Chapter 207

Despite having escaped the Hellhound cave, the dungeon wasn’t quite finished with them. But its temper was at least cooling. The encounters thrown at them were successively easier—if still far more difficult than usual. Malice’s claim that its moods were ‘ephemeral’ seemed to be accurate. Intense but fast-passing.

When they finally found an exit portal and threw themselves through, Natalie’s entire body was aching. She was used to coming out of dungeon expeditions exhausted, but not to this extent, having undergone a vigorous sex fight followed immediately by the dungeon’s vengeful wrath.

The good news, if there was any for such an onslaught, was that they had racked up a lot of kills. The dungeon’s temper tantrum had resulted in quite an efficient leveling expedition.

Materializing in a random spot inside the large chamber that served as Aradon’s dungeon entrance, Natalie finally allowed herself to relax, swaying on her feet. She looked around, checking in on each of her teammates. They were all alive and none too badly hurt. That was all that mattered.

They had stored Malice inside the Capture Core just before exiting. Natalie didn’t want to deal with explaining how a definitively non-human creature had accompanied them outside the dungeon. Now or possibly ever. Malice’s existence in general posed a whole slew of complications.

“Alright,” Natalie said. “To the healers.”

Their team was hardly the first to stumble from the dungeon in poor shape. For exactly those situations, there was a healer’s hall connected directly to the main chamber. There were even medics on standby to rush to a delver’s immediate aid if necessary. They weren’t in that bad of shape, though. If admittedly Natalie wobbled on her walk over, feeling light-headed.

They passed the squat obelisk of black stone—the actual portal that led into the dungeon—as they went, then promptly had their wounds tended to. Liz had been caring for them as well, alongside health potions. Combined with the higher-level spells from the healers servicing the dungeon exit, Natalie would be sore when she woke in the morning, and possibly have a few faint lines on her stomach and thighs to remember the wolves’ vicious claws by, but otherwise, she’d be fine. They all would.

Scars were cool, anyway.

After getting patched up and staggering into the evening air of Aradon’s streets—feeling ten times more exhausted, now that adrenaline wasn’t holding her up—Natalie and her team said their goodbyes to Leah. The rescued party poured their thanks onto them, trying to insist on payment, but they declined. As far as they were concerned, Natalie and her team had only done what was expected of them. They would hardly leave a group stranded in the dungeon when it was entirely within their capabilities to help. And the actual chaos had been of their own making. The mundane challenges associated with saving Leah’s team hadn’t posed much difficulty at all.

The team of five trudged back to the Tenet campus and convened in Natalie’s shared dorm. Considering the amount of grime, blood, ash, and other unidentifiable messes that had come with their adventure, they peeled out of their armor, stored it in monster cores, and took turns getting cleaned up so as not to ruin the furniture and flooring of the dorm.

Finally, they collapsed in the living room. Sofia took the recliner, and the rest of them piled onto the couch. It wasn’t meant to seat four people, but they crammed in anyway, exhausted enough that they didn’t care that their shoulders were touching. For a while, they simply sagged into the soft cushions and stared vacantly into the distance, decompressing.

Even Liz and Ana, the mages of the group, were worn out. Magic didn’t drain the body in the same way as physical activity, but too much exertion of that inexplicable muscle would definitely lay a person on her ass. Natalie would know. She was drained in both ways.