28

The channels felt as if they were clogged up with sludge. I kept on forcing that sludge out of the way in the biggest channels. It took me forever just to clear the sludge out of my arm. The mana channel when away from my heart. Down my arm to my hand, and then came back up to my heart. 

It took me nearly an hour just to do that. I made sure my phone was fully charged before unplugging it, and taking it back to the bed with me. Squishing it beneath my boob as I relaxed into the blankets. I was tired enough to sleep, and six o'clock was about seven hours away. I'd get a decent amount of sleep between now, and six. 

I tossed my bloodied blanket on the ground. Grabbing one of my cleaner ones before passing out on the bed. I wouldn't know where my phone would end up while I was sleeping. All I cared about was it staying under my breast. As long it was was there I would be able to feel the vibration, and it would wake me up. 

My sleep was blissful. I hadn't slept this well in a good long time. I woke to the vibration of my phone ringing. I pulled my phone out from under my body, and realized I was getting a call. 

"Hello?" I answered the phone groggily. 

"Hello is this Lilian?" someone on the other end of the line asked.

"Yes," I pulled the phone away from my ear to look at the time, "What do you want?"

"This is captain Grieves," he responded, "We were wondering if you planned to go into the dungeon again today." 

"Yes," I got out of bed reluctantly, "Why do you ask?" 

"We have a team ready to enter the dungeon," he continued, "They're just short one person."

"Get down here, and join them right away then?" I snorted, "I'm going to eat first. Then I'll come down. If they're not okay with that then they can go without me."

I hung up. Tossing my phone on the bed a second later. It wouldn't take me long to change my clothes, and eat some leftovers. Plus I really needed to pee. I had a relaxing moment in the bathroom before returning to the main room to make myself some leftovers. 

Today was the last day that the military had paid for so I'd have to be out by noon, but I didn't care. The fact that they hadn't already taken care of the last floor of the dungeon on their own bothered me a bit. Here it was the sixth of July, and the final floor of the dungeon was about to burst in just over an hour, and they hadn't sent anyone in knowing that the power of the monsters were slowly increasing as we went up each floor. No way. I frowned. 

There was no way they hadn't already sent someone in. That meant that something had gone wrong. I should probably get a better bow before I headed into the dungeon. I didn't like losing money to something like that, but if it was as dangerous as I suspected it to be then I should get a decent reward anyway. I ate my fill of the leftover scalloped potatoes before heading down to the lobby. 

It didn't take me long to walk from the hotel to the park. I showed my ID, and was waved through without a problem. I knew that most people at level ten would have way more stat points to throw around. I was let through the second checkpoint as well. I got a better bow on my way through. 

Keeping my bone bow as a backup. I had plenty of arrows. They were all made of bone, but my backpack was completely filled to the brim with them. I got some funny looks from the people around me, but I really didn't care. The dungeon had followed the same theme through all the floors. 

I could expect the next floor to be the same. All the floors had spit out zombies so I imagined they were similar. Zombies, zombies, and more zombies. This was the final floor. The third, and forth floors were both graveyards.

One more overgrown then the other. The fifth floor would practically be an overgrown forest with the occasional grave marker if it followed the same pattern. Then the thought occurred to me again. They had to have sent someone in. They had to have sent someone to deal with the monsters before they came into the city. 

The fact that half of our team was made up of military awakened just made my frown deepen. They had to have sent people in, and those people didn't come back. That just made me even more suspicious. I headed into the dungeon with the others anyway. I knocked an arrow as soon as I had even footing, and scanned the surroundings. 

This was the final level of the dungeon. It reminded me of pictures of the redwood forest I'd seen in school. The trees were smaller, and there were more bushes, and smaller plants. I could see a gravestone from where I was standing. I didn't like this. 

I stared into the trees. I didn't see any movement, but I was glad that the stench of death skill was affecting the others. It would make the stat gap less noticeable. They wouldn't know there was anything off about me for now. I could hear movement, but I didn't see it. 

"I don't like these trees," I was growing tense, "We should move somewhere more open if we can."

"I'd prefer to have the cover," the sniper glanced over to me with noticeable disdain.

"You can hear the noise in the trees as well can't you?" I widened my scan so it went up the trees as well, "I don't know where it's coming from, and this isn't some human enemy. Our enemy might use the trees to their advantage."