The talk with Miss Eina went as well as he could have thought. One thing was official, at least: the talk about a goddess of unknown origin, rivalling Freya in beauty, would be the talk of the town for a long time.
Orion was just glad that their Familia was successfully formed. As soon as the official papers were in his hands, he practically dragged Marika out of the Guild, never to bring her back there again if possible.
From there on, he directly teleported the two of them inside the Dungeon. The idea of finding an apartment did cross his mind; however, this was too early. Really, it was only 7 in the morning.
He planned to finish his dungeon raid around noon and then go house hunting.
Just like before, he skipped all the cleared levels in the Dungeon, directly teleporting to the 5th floor and heading toward the 6th.
Recalling the horror Eina put him through yesterday gave him shivers, but in the name of grinding, he had to go.
The Dungeon was generally divided into three parts by adventurers.
The upper floors, the middle floors, and then the deeper levels.
From floor 1 to 12 were considered the upper levels. Most monsters in these levels were dangerous but doable for level one adventurers, as long as they were not complete idiots.
With entering the 6th floor, he had officially come halfway through the upper floors. He could see the changes easily. The size of the Dungeon had increased; it was no longer a narrow corridor but an expanded, interconnected maze.
Getting lost here was as easy as dying to monsters. Eina had told him to take note of every turn he took.
The Guild did provide maps made by previous adventurers; however, they were not always accurate. The Dungeon was considered alive, and it even changed—from routes to the way it trapped you.
The only reason he decided to ignore the generous advice was because of his teleport ability.
As he was advancing, he noticed movement ahead. Sounds of metal, hacking and slashing.
"Adventurers..." Orion turned around the corner to find a few newbies like him fighting against three War Shadows.
It was a party of four.
Ideally, a person should help them; however, Eina particularly told him not to. It could be considered as Exilia stealing.
He observed them keenly. They were holding on well. They spotted him as well.
"Do you guys need any help?" Orion decided to ask. Just ignoring them outright didn't seem right to him.
The four of them didn't immediately give a reply. First, they observed him, and only then did they shake their heads. "No thanks, we're good." That was all they said before once again going back to the fighting.
This was the first time Orion found fellow adventurers in the Dungeon. It seemed like the upper floors were strictly for newbie adventurers. There was hardly any traffic there.
Shaking his head, Orion left them be and delved deeper. It wasn't too long before he found some monsters to kill.
Frog Shooters. They attacked adventurers with their long tongues. Their tongues were rather fast; just like how frogs hunt, escaping from them was no easy feat.
As soon as it saw Orion, it opened its giant mouth, the tongue inside slowly coiling before shooting like a rocket toward him with its sticky fluids all over it. Once caught, freeing oneself would be a headache.
Orion's instincts kicked in just in time and he dodge-stepped. It still amazed him how even after getting hit by the attack, nothing happened to him since he was under I-frames.
As soon as he landed on his other foot, ending his dodge-step, he shot forward like an arrow, trying to get to the frog monster before it attacked again.
This was a pain for every melee fighter—closing the distance.
"I should try to learn some long-range method to take these fuckers down as well," he mentally noted to himself.
Before Orion was halfway in, the Frog Shooter used its strong legs to jump again, once again making distance in an instant.
'Damn... this guy's gonna be annoying as fuck.'
Thus started the chase, which completely exhausted him. However, in the end, Orion did get the frog after all.
He rested for a while before continuing. The monsters he saw on the 6th floor were similar to the ones he had previously defeated—Dungeon Lizards, Frog Shooters, and War Shadows.
Hacking and slashing his way forward, Orion finally reached the end of the floor, where the boss fog was, as usual, waiting for him.
"Sigh... if every floor is guarded by a boss, then I could never skip a floor. I'd have to beat all of them," he muttered with irritation. This added further to the reason why he couldn't co-op with other adventurers.
Resigning himself to his fate, he entered the boss fog, only to find himself in a graveyard.
Tombs and stones were erected everywhere, almost reminding him of Skyrim's dungeons.
[Take heed, my lord. I sense foul workings ahead—black magic stirs before us.]
The timely warning from Marika made him stiffen.
That was when the ground split with a chorus of dry, hateful cracks.
Graves ruptured like rotten teeth being pulled from the earth, and one by one, skeletons clawed their way free—ribs first, then skulls, then the rest of their miserable existence. Rusted swords, chipped axes, broken spears—every weapon looked like it had lost a fight with time and lost badly.
Orion stared.
"…Of course. Skeletons coming out to fight me now." He almost rolled his eyes, like nothing surprised him anymore.
But he felt a bit weird. Boss fight meant a single boss, right? Even a boss should be there with its minions. There was no boss?
Alas, he couldn't ask the skeletons themselves. The mindless brutes started sprinting at him like he was their salvation.
They came at him with the confidence of creatures who no longer needed self-preservation. Orion slipped into motion instantly—dodge-stepping aside as a sword whistled past his face, rolling under a clumsy overhead swing, then snapping back upright to slash clean through a ribcage.
Bones exploded.
A skull flew off and bounced twice before rolling to a stop, jaw still clacking as if offended.
"Stay down," Orion said, stabbing another straight through the spine.
Having no flesh, at first he even questioned what to target on them. Good thing their bones were at least attackable.
Another question was how they were able to move without muscles, but he felt ashamed even asking when he was fighting undead skeletons.
It was wrong to think logically in the Dungeon ?
Another lunged. He sidestepped, kicked its knee the wrong way, and hacked downward. The skeleton fell apart like cheap furniture.
This was… easy.
Being human skeletons, without other things which once made them human, they had a significant downgrade in both size and power. They lacked skills and only sustained this fight by their numbers.
However, numbers seemed to be enough to cause trouble for Orion. They kept coming, one after the next. Orion broke all of them, but he didn't see their numbers going down.
He exhaled sharply.
"Something's seriously wrong here..." He looked around, skeletons ganging up on him from all sides.
'Why… how come their numbers are not going down at all?'
Behind him, the pile he had just destroyed twitched. Fingers crawled back to wrists. Arms snapped into sockets. A skull rolled, hopped, and locked neatly onto a spine with a click.
The skeleton stood back up.
Then another.
Then five more.
"What the—" Orion gaped, backing away as the graveyard filled again, "the hell."
"This is cheating, dude..." he complained. He saw that every skeleton he destroyed was now repairing itself, reviving.
Just to test, he cut one down again. It fell apart. He stabbed another through the skull for good measure.
They rebuilt themselves anyway. It took some time; however, they were back up, like they had gotten personal attention from the city's best orthopaedic.
"Nope. No. Absolutely not," he said, slashing wildly now as the undead surged again. "I killed you. I very clearly killed you. Just fucking stay dead, dude. Don't cheat."
And that was when he remembered something.
"Right."
"Skeletons."
He chopped one down, then immediately hacked the remains again, scattering bones across the dirt. Another slash. Another stomp.
In Elden Ring, undead had to be killed this way—after they were down, during the process of reviving, attacking them would permanently kill them.
So he started to mindlessly stomp on any and all pieces of bone he saw in his path, like he had a personal bone to pick with them.
Unfortunately for him, it didn't work.
The bones rattled… and then crawled back together anyway.
Orion stared in disbelief as a skeleton reassembled itself upside down, fixed that problem, and charged him again.
"Fuck you, man... what kind of cheat is this. How come you guys here, go guard level 60 or something," he said breathlessly, dodging backward.
[At last, thou hast noticed.]
Marika's voice rang out, sharp with thinly veiled irritation.
[Thou swingest thy blade as though stubbornness alone shall solve the matter.]
Orion ducked under a swing and kicked a skull away. "I'm open to suggestions!" Not even bringing up the fact that she knew what he was doing wrong and didn't tell him.
[These wretches are bound by summoning, not sinew.][Steel alone shall not grant them rest.]
Another skeleton lunged. Orion rolled, came up, and cleaved it in half anyway—purely out of spite.
"A summoner? I don't see any summoner here...?"
[Nay, indeed there is none.]
Marika nodded. It didn't make sense for this many skeletons to be here without a summoner. But still, no matter how twisted the trap was, the basics never lied.
[Thou must either slay the one who binds them…][Or cleanse them with holy power. That is the only way to deal with undead.]
Orion paused mid-dodge. "Holy magic? Lady, how the hell am I supposed to get that? I'm Orion Star Storm, not Orion Godson..."
He complained.
Unfortunately, that momentary pause on his dodge cost him.
A rusty sword pierced his chest the next moment—a skeleton stabbed him.
Pain shot through him, and the next moment he started coughing blood.
"You motherf—"
Before he could even complete it, he was jumped by a dozen or so skeletons, making more holes in him than he had ever seen in real life.
Marika's silence was heavy.
[Perhaps next time, my Tarnished, I shall hope that by then thou hast found thy faith… amen.]
xXx
A/N: He'll face all types of enemies in the Dungeon; sometimes a straightforward approach won't be enough. He has to improvise.
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