Chapter 122: What’s this Supposed to mean?

Noah turned to move toward the door.

Then stopped.

Something in the far corner of the room caught his eye.

He hadn’t seen it before. During the fight his attention had been completely consumed by what was happening in the center of the chamber and he hadn’t looked at the corners.

Now in the aftermath with the room quiet and still and the crystal light doing its steady work across the walls, the shape in the far corner was unmistakable.

A chest.

A large one. It was made up of metal construction, bound at the corners and along the lid with iron strips, the surface aged and marked with the same kind of old wear as everything else in this dungeon. It sat against the wall like it had been placed there deliberately, which it almost certainly had been.

Noah stared at it.

Damien had also seen it. He was looking at the same corner with the same expression.

Neither of them spoke for a few seconds.

Then Noah’s face broke into something between disbelief and genuine excitement. He pointed at it.

"Damien," he said. "That is a treasure chest."

"I see it."

"A literal treasure chest. In a dungeon." He was already walking toward it. "There has to be something inside. A hidden artifact, a weapon art manual, rare materials, high grade potions, something. After everything we just went through in this room there is absolutely something good in there. That’s how this suppose work."

Damien followed at his slower careful pace. But there was something on his face too, a tiredness that had been replaced briefly by the same anticipation Noah was feeling. They had earned this. Whatever was inside that chest they had absolutely earned it.

Noah reached it first.

It was larger up close than it had looked from across the room, coming up to his chest height, wide enough that he couldn’t have wrapped his arms around it. The metal was heavy and cold under his hands as he gripped the lid.

It was not locked.

The lid lifted cleanly on the first try, hinges moving smoothly despite the age of everything around them.

Noah looked inside.

He looked for a long moment.

Then he looked again, tilting his head slightly as though the angle might change what he was seeing.

It was empty. No matter how many times Noah stare at it or rub his eyes, the sight remained same.

It was completely empty. Not even dust at the bottom of it. It remained there in room empty.

Noah looked around the chamber, checked each corner I there was anything else. But all he saw was shattered floor, dead bodies and big hole in floor. And blood spilled here and there. Other than that there was nothing else.

Damien leaned over beside him and looked in.

He also looked for a moment.

"It’s empty," Damien said.

"I can see that," Noah replied.

"It’s absolutely empty."

"Yes."

Noah straightened up. He put both hands on the lid and closed it and stood there with his hands resting on top of it and stared at the wall in front of him.

Then he started talking.

"Why this happened?! Why there’s no reward for us?!! Dammit!!"

He was not talking to Damien. His voice carrying everything that had accumulated over the past several hours of walking through an unmapped dungeon, fighting goblins and kobolds and bats and hobgoblins, getting thrown across a stone floor multiple times, nearly dying to a summoned entity of unknown origin. At the end they found a chest.

An empty one.

"Fuck this dungeon!!" He said several things in anger.

Damien listened to all of it without interrupting. When Noah finally stopped, there was a short silence.

"I’m also pissed," Damien said flatly. Which from Damien, who did not typically express strong negative emotions, was significant.

"Good," Noah said. "You should be."

He pushed off the chest and turned toward the dead body of man who had awakened that creature.

Both Noah and Damien inspect him to check whether he had taken those things from chest. But they found nothing. Even his storage bracelet had only clothes and nothing else. Probably he stored those dead bodies in it and brough them here.

---

"Why aren’t you storing the creature’s body?" Damien asked as they passed the dead creature on the way out.

Noah glanced at it without stopping. "I tried earlier when I went to retrieve the core. The storage ring wouldn’t take it. The body was rejecting entry the same way the core rejected contact." He kept walking. "Whatever that thing was, it doesn’t follow normal rules. I’m not going to force it and risk whatever energy is in the core spreading through a sealed storage space."

Damien looked at the creature as they passed it.

"Fair," he said.

They reached the door and it opened without resistance this time, swinging outward into the passage beyond. The crystal light in the walls continued its pale steady work, indifferent and unchanged, the same as it had been when they first walked through heading the other direction.

Noah pulled out his guild card and checked the back.

The holographic map bloomed upward. The paths they had walked were all recorded, every turn and junction rendered in simple blue lines. The way back was clear and readable.

He oriented himself, put the card away, and started walking.

Damien walked beside him.

Neither of them spoke for a while.

The dungeon was quiet around them. They walked through the crystal-lit tunnel without encountering anything, through the junction where they had chosen the center path, past the areas where the kobolds and bats had come from.

Everything was still.

Noah’s body had settled into a dull ache that covered most of his operational parts. His left arm where the claws had raked it had been wrapped with a basic cloth bandage from

Damien’s supply, which was doing an adequate job.

His head still had the background pressure from the mana overuse. His legs were working but using them as he want was hard.

Still he kept walking.

Damien was managing beside him, his breathing still careful around the ribs but steadier than it had been in the chamber.

They walked past the large rooms. Past the first iron door. Through the upper passages where the first goblins had been.

Eventually the torchlight from the entrance appeared ahead of them, a different quality of light from the crystals, warmer and slightly unsteady, coming from above and ahead.

The slope upward.

Noah looked at it and felt something in his chest release slightly.

They climbed.

The cool deep-earth smell of the dungeon faded as they rose and was replaced by outside air, real outside air, carrying the smell of forest and early night and nothing underground about it at all.

They stepped out through the stone arch and into the night’s light.

The guild staff at the entrance station looked up as they emerged.

One of them took one look at the state of both of them and stood up from the folding desk.

"You need medical attention?" she asked.

"Him first," Noah said, tilting his head toward Damien. "Possible few cracked ribs."

"You are not in good condition either," Damien said.

"Well that’s true," Noah said.

"We need to report something," Damien said to the staff member, ignoring Noah. "About what’s in that dungeon. We have mapped. We will show you the location of that chamber,."

The staff member’s expression shifted from concern to alert attention.

"How serious?" she asked.

Noah looked at her steadily. And decided to tell her.

"Seal the entrance," he said. "And get someone senior from the guild here tonight as soon as possible."

She looked at him for a moment.

Then she reached for the communication device on the desk without asking any further questions.