＜ 6. Unexpected Companion (7) ＞
The 23rd floor was a rest area.
The rest area in the dungeon has better facilities as you go down. If the resting area on the 4th floor was like an abandoned house with an old bed and only a fireplace, the resting area on the 23rd floor could still be called a place where people live.
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Not luxurious, but cozy space. Marco was sitting at the kitchen table chewing on dried jerky. There was no particular conversation going on, so the only sound was the chewing of beef jerky in the resting area.
Andrea, who was sitting halfway in front of the fireplace, glanced at Trisha. Trisha, who preoccupied a bed, had been staring at Andrea for a while. It would have been a little better if I had said something, but since I didn’t, there was only awkwardness.
Trisha had her own circumstances. I had so many questions to ask, but I was at a loss as to how to get them out.
Maybe it was because I was thinking too deeply, but when I opened my mouth, a completely unimportant question popped out.
“How do goblins talk?”
Trisha even wondered why she asked such a question. Andrea was taken aback for a moment, but she still answered the question as she knew.
“…Shylock is a kind of mutant. He is cunning and highly intelligent, but his strength is weak, so he was ostracized by the goblin horde. I just accidentally signed a contract with the library and gained more than enough power.”
“I see… it’s not like, damn it, how do you know all that trivial knowledge? Did you really come up from the 20th floor?”
Suddenly, Marco was also looking at Andrea.
“Yeah, I’m curious too. I told you that you are a challenger who already knows a lot about dungeons, but what happened to you to know about these places? Is it really that hard to say?”
Andrea wiped her face. Where the hell am I supposed to explain?
He finally decided to take a look around.
“When I passed this stick to the orc, I said it was a stick that lends wisdom. Actually, that’s true. This stick has a self, so it often tells me information about the dungeon.”
Tricia’s expression is distorted bizarrely. Everyone was at a loss for words at the absurd answer.
It was Trisha who broke the silence.
“I thought men only had one stick with an ego.”
Andrea didn’t understand what he was talking about at first. When I saw the direction Trisha’s gaze was heading, I could understand what she was saying.
She was looking at Andrea’s groin.
Marco was eating beef jerky when he heard it.
“Keuk-keek, kek-keek. That… that… a grown lady wouldn’t carelessly say such things…”
“What is it, uncle? The reaction is more naive than I thought.”
Growing up among wild hunters, Trisha had a habit of swearing like this. Even though Andrea knew about it, she couldn’t hide her absurd expression.
Trisha continued in a calm tone.
“Don’t try to cover it up with such absurd excuses. Isn’t that the normal stick that the melee class gives you when you first start out? I know the arrangement.”
It was such an absurd excuse. Andrea was again in deep trouble.
‘Do I really have to tell the truth?’
All of this is just a fake world that exists in the game, and the two of them are just chunks of data that exist in the game.
It was the truth that completely shattered the two people’s world views.
Even if he believed it, the shock would be great, and if he didn’t, he would treat Andrea as a lunatic. Either way, it wasn’t very pleasant for Andrea, who desperately needed the cooperation of the two.
In the end, Andrea decided to give false excuses again. Just as a very plausible, fully convincing excuse.
Andrea covered her mouth and sighed. The two held their breath and waited for Andrea to speak. Andrea was lucky for once.
“Everything I tell you from now on is a secret. Even if you meet someone while wandering around the dungeon, you shouldn’t reveal it.”
The two silently nodded. Andrea took a deep breath.
“I’m actually… a follower of Khalisis, the Shadow God.”
Trisha’s eyes widened. So was Marco.
“Is that true? Didn’t Khalisis perish? Are you… a descendant of that fallen country?”
In ‘Dungeon of Infinity’, there are five gods who govern the world.
The sun god, the shadow god, the thunder god, the earth god, and the wave god.
The nations outside the dungeon are named after the gods they worship.
Among them, ‘Chalesis’, which served the shadow god, was a nation that had already perished 300 years ago. Marco scratched his head as if something was wrong.
“But wasn’t Khalisis collapsed because of ‘the thief who stole the country’ Andrea? You serve the Shadow God, so why do you have the same name as the thief?”
‘Andrea is the name of the thief who stole the country?’
Andrea also knew the story of the ‘thief who stole the country’. After exploring the dungeon and entering the temple of the Shadow God, it was a story that I had heard so much that I was stuck in my ears.
Kalsis, a country that was once huge enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with Helios. It was not a foreign force or a calamity that brought down the country, but a single thief. A thief who stole ‘things that should never be stolen’, which are the foundation of the country.
However, it was the first time that the thief’s name was Andrea.
Unexpectedly, the answer came from Trisha.
“It is a myth that the name of the thief who stole the country was Andrea, which is only passed down in southern Helios. 300 years ago, ‘Andrea’ was the most common name in Helios. It was the followers of the sun god who destroyed the country of the shadow god, they wanted to embellish their history in this way.”
Marco looked at Trisha from afar. Trisha added, tinkering with her ear.
“Well, it’s an ominous name that destroyed the country, so Andrea is no longer a common name.”
“How do you know that so well?”
“I was also born in Helios. I don’t have very good memories there.”
Tricia said that and shrugged her shoulders. It was clear that he did not want to speak on the subject any longer. Marco was happy to meet the person from the same country and wanted to talk more, but he had no choice but to stop.
When Andrea saw it, something flashed through her head.
‘What, no way…?’
Andrea looked back and forth between Trisha and Marco. The two of them were looking at each other like that.
‘No… Let’s talk about this later step by step. Right now, it’s more urgent to make up my circumstances and tell them about it.’
Andrea collected her thoughts and continued to make false excuses.
“My name was studied by the Archbishop, so I didn’t know there was such a story. Anyway, I grew up as a servant of the Shadow God among the refugees of Khalisis. Until our hideout is discovered by Nelas’ army.”
Marco let out a small exclamation as if he knew what had happened.
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Nelas, a nation that worships the waves god. The galley that Andrea and Marco were on was Nelas’ ship.
“As you know, no country welcomes the refugees of Khalisis. All those who resisted were killed, and those who survived were severely tortured and all were enslaved. I, too, could not avoid being on a galley.”
Marco nodded with a sad expression. Andrea continued her explanation.
“The moment I fell into the abyss, I hated and cursed the Shadow God. There is no need for a god who does not answer prayers even while all the people are brutally dying. But things in the world are really unpredictable. At that moment, I received a revelation from the Shadow God.”
Andrea added that the Shadow God’s revelation led her to this dungeon and gave her all the information about the dungeon.
In this world, mysterious things could be packaged as miracles of God. Trisha and Marco might have their doubts, but they wouldn’t say it’s nonsense.
This was the best excuse for mobilizing all the worldview information he knew.
Marco asked a question.
“Then can’t I use the power of the Shadow God like the priests who serve other gods?”
“It’s a pity, but the only thing I’ve been allowed by the Shadow God is knowledge about this place. If I had been able to freely use the authority, I would not have been enslaved to the galley in the first place.”
As if he were speaking by borrowing someone else’s mouth, the answer came out smoothly. Andrea wondered if she had been so good at lying.
In any case, all that could be said was done. Now I had no choice but to wait for their reaction.
After a long silence, it was Trisha who spoke first.
“It’s hard to believe, but… I can’t help but believe it when I think of what I’ve shown so far. I thought the Shadow God was no longer involved in this world… but to think that there were still servants left.”
Marco also opened his mouth.
“That’s why you were hiding the circumstances from us. Followers of the Shadow God are always rejected wherever they go…”
Andrea nodded her head thoughtfully. Marco bowed his head.
“I want to apologize first. I didn’t know that such a story existed for you. Now that I think about it, I think I was out of my mind. You tried to escape the galley by eating your corpse…”
“what?”
Trisha looks at Marco with an angry face. Trisha had only known that the two of them would escape the galley on good terms.
Andrea made the excuse that Tricia had a daughter she needed urgently to save so she wouldn’t see Marco as an idiot. However, Andrea herself did not think this excuse would work.
Trisha slipped away from Marco. All in all, Marco was holding the jerky in his hand. Andrea sighed deeply as she was at a loss as to how to convince her of this.
Still, I’ve finished all the excuses I had to make. Even if he was familiar with dungeons from now on, Tricia and Marco wouldn’t look at him strangely.
The hurdle was over, but there were still many problems that bothered Andrea.
Why did the monsters in the dungeon become aware of their deaths, and sometimes show patterns they hadn’t seen before?
Also, who told Trisha about the ordeal, and why did she fall into the world of this game?
I couldn’t figure it out if I stayed here all along. As Arpan said, the answers to all questions lie deep within the dungeon.
Andrea got ready before leaving. First, I opened the Necronomicon and accepted the curse card. An unavoidable price to raise maximum mana.
‘[Curse] Curse of the Necronomicon: This card cannot be removed from the deck.’
As it is a rest area, of course there was also a holy water fountain. Andrea approached the holy water fountain to strengthen the card.
It would have been nice to be able to enhance the summoning of Marco, but the 3rd stage enhancement could not be done with the holy water fountain. Therefore, the card he chose was ‘Indomitable Will’.
‘[Unique] Indomitable Will + (2 cost): Extinction, increases all stats by 10 for each enemy facing you during this battle.’
The cost was reduced, so now you can use Indomitable Will without mana conservation. Andrea put a card in her deck with a satisfied smile.
Since there are two fountains, Trisha could also strengthen her cards. Andrea advised Trisha to step up her strong fire.
‘[Normal] Strong Shot + (2 cost): The next arrow attack deals 20 more damage. Every time you use this card, this card’s cost is reduced by 1 for this battle.’
It was a bit of a pity that strengthening the strong shot didn’t reduce the cost, but it was a choice that couldn’t be helped because it couldn’t strengthen the attack or defense.
Trisha licked her lips as if she couldn’t bear it, and put an enhanced shot into her deck.
It was really time to leave.
They turned their backs to the rest area and walked towards the exit. Escape from the pleasure of safety and enter the dungeon where countless dangers lurk again.
After exiting one last time, Andrea saw a faint blue glow around her.
But when I looked around to see where the light came from, it was already gone.
‘What the f*ck.’
Andrea scratched her head and ran after her teammates. In the end, he didn’t even notice that the little light was coming from his status card.
＜ 6. Unexpected Companion (7) ＞ End