Everyone was silent, thinking about what to do next.
"Aren't we stronger together?" Sam asked me with a pleading face as the tension grew.
I didn't reply to this.
"You are leaving regardless?" Stormy asked, understanding what was really happening.
I nodded slowly.
The team was finished. The question was whether this was going to be a hard breakup or not. Any verbal response would just increase tensions. Breaking up like this was the politest way, but feelings would be hurt, regardless.
"They can track the war mech. A rescue operation can and will take place," Stormy said.
That was wishful thinking.
"The people who can track it will have to find a way through the dungeon. People have made such attempts previously by equipping teams with methods of tracking each other. We are siloed in a completely different section of the dungeon. There will be no easy rescue. If we were by another human city or even an Elven city, I might agree. But since we siloed under the beastkin continent, then there is no chance," I countered with as little inflection as possible in my tone. "We should vote."
"The Indomitable is part of the team," April said.
"It is a pet. Pets don't count. Not even my pet," I said coldly.
"I vote no," April said.
"Yes," Harren said.
Sam was looking at Stormy. He knew that voting yes would result in someone dragging him to his death. The war mech and April were a dead weight in the dungeon, along with Sam, since his skills were most useful with it. Voting to break up the team meant killing them.
But if Stormy voted to stay, I would still leave.
And if I left, Harren would leave. Losing both front liners would be a death sentence for the casters, Stormy included.
"Chain Lightning."
Both Sam and April collapsed as Stormy attacked them.
Harren quickly got to his feet, but I remained seated.
"Fire Bolt. Fire Bolt."
Stormy killed our two teammates without hesitation, incinerating their heads.
"Why?" Harren asked in shock.
I knew exactly why. I wouldn't have made that choice, but it was the only logical one for her. And when it came down to it, elves were pragmatists in a specific sort of way.
"Naïve," Stormy said with a sneer. Her Elven ears twitching slightly. "If the beastkin had captured them, they would have revealed more about us. That was their only hope, plead for mercy where there is none. We cannot lose the living mech core. April would never abandon it and would insist on stomping through the depths. Sam would be useless without the war mech present. Now we have their supplies and can last longer."
It also made her the only caster. Otherwise, I could have picked Sam to come with us instead of her. She couldn't afford to be left behind, or she would have no chance in the dungeon.
Stormy was utterly ruthless when it mattered. Harren fooled himself, but I noticed my Social Resistance increasing when Stormy was around. Probably some kind of subtle aura and social combination skill.
"Can you conceal the core and carry it?" I asked.
"Yes. I know how to shut it down and transport it discreetly if necessary. Our teammates fell to the beastkin," Stormy declared.
"Bitch," Harren muttered but said nothing else as Stormy got up.
I remained seated as she went over to the warmech to extract the core. I looked at my two teammates' corpses. They were the ones who were naive and foolish. They should have realized their situation when the vote was held.
I would have just left them behind, not killed them. I would have also destroyed the living mech core. But Stormy would leave no loose ends and take the key item away.
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"You are just going to accept that?" Harren asked me.
"No, let's leave. Quietly and quickly," I said and began putting my items quickly into my spatial pouch.
I knew why Stormy had made her choice, but since she had killed her teammates… There was no way I would trust her.
The moment her rescue team showed up, Harren and I would be dead.
"Where are you going?" Stormy called out as we stopped at the edge of the chamber.
"Away. I never agreed to let you join me. Your people will kill us the moment we are rescued. If you follow us, there will be no mercy. Let's go," I told Harren, and we quickly departed.
We made our way through a passage back down to the 6th layer and took it. In that layer, things had been reset, but we easily began clearing our way through several caverns at a rapid pace to put distance between us.
We went down to the 7th layer and then back up another passage to the 6th layer.
"You think we left her behind?" Harren asked me.
"Hopefully. Check everything, including the items in your spatial pouch, for any markings or Mana. Take your time."
We began checking all our gear. I found a mark on my heavy armor, under a bit of padding on the back guard. I easily broke apart the Mana that was present.
Harren had something similar on his chair. He broke apart that tracking method by injecting some of his Mana into it like I had.
"We will check everything again tomorrow."
"You think there is a second method?" he asked me.
"Maybe. It would increase the risk of finding something, but the clues were subtle. Stormy will not let this go easily. But after a couple more days of checking, we will just have to wait and see if we run into her again," I said.
"Now what? Any ideas?"
"Unfortunately, no. If I had one, I would have said it already. You?"
"We should check out a passage to the surface, just to confirm,.
"We could, but the risk of running into a strong beastkin is high, and then we would be dead."
"So, we just stay in the dungeon forever?!"
"There are no other options. We can't go further down, and we can't go up," I said morosely.
"Food is going to be tight," Harren muttered.
"I know. At least I took all the food the beastkin had. There was only one spatial pouch among them."
"We left the food with…the others," Harren trailed off, uncomfortable recalling what had happened.
"Let Stormy have it. Staying would have invited trouble."
"Can't trust anyone," Harren muttered and then looked at me. "Um, I didn't mean you."
"I understand."
The only reason I trusted him to tag along was Ozy. Monsters needed very little rest. They could sleep, but they could get away without a lot. My winged serpent rested on my shoulder pauldron for long periods of time anyway.
"So back to the 11th layer?"
"The large groups of monsters would be difficult with just the two of us, but it's possible."
There was another option I hadn't mentioned. I could have made a large runic array drawing in lots of Mana, but my mother had warned me never to do this, since the dungeon would react to large-scale uses of runes within its boundaries.
"She just killed them, just like that," Harren said, clearly shaken up about our teammates' deaths.
The moment I realized we had been siloed by the dungeon, I knew they were dead and we probably were as well. Lugging the war mech around would be too big a hindrance, and April would never leave it.
The excuses kept going through my head. I had forced Stormy into that situation, but there was no other choice but to break up the team. That was why certain people shouldn't become adventurers. They couldn't descend on their own.
As for Stormy, she might survive, but it would be difficult for a lone caster. She would have to manage her Mana carefully and pick up some melee skills. It would be a tremendous struggle to level them up while fighting. I had trained to be a spellblade for years; she hadn't.
Not everyone was my mother, who picked up a sword and rushed to slay everything that looked at her funny inside the dungeon.
What made me feel bad, I guess, was April and Sam's deaths before me. I was sentencing them to die by leaving, but if I had stayed, I would have died as well.
I wish there were another option. If I had the strength or the right skills, I wouldn't have been in that situation.
My mother's lessons of only being able to count on yourself in the dungeon ran through my mind. There were no laws or higher power to save you; only your skills, your sword, and those you put your trust in. It wasn't being overrun with monsters, but the situation was just as dire.
If they didn't cut away the dead weight, they wouldn't survive this disaster. April and Sam were deadweight. Stormy had turned into deadweight with her betrayal of them. If she hadn't killed them like that, I might have been open to working with her, but April would have never let her dismantle the war mech. Sam wouldn't understand what was truly happening.
I wouldn't betray teammates, but I wouldn't coddle them either. This wasn't a power-leveling trip. They were equal to me on this descent. Their failure to understand was on them.
Every time I told myself that, I felt bad. I knew I was going in circles and shouldn't brood over what happened, but I genuinely liked April and Sam. They were earnest individuals trying to do their best. Harren was the same, but he was competent in the dungeon and slightly more aware.
I hated all of this. Once things began, I had no way to diverge from this chain of events if I wanted to survive.
With Harren beside me, we could last for a long time, but it would work. I would need to improve my stealth skills, specifically Stillness, that my mother had left me as her legacy. Combine that with a disguise skill of some kind. I had seen more of Sam's illusion work, and I had Mana Manipulation.
I would need to consider making a new skill to alter my appearance and hide that I was altering my appearance to leave. But even that wouldn't be enough. Perhaps making myself look all burnt up, like a beastkin that had suffered horribly in the dungeon would work? I quickly dropped that plan. The beastkin specialized in sensory skills and stealth. They would sniff out any disguise I might try to use.
Even getting out to the surface wouldn't help. There would be nowhere to go but to hide in the wilderness. The entire society was hostile.