Chapter 144 - 144: Reunion

The trio followed the icy blue devil while War God tried to gather information about the city.

"So we were trained by a few members of the city but apparently they never told us some really important things like... pets."

The blue devil smirked to herself before floating into the air with her wings spread out, her gaze settling on the trio but mostly on the demoness.

"Fine I shall explain what I see you have already done that should be fixed before you get in trouble."

She pointed at shade first and motioned generally at his body.

"The male elf, he must wear bracelets that are visible across the majority of his wrist as this designates him as a combat related member of your group rather than a pet... oh and removed the piercings."

Shade brought a hand to his ear where he had a number of piercings that he had liked the look of.

"Why the hell do I have to remove them? I like them."

She started to cackle before she relaxed.

"Listen, males are given pretty objects by their mates and when standing near your demoness friend everyone will assume that you are her pleasure pet since no self respecting infernal would take a male of another species as a mate but you would easily be seen as a lover due to those pretty bits on your ears."

He had an expression of discomfort as he put his hood up.

"Hm, they will look at you strangely but you have the right to wear what you wish as a rogue class."

Hope watched the two before stepping forward with a defiant look on her face.

"You're making this really uncomfortable ma'am, what is your name? Mine is Hope."

The devil seemed to be caught off guard before she smirked and looked at the beastfolk.

"My name is Halacynth and you might want to be careful young beastfolk because you might get mistaken for a member of her coven, you must be sure to distance yourself from the way she dresses and you must be sure to wear the same bracelets as your friend."

"Listen, you make things sound really uncomfortable you know? In our world it isn't normal to tell people to dress in certain ways or to stop wearing certain things. We moved past that years ago."

Halacynth stared at Hope when she spoke about the different norms of the two worlds, her response was to simply disregard Hope rather than speak.

"Hey Listen devil girl, we came here to see our friend again and we don't care about how angry you people get just because you dont like how we do things."

The disagreement was growing as they finally entered the city, a beautiful city full of so many infernal beings that they were struggling to see where things were.

"Your friend, what does he look like? We do not get many non infernals in our city these days so you will be easily recognized by him."

The trio looked at eachother as they realized that she hadn't even mentioned a problem with the group being allied with what they understood to be a heavily protected group in infernal society.

"Well he is apparently a very bizarre looking devil, I think we will easily spot him if he travels nearby... are there any dungeons? He would probably be there."

"Actually there is a dungeon that is popular with people of your level, the Toxic Swamp is common but also dangerous so be careful if you enter it."

The trio turned to discuss with one another begore turning back to their guide and nodding.

"We want to go that dungeon."

~

When Ezekiel finished the dungeon again and placed the rewards on the shop.

After selling his gear he checked on Amaru with a caring smile for his new pet since she was slowly growing in power.

After her most recent stint in the dungeon she had gained thirty-three levels with a nice improvement to her stats.

As he was petting her head and preparing to enter the dungeon again he heard a cry joy behind him.

"BELIAL!"

He turned around and saw the three party members he had left in the previous city, with a big smile on his face he jogged over to greet them.

"Hey! I can't believe you guys finally made it here, and you actually met Halacynth too!"

The others were surprised that Belial knew the random npc but the expression on Halacynth's face was even more shocked than the players.

"The friend you were here to meet is HIM?!"

She watched the group with a look of horror before she flew back to the city.

"What's her problem?"

Belial laughed at the reaction before shaking his head and inviting the three to his party.

"You have a lot to learn about the society of the abyss, they do things in a very weird way. Come on let's go farm the dungeon."

The group gathered around the dungeon entrance as they explained their experiences to eachother, Belial did not tell them everything about Lucretia and why he was there even if it could be confusing for the group.

When the group finally entered the dungeon Belial took time to explain how dangerous the enemies would be.

"The enemies in this dungeon are very ambush oriented and they use a lot of poison, do not ignore anyone because you could miss an ambush just because you cannot hear them."

He soon noticed the first enemy nearby while grinning with pride over his abilities growing so much compared to when they had last met, this was the perfect opportunity to see how different things were.

He watched as the beast caught sight of their group and began to approach, when it got closer he was able to see that the creature resembled a panther with a back covered in spines.

The spines were full of poison mana and under the fur he could see the outline of so many hidden below the fur.

He prepared a spell that would harm the creature enough to make it back away if the target wasn't able to notice in time, the result of this was the creature pouncing on Shade.

When he watched the creature attack he also saw War God attack the beast with such a savage strike that the creature was sent crashing back into a large tree.

His smile grew as their instincts had obviously become so honed in this game that their past game history made them much more dangerous.

He sent a Frenzied Void Needle at the beast as well while Shade used a much more powerful version of the death mark to slay this creature while it was knocked on the ground.

He had helped Amaru gain enough stats from the dungeon that even if she participated in every battle the result would most likely be just the experience gained.

'I have to rely on my skills to see the enemies so it's no wonder these expert players are able to defeat the dungeon enemies more easily than I can, they have their teamwork down to instinct.'

Once he got back into the groove of the dungeon he led the way with his mana sight allowing him to point out every enemy.

Shade did not have a bow as powerful as his primary weapon but apparently the one he did have was enough to cause significant damage with the skill he had identified as Executioner's Mark.

With beasts attacking them at a disadvantage from low hp Ezekiel gave the majority of the combat contribution to Amaru, her level was low enough to grow faster from the stage they were at anyway.

"The dungeon boss is a serpent monster that knows magic and has powerful physical abilities so we can't be disorganized. I haven't been able to kill the hard mode boss with Amaru yet so I don't know how much it has changed since normal mode."

"Hmph, who's Amaru? Another racist devil you've been spending time with?"

'....What?'

Hope had caught him off guard with such an out of the ordinary statement that he was actually wondering if he had misheard her until she stared at him.

"Uh no Amaru is a my new pet... what racist devil women have I been hanging out with? The devil women in this city rarely even speak to me because of their customs."

As he said this Shade began to laugh.

"Oh so you get to walk around without issues just like Layla? At least you didn't get called a fuck toy because of piercings."

This had been said with a sly smile and a playful tone but underneath that Ezekiel could feel something was wrong.

"Ok seriously what happened? And they don't speak to me because they would get reprimanded by their own coven members."

As Hope began to recount the events of the woods with Halacynth his confusion slowly changed into anger over how his friends had been treated.

"Don't worry, next time we see her i'm giving her a piece of my mind to correct her for that behavior. She wont be bothering any of you again."