infused with dark mana to break the bull's skull while it was trying to get up.

I then ordered everyone:

“Let's run to the cows before they escape.”

I and Mark looked at each other and then started to run as fast as we could, while the others followed behind.

The rock cows had small horns and were also less aggressive than the bulls. For that they tended to let all the fighting to the bulls, which ended up being the only ones growing in strength, leaving the Rock Cows as just cows with tougher skin.

The cows at first got near our position, following the bulls, but when they heard their cries of pain they started to run.

I was the one ahead, I was sure I could catch them first, but, suddenly, mark raised his left hand and chanted:

“Light.”

Light flashed for an instant from his hand, That was all the spell did, but the light allowed him to do something else.

“Flash leap.”

Mark suddenly seemed to slide on the lit ground and in an instant appeared near the cows.

That technique allowed you to slide at high speed on things lit by a light until a certain distance and Shadow leap did the same with shadows.

During the last fight the light of the lantern was enough for him since it was a short distance, but this time he needed to go further, so he needed more light.

They were complicated techniques that required both ki and mana to be used and although I trained in it, I still couldn't use it.

Mark then wounded all the cows on a leg to stop them.

“Hehe, I won.”

He said.

'Damn.'

Mark proceeded to finish off all of them and I let him do.

“Hey, do you think we can eat them?”

He asked me.

I looked at the corpses.

“We could, but I've got a better use for them.”

The scene of our first hunt came back to my mind.

'It's time for some more traps.'

“We'll use them as baits, Oliver said there is a tower ahead, we'll go there and set a trap.”

I carved a rune of preservation on all the corpses, a rune that used dark mana to kill all bacteria on something, usually used to preserve food, in my case, it was needed to not let out too much smell just yet.

“You and I will bring one each, Jane and Erian will bring the last one together while Oliver checks the surrounding.”

The others just arrived so they heard my orders.

We advanced a little while bringing the corpses and we arrived in front of a relatively small tower and a small building beside it, probably barracks.

They were too recent to be from the war against the Shovos, they probably were from the war against the Dark Lord.

The cities of the northern continent were all linked by underground tunnels. It seemed that in this net of tunnels circulated magic tools similar to trains moved mostly by the magic in the air, they were probably developed using Shovos technology, but such knowledge disappeared after the war.

Part of the war, in fact, was fought underground and although this dungeon wasn't part of the net, it was guarded in fear that the enemy could dig unnoticed from the net to deeper in the dungeon and then climb through the dungeon and emerge behind the allies' lines.

Those buildings weren't used anymore, but part of the net was still controlled by the Hollows or was inhabited by tribes of vampires, most of the vampires never betrayed the Dark Lord and part of them survived the war without turning hollows and took residence in the net while remaining allies of the Hollows.

Another task of the guild of this dungeon was to be sure no Hollow or vampire ever showed up here, but, until now, none of them ever did though, so the security was quite lacking.

Before setting up the trap we rested for a while inside the barrack and ate some food, we needed to regain all our mana and ki, and the others probably needed to rest their minds too.

I hoped to use the corpses to lure out Dark Panthers or Cave spiders, the most common predators of the area, but other rarer and more dangerous monsters could also smell our bait and we couldn't afford to fight them while weakened.

In the meanwhile, I measured my mana and ki.

The magic tool to do it was quite little so we decided to bring one with us.

I used it while I was still eating and looked at the numbers materializing in front of me.

'585 mana and 557 ki., not bad.'

“Hey David, let me try too.”

I heard an irritating hero say.

“Here.”

I passed it to him. He used the tool and numbers appeared in the air.

'591 mana and 582 ki, are you kidding me?'

He looked at me with a smug face.

“Hihi, first again.”

He then changed his expression to a more serious one and said:

“Anyway there was something I wanted to talk about, it's about the party after you finish your meal, can we talk outside?”

'It sounds troublesome, but I guess I have no choice.'

I sighed.

“Sure.”

“Good, I'll wait outside then.”

He got up and went outside.

Since Mark didn't give me any problem in the last fights, I was starting to think that everything would go smoothly from now on, but I guess it was impossible.

I sighed again, then rapidly finished eating and got up.