24 Ch 24: Playground of the Lethal Teddy (2)
The winding corridor opened into a massive hall with a putrid, rotting smell. The smell reached the young man before he entered it. His nose scrunched up in disgust.
He was hesitant about entering the hall but it was the only way forward. In the end, he suppressed his disgust and advanced forward.
He had only entered the hall when he caught the attention of a dreadful being.
It was a rat with soft brown fur.
What could be dreadful about a rat?
Well, it was as tall as a man but wider and rounder than one, and like a human, it was standing on its thick, meaty paws and wielding a metallic sword.
Seeing Valerius unarmed, the rat was overcome with confidence. It charged towards the newly arrived "prey" while squeaking menacingly.
"How foolish," Valerius muttered, as his gloved hand transformed into a hook. The hook shot forward, bringing along with it a dreadful chill.
Although surprised, the rat responded relatively well. Its sword clashed with the chain tethered to the hook, altering its course at the last moment. Instead of stabbing the giant rat, the hook took a turn, circling around the sword a few times due to inertia, chaining it up before coming to a stop.
Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!
The rat let out a series of mocking squeaks, clearly looking down and making fun of its prey. What it didn't know was that it was delusional. Valerius was never its prey. From the very start, it was the opposite. Valerius had considered it his prey the moment he laid his eyes on it, and step by step, he had baited it into a well-crafted trap.
"Idiot, this is exactly what I wanted," Valerius scoffed.
The chains retracted rapidly. The meaning behind his disdain for the rat became clear as the sword was yanked from the rat's grasp and pulled towards him. He picked it up with his free hand and transformed the hook back into a shield before smiling menacingly at the rat.
His smile was colder than an iceberg and spoke of devilish confidence and cruelty, revealing the inhumane predator within him that he wasn't aware of. Its horror couldn't be explained in words, but to put it in perspective, it was unnatural and horrifying enough to instill fear in even monsters as the rat was overcome with fear when it saw his smile.
The horrified rat: (ΦωΦ)
Valerius was now armed with both a weapon and a shield. The rat, who was disarmed and outsmarted, couldn't win against him in a battle without a weapon to defend itself. It would be killed if it stuck around. Retreat was its only option so it took it without shame. Besides, it's not like Monsters, especially the less intelligent ones, knew what shame meant.
The rat saw its chance and took it. It made a run for its life.
As soon as the rat turned its back to him to flee, Valerius changed the Shielding Glove back into its hook form and aimed for the most defenseless spot on its body.
The rat didn't have eyes on the back of its head. It didn't see the hook coming. The hook embedded itself into the rat's thick meaty paw, and as Valerius retracted it, the paw was torn apart from the rest of its body, paining and sending the rat crashing to the ground with a loud thud.
Valerius rushed towards the fallen creature. Before the rat could stand, he began hacking at it with the very sword he had 'borrowed' from it like a gentleman.
In seconds, the rat was chopped up into pieces.
He could have granted it a swift and less painful death, but due to the side effects of the Shielding Glove, his murderous intent surged, driving him to act with such brutality.
The inhumane way he killed the rat sickened him but he controlled the urge to puke and began to search through it.
He collected a hexagonal crystal from its corpse.
This one wasn't red like the previous two. It was blue. Again, he didn't know what it did. Only an appraiser could help him understand its effect and true value.
He slid it into his pocket before he looked for a way forward as he believed that the guardian of this floor of the pagoda was further inside the building and only by finding a way forward would he be able to get to it. And he needed to defeat it to complete the challenge of the 0th floor.
At the end of the hall was an eerie black door. He inspected the door and discovered it was firmly locked.
'Guess I have no choice but to behave like a barbarian.'
Valerius tried to force it open but failed miserably. It didn't even budge as he slammed his shield against it.
He inspected it again.
The door had a keyhole in the most inconspicuous place. He hadn't noticed it the first time he saw it. Anyway, since it had a keyhole, it meant that there must be a key somewhere to unlock it.
'Maybe it's on the corpse of the rat monster?'
Doubting that he might have overlooked it while searching the rat's corpse earlier, he meticulously searched the monster's remains again but found nothing that resembled a key.
He then thoroughly scrutinized the hall in search of the key and discovered something chilling.
The floor and ceiling were covered in detailed and ominous paintings.
There were six paintings on the floor that depicted a sequence of events.
The first painting showed a fire raining down from the sky.
In the second, a devil emerged from the fire. This devil was grotesque, with black horns twisting from its head, skin like scorched earth, and red eyes ablaze with malice.
The third, fourth, and fifth paintings depicted winged humanoids. In the third, they appeared terrified of the devil. In the fourth, they turned around to flee from it, and in the fifth, they were running away. With each painting, the devil's grin grew wider and more sinister.
The sixth and final painting on the floor showed countless corpses surrounding the devil, who was smiling happily.
The six paintings conveyed a story where a bright world where the winged race lived was invaded by a devil, a devil so terrifying that the inhabitants of the invaded world chose flight over fight at the sight of it, only to be mercilessly hunted down until the devil had decimated them all.
On the ceiling, there was only one painting.
It covered most of the ceiling and depicted a platform surrounded by the same winged humanoids seen in the floor paintings.
At the center of the platform stood the devil. Unlike the floor paintings, its face was twisted in fear and disgust.
Valerius felt that the paintings were trying to convey something crucial, but he wasn't a genius who could instantly comprehend something just by looking at it.
Basically, he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was.
He also wondered if the clue to finding the key to the locked black door was hidden within these paintings.
He scrutinized them again and again.
As he examined the paintings repeatedly, he noticed a subtle but significant difference. In the floor paintings, the devil's eyes were entirely red. However, in the ceiling painting, while the devil's right eye was red, its left eye had a hint of black in it.
'Maybe the key is hidden in its eye,' Valerius thought.
His gloved hand transformed into a hook and sprang forward towards the ceiling, aimed precisely at the devil's left eye.
Bam!
The hook smashed through the painted eye, dislodging a black key that slipped out and fell downwards.
'Guess I was right,' he thought with a smile.
Valerius caught the key deftly and approached the eerie black door. He inserted the key into the keyhole and turned it. The black door opened with an unpleasant creaking sound.
Beyond the door was a room, which was notably sparse, containing only a table with a book on it.
Valerius thoroughly inspected it but didn't find the guardian of the 0th floor or the way forward.
After the inspection, he turned to the only significant object in the room.
He approached the book and opened it.
Inside, he found only two sentences, which seemed like spells, written in an unknown language. However, the alphabet was quite similar to that used in Serph. Thanks to the memories of the original owner, Valerius was able to pronounce them.
Reciting them in his mind had no effect.
Deciding to vocalize the spells, he pronounced the first one out loud. As he did, something bizarre occurred.
Blood flowed out of the pages of the book in such a large quantity that it quickly filled the table and spilled onto the floor. The blood carried the same putrid smell that was present in the hall.
Feeling creeped out, Valerius stepped back to avoid contact with the blood.
Suddenly, jets of blood rose from the ground, gathering and swirling together, twisting into a figure cloaked in red robes, its face obscured by a hood.
UWAHHHHH!
The robed creature let out a screech as soon as it materialized.
-1 HP
Remaining HP: 1/2
The screech was so loud that Valerius began to bleed from his ears, and he lost half his hp. He quickly covered his ears with his hands; otherwise, he was afraid he would go deaf or die from hearing its cry that was showing no sign of dying out.
After a while, its screech died down. Two symbols then appeared on the floor, glowing brightly.
From them, monsters emerged.
The first was a 2-meter-tall rotting corpse with a bandaged head and a right hand that resembled a sword. The other was a dog-like creature with as many legs as a spider.
The zombie thrust its weaponized hand forward. Valerius immediately noticed that its attacking speed was slower than the average Serphian as even he could react to it. He realized that it wasn't as strong as it looked, completely the opposite of him.
Valerius responded to its attack with a ferocious upward swing of his sword. Their attacks collided, and the zombie was clearly on the losing end as its weaponized hand was deflected, leaving it defenseless for a moment.
Valerius didn't let this chance go to waste and moved in for the kill. With a swift stroke of his sword, he decapitated the zombie's head from its body.
Just then, the eight-legged horrendous dog lunged at him from behind the zombie's headless body.
"Want to bite me? Say hi to my shield first."
Valerius placed the shield, which his gloved hand had suddenly transformed into, between him and the pouncing dog. The dog landed on the shield and stretched its neck to bite his face. But Valerius tilted his upper body backward and out of its reach, causing its jaws to chomp down on empty air.
At the same time, with his sword-wielding hand, he repeatedly stabbed the dog in the head until it ceased moving.
He then tossed the lifeless body off his shield and turned his attention to the red-robed figure, which suddenly opened its mouth.
Valerius knew what was coming. He hurriedly blocked his ears.
UWAHHHHH
It let out a screech, and the same thing happened once again. Two more monsters were summoned by its cry.
