Chapter 132 Mansion Of The Damned, Day Three
"Hmm? I can\'t say I\'m okay, I didn\'t get any of the two things I wanted."
"And just what were the two things you wanted?"
Pride asked with a frown on her face as she walked up to Evan with Eliza trailing behind her.
"My main goal was to see if I could replicate a skill from the ga-?!, a skill that I saw somewhere. My secondary goal was to see if my adaptive evolution would trigger."
As Evan replied, he pulled off the gauntlets to reveal his palms that had been burnt by the excessive amount of lightning that he had gathered around his hands.
"Sadly...Both were failures."
He heaved a sigh of disappointment before abruptly being slapped on the back of his head.
"What...?"
"Don\'t \'What?\' me! It\'s fine if you want to replicate a skill or something but how could you injure yourself this much when we\'re just entering the dungeon?!"
"Because I would not have the time to test these out later on? Blade wraiths are monsters that move in groups, we were lucky to find one on its own so I just had to try it out."
Evan gave an honest reply but he only saw Eliza summon her staff and swing it at his head.
"WHAT THE HELL?!"
"You seem to be mentally ill, maybe a few whacks to the head would solve your issues."
Eliza replied to Evan\'s question as she swung her staff wildly, with just enough force to inflict the maximum amount of pain on the young hero while letting him keep his consciousness.
"That is not how you deal with mental illnesses!"
[Master, I really don\'t think that should be your problem here.]
Kayla who was watching the two couldn\'t help but retort as she turned her gaze in Pride\'s direction and flew over to her.
The high demon was looking over the blade wraith\'s corpse, taking note of a few of the blade wraith\'s characteristics.
She even picked up its weapon and inspected it after noticing that the weapon seemed to have detached itself from the creature\'s arm after its death.
"Hmm? I thought you didn\'t like me much?"
Pride could not help but ask as she saw the spirit fly over to her and sit on her shoulder.
[I don\'t dislike you as the others do. You are master\'s ally so that\'s even more of a reason to not hate you.]
Hearing the spirit\'s reply, Pride\'s eyes flashed for a moment as she glanced at the black-haired spirit from the corner of her eyes.
"You...you\'re a lot more mature than you make yourself out to be."
[Isn\'t that obvious? Master is the only one who hasn\'t noticed. Even that creepy girl figured it out.]
Kayla rubbed her shoulder as she thought about how Eliza kept trying to hug her at every chance that she got.
She then shook her head to clear the scary things out of her head and turned her gaze to the fire spirit that had been following Pride ever since the usual group of spirits that always followed Evan came back from Undine\'s questioning.
[If you can get even Amy to stick to you this much, then I don\'t think it is impossible for the other spirits to hate coming close to you for long.
Then again, to aunty undine and uncle earth, it would be a lot harder to get them to not hate you because of what your race did a thousand years ago.
I wasn\'t alive then so although I understand why they hate you guys so much, I don\'t share the hatred.
The bottom line is when Aunty Undine eventually catches up to us, you are the one who\'s gonna have the hardest time so start planning how you\'d get out of that mess from now.]
Leaving those words, she turned around and flew back to Evan who had been whacked a few times by Eliza\'s staff and was now obediently accepting healing magic from her.
As she left, Pride turned her gaze to the fire spirit who had jumped off from the Blade wraith\'s corpse with a magic stone in hand and offered it to Pride.
"So, your name is Amy, huh?"
The spirit\'s eyes widened in surprise but after a quick glance at Kayla, she seemed to figure out how Pride knew her name and nodded before flying back to Pride\'s shoulder and resting there.
Pride only looked at the magic stone in her hands before petting the head of the small humanoid spirit as she turned around and walked toward the others.
\'Perhaps I should ask Evan how to make contracts with Spirits.\'
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Mansion of the Damned, 3rd Basement Floor
City State of Magic, Kasteblum
December 22nd
Year 1051
"Eliza! Now!"
Evan shouted as he dashed towards the seven feet tall Blade wraith in front of him with his sword in hand.
His body glowed as a thin layer of white light that signified the activation of his paladin skill enveloped his body.
Next, a green ring of light appeared around his ankles as his speed increased to a level that made the blade wraith lose sight of him for a moment.
And that moment was all Evan needed to deal a deadly blow.
\'Blink\'
He activated his blink skill and flashed to the monster\'s side, his sword coated in his signature golden aura as he swung it towards the monster\'s waist, intending on severing it in two.
**CLANGG!!!
Sadly, his attack was blocked at the last moment as a flaming crossbow bolt crashed into his blade and diverted its path, making him miss his swing.
\'Shit!\'
Before he could regain his posture and attack again, his opponent had already noticed where he was and turned its glowing red eyes in his direction.
He made a split-second decision to blink away and that prevented him from being hit by the monster\'s lightning-coated fist that came crashing down on his previous location.
"This...might have been a bad idea."
"Now you regret it?"
Pride replied to his words as she backtracked towards him, with Eliza ducking to avoid another blade wraith\'s slash and rolling out of the way to avoid the blade coated in an ominous black haze that came crashing down on the ground.
She rolled towards the hero and demon whose backs just hit before standing up and tightening her grip on her staff as she stared at the blade wraith that nearly beheaded her seconds ago.
Surrounding the Trio, were a Trio of Blade wraiths that Evan was sure were definitely not supposed to be on the third floor of the dungeon.
Their levels were way too high and they were way too smart. It was as if they came over from the dungeon\'s floor boss room.
"Yep, going inside the room with the monsters was a horrible plan!
To understand how Evan and co. Ended up in this situation, we have to backtrack to the previous day, right after the trio woke up from sleep and prepared for their third day of dungeon diving.
◇ ◇ ◇
Sleeping in dungeons was a very risky endeavour that very few adventurer parties dared to try, however, if one was in a party with reliable teammates who they were sure would not backstab them, both literally and figuratively, then it was possible to live in the dungeon for a month or two, provided the party possessed enough supplies.
And that was the situation that Evan, Eliza, and Pride found themselves in.
The trio had prepared enough food to last an average family of three for three months, coupled with Evan\'s inventory skill that did not allow for foodstuff to rot inside, then food was not a problem for their dungeon diving.
The trio then took turns to keep watch for monsters and other adventurers, with the other two sleeping while one kept watch for three hours.
Like so, they were able to get enough rest and carry on with the dungeon diving by the next morning.
They had a small breakfast that was slightly delayed because Eliza kept wanting to feed Kayla while the lightning spirit zapped away from her multiple times.
Eventually, they were able to get that behind them after Kayla finally agreed to be fed by the battle priestess who smiled as if someone had just given her a few hundred pounds of gold coins for free.
Upon entering the third basement floor of the dungeon, their opponents were a group of six blade wraiths that charged at them the moment they caught sight of the group.
"Okay, everybody gets two for themselves."
Evan spoke before dashing towards the sword-wielding monsters with the unforged in his hands. Lightning danced around the blade as Evan swung upwards to meet the incoming overhead slash from the blade wraith that reached him first.
**CLANGG!!!
The sound of metal clashing against metal rang out as the two began to exchange rapid sword strikes between each other.
Within the short gap between strikes, the blade wraith suddenly back steeped as another blade wraith jumped over it with its sword held up high.
Sensing the amount of magic power in the blade, Evan realised that blocking it would be a foolish decision and jumped backward to avoid it.
**BAMMM!!