Chapter 106: Betrayed

POV Eliza

“Are you interested in our request?” <Man>

I turned around and saw a beefy man, about 3 years older than me. He wore chain armor and carried a large axe on his back

“Yes, I did.” <Eliza>

“Follow me to my group. We'll talk about everything there. I am Karem.” <Karem>

I followed Karem to one of the tables. There were two other men of the same age at the table. As I sat down, I tried to assess the strength of the three men. Karem was recognizable as a warrior from his equipment. He has the typical body of a fighter. The second man also appeared to be a fighter as he wore a sword and leather armor. The third man carried no obvious weapon or visible armor. He had to be a thief or something similar. For some reason, my gut told me that he was the strongest of all of yours. But I didn't know why.

“Let me introduce you to the others. This here is Stevt and this here is Zeel. The three of us have been forming a group for a year now, the Mighty Guys. You have experience in the dungeon?” <Karem>

“Yes. I know my way around the floors up to the third boss room and have defeated him before.” <Eliza>

“You don't look it at all. What level are you?” <Karem>

“I'm level 26. I gained a lot of experience with my old group last year. I defeated more than one boss with them.” <Eliza>

“That sounds good. You know magic too?” <Karem>

“Yes, I can. You won't be able to defeat the slimes without it. I suppose that's your problem too?” <Eliza>

“Yes, unfortunately. As powerful as we are, we can't get past them. Unfortunately, we don't know any wizards and we haven't found anyone who wants to join us.” <Karem>

“Okay. What exactly do you want me to do?” <Eliza>

“We know the way to the boss room ourselves, but with your experience we'll certainly get there faster. Ideally, we can do it on the same day, preferably even today. You would then have to kill the slimes during the boss fight. We'll take care of everything else.” <Karem>

“All right. I'd be available today too, so we can leave as soon as we've agreed on a deal.” <Eliza>

I negotiated my reward with Karem and after we came to an agreement, we set off. I got a surprising amount of money for my tasks. This made me a little suspicious, but as I had no experience of hiring from other parties, I didn't give it a second thought. We walked quickly to the dungeon, me using my spear as a walking stick again. On the way, I noticed how my Sense Danger skill reacted several times without me being able to identify any direct danger. I was extra vigilant from then on.

Then we came to the entrance and saw a familiar, but already repressed image. Soldiers were standing next to the entrance, pointing out to all the adventurers that the heroes were in the dungeon and that we shouldn't get in their way. We were then allowed to enter the dungeon.

I led the three of them directly to the portals that led down to the next floor. The whole time I had the feeling that I was being watched and when I paid more attention, I realized why. Zeel, the supposed thief, had his eye on me the whole time. As I sensed danger coming from his direction, I expected the worst. However, there was no action on his part, so I remained in my wait-and-see role.

We met the heroes on floor 15 at the vines. I spotted them from afar and because I was worried that they might recognize me, I tried to keep my distance. Unfortunately, both they and we were heading for the boss room.

“This is not the way to the boss room. Are you trying to double-cross us?” <Zeel>

“No, it's not that, but we don't seem to be the only ones heading for the boss room. That's why I wanted to take a detour and avoid the others.” <Eliza>

“Nothing there, we finally want to get to the next floor. Come on, let's run.” <Karem>

I sighed as the others set off. This was guaranteed trouble. I pulled my hood up over my face as a precaution, but still feared the worst. Then I ran after them too. About 15 minutes later we came to the cave entrance with the boss room. We had a slight head start on the heroes, but they saw us at a distance.

“Hey, you guys, stop right there. We're going to the boss first.” <Cornelius>

“Nothing there, we got there first. Come on, inside now.” <Karem>

“Hmm, doesn't the person with the hood look familiar?” <Javier>

I could hear Javier talking quietly and immediately ran into the cave. I couldn't give him any time to use his appraisal skill. Now we could only hope that no other group was with the boss.

“That's good. Let's go to the boss.” <Karem>

We were lucky and were able to open the door without any problems. I could hear the angry shouts of the heroes behind us and just before they reached the door, it closed. Inside was a familiar sight. The feeling of danger remained the same, apparently my skill didn't recognize the danger from the boss as much more than the danger from Zeel. I spoke my usual support spells quietly while the monsters appeared in the middle of the room. The boss this time was the slime. Somehow fitting.

“You take the slime and we'll do the rest. Just as we discussed.” <Karem>

I nodded and moved away from the three of them. Meanwhile, I spoke an Air Bolt at the slime boss. I wanted to keep the Air Cutter in reserve. I kept an eye on Zeel in the corner of my eye. The three of them were experienced fighters and had few problems with the rest of the monsters. I finished off my opponent before the others had completely defeated their monsters. Unfortunately, I had lost sight of Zeel for a moment. He seized this opportunity and suddenly appeared behind me. Without hesitation, he plunged his dagger into my neck. With his other hand, he snatched my spear from me. By moving my head quickly, I was at least able to avoid a critical wound. Nevertheless, the injury was bleeding profusely.

“Uhuhuh, I got you. Uhuhuh I won.” <Zeel>

“Did you get her?” <Karem>

“Uhuh, she's bleeding like a pig. She's almost dead. Her neck is through. And I've got her spear too. Uhuhuh.” <Zeel>

I jumped back to the wall and held my neck wound with my hand. It was indeed as I had suspected, but the targeted stab to the neck had taken me by surprise. A quick check of my status showed me that I was still losing minimal HP from the bleeding. I had already lost so much HP from the stab that it was approaching the value that I had set as my total HP for others to see through concealment. But I didn't make it that easy for them. My hidden reserve was over 500 HP, which they didn't know about. I still had EXP left and used it to increase my regeneration to 12, which stopped the bleeding and my HP slowly increased again. To lull the others into a false sense of security, I pretended that I had collapsed. I knelt down and then slumped back against the wall. My hands sank down and I closed my eyes.

“Uhuhuh, she's lying on the floor. She's gone. Uhuhuh.” <Zeel>

“Take one of the goblin daggers and stab her several times with it. Then it'll look like she died from the goblins and we'll be in the clear. We'll be finished in no time.” <Karem>

“Uhuhuh, I'll do it. This is going to be fun.” <Zeel>

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Zeel grab one of the daggers and walk towards me. As long as the last monster wasn't defeated, you could take one of the weapons and fight with it. Meanwhile, I had drawn a hidden dagger with my other hand and was waiting for my chance. When Zeel crouched down and swung his goblin dagger, I stabbed my dagger into his unprotected neck with lightning speed. Tit for tat. He screamed and fell to the ground, gasping. He dropped the goblin dagger and held his neck wound. Mine had stopped bleeding completely, which meant that I regenerated my HP much faster than with the bleeding.

“Zeel, what's wrong?” <Karem>

Karem turned and looked in my direction. Before he could say another word, I hit him with a prepared dark spell. It was the spell that blinded the target as well as causing little damage. Next, I jumped up and drew my second weapon.

“Zeel, damn it, why is she still alive? Zeel, why don't you say something?” <Karem>

There were only two monsters left in total, a goblin and a beetle. Plus Karem and Stevt, who were both slightly injured. To give me another advantage, I cast another spell: Darkness. I used it to create a zone in which it became darker depending on the rank of the dark magic. The light in the cave was significantly reduced, making it as bright as a moonlit night. I had no disadvantages as the one who had cast the spell, but everyone else without night vision suffered deductions.

“Damn, why is it getting so dark all of a sudden? What's going on here? It wasn't planned like this.” <Karem>

The confrontation with the traitors had clearly gone in my favor. On the one hand, I had regenerated almost all of my HP and it was still increasing, and on the other, there was still my darkness. Since Stevt was still busy with his last monster, but needed two or three more attacks at most, I dealt with Karem first. His heavy axe made him slow and therefore a grateful opponent for me. On the other hand, his armor was a real obstacle for me, so I had to aim for his unprotected areas. In this case, it was his legs. As the darkness and the additional blindness prevented him from fighting effectively, he had no chance. As a result, he could barely move and went down.

While he cursed his situation, I turned my attention to Stevt, who had defeated his beetle. As a swordsman, he was the more difficult opponent, but I also had a clear advantage over him. Unlike Karem, I hit an important vein in his body so that he would quickly bleed to death from the injury. Unfortunately, part of the resulting stream of blood reached my face. I had to wipe the blood off with my sleeve and spit some out. After about two minutes, Stevt went down and stopped moving.

A subsequent glance showed me that Zeel had also bled to death in the meantime. That left only Karem, who tried to crawl to the exit. The back door was now open as all the monsters had been defeated. However, I didn't let him escape and stood in his way.

“Hey, what was that all about? Were you trying to save my pay? Or were you trying to sell off my equipment?” <Eliza>

“Damn, why didn't you die from the neck wound? It would have killed anyone of your level and you're not even a pure fighter.” <Karem>

“I'm certainly not going to tell you that, but I'll show you something. Take a closer look here.” <Eliza>

I held my hair back so that my neck was exposed. There was no sign of a wound as it had healed completely. Only the remains of the blood were still visible.

“How can that be? There's no wound at all? But the blood is real! With the amount of blood you've lost, it should have killed you. I don't understand this.” <Karem>

“You chose the wrong person to betray. Unfortunately, I can't let you live, but you only have yourselves to blame for that.” <Eliza>

“No, please don't, no. I don't want to die.” <Karem>

“Too late, but I'll make it short and sweet. You would have made me suffer, but I'm not you. Lucky for you.” <Eliza>

With one swift movement, I stabbed him in the neck, causing him to gurgle. The injuries he had already sustained were killing him quickly. I took a deep breath. The three of them were the second human opponents I had killed after the bandits. It wasn't as bad as the first time, but still fierce enough. I'll never get used to killing. In the end, though, all that mattered was that I had survived.

I searched the three of them for useful things. Taking equipment would be too conspicuous, but I took the money and other inconspicuous things like jewelry or potions. It wasn't much. Following an idea, I did the same to them as they had planned to do to me. I took the two daggers from Zeel and stabbed them into the necks of Karem and Stevt.

Finally, I treated myself to the rewards for defeating the boss. I didn't find anything special in the chest. But I was able to sell everything. At the stele, I collected my reward for the third boss room in a group. I chose Self Transformation. I should now have all the important skills on advanced apart from the magic skills. Although I couldn't choose these here anyway. This meant I had defeated the first three bosses in the nature dungeon. I left the corpses here as a gift for the heroes, but before I left the boss room and thus released it for the next ones, I still had to take measures in case the heroes drew the right conclusion and suspected their old companion Liss in me.