Guardian core (Book 1 of: potentially many)

Of Gods and Men

Alcor

I looked around, beginning to walk forward into the unknown room. I was silent, as always, and extremely alert. I'd never seen Stephan so badly injured he couldn't walk before- the roguish human always had resisted the pain and put on a mask of confidence- however poor it actually was, and however easily we all saw through it, he still tried. Right now his health was too low for him to even put up a pretense of wanting to continue. Admittedly, he had just had his very soul tampered with by powerful, unknown demonic magic, but still.

I expected some being to still live in the ancient-looking temple, if all honesty was being used. We slowly explored, even more wary of traps and less likely to sense them. Embarrassingly, it took us a full three days to explore the temple, and finding the pedestal wasn't where we stopped. This dungeon had no traps anywhere, and it was unsettling.

Despite this, we rested for a few days while healing Stephan. He healed surprisingly quickly, and even managed to get healthier. I've never been jealous of a human's physique, but I'll admit that I'm jealous that he get's more muscle definition every time he almost dies. If I had that same gift, I'd look obscene, and he likely will eventually as well.

I looked at the pedestal on the fourth day, when Stephan could walk on his own and even spar again. I chose to consider what was happening and why Val hadn't put the orb on the pedestal yet. If she didn't want to do the quest, well it was already over. It would be far more easy to simply put the orb in place, than try to continue in a dungeon clearly meant for adventurers as high a level as us- even if we each averaged twenty or so.

No, it was more likely we were still finishing the quest. Instead, she must have some reason for keeping it. But what could we gain from still having to fight the monsters in this place? Honestly, we ourselves wouldn't gain anything. It might weaken the dungeon slightly, but except for knowledge, we wouldn't gain anything. Actually... I paused, considering that.

If we became immune to monster attacks, we couldn't fight the demons and gauge their strength. That would mean bringing incomplete information to the guild and less pay- plus less experience points for us. Those in conjunction would be painful. Even if we got our hands on the dungeons beginning artifacts. So she would keep the orb, threaten it if we were overwhelmed, then complete the quest later.

Satisfied I'd figured it out, I relaxed and began trying to figure out why Stephan had healed so fast. I'd never heard of healing like that without magic being involved before, and there shouldn't have been any way for that to happen since we didn't have a cleric around.

He was infected with demon bits- and they healed quickly- but it was too diluted, and none of the powers from the demon bits had been related to healing. On top of all that, this was an underground dungeon- not a tower. Towers had angelic cores, and those dungeons had territories that healed everyone in general as long as they were being affected. Since there was no tower, that was impossible.

With no obvious answers, I just kept waiting. On the fifth day, I sighed, following Val and the rest as our team headed out. We walked to the sword path, this time more alert and aware of our surroundings as we prepared for the dungeon to try and kill us. There still weren't any traps, but we found the demons- spaced out, waiting for us, and all of them whole and energetically rearing to go.

None of the was missing a tail, so Stephan's take-down hadn't actually limited the fighting force much at all. That didn't bode well for us. With the demons unable to surprise us, we managed to kill them as we went up the path- though there were a few close calls when I got distracted by how beautiful Auriel was... the way she completely destroyed all of the demons she fought with a brutal efficiency, struggling as the demons blood splattered across her and singed bits of demonic flesh exploded across and past her with each blast of fire she sent their way...