Dungeon? This Tree? Why Don't You Join Me for Lunch? (Dungeon Core)
Chapter 93: The Tree of Memories

Chapter 93: Chapter 93: The Tree of Memories

The Tree of Memories held no lasting memories. It was what I told myself, as I cleaned up Drusilla’s body to be sent off.

Her dungeon still stood, thank God... or maybe it wasn’t such a good thing that it stood?

After all, her dungeon was the Dungeon of Pain.

That wasn’t for me to decide, however, as I rubbed the wet wash cloth on her skin. Trying to think about anything but the maggots which I had to burn away from her stomach, where they had been lying eggs.

Right there, in the stomach acid.

What sort of animals survived something like stomach acid? My trance state told me a fact. That the walls around our stomach were an evolutionary miracle.

That not even stomach acid was supposed to break them.

And those worms had the same thing around their body, I told myself. For how else had they been able to survive?

"Sylvan, which direction?" I was Wrath’s eyes and ears. The one hunting hound who just wanted to get its master out of there. Next to me, over a cooking fire, was a pot with mushroom soup.

If Wrath didn’t eat any of it, if he found Lamia before it was done...

"Right," he had earned his name. Had changed the one his parents or dungeon system had given him to Wrath.

No one, not even Lamia, who was slithering through her corridors with the speed of light, her heart racing, something I could feel through Wrath’s mana, was able to take it away from him.

Wasn’t it funny, I asked myself. The strongest dungeon cores, the ones who could have beat Belladonna together!

Drusilla, Lamia, Wrath! A team like no other!

"Left," I whispered. "Right there. Behind the wall."

Lamia either ran out of corridors to slither through, or maybe she decided to stand and fight.

And Wrath...

"But first," he had let me in. Maybe I was committing suicide, something Amdis and Aron seemed to think as well, for the two of them were shaking their heads. "Please, you need to be at full health."

I wanted to ask first. To give him the chance of a free will.

What, I asked myself, as he stopped dead in his tracks. The axe risen high. Was I going to do if Wrath died?

If Lamia, powerful Lamia who had the Still Waters, joined Belladonna?

"What are you going to do?" Huh, so the mind rune gave up the ghost. Edda was gone.

It was time to come clean.

"Yes, because somehow, someone, up there, probably," I didn’t know if he could see me pointing at the ceiling. When what I wanted was to keep on cleaning Drusilla, so I could send her off to be buried.

I owed her. I owed her more than I cared to admit.

She had fought for me. She didn’t deserve to die like this, darn it!

I stood up, shaking.

"Decided that a weakling like me is supposed to fight Belladonna. Who wants to kill us all!"

I threw the dirty washing cloth to the side. Drusilla’s dark eyes stared up at me.

You didn’t save me, they were whispering. You didn’t even supply me with my own water! They roared.

"No," I whispered back, lost in those accusing lifeless orbs. Orbs which had looked at Wrath with a kindness the man probably had never experienced before. "I believed that both of you were titans. Strong beyond measure. That Lamia would have liked some mushroom soup..."

My shaking hand went to my mouth. I heard as Wrath began to hack at the stone wall.

"Wrath... please," I didn’t even know why I was begging him to eat the healing soup.

I can just make him, I told myself. Then he can kill me, hate me even after that, but he will be alive to do so.

My mana flexed; Wrath stopped.

"Do it," he hissed. His mana pushing against me. My toes were beginning to heat up.

The Dungeon of Horrors.

I had no doubt that whatever he was going to do, it was not going to be pleasant.

"See what happens!"

"Wrath!" That wasn’t his name, I told myself. Why was I repeating that stupid tittle? "Tell me your name!"

"My name?" He began to bombard the stone wall with his axe once more. The soup was finally ready to be taken off the fire.

A lovely golden glow shimmering over it.

"Yes, your name!" I knew that I shouldn’t rise my voice at the strongest dungeon core there was, but the man was there, in that dungeon which had already taken a titan’s life, and he... he...

"Felix," Wrath allowed himself a chuckle. So, as if he had known the name didn’t suit him his whole life. "Call me by it, and I will never eat your cooking!"

"Oh?" I gathered all the bravery I could muster. This was it. The time to be someone who protected others. "Then, if I never call you by that good and kind name, a name that suits a hero like you," I wasn’t even trying to butter him up. He was fighting for what I believed was right!

But in the end, it was just my life.

"Then you will eat a pot of mushroom soup?"

It was silly. Doomed to fail. It was worth it in my mind to take him over, shove the soup down his gullet, and then wait for his axe to split my head in half.

He stopped hammering.

For a second, I thought that he was not going to risk it. That he was doing this for Drusilla, and not for me.

Wrath didn’t fry my brain with his mana, as I feared. He just chuckled.

I watched in slow motion as he patted his stomach, and then...

"I can do with something warm. And water, Sylvan. I need boiled water," he was preparing for a fight.

I had no idea if Brandon and Doran needed me just as much, but I did know I had only one rune.

The dragon and the elf were together with a boss mob and a healer.

Wrath was alone.

The choice was clear.