Risen World

Chapter 92: Dungeon In the Marsh Part 4

The large door in front of them creaked open slowly as Joshua used his strength to push the two sides forward. It let out loud creaking sounds as the stone grated against the floor for a moment. When the pair were able to make their way inside the two doors shut behind them rather quickly after how hard it was to move them in the first place. The new room they found themselves in was rather large with an interesting design to it. It had two rather large totems sitting in the middle of the room on raised platforms. One totem had a depiction of a human on it that was wielding a sword and preparing to go to battle. While the other totem had a large figure of a lizard carved into it that had its mouth wide open as if it were preparing to charge in and attack.

"Well I guess that proves this was the right path to take doesn't it." Lilly said as she was inspecting the artwork on the two totems while still sitting up on top of Mr. Hoppy.

"True, but now that we've gotten here we will probably be given another choice soon seeing as there seems to be two more doors at the end of the room." Joshua replied as he pointed over towards the back of the room where two more large doors stood tall. Joshua then looked around a bit more to inspect the room for anything else and took notice of the large circular holes in the ceiling that looked a bit out of place in comparison to the rest of the simple room. Another thing he took notice of was how the stones underneath his feet seemed to creek a bit with each step he took. It wasn't bad enough to the point where he would expect the floor beneath him to fall apart as he explored the room, but it was noticeable in comparison to the rest of the dungeon he had traveled through up to this point.

"I don't really see anything else in here to tell us what to do next." Lilly said as she was done checking around the room. Unlike previous rooms that were filled with carvings on the wall with wording that the system could translate this room had absolutely nothing but two totems and two doors behind them. "Maybe the doors correlate with the totems in some way?" Lilly asked.

"That's possible, but even so that wouldn't give us an answer on which way is the correct way to go." Joshua said as he thought back on everything they had passed on the way to the room. Up to this point all they came across were lizards as opponents and he was guessing the human totem represented any explorers that tried to make their way through the dungeon. Even if he had understanding of what each totem represented neither one had a particular reason to be the right choice. He knew better than to think that the dungeon was the type to reward him no matter what after what he had gone through so far.

While he was trying to figure out which door would be the best one to go through he suddenly heard a dripping sound come from above. He turned to look as drops of water started falling from the holes in the ceiling. Before he could inspect it a loud grinding sound could be heard as if some gears were turning above him. It was followed by a loud click before a torrent of water came cascading down from the holes above. The water was quickly flooding the floor of the room and the entire space was sealed tightly with the door they came from being closed up along with the ones ahead of them being shut tight. "Looks like the dungeon just decided to speed up our decision a bit." Lilly said as she walked over and stood on the risen spot where the two totems were kept. It wouldn't take very long for the room to be filled up with water with the amount that was pouring in from the ceiling. From what they could tell they probably only had a few minutes to make a decision before they would have to hold their breaths under water.

"I don't like this. It makes it seem like this is another fifty-fifty decision, but I highly doubt that is the case." Joshua said as he quickly glanced around the room to see if he had missed anything out of the ordinary.

"Maybe this time it doesn't matter which door we choose." Lilly said, but she clearly didn't believe it based off of the frown on her face. If the last decision had been similar to this one where it was fifty-fifty odds then maybe they could just toss a coin and pick a door, but if they had gone to the right before instead of the left then they would have been penalized. Joshua noticed the water was quickly rising up and was now passed his ankles and would soon reach his knees. For someone as tall as him this was a rather fast pace.

While trying to think things over Joshua started to fall into one of his old habits he had whenever he was thinking. A slight frown graced his face while he kept his eyes closed. He leaned to the side while one of his feet gently tried to tap against the floor, but the water was starting to get in the way a bit. While making these motions Joshua noticed the floor beneath him creek a little like it had done when he first walked into the room. He had found it rather odd that the floor didn't seem sturdy like the rest of the dungeon up to those point and was worried about this being some sort of trap before, but now his eyes lit up as an idea came to his mind.

Joshua pulled his scale blade off its holster and rose it over his head preparing to swing it harshly into the floor beneath him. "What are you doing?" Lilly asked as she grabbed Joshua attention before he could do anything else.

"I think both of the doors are the wrong answer. In fact the right way to go is right beneath our feet." Joshua said with a smile as his aura shroud flared to life around him.

"What do you mean?" Lilly asked as she jumped on top of Mr. Hoppy's back just in case whatever Joshua planned to do would ended up tearing the whole room apart in the end.

"Well this room has quite an old and creaky floor, especially sense it's supposedly made of stone. Every other place we've run across has had great footing, especially sense it had large lizards running across it constantly. If a few of those giant things made their way into this room I'm not sure if the floor could hold up. Why do you think that is?" Joshua said with a smile and watched as Lilly's eyes brightened up.

"Probably because there is another room beneath this one right. A room that leads down another path in all likely hood. If there were monsters in here for us to fight we might have accidentally tore up the floor and literally fell into the right path to take. So the dungeon forbid creatures from being in here to make things less obvious, are only clue was the fact that the floor creaked and that's only because of you and your giant sword." Lilly said excitedly.

"Hey, I'm not that heavy. Besides the holster makes the sword light." Joshua said jokingly. "Well let's see where this takes us. Get ready for a fall Lilly." She simply nodded at his warning and Mr. Hoppy seemed to tense up as if he was preparing for what Joshua was about to do. Joshua took a deep breath as the water had passed his knees. He lifted the blade above his head and coated it in aura so that the force of the blow would add even more weight just in case the floor was sturdier than he expected. He swung his blade down harshly into the ground and the force of the impact rocked the entire room as a large portion of the floor started collapsing in on itself. Joshua was the first one to fall through into the floor below alongside a lot of water that continued to fall alongside him.

Soon Lilly and Mr. Hoppy fell in as well and landed next to Joshua who was getting up and looking around to see if they had made the right decision. This new room that he stood in wasn't nearly as big as the one above, but unlike the little death trap that room had been this new one had drains a little up off the floor of the room along the walls. This kept the water that was pouring into the room from over flowing. The highest the water could get was just above Joshua's knees but that was still a bit of a hindrance in his movements albeit a small one. The room had very little lighting, but what lighting it had allowed Joshua to look up and notice that the portion of the room above that had collapsed wasn't all that big and the pieces of stone that Joshua had broken through were now being pulled back into place and filling in the hole they had fallen through. It was a unique sight.

Before Joshua could take in any more of the room his sense of danger kicked in and he could feel something approaching the room from the dark hallway ahead of them. Mr. Hoppy seemed to get a bit agitated as well so he turned his attention towards the approaching danger which got Lilly's attention. Joshua moved out in front and waived for Lilly to back up a bit to give him some room to react if whatever was coming tried to go after Lilly in a similar way those two lizards from up above had done. It didn't take very long for their enemies to come into view and Joshua tensed up a bit as he saw around five lizard around the same size as the one Lilly had tamed came swimming into the room at far faster speeds than any of the other Lizards could move.

"Hide your presence and help me from a distance. If these things tried to swarm you I'm not sure if Mr. Hoppy can hold up long enough for me to help out." Joshua explained as he turned to look at Lilly. She agreed and quickly started to hide her and Mr. Hoppy's presence as they hid in the corner of the room. The five lizards rushed into the room and Joshua observed one of them to see its information. It was only level twenty-three and had just one star next to its name, but Joshua could already tell what the problem with these enemies was going to be. They were all about speed as they shot through the water like torpedoes towards him, but he smirked a bit at their naive attacking methods.

He batted the first one aside easily with the scale blade and sent it crashing into the wall. The next one was coming towards him to fast to attack with the scale blade, so he drew the short sword on his waist with his free hand and used the creatures own momentum to skewer it through the head with the sword. It would take too long to get the Lizards corpse off the short sword before another one approached so he dropped it and twisted out of the way to avoid another one of the creatures. The last pair tried to charge him at the same time, but this time he used an aura blast as he swung the now properly positioned scale blade. The attack tore them in half which frightened the last pair of surviving lizard, but they shook it off and charged at him once again.

This time they came at him one in front of the other at a speed so fast that they were blurry, but Joshua just smirked a bit as he swung his blade at the perfect time to smash the head of the first one in to the ground. The final lizard hissed loudly as it was preparing to bite into Joshua's throat sense his blade was down in the ground after his last swing and he wouldn't be able to lift it in time to fend it off. Unluckily for the excited lizard a phantom appeared behind Joshua and made the same overhead swing that he had previously done. The attack had splits its head in half sense its defense was so small in comparison to the larger creatures.

With that the first wave of enemies was cleared and Joshua gathered the corpse and his short sword as he prepared to make his way down the new hall way where all of the lizards had come from sense it was the only path forwards. He got the faint feeling that there would be something interesting up ahead and he could feel an unusual aura off in the distance that fully grabbed his attention.

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