The queen of the ditch

“Sigh…”

“Don’t sigh, we’ve just begun with our conquest, there is far more ahead.” Vorn tried to motivate me.

We had been using a map we took off one of the dead bodies at the drop zone for a few hours but hadn’t run into a single living being. I was getting angrier as time passed and in a matter of seconds, Vorn would have felt my rage.

Would have felt—

Luckily for him, we ran into a few monsters, but wait…I’m gonna explain in detail.

We wandered into a dark corridor, all the previous ones had white light shining down on us and a few tiny orbs embedded into the walls as cameras of sorts but this one didn’t.

“This area isn’t being monitored so we can plan ahead without being spied on.” After verifying there were no presences as we walked, he asked, “So what’s your problem anyway?”

After thinking for some time, I replied, “Which general problem group are you referring to? Everyone has problems so you’ll have to be specific.”

“Hmm, stop giving me cheeky answers boy. You have a double personality that’s for sure, but your other problems are hard to understand... Anyway, I was referring to your gear.”

“What about it?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t get it, aaahh that’s the problem with kids these days. You were the gold rank badge so you are at least capable of Warrior Rank feats.”

“Sigh…fine I get it you’re also smart, guess there’s no use keeping things from you anyway since we could all die here.”

“Good, so get started!”

“I have a skill that allows me to keep my real weapons close at all times so…I am always equipped. I chose this et this time because I’m not certain that slimes aren’t down here.”

“I see, slime lords with their acid strong enough to melt steel in seconds, smart choice. Hmm, yes…yes…smart indeed, even if your current set gets destroyed, you can equip your main set. That explains your crappy armor but…”

“The personality thing?” He nodded, to which I continued. “Well I didn’t know much about it myself until a few days ago. As I was reading my fath—”

“Skip to the explanation please!”

And I was starting to think he was smart. Anyway…“Simply put, that’s my ‘pride reaction’ that takes over me when I’m near dragon kin. It wears off after some time away from dragon kin or dragons in general.”

“Many questions here. Where did you recently meet a dragon kin? They are really rare in these parts of the continent. You also said something about pride reaction, that’s unique to demons of the Pride faction, are you a lesser demon? No that’s impossible, you wouldn’t have been allowed unmonitored entrance into the country. Your ‘space’, how many things can you store in there? Can you hide in there? Can it even support living creatures? And what abou—”

“Rambling again!”

“…Sorry.”

“Sigh, my friend is half dragon so yes, he’s technically a dragon kin — even though it’s really small. Yes I said pride reaction, I am technically a demon of the pride faction — but a half demon. I can store an unlimited amount of things into my ‘space’, I can’t hide in there…yet, and…yes, it can support living creatures. I think that’s about all of them.”

“…Wow. Who in the world are you anyway? I can’t beli—”

Hiss…

“What was—?”

I grabbed him and covered his mouth quickly while activating {Flight}. Hopefully it was just a snake, which we could crush easily, but I didn’t want to take any chances. As we hang there, the hiss got closer, then became hisses. Then from the shadows emerged the shapely figure of a woman, then three women. As they moved toward the light, their appearances became clearer.

“Gorgons.”

I whispered when I laid my eyes on them.

“Luckily, good’ole Vorn here, stole a cyclops eye from a dead body.”

The three shapely figures were scaly naked women with hair of snakes and tails instead of legs. They weren’t as hideous as the books I read depicted but they could still petrify a person with only a stare. They had green scales covering their whole body except for the chest area down to the center of their would be thighs, which had a pale yellow colored, tight, wet t-shirt look to it.

The snakes on their heads had been tied down with red hankies, like a farm girl would her hair. Except for those ad the arm braces they wore, they were completely naked otherwise.

With a thud, I landed behind them with Vorn and shouted, “Hey! Look over here!”

The moment they turned, I pulled out the cyclops’ eye and held it toward them.

In this world, cyclops’ eyes or a complete cyclops’ head had the opposite use as gorgon head. While the gorgons were known for their petrification—even after death—, the cyclopes were known for having the power to neutralize the petrification. The funny thing was the fact that they both had the power to petrify but the gorgons couldn’t control theirs.

I ran toward the gorgons and slashed at one’s throat. I followed up with slashes at the others before they could strike me. Then I felt a presence about to strike me from behind so I activated {Flight} once more, evading the strike.

“Good, no, great effort, but…”

As I landed by Vorn, I looked back where I was attacked to see the gorgon’s slit throat healing rapidly.

“What the heck? Gorgons don’t have healing capabilities like that. What is going on?”

“I had a hunch but…this is incredible.”

“Hmm, aww crap…” I finally noticed what he was talking about.

Since we had I arrived in the ditch, I hadn’t paid attention to my environment much. Now that I thought back, the landing area was clean, way too clean to be unattended to. There was not even a tiny patch of moss in sight. Like the area was constantly maintained. I had learnt earlier on that the ditch was only opened once a year at the annual ditch games, it wasn’t even opened for cleaning or maintenance.

Besides the clean surroundings, the air was unusually thick with aura and mana. It was enough to make any silver ranked adventurers pass out. I was surprised that I didn’t notice it before.

“I’m now realizing some things that I’m sure you knew some time ago, so I’ll just ask, how are they healing themselves like that?”

“Hehe, I’m not too sure about that. It could be anything from acute mana manipulation, to advanced race characteristics. BUT IS NOW REALLY THE TIME TO BE DISCUSSI—Woah!”

All the while we were conferring, we were also dodging the attacks of the gorgons. Naturally, the two that attacked me were the ones I dealt the most damage to. I was barely dodging them while holding up the cyclops eye. I couldn’t risk endangering Vorn by taking to the sky but the gorgons’ healing ability was too fast to handle. Speaking of Vorn, he seemed to be playing with the other gorgon like a kid does a toy. He dodged her strikes without much effort.

“These fools are stronger than expected, eliminating them may prove too difficult for the three of us.”

One gorgon spoke.

“Interesting, there are no studies that indicate that gorgons communicate with words while in the midst of battle.” I said to Vorn, then asked the gorgons, “What are you?”

“…”

After waiting some time, the gorgons turned to each other then back to me, before turning to Vorn. I also turned to Vorn since I didn’t know what else to do.

“Be ready boy, they are planning their escape.”

No sooner had the words reached my ears than the gorgons charged straight toward me.

I readied my blade, cast {Life Sync} then used {Blur}. It was a swift action which killed the three gorgons instantly. In my human form, my slices could only go as far as hitting bone and using my demon form would not only give away one of my trump cards to Vorn, but also strain my body. Using {Blur} however, allowed the momentum to do most of the work. All I had to do was aim for the neck.

My demon form was something I discovered in my dad’s book. It unleashed all my demon power, giving me far greater strength, speed, durability, mana reserves, increasing my health limits and so on. The downside was that it caused immeasurable pain the three times I tried using it. That was due to the fact that my dad was a Demon Progenitor and also because I wasn’t strong enough to use it.

When activated, my dark blue hair changed to a far lighter blue while the black tips of my hair changed to white. My clothes and anything else on me changed to match my appearance, merging with me, turning me into a deformed— yet still handsome, apparently—human looking creature. In that form, I held a dark aura over my body constantly, giving off faint amounts of fear and despair—but the form also wasn’t at its strongest since my human body wasn’t strong enough.

“…What was that!?” Vorn screamed at me, “You telling me you could have killed them that quickly the whole time?!”

“Hey, we both have our secrets, besides, I was watching and analyzing your fight with the gorgon. I know your strength is far above the silver badge you wear on your chest.”

“Hmm, you are stronger than I could ever anticipate. Assessing my skills while holding your own against two gorgons, that’s no easy feat. You are also stronger than your gold badge so that’s something we have in common.” He tried to joke. After failing to get even a smile from me, he continued. “Aye, how bout we exchange a little bit about ourselves while we’re here. It’ll help ease our minds of some curiosity, and possibly give some trust.”

I nodded to his suggestion. He watched me, then answered with enthusiasm…

“The name’s Vorn Nard Mohaw, son of King Gazer Mohaw and half prince of the Dwarven-Jura State. I am currently more than capable enough for the Platinum Badge or Elite Rank but due to my brother’s spite, I am being kept at the silver badge level. Since I am the first born, I have a claim to the throne but because of my mother’s lack of a noble house, I am scorned by the royal family and the noble faction of the nation. The only reason I’m this strong is because of my father’s blood and the only reason I’m an adventurer is…” He looked straight into my eyes, “…personal. Whoo, I almost said too much there, now it’s your turn.”

I was considering whether to tell him the truth or not…

But then realized that I didn’t care— at the time.

“I’m called Masayuki, my dad is…was…? Sigh, forget that, I’m starting over. The name’s—”

“SILENCCCEEEE!” A beautiful voice hissed from the shadows, stopping me from making a stupid mistake. We had been walking in the direction where the gorgons appeared earlier and now appeared to be in a large circular hall. The echo prevented us from locating the direction of the voice and the natural darkness prevented us from seeing anything else.

“Wait, let me try something…” I said to Vorn as I began concentrating. Earlier on, when we were walking through the corridor, I noticed a few orbs in the walls monitoring us. More than normal, which lead me to believe that either we were nearing the boss, or another major location like a resting area or a treasure hotspot.

With all those orbs, there has to be a light source or something. Hmm…almost…there!

I located the spread-out torches in the room then spread the small flame in my palm to light them all at once. The light enveloped the room quickly, giving us a full view of everything.

The first thing we saw was a throne made from different materials like gold, steel, silver etcetera, and on the throne was a beautiful gorgon with armor and a sword on her waist. She had her human legs crossed and would have been mistaken for a human but for her snake hair. The armor seemed to be enchanted with several runes and the sword itself seemed to be a high-class piece with fire elements.

On both her sides, were four other gorgons with magical armor— of lower quality—and rune weapons. They stood, well they had no legs so they prostrated themselves by her like guards would do royalty, looking down on us like we were lower than scum.

Looking around now, I noticed the guards all around us— about twelve in all, excluding the ones by the throne—all looking at us with disgust in their eyes. They seemed to scorn the cyclops eyes we held in our hands.

“Well, I knew we were set on the path to death but I didn’t expect this at all.” Vorn said to the gorgon on the throne. “Am I to assume that you are the protector of the main boss or something?”

He spoke calmly but I could sense the fear in his voice. I focused on my surroundings once more and again, I was shocked by my discovery. I didn’t understand why my senses couldn’t pick up on the many life sources in the area. I got overwhelmed by the number of gorgons in the corridor we just passed through, close to a hundred gorgons were apparently in the corridor but did not make any indication of their presences known to us.

They could have easily overwhelmed us or surprised us from behind, but they let us through to the room we were currently in.

“You seem to be smarter than your companion dwarf…” the gorgon in the throne spoke, “oh, is that royal blood I’m sensing? How interesting.”

She spoke clearly without hissing once and the snakes on her head were quiet and well behaved, arranged in the form of a hairstyle or more specifically, a ponytail. Their scales, unlike the green of the other gorgons’ snakes, had a faint gold color. Her scales weren’t visible and had the appearance of skin, human skin.

“My name is Vorn, this right here is Masayuki and we challenge you Gorgon queen to a two on two duel.”

Son of a…