We walked slowly down a hill and stopped when we came to a huge wall of stones and dirt. There was a stone altar in front of the wall, and as Mira approached the altar with the crystal in her hand, it flew out of her hand and landed on the altar.

  ‘’It scared me again,‘’ Mira said with a giggle, and at that moment the wall began to descend very loudly into the ground. Mira took the crystal from the altar and we went inside, it was slightly dark, we were surrounded on all sides by pink and blue crystals, Sergius warned me twice to be careful where I stepped. After we had taken a few steps, I stopped, everyone was moving forward, I looked at a flat crystal and my reflection looked at me. I moved my head to the right and so did my reflection, I raised my hands and so did my reflection...

  I HAD A REFLECTION!

  Is that what I looked like! I was so fucking cute! My mother used to show my face with an illusion, but I was much younger then and... I'm so fucking cute! I knew it was common in the Rosarium culture to show affection by touching and kissing, but now I understood better why my parents always kissed me, I was so fucking cute!

  “My lord?” Nazir came up to me curiously and I jumped up and looked at him.

  I said, “Get this crystal down somehow, we're taking it home!” and he looked at the crystal, then looked at me, then looked at my reflection.

  “Sure…”

  He quickly told the men with the pickaxes to lower this crystal very carefully, and after a while they managed to take down my ‘new mirror’. I wouldn't be sorry if we found nothing in this dungeon now. Just in case, we went back so we could get the crystal on the way out and left it at the entrance, then went back in again.

  For a while we went on without any problems, we passed through many corridors full of crystals. After a few steps Sergius stopped and said, “Something is wrong.”

  Ivan looked around, “It doesn't look like there is a problem, why did we stop?” he asked curiously and Sergius replied, “If there is no problem, there are problems.

  Check your surroundings frequently and stay alert."

  Everyone started to move more cautiously, even the smallest stone slipping made us nervous. After minutes of not encountering anything, the corridors ended and we came to a large area. This area filled with hundreds of crystals, slightly bigger than the one in Mira's hand, both fascinated and frightened me when I looked at it. In a living dungeon, in an area full of such precious stones, it was impossible that there was nothing to protect it.

  I gripped my dagger tightly, and I realised that Arthur was looking intently around him, every step echoing, the wind whistling through the crystals making our hair stand on end. I took the firestone Sergius had given me out of my bag, and tucked it into the belt around my waist, just in case.

  When we saw a door in front of us, curiosity filled me, we approached, Ingrid and I were guarded by three people, each holding their weapons and staffs tightly. Of the 20 people with us, 12 of them were melee orientated, they were going to attract the monsters' attention and kill what they could, the remaining 8 were mages, 5 offensive mages, 2 defensive and utility, and we had a time priest for healing.

  “Alt, don't try to fight if you don't have to, the creatures we faced last time were not easy.

  But if you have to fight, they have these bright red areas on their bodies, try to hit them there.” Sergius said in a low voice and I nodded.

  The door in front of us seemed to get bigger as we approached it, and if we walked a little further we would reach it, but suddenly we felt a jolt and stopped. We quickly looked around us, every nook and cranny and spot in the darkness... When I was fully focused I could even hear and feel the fall of a drop of water, and that's when I realized that something was jumping towards us.

  It had a dragon-like head and a long, four-legged body. Its claws and back were covered with crystals. It jumped on the young warrior with the mace, who was walking ahead of us, and in a split second it bit off the unarmored parts of his arm and chest and ran quickly and disappeared into one of the crystals. Everyone raised their weapons in the shock of the moment and we looked around.

  The man he had bitten screamed in pain for a while, the time priest rushed to him and tried to heal him with the blue light from his hand, but with a huge gash in the right side of his chest it was impossible to heal him, and finally the light in his eyes faded as he struggled to breathe. Before we could come to terms with the man we had lost, the creature jumped at us again, but this time there were two of them. In that brief pause I examined the creature and noticed the glowing red area under the left armpit, both creatures had weak spot in the same place.

  This time the attack was aimed at Nazir. Nazir swung his sword up from below with the blunt side, knocking the creature off balance and sending it into the air like a ball, and Sergius quickly fired a small, elegant dagger, hitting the weak spot.

  “Stay focused! We might collect your bodies later, but if I have to choose between the treasure and your body, I'll choose the treasure!

  Besides, I want the only time I talk to your mother is if I'm flirting with the old bitch, so stay still and focus!”

  When I heard the men shouting at once, a smile appeared on my face, even though there was a dead body in front of me. Three more of the same creature came out, each with a different colored crystal on its back. Red, green and yellow. The one we killed had a blue crystal on its back and the one that came out after it had a colorless crystal on its back.

  “Don't attack with the element that is the color of the crystal on their back, they can absorb the element!”

  After Sergius said that, the creature with the red crystal jumped very high, and as soon as it opened its mouth, I noticed that there was a fire inside. I quickly raised my hand and zeroed the air around its head, and the fire disappeared. The creature started to fall down in a panic and suddenly we realized that it was suspended in the air with purple waves around it. When I turned my head, Arthur's eyes were glowing purple. He turned the creature's chest towards us, and one of the men threw his spear at the creature's weak point as it stood motionless.

  “Have you done something, my lord?” Nazir asked, as if he had noticed something, and I lifted my shoulders and pointed at Arthur as if I didn't know.

  Arthur looked at me wide-eyed, “What?” I asked, and he watched me for a very short time and then remained silent.

  There were three creatures left, they were too aggressive and too fast. The creature with the yellow crystal on its back climbed up to a crystal that reached up to the ceiling and formed a lightning bolt in its hand in dazzling light blue and yellow colors. As the sound of the bolt took over the whole area, it grabbed onto the crystal with its feet and began to form another one. While the other creatures were distracting us, he threw one of the bolts at us and before he could throw the other one, Ivan threw a huge fireball at the creature's head and made it fall. Immediately afterwards we were surrounded by a stone shield created by one of the mages next to us and we survived the explosion.

  We took the opportunity to move quickly, the creature was about to get off the ground when Nazir kicked it and before it could recover its balance, a woman in half plate armor thrust her sword into its weak spot.

  “What element is it resistant to?” Ivan asked, pointing to the creature with the colorless crystal and Sergius replied, ”I don't know.”

  I noticed that said creature was closing in on one of the mages, a man with a shield also noticed it and quickly moved in front of him. The creature stepped back and spun quickly around us, throwing gray jagged stones at another of the mages. Were they some kind of metal?

  In a split second I managed to create a stone wall from the ground and pointed at the creature while everyone was looking at me. As the creature was hissing looking at us the guy with the shield charged at it and when it tried to run away, one of the mages surrounded it with walls on 3 sides. From the 4th side the guy with the huge shield ran towards it, screaming and toasted the creature between the walls. He grabbed it by the head and threw it to the ground, then thrust his sword into its weak spot. The man let out a war cry and we turned on the last remaining creature, which let out a loud scream and then ran towards one of the crystals.

  We threw fireballs, arrows, and spears at it, but some of them got caught in the crystals on its back and some of them it managed to avoid with quick movements and the creature was just about to disappear into the crystal when it was surrounded by purple waves and we approached, and killed it as Arthur was holding it.

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  We looked at each other and took a deep breath. I saw Ingrid looking at the dead man on the ground, she looked scared. I was relieved that someone was finally reacting normally to these things. But I seemed to be getting used to it, probably because I had killed someone with my own hands, I couldn't feel anything when I saw a dead body. Or I thought I couldn't, I looked at my shaking hands and took another deep breath. I felt Arthur's small hand on my neck and I saw him looking at me with a serious expression. Without saying anything, he jumped on my head and sat on top of my head.

  I reached out my hand towards him and felt a sense of relaxation when I petted his head. I breathed again and followed Nazir who was looking at me curiously.

  We were standing in front of the huge door, its ring-shaped handles raised high. Who would be tall enough to open this door? There were no giants inside, were there? We had a hard time pushing the door open, or more accurately they had a hard time, I watched from a distance with Mira and Ingrid.

  When they finally managed to push the door open, Sergius said, “We don't know what's ahead, stay close,” and we went through the gap.

  The area we came to was much smaller than the one just before, and on the wall in front of us were 6 crystals, purple, green, orange, yellow, red and blue. We approached the wall and saw that there were dozens of crystals of different colors in a chest of transparent crystals.

  One of the men picked up a red crystal and said, “Well, let's take these and go back, can't we? There's a fortune here.” And we looked at each other.

  “We're here for the artifact,” Mira replied and took a blue crystal from the chest and looked around. Against the wall, in the distance, we saw a structure resembling an altar. Mira felt the crystal attached to the belt around her waist, the one we used to enter the dungeon, vibrate, so she picked it up and it flew towards the altar. As the crystal began to float in the air, it suddenly sent a colorless, transparent light straight ahead, and while we were looking at it in amazement, a number of altars emerged from the ground. On the altar where the main crystal was, there were many mirror-like crystals with flat faces, and when Mira held the crystal in front of the light, she saw that she could send a lot of light in different directions, and when she held the blue crystal in her hand and shined the crystal on the wall, she said, “This is going to be easier than I thought.”

  At that moment we heard the voices of dozens of creatures echoing off the walls of the dungeon, resembling gorillas and sympanzees, their backs and arms covered with crystals. They didn't seem to be made of crystal, the chest and head parts of their bodies were clearly made of flesh and bone. Just like the creatures we had encountered before, they were climbing up and down the crystals and walls around us, and they started running at us at a fast pace. They were coming from all directions, “We'll hold them off, you take care of the lights!” Sergius shouted and again everyone grabbed their weapons.

  Mira took a lot of crystals from the chest and placed them one by one, the light changed color as it passed through the different colored crystals, she was trying to move the altars and keep order while we were fighting the monkeys that were running towards us.

  The monkeys outnumbered us, some of the gorillas had crystal clubs and swords, I saw some of our men engaged in a sword fight with them, and while our defensive line was dealing with them, the mages were exposed. One of the monkeys jumped towards me swinging a crystal sword, Nazir stepped in front of me and grabbed the monkey by the neck in mid-air and threw it into a corner towards a large sharp crystal. When the crystal pierced the monkey's chest, the impact kicked up a cloud of dust and the crystals flew into the air. That and many other monkeys started screaming. These creatures were communicating with each other. As we killed the monkeys, they kept coming, and the worst thing was...

  “Son of a bitch stole the crystal!” shouted Mira.

  Wyll quickly grabbed the monkey that had stolen the red crystal with many vines out of his hand, and after Mira stuck a spear of ice into the monkey's head, she took the crystal and put it back in its place.

  “Guard the crystals!” Sergius ordered and everyone approached the crystals.

  The gorillas and monkeys grabbed a young warrior with a sword and shield and a fire mage by the legs and arms and pulled them to their sides. I watched as one of the gorillas tore off the fire mage's arm with his hand, knocked him to the ground as the fire mage screamed in pain, and threw his dead body towards us. A man with a giant shield rushed forward and saved us from the horrible sight, and the monkeys drew the warrior to them and pierced him with their crystal knives.

  I saw Sergius clenching his teeth as he looked at the dead men, he took a deep breath and took out 2 firestones from a small gray bag around his waist and threw them at the monkeys standing in a herd. I looked at the 'crystals' of dozens of monkeys scattered by the impact of the explosion, which was very unpleasant. The gorillas, realizing that we had easily defeated the monkeys, began to attack us themselves, first a gorilla jumped on Nazir, screaming and swinging a huge crystal club at Nazir several times, and Nazir deflected it with his greatsword. I noticed another gorilla charging towards us, it seemed to be aiming at me and Ingrid. Nazir was in no position to protect us and I was already tired of being on the protected and watching side. I charged at the gorilla running towards us, dodged his attack easily as he swung his crystal sword at me, which he held in both hands, and then I jumped up and thrust my dagger through his ear and almost everyone in the team watched in shock as the gorilla fell to the ground.

  At that moment another gorilla grabbed the man with the shield who was protecting Mira and threw him into the air, we all turned towards Mira in fear and the gorilla was reaching out his hand towards her when Arthur jumped quickly over everyone's shoulders and ran to Mira and jumped on the gorilla's hand and touched it and the whole body of the gorilla was covered with a purple wave. He knocked the gorilla to the ground, played with it like he was bouncing a ball, hit it against the walls and then threw it at the other monkeys, crushing dozens of them.

  When he came over I looked at him curiously, “Can you do that even to those ones?!” I asked in amazement and he replied “What? Of course.”

  “Why did you wait until now?”

  “For the same reason you don't use the fire stone.

  I might need it in the future, and also it uses too much mana.”

  After Mira recovered from the brief shock, she continued to place the crystals, and when she caught another stolen crystal and replaced it, the ground began to shake with a sound like an explosion. Many creatures and 4 of us fell to the ground as both us and the monkeys tried to keep their balance. When I looked at the wall I saw that all the stones were glowing, the puzzle was not very difficult but the monkeys made it very frustrating. The wall in front of us split open to the left and right and the monkeys started to run away from the door.

  I looked at the creature corpses on the ground, they didn't have a flow. The creatures we killed in the previous area also didn't have a flow, was this something to do with the living dungeon? And how did the monkeys get here anyway?

  I was going to ask Nazir about this, but looking at the men we had lost, I realized that now was not the best time to ask. Sergius noticed me looking at the bodies and came over to me, “Keep your head up, we haven't reached the end of the dungeon yet.” he said, tapping me twice gently on the shoulder.

  “Are you going to talk to all their families?” I asked, “Except for one of the dead, the others have no family, and the other one was planning to ask a whore to marry with one of the crystals here.” he murmured, and scratched his eyes.

  “Let's rest,” he said, looking at me with a bitter smile.

  The wall in front of us was completely open, and there was a long corridor ahead of us again. Before we started moving forward, some of the men stood guard while others sat down to rest. I noticed that some were eating the sandwiches they had brought with them, while others were drinking. I picked up my flask and took a few sips of my poison, this time it tasted a bit like orange juice.

  I was sitting with my back against an altar and Ingrid was standing next to me, looking at me curiously.

  “I'm sorry, I'm just making things difficult for you.” she said, her voice suddenly shaking, and she had a look on her face that I couldn't understand, like she was sad. Her hands and legs were shaking as well as her voice.

  “Keep your head up.” I took another sip of my poison and she looked at my bottle, “Sorry, I can't give you this, it has my medicine.” I added but actually I was lying, the bottle was half full but... with poison.

  In this world you could create and water with mana and drink it, but it was not guaranteed to be clean, so it was not recommended.

  Mira took a canteen out of her small bag and shared it with Ingrid, then looked at the corridor.

  “I can feel something powerful up ahead, it's definitely the creature guarding the artifact.” she announced and we all sighed. After one half of us rested, the other half rested and we kept watch. I was really intrigued by the spectacular nature of the crystal dungeon, dozens of different colored stones clinging to the earth and the walls and after I saw another crystal with a flat structure, I walked towards my reflection and saw Nazir standing behind me.

  “Would you like to take this home with you, my lord?” asked Nazir, the crystal mirror in front of me was much smaller than the other one.

  “I don't know,” I replied and looked at him, ”but I wonder how it works.”

  He put his hand against the crystal, “It probably reflects not only living flesh, but also mana,” he replied, and when I looked at him in puzzlement he continued, “Your body is different from ours, a bit like that of the gods, but not as powerful, you are made up largely, perhaps even entirely, of mana.

  At least that's what a book I once read said about your race.”

  “Do you still have that book?” I suddenly asked and he shook his head, ”I'm sorry, my lord.”

  I took a deep breath and realized that everyone was slowly recovering, we had lost 4 people, but the morale of the team didn't seem to be too low. Maybe it was because they were experienced and they were used to loss, or maybe it was because the people who had died were not very close to them. That was actually a good thing in the situation we were in, because the last thing I would want here was a bunch of people throwing tantrums.

  We held our weapons tightly and began to move forward into the corridor. For a while we were able to go without encountering any creatures, we encountered many traps like small potholes and explosive crystals, but our scouts spotted them in advance and kept us away from dangerous paths. After minutes, which felt like hours, of careful, slow steps, we came to a huge oval arena-like area, again covered in crystals, but brighter than anywhere else we had passed, the ground was black earth and the top was filled with countless sparkling stones and crystals, reminiscent of a night full of stars.

  And the most spectacular part of this place was the giant creature sitting on the ground right in front of us, its back turned towards us, filled with colorless crystals.