Reborn as the Black Knight - Chapter 2 (Patreon)

This is a RE-RELEASE (again) of chapter 2. There is an entirely new segment added to the end where Sir Knight goes to the dungeon. If you read the previous version, I suggest reading this one's end half again =)

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Acacia Odofredus Krone

Human, Female, Initiate

Level 05

Location: The City, Home

Blurriness is the first thing that she takes note of as she wakes up, her eyes slowly opening and breaking the tight seal that they had formed around her consciousness as she stares blankly.

Her body is sore and her head is throbbing, which isn’t actually too unusual of a state for her to be waking up in these days.

The girl runs her tongue over her dry lips and mouth.

She’s in bed.

Acacia stares blankly for a time.

— She blinks, sitting upright in a jolt and looking around herself.

‘She’s in bed’?! The thought repeats itself in her mind.

Wincing from her movements, she holds her throbbing head and then slides her legs over the side of the bed, kicking away some empty bottles that roll off a few feet to the tiny wall of the basement room.

Confused and dazed, she looks around herself.

This is her room.

What was… what was all that?

Was it some weird fever dream brought on by the slow progression of the sickness?

Acacia coughs, clearing her throat out of habit, as she looks around the room in a daze.

No.

No, that wasn’t a dream. She was trying to find work and then…

— Her eyes go wide, and she jumps up, kicking more glass away as she runs to the door to the tiny cellar room and opens it, stepping outside into the city back-alley and then looking around.

It’s daytime. Back here, everything looks fine.

She runs a few steps down the alley on the side of the adventurers’ guild and looks at the plaza.

It’s destroyed.

People are running around, cleaning up the rubble. Sorcerers and wizards of the less destructive schools of magic are using their spells to move away debris, as are the particularly strong physical types. Facades are already being repaired by teams of craftsmen of many trades, and patrolmen march the streets in groups of three, keeping a sharp eye on everything.

Rubbing her eyes, she looks around herself and then heads back past the garbage bins in the alleyway and down the small staircase, into the cellar room, closing the door behind herself.

The attack was real, then. If that was all real, if the attack on the city was real, if all of that mayhem and death was real, if her attempted kidnapping was real, then so was her rescuer… right?

Acacia leans back against the door, one arm hanging loose and her other hand fiddling with the fabric of her robe on her chest.

But what the hell was that?

Was it some feverish delusion? The impossibility of the situation is, of course, clear to her. But it felt so real, right?

“…Sir Knight,” she mutters beneath her breath, trying to recall exactly what had happened last night.

“Your Majesty,” says a voice from nowhere.

Acacia jolts upright, looking around the tiny room. “Show yourself!” she orders, not quite sure how the impossibly large giant could be in here. She opens the door again, looking back outside as if he were standing on the other side of the door, but he’s not there.

She holds her mouth open as she smells the smell of air, shortly before a lightning strike and tastes the taste of copper on her tongue. Black smoke wafts out between the gaps of her fingers.

As before, the entity releases itself from her body in a truly uncomfortable manner, leaving Acacia gasping for air after it is finally free. She lifts her head, looking at the shadow that forms together into a hulking creature that can barely stand in this tiny room, his head bending down because the ceiling is too low.

“It was all real?” asks Acacia. Although, she’s not really asking him as much as she is asking herself and the universe. He nods. “You’re real?” she asks, lifting a hand and moving it towards him to touch the foggy body that is only starting to come together now into something solid and coherent. The spot that her finger reaches ripples outward as if she had touched the surface of water, but then it comes to an abrupt stop as his body hardens and becomes manifest. “What is this?” she asks.

The shadow looming over her shrugs. “Good question,” he replies. “What do you want it to be?” asks Sir Knight, and she stares at him. The man lowers himself down onto one knee, perhaps as a sign of fealty or perhaps simply so that he isn’t butting against the roof.

It’s quiet for a moment as the question lingers in the room. What does she want this, all of this, to be?

“…Real,” replies Acacia, knowing the answer. “I want it to be real.” She clenches her fists, her mind racing. It really happened. Everything that happened last night, everything that was said, she wants it to be real more than anything else in the entire world. She wants to be something, to be anything more than an absolute z-

Sir Knight lifts a hand, stopping her.

- An absolute nothing.

“…I don’t like that you’re reading my thoughts,” says the girl, lifting an eyebrow. “Are you a demon? What are you?”

Sir Knight shakes his head. “Fair. But we’re connected,” he replies. “For as long as I reside in you, I am essentially just a thought of yours, and no, I’m just a man,” he says, looking down at his hands as if to make sure this statement were still true.

Acacia looks at him, crossing her arms. “I don’t like that you’re actually inside of me either,” she notes.

“Also fair,” replies Sir Knight. “It is a little awkward. But I don’t make the rules.”

Acacia stares at him, and he stares at her through the slits of his heavy helmet, behind which only the glint of a glowing eye can be seen and nothing more. The room is silent for a moment. Her gaze drifts wayward, wandering over to an empty glass bottle down on the floor and then back towards him.

“I would prefer not to live in a bottle,” says Sir Knight, reading her thoughts.

Acacia looks at him. “Sir Knight,” she says, holding her hands together. “I, Acacia Odofredus Krone, youngest princess of this nation, sincerely thank you for your efforts to save me last night.”

He gives her a thumbs-up. “We’re good.”

She points at the bottle. “But from now on, please stay in this bottle instead of me.”

“As you wish,” says Sir Knight. He rises to his feet. “There is a lot for us to do,” he explains.

Acacia blinks, looking at him. “Do?” she asks, not sure what he means.

Sir Knight nods and stands upright, lifting his cloak to pull out a sack of coins that he had taken from the enemy the night before and tossing it to her. Acacia looks at it, not understanding. She opens the bag and looks inside, yelping in surprise and dropping it as she sees all of the money. A paltry sum that wouldn’t have even been worth holding in her old life. But now…

— The coins all fall out and scatter, rolling around the room, and she screams, dropping down after them to the floor to collect them all back together.

This is more than enough for another dose of her medicine.

“Do,” repeats Sir Knight, as she lifts her gaze to look up at him from the floor, now on her knees instead, as they have seemingly switched places with one another. “To return you to your rightful throne, your Majesty.”

— A coin strikes against the wall, rattling noisily as it slowly comes to a stop.

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“I’ll give you… uh…” The man taps his chin, looking at Acacia before turning back down to the equipment she brought with her and the list in her hand that details Sir Knight’s total collection of plunder from the assault on the city. “Two-hundred.”

“…Two-hundred?” asks Acacia, looking at him and then back down at the breastplate she had brought with her. “For the one?”

That doesn’t sound right. It’s way too much. This one should only be worth -

“For all of them,” he replies, pointing at the list she has with her.

She blinks, looking back at the man, who crosses his arms and leans back against the counter behind himself. “That’s nothing!” replies Acacia. “Just the materials alone have to be more than that!” She emphasizes the number on the list. “I have eleven of them!”

He shakes his head. "Well, Miss, you’re free to dismantle them all for the raw materials on your own then,” he replies. The man taps the breastplate lying on the counter. “This is enemy armor. Nobody here will buy and wear this stuff as is for obvious reasons,” he explains. “The design is too unique. That means I’ll have to either scrap it myself or send it abroad to a buyer where it isn’t so hot.”

Her shoulders slump. It’s not an unreasonable argument on his part. “Still…” says Acacia, pretty let down. Sure, two-hundred is a good amount of money. It’s nothing to complain about at all for anyone who lives in this neighborhood. With the other two-hundred obols Sir Knight gave her, that’ll help cover some of her expenses for a month with a bit of a stretch here and there. But for a small cart-load of light armor, clothes, rucksacks, and short-swords, it’s nothing… She looks back at him. “Two-hundred for the armor and the branded clothes. But I need more for the packs and the swords. They’re not marked.”

He shakes his head. “My best offer.”

“If I go to the market and sell the packs and swords individually, I’ll get more than that,” argues Acacia, pointing at the door.

He shrugs. “Then go do that,” replies the man, matter of factly. “But you don’t look like you have a merchant’s license to sell them to the public,” he explains. “And you’re kidding yourself if you think any of the others are going to give you a better deal. This is a business.” He pulls himself free from the wall. “Take the deal or please leave my store,” he demands, looking down at her, causing pressure to build in her chest.

It’s been a lot to adapt to.

Even as the youngest daughter of the royal family, to be spoken to like this by a commoner would mean the death of the man under normal circumstances, let alone in this tone. Yet here she is, trying to understand the context of this world. Is she being taken advantage of right now in the context of this transaction, or is this deal, in this tier of society, the fairest trade available to someone like her, a nobody?

The merchant class is also low-born, but they’re a tier above the normal riffraff of the city just by the merits of having money. The peasants and other commoners who work normal trades and positions, or students, which she is no longer one of, count to this low tier.

However, given that she’s actually technically unemployed, she has no status or position whatsoever. She’s a nothing. If someone killed her in a back alley, it’s not even unlikely that there would be an inquiry into it — it’s just flat out not on the list of events that will happen at all. Her body would be thrown into a cart with the rest that get picked up now and then, and that’ll be that.

— Something shakes against her leg, a familiar voice whispering into her head.

Acacia sighs, lowering her head. “Yes, please,” she relents. “I accept.”

“Great!” replies the merchant, knocking twice on the counter with his fist as he walks past her. “Then help me unload, and we’ll get your money.”

She has to help him unload the things she sold at his store?

Acacia decides to hold it in. She needs this money.

The girl follows the merchant to the door, looking down at the flask attached to her belt, a black fog swirling around inside the glass.

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Sir Knight

Location: The City, Acacia’s Room Beneath the Adventurer’s Guild

The coins clatter noisily together on the fabric of the bed in the small room as she sets them all down.

“Why?” asks Acacia, turning her head to look at the bottle she set down now that they’re back in her room. The black smoke wafts out of it, drifting together to form the shape of a giant man. “Why did you tell me to accept that deal?” she asks, looking at him, referring to the whispers he had pressed into her ears inside the store.

Sir Knight forms together, looking at her and then at the mound of money heaped on the bed. The currency of the land are denominations of coins of many colors called ‘Obols’, which are imprinted with iconography of esoteric symbolism such as skulls, or the faces of great kings. Depending on their size and metal, they are worth different amounts.

“Because, it’s not a big deal,” explains the creature, looking down at his own hands as he comes into coherent shape.

“Huh?” asks Acacia incredulously, stacking the money to count it as she adds it together with her other savings that he gave her yesterday. “It’s a huge deal, isn’t it? If he scammed us?”

Sir Knight shakes his head, the floor creaking under his weight as his body becomes tangible, built out of the black smoke. “I don’t think he was lying,” explains the entity. “It made sense, what he said.” Sir Knight shakes his head. “Besides, you need to make connections.”

“Connec… what?” asks Acacia, counting the money and nodding, before looking back at him, as apparently everything is in order. “He’s just a merchant. There are hundreds of them in the city,” she replies, wiping a strand of short hair away from her eyes.

“A man with eyes in the kingdom of the blind,” replies Sir Knight, leaning against the wall and looking at her. “Even if he was pulling a fast one on us for a profit, offending him will damage your reputation with the other merchants of the city,” explains Sir Knight. “You need their support if you want to ascend to your throne, your Majesty.”

Acacia stares at him for a while, the room remaining quiet. “Who are you?” she asks after a moment more. “Why are you doing this?”

“I’m nobody.” Sir Knight looks at her, his arms crossed. “And I’m doing this because…” starts the man, lowering his head to stare at the ground, as if lost in deep contemplation, a deep shadow covering his visor. “- I have nothing better to do.”

“DON’T JUST SAY IT LIKE THAT!” yells Acacia, pointing at him. A metal coin flies towards his head, flung from her fingers.

— There’s a chime as he catches it with one hand, his helmet turning to look at her as the metal disk slides between his metal fingers.

This is the horrible truth, though. He died. He died in his old world and was reborn into this new one, into this new body, but… what the hell is he supposed to be doing?

This purpose here, helping this weird girl out, seems like a pretty good one. In fact, it almost seems like what he should be doing, if the universe were able to assign such things. Why else would he have been brought here to this place and this time?

He just wanted to buy groceries.

“Who are you?” asks Acacia, glaring his way as she repeats her question.

Sir Knight flicks the coin he had caught back to her, the metal chiming as he launches it into the air as the events of last night replay through his head, the spinning metal flying through the air in slow motion while his thoughts race, catching a flicker of daylight that enters in through the tiny window that comes together to create the illusion of a flash of moonlight, piercing into haunted eyes.

“Der Schwarze Ritter,” says Sir Knight, telling her what the men from yesterday had told him, whatever that actually is supposed to mean. Her eyes go wide. He holds his hand against his chest, kneeling. “My mission is to return you to your throne, Your Majesty.”

“…Why?” she asks again, not willing to just let it be.

The room is quiet for a time. Sir Knight then lifts his head, looking at her and seeing a familiar expression on her face. It’s one he himself had worn often in his old life, which isn’t actually that ‘old’, considering the time spans involved. But somehow, it feels like it was years ago already. The look betrays that her question isn’t even geared towards him. She’s not asking him why he would help her do this; she’s asking him why she herself would do this. He gets it. “Because you have nothing better to do,” replies Sir Knight.

It’s really that simple.

Life is going to go by no matter what. She can live down here for a while, though she’s going to have to leave the city eventually because there will be more attempts to take her, if not kill her outright, assuming she finds a way to survive.

She doesn’t reply at first, simply looking away for a time before then looking back at him, her arms crossed. “Do you really think it’s possible?” asks Acacia.

He nods to her. “We’ll pretend that it is,” affirms Sir Knight.

“We could die playing with things like this,” says Acacia, folding her hands together as she steps towards him.

Sir Knight rises to his feet. “We’ll pretend that we won’t,” he replies, shaking his head. “Besides, I’ve died before. It wasn’t so bad.”

Her Majesty sighs. “That’s not a reassuring thing for a bodyguard to say,” she remarks. It’s quiet for a time longer, and then she shakes her, slapping her cheeks as she looks at him, that familiar look from yesterday returning to her face. She’s given up on being realistic.

She’s ready to play their game of pretend again.

The floor creaks as he walks over to the bed, moving a finger to separate the coins — the ceiling above them rattles as the people of the adventurers’ guild above them are busy at work. “First, we’ll establish a foothold here in the city,” he explains. “There won’t be another attack for a while,” explains the creature.

“You think?”

He nods. “They had one shot to get you. After yesterday, security measures will be greatly intensified in the region,” explains the monster in armor. “Running to another city over the open roads would be more dangerous than staying here.” He pushes the coins into different heaps. “We’ll make a name for you, starting with the lowest tiers of society here,” he says. “Adventurers, merchants, the people of the trades – We’ll introduce you to them.”

“…Isn’t that risky?” she asks. “If they learn who I am, then-”

“- No,” says Sir Knight. “We won’t tell them who you really are,” he explains. “But we’ll let them learn who we want them to think you are,” says the man. “Once your support in the lower populace is strong, we can move up and start pressing your name into the middle tiers of common society, and we’ll work this same game all the way through to the top,” he says, having pulled out a few coins that he holds in his hand, hovering over hers. Acacia opens her hand, and he drops them down into it. “In this city. And then, once it’s secure, the next, and then the next,” explains Sir Knight. Acacia looks down at the coins he gave her from the pile. “Until we’ve won every heart and mind between here and your rightful title, Your Majesty.”

“…What’s this for?” she asks, looking back at him.

“Lunch,” replies Sir Knight, vanishing into smoke that slowly drifts back into the bottle, just in time as a loud growl fills the room from her stomach, which hasn’t eaten in quite a while.

“...But I’m not good at anything,” she explains, watching him vanish. “I’m not good at magic or fighting. I’m not good at talking or politics,” argues Acacia. “I’m just not…” She stops, lowering her gaze to the coin in her fingers. “- I’m just not good.”

The glass rattles and wobbles, spinning on its base as the shadow vanishes back inside. “Pretend you are,” finishes Sir Knight, a cork seals itself back into the flask. “Eat. Then we’re going to make you some friends,” he says.

“How?”

Sir Knight doesn’t answer that question. It is, of course, not so easy. If it were, he wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with, as his old life would have been very different. But that’s irrelevant. He’s not that man anymore; he’s someone else now. This is the game they’re playing, so he answers not as himself but as he is now pretending to be.

“Let that be my problem, Your Majesty,” whispers the shadow as the bottle rolls away, down beneath the bed, the glass clinking as it rolls into an obscure darkness that is out of sight.

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Sir Knight

The shadow comes together, leaking out of the crevices in the brickwork pathing of the alley as its whispering tendrils come together, forming a whole after having crawled and crept through the underground below the city like a legion of worms.

Sir Knight’s body slowly returns to a coherent shape; the individual strands of nothingness wrap themselves around one another like the strings of a tapestry until they eventually make the shape of a man in armor, which is then slowly painted with details by the light of the day that ekes into the crevice between the buildings.

Well, that was certainly an experience.

He looks down at his hand, squeezing it now that it is a single piece, thinking for a moment about this new existence. It felt like, just yesterday, he was a man buying groceries that he didn’t really even want and now, he’s…

— Sir Knight lifts his helmet, staring out into the city beyond the alley.

It’s, despite the horrors of the night before, a beautiful day today. The sun is shining brightly, its warm rays bouncing off of the whole glass panes of many open windows, absorbing into the fabric of the curtains that blow in the comfortable spring breeze out into the street, adding even more color to it than it already has. It’s full of tones of red and green, aural blues, and summer yellows as people in outfits of many resplendent shades make their way about their lives, past busy stalls behind which sit hawking vendors of regional products and many odd storefronts, the insides of which are filled with obscure objects of all trades ranging from the alchemical and obscure to the more pragmatic kinds.

The damage is already being cleaned, with workers running all around with carts and wheelbarrows full of rubble — not just city workers, but also adventurers who would usually earn their money by fighting monsters and plundering dungeons seem to have been recruited into the effort in order to speed it up.

Voices fill the city, laughing and talking about this and that, most of the worry caused by the destruction already washed away by the seemingly impossible generosity of this good spring day.

A heavy, black metal boot steps out of the shadows and into the street as he walks, doing his best to mingle without making a scene as he makes his way through. However, this is impossible, given the nature of his stature and appearance, and as soon as the first ray of daylight hits his ebony armor, so do the first eyes, sucking into the material like the heat of the late morning sunlight. Voices emerge as he moves, and then vanish just as quickly from his hearing as he walks past their origins, heading into a cluster of new ones.

“Hey, isn’t that-”

“Look! It’s the guy from la-”

— And so it goes. Apparently, the story of last night, despite having only been seen by maybe a few dozen actual people, seems to have spread like wildfire. The tale of a mysterious, imposing stranger who had appeared at the same time as the danger that hit their city. A man in frightening armor, walking the line between monster and man that is present only within the tales told in the dead of night.

Sir Knight looks around the city as he walks, trying to understand it and the world better. From his ‘imprinting’, his awareness of Acacia’s thoughts and understanding of the world, he knows the context of what he’s looking at.

It’s a city full of magic and adventurers; there is a dungeon in its core, and these many streets are lined with all manner of exotic, strange vendors that sell anything from magical potions to weapons of the trade — anything that a man who hunts slimes and goblins for a living needs.

A large bridge, wide but short, spans a stream of water.

Here at the end of this long shopping street is a circular island of sorts, artificially made. The channel, ten strides wide, runs around it in a perfect ring of crystal clear water that sparkles in the nigh midday glow, with four of these short, wide bridges in each cardinal direction connecting to different districts of the city.

Sir Knight lifts his gaze, staring at the thing in the center of it.

There, on the island, sits a massive, towering gate of white stonework, lined with intricately hewn figures of monsters and men. It rises up, higher than any of the houses here, far more so, going as high as the many watch towers that line the city’s exterior walls. The gate leads nowhere and is able to be viewed through, instead sitting on top of a hole and a wide, decorated stairwell that leads down underground — an evercool breeze rising up from the darkness below that hundreds of people move in and out of.

This place is the heart of the city. It’s where the majority of its many resources come from, whether they stem from monsters or inorganic materials. Adventurers move out past him as he stands there on the bridge, many confused eyes looking his way as they move with rucksacks full of goblin teeth and mushroom caps, rare ores and precious gems, roots, tubers, and all manner of herbs, weapons and armor, magical items, potions and salves — everything.

This is the dungeon.

It’s a hole full of wild monsters and dangers that will, if given the opportunity, kill a human with no questions asked. However, it’s a wildly valuable place, as it is, in essence, a well that can never run dry.

Adventurers are the people who do this work, and their primary place of collection is the adventurers’ guild, the very building that Acacia’s little basement room sits below.

Despite their importance, not everyone is an adventurer, obviously. The city has hundreds of thousands of normal people too. Tailors and bakers, smiths and merchants, alchemists and students, teachers and accountants. It’s a functioning society, after all.

A ring of people has begun to collect around him as he stands there on the middle of the bridge, fairly in the way, honestly. But the bridge is wide enough that people could just walk past him. However, they instead seem to have formed a ring.

— And at the head of this society, at the very top, are the noble families, who are then subordinate to the royal family itself, the very family to which Acacia belongs — in theory.

The whispers have caught up to him, having turned into full blown murmurs of excitement now as people begin to talk to him.

“What’s your name?” asks an excited elf from next to him that he turns his head to look down at.

Someone tugs on his other arm from the left. “Wanna join our party?” asks the man, a human. “We could really use a guy like you!”

However, in order to return Acacia to her rightful place within this family, she must first ascend within this lower society before then moving up through it. There’s no other way. They have to start at the lowest rung of the ladder for her claim to have any legitimacy at all, given that she doesn’t have the backing of any powerful families. To try and make a power move without it will simply lead to her being assassinated — and there are very likely people trying to do that right now anyway.

It’s good that she’s kept her head down so far.

“What’re you doing tonight?” asks a dark-elf, walking backward ahead of him. “We have a spot free at our table at the guild if you want?” she offers, holding her hands out to her side.

— One of these hands being the very same that had thrown the full tankard at Acacia’s head yesterday.

Sir Knight walks onward, the crowd splitting as he moves through them like a school of fish diverging in the presence of a predator, the dark-elf trying to up-sell him with promises of larger shares, great progress in the dungeon, a good team, and so on. “- we even have our own space in the guild!” she offers, trying to out-compete the other ten voices bargaining for him from all sides. “So what do you say, how about iAH-!” she yells, flailing her arms as she, inadvertently lost to her sales pitch, having walked all the way backward toward the large staircase, losing her footing and her arms flailing as she starts to fall.

A metal hand grabs her by the arm, stopping her from doing so and pulling her back toward the surface.

“Thanks,” she says, sighing in relief.

Sir Knight lets go of her, walking down the steps toward the dungeon, his midnight cape billowing behind him as he moves toward the welcoming darkness.

He turns his head, looking up at the crowd and at her. “I’ll get back to you later,” is all that he says before turning back to the void down below, to the emptiness of the underground. Whether this statement is an ominous threat or a vague promise of communication is uncertain, but it is certainly perceived as the latter by the public.

As Acacia’s bodyguard, which he is pretending to be in this game of theirs, he’s now honor-bound to not damage her reputation.

These same people who had rejected her the day before, the same kind of people who had done the same to him in his old life, will need to be shown what they missed out on, what the price is for thinking of someone as being a person whose value is less than one, and, even worse, for treating them that way.

By the time he reaches the spot down low where the sunlight fails to reach, the people following all lose track of the monstrous man, as if he had simply somehow, impossibly, vanished into the shadows.

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~[An Adventuring Party in the High-Spawn Zone on Floor One of the Dungeon]~

Wretched screams fill the air, metal clambering over the stones as rusted daggers and blades fly around the ground, clambering against it together with sharp claws and just as many broken teeth.

“H- He’s… he’s…” stutters an adventurer, a thief, standing amidst the goblin farming zone on floor one. The man screams, diving down to the ground as half of a blue goblin flies over his head, its broken corpse crashing against the wall just where he stood, flopping down to the ground next to him and looking up at him with surprised, hollow eyes.

His vision moves back up toward the center of the room, where a man in black armor, a giant, has not only begun dominating the spawning zone for the goblins but has made himself quite at home in it, a sword that is made up of what looks like dark-magic cutting through a dozen goblins at once, piling up mounds of corpses and gore all around himself, his long, lightless cape sweeping over the bodies as he turns, absorbing coins, metal, and bone by the pounds.

“— A monster…” whispers their party priestess as the giant’s blade cuts through the damp, underground air, sending a trail of streaking blood out into the air that seems to hang there for moments too long, as if it were uncertain if it should fall or flow toward his absorbing armor, which is stained in the dark ooze of monster gore that he has become more than comfortable in.

“- Awesome!” calls the excited party swordsman, answering the question himself with excited eyes. He cups his hand by his mouth. “Hey!” calls the very brave elf, the party priestess shrieking in terror and trying to stop him from getting the knight’s attention. “Save some for the rest of us!” he calls out, jokingly, as the man presses down on his blade, cutting into the rock, through the body of a very unlucky goblin that is much thinner than the weapon as a whole.

The man turns his head, looking their way and then around himself at the high-rate spawning field within the dungeon.

Naturally, inside a dungeon, monsters ‘spawn’ all the time, that is, they come into existence from seemingly nothing, as they are materialized by the dungeon’s ambient magical properties. However, in specific places such as challenge rooms and unique chambers, this effect is much more intense, and monsters that could maybe take anywhere from minutes to hours before they respawn can do so here in fractions of the time, oftentimes seconds, in the case of very low level monsters like these goblins that the man is clearly much too strong to be bothering with.

— He wrenches the blade free, pulling it out of the dead goblin and resting the sword on his shoulder.

“Do you need a caster?” he asks from across the room, his gruff voice sounding not as if it were shouted, but rather coming from the shadows just next to him.

“No, no, no,” whispers the party priestess, desperately shaking her head as she pulls on the other two, trying to pull them away.

In the instant he stops fighting, dozens of goblins respawn all around him, their slender green and blue bodies materializing from nothing, snarling their teeth, and baring their claws before charging at him with their daggers and clubs, none of them reaching up past his waist.

“Look out!” calls the thief, as half a dozen blades of knives cut and press at the knight’s armor, trying to find their way through the gaps.

The man just stands there, not really moving, as the goblins stab at his body and club at his joints to various states of growing dismay as he slowly lowers his gaze, looking at the monsters that have encircled him, a few of which have tried climbing up his body to swarm him.

“So, that’s a ‘no’ on the caster?” he asks, looking back at them.

— A slime, a small, gelatinous monster, known for its acidic body and devious ambush tactics, drops down from the ceiling, landing on his helmet and failing to try to digest his head.

Changing tactics, it instead shifts to one of the goblins, wrapping its body around the unfortunate monster and starting to eat at it. The goblin screams, running away to little avail as the slime eats it.

“— Are you the caster?” asks the party swordsman.

“I am not the caster,” replies the monstrous man in black armor, rather matter of factly.

“What kind of question is that?” hisses the priestess. “Does he look like a caster to you?”

The party swordsman shrugs, turning back to look at the beastly giant, who throws his hulking arm outward, throwing the ends of his cloak into the air, the fabric sweeping through the dungeon mist and swallowing the dozen goblins whole, their entireties vanishing at once into the void, together with the slime and, ultimately, himself — as if they all never were.

— A rusty goblin dagger clanks against the ground, falling from the air.

A tendril shoots out of the darkness behind them, the priestess screaming in horror as it grabs the leftover weapon and pulls it into the wall, where it vanishes with all the rest.