Who Needs Magic in a Fantasy World Anyway?

Chapter 106: Decent

With the tunnels above apparently cleared and all of the adventurers gathered together again, the large group followed Dedrick into the dungeon. And while they'd been using either the lights from spells or Senshi in order to see, now they didn't need them as the other groups had brought along plenty of torches and Koko was able to keep her pet on her shoulder before they came across their first intersection in the hallway that they'd been following. And after two groups of adventurers moved down the splitting hallways, the rest of them continued to go straight until they eventually walked out onto a stone bridge which resided at the top of a massive circular chamber which had a long spiraling staircase leading downwards at the end of the bridge. However, they couldn't see very far down with just the light from the torches, so one of the adventurers dropped theirs before Koko joined everyone else in looking over the sides of the bridge and watching the light fall. And also along with everyone else, she whistled slightly to herself as the torch continued to drop, never hitting the bottom until it grew far enough away that they couldn't see it anymore.

"That... is a long way down." Richard's voice called out needlessly as Koko finally spotted both him and Christina. However, seeing as they were on the other side of the crowd, she couldn't get to the yet.

"Never move more than three people wide and be prepared to stop at any moment! There's no handrails here and I don't think I need to tell anyone about what will happen if you fall!" Dedrick called out, and Koko found herself walking in between Ander and Ethrion as they continued forward and began descending down the stairs. And while she would have loved to look at the carvings along the walls which she only now noticed, she instead had to watch where she was going seeing as she didn't want to push anyone into the bottomless pit below. However, after a slight shout from Rose in front of them, Ander had to hurry and catch her as the innermost edge of the stairs had given out beneath her and she nearly fell.

"Don't get too close to the edge, alright?" Ander laughed slightly as he hauled her back up. And despite the woman being fearful of the edge now, they continued to descend deeper into the chamber for another half-hour before Koko began to wonder just how far down it went. Though when somebody else behind her started yelling, it turned out that they had problems other than stairs as everyone turned to see that the man yelling was currently being lifted from the stairs by a string of web. And now that everyone was looking upwards, they only now recognized the shapes of a long line of spiders that were all hanging from the bottom of the stairs above them.

"Attack them at range and don't use anything big enough to take out the stairs! They may be our only way out of here!" Dedrick commanded, and Koko unfortunately couldn't do anything as all of the rangers and mages began to pepper the spiders above them with both arrows as well as small spells.  However, not being able to use any larger spells or put any power behind their attacks, killing the spiders took much longer than it should have while everyone that couldn't reach them focused on catching anyone who had been lifted into the air so that they didn't fall past the stairs.

"I gotcha!" Koko yelled as she attempted to catch a knight that had been lifted from the stairs but then dropped as the spider was killed. And while she thankfully managed to grab hold of the man's hand and stop him from falling the rest of the way to the chamber's floor, her own foothold on the stairs was tenuous at best before, just like what had happened with Rose, the stone stairs cracked under their combined weight and she ended up falling as well. However, unlike the knight who was screaming as he must as expected to fall to his death, Koko wasn't as worried as she watched Senshi jump from her shoulder before returning to its normal size in front of her.

After beating his wings and being able to fly almost immediately, Senshi caught Koko just behind his head before freefalling in order to catch up to the knight who was still falling beneath them. And thankfully it appeared that the floor of the cavern was still some ways away as the beetle managed to grab onto the knight's leg during freefall before they started flying again. Though seeing as Senshi seemed to be having trouble carrying both of them, he instead flew to the side of the chamber where the stairs were still spiralling  before dropping both of them off and returning to his small size, this time not landing on Koko's shoulder as he flew overhead and shined his red light so that they could see.

"Are you alright?" Koko asked as she moved to help the knight up seeing as he was still breathing heavily from his near-death experience.

"Y-yes... Thank you." He thanked her with a shaken voice.

"Don't only thank me. We both would have been dead without Senshi." Koko replied happily while indicating towards the beetle that was flying over their heads.

"Oh, that thing was yours..." The man breathed out a sigh of relief. "I thought I was going to get eaten..."

"You still might be." Koko replied while looking at the soft glow that was hitting the stairs above them in order to check for spiders. "Or maybe not. It doesn't look like there are spiders down here."

"Then we should be safe here until the others come." The man sounded relieved yet again before the stairs beneath them vibrated as something large clicked from somewhere beneath them.

"I keep on telling people about flags, but does anyone ever listen? No!" Koko shouted, however even she didn't know what was going to happen until the inside edge of the stairs somehow bent and tilted upward somehow, making her wonder if they were really made of stone after all. However, the transformation wasn't complete as the stairs suddenly folded down, turning what was once stairs into a slide before Koko fell to her hands and used whatever traction that she could in order to slow her sudden sliding.

While Koko had managed to find enough traction to stop herself on the former stairs, the knight that had been with her unfortunately wasn't so lucky as the man let out another yell before disappearing into the darkness beneath her as he slide along the wall. And while she was pondering whether or not to use Senshi again to try and get him, her attention was suddenly distracted by a commotion above her as it sounded as if a bunch of people were yelling. Though as their torchlight became visible to her, her eyes grew wide as she realized that the entire group of adventurers from before were all sliding down as well and headed straight towards her.

"W-wait! Ahhhh!" Koko let out a shout herself before those at the front of the pile of sliding adventurers hit her and knocked her loose before they all continued at a steady pace down the slide. Though thankfully, after perhaps about ten minutes of sliding in circles, they finally reached the chamber's floor in a giant nauseated heap with several people attempting to stand yet falling immediately afterwards and with nearly everyone groaning from the experience.

"Koko... you're ali- (bleugh)." Christina covered her mouth quickly in order to stop herself from throwing up.

"Yeah..." Was all she said in return as Koko attempted to simply lay down and let her dizziness pass her. Though as she laid on her back and watched as Senshi's red light slowly descended while he headed towards here, all Koko could think about was how lucky her pet was to not have experienced ten minutes of constantly spinning. But as those thoughts ran through her mind, she also noticed yet another dilemma which had happened to her in the last dungeon as well. In fact, seeing as it had happened in both, she began to suspect that it was a curse of hers that the pathways leading backwards always seemed to disappear on her. However there was nothing that she could do about it seeing as, while it was slow, the slide that they'd all just been on slowly sank into the walls before their way of returning to the surface was lost completely.