Valentius had shaken that pinky as if he had signed away his life.
But he didn't care! Albert had a slave rune! There was only one way to get rid of one of those!
Valentius needed to do the hard thing! The right thing!
To capture a dungeon core hidden under God knew how many barriers, floors, and horrific mobs!
The floor of the slime cavern was still slippery. Good, Valentius told himself, as he made his way by clutching at the wall.
It has not been reset yet.
He needed the core, but… he also required his backpack back.
If he were to give Albert a good life, then he needed to settle him somewhere!
Maybe not in Rock's Nest, Valentius thought.
Adam, the Guard Captain, could rat him out. And if he did that, then Valentius was sure to be caught.
And drawn and quartered…
He shook his head as he finally opened the rusty iron door to the second floor. He couldn't think about this now! The mantises were over there! And this time, they wouldn't be distracted!
The chubby boy did his best to make his steps as quiet as possible. He was still clutching at the wall, his eyes darting.
He could hear them.
The pitter-patter of feet, the rustling of the antenna.
The picture of the ruin they hadbeen…
He sucked in a breath.
It wasn't enough.
Before he could do anything about it, he bent over and began to heave.
It was too much, darn it! He had dreams! He wanted to be a hero!
Not to fight monsters which raped people! Defiled their corpses, denied them rest even after everything was over!
How… why…?
Valentius stumbled forward. There was a cold wind blowing from the spot where he had saved Albert.
Even as rushed as he had been, he had left a clue behind the last time he had been there.
The mantis he had killed on his way to Albert's spot!
It was there, twitching, headless… had he kicked in its head?
Why was it still alive? Why?
"Darn you!" Valentius yelled as he took hold of a pebble from the ground. Only to blink, when he saw that it was too white to be a pebble. "Darn you!"
He threw the bone piece, using mana to make it faster, more substantial, like a crossbow's bolt!
The mantis finally stopped twitching.
Valentius heaved once, twice, but nothing came out. He looked at the corpse of the thing that would have committed a crime so severe against him that he would have wished for a quick death.
That was… a praying mantis!
It must be, he reasoned with himself. A part of him knew that the females ate the males. Finishing with biting their heads off.
But…
In some cases, the males survived! For one to three days, dying from hunger… but even headless, they survived.
This was a dungeon, Valentius realized with mounting horror. That adventurer who was being… a praying mantis couldn't finish the mating headless if it were dead!
Was that boy… was he still…
Valentius saw red! He grabbed one of the mantis's sharp legs and pulled.
Using mana to augment his muscles.
That dungeon core! That bastard of a core! It wasn't enough that…
Valentius felt the bile rise in his throat, but he could only see the picture of a headless ruin rocking between two mantises…
Twitching…
He wasn't thinking about how he would end up like the poor adventurer anymore.
He wasn't thinking at all.
The only thing he wanted was for the mantis to die! All of them! To end up as empty shells on the floor!
He found them still rutting over the corpse.
The arms were twitching…
Valentius gave out a yell!
The same rage that had made him turn the lord's head into mush with a broom spurred him on now!
He hit, crushed, and found strength that he didn't even know he was tapping into.
Something that had earned him his name. Something his parents had wanted to keep hidden.
The insects looked like someone had crushed their cursed bodies with a stone.
The corpse was still flailing its arms… its legs were still twitching.
The boy Valentius could see that he was no taller than him, even headless, and was still alive.
Valentius screamed. A scream so heartbroken, it drove him forward.
The sharp leg of that mantis, which had been meant to do to him what had happened to this lost soul, pierced the boy's stomach.
He finally stopped twitching.
Going pale; going cold.
Valentius curled up in a ball near the corpse and screamed louder.
He screamed his childhood away. He screamed his dream of a peaceful life away.
How would he ever live a life of peace, he asked himself? When such things happen in the world?
The dungeons were the creations of the Archdemons! Their mana had polluted the air!
Valentius shuddered, looking around. The backpack was there.
Pristine.
So, as if it had not been lost in a cave of horrors.
He gulped.
No, the Archdemons were too strong to have a war declared on them. They had ruined Nightshade, their once proud Empire of a homeland.
The Empire where the Legions had marched, the Caesars had ruled, and Mars had looked on them with pride.
Where was that pride now, Valentius asked himself, as he got up on shaky feet?
Where was it, if the deity had not been killed by an Archdemon by this point, if someone, who carried a name Nightshade would have gifted to a Caesar, had it in him to cry on the floor of a dungeon?
His fingers closed around the backpack's strap. He picked it up, securing it on his back.
"The Legions will march once more," he whispered, looking down at the small trapdoor beside the corpse. The dungeon core was a bastard most vile. Of that much, Valentius was certain. "And the king Nero will become Caesar!"
He didn't have it in him to say that Mars would smile down on him.
That was not something he should promise. It was something that had to be earned.
In the mud, covered in blood and guts.
Living a life with no place for farms, children, or even a soft bed to die in…