Chapter: 31, Missing Piece

Dainsleif looked at the now scared and timid Gura who was shaking all over with fear.

He crouched down and looked at her eyes that held weariness for him. He sighed and said,

"I know how you feel; I have been in your situation once." Gura's eyes contracted in shock when Dain continued.

"I understand that the most idiotic thing would be when a slave starts to trust his slaver…"

"I don't want you to trust me… I will give you a chance. I will hand you over to someone; you will only be imprisoned for a year. If even after a year you don't want to stay with that person, you will be released." With that, he finished speaking and waited for Gura's reply.

Gura contemplated his words. One, if she refused, Dain would surely kill her. He had kept her alive just to give her to someone. 

Two, if she accepted, she would be out of this dungeon and stay in the outside world. During the one year, she can get strong enough to protect herself and later live a normal life.

But, being a slave is surreal and dreadful to her. It would be humiliating to serve someone like a slave. As for Dainsleif breaking his words, she never thought of that. The small amount of time they had been together, she knew him enough to know his character even if just briefly.

She hesitated for a brief moment before saying, "B-But the children of our floors…"

"All of them are dead." He interrupted her, "No one is alive on the floor."

She turned silent. She anticipated this but it still hurt so much to know that now, she doesn't have any relatives in this world. She calmed down after a breakdown and then nodded her head through the tears.

Dain didn't waste time and summoned an old wrinkled paper with crimson letters arranged like an agreement. It was a slave contract with the freedom to change masters. Dain gently took her hand and used the sword to make a small cut. Green blood flowed out of the cut and fell on the wrinkled paper.

The paper glowed with a green light and the paper turned a faint hint of green. Dain then made a small cut on his hand and dropped some of his blood. The wrinkled paper glowed once again and completely turned golden in color.

The newly turned golden paper began to disintegrate into dust with some flowing into Dain's hand and the other flowing and merging into Gura's neck.

A faint green tattoo that showed the figure of a woman inside a circle appeared on the back of his hand. And a similar red tattoo appeared on Gura's neck with the figure of a man inside a circle on the back of her neck. The red tattoo wrapped around her neck completely like thin red ropes wrapping her neck tightly.

Dain stood up and walked back slowly saying, "Go and calm down at the tribe hall, I'll be back after clearing the next floor." After saying that, his figure vanished from the narrow dark alley leaving Gura with two rotting corpses.

After Dain left, Gura stood up and began to run back to the Tribe. While running, she was too emotional to notice a shadowy figure catching up and merging with her shadow.

*

Dain walked down the stairs that led him to the 19th floor of the beginner dungeon. As soon as he reached the end of the stairs, he suddenly teleported from the darkness to a vast bright space. Light assaulted his eyes as no hint of shock appeared in Dainsleif's face.

This was the 19th floor of this low level dungeon. It was a bright lively space with trees, sky, life, sun and everything else. The monsters in this level are mostly wolf-like inferior creatures. 

Unlike the wolves in the outside world, the wolves inside were much weaker.

Even if he killed all of them now, he wouldn't level up by even 1 level. The goblins never approached this level because no goblin was able to return after entering this space. While the goblins only sent their weakest members, the wolves here mostly sent their strongest members.

The wolves seeing their strongest members not returning had the idea that the goblins sent might be the weakest and stronger forces waiting outside, which was true. 

On the other hand, the goblins, despite being intelligent, had the misunderstanding that every wolf inside was just as strong as the stronger ones who appeared out of here. The misunderstanding was ironic and laughable to Dain after he read the journal published by Arcadius.

Dain let go of that and moved ahead to search the floor. The reason for his action was because the surprise attack in the previous life was very odd.

As he knew, this dungeon was never explored by anyone from the moment of its birth. So it was impossible for a regular demon or a demonic follower to infiltrate through the high security and come here to prepare the attack.

Demonic followers can't summon themselves anywhere so there must be a temporary portal to the underworld somewhere in this floor or the 20th floor.

Dainsleif searched the entire floor for three entire hours to find nothing. Sighing in defeat, Dain went towards the teleporter to the 20th floor.

In front of the teleportation altar, Dain noticed something strange. A second teleportation circle was placed beside the floor teleportation circle. Dainsleif never learned anything related to summoning or array magic.

Not finding any way, He reluctantly used three percent of [Envisioning] Charge to become a Grandmaster at Array Magic. Countless knowledge poured into his mind as slight pain coursed through his head.

After he digested the knowledge, Dainsleif again looked at the array circle, finally finding the traces of the incomplete parts of the array circle.

 The traces looked like someone voluntarily messed up the patterns, it confirmed that a demon summoned itself here near an energy source like the Teleportation array of this space.

After Dain used his mana to repair the array, He found out that the array was missing One Piece. A piece that would be something like a stone that connects the two locations and that particular stone was missing.

After memorizing the array patterns, Dain sighed and stepped into the teleportation array that leads to the 20th floor…

To be continued…