Faith studied the unconscious man further, but she saw no further clues. 'Hmmm... I've got a curious mystery on my hands. I'll need to tell Zach about this later... He always loves a good mystery...'
——————————————————————————————
{11:02 AM}
^(SQUELCH!)^
^(THWIP!)^
'That's another lizard down.' With a snap kick, she broke the neck of another Goblin. She would've continued her assault, but she had to dodge another lizard tongue from ensnaring her neck.
With a step, skip, and a jump, she found herself facing the last of her opponents with her back against the wall. She found herself in a circular room less than 20 minutes ago; the exact moment when this annoying monster party started.
She had no time to think or hesitate. All she did was dodge and counter-attack.
With a sweeping gaze, she counted a dozen Dungeon Lizards left while 30 Goblins or so accompanied them.
Dinah had a few close calls, but she used their numbers against them.
With another quick exhale, she sprinted forward. A few lizard tongues tried to hit her, but she dodged them just enough for them to miss her by a few centimeters.
She found herself encircled, but that's where she shined. A darting tongue that tried to hit her shoulder found a Goblin's head in its place while a thrown rock met the lizard's eye.
An improvised pirouette with a kick trailing behind it had her sending Goblin #2's body towards a few of it's friends.
She was doing well against them so far, but the sounds coming from the only room's entrance made her skin and spine tingle.
**\!CRACK CRACK CRACK!/**
Instead of continuing her assault, she changed tactics in a heartbeat. She used the nearest Goblin as a stepping stone and jumped away from the encirclement. Unfortunately, her back was against the wall once more.
The Goblins and Dungeon Lizards weren't getting closer, but they looked like they were waiting for reinforcements.
Dinah felt the light coating of sweat dripping from her skin. A few of the scratches she accumulated stung from the invasion of sweat. The room smelled like Goblin corpses and Dungeon Lizard guts. And the sounds of a gathering stampede of monsters bode her ill.
'Hmm... it looks like I'm in a bit of a pickle. I don't feel too tired, but by the sounds of those footsteps, then it looks like I'm about to be mobbed...'
"Only one thing to do...", she told herself quietly. "Let's hope this works..."
With her back against the wall, Dinah touched her Mana and nudged it awake; hoping for a miracle. She nudged and guided the cool liquid feeling Mana towards her vocal cords. The metallic feeling felt like an injection to her throat, but it didn't hurt one bit.
Thankfully, she was just in time, because a lounge of numerous Dungeon Lizards, a large pack of Kobolds, and what she'd correctly call a horde of Goblins just joined the party.
Before the swarm could take another step, the Black Canary unleashed her cry.
^(AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)^
Even though she hasn't used her Canary Cry since she got here, she still recalls how to properly utilize it. Though she needed Mana to activate it, it was still her Canary Cry. It's her trump card, and it was very effective. However, with magic in the equation, it's effects were magnified.
Like a tidal wave, the sonic cry swept the horde of monsters away and smashed them against the walls and each other. The sonic waves appeared as slightly translucent yellow circles of force that both debilitated, concussed, and damaged the dungeon's denizens without mercy.
With a tweak and another small injection of Mana into her vocal cords, she caused her Canary Cry to vibrate and further damage the still twitching bodies until they died.
And with that, Dinah cut off her Canary Cry and leaned back against the rocky wall of the circular room. 'That was stronger than I expected... my Canary Cry back then was powerful, but magic definitely magnified it. I was just aiming to push them back and bottleneck them with their fallen's injured bodies until I can take them down in small groups, but that worked out just fine... I'm lucky that actually worked. I was praying for a miracle, and looks like it happened. Thank you, Panacea, for your blessing.'
After a few moments passed, Dinah sat down on the ground. *Whew* "And now, I'm thirsty...", she said to herself while she scanned the slowly dissolving bodies. 'And that's a lot of loot...'
——————————————————————————————
{11:49 AM}
'That makes 217 tiny magic stone slivers from both Goblins and Kobolds, 101 slightly larger magic stone slivers from the Dungeon Lizards, 49 Goblin Fangs, and 27 Kobold Nails.'
With her spoils gathered, Dinah spent the rest of the time eating a quick snack. The snack she ate was a few bites of beef jerky that she brought at a food stall. It was decent tasting and it quelled her hunger for the moment. Afterwards, she washed it down with some water and continued her 2nd foray into the dungeon.
'I'll avoid circular rooms for now. I'm by my lonesome and those places are easy ambush sites. And I've never heard of a monster horde reinforcement wave like that before, so I need to be more wary. This dungeon really hates me...'
As she traveled through the wide rocky corridor-like tunnels, she kept her wits about her.
It was quiet for awhile and she encountered nothing but dirt, rocks, and more paths through the winding labyrinthine tunnels.
But as she turned left past a three-way fork on the tunnel she took, she came across something new.
The smell of the area shifted from stale underground air to a familiar set of scents. Old and dried up blood, dusty cloth, wet dog, and the smell of lizard guts.
Along the tunnel corridors, were the signs of an old battle. Dinah could see dried up bloodstains, old pieces of torn up clothes, left over monster parts, several dozen or so slivers of magic stones, and there were all sorts of armor and weapons strewn about the battlefield. The sight of this place made Dinah's heart clench in pain.
After a long exhale, Dinah strode forward slowly while she scanned the site with care. 'There's no bodies left... and there's no bones...'
"Damn..."
'Hmmm...', with a thoughtful frown, Dinah started slowly gathering the small scraps of cloth, the pieces of armor as well as the weapons and she piled them in distinct and separate piles.
'There must be at least a dozen sets of armor here...'
*Sigh* With her decision clear, Dinah removed her backpack and gently placed it on the ground. 'Their Familia needs to know. And this is all that's left of them. Damaged armor, weapons, and tattered pieces of cloth.'
With a mother's gentleness, Dinah wrapped up each individual sets of armor in the pieces of clothing that was near them and placed them in separate places in her traveler's backpack alongside their weapons. If the armor and weapon was too heavy, bulky, or too large for her backpack, then she stuffed them into her seemingly bottomless satchel in separate areas to differentiate which armor and weapon paired with each other in the way she found them.
She spent what felt like 20 minutes doing this without pause. It would've taken less time than that, but the last weapon she had to put away was a bow. It was an old, worn, but well-maintained one. Probably hickory or the equivalent of hickory in this world. And seeing that bow was like a smack to the face.
Dinah finished putting away all the armor pieces and the weapons except for this bow that she now held in her hands; while she knelt on the ground next to her backpack. Her eyes grew misty while she held this old bow with very careful hands. She traced the patterns, the grooves, the slight nicks, cracks, and the broken bowstring while tears fell from her eyes.
"Oh Oliver...", she choked out with a quiet sob. "I miss you so much."
This would've been a perfect moment for her to release more of her repressed sadness and longing, but the dungeon seemed to have other ideas.
**\!CRACK CRACK CRACK!/**
That familiar sound had Dinah gently setting the bow down near her backpack. She then stood up straight and observed her surroundings with tears still falling down her cheeks.
Her fists clenched in anger at being interrupted during this painful moment. Her emotions were in turmoil and this abrupt interruption shifted it from sadness and longing to outright righteous anger.
As the dungeon unleashed more monsters from it's floors, ceiling, and walls, Dinah walked towards the largest congregation of these heartless beasts. The look on her face was utter loathing and she was subconsciously radiating an aura of fiery righteous anger.
"How dare you desecrate this place? How dare you leave nothing but tattered clothes?! You disgust me...", Dinah intoned as she kept walking towards a growing pack of Kobolds, Goblins, and Dungeon Lizards.
Normally, Dinah was in control of her emotions. She learned that fighting with your wits about you was very important. It helped keep you safe and alive. But at this moment, all she could feel was righteous anger. Anger at being interrupted in her grief. Anger at these ugly things for desecrating the remains of the fallen. Anger at what they represented. And all that righteous anger, had her accidentally activating something she didn't know she had at the time.
"~Now this is the Law of the Jungle...~
As old and as true as the sky~~~"
Dinah inadvertently nudged her Mana towards her vocal cords before she spoke, but this time, instead of activating her Canary Cry, she used something else.
"~And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die...~"
The combination of her emotions, her Mana in her vocal cords, and her rhyming unleashed what was to an outsider's perspective must've been a Magic Spell, but it was anything but.
Dinah's words reverberated throughout the tunnel and before she could speak any more, the monsters attacked.
However, before they could reach her, a bright canary yellow translucent aura surrounded certain areas of Dinah's body. It looked like condensed sound waves in the form of visible wind.
Dinah never stopped walking forward towards her enemies. When they reached her, she blurred towards them and disappeared like the wind amongst their ranks.
"~~As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the Law runneth forward and back...~~"
Her fists moved faster than they had ever before, her kicks were like whirlwinds, her vision was clearer than ever, and she could sense where all her opponents were, even with her back turned.
^(SQUELCH!)^ ^(SNAP!)^ ^(FWOOSH!)^ ^(THWIP!)^
She was like a cascade of movement, taking down each of the dungeon's denizens with a single strike. Dinah didn't keep count of how many there were. But it seemed like the dungeon pulled out all the stops for this ambush.
She used the walls, the ceiling, and the very monsters themselves as jumping platforms in her single-minded quest to eradicate these ugly bunch of freaks without hesitation.
"~~~For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack...~~~"
Those final words to the poem she recited caused the translucent glowing yellow energy that her limbs were encased in to rotate rapidly. And with that boost, it took Dinah a manner of 30 seconds or less to rid the area of the monster party ambush horde.
After she finished her one woman decimation of the monster horde, she blurred forward next to her backpack and the energy she was emitting dissipated.
Her righteous anger was gone as well as the sadness and longing. All that was left was confusion and questions as to how she did what she did. It was then that a sense of lethargy and tiredness filled her. Her head spun, her vision was in a daze, her sense of smell wasn't there, she couldn't taste, she couldn't speak, and her body felt tired.
She suddenly knelt down on the ground and took heavy breaths while she closed her eyes. 'I feel like I'm gonna vomit... What the hell did I do!?'
'I moved so fast... I've never moved that quickly before. I could see and sense everything. My body felt so light... It was as if I drank an energy drink, coffee, and concentrated adrenaline but multiplied by a hundred or something... Damn...'
It took Dinah maybe 2 or so minutes until she no longer felt faint. She opened her eyes and studied her surroundings once more. "Damn...", she said softly; confirming to herself that she could speak again, while her eyes widened at what she saw.
"That's a lot of loot... How many did I kill?"
Her gaze wandered the wide tunnel corridor and found numerous openings in the floor, ceiling, and the walls where the monsters were birthed from. She stopped counting after 50...
'This dungeon is a cold-hearted bitch...', after that profound and compounded thought, Dinah carefully picked up the bow, wrapped it in tattered pieces of cloth, and gently placed it inside her satchel; near the pile of armor and clothes that she found near the long-ranged weapon.
She then carefully tucked the satchel back into her traveler's backpack; then she started the process of gathering the enormous amounts of magic stone slivers and monster parts in the area. 'This will definitely take awhile.'
As she started her collection, her mind wandered back to what she did earlier. She still felt sluggish, but it was slowly going away. Her senses having already returned to her. She could move like normal again, and she felt only slightly tired, but she still felt lethargic. 'How much Mana did I use to sustain that form...? And how did I do it in the first place..?'
"I need to be more careful." *Sigh* 'I need to meditate on this... I can't let my emotions run out of control or else I'll die. I'm lucky no other monster appeared while I was trying not to puke my guts out. Whatever I did, the drawbacks are too much for me. Any faltering or weakness by even a small fraction could lead to my certain demise. It's just like what Batman said, "Everyone has a kryptonite. Weaknesses, behaviour, patterns, habits, and everything in between can be exploited." So I need to be very careful...'
——————————————————————————————
{Same time}
"Hey mommy, what are all these people doing to our basement?", the 10 year old, hume bunny, girl asked her Goddess/Mother; while she sat near her.
The Goddess of Cures and Universal Medicine looked down at the silver-haired bunny girl with fondness while she was currently feeding the blond-haired baby in her arms. "They're just here to start working on the renovations Faith and I scheduled for this part of the basement. Since our Songbird is out, it was the perfect time to schedule this."
Lianne; with a tilt of her head, looked up at Panacea with a smile. "So it's a surprise?"
"Yes, it is.", she answered the adorably curious girl while she fed Conner more milk. "We have to keep this a surprise, alright?"
"Uh huh, sure.", said Lianne with a thumbs up.
And with that, the two just stayed seated on the wooden flooring of the basement; near some couch cushions, in comfortable silence as they watched the men that Panacea and Faith hired -- work with a solid and steady pace. 'This increased our debt by a significant amount, but it'll be worth it in the end. Plus, these guys signed a magically binding company-client privilege knowledge locked contract. Whatever they worked on and saw in our Familia grounds will be locked and the knowledge will disappear within 1 week after the work is completed. That took a while to set up, but it'll be worth it.'
Lianne leaned into Panacea's warmth while the Goddess scanned the rapid work being done. 'We paid for the best, and we'll get the best. Basement expansion, renovations, and the works. By the time that they're done, the space underneath our Familia house will be completely different. I just hope Dinah likes it.'
'I wonder how big sis Sensei is doing? I think she's kicking major butt right now.', thought Lianne with an innocent smile. 'Oooohhhhh, that's a big saw! Wow!! Who knew Dwarves could carry something that large? Their so small though... Hmmm... If I grow that strong while staying small, then I'll be like those Dwarves too?! That's awesome!!' Those thoughts and others like them invaded little Lianne's mind while her eyes shined with a spark of awe as she watched all the workers in action.
Panacea noticed the glimmer of awe in Lianne's eyes, and a bead of sweat dripped down her brow. 'I hope she's not thinking of emulating those Dwarves. I don't think Hume Bunnies are supposed to grow that strong... well, at least not their upper body. I swear, if she learns how to juggle small boulders, learns how to hold her liquor, and gains the strength to smash trees with her bare fists, then I may just cry. A Hume Bunny acting like a Dwarf is the last thing we need... Dinah needs to wow Lianne more. I'd rather have Lianne acting like a mini-Dinah than a Dwarf/Hume Bunny. I don't think anyone's noticed yet, but Lianne's getting kind of bitey. I'm still kind of wary of when she turns 13...'
*Sigh* 'Hume Bunny puberty... from what I've heard, it's kind of scary.', that thought made Panacea's spine shiver in dread.
——————————————————————————————
{12:43 PM}
After collecting all of her spoils, she explored the 2nd floor of the dungeon further and encountered a few more monsters trying to ambush her. A handful of monster parties were thrown her way, but she dealt with them swiftly.
Thankfully, the lethargic feeling left her after half an hour, but Dinah was still wary of using her Mana. She still can't differentiate how much she currently has as well as how much she's using when she channels it. It's a problem of not having enough of it, her very little Mana control, and her relative new status to having Magic at all to use. So she stuck to her tried and true method of overwhelming and peerless combat prowess.
When she found a relatively different empty tunnel corridor, she decided to eat her lunch there.
As she sat down in the middle of that corridor, she removed her traveler's backpack and took out a couple of sandwiches and one of the several dozen leather water skins she filled up by using her never ending bottle of water. 'Too bad I can't read the Runic sequence on Conner's milk bottle as well as my water bottle. Panacea thinks I need to learn more about how Runes work in order to understand it further.'
'Mmmm... delicious.'
A few bites of the first sandwich helped her calm her nerves as well as to rejuvenate her spirits. 'Egg salad sandwich. It's amazing that my satchel of holding can keep food and water fresh. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that it's indestructible or something. You are a very thoughtful old coot, Kent Nelson.' *Sigh* 'I miss your grandfatherly advice.'
As she ate, she reviewed her total spoils from her 2nd stint into the dungeon so far. 'Hmmm... 579 tiny magic stone slivers from the Goblins and Kobolds, 343 slightly larger magic stone slivers from the Dungeon Lizards, 236 Goblin Fangs, and 150 Kobold Nails. Yet, there's still no monster parts from any of the Dungeon Lizards. If I remember correctly, according to 'Monster Guide - Vol. 6 - The Art of Not Dying', and to 'Idiot's Guide to the Dungeon', the Dungeon Lizard won't ever drop a part of itself. But then again, these books have never mentioned what I've been through. I should start writing something about these inconsistencies... Hmmm... how would 'The Black Canary's Dungeon Adventures' sound? I'll have to talk with Mother Panacea and Captain Faith about this. It sounds like a good pass time...'
With those thoughts circulating through her mind, she started partaking in her 2nd sandwich. Halfway through her delectable lunch, her thoughts veered off to another branch of thought. 'I think it would be wise for me to stay in the 1st and 2nd floors of the dungeon... just in case. If what's been happening to me is any indication, then I need to become more stronger than I am now or I need companions by my side. Both would be better. Strength and trusted companions. Faith and Lianne are getting there. If their training's progress is any indication, then I'd feel comfortable with them accompanying me soon.'
When she finished the prosciutto sandwich, she checked the time. {1:11 PM} 'I've got a few more hours until I need to go back up. I wonder how many more monsters I'll encounter until this dungeon learns not to mess with me..?'