The place looked creepy. No one in their right mind would enter that tomb.
Well, hunters thought differently, it seemed. I was just too scared to go there because I couldn’t fight. If I could defend myself against the monsters, then maybe I would think differently.
We stopped in front of the tomb. A double wooden door was at the front. Massive, at least 5 meters in height or something. It also had two statues, one on each side. Those statues were gargoyles.
The doors didn’t look so dusty, but I had no idea if it rained inside that forest or not. If it did, then it made sense how the doors looked so clean.
Mike and his team were trying to act fearless, you know, heroes that could go anywhere and fight anything without feeling a hint of fear.
But I could see he wasn’t that calm. Fuck, they were just a rank D hunting party. Obviously, exploring a place they hadn’t even heard of would get them tense.
They tried to find ways to let go of their anxiety.
"This is a rank D dimensional rift, so it can’t be that dangerous," Mike said as he turned around to face the rest of his team, "we’ll be fine. Also, she’s here with us."
He was referring to the red-haired woman whose name I had yet to find out.
I was just chilling there, not saying a word because I knew how they would act, but Mike came to talk with me. I wasn’t expecting that.
"You are carrying everything we got from the hunt so far, and if you die, we can’t open this ability of yours to get our loot. So, please, Vince, stay the fuck behind and try not to die."
He then added, "Everyone, make sure Vince doesn’t die. He’s a piece of shit, but he has our stuff."
A weird treatment. They hated me to their bones, for some reason. Saw me as trash, someone they wanted far away, not there with them. But at the same time, they had to protect me. I was like their golden goose. Or rather, golden mule.
Anyway, Mike moved first, trying to open the tomb’s double door. It had a metal ring on the door. All he had to do was pull it, and then push the door open.
It wasn’t locked. I walked on the back end of the team, away from the front lines. The red-haired woman was right beside me.
"I’ll make sure you don’t die," she whispered to me, "you know, I also want my payment after this is over."
I was curious to know how much she was getting for it, but I didn’t ask.
The tomb didn’t look that big from the outside, but the whole thing was underground.
The first thing we saw after opening that door was a staircase leading down. I saw a few graves on the walls with things written on them. The words were unknown to me.
"Stop looking at those things and keep moving," Mike said.
He was angry that I was wasting time looking at those graves, but when his teammates did it, he was fine with it.
"Boss, what do you think these are? I mean, who was buried here?"
The man who asked that was Ricky.
"I don’t know, and I don’t care. What will knowing this change in our lives? Look, we just need to explore this tomb, get the loot, and get out. It’s that simple."
For the first time, I kind of agreed with Mike on that one. They were already set to explore the tomb anyway, so what was the difference in knowing about the graves?
The team walked down the staircase, each step landing on the solid rock beneath their feet. It was dark inside. I took out the headlamps before Mike asked me to. I was weak, but not dumb.
I gave them headlamps. Everyone attached them to their heads, and then we proceeded down the staircase.
The staircase had a few destroyed parts, so knowing where we were stepping was more than needed. Also, we had to make sure we saw the monsters coming before they got too close.
Every single one of them had their weapons drawn, ready to fight against the undead.
Nothing came to attack us, though. We just walked, and walked, going down the staircase until we arrived at the bottom.
The first thing we saw was a corridor. Only one, leading forward to who knows where.
Something was different this time. The walls had torches on them. Blue ones. Everyone knew these types of torches had mana on them, and that’s why they remained on for long periods of time.
"Keep your eyes open now," Mike said, "the monsters might come now."
My shoulders tensed up. The atmosphere of that place, with the faint blue light and the absence of sound, was nerve-wracking. I preferred to be outside, fighting the skeletons in the foggy forest, than to be there.
That fucking ominous feeling. Plenty of movies and books told me that the place was dangerous, and that we were being too greedy for going there.
We kept walking for about ten minutes with nothing happening. Then footsteps came our way.
The footsteps grew louder and louder. Whatever it was, it was getting closer to us. We couldn’t see what it was.
Mike gestured for us to stop moving and wait for the creature to reach us. Mike had his katana ready, Sarah her chains, and Ricky just stood there. He didn’t have any weapons with him, and I didn’t know what his ability was.
All of us were expecting a skeleton, or those draugr-like creatures that we saw outside in the forest.
But it was a human. At least it looked like one.
A man wearing some leather clothes, ragged in a few spots. Clearly, the man had been down there for a while.
"What the fuck is that?" Sarah said.
No one knew what the creature was at first glance, but I knew it. Fuck, it wasn’t hard to figure out what that man was. Mike and the others were just stupid.
"A vampire," I said.
"A vampire? Stop talking shit, Vince," Mike roasted me.
To their surprise, the man in front of us spoke to them in their language.
"He’s right," he said, "I’m a vampire."
Everyone could barely breathe. During their academy training, all hunters studied the different creatures that could be found inside the dungeon. A vampire? All vampires were at least C rank.
That wasn’t good for us.