Out the Dungeon

The rest of the team were blocked off but he could just barely sense them running away before his mana detection was cut off by the wall of blood that trapped him in the dungeon. The blood formed into a wave and washed down on him and the demon's corpse, collapsing the floor beneath him. The room they fell to had no gems or source of light whatsoever. The blood rushed in to suffocate him but Black released a beam of red energy and evaporated all the blood.

'Listen, I can only do this for about a minute, escape during that time in case it's too strong.'

'What are you gonna do?'

Black formed his black eye in front of Zeeth but more magic was being pulled onto the eye. The mist of the blood in the surroundings collected and swirled around the eye, forming a body. It expanded and collected in tiny particles of blood, gems, rocks, and mana until he recreated a body. It consisted of the bare minimum, hands, torso, head but no legs. Instead, it formed three, then four, and eventually six hands.

Black used all six hands to draw circles into the air, five eyes surrounded the bald head, unable to tell where each of them was looking. From the six circles, six different weapons came out, made from the falling rocks and gems. He used each of the six hands to wield all the large weapons while Zeeth tried running out the hole. More blood burst from the floor and dropped them even further down the hole. Black drew one massive circle using all six arms to create and caused the rocks to close themselves up and trap it outside.

Russel's dead body fell from the sky, having gotten through the entrance before Black closed it. Its body was wrinkled and dried up, all of its blood soaked away. Black drew a final circle, creating a barrier around them, with a special touch, one of the patterns Zeeth used on his shield to create an attacking barrier of mana and dust, and his six-armed form dissipated, all its dust and blood falling apart and mana dispersing.

"What is that?"

"It's my sixth form, Quick Draw. six arms and the bare minimums made to draw circles the fastest way possible. Not exactly useful for only a minute but it did its job, we survived."

"Why could you use it before? Or any of your other forms."

"First of all, none of my other forms can be manifested, you are not strong enough to handle it and neither am I right now. Two, I had just finished collecting enough mana and I am now all spent on magic, I will be pretty useless other than improving your body."

Russel's arm twitched and they both went silent, staring at it. Its entire arm twitched again and his body flew up. It came crashing down on them like a ragdoll but the barrier deflected and tore it up and instead smashed into the floor, skin, and bones smashed. The body was being pushed against the floor as if something was trying to pull it through.

'It's not attacking us anymore.'

'Hopefully. I don't have God's Shield or your powers anymore. But why is it staying there?'

'The body isn't alive, it seems the blood I was using for my Sixth Form collected into the body and is now trying to get somewhere. It's not just away from us, it looks like it's trying to get back home the fastest way possible.'

'Should we follow it?'

'Into the den of the blood that we couldn't take down so far away, without my Sixth Form or your shield? No. although i don't know if we have a choice.'

'What?' the floor beneath the carcass cracked and broke, a wave of blood engulfed the body and took it in. the entire floor cracked and broke, dropping the two of them once again. He created a shield with Afir's cloak and landed safely on the ground. Unknowingly, the shield he generated had allowed them to break through a barrier placed in the room but depleting the shield's energy by a lot.

In front of him were gold and red coffin decorated with bones and dust. Above him, blood swirled around and tried to attack him but they seemed to have been stopped by an invisible dome above him in the shape of an egg. He brushed the bones off the coffin which revealed a saying, "awaken, Five as one. If you find me, Four others must follow to my grave, awaken, Five as one."

'What does that mean?'

'No idea but this is the core of the immortal being. It is what is controlling all this blood and possibly even the cause of this entire dungeon, its mana is just that powerful. This is where I sense all the undying energy, let's open it.'

'Isn't that really dangerous?'

'No, its power is to control blood and attack but there is a barrier surrounding us and this coffin, we should be safe. Besides, I'm pretty sure it has almost no thoughts, it simply wants to live and protect itself.'

He tried pushing the top off the coffin but even with his strength, it wouldn't budge an inch. He used water, air and Black even tried blasting it with a beam but nothing budged it.

A drip of blood crawled down his arm and fell to his hand as he was leaning on it and fell on the lid. The moment his blood hit the top, several loud clicks and bangs rang from inside and he could finally open it with ease.

'It requires blood to open? Who made this?' Zeeth thought.

But neither of them spoke as they looked into the coffin. A single old bowl of dark red blood with two eyes looked at them. It looked a lot like his own slimes.

"Blood slime?"

"This is the source of all that power. This undying slime seems to have lived here for thousands of years, pulling mana around itself to create this dungeon. Strangely enough, I don't sense any malicious intent. It doesn't want to kill us at all."

"Really? Then why was it attacking us with so much blood earlier?"

"Defense? No, then it would feel cautious around us. For fun?"

He inspected the blood with God's Eye and all it said was [Undying Blood Slime: has almost no thought whatsoever but has immense control over blood. Extremely high affinity with water and liquids, especially blood, and controls the blood of his victims to play. Intelligence of a baby.]

Zeeth informed him, "It has the intelligence of a baby but incredibly high affinity with liquids, especially blood. It uses the blood of others to play. I think this slime has always been simply playing with those it kills, not understanding what it was doing."

"What is with the words on the coffin though?"

Zeeth analyzed those as well and it said, [Undead Coffin (900000/900000): Created with immense black magic, nearly indestructible and is powered by black magic. Words carved on top using black magic. (opens upon contact with blood)]

The parenthesized part seems to be information that he learned. He reached in to pick up the bowl of slime but black claws leaped out from the sides of the coffin toward his hands. He pulled back in time but he could still feel the cold wind the blades created against his hands.

Something else was added to the analysis, [(ten Killer Blades eject from the sides of the coffin to protect the contents of the coffin)].

"It'd be bad if someone else got to this guy first and made it our enemy."

The blood above him rushed more fiercely than ever, rocks from the ceiling crumbled and fell. Larger and larger chunks of rocks and gems hit the barrier protecting them, damaging it bit by bit.

"We don't have long!" Zeeth put the lid of the coffin back on and lifted the entire coffin instead.

He ran out the barrier, carrying the surprisingly heavy tomb above his head. It helped to block a few dropping rocks while the blood chased after them, helping them move up. The blood became a tall funnel that burst them out of the dungeon, appearing above ground a long distance from the entrance to the dungeon. The blood opened the lid of the coffin and hurled itself into it, magically fitting all the waves of blood somehow fitting in the coffin as they were flying through the air.

Additional information was added to the coffin, [(Closed Coffin of the Undying Blood Slime: Having Escaped the dungeon that allowed it to use all its mana, it now shuts itself off from the world, something ingrained into the slime's body to protect the surroundings from its danger.)]

The ground beneath him crumbled and broke, caving into the dungeon. All around him, people in dark robes surrounded and watched them fly out of the dungeon, golding the coffin. He noticed someone he recognized, Sinistra holding a glowing red ball.

"They have the coffin!! Attack!" she threw the ball at them, a portal opened, swallowed the ball and it reappeared behind him, exploding upon contact with the coffin. The shockwave brought them down a little but the durability of the coffin stayed at nine hundred thousand. A torrent of water collected near his feet froze and he kicked off it, flying higher while dropping a ball of ice on them.

The massive crumbling of the dungeon alerted the soldiers of the city. He could see hordes of people rushing out. The entrance to the dungeon crumbled and fell in a cloud of dust. From the sky, he could see a domino effect of the dungeon falling from the end to the entrance like a fast-moving snake.

He hit one of the robed people to break his fall, running off with the coffin. But the soldiers were riding on wheeled planks powered by magic and he could tell he wouldn't be able to outrun them so he just stopped before he made himself look even more suspicious. Sinistra tried to create as many portals as she could to allow her followers to escape while many others tried to use human catapults but the soldiers had already caught many of them. Sinistra considered fighting off a few soldiers and cutting their limbs off with portals but she was severely outnumbered, she would run out of mana before they were all defeated. It would simply anger the nation and put up countless wanted posters and negative news on them, hurting their chances to gain followers.

She ran away into a portal and allowed six other followers to leave before closing them.

"Everybody, lie down with your hands in the air unless you want to die! You, back away from the gold box!" one of the soldiers shouted. She aimed her magic staff at Zeeth, still holding onto the coffin. He put his hands in the air as she instructed and told her, "I'm not with them! I don't have a robe, I just escaped from the toppling dungeon."

"We will figure that out on our own! Come with us if you have nothing to hide!"

"Got it, Joe." Zeeth gave her a thumbs up.

She put a wooden handcuff on his hand with circles drawn in the middle. When it closed up the circle completed itself and locked his hands in tight.

'You allowed yourself to be cuffed? How demeaning.'

'Why not, they would probably attack me if I don't, I don't wanna get on the bad side of a country. This thing seems pretty easy to get out of too.'

She cuffed the hands of the man he knocked out when he landed on him and tossed them both onto the back of a wagon as she drove them back. She tried to lift the coffin but could barely tip the edge before she gave out and allowed five other men to lift it with great difficulty two other wagons.

"Good God, what the hell is this thing? Have you tried opening it yet?"

"No, we'll have to bring it to Enoda, let's hope she's in a good mood today."

He was sent back to the city along with fifty other people, now unmasked and tied to poles. He simply sat in the corner and tried to get comfortable for the ride back to the city.

"So let me get this straight, you were in the dungeon when it was caving in and flew through the ceiling. You then landed on the Three Eyed Cult in the process of blowing up a dungeon and is there by mistake."

"Yes."

"Do you understand how far of a stretch that story is?" the interrogator asked him.

"Don't you have a lie detector right there?" Zeeth pointed to a red stick gyrating on a piece of paper connected to his arm.

"You're somehow tricking it, tell me the truth!"

"So you're telling me that your machines are so simple that I could mess it up with you watching me?"

"That's not-"

The door to the room opened and a tall man in a suit walked through. It was Dives Locufle fixing his sleeve. "Charlotte, let him out."

"You can't tell me to let a suspect go." she challenged.

"Has the lie detector found anything strange?"

"No, but I still have a few hours-"

"I spoke with your boss. If nothing was found by now, he is free to go," he said coolly. "Charlotte, don't make me get your mom."

She clenched her teeth a little but gave in and said, "fine. You can go, let me undo the cuff-"

"By the way, those cuffs won't do a thing." Dives told her.

At the same time, Zeeth touched a finger to the magic circle, applied transformation magic to it, and disrupted the mana current holding it together. The cuffs fell off his hand and he tossed it aside. Charlotte was staring at the broken cuffs and then at him and he realized, "oh, man, sorry for breaking the cuffs! Right, I should've just let you do that. How much do these cost? Do you want me to make you another one? That was my bad, I was just in a rush."

"You were able to open that anytime you wanted?"

"Uh, yeah. I thought it was just for show or they were disposable cuffs. Why didn't you use metal cuffs if you didn't want them broken?" Zeeth left the room with Dives while Charlotte stayed behind, holding up the ruined cuffs.

"Dives, what are you doing here?"

"I heard you were caught as a terrorist so I came to check it out. How did you already get in trouble?"

"Bad luck?"

"By the way, if you become a high member of the Vanes, you can have as much pull as me and never be accused of treason."

"Sorry, as long as there are restrictions and rules attached, I'm not interested."

"Alright. If you do, please come to us. Your weird coffin is waiting for you, we were unable to move it out so you would need to get it from their evidence room."

"Oh, thanks."

Their evidence room was underground protected by thick metal walls and laced with magic protection. It seemed to also work as a bunker if they were ever in danger.