Chapter 63: Dynamic Dungeon Pt.3: The Nest
"You said we weren’t the only humans to have walked into this place," Aiden mentioned, expecting the demon to elaborate further.
"Yes, a few more came to this place two days ago. They were captured and taken to The Nest," the demon replied.
"Why?" Aiden asked, wondering what demons needed captured humans for.
"Mazrath keeps them for entertainment and intercourse," the demon replied.
Earlier, Aiden had already come to understand that Mazrath was the leader of the nest and therefore the boss of this dungeon.
"So if you had captured my elf friend..." Aiden hated the thought of what could have happened.
"Yes, Mazrath would have kept her as a slave to have continuous sex with," the demon confirmed his thoughts.
Now Aiden wanted to kill this creature more than ever. Laela, who listened, shook her head disappointedly at the vileness of these creatures.
"The humans you demons captured, are they still alive?" Aiden asked, needing to know how to approach the situation.
If there were more humans involved, they would need to be saved first before a full destruction of these demons ensued.
"I’m not sure. Another party captured them," the demon replied.
They walked a bit more until Aiden suddenly stopped. Laela did as well, looking at him to understand why he had halted.
The demon, who was tied with the whip, couldn’t proceed further naturally due to Aiden stopping.
Then it turned its head backward with an awkward smile showing its clawed teeth and asked, "W-Why are we stopping?"
Aiden’s face broke into a grin as he said, "You think I followed you without thinking you could be leading us into a trap?"
At no point had Aiden ever let go of his Dragon’s Sight skill, so from some distance, he could see demons like the ones they’d killed before all hiding at corners and behind destroyed structures.
The demon Aiden held captive frantically struggled to break free as it realized its plan had been found out, but Aiden held ever tightly. There was no way this demon was going to get loose, not with Aiden’s strength stat.
Hearing Aiden’s revelation, Laela readied herself, preparing to cast her magic.
The demons lying in wait then started hurling weapons of different kinds toward Aiden and Laela, totally disregarding that the one being held captive might be caught in the crossfire.
Aiden stretched his hand forward and used the King level supplementary spell; "Force", on the incoming projectiles, which brought them all to a halt.
He twirled his index finger a little bit, which telekinetically made the weapons turn in the opposite direction. Then he motioned his fingers forward, and every single weapon hurled at them flew back toward the demons, effectively killing them.
The demon held captive was entirely mortified at the display of magic that stopped all the weapons right in front of it. It stopped trying to struggle and just went to its knees in defeat.
"Just how many different magics does he even know?" Laela said to herself, still trying to get used to the sight of what she was seeing.
Even when they were all dead, Aiden scanned through his surroundings with his peculiar eyesight and listened further for anything else, trying to make sure they were truly safe.
When he confirmed there weren’t any other threats, he walked closer to the demon who had abandoned hope and was on its knees, then said, "I was going to let you live a lot longer, but..."
He raised his left hand and clenched it into a fist, then punched the demon’s head with the destruction skill active.
On impact, the demon’s body crumbled into different tiny pieces before it started disintegrating like the others.
[Fists of Destruction]
Then he walked back toward Laela and said, "I don’t think we’re far off from this nest. We can get there on our own."
Laela simply nodded in agreement and followed behind him as they moved continuously forward.
...
After a decent amount of walking through the wasteland in the same direction as they had been walking earlier, Aiden came to a halt once more as his enhanced hearing picked something up; sounds of a cluster of demons.
"New demons to fight?" Laela asked when she noticed his momentary pause again.
"It’s not just a small party..." Aiden replied with a little bit of worry on his face.
They had both gotten closer to the edge of a cliff, and what they could see below left them bewildered.
It was a full settlement of demons.
"Hey, lower yourself," Aiden whispered to Laela as he moved away from the cliff’s edge to take a squat. This was to avoid a situation where all of those demons saw them both at once.
They had both pulled back quickly from the edge, and Aiden peaked over again. From his rough count, there were probably maybe two hundred of them.
Then he saw a demon with an imposing figure sitting on a large seat, with horns several times bigger than the rest of them within the settlement.
He rested his hands on the arms of the seat and was in a posture befitting the ruler of the settlement. This was Mazrath.
And close to him was a cage with someone held captive inside of it.
Aiden couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw who was being held captive in that cage. "No..." he whispered. "...Is that Alaric?"
....
Meanwhile, Katherine and Piers had found the dungeon, and without stopping to check the magical energy, Katherine pushed the door and made her way through the translucent portal. Piers followed right behind her.
When they arrived through the doors, they both could not believe the view in front of them.
Piers had never experienced one but was knowledgeable enough to know what type of dungeon they were in.
Katherine, who had experienced one once before, had terror filling her eyes. She had just one question that kept ringing in her head:
Had she just sent her guild members to their deaths?