The living room was large, being almost two times bigger than Cain’s room. Walls of brown timber and stones, decorated by the preserved heads of monsters!
Cain could count wild animals, small monsters, magical beasts, there was even a medusa head on the corner!
‘shouldn’t it be still able to petrify things?’ Cain question himself, he remembers that severed medusa heads could still petrify! The magical effect was tied to the creature being alive!
A large table was placed directly in front of the stone fireplace, directly above what seemed like the hide of a large white bear. Around it was just four chairs, only enough for the people living there!
The bear was from one of their first missions! They were tasked with slaying an Ice bear that was ravaging the snowy tundra to the north. Them being still inexperienced they got swept in an ice storm and separated. Takeshi and Yamauba were together, fighting to not freeze to death!
At the time, The two of them were like water and oil, fighting all the time! Them being in a party together was purely from circumstances!
Eventually, they had to use their bodies for heat when Yamauba ran out of MP. To her that was unacceptable, Having to cling to a man like Takeshi!
…
After sitting down, The first one to speak was Miko, reciting the prophecy!
“An unchained man, followed by a purgatory witch, a raging beast, and a merciful devil. When the gates of hell open, and the sun turns black. The unholy creations of the underworld are going to ravage the land. Those four you must lead, so the sun may shine again!”
Hearing what she said, Cain understood most of it! The gates of hell were the doors to the dungeon that started the Catastrophe, the sun’s turn back was a reference to the sky getting red in a dungeon break, and lastly, the unholy creation where what came out of the dungeon!
Normally, no one would have believed that as most prophecies were lies created by mortals! Yet this was true as it held knowledge about the future and Cain could confirm its validity.
They were to be trusted to some extent. Cain started thinking of a way to hide his reincarnation as it was hard to believe and might get him used in many ways!
“So you’re saying I’m the unchained man, Sofia here is the purgatory witch, and Selena is raging beast?” Cain asked as if he didn’t know.
“You’re right, but we’re still missing the merciful devil! we got find him or her first!” Takeshi was the one to reply. Crossing his arms as if thinking.
“I’m not raging-nya!” Selena replied, she didn’t seem to count her violent responses as raging.
Sofia seemed confused and a bit scared, she didn’t get a moment’s rest from the morning! Now that her being a sorceress, a witch, her anxiety skyrocketed to the moon!
Noticing her shaking, Yamauba comforted her, “Witches aren’t inherently bad, It’s just that the twisted ways they use to learn magic are unacceptable!” Sofia didn’t seem to have learned magic the traditional way but instead learned it directly from Cain!
“About three months in the future, a dungeon break will happen at the city outskirts, the flooding monsters are going to ravage the area!” Cain revealed, the dragon fang members were surprised but not shocked, they have already expected something bad but not like that!
“What are the dungeon…” Before Daraku could finish, Cain replied!
“S-rank, one day break, Undead, and ghosts! The boss is a triplet consisting of a wraith, a death knight, and a lich!” Hearing that their faces turned pale. Yamauba stood in rage, “Are you sure!?” They knew exactly why those are a problem!
Sofia and Selena were clueless so Cain had to explain, starting from where he got that information!
First, he was unchained, which meant he could know a single fact about the future! Of course, that was a lie to hide his reincarnation.
Dungeons are magical structures that host monsters, they usually pop out everywhere! No one knew why they existed, some said they were trials made by gods, and others said curses left by devils.
They were ranked from C to S, Taking in mind that a party could clear a dungeon of one rank below it! An A-rank party could clear a B-rank dungeon.
Each dungeon was unique. having themed monster and distinct monsters bosses! They also had a break timer. A dungeon break is an event when a dungeon stays uncleared for a certain period, its gates break allowing the monster inside to flood out!
C-rank takes a month!
B-rank takes a year!
A-rank takes 10 years!
S-rank is a special case when the dungeon break time is random. Some S-rank dungeons are now hundreds of years old without breaking and others break the moment they spawn in! The S-rank Cain is talking about seems to have a 1-day timer!
Undead, zombies, and skeletons. As generic and well-known as undead they are, they are still extremely dangerous to fight up close! They swarm in hundreds, ganging up on anyone they meet in their way, hard to kill as they are already dead, smells horrific, and lastly turn anyone killed by them into an undead! And most of all, their blood is toxic to all living beings so you can’t just live on the battlefield afterward!
Ghosts are also on a whole other scale of scary! One, they are invisible all the time and can only be detected with magical sense. You can’t slice a ghost with a sword, and they have resistance to magic but not immunity! Ghost possession is a thing, and it’s not pleasing!
The bosses are just their minions but with higher power and overpowered magic!
They all had to take a rest after hearing that, three months seemed too little to prepare for that disaster!
“I need some time to relax, I will brew us some tea!” Daraku of all people was the one to say that!
“That doesn’t sound good-nya! Can we take that on-nya?” Selena asked, looking at Cain.
“Of course, we can, All we have to do for now is get rid of Jack to start the preparation!” Cain said smiling as if he wasn’t worried, he wanted the two girls to feel at ease!
“Then why do you want to kill Jack, besides the curse!” Yamauba asked, If Cain knew about the curse from the start he would have blasted him right away!
Cain didn’t intend to hide anything about jack and told them everything, from him leading the bandits to betray everyone before the catastrophe.
Hearing all of that had sparked a new flame of rage in Selena. Jack was the leader of the bandits who imprisoned her!
Of course, The guild has taken care of cleaning the cave as they discovered it after Cain and Selena left!
This had left one question to be discussed, “Who is the Merciful devil?” Yamauba asked.
Cain remembered Alice’s face, he took the strand of hair from his pocket and showed it to Yamauba.
“The lord’s youngest daughter, Alice Forberg! She might be the one!” He said.
Yamauba was confused, looking at the strand of hair, how did come into Cain’s hand? Did belong to Alice?
“We’re going to FIX her condition, I might just know what she is suffering from!” Cain declared.
‘FIX and not treat?’ Sofia thought, catching to what everyone seems to have missed!