Harem Sync: Divine Edition-Chapter 43: The Master’s Scent

"Hey, what’s the master doing?" Kira murmured. "He’s taking too long..."

Isabela, Aldric, and Kira waited for Haru in a chamber they had found, the three of them sitting on stones while they waited for him to arrive.

"Could something have happened?" Aldric asked nervously.

"Master!" Kira shouted loudly. "HARU!"

Absolute silence.

Then she began to hear noises, coming from somewhere distant, like stones being dragged, a heavy, harsh sound that reverberated off the walls.

"Are you hearing that?" Kira asked, turning to Isabela and Aldric, her fox ears fully erect, trying to locate the source.

"Hearing what?" Isabela replied, hearing nothing but the silence of the dungeon.

"I’m going to see why he stayed," Kira said, standing up decisively and starting to walk towards the tunnel where Haru had been.

But when she realized it, there was no turning back; their paths didn’t align. She turned around to see if Isabela and Aldric were still there, but the chamber where they had been had completely vanished, replaced by a tunnel identical to the others.

The group was no longer there.

"Shit..."

She instinctively began sniffing the air, searching for any familiar scent that could guide her. For a moment she smelled nothing, neither Isabela’s nor Aldric’s.

The only scent she could detect was Haru’s.

His blood, sweat, the specific smell of burnt mana that clung to him after using fire, all mixed together forming a trail that only she could follow.

Kira began to follow the scent, running through the labyrinth, leaping over roots that blocked her path, dodging fallen rocks, passing through tunnels that narrowed and then widened again, through chambers filled with broken crystals and more...

The scent grew stronger as she progressed, signifying that she was heading in the right direction, but then something strange happened.

The path began to guide her back to the dungeon entrance. She recognized the markings on the walls, the specific roots they had seen when they first descended, and when she turned another corner she found herself back in the first chamber, exactly where they had started.

Kira stopped immediately, looking around confused and frustrated.

"What the hell is this!?" She looked at the map drawn on the wall that was still there. "That explains this whole confusing map... the tunnels change. It doesn’t matter which path you choose..."

She stood there processing that for a few seconds, then looked at the tunnels, closed her eyes, and sniffed the air again searching for Haru’s scent.

She found it.

It wasn’t coming from any specific tunnel; it was coming from a direction. Straight through the walls, completely ignoring the logic of the paths.

Kira crouched at the entrance of one of the tunnels, her muscles tensing, and opened her eyes with absolute determination.

"Fuck the tunnels."

And then she started running straight in the direction where Haru’s scent was coming from, completely ignoring the paths the labyrinth offered.

The scent began to get strong, then even stronger, and then extremely strong as Kira advanced through the tunnels, completely ignoring the forks in the path and following only her instinct and sense of smell.

She turned another corner running and came across skeletons blocking the path ahead, about five or six of them standing in the middle of the tunnel.

Kira stopped, claws instinctively extending.

The skeletons turned to her, empty eye sockets focused in her direction, but they just stood there. They didn’t advance. They didn’t raise weapons. They just... observed.

"...Okay?" Kira murmured confusedly, but she didn’t have time to understand why.

She advanced, cutting them with her claws in quick and precise movements, shattering bones into fragments that scattered across the ground.

When she finished and continued running, she glanced back for a split second and saw the skeletons rebuilding themselves, bones dragging back into place, but still not attacking, just standing still like statues.

Kira was indignant for a moment, almost turning back to knock them down again just on principle, but then she realized that Haru’s scent was losing intensity the longer she stood still.

She immediately started running again.

After crossing several corridors, Kira reached a strange area that made her stop instinctively.

The floor was covered in black ash scattered everywhere, forming circles and patterns where bodies had been completely burned.

There were deep impact marks on the walls and floor, small craters where something heavy had hit hard, cracks running through the stone in spiderweb patterns.

It was clearly a place where a brutal battle had taken place. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

Kira sniffed the air and Haru’s scent here was incredibly strong, so concentrated that she could almost see his form hovering in the air. But there was something else mixed in, something sinister, a smell of death and decay and corrupted energy that clung to her lungs when she breathed deeply.

She looked at the ground more closely and noticed footprints. His footprints made with that black ash, shoe marks following a specific tunnel that continued deeper.

Her heart raced, pounding in her chest, and she ran again following the footprints, the smell growing stronger with each step, so close now that she knew she would find him at any moment.

"MASTER!" she screamed with all her might, her voice echoing through the tunnels.

...

Haru was fighting a horrendous creature that had emerged from one of the side tunnels without warning, something completely deformed, its body made of black roots intertwined with bones.

Haru grabbed the monster by what seemed to be its neck, dodged a tentacle that tried to bite his face, and crushed the creature’s head with brute force. The creature’s head exploded in dark matter that splattered everywhere, and its entire body crumbled into a smoldering organic paste on the ground.

Smoke billowed from the destroyed body, unlike any he had seen before; this smoke was denser and had a greenish glow, and some of it was drawn directly into Haru’s right eye.

"They’re getting more and more... delicious," Haru thought, frowning, feeling the energy being absorbed, a strange and uncomfortable sensation he hadn’t yet fully adjusted to, and then he turned his head slightly as if he’d heard something in the distance.

A voice. Familiar. Shouting something that sounded like... "Master?"

"Huh... Kira?" he murmured, looking around confused.

But the corridor was completely empty. Silent. Only him and the smoldering remains of the creature he had just killed.

Kira arrived running at an intersection where three tunnels met, stopped in the middle trying to decide which one to follow, and sniffed the air desperately. Haru’s scent had been so strong seconds ago, so close that she swore she would see him around the next corner, but suddenly...

It disappeared.

Completely. As if he had never been there. As if the labyrinth had deliberately erased the entire trail.

Kira turned in every direction, sniffing each tunnel, trying to find any trace of the scent, but she only smelled damp stone and mold and the sinister smell of corrupted mana that permeated everything.

"Master..." she murmured softly, ears lowered, frustration and worry growing in her chest.

She stood at the intersection, unsure which direction to take, the three tunnels looking exactly the same, and the absolute silence of the dungeon pressing down from all sides.