Chapter 9

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The ghosts of dead goblins didn't wake me up in my sleep. In fact, I didn't dream about dead people, not the living or the dead. That wasn't a bad result for the place we'd slept in. Perhaps it would be safer to try to take a nap in the den of a hungry bear than to lie down to rest in a necropolis.

And yet, despite the theory of probability, nothing irreparably bad happened to us, unless you count the bodies that were stiff from lying on the hard stone floor. Morning - and in a place like this, when you get up, it's morning - we greeted it quite cheerfully. Be that as it may, our company was still breathing, which meant that we still had a chance of survival. And, personally, I had the feeling that my companions, after the battle near the entrance of the dungeon, were fully confident that I could get them out of any shit. Of course, this flattered my immense ego, but I, unlike them, am well aware that I am not the biggest crocodile in this hellhole. And if it comes to another legendary monster, all I'll get the same legendary f*cking.

A quick breakfast, an equally quick packing, and we're good to go. I turn to the sphere again, trying to figure out a normal route that won't lead us to a dead-end, forcing us to spend the whole day just to get back to some fateful fork. We have food and water for another three or four days, and then we can either eat each other or starve to death. Neither of these options inspires me, so let's go with a song.

Only it is better to sing to yourself, so as not to call all the locals at the concert.

Not that they're such a bad audience, but I'm afraid their embrace won't please my guts.

With each passing minute I realize more and more, or rather, it gradually overwhelms me with the realization that this underground necropolis is really huge. Once upon a time, it was a real city, hidden in the depths of the earth. The city is reliable, made by the best engineering solutions, branched out, and intricate. The clairvoyance skill went crazy, literally pouring out tons of information garbage on me. The city was neither ordinary nor metropolitan, but rather peripheral and provincial, and not the largest, but nevertheless it was, existed... and fallen.

This place remembered laughter and crying, tears and blood, groans and screams. I have no idea what happened here once, but the city died. Not the people of the city, or rather, not just the people, but the city itself, all that it was. The earth, the stones, the vaults and arches, the halls and corridors, the rooms and tunnels - all of it literally reeked of ashes and cold. It was as if something had escaped into reality, literally fusing with these stones, turning them into a breeding ground for a world-poisoning contagion.

It's a tormenting sensation that makes my whole body shiver involuntarily. Whatever is sitting somewhere at the bottom of this necropolis belongs to the category of unknown evil crap, which is better not to touch even with a three-meter stick. Just for the sake of mental health and normal functioning. I don't know what level this thing is supposed to be, but for some reason, I don't have the slightest doubt that it's not fucking small.

I instinctively try not even to look down with the sphere of shadows, so as not to provoke it. Now even if it knows about us (someone created a trap at the entrance), it doesn't see us yet. And it doesn't keep track of all the undead in the dungeon, or they'd start killing us off the moment we killed the first dead man. So, slowly and stealthily, we crawl toward a possible exit.

Smile and wave, smile and wave.

"Well, and what should I do about it?" The question is rather rhetorical, because, apart from me, who has the Gaze, no one can see this very education due to the lack of the necessary skills.

Losij and Hans looked at each other and asked, almost synchronously, without raising their voices above a barely audible whisper, as if just breathing loudly, while remaining much quieter than the indignant isekai:

"What do you mean?"

I suppress my growing irritation, realizing that I myself had decided to help these two, and now to abandon them would be at the very least not pedagogical, and in some ways inhumane.

"A trap, and, if I understand correctly, combined with the alarm." Explanation. "It's pretty well hidden, but the worst part is that there's nowhere near a proper passageway. Except leading downstairs. You can, of course, break through the wall in that nook we checked half an hour ago, but there would be so much noise that the thing I don't want to go down might come up and visit us."

Hans looked eloquently at his feet, obviously not too happy to hear about something that lived right beside us, and which even the great James Bond follower in me didn't want to wake up. The Losij was much calmer, but not so calm as to hide his slight nervousness.

"Any chance of passing through the signal spells, or turning them off unnoticed?" The duelist asks collectedly.

"In principle, I can try, but right below us, though a little to the left, there's a whole room full of undead. There aren't a lot of undead in there, but I noticed about a dozen wights, and something else that smells very deathly. I guess if we disturb the signal grid, we'll have to deal with them, too." I explain calmly, already figuring out the solutions.

And I realize that, as it were, there aren't any. I wouldn't take the risk of disarming the charms while there's such a powerful group of undead near us, and I couldn't guarantee that I'd be able to successfully untangle this thing. Not at my current level of trap skills.

The spells themselves looked like a mesh of cobwebs, slime, rot, and snot, with frequent cells covering all the entrances to the room. In some places, the enchantments were clearly a little thinner, so with my dexterity and my Gaze, I could try to squeeze through, but only on my own. The three of us were guaranteed to hit a single thread, even if I drew a path with the crayon.

After another hour and a half, I gave up and ordered to turn around. My skills at avoiding traps were clearly inadequate, and the undead sitting in the hidden room was starting to move in a bad way. Perhaps this was a case where normal heroes should take the detour.

"Okay." In response to the noise I made, both men prepared for battle. "I'm not getting around this thing, and I'm not risking another battle. Let's pack up and get out of here. It's better to spend a few hours on the way back than to get killed in an unnecessary fight."

It certainly didn't seem like they were both sighing in relief. And I wasn't eager to try my hand against such an opponent, either. I might be able to take out a dozen wight and some other weird shit, but to do it while covering my allies... no, it's too hard. With the composition of the enemy squad, I'd have to survive a fight like that myself.

So let's get out of here, gentlemen.

Two wights stood in columns near the gate, decayed to dust and a pile of rotten wood. It looked as if the long-dead guards were still defending the entrance to their territory. It looked rather frightening, especially when you knew that the two dead men were level thirty even.

Let's just say I don't want to mess with them for anything. It's trivial because I'm not sure I can take them out quietly and unnoticed. Not only the specific skills of the undead, specialized in finding the living but also the terrain itself, played for them. The extremely wide hall, with high ceilings lost in the darkness, was illuminated by a deadly pale light coming from some crystals. I couldn't help but marvel at the reliability of the local lighting system: that's what our housing and communal services could learn from.

All three of us are peering out of some sort of technical aisle, so we're looking up at these cunts. In theory, I could jump right at them, but something tells me that these particular dead men have their dead analogs of the danger sense. It's so easy to knock out an airborne target that they don't have to work hard.

On the other hand, I could just pull myself out of the path of impact thanks to the shadow, but then I'd still have to fight the damn two high-level undead at full power. And a quick elimination wouldn't even be a thing.

"Yeah..." All I can say is to break the nerve-wracking silence.

"What are you planning to do, eh, Tin?" Asked his question, Losij.

"Like what?" I wonder. "I'll make our way out of the gate."

"Hmm. You know, don't take this as an insult or disbelief, but tell me, Tin, do you have a plan?" The swordsman asks somewhat tentatively. "Because even from this distance I can sense a threat from those two."

"Don't worry, kid, I've got a perfect, brilliant plan." I'm being as nonchalant as possible in my tone of voice. "The best plan ever!"

"Be quiet, or they'll sense it, bitches." the ever-frowning Hans, interrupts my pathological monologue. "Anyway, what's your plan, if it's not a secret? Well, to support you, if anything."

"The plan? My plan is perfectly foolproof, infinitely cunning, and completely fucking awesome." I'm diligently adding more self-confidence to my voice. "I'm going to go in there and fuck them both up."

There was nothing but silence in response, but, by Cthulhu's balls, it was an infinitely eloquent silence. It was the kind of silence that would make you call a lunatic asylum on Earth.

"Mm-hmm. What a plan. What are we supposed to do?"

"Give me some moral support."

"And that's it?"

"Well, I don't know, you can also iron your shirts, just in case."

I'm not listening to the answer to my quip, and I go into stealth and start approaching my opponent. Despite my ostentatiously cheerful mood, I didn't feel like laughing. The stupid jokes didn't make the problem go away, and even though I'm still confident that I can defeat both of the dead men, no one says that there are only two enemies to fight.

I have a suspicion that there are more than two of them nearby.

My high dexterity allows me not only to do industrial mountaineering without safety but also to jump very far. I was also able to jump far enough to fall from the ceiling onto the left guard's back with all of my body weight.

In a perfect world.

Because in our cruel world, the thirtieth-level undead might well sense a threat, even if it were perfectly concealed. Sense it, and then shift a bit, putting a rusty halberd on the spot where the threat landed. So rusty, in fact, that it literally consists of rust and materialized death energy.

I could have ducked, but I didn't. If I duck, my opponent would shift, get ready, and attack my landing spot without delay. I will no doubt dodge the attack again, I hope. But the quick destruction of the enemy would be out of the question.

Instead of ducking, I fell straight to the halberd, only to twist at the very last moment so that I could get within inches of the blade, grab the shaft, and throw myself onto the chest of the somewhat confused dead man with all my weight. The undead may not know how to be surprised, but the patterns of action preserved in their heads are somewhat retarded if you do something out of them, like now, for example.

A second, but what a second? A moment of confusion, but that's all it took for me. The obsidian goblin dagger, soaked in shadow that it resembled a shadow itself, struck precisely into the small slit on the old helmet. The eyes of the undead are not much use, of course, but there was no one to remove the unnecessary gap in the armor designed for a still-alive man.

A gray light flashed on a defensive skill that should not only repel the blow but also shake the man who was too close. Except that the little man had already jumped off his victim, using the same halberd as a fulcrum. The defense repelled the dagger's attack, but in doing so it released all the energy it contained, literally wrapping the undead in a cocoon of [censored] mist. A volitional effort transformed the mist into a set of sharp blades of pure darkness, jabbing into every articulation and burning out the magic in the dead man's body.

I should have said something like "Easy Frag," but I was too busy saving my skin. The other guard wasn't the least bit downhearted about destroying his colleague, and he wasn't about to give a denunciation, either. He also took advantage of a not like standard warrior's dash. If the first was always in a straight line, and you can track it, the dead man's use of it was something cooler.

In an instant, the two-meter-high iron (and bone) thing just scattered in weightless ash and rust, only to appear at my back a moment later. If it hadn't been a sphere, and if it hadn't been a danger sense howling like a pack of castrating cats, I might have been multiplied by zero. Or divided by two, given the force of the enemy's halberd.

I had to dodge again, trying desperately to reach my opponent with the two shadow whips at once, shrouding his legs at the same time. The whips slipped helplessly from his armor, and the tentacles that had bound him were dispelled by the raw force. I'd already won the initiative, though, so I'd better not hesitate.

My series of attacks was effective enough to stifle my opponent's attacking impulses while forcing him to use one defensive skill after another. The shadow ribbons knocked the dust and ash out of the heavily creaking armor, leaving dents and cuts, but they couldn't penetrate it. Daggers were, alas, too ineffective against an armored foe armed with a long pole weapon.

It was a full-fledged battle, one in which I was undoubtedly in the lead from start to finish, but my opponent nevertheless offered decent resistance to my actions. After about a minute of time, some attacking skills (especially the weapons that split into three ghostly copies), and a couple more teleportations in the ash cloud, the other guardian was hit in the chest by shadows, slowed, and was subdued by me in a particularly cynical fashion.

I raise my head slightly upward to discern the silhouettes of my comrades, still lurking in the dark tunnel: "Did you fall asleep in there, or what?"

Traps, undead, traps, some more traps, undead, and traps again. This place is slowly losing its scare. It's starting to piss me off more and more. The problem is that going through these tunnels and passages quickly would be fraught with all sorts of bad things, and going slowly would not be able to meet a reasonable deadline.

Not that the undead was that dangerous. I didn't meet anyone scarier than the dead guards who had been turned into experience a little earlier. The usual dead, single or in small groups, a couple of ghouls, a few ghosts, another ghost, and some shit consisting of six bodies without legs or heads stitched together, crawling somewhere in its way. The last creature, which embodied the phrase "multi-armed poly-asshole," almost became dangerous. Both because of its very high level and the fact that I couldn't fight it properly, almost bending over with laughter.

Imagine being attacked by a huge, toothy butt. It's funny and scary and surreal. A phantasmagoria, I'll admit. And it was as tenacious as a mixture of a cockroach and a dandelion. I spent more shadows on that thing than I did on three of the dead. But we finished it off altogether, literally crushing the abomination to pieces. The level dropped for all three of us at once, even for Losij, who was one step away from gaining the next class. He was walking around so happy that I unwittingly suggested I put out the torch by continuing to use his face instead of the lamp.

I almost died the moment another trap went off without any warning from my gut. Only at the very last moment did my precognition work, forcing me to almost bite my own heels. I ducked, even though a piece of my soiled jacket was literally scraped away by the air blade.

After my swearing had subsided a little, my breathing had stopped, and the new curses weren't so bad, I calmed my companions down and began to examine the place where the trap had been placed. How it had been concealed from my perception was still unclear, but at least I could see the exact method of execution.

The magical crystal with the enchantments was surrounded by a circle of scribbles that looked like translucent worms. Apparently, it was some sort of crap designed specifically to withstand visionaries, clairvoyants, and the like. In theory, I could try to sense such crap with my shadow sphere perception and be sure to identify it with my Gaze.

All I have to do is not walk around relaxed but also try to actively sense something. But I'm afraid to turn on the Gaze, it gives me a headache and makes me feel depressed about the scenery. So I had to overpower myself and look around every corner, every room, with my eyes before I set foot there.

I feel like some kind of stalker walking through anomalies.

It's a reference not to the pervert people but to the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Hans made this find, for I had ignored those things, for there was no magic or danger in them. And they weren't undead, either. But the seasoned pathfinder had gone through the dusty drawers in some old room and found nearly two hundred coins in gold. None of us had ever encountered such coins, but a gold coin is still a gold coin. A little more or a little less, but gold.

I remained somewhat gloomy, to the exuberant joy of the archaeologists who had found a worthy reward. No, the loot was good, of course, for I had not a penny at all, and the gold itself I had triple-checked with the Gaze for curses. No, there was another reason for my anxiety and longing.

It just so happens that, despite my best efforts, not only do we not come to the exit, but we have to go steadily deeper and deeper into the catacombs. It's dark, damp, wet, and dreary. There is too much death and cold here for this place to evoke any positive emotions at all.

In contrast to the upper levels, there were still some remnants of furniture - like those drawers in which the gold was found - that were made of no other kind than super hard wood, or simply enchanted ordinary wood.

We took the coins (gold is heavy!), dividing them between Hans and Losij. I would have taken some too, but I need the maneuverability too much, so I gave my share to them for safekeeping. It may have been gullible, but I doubt they'd want to screw me over right away. Besides, gold is the last thing I care about right now.

"I don't like this place." It was the first thing Losij had said in the last hour, but he said it as soon as he looked at the scenery in front of us.

"Fuck, me too." Hans immediately added. "It's like they're putting needles under my skin."

Apparently, this place was a water reservoir, created for the needs of the inhabitants of this dungeon back when it was inhabited by living inhabitants. I think there is no need to explain what these reservoirs could have become in centuries of downtime, lack of cleaning, and constant feeding by the energies of death and decay?

The smell was not very strong, but it was so nauseating that we had to quickly wrap our faces with rags and sprinkle the rags with a disinfectant for water purification. I do not know whether it helps in this case, but at least it has a pleasant smell. What was more disturbing than the smell was the calm smoothness of the murky, almost [censored] water.

I wasn't the least bit surprised that both warriors' intuition was telling them there was trouble. For my danger-sensing skill was literally howling like a rabid wolf, urging me to turn around and kick the fuck out of this place. The sphere discerned an enormous amount of active death energy and some vague stirring in the depths of the reservoir, which in the Gaze looked like a huge puddle of pus and some scraps of flesh, staring into the void with a thousand eyes. So it was with a clear conscience that I responded to what my comrades had said:

"Don't talk to me about misgivings. I have an entirely materialistic view of the world, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that there is such an epic fucktard at the bottom of the water that the three of us could be swallowed and not even wrinkled by it."

I think I have a talent for calming people.

You can't lose your talent!

Flutter like a butterfly, so sad that you're a loser.

So, what am I talking about?

It is about the fact that sometimes bad luck is just fate.

The passages to the other levels were accessed by a fairly wide road that led past the ponds right along the wall. All I had to do was walk carefully along with it without disturbing the inhabitants of the local pond. The smell, of course, is much stronger there, but it is possible to hold your breath or just not pay attention. It's about a dozen minutes' walk, and we can do it on foot in a couple of minutes. And traps there, too, it seems, are not set. It's not too difficult a task, is it?

It was going relatively well at first. The stench and the obviously unhealthy impurities in the air made me dizzy and nauseous, but it wasn't as fatal as it might have seemed. And when I used the shadow over my face like a respirator, I was able to get rid of the smell.

Then, however, we had to slow down, because from the lake along our path and on to the walls, there were numerous rotten threads of peculiar alarms. This, too, was not an insurmountable obstacle, either for me or for Hans and Losij. The threads were frequent, but not dense, so that, marking the way in advance, stepping one after another only trace by trace, we easily bypassed them

At the very end, our steps provoked some vibrations, which caused a small pebble to fall out of the wall next to us, and with a resounding - in such silence - "gurgle" it plunged into the depths. It fell so well that even with all my dexterity and coordination, I could not catch it!

I did not even begin to guess about the consequences of this epic fail, immediately yelling loud and clear like a steed that someone is trying to make a mare with a blunt and rusty saw: "Run!!!"

The only thing that saved us was the fact that we ran immediately, not hoping that the little pebble would get through and no one would notice the fall. It also helped that I stirred up all the shadows in our path, breaking the signal strings and disrupting any possible targeting. Otherwise, we were just lucky, if you can speak of luck after all this f*ck up.

The first blow was not some monsters, but a huge bubble of gas that had risen from the bottom in the company of many smaller companions. I'm sure if we had inhaled it, we would have had to fight poisoning at best, and at worst we would have had to foam bloody from our mouths - there was too much pure death in those fumes, thickly mixed with decay.

We had already reached the passage closest to us, and not at all the one to which we were originally going, when a local came out of the water, clearly wishing to ask what cemetery we were from and, in general, who we were in life and death. I did not wish to meet the inhabitant of the underwater world at all, so I only accelerated my tactical maneuver of retreat, taking a somewhat exhausted Hans under my arm.

Behind me, out of the [censored] abyss of what had been a dead subterranean lake for hundreds of years, rose something that was too problematic to even give a name to.

The shadows saw everything, unmercifully transmitting to my brain a picture of the resulting horror and gloom, which only makes me happy. In the sense that I don't have to turn around to see the horror. Or rather, that now I know for sure that I should not turn around at all. Otherwise, I'm afraid the gray would not suit me at all, not fitting in with my style, image, and the role I play.

Already at the entrance to the passage, when the threat had diminished a little and I was confident that I could escape with a guarantee, I still turned around to look at the monster that had climbed out.

Imagine a mass of rot, the size of several floors. There are no bones, no flesh, or any discernible body parts, nothing at all but an almost [censored] mass of toxic crap.

And faces.

Thousands, tens of thousands of fucking faces!

I wondered why such a large necropolis could not contain an adequate number of corpses. Well, here is the answer. They had all gone under, feeding on a creature of colossal size and danger that made the Skin Taker look like a little runt that even goblins would have kicked to death.

I saw those faces, all woven from the same rot, distorted in screaming, whispering, calling, begging, and promising everything imaginable. I shook my head and knocked out my companions, who were already walking toward the filth, while I grabbed their shadows and tried to crawl back into the corridor.

In spite of its lack of brains and its extreme slowness, the thing thought very quickly. When it realized that its prey, probably its first in a very long time, was leaving, it immediately coughed up a huge lump of something disgusting, as if it consisted entirely of terribly vicious mutant worms.

I'd never worked with shadows this fast before, but in less than a second the three-layer, not even a barrier, but a bloody wall of shadow-soaked shadows was already blocking the passage into the narrow corridor. Even so, the blow was truly terrifying, blowing the first two layers of protection to all the devils. One more effort of will-reminding me that I kept backing away from the thing, dragging two very big men on my back - and new barriers came up right behind me.

After a hundred meters, I was already bleeding through my nose and only wheezing, praying to the pantheon of Internet gods that it wouldn't follow us into the tunnels. With that kind of body structure, it would have no trouble squeezing through any crevice like a jellyfish.

My reserve was dangerously close to exhaustion, so I had to stop using shadows. But I didn't stop moving forward for another ten minutes, risking a lot because I was walking in untested terrain where it wouldn't hurt to run into a trap and die young.

I did not encounter a trap, but both sleeping beauties began to come to their senses.

"It was the most disgusting thing I'd ever seen in my life." Losij was so grim now that he reeked of a palpable bloodlust. "And I've seen a lot of ugly things lately."

The mood was extremely gloomy because there were plenty of reasons for that. First of all, we had managed to get into some fucking mines, and half-flooded ones as well. The walls were caved in, the corridors were knee-deep in water, and some of the corridors were completely flooded. There were no traps, but to stay here... Let's just say there are better places to be, even in this dungeon.

"I agree, this crap is really outstanding." There was nothing to do, and no strength to go on, so I had to distract myself from the headache by talking. "The creature is at least of legendary rank, old, and very strong. Lucky for us, it didn't crawl after us into the tunnels, or try to pump some kind of poison into them."

"Bitch, I'll never forget those faces!" Hans started swearing the moment he woke up and he wouldn't stop giving high-pitched rants to the rest of the creature in that room.

And I am silent and just happy that I am still alive.

It's okay, we'll get out of the mines, find our way, and move on to the exit.

For some reason, I really believe this whole story will end in a positive way. A clairvoyance skill that works? Or progressive insanity? Honestly, I have no idea, but I want to believe in the first option.

In the mines, too, there were dead men, a new subspecies. Before they were dry, light, and agile, but these were more like classic drowned men. Bloated, smelly, and seemingly toxic. Good thing they didn't explode.

I let the guys deal with the crap, saving my reserve, which was gradually filling up, for emergencies. Both warriors managed to deal with their opponents without too much trouble, not even getting their hands dirty. I only helped them in critical cases, fixing the most dangerous moments with my shadows.

And the guys themselves have become much stronger in recent days. First, the legendary and then epic titles, several levels were taken, and a huge number of enemies that had fallen on them made them more dangerous and stronger than before their misadventures in this forest. At the very least, they could fight the tenth or thirteenth level undead without too much trouble, even on their own.

Things were going on.

Fuck!!!

About the exploding bloated corpses of drowned men, I seemed to jinx. Barely had time to cover us from a very unpleasant shower. The rocks, at least, hissed and smoked under such exposure.

As I imagine how such a shower could end for our feeble bodies, I immediately feel sick, like a first-year student on her first practical lesson in the morgue.

At last, we got out!

I mean from the mines.

After crawling, I swear, a couple of kilometers through some kind of straight technical tunnel, collecting all the dust in it, we did come out into a "normal" dungeon.

The wide hall, or rather huge, if not approaching the bar of the giant, was perfectly round and just as perfectly clean. Not a trace of dust, not a trace of disrepair. It was as if people (or not people) had lived here yesterday.

This uncharacteristic state of the room quickly arouses all sorts of bad suspicions, and a flash of intuition makes me quickly retreat into the same tunnel from which I came to keep the abomination from the reservoir company.

Obviously, I don't even have time to take a step in the direction of the tunnel.

And then a voice came from somewhere above, and my ass cheeks clenched in anticipation of the invasion of their fiefdom by innumerable spiky clubs and logs. The voice asked our pale trio rather politely and courteously: "Welcome, gentlemen. So what should I do with you?"

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