There wasn’t any time for Arwin to stop and consider if he actually wanted to help the Ardent guild. This was probably the team that Busal had mentioned reaching the fifth room. Arwin really didn’t have much desire to have any more dealings with them than he had to — but a death was still a death, and none of the adventurers before him looked far from it.
He bounded down the hill, [Scourge] pouring into his legs and accelerating him with every step he took. It wasn’t the ideal way to engage the snake, but there wasn’t enough time for him to draw Prism’s Reach.
Arwin shot past the Ardent guildmembers just as the snake’s head shot forward. He summoned Verdant Blaze and brought the hammer around, slamming it into the side of the snake’s snout and pumping his muscles full of [Scourge].
A crack rang out, tremors racing up Arwin’s arms, and the snake flinched back to abandon its attack. It felt more like he’d surprised the monster rather than actually injured it. Arwin dropped to the ground in front of the other adventurers just as Rodrick arrived beside them.
The snake hissed, pulling back even farther to stare down at him with a massive, watery eye. Its tongue flicked out to taste the air, trying to determine if Arwin was actually a threat or if he was just another snack waiting to sprint into its mouth.
“What are you doing?” the leftmost guildsman asked in a distressed tone.
“Saving your sorry asses,” Arwin barked. “Why are you still fighting this thing? Do you not realize that we’re just a few deaths from a Dungeon Break? Get out of here!”
The air itself rattled as the Life Constrictor let out a low hiss. Green smoke wafted out from the corners of its mouth and curled up around its head.
“We can’t!” the healer said, her voice gummy and thick, like she was trying to speak through a mouthful of food. “You’re the one that needs to leave. The snake has a neurotoxin in its breath! It slows your movement. We can’t move fast enough to get away.”
“I’m not so sure Cure is meant to deal with ailments this bad, but I should be able to with enough time,” Anna replied, dropping to her knees beside the healer of the other group and pressing her hands to the other woman’s Chestplate.
“Nobody else got hit by the poison, right?” Lillia asked.
Rodrick and Olive shook their heads as one.
“No. Rodrick got me out fast enough,” Olive said.
Anna’s patient sat up with a strangled gasp. She doubled over, coughing, and Anna moved on to the next one of the Ardent members without hesitation.
So much for not being sure if Cure was meant to handle something this bad. Anna handled it in just a few seconds flat. Did she just flood the skill with magical energy so it would perform faster?
But, by the time that the Ardent guild’s healer had managed to gather herself enough to wipe her mouth with the back of her hand, Anna had already made her way around the rest of the woman’s guildmembers and purged every single one of them of the poison.
Anna flopped to the ground with an exhausted groan. “Okay. I’m out. That took everything I had. That poison was really strong.”
“Who are you?” the shield-bearing warrior asked through a coughing fit. He pushed himself upright, wobbling as he rose, but managed to find his footing.
“Does it matter?” Arwin asked. “I think there’s a different line you should be starting with.”
The man reached up to his helm and pulled it off to reveal a clean-shaven face with straight black hair. His cheeks colored slightly with embarrassment, but there was a distinct sadness in his eyes as he looked back over to the Life Constrictor lying in wait. “You’re right. My apologies. Thank you for the timely save. We couldn’t have taken more than another blow or two. The snake was playing with us.”
“Did you get Jonah?” one of the women asked. “Is he—”
“Dead,” the warrior said. His fists tightened at his sides. “We will grieve later. We aren’t out of this yet. If we don’t deal with the dungeon—” The man cut himself off and glanced at Arwin, then blew out a breath. “Are you aware of what a Dungeon Break is?”
“Yes,” Arwin replied. “We don’t typically risk death to ourselves just to bail another group out. This dungeon is one strong push from teetering over the edge and taking half of Milten with it.”
The man gave him a grim nod. “Then you understand why we need to press onward. That snake has absorbed an enormous amount of magical power. If we can kill it, we can delay the break.”
“You can’t kill it, though,” Reya said. She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Are you seriously going to try again?”
“We got caught off guard the first time,” the other warrior said as he rose. “We need to. After Jonah—”
“The girl is right,” the dark-haired man before Arwin said with a sharp shake of his head. “We’ve already made a mistake. Without Jonah, we aren’t going to be able to take that thing down. It’s injured, but so are we. If one of us dies fighting it, we could trigger the very thing we’re trying to stop.”
“So we’re just going to give up and leave?” the healer asked. Her hands tightened at her sides. “How are we supposed to explain that to—”
“Leave that to me.” The dark haired-man looked back to Arwin and the others and inclined his head. “I know you only acted out of necessity but I thank your team, nonetheless. I will mention this to my guild.”
Arwin let out a snort. “I doubt they’ll think much of it but feel free. Tell them the guild that bailed you out was the Menagerie.”
Judging by the look in the man’s eyes, he didn’t recognize the name. That was only a mild surprise. Larger guilds had a lot of branches and people in them, after all. The part of the Ardent guild that managed purchasing goods probably only had limited interaction with the actual adventurers, so only some of them would know a blacklist by heart.
Which makes it even more suspicious that Busal did. That guy was waiting specifically for us, wasn’t he?
“I’ll do that,” the man said. He looked back to the snake, then grimaced. The look of regret in his eyes was one that Arwin recognized. The man shook his head and blew out a breath. “We’ll try to send reinforcements to deal with this. My group is weakened, but we have stronger adventurers. Be careful.”
With that, he gathered his people and they broke away.
“They could have been a bit more grateful,” Reya muttered. “That thank you almost felt like he was fulfilling an obligation.”
“He’s not thinking about how he and the others survived,” Arwin said, watching the group jog off. “His thoughts are on the one that didn’t. I don’t like the Ardent guild much, but I can give them a pass for that.”