Chapter 72: Alice

"..Okay, we made it, but what the hell is this?" Aria's brow twitched as she turned her head left and right, at a loss at the new stage.

"I don't know, but I think.." Elgin looked around as he wielded daggers, ready to strike at any given moment. "This should be the right place, right? There shouldn't be such a space if there was no use to it,"

"That makes sense, but.. really?" Reina had a dumbfounded expression.

Yan, who was standing right behind her also surveilled the environment with curious eyes.

"Illusory gas? Harmful substances? Anything?" Yan suggested the potential dangers of such stage.

Aria let out a long breath as she shrugged, telling something that everybody in the vicinity had been dying to say.

"Tell me, does this not look like a child's bedroom to you?" she asked.

"It does!" All three responded simultaneously, almost seeming comical with the timing and reaction.

The room was painted pink. There were toys scattered all over the ground, with varying sizes, shapes, and colors.

Books that were clearly children story books. A baby's crib covered by thin lace fabric.

It was a child's playroom.

'But why?' Aria was distraught.

All of a sudden, the stage atmosphere changed.

The stage before, its environment was completely normal for a dungeon. But one would not expect this sort of room they were currently facing to appear inside dungeons.

"More than anything.. this is creepy. It's unsettling," Reina crossed her arms, rubbing her forearm up and down. "The contrast between this place and the previous stages.."

"Well, it could also mean that this is the Boss room since it's so.. peculiar," Aria commented.

Her System wouldn't issue the notification, so she still had doubts.

Another doubt of hers was that the notification did not activate because the boss wasn't in this room, but how could that be?

Where else would the boss be if not for their stage room, and who are they supposed to fight?

Aria summoned Dianthe out of the space. The Water Spirit came out happily, swirling around Aria and awaiting her orders.

"Dianthe, could you check if there is any harmful substance in the air?" Aria asked.

The spirit nodded and entered the room, floating in the middle of it all. She began to detect the room's elements for hidden dangers.

The result came back as negative. It should've been a relief, but it made things even stranger.

Aria licked her lips as she looked behind her.

There was only the huge gate they had just passed through. They were currently not inside the room yet, but instead on a separate platform that was connected to the gate.

Stepping one step further should trigger the start.

"Well, I guess there is no other option than to search the area.. It's better than doing nothing. Any clues, anything," Aria said, rubbing her temples.

"So.. we enter now?" Reina asked.

"I guess so," Elgin was the first to step in.

With daggers still planted snugly in between his fingers, Elgin touched the nearest object to him.

However, unlike what they feared, nothing happened.

"Is it safe?" Reina pursed her lips as she too began to step inside the room.

Elgin nodded nonchalantly, not experiencing anything weird.

The team took that as a cue to get in.

Aria, however, stood still in her position.

Her eyes were piercing as she desperately scanned the surroundings.

"I don't think the trap is laid out as an offensive one. This should be a puzzle. A strange one," Aria deduced.

"I think so too," Rallaka answered from the side. He then stopped moving. "Though.. Aria," Rallaka called out.

"En," Aria hummed in response. "I know,"

There was something strange that only Rallaka and her recognized the moment they stepped inside the room.

But since everything had just started, it was too early to suspect anything.

______

Minutes passed as they searched the room, flipping everything upside down.

It was then that one member found something that was out of the norm. Out of place.

A grimoire with a purplish cover.

"Hey! I found something weird," Reina raised the book high, presenting it to her team.

The team gathered around the woman, observing the item with curious eyes.

"A grimoire in a children's room.. It certainly doesn't fit. But is it really that big of a deal? Maybe the creator forgot to take it away," Elgin inserted his input.

"Ao! The room was so meticulously designed, how could this only be a coincidence?" Reina protested.

"Well, first of all, try to open the book," Aria said.

Reina, still grumbling, pried open the cover and went to the first page.

Surprisingly, it opened without any resistance. Nice and smooth.

However, instead of clues, the front page only consisted of strange writings.

Everyone heaved a long sigh as they found the discovery to be disappointing. Except for Aria and Rallaka, who was accompanying her.

They had a different set of expression.

"What are these? Scribbles of a child? Hah," Elgin shrugged, turning around and preparing to search deeper since he thought nothing much about the grimoire's discovery.

Aria, however, had a different reaction.

Her mind fell into a temporary jeopardy.

"Hmp! I just wanted to point it out, alright?" Reina sulked, closing the book and wanting to put it back from the place she took it out from.

Aria snapped out of her trance and stopped Reina.

"..Wait, I can read that," Aria came closer, recognizing the characters as archaic letters.

She was familiar with them. In particular.. the way they were written.

The team became shocked with Aria's declaration, gathering around the woman as she handled the book and opened it once more for everyone to see.

"Aria, this is.." Rallaka chimed in from the side.

"Yes," Aria nodded as her fingers trailed over the pages. Her eyes scanned the contents and deciphered it. "It looks similar to that bastard's handwriting,"

By that bastard, they meant a certain infamous necromancer that had came across their minds several times inside the dungeon.

"..So our guess wasn't wrong? What are the chances? The slime cluster on the previous stage, the undead theme, and now.. his handwriting,"

Their first guess began when they saw a painting placed on a deserted corner. It caught their eye.

It depicted a man wearing heavy armor with a woman standing right beside him, donning casual clothes. However, there were no sights of a child.

It wasn't that fact that freaked them, though. Although the face was blurred, and the quality was not defined, the two silhouettes appeared to look quite similar to someone that would suit the undead theme around this dungeon.

"But why a child's room? Does Leonis have a fetish or something?" Rallaka couldn't comprehend why.

His eyes were drawn onto the letters.

Leonis' handwriting was messy, but they could grasp the meaning after a couple tries.

It spelled 'Alice'.

Someone's name. Whose was it?

"Maybe we got the wrong guess?" Rallaka asked.

Throughout all this, Aria stayed silent.

After thinking for a couple moment, she spoke up.

She walked away from her team and went to a separate corner, not minding their reactions.

She had to discuss this with Rallaka first.

"Do you know Leonis' wife? The one that passed away tragically, the one that became the motivation for him to become rampant?" Aria looked at Rallaka as she questioned.

"Of course I know. If I'm not wrong... her name was.. Adele, right?"

Aria nodded, confirming Rallaka's guess.

"To tell you the truth, the reason that Leonis went berserk was not only because of his wife Adele. That woman.. it is heavily implied that she was pregnant with Leonis' child according to the circulating data we investigated through," Aria still remembered the incident.

She took part in it, and even got to interact with Leonis before he went away on his own journey.

At that time, his eyes was empty. In particular, before he left, he had muttered words.

Although it was hard to understand his meaning, Aria once deciphered it as him repeating the words 'wife' and 'daughter'.

A daughter.

"Then.. Alice should be..." It was Rallaka's first time hearing this piece of news, but he took it very easily as the wedded couple was very harmonious.

It wouldn't be surprising if they managed to get a few shots at pregnancy with how loving they are, even when separated by Leonis' busy schedules.

"His daughter, probably," Aria replied.

Aria stood up, her eyebrows furrowed as she went back to her team.

"Look for anything that has the name Alice written on it," Aria faced her team and asked them this favor.

The team was slightly disturbed by how fast Aria took in the situation and relayed the message. The letters were extremely cryptic. Reina, in particular, was a multilingual person that could recognize most languages' characteristics when quizzed on it.

However, the letters presented on the note were like ancient symbols, not alphabets. It was a mystery how Aria managed to decipher it.

With their amount of trust placed on Aria, they carried out the task, but they couldn't help but keep the looming suspicion inside their minds as they searched.

Within minutes, Aria's prediction came true.