Because by the time the first claw scraped against the stone, Bastet had made her move.
Her mana flared with terrifying intensity. Sunlight burst from her form like a solar flare. The dungeon’s cold gloom was banished in a blink.
"You taint this world with your mere existence!"
Bastet roared.
A literal roar: [Solar Roar].
A pulse of divine fury erupted from her throat, a shockwave of blazing sound and light that staggered the vampire and vaporized the dark mist pooling at its feet. Its call was cut short. The walls trembled from the impact.
"[Curse of Noon]," she hissed, raising one clawed finger.
A glowing mark flared on the vampire’s chest, burning through velvet and dead flesh. It tried to move, but its limbs had begun to tremble.
Bastet walked closer with disgust carved into every motion of her steps. Then she raised both hands and formed a radiant sigil in the air.
"[Anathema Ray]!"
A concentrated beam of solar punishment erupted from her palms, blinding in its brightness. It pierced the vampire through the chest, sizzling through bone and sinew. The creature didn’t even have time to scream again before the radiant energy burned it from the inside out.
It collapsed in a heap of blackened ash.
Bastet looked outright vindicated.
"Damn... That was badass," Luna whistled.
"Yeah! Good job, Bastet!" Aria chirped, liveliness returning to her cheeks.
"Our resident racist felinid never disappoints," Nyx chuckled.
And just like that, Bastet’s sheer hatred for the undead and overwhelming display had brought the Valkyries out of their troublesome thoughts.
The group began to move again with careful steps, pushing deeper into the corridor beyond, wary of whatever the dungeon had waiting next.
But then...
"Wait."
It was Aria.
The silver-haired beauty hadn’t budged from her place near the scorched remains. Her eyes were narrowed, fixated on the rapidly disintegrating corpse pile. What little remained of the vampire was collapsing into flakes of black dust, the last vestiges of its cursed existence fading away.
Disintegration was the fate of all non-boss type monsters in the dungeons. They’d respawn soon.
"There’s something wrong with this..."
Kaiden paused and turned. "What do you mean?"
"There’s... a bulge," she said, walking forward and crouching near the center of the ash pile. She pointed at what looked like a half-melted ribcage, charred black. "The bones are warping around something. That doesn’t make sense biologically, even for undead."
Carefully, she peeled back a curled plate of brittle rib and brushed away the soot.
Something gleamed inside.
A dense red shape, roughly the size of a brick, was nestled within the vampire’s chest cavity. It hadn’t been touched by the fire.
A blood-sealed object.
A journal.
Even after all that radiant damage, it remained intact. The pages were thick and pulsing, protected by magic. Sigils lined the edges, subtle and dormant now, but unmistakably vampiric.
Aria carefully lifted it.
"This might be part of the puzzle!"
She looked proud of her discovery, and an expectant shine could be observed in her eyes.
Kaiden knew what that shine meant. "Good catch, Aria. We wouldn’t have seen it without you." He walked closer and replicated the hug Luna got not long ago while checking the book’s contents.
Aria’s only response was nestling her face further into his chest.
Meanwhile, Nyx had taken the journal from Kaiden’s hand and was flipping through its thick pages.
And reading.
And reading.
And... still reading.
"... I hate this guy," she muttered flatly.
"What does it say?" Kaiden asked.
"Dear Eternal Misery Diary," she began in a dry tone. "Today, Lady Catrin refused my invitation to the masquerade ball. Again. The guards in the East Hall allowed sunlight in for a moment too long, and now Lord Halberd’s flesh is extra flaky. I sent the fifth blood-servant to be flayed because she got a lip on my goblet. Do I feel guilt? Only when I run out of eyeliner. I can hear the hunger calling, yet again. It croons to me. I love her voice. It reminds me of my mother."
She looked up. "It goes on like that for pages. Pages."
Luna, who had been leaning against a pillar while listening to Nyx reading the book’s contents, groaned. "We’re going to die of boredom before we starve."
Aria peeked up from Kaiden’s arms and added dryly, "And this is just the first journal. There’s probably a set."
"Of course there is," Luna agreed.
"We don’t have time for this," Nyx sighed, snapping the book shut with a faint thud. "Even if each of these journals has a clue, we’ll burn hours we don’t have trying to find them."
"We could just ignore it," Aria suggested. "The riddle might be optional."
Kaiden felt troubled. "Or it might be what unlocks the boss chamber..."
Bastet stepped forward with a grimace visible on her gorgeous, tanned face.
Without a word, she snatched the journal from Nyx’s hands and raised it to her nose.
Everyone paused.
The Ra-Blessed Felinid visibly grimaced.
She took another sniff and gagged.
"Why would you smell it?" Nyx asked, baffled.
"To gain insight..." Bastet muttered between wheezes.
She turned the page, sniffed again, and gagged even harder.
Luna, watching this ridiculous scene unfold, burst into laughter. "You’re telling me this kitten can swallow Kaiden’s fat cock without gagging, but she’s about to throw up over moldy diary pages?"
"That’s completely different!" Bastet snapped at the Storm Valkyrie.
Luna held up her fingers in a dramatic ’X’ and squinted. "Doubt."
Bastet ignored her and pressed on, flipping to another page and sniffing with all the dedication of someone performing an exorcism through scent alone. Each inhale was accompanied by a choked cough or feline retching noise.
But then...
*Sniff.*
Pause.
Her ears perked. Her eyes narrowed. She flipped the page again, then again, then paused.
"There!" she announced triumphantly, tapping a heavily blotched page near the spine of the book. "He spent longer writing this section than any other. It reeks of obsession, panic, and many, many days filling this single page with words."