The trio cautiously entered the darkness of the loot cavern, carefully treading along a rocky cavern covered by ceiling holes that sporadically showered the cave in rays of light; the light provided by the outside was used to navigate through the area. Rays of light are often shown in dark corners of the dungeon, swift shadows sprinting from one end to the other; the dark bodies running through the light, often showing smaller quadruped creatures.

Row’s anxiety steadily rose as they tread closely behind a calm Lucerna. The dark-skinned Kotka turned back to her allies with a smile to combat their frantic eyes. 

“Relax, Row, I told you if anything pops up I’ll protect the both of you.” 

Row is quaking in his boots. 

“E-e-easy for you to say! I know I needed that material, but I take it back! I don’t need it this badly! Quick! Take us home!” 

Lucerna raises her finger and wags it. 

“Nuh-uh-uh! No goin’ back now!”

Row stomped his foot. 

“You’re so mean!” 

“And you’re being really loud right now,” Lucerna calmly retorts. “Keep it up and something might just pop up and get us.” 

Rhea extends her arm to poke Row. 

“Like this.”

Poke

Row leaps backward on all fours, his ears and tail pointing erect toward the cavern ceiling. 

“Hissssssss!”

“Hahaha,” Rhea chuckles. “Relax, Row. That was me poking you.” 

Row leaped on his feet and pointed at Rhea. 

“Y-you… you suck! How is it that you’re not worried about this place?” 

“It’s not that I’m not worried…” Rhea began to explain. “I’m a little anxious, but if Lucerna said she’s been here plenty of times and that she’d protect us, then I may as well try and not be paranoid.” 

Lucerna nods and smiles. 

“You’re so right! That’s the sound of a tried and true adventurer in the making!” 

“Adventurer, huh,” Rhea repeats. “I never really put much thought into that as a profession…”

“Because it’s a dangerous profession where plenty of people die! And Lu isn’t even an adventure! You consider yourself to be a thief says, turning to his friend. “Don’t you, Lu?” 

“Yeah… but thieves go on adventures all the time.”  

Drip 

“Huh?”

Lucerna raises her head to the dark ceiling and sees something clinging above. 

“Gyaaaaugh!” 

A creature lets out a muffled battle cry as it falls onto Lucerna, but she leaps back, dodging the surprise attack. Rhea and Row also jump toward Lucerna, dodging as well and examining the monster as it splats onto the ground and then rises on its feet. Lucerna gets a closer look at the creature and sees a small monster about two feet tall, holding a club covered in ooze; the monster itself was also covered in slime. 

“Woah!” Lucerna gasps. “It’s a Gooplin!” 

“W-what is it?” Rhea asked. 

Rhea is looking at the Gooplin sporadically jolting about and taunting the party. 

“A Gooplin is a goblin that was encased by a slime,” Lucerna explained. “Right now, the Goblin itself is dead, and after it dies, like a parasite, slimes take over their bodies.”

“A goblin and a slime? Like one of those fantasy creatures?” Rhea asked. 

“Those two monsters look quite real to me!” Row retorts. “If there’s a Gooplin here now, then that means there are-”

Row looks ahead and sees another goblin leaping mid-air ready to swing, but Lucerna kicks it away while a scared Row leaps into Rhea’s open arms.  

“Ah! Goblins!” 

Rhea examines her surroundings. Their forward position is beginning to be surrounded by an ensemble of goblins and slimes. 

“Looks like slimes are teaming up with them too…”  

“There aren’t too many in this cave. We can fend them off as long as we fight carefully.”

“We?” Row repeats as he jumps out of Rhea’s grasp. “Whatever happened to you protecting the both of us?” 

“Oh, I can fight off these little runts by myself,” Lucerna punches her hand. “But either of you are free to jump in any time you want.”

Lucerna takes a fighting stance, showing her left palm and fingernails elongated, while her right arm is pulled back, also in claw formation. She looks to her allies with a confident smirk on her face. 

“Don’t worry, I won’t be long.” 

Lucerna dives into combat, first clawing away a leaping slime, spreading its gelatinous body across the walls with a single swipe. Next, a goblin leaped into the air to swing its club down onto the Kotka, but she caught the wooden club with one hand and then punches the goblin into the ground, moving forward with her fist and putting all her body into the blow. She rolls forward and leaps into the air, catching two more slimes at once with cross-claw slashes. 

Rhea and Row are watching from afar, impressed by the agile Kotka’s actions. 

“Woooo…” Rhea whistled. “Your friend is something…”

“I-I must admit, I’ve never seen her in combat, but yeah, she is impressive.” 

Lucerna continued her assault on the small group of enemies, clawing away slime and goblin with ease, that was until, the hairs on her Kotka ears stood up, sensing danger behind her. She twists her body around and sees a glob of slime darting in her direction. Launched by the Gooplin, its club sprays a heap of slime onto Lucerna’s left leg. Suddenly, she felt a lot more weight press onto her appendage, pulling her more toward the left. 

“Wh-what the heck?!”

Lucerna tries to lift her leg from the ground but finds it incredibly more difficult given it feels as though her leg weighs several more kilos than before. In her fixation on her leg, she did not see another slime leap from her left. She kills it with one strike but is blindsided by another glob of slime launched from the right, striking her on her right arm. 

“Er… Row… we should probably jump in.”

“And do what? We don’t know how to fight! We’d just be getting in the way! Let her handle it!” 

Somehow, Lucerna is still barely able to defend herself, smacking away the creatures that try to jump onto her, until another goblin whacks her across the face with its club.

WHAM

"Gauckgauckgauckgauck!"

The goblin cackles as it deals a dizzying blow to the Kotka. Rhea balls her fist, and without thinking, she dives ahead.

“Lucerna!” Rhea calls out. 

Row holds out his hand.

“Wait, Rhea!” 

Another goblin leaps into the air, winding its club back, ready to back the back of Lucerna’s head in. As it flies into the air, Rhea meets it halfway. She jumps into the air and reaches to grab the back of the goblin’s head. Its jaw rests atop Rhea’s shoulder as the two fall back onto the stone ground, driving the goblin’s face into the rock with a three-fourths facelock neckbreaker. 

Crack

Rhea breaks the goblin’s face onto the pure stone and releases her hold. She moves herself off of the goblin’s neck and kicks herself up to her feet. The other goblin rushes over to attack, but Rhea disarms the creature and smacks it away with its weapon, sending it sliding across the ground. She then looks around. There is a cold glare in her eyes as she looks down at the small group of enemies. A slime tries to crawl up to her leg, but she stomps it on her heel while glaring down the group. The dwindling numbers begin to back off, finally scattering back into the darkness behind them. 

As the bustling noise dies down, Row steps forward from his hiding position. 

“Th-they did it…!” 

Rhea walks over to Lucerna, who is on her knees. 

“Are you hurt?”

Lucerna’s ears wriggle and she tries to break free from her slimy prison. 

“N-no!”

Rhea raises an eyebrow. 

“No?”

“I… there’s still more!” Lucerna cried. “I can hear them coming from the dark!” 

Rhea and Row raise their heads and see an army of beaming eyes pointed in their direction. As they step out of the darkness, a small army of goblins and slimes step forward. 

Rhea’s eyes widen as she feels her heart accelerate. Row looks behind him and sees another path leading deeper into the loot cavern. 

“W-we need to get out of here…” 

Rhea eyes the exit ahead.

“I-I’m pretty sure we came from that way! They’re blocking our way outta here!”

Row whips his body around.  

“Then we need to go deeper! C’mon!” 

Row runs deeper inside the cave as the army of enemies sprints toward the party. Rhea grabs Lucerna’s slimy body and throws it over her shoulder while following Row. 

In his desperation, Row’s eyes frantically scan from left to right, making last-minute direction changes through the unknown maze. Sometimes they were able to pass through total darkness, tripping on unknown stones and objects, other times they were blessed with light from above; a sea of stomping feet following swiftly behind them. Yet as they fell deeper, the light from above was sealed, and a red hue bled through the cavern; something that immediately caught Row’s attention. 

“A red light… could it be…?” 

Row turns the corner and sees a small floating ball at the center of the room. He feels himself light up. 

A red sprite!

He looks over his shoulder. 

“Rhea! Come! Go behind the stone wall!” 

Rhea follows Row, stopping behind a durable rocky wall. The woman is panting. 

“Wh-why’re we stopping?! What’re you doing?!” 

“Saving us all.” 

Row grabs a large rock resting beside his feet. 

“Time for me to put in my share of work.” 

He eyes the floating electrical sprite lighting the area, reels his arms back, and launches the rock. 

“DUCK!” 

Rhea ducks and lowers Lucerna to her side. Row ducks right after. 

The rock collides with the sprite, and the sprite immediately starts to build in energy. It cracks viciously, snapping its energy all around the room. The moment the small army entered the room…

KA-BOOM

The sprite explodes, completely eviscerating every single enemy in front of it in an electrical maelstrom. The sprite's voltaic energy sears across the walls; the creatures bodies are burnt to a crisp while the trio was left alive and in one piece.  

As the dust settled, Row leaped from his hiding spot, raising his arm in victory.

“Yes! We did it!” 

“Wh-what the heck was that?!” Rhea asked. 

“That entity we encountered was a red sprite. It's a very docile magical entity, unable to harm most unless you come very close to it. However, if it is damaged in any sort of way, it explodes. I remember studying its existence in a book. As a matter of fact…” 

Row manages to navigate through the darkness toward the former Red Sprite. He crouches down and feels something rough in between his fingers. 

“I believe this was one of the materials I was looking for. Thank you both for guiding me here.”

“Uh… you're welcome?” Rhea questioned. 

“Yeah…” Lucerna agrees while clawing away the rest of the ooze from her body. “You're welcome…”

“Unfortunately that does nothing for us when it comes to getting out of the cave.” Row said. 

“That it doesn’t,” Lucerna agrees, looking to the side. “And while I can barely see in front of my face right now without the sprite, I think I can see something thattaway.” 

Lucerna points in the direction of a dim light. 

“Doesn’t that lead deeper into the cavern?” Row asked. 

Lucerna nods. 

“Yup.” 

Row sighs. 

“And you still wanna press on after what just happened?” 

“We didn’t even find any Rhea clues,” Lucerna pinches her fingers. “I say we go on for just a liiiitle more.” 

Row sighs. 

“Undoubtedly you will be the death of me, but fine, let’s see what’s ahead, but let’s not delve too deep.”

“Gotcha. Ready, Rhea?”

“As I’ll ever be…” 

The trio steps further into the maze-like cavern, finally reaching the source of the dim light. A small pond resting in the middle of the room housed a tiny aquatic creature. Its back was facing the group as it merrily splashed about in the water. Rhea squints to get a closer look at the animal. 

“Is that a… seahorse?”