The Martial Unity

This was definitely a strange outcome. There were corpses on the floor that clearly died of natural causes that rotted normally. Furthermore, the skin of many of these corpses was sickly black.

"So the skins of these corpses that rot naturally and have been dead for quite some time were not the greenish-black like the others," Rui made an empirical observation. "That's interesting… That implies a correlation between them."

He glanced at the buildings. "Furthermore, these buildings were not constructed after the Shionel Dungeon was discovered. Not only is the age of the exterior worn away to a degree that is impossible to occur within a year but there's also an indication of erosion due to rain, which is absolutely impossible inside the Shionel Dungeon."

"So you're saying this isn't some strange feature of the floor, but that these buildings were constructed before Shionel Dungeon even came to exist, but wouldn't that mean…?" Kane frowned as the answer came to him.

"The town of Veril was a town that existed right outside the outskirts of the Shionel Confederation," Rui explained. "It used to occupy a place that is now occupied by the massive Shionel Dungeon. It was presumed that the town and all its inhabitants had been completely annihilated when the Dungeon erupted, as not a single trace, not even so much as a single brick from the entirety of the town had been found. People assumed that this meant that the town was utterly annihilated and crushed within the dungeon… There was even a large memorial honoring the deceased town and townspeople even if wasn't explicitly a part of the Shionel Confederation. However, if I'm not wrong, then this place is probably…"

Kane turned back to the corpse and the abandoned building with a dropped jaw. "And just like that, it became a dungeon floor? What are the odds, honestly?"

"I don't know," Rui admitted. "But it makes sense. The town would have had zero vegetation given that it was densely colonized, which meant that there was no vegetation in the village whose roots eventually reached the deep subterranean mine of esoteric mineral deposits, absorbing them and undergoing dungeonification. Thus the town as a whole was not overrun with roots immediately and instead got absorbed into the dungeon as a single piece."

"That's unbelievable, honestly," Kane sighed. "It's really hard to believe that despite being in the middle of everything, the town survived."

"Well," Rui remarked. "Survived is a strong word."

He gestured around to the broken building of which only the foundations were intact, the many long-rotted corpses that clearly died painful deaths. The corpses were mangled and broken, some corpses had heads that were completely flattened by debris.

"True," Kane nodded. "Still, that alone doesn't explain everything. Even if this town is the town of Veril that somehow survived being absorbed into the Shionel Dungeon. How does that explain the state of all the surviving people? How the hell did they become mindless monsters."

Rui considered the question, before sighing. "The same way all the animals taken into the Shionel Dungeon became monsters. I can't believe it, but the mutations and physiological changes caused to the humans that survived ingesting esoteric substances into their bodies caused them to all become those sickly creatures."

That was the only explanation that made sense to Rui, he genuinely couldn't conceive of even a somewhat reasonable explanation asides from this. It also matched his senses being hampered when he tried to use them to gather information on the man's corpse, thereby indicating the presence of the same esoteric substances that were ever present in the Shionel Dungeon.

"So these poor people had consumed whatever they found, and inadvertently started becoming like that?" Kane asked with a grim expression.

"Most likely," Rui nodded, sighing.

"Can they be helped?"

"…I can't be entirely sure, but almost certainly not," Rui evaluated. From his understanding of esoteric medical technology, this level of mutation and poisoning of esoteric substances probably could not be accomplished. "At the very least, if there does exist some solution out there. It almost certainly cannot be applied to humans on such a large scale as such a solution would include prohibitively rare and important esoteric resources. The Shionel Confederation would never spare such expenses and assets for low-class citizens that weren't even officially part of the nation."

"I see…" Kane sighed.

"Still, that doesn't mean we can't do anything for them," Rui replied. "All of them must be suffering horrendously on the inside, even if it doesn't look like it. The least we can do is end their nightmare and put them to rest."

"Yeah, I can definitely agree with that," Kane stood up. "Let's do that before we plunder this entire floor."

The two of them were under no obligation to do this. They could have followed their normal plans and harvested the floor of any esoteric yields that it had to offer. Yet, despite this, they both unanimously agreed to kill all the humans in the thirteenth floor and put them out of their misery.

"Be careful, however," Rui warned him. "If I'm not wrong, these people are no different from monsters at this point, they'll resist and fight back. They probably will display aggression as well considering that even docile species when monsterified turn hyper-aggressive. We'll have to fight."

In Rui's eyes, they were basically zombies.

"No problem."

The two of them stepped out in the open, releasing the Void Step technique.

"Hurh?" Many wandering humans were in the vicinity as they noticed the presence of the duo. Their bloodshot, black eyes widened and their pupils sharpened as their eyes seemed to regain focus and awareness. "AAAAAARGH!"

They let out guttural screams as they blasted forward toward the duo inhumanly fast with widened drooling jaws and arms stretched out.

WHOOSH 𝘣𝑒𝘥𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝑙．𝘤𝘰𝘮

BOOM!

Rui avoided a bullrush as the woman crashed into the ruins of the buildings that they had just exited, completely destroying it with her remarkably powerful momentum.

"They're as powerful as low-grade Martial Squires," Rui noted, "Don't let them bite or scratch you though. It's probably highly toxic."