“Listen up, the last nine floors have the keys we need to carry out our mission. The name might be familiar for anyone who’s heard about the Divine Comedy. Though in my opinion, the naming is pure coincidence.” Kraft had explained when they first teleported to the building’s roof for surveillance.
“Who cares? We have 18 levels of hell, sounds like this will only take half as long compared to that. Hahaha!” Ixel stated with such bluntness, the rest couldn’t help but laugh at his comment bitterly.
“Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, Treachery. Those are the names of each floor, and according to Moloch all of the floors are themed in that manner too. Any prisoner gets to try and challenge any supervisor of those floors to their advantage.”
“Can you elaborate on that?” Pei asked, and Kraft smirked.
“The themes must have to do with the personality of the corresponding guard supervisor. A person with more greedy traits would be more suited to be a supervisor in the Gluttony post as compared to getting a post in Lust.” Evon imagined, and Pei nodded at that explanation.
“Unfortunately the system continued to evolve after Moloch’s time, so his information on that is limited. Nevertheless, we are not here to challenge them to become the next guard supervisor. Feel free to get the keys for the Dungeon Core any way you like. But, looking at you guys, none of you seems willing enough to walk away from a good fight. “
“Anyway, there is no reason why we should go through each floor one at a time. Time is a luxury we don’t have, so I expect you to NOT play around with your enemies. Nine foxes for nine levels… I do not see why we shouldn’t break up and get each key.” Kraft continued.
“Well if you want, we can make it more interesting to see who among us will get their key the fastest. Also, whoever needs a helping hand will have to pay for it with one of Lynn’s desserts!”
“Sounds like I am going to the last floor,” Rex said with a nonchalant face. “Treachery sounds right up my alley.” Even as he tried to stop thinking about the betrayal he had faced from his father, there was this dull burning ache in his heart.
“Going by normal logic, the first floor should have the weakest supervisor, so I should take that one then.” Pei decided as she raised her hand. Kraft somehow gave her a cold face though it later turned into a verily slight grin which none of them except the watchful Pei had noticed.
She understood why he did that. The theme ‘Limbo’ suited her quite nicely. She had not been the most faithful among the foxes in Kraft’s skulk despite her fulfilling her obligation by keeping a watchful eye at Jin’s every moment since he was the newest master.
——-
Though not as poetic as one could imagine, the further Pei moved forth, the more the beautiful and mesmerising corridor hallway became until she found out that the four walls started to split. At some point, it turned into something akin to a shattered mirror revealing the ugliness of this prison core.
Pei was unsure if that was a normal illusion. Her high resistance should have allowed her to not fall under any such spells, but right in front of her, the scene turned into something grimmer. It appeared as if she was standing on the edge of a barren mountain cliff, void of life and the only way forward seemed to be the series of stairs that eventually spiralled into various paths into the abyss.
Cold winds started to blow from below, and Pei could finally see some enemies approaching. Shaped like babies, they were moving as fast as Jin’s robot crawlers. Not only that, but their faces were also all distorted, leaving their eyes crossed out with a bleeding scar and horns growing abnormally throughout their bodies.
Pei did not know which path to take, but instead of thinking too long on the issue, she took out a special paper fan. Unlike her regular paper fan, which she used to regularly beat Jin or sometimes Kraft with, this one was considered as one of the many heirlooms from the Crane Clan.
It was golden with a beautiful scene of cranes flying to the east, and more importantly, it was imbued with the chi of herself. “Since all the paths lead to the bottom, I shall take the quickest one down.” Pei thought to herself, assuming that diving into the cliff was the fastest way.
But the moment she stepped over the cliff, the entire mountain turned upside down and both her and the disgusting baby abominations fell due to gravity.
Those baby abominations quickly adapted to the situation by growing wings to get closer to their target. With Pei free falling, all she could do was to defend herself. While still in her fox form, she was agile enough to whack any incoming abominations with her large paper fan and evaded their assaults whenever needed. Nevertheless, their numbers did not seem to be dropping at all, instead rather increasing, forcing Pei to transform to her human form and releasing her cultivation aura.
The burst of aura burnt any incoming baby abominations giving Pei space to fully utilise her paper fan. “Advanced Fan Art, The Crane Descends into The Lake,” Pei announced her fan technique, causing the paper fan to split into two and a subsequent burst of energy was released as she used the two fans like the crane’s wings open widely to glide into a lake.
That twin burst of energy cleared the surrounding of all the baby abominations, and soon enough, Pei realised that she was able to touch on some ‘ground’ in the air even though the mountain and spiralling stairs were still upside down.
“Ah…please do not tell me that the spiralling stairs leading to heaven are some stupid metaphor.” Pei criticised out loudly, and she heard a loud laugh.
“HEAVEN?! HAHAHAHAH!” The booming low voice echoed all around her. The sky shattered once more like a mirror and Pei returned back to the very same momentous hallway she had been at a few minutes ago. Only this time, there was a throne chair at the very end of the hallway.
The person on the throne chair beckoned her to come closer. She followed the request cautiously and the closer she got, the more confused she was. The ‘person’ on the throne resembled …Moloch?
“Huh, a minotaur. And here I thought I won’t see any of you around.” Pei wondered as she combined both of her paper fans into one large weapon again.
“WHY IS THAT?” The big faced Black Minotaur abruptly shouted with curiosity.
“Woah, I’m right in front of you, is there really a need to shout, big guy? It’s just…erm ever since the invasion, I’ve never seen a single minotaur on the demons’ side. So I thought that all of them were under Moloch’s care.” Pei explained her thought process.
“did you just say Moloch?! you saw him? where is he now?” The Black Minotaur’s expression turned into delight, but the more Pei spoke with him, the more she felt that there was something seriously wrong with this particular minotaur.
“So you do know him? Currently, he is defending a city we made together. Well, I didn’t do much per se…but he created the city for our new master.”
“MASTER? NEW MASTER?” The Black Minotaur questioned once more with an earth-shattering volume, but this time Pei got a scrutinising look at him. His face would shift, but the voice wasn’t emitted from his mouth. Instead, the two pauldrons on his shoulders, one on each, would light up.
“did Moloch really betray king baal and go for another person? we have been trying to search for him for so long. we even killed someone to go into this prison to look for him. even when we became paradiso prison supervisors, we still did not see him. why hasn’t he come looking for us? did he abandon us as well?”
“We? Us?” Pei could only see one minotaur on the throne, and she could sense no one else in the area. “Who are you to him? He didn’t mention anyone of his people being down he-“
“MOLOCH FORGOT US? WHO ARE YOU? WHY MOLOCH FIGHT WITH HUMAN?” Now Pei could clearly see. The loud voice was emitted by the right red pauldron while the other gentler one was from the left yellow pauldron.
“looks like our invader has more information about him that we know. let’s subdue her and get information out of her.”
“THAT WE SHALL, BROTHER.”
