Combat Healer Ch. 05

"And I'm guessing you went after her?" Mel assumed.

I nodded, only to clear my throat. "I, umm...well I thought she was really pretty, and knew exactly how she felt, so I was always paying attention to her."

Mel tried to lighten the mood, seeing that I was uncomfortable admitting that to her. "You like taller women, huh?" she said playfully.

I smiled. "Actually, she wasn't taller. Even though she was fourteen, practically the same age as me, she was still a couple of inches shorter than me."

"Oh," Mel said in surprise, likely knowing that even female elves were often much taller by then. "But she would have been taller eventually, right?"

I shrugged. "Supposedly, her mom was short for an elf. Like, so short that no one believed she was an elf unless she showed off her ears." I paused, realizing I should probably clarify how I knew that. "I found that out from one of the other elves traveling with them. The girl didn't actually talk to me much." I grimaced again. "She was kind of, you know, traumatized and such. Didn't really speak to anyone. Only thing she asked me was to help her save her dad, but I couldn't exactly do that."

Mel nodded. "So you followed after her."

I took a deep breath. "I did, and it was the worst three months of my life." Of course, like night vision, many elves had Chronosense, which was an extremely accurate ability to detect the passage of time. Otherwise, I wouldn't have known how long I'd been in hell, and might have overestimated the experience as several years.

"Three months?!" Mel said in shock.

I nodded. "Yeah, have you ever heard of a Dungeon Engulfing?"

Her brow furrowed. "I think I've heard the term, but don't really know what it is," she admitted.

I wasn't surprised, since it was a very rare event, to the point that it was also believed to be a myth by many. And had I not experienced it for myself, then I might not have believed it.

Of course, it was normal for a Scourge Dungeon to appear and for monsters to begin flooding the nearby land, along with a thick layer of dark clouds. And, upon conquering a Dungeon by reaching the final floor, it was also normal for doors to open that led directly outside, something that made zero sense logically.

Plenty of people had actually mapped out Dungeons, and proven repeatedly that the final room opening to the entrance didn't make any geographical sense.

Yet it was still normal, because it was what everyone experienced.

Especially since that usually meant the excavation teams entered the Dungeon at the end, rather than the beginning, to excavate Monster Cores.

But, what was not normal was when people found themselves inside the Dungeon without entering it. The part people thought was a myth, was when the Dungeon itself swallowed people up.

Because if they knew it was true, they'd probably panic at just the mention of a Dungeon nearby. Especially when it could happen even when someone was miles away from the actual entrance, like it did for me and my...companion...

However, I didn't respond right away, since we were close to another turn, only continuing once we crossed into another alley.

"Basically, it's when you enter a Dungeon without meaning to. Without going through the entrance."

"How is that possible?" she asked seriously.

"I don't know," I admitted. "But it happened to me. No sooner had I caught up to the girl, planning on trying to convince her to come back, only for us to both realized that we weren't in our world anymore. Somehow, without even realizing it, we'd entered the Dungeon. The sky was gone. And what we thought were black clouds above us were actually stone walls. It was already almost pitch-black outside to begin with, so the limited light wasn't a surprise."

"But you said the Dungeon appeared in the Atacama Valley, right? Isn't that like a day's trip from the Mohave Gorge?"

"Yes, it is," I agreed. "Which is why we were so shocked when we realized we were surrounded by stone walls. My town should have been barely a short run back in the other direction, but when we tried to go back, I almost fell into an endless pit."

"Shit," she hissed. "You didn't have a light on you?"

"No, because I wasn't planning on going far to begin with. But she saved my life, since elves can see in the dark, and all."

Her gold eyes then abruptly widened, as if she was suddenly realizing what I'd said toward the beginning. "And you were lost in there for three months?"

I could only nod.

Because it was true, and horrible.

Three months.

For three months, every day of my life felt like an eternity in hell.

-

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Submitted: October 13, 2022 to Literotica (Copyright 2021 Kaizer Wolf)