The Young Master in the Shadows

Chapter 257: Soul Apples(2)

“Achoo!” Margret sneezed, someone was definitely thinking about her in a perverted way as if anyone would think about her in any other way!

She didn’t care, she had better things to do.

As she was busy moving the strange blocks in the vault to her ring, she discovered a trap door hidden carefully underneath a big stack. It took her three hours to finish clearing the blocks above and making room so that she would be able to open the door.

Unlike that stupid vault door, this one was not gay, it was as straight as an arrow. Under her gentle touch, it shook and squealed with pleasure as she pulled it open.

“Hssssss….” She gasped at what she saw inside. Although the cellar was small, it was filled with large carcasses of many exotic animals that had glowing metallic bones. There were even shiny golden human skeletons chained to the walls.

What kind of place is this? What are those for?

Like with the blocks, Margret had no idea, but she knew that they were expensive… This slut was getting filthy rich!

…

Victor smiled as he looked at the chained-up Midget who began to have dreamy eyes. Now he could be interrogated easily.

“Now… What is your name?” Victor asked as he relaxed in his foldable chair and took an energy bar to eat.

“...Milo,” The midget answered as he drooled.

“How old are you?”

“31…”

“Bachelor?”

“No…. Yes… I just became one….” he said, feeling absolutely no remorse for his dead evil girlfriend.

“Milo… what was your plan waiting here?” Victor asked.

“Nothing… It was Ivon’s plan…” he said. Ivon was his now-dead 'girlfriend'.

“What was her plan then?”

“Wait here, and trick those who descend the stairs… The other groups have been hunting a lot lately. There is a new group of idiots who entered the dungeon. We wanted to try our luck too!”

“Typical! How many people are in your group?”

“Just me and Ivon… The others didn’t like her because she used poison!” he said.

“You two met here?”

“Yes… She caught me stealing her food. She said that I was not worth eating as I didn’t have a lot of meat! She poisoned me and then forced me to help her hunt… and maybe attend to her other needs…. I am innocent here!”

“We will see about that. How many men did you eat?”

“None… Ivon eats the men, I eat the women…” he said licking his lips. The apples were causing the players here to have a degraded sense of values. Victor expected that.

“How many did you eat? How long have you been here anyway?” Victor asked.

“Four months. I have eaten three girls…” he said, licking his lips again as he remembered the taste.

Victor frowned… Damn this dungeon was dangerous! If this weak midget could eat three, what about the others here?

“How did you get to this dungeon?” Victor asked.

“I paid a black market guide… He took $10.000 to tell me about this place, that bastard he charged Ivon half of that!!”

“Who was he?” Victor asked as he squinted his eyes.

“I don’t know… I found him through a dark web website…. True Player Network!”

Victor knew of this, it was one of the unauthorized websites that players can use to subvert the player's council's supervision. Of course, that was a lie, the player council was the one behind it. It was built to scam and keep an eye on the rogue player who hated the current way things were done.

“I see… Didn’t your mother teach you not to trust shady people online?”

“No… My mother always went out with people she met online…”

“Oh… Tell me what you know about this place!” Victor finally said.

“Why should I?”

“I will let you eat this!” Victor took out an energy bar from his ring and dangled it in front of the midget. One major sign of soul damage was craving sugar.

“Ok…. “ The midget quickly nodded as he drooled, although the apples were delicious, he was craving some candy lately…

“This dungeon is very strange. It is composed of different levels! The upper four are dark and filled with skeletons so no one really goes there except when we are hunting… even then, it is not really feasible as we can be easily spotted when we use light and the skeletons would easily sneak up on us if we stayed in the dark…” he said.

“What about the lower floors?” Victor asked.

“This fifth one is the only one that has food… the black apples!” He licked his lips again, “Going down the dungeon changes and gets much bigger. Even the rocks change and become more sinister… Magic lights barely work down there, and it is very dim. so we can only crawl in the dark! We only reached the seventh floor. It is very dangerous there!”

Hearing that Victor frowned. The places where Alex and Tom were in, had strange wall lights, so they must be on the 8th, 9th, or 10th floors… No, the tenth floor was where that abomination appeared!

"How about this floor? How many players are there here?” Victor asked again as he casually threw a dagger shattering the skull of a curious skeleton that wondered what was those two talking about… maybe he was interested in the handcuffs… who knows.

“This floor is big, there are three main groups who hunt here. They founded their bases on the fringes of this floor… The rest are groups of stragglers who manage to survive alone…” he said.

“Does this floor has a boss room?" Victor had noticed a big hall on the map, right in the topmost section of this garden. It looked perfect to be a boss's room.

"I have no idea... wasn't the bosses on the lower floors?" the midget wondered making Victor sigh. This idiot knew nothing.

“There is a big round hall on this floor, what is it for?” Victor asked again.

“I don’t know, this hall was being used by one of the dangerous groups as their base ever since I came here!”

“I see… How many players are here exactly?”

“Ivon said that there are about 150 players… maybe more!”

“Sh*t…” Victor cursed. He knew that something was very wrong here. Why was someone collecting players inside this dungeon?

He didn’t notice anything strange near the gate, but he couldn’t really check carefully because that exhibitionist Naomi was eyeing him.

Victor didn’t like it. He had the feeling that he had stumbled upon some weird conspiracy. And maybe a trap. He was 99% that the Von Zwei family was behind this because of the fruits, but he was not sure.

But why would they give up this dungeon so that the free players association could use it?

It was either that they finished with it or that they entered it and then the association just happened to find it later... Or maybe they wanted to scam the association too!

Either way, whoever controlled this place before must have already entered here!

Looking at the Midget Victor asked, “How long has it been since the last group of players entered here?” he asked,

“Ah…the last one was yesterday,"

"The one before it?"

"It was three months ago maybe… Those guys were very dangerous. They grouped themselves near the big tree!”

“Oh…. “ Victor frowned. He couldn't tell which group was the main perpetrator.

If he guessed right, those people were collecting players in here to do something evil. They carefully disguised a C-ranked dungeon as an F-rank before luring weak players in. But why? He had no idea.

No matter what, now that this dungeon had become an S rank, things would change.

Victor took out a piece of paper and began to draw the shape of this floor on it then began to ask the midget to specify the places of every group with their description. It took him half an hour to collect all the information he needed.

It took him a few minutes to formulate a plan and began preparing for it as the midget watched.

Victor took a wooden door, then using some green gooey substance he was making a slit in it... After that he took a very fancy sword, and pushed it through the slit before clamping it from the back by two strange pieces of metal… They looked like damaged door hinges.

“What is this?” the midget asked,

“Watch and learn!” Victor said then ignored him as he continued to work…

This floor was big and Victor didn’t want to risk going around the bases of the three groups as that would take all day. He just needed to get those guys here! So he was setting a trap.

For the next hour, the midget watched as Victor kept taking talismans from his ring and then burying them in the ground with loads of GEMs. So many GEMs that the midget's eyes popped open. Were there this many GEMs in the world?

“What is this for?” The Midget finally asked as he couldn’t understand what Victor was doing.

“Oh, Something you will help me with!“ Victor said as he quickly adjusted a few things, then took an apple from a tree and gave it to the midget. “Eat this! You will need your energy!” he told him.

The midget, wanted an energy bar, but he didn’t refuse the apple, he was hungry. Although he ate those apples for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, he still liked them. And it couldn’t be poisoned since he saw Victor pick it up!

Biting onto the Juicy apple he didn’t notice that Victor was slowly stepping away until he disappeared.

The midget frowned as he felt the energy draw from his body. Wasn’t this more than usual? He began to feel pain as slowly his body puffed up, his muscles swelled and his bones creaked…

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh……” He screamed in pain as he felt his body become like a balloon…

BOOM!

The midget was blown into a ball of blue fire seconds later, and a shock wave blew everything around him… Even the vaulted ceiling of the dungeon shook because of the explosion! Thankfully, the indestructible trees that only shook a little absorbed most of it.

“Sh*t! That was bigger than I expected!… “ Victor, who stood up after getting blown away, said as he looked at the apple in his hand. He was correct!

This thing turned souls into energy. Usually, the soul was in a solid state, like an egg! The apple could only affect its outer shell, turning just some wisps at a time into energy.

But if combined with the soul wine that somehow liquidates the soul, it would cause an excessive amount of energy to be released as most of a person's soul turns into energy.

Now, it was time for him to hunt some naughty players!