Purify Food

The Shadow Rabbit, as I came to call it, was the other monster on this floor. Nonaggressive, it remained in the shadows and fled the moment you attacked it. It had very little strength, but it was extremely fast. The only way one could defeat it was to kill it in one hit. If you didn't have Life Sense, you wouldn't be able to pinpoint its location at all. If you didn't have Lydia's speed, you'd never be able to kill it.

I located a rabbit and then switched to Cook and allowed her to attack. We only knew if it struck after her sword struck the ground. Fortunately, the weapon seemed to have a magical property, as it didn't get too banged up using this method. Three out of four times it'd move before she struck or she'd flat out miss. That meant every fourth time led to the death of a rabbit. Unfortunately, their experience was also crappy. If I wasn't starving, they wouldn't even be worth hunting in my opinion.

Sense Life was very useful but had its setbacks. I realized that life was indistinguishable, so I couldn't tell the difference between a rabbit and a Living Armor. However, Living Armors were constantly moving, whereas rabbits tended to remain in one spot, freezing when we got near them. Through that method, I was able to see where rabbits and Living Armors were around the dungeon. I could avoid congested hallways without needing to get near them. Our mobility in the dungeon increased drastically.

"There is one right there," I said, pointing and switching to Cook.

Lydia always attacked without question. She was a lifelong slave, and it showed with her obedience. When this rabbit died, this time, there was something left over when the body melted away.

"F-fur…" I looked at the black fur… realizing that after all that work, I hadn't managed to get any food.

"Can you sense life below us?" Lydia asked.

I shook my head. "No, I guess the dungeon floors block that."

"What should we do?" Lydia asked once again for my direction.

I shook my head, "Let's try a little longer."

After killing ten more, we found another two pelts of black fur.

"This is pointless." I sighed. "Let's just try to make our way down to the next floor."

Lydia ran ahead boldly and attacked an armor. I hadn't been paying attention until the moment she killed it.

{Cook has increased to level 4.}

{You have unlocked the Cook Skill: Purify food.}

I had left my Cook job active.

"Are you freaking kidding me?"

My words weren't aimed at the level at all. Rather, sitting where the Living Armor had fallen apart, was a fully cooked, tasty looking piece of turkey drum the size of my arm. I walked over to the drum and picked it up. I sniffed it. It smelled fine.

A Living Armor had a turkey drumstick? I used to play Castlevania back in the day, and I seemed to remember that you could find turkeys in the wall. Was this one of those kinds of things? Up until now, the Living Armor had not dropped anything, but now it dropped food when I had Cook equipped.

"Purify Food!" I made sure the food was edible before splitting it with Lydia.

After that, we started fighting more armors, and soon we had enough turkey drumsticks that we didn't know what to do with them. Although we weren't a step closer to getting out of the dungeon, we were no longer desperate. With light, food, and water, we could hold out for rescue. In the meantime, I decided we might as well keep pressing forward.

Level eight consisted of skeletons only. However, it had two different types of skeleton. One was a swordsman much like Lydia. These fights would have been dangerous, as Lydia fought at about the same level as a single skeleton. However, after adding my Divine Aura, attacking with Harm Undead, and/or switching to get Party Status Up, Lydia was more than capable of taking them out. The second type of skeletons wore a robe and chanted magic. These guys actually fell quicker if you could get to them, but if they were allowed to fight from a distance, their spells were scary and dangerous.

I made sure to use Cook with both of them, but neither dropped anything considered food. Fortunately, we had several weeks' worth of drumsticks. As long as I remembered to cast Purify Food on them daily, they also remained fresh. They were just as tasty as the moment they were made. Were they even real food, or were they magic? I decided not to ask any questions. It'd only give me a headache.

Both skeletons dropped bone dust. I picked it up and had a pretty large stockpile that kept growing. I considered learning alchemy, but with only two ingredients so far, I really doubted I'd be able to accomplish anything. Thus, instead, we just kept killing and working towards the next floor.

Lydia's Swordsman had increased to 13 now, and I was a level eleven White Mage. My new White Mage spell was Detect Magic. It was an active skill, not passive, unfortunately.

"Detect Magic," I muttered to myself.

Usually, detect magic was met with a dead ping. Rather, I felt nothing except a faint impression of magic when it came to my backpack and Lydia's sword. They were the only items with any magic properties, and they weren't strong either.

The reason I was casting Detect Magic regularly was that I was looking for some kind of portal to lead us back up to the surface. We had been down here for nearly a week now, and we were almost certainly left for dead. Although they'd eventually send a group down to whip out this place, that could be another month or more before that happened. Neither of us wanted to wait down here for another month.

"A ping!' I let out a cry as I felt an abnormal magical resonance.

"Master?"

I let out a cough. "Ah…I mean… we have something that is showing magic. It may be a portal out of here."

The pair of us headed in the direction of the magic, and it got stronger the closer we got to it. It also seemed to attract skeletons, and the last few batches were difficult to take out. I had to cast Group Heal in order to distract the mages while she took out skeleton after skeleton. When everything was said and done, I was looking down at a platform.

"It's a trap," I said, mostly muttering to myself.

"Yes, Master… it does resemble a magical trap."

"If we trigger it, it could be a portal to send us somewhere else in the dungeon. Or… it could conjure up a fire, or spikes, or something else to kill us."

"Would Master like me to test it?"

"No… it'll probably be one use. We'd need to go together or risk being split up." I sighed.

This was a literal life or death decision. If I was wrong about this trap, death was almost a certainty. Even if I was right and it transported, who knew where we would end up. It could put us down deeper, in a harder section of the dungeon.

"Should we do it?" She asked.

I sighed, grabbing her and pulling her close and stepping onto the trap. "If I don't go, I'll never know," I said.

Light sprung up around us, and I was delighted to feel something akin to the teleportation from before. The room we appeared in… was another cathedral with yet a third mural. We had managed to travel even deeper into the dungeon. Damn.