Chapter 49: More slimes defeated…

“A dead body?” Melody turned around, looking toward the S tier behind us. “Umm… are you able to call, like, the management?”

“Yep.” The S tier nodded, pulling a thin black stone from a pocket and breaking it. “They should send someone down shortly. We can keep raiding.”

It’s that simple, huh. I guess they have procedures in place. Which makes sense… people probably die pretty often. Why don’t we have those stones though? Shouldn’t everyone have them if they’re made to report deaths? Actually, never mind. Those are probably expensive.

If it somehow gets a signal outside of the dungeon, then it has to be something mana-powered, which means it’s probably an artifact of some sort. Or some crafted item, but not the type of item that can be manufactured and made in bulk. Whatever. Not the most important thing right now.

Having confirmation that we didn’t need to worry about the dead body, Melody spun back around to Silvia. “What about the slimes?”

“There’s a mana cage of some sort around them… so they’re trapped.” Silvia shrugged, adding, “Probably… the dead guy.”

First floor of a slime dungeon. How does one die… here? That’s kinda sad… I guess a slime must have somehow… wounded him badly enough to cause some major wound—No that’s impossible. It’d have to be some form of internal damage. None of those slimes are breaking skin.

I guess a strong bounce sent him flying and… he used some ability to trap the slimes, but hit a rock and died. To die that easily though… you’d have to be either level zero or… E tier? I can’t imagine what would make an E tier enter a dungeon though. Even if you’re broke as fuck, when you’re that weak, it just won’t work. Just go get some fast-food job… and if you can’t do that… well… I really don’t know.

“Okay…” Melody tilted her head downwards and crossed her arms, then looked up, having made a decision. “I’ll go walk to the barrier, Scarlet can make her chronofield. Then Elle and Amane can go right to the edge, and I’ll try and smash the barrier with my whips. After that, Fara and I kill the slimes. Sounds good, everyone?”

I nodded. Everyone else nodded.

“Okay, then let’s go.” Melody led us all into the very large room. It was easily four or five times the size of the original room we entered the dungeon in. The layout was mostly circular, but the right sort of squared out, and from the right section, there was some part that went back around, parallel to our entrance, so I couldn’t see how large it was.

Across the room there was a passageway, and another diagonally to the right. Then there was one smaller one to the left, and one smaller one to the right, which looked like it led straight to another room. None of those were our targets yet though.

We all went toward the slimes trapped in some invisible barrier, and Melody approached until she was inches away from the nearest slime, presumably at the border of the trap. Then she gave me a wave and I cast my ability again, creating a field around her.

My mana had long since regenerated so I made the barrier as large as I could, its center point at Melody’s head, which consumed nearly a third of my mana, just like last time. Although we were still in a passageway last time… I guess it must have gradually gotten wider without me really noticing, otherwise the mana consumption should’ve been much lower, like fifteen.

With the barrier in place, Melody stepped back, letting Amane and Elle take her place. Then, from in between them, Melody struck out with her whip, which faced a split second of resistance as it shattered the mana barrier, losing its momentum and falling downwards.

As the barrier fell, two slimes targeted Amane and another two, one of which was the fuchsia slime, targeted Elle, who repeated her actions from earlier, jumping back and forth around the slime.

Fara dove in shortly after, first heading toward Amane’s slimes, releasing a couple bolts at each of them. After which she stepped back, staying right on the edge of my chronofield with only her head inside, although she had to take a couple steps forward so she remained in the shrinking sphere.

A few seconds later, seeing Melody’s inaction, Fara sent bolts toward Elle’s slimes. The fuschia one took three hits before it too finally turned into a puddle of slime goop like all the other slimes.

With the room now clear, I received another notification.

Combat Summary

Enemy Assists:

1x Fuchsia Slime (2x experience)

3x Slime

You are 70% of the way to level 4.

The fuchsia slime was worth twice as much… yep… I definitely did twice as much work. Anyway, looks like I get rewarded for everything, assuming it’s 10% toward level four per kill.

“Silvia,” Melody called out to our right. “Did you get experience?”

“Yes.” Silvia nodded, walking closer to us. “I got fifty percent.”

The same amount as me… it’s definitely support that’s broken. I get rewarded for everything I help kill. Silvia gets experience for everything she identifies that’s killed. The only weak support would be healing, right? Since to earn experience for that I assume it’d be something like getting rewarded for each heal you do, which wouldn’t be very often for good teams.

“So Amane was right.” Melody turned to Amane, smiling. “Good job.”

Amane blushed, hiding her face by looking downwards, as she usually is.

“I’m gonna go take a look at the body,” Melody said, then slowly spun, looking at each of us for a brief moment. “Join if you’re comfortable.”

She began heading toward the right of the room, the place I couldn’t map out when we first entered. That was where the body was, I assumed.

It would probably be fine. I can’t imagine seeing a body is anything heart-wrenching. I’ve seen dead bodies in games, so presumably it’s like that… but… bigger? Even in VR games dead bodies have never shocked me, although I know those do shock some people. But it’s just a game… although this time it’s not.

I followed behind Melody and pretty soon we rounded the corner of the cave and reached a smaller area, ten or so meters wide. As soon as my eyes wandered to the center, I froze completely. There was... a dead person.

Like dead dead. And yet, his hollow lifeless eyes were still opened wide, staring blankly at the ceiling. His body looked pristine, his arms by his sides, and his clothing mostly untouched. Not even devoured by the fuchsia slime. Hell, he looked like he could be alive, like he was just sleeping or relaxing, if it weren't for the complete lack of movement… no rhythmic chest bouncing or slight flinch or roll or anything. My stomach churned a little and I felt my limbs weaken… I swallowed and a bead of sweat dripped down my forehead.

That dude could totally have been me… yeah no. Never mind. But he wasn’t so far away that it was unimaginable. If I hadn’t awakened an X tier and instead went back to my normal life, with a couple unlucky events it’s not hard to become desperate. Desperate enough to risk it all in a dungeon? Probably not, but I could see it.

The man was wearing some jeans and a plain t-shirt and his brown hair was cut short. About as basic as you can get. Those jeans were certainly a choice though, limiting your own movement doesn’t seem smart.

Unexpectedly, the body didn’t smell or anything, which might not be that unexpected since I think a rotting and decomposing corpse would be a fairly strong odor. But I assume that meant the body was fresh. Like in the last few hours fresh, since it just looked normal… probably cold though.

Looking at a dead body is much weirder than I expected… it feels like I should care more than I do, but also less, you know? I didn’t know the person, and it’s sad he died… I feel like the most terrifying part is just… those eyes. Still open, like he was thinking, moving, doing things moments ago. And yet, he’s dead. No more movement from him. No more anything… and he can’t contribute to the world anymore, not that I know what he did, but I’m sure there are some people who did. I’m sure there’s someone whose life will be forever changed by this… and if not… well… that sucks.

But at the end of the day, that’s how life works… with… well over fifteen hundred people dying in dungeons each day it’s probably a sight I’ll need to get used to. Seeing dead bodies. Hopefully never anyone I know… I much prefer strangers dying…

Saying that makes me feel terrible.

I pushed the thoughts out of my mind, although they crept creeping back in given my location, and tried to focus a little more on happy things. Particularly Melody, who was approaching the body.

Melody crouched down beside and placed her palm on the body's chest… making sure it was dead? But before she could do any more, we heard some footsteps from behind us. All seven of us spun away from the body and looked toward where we came from, finding two people in suits walking over.

The two men politely nodded, and walked through our group to kneel beside the body, where they took out some object things that unfurled into two large tarps, which they carefully wrapped around the body. And once they were done, they stood up, carrying the body at the feet and head, where something rigid was placed or connected to the tarps, and left the same way they came. As they left, one said, “Thanks for reporting it.”

“Of course,” Melody replied, then turned back to us. “The slimes won’t kill themselves so… shall we continue?”

Hesitantly, we all nodded, after which Fara asked, “Which path?”

Melody pulled her map back out, and looked it over. “The right path is the boss area… the leftmost loops back around to where we came from, and passes by the west entrance. So one of the middle two?”

“Okie-dokie.” Fara nodded. “I vote left.”

After voting, it was four for right and two for left, so we lined up again, Silvia in the very front, then Melody, Fara, and Elle, and then Amane and I in the back with the S tier trailing behind, and we headed toward the passageway to the next chamber.