I Own A Brothel In Another World (Ch. 1-196)

Chapter 22 - Through the Eyes of Another: The Hero's First Dungeon

"Ow, ow, ow... My fucking ass... My fucking head... My fucking everything!" I groan while lying on top of a small pile of rubble.

Flipping myself onto the stomach, I take a glance around. Natalie is kneeling a bit to my right and tending to Paul's injuries. Shino is walking from side to side and checking the place we landed in for possible threats. Her hand lays prepared on the katana's handle. Besides slightly torn clothes here and there, she looks fine. She must have eased the landing with her movement skill somehow.

After dealing with Paul, Nat comes to check on me. My armour mitigated most of the flying debris, but I still feel sore all over my body, from the hits and the last impact. While she takes care of it, I scan our surroundings with my eyes.

We are in another cave. No, that's wrong. It looks more like a room carved in stone, but old enough for most of the walls and some parts of the ceiling to fall off. You can still tell that it had a rectangular shape and there are some weird torches attached to its walls, with blue, glowing crystals instead of your usual flaming heads.

There's also a pair of stone doors, each on the opposite end of the room. One of them, let's say to the south, is completely shattered and covered in debris. No chance we can get through it. But the northern door looks almost intact.

Natalie calls everyone to gather up and we sit in a circle. While she plays a soft and slow melody, we drink water and eat some of the rations. Her chant revitalizes my body even more than any food and I feel my fatigue being slowly washed away. It's one of her Bard skills - Song of Rest, which boosts regeneration and all healing, also taking care of some strain of the body. It can't replace sleep, but it's the best course of action we can take right now.

"Is this place connected to those monsters?" Marcia asks while munching on some jerky.

"I don't think so. There are some murals on these walls, but I don't know which race they depict. They are too damaged. This must be some old, unknown structure that happened to be under the mining area," the Samurai girl shares her findings and thoughts.

I look up into never-ending darkness. "We don't have any magic to go up the way we fell, right?" I ask moving my hopeful gaze towards Nat.

"I'm still Tier 1 too. My wind magic won't be able to carry us into the air." She shakes her head.

I sigh heavily. "Haaaaaaah... Fuck! What shit luck!"

"You always had problems with controlling the strength of your thrusts." Marcia giggles teasingly.

"Oh, fuck off!" I look at her with my face saying 'really?' and she starts giggling even harder.

"It's not Kamil-san's fault. That monster must have weakened the floor with the shockwaves too." Shino surprisingly joins to defend me.

"I know, hehehehe, it's just a little joke to lighten up the mood," Marcia responds.

Ten minutes later, we finish our short break and explore the chamber with a bit more attention. From all the details, we conclude that this area might have been built by Dwarves or some other similar race. I have no idea how many of them exist in this world, but Shino says that there are plenty. But, wouldn't they make everything smaller if it was made by Dwarves? The room and doorways seem the usual size.

Nothing else can be learned here, so we move to the stone door. With Paul's help, I somehow manage to push them open, with a lot of resistance. They make loud scraping noises, scratching all over the pavement from the same material.

A corridor fashioned akin to the room we are in opens up in front of us. It's about 4 people wide and something around 2 meters high. Its walls have carved, decorative pillars in equal distances, split by the blue torches in between the sculptures. This whole place gives ominous feelings.