As Sero and his friends entered the dungeon through its cave entrance, they noticed that there was something off about the dungeon.
"Umm, anyone else notices that something feels awfully wrong here?" Domfan asks, clearly feeling the unusual atmosphere surrounding the cave.
"Yeah, it almost feels out of place," Sero replied. This was due to how the atmosphere of a dungeon usually feels threatening or exciting as one enters it, however this time, it felt as if there was nothing wrong with the dungeon and no presence of any monsters or mana was emitted from the place.
"Wait, where did all the monsters go?" Ellie questioned as they got deeper into the cave. They heard from those that entered these caves that they were going to encounter some A-rank monsters when they were deep enough so that they could no longer see the entrance.
"This is weird… wait what is that?" Sero suddenly pointed out, his finger at the unknown object that was laying on the ground.
The group headed over to where Sero had pointed out, until suddenly Amayako shielded Fragmo's eyes with her hands, startling him.
"What did you do that for??? Let me see!" Fragmo said as he desperately tried to get Amayako's hands off of his eyes.
"My little child, this is something that you should not see. I am saying this for you and our benefit," Amayako gently told Fragmo while being green herself. She did this because they knew that Fragmo was the weakest among them in terms of mentality, and they knew that he would collapse on the spot if he saw what was in front of it (just what is it for god's sake???)
"Why would anyone do this to someone?" Ellie asked, looking like she was about to collapse herself.
"Exactly, why would anyone do this monstrosity?" Alegriso agreed, looking green himself.
This was because the unknown object in front of them was not just one corpse, not two, not three, but ten corpses. The corpses had their stomachs cut open, their intestines intertwined with each other, a hole in which the hearts was just dangling there, a whole bunch of teeth missing, and their jaws also dangling. Their limbs also seemed like they were cut off by a blunt object, likely a dull blade of sorts, and their blood mixing with some unknown liquid that they did not want to figure out. Their throats were slit vertically, and you could see blood gushing out. However, their faces were what haunted the group out. The corpses eyeballs were dangling from their sockets, the skull was smashed in, revealing the brain, and their noses were halfway cut and also dangling from side to side. A couple of them had one or both ears missing, which could be found in their hands that were missing fingers, in which those fingers were shattered off and stabbed into various places on the body, some being pierced to form moustaches or beards, while others had them stabbed in interesting "spots" that would definitely hurt to the ends of hell if they were alive.
The group wanted to walk away from the scene, however they could not look away, just like how a normal person would be horrified at a car crash but cannot take their eyes off of the accident, as if they are entranced into it.
It was Sero who finally pulled out and dragged the group out of the dungeon (smart man cause other book characters would've kept going in deeper *cough cough*). It wasn't until later when Domfan finally said in a still shocked voice, "Well, that was something…" .
"What even happened to them? I thought that the cave was only an A-rank," Amayako wondered, still looking a bit green.
"Whatever happened to them, I'm glad that we didn't go any further, or else we may have ended up the same," Alegriso said (I might as well just add calmly).
"We're going to have to report this to the adventurer's guild," Ellie said as they headed away from the dungeon.
As the group was walking away, they seem to not notice something coming out of the entrance of the cave (that's crazy).
The group soon arrived at the entrance of the adventurer's guild, and Ellie quickly approached the receptionist's desk. When she came up to the receptionist, she said in a hurried tone, "Hello, we would like to report a problem at the dungeon we were just at."
The receptionist, a young lady (why are they all ladies... oh wait never mind I forgot where I was) with glasses (hmm...) and long, black hair (alright author, you can stop now...she ain't that important now is she...right?), replied, "Which dungeon were you at and what has happened there?"
"I was at the Dungeon of Many Ends, and my party found another party that has been slaughtered near the entrance," Eliie hastily answered.
"Oh, that's quite serious," the receptionist said. "Let me send over some people to check over there" (lady, what is that damn lame response. She told you that a whole group of people got murdered, and that's your reaction? Bruh what did she experience to not be shocked???)
A few moments later, a group of adventurers went over to the dungeon to check the situation there. As the adventurers left, Sero and his group sat down at a couple of tables at the lobby of the guild. At this point, everyone in the guild were staring at them since they overheard what Ellie had said and started to whisper amongst themselves. After a moment of silence, Sero asked them all, "So, what do you think happened for those people to end up like that?"
Domfan almost eagerly (wat.) responded by saying, "Maybe they found a secret treasure, but as they were going out, one of them got greedy and decided to kill them all to keep things for themselves! Or maybe some of them wanted revenge amongst one another and decided to finally go through with it! Or maybe, just maybe, they-"
"Alright buddy, no need to be so eager to talk about a group of people being eager!" Sero quickly cut him off.
"I don't know man, but something definitely happened there, or else they wouldn't be killed in such a brutal way," Alegriso wondered out loud.
Amayako, somewhat recovering from the shock, gave her own opinions on the matter. "Maybe they encountered a foreign monster and tried to run but in the end got killed?"
Ellie then replied, "No, that wouldn't make sense, since their fingers were stuck forcefully and they were cut in many places. It seemed like the work of a human if anything else."
Poor Fragmo, who had his eyes covered by Amayako before he could see what was going on, did not have a clue on what was going on. So he was just sitting there, looking very confused and worried about all of this murder talk.
Sero then expressed his own thoughts. He said, "So, basically we can guess that those people were likely murdered by a human being. However, the true question is, who is strong enough to go up against an entire party of A-rank and B-rank adventurers?"
Then, one person came up amongst everyone's mind. "Wait a damn minute," Ellie said. "Is everyone thinking about what I'm thinking of right now? It can't be -"
Before she could finish, there was a loud noise outside.
"HELP!" someone screamed.
Everyone suddenly rushed outside, trying to see what was going on.
Only if they knew.