Starlight Necromancer

Chapter 60 - Black Mist

With a grin on his face, Foster looked at Lynol, "That means that we can clear this dungeon after all."

Lynol let out a deep sigh, closing his eyes as he started to think for a while, "If you can actually immobilise the slimes on the other levels as well, then yes. But if it doesn't work for some of them, we rethink it."

"Honestly, good enough for me. Let's take a look at the map for now. I think there was some other path behind that room which could be a shortcut to the end of the floor, right?" Foster said with a smile on his face, as he took a few steps away to get rid of the slime in his hand safely.

Kyla quickly grabbed the map from her bag and unrolled it, holding it in front of her while Foster looked around to make sure he could quickly get rid of any slime that was approaching the group, "Yes, there is a path there that we could use... it's pretty far away from all the other crossed-out areas, and I doubt there are going to be that many slimes in the others' territory… So, yeah, let's try it!" Kyla exclaimed, "Traps usually take a little while to reset, so we should be able to get there and back easily. We're not prepared to go beyond the first floor anyway, so let's return after that."

"Cool, cool, cool, sounds like a plan." Foster said with a smile, turning toward Lynol and Octer, "Are you two fine with that as well?"

"Do we have much of a choice..?" Octer asked with a wry smile, and Foster shrugged, "I don't know, do you? Oh, before I forget it, I found something else that might be kind of useful to us. So, when I touch them with the holy aura thing, the slime kind of dries out, right? Well, when you then hit that dried-up skin, it basically burns up and the whole slime turns into a puddle."

"Wait, seriously?" Octer held his shield to the side and made a confused expression, "That... that's weird, right? Isn't that weird?"

"It is, but... maybe not? Holy energies and fire are some of an undead's greatest weaknesses, and they are known to work in unique ways when combined against undead sometimes. If the slime is some kind of undead being, then it's definitely possible." Kyla explained, "Either way, I don't think we should complain about a revelation like this~!"

"Kyla, can you cast some kind of miracle that's similar to holy aura, but just... with a larger area of effect?" Foster asked, and Kyla thought about it for a moment, "Somewhat, yes. There's the 'Holy Field'... it's usually just a miracle used to turn an area into the equivalent of a chapel of sorts during longer adventures... It's pretty weak though, and I can't move around at all, and I can only use it once a day. And it only last for an hour."

"So basically, it's useless." Lynol pointed out, rolling his eyes with a deep sigh, but Foster immediately shook his head, "Not necessarily. If there's some kind of emergency going on, we can use that. Whenever one of those slime things touched me, they immediately moved away from me after being hurt. So if that works on the 'stronger' ones as well, then we should keep that in mind."

"On top of that, what if the boss monster of this dungeon is something similar to those slimes?" Octer pointed out, "That doesn't sound impossible, right?"

"You have a point. I was thinking something similar as well." Kyla replied, and Foster grinned lightly, "So if that's the case, shouldn't we get a few more molotovs before heading into the boss room?"

Octer and Lynol slowly looked at each other, and then stared back at Foster, "Do not use that kind of thing inside of enclosed spaces." Lynol said in a blunt tone, while Kyla slightly tilted her head to the side, confused about what a 'Molotov' was even supposed to be.

Foster let out a deep sigh, slightly grumbling to himself, while the rest of the party made sure that they were ready to continue through the dungeon.

---

"Wow, is this it?" Kyla asked curiously as she looked at the mummified corpse laying on the ground in front of her. Foster turned around and raised his brows, before he slowly nodded his head, "Yeah, that's the one. I hit it with my knife, and then it just ripped itself loose from the ceiling. It looked kinda disgusting, to be honest."

"Hm... So it only reacted when that orb was in danger, huh? Interesting."

"Kind of? It really just put it into more danger. That high up, and with the constant dripping of that slime, it was a lot harder for me to hit the orb when it was up there. I was able to take it out pretty easily like this." Foster explained, while Octer and Lynol were nervously trying to kill more of the slimes with the torches that they picked up along the way, just in case they suddenly woke up again.

"Cleric girl, are you sure that the dungeon can't repair the trap anytime soon?" Lynol asked from the other side of this large, empty room, and Kyla quickly nodded while she pulled open the mouth of the corpse in front of her with a short dagger to take a look inside.

"In small dungeons like this, it should take a day or two, especially with the complexity of the trap. I mean, it's a magic gemstone combined with a 'living', albeit undead, monster, and that was then turned into a trap. That kind of thing can't be regenerated quickly." She explained, something that really calmed both Octer and Lynol down quite a bit.

Meanwhile, Foster made his way to the rotten wooden door on the other side of the room and pulled it open. The slimes had seemingly carved their way through the bottom of the door, causing it to just rot away as they pushed against it. Any biological matter was affected by the rot of necromancy, after all, and that even included wood created by the dungeon itself.

"Honestly, I really don't get how dungeons work at all." Foster added with a wry smile. This kind of thing really seemed foreign to him. The only thing that he could compare this sort of thing to, would be... if the dungeon core were some sort of advanced artificial intelligence taking care of a base in some sci-fi movie. But even that didn't really seem to be accurate. Magic itself was still tough to grasp in itself.

Just as he was thinking about that, Foster figured he should test that one magic spell out again. That 'Dead Sight' spell. He felt a deadly chill in his eyes that made him shudder for a moment, as the world around him slowly faded away, losing its color and edges that made things stick out. And all that he was able to see then was a sort of black mist covering the corpse that was laying there on the ground, as well as all the ooze that was leftover from Foster killing the slimes.

And from his bag as well, a faint black mist streamed out. And then, just a second later, startled by what happened, Foster deactivated the spell and the world around him turned to normal.

"Eh?"