Miri and Anne continued exploring the dungeon to try to find the corpses of the high-ranking royal mages in the hopes that they might find a key rune on their bodies that would allow them to access the main ritual room.

  To shorten their search, they made sure to search the areas that they hadn’t searched before, reaching to the most obscure areas of the keep. At the same time, they would try their best to move away from the sound of a faint, rumbling growl in the far distance—one that’s likely from the chimeragon itself, which they correctly assumed was still very much alive. It was a delicate and terrifying procedure to go through, sort of like two mice trying to scavenge for food while avoiding a large cat prowling the vicinity.

  For the most part, they were able to avoid direct contact with the chimeragon so far. However, after almost an hour of searching, they were still not able to find the key rune that they were looking for.

  “Man, this is taking forever,” Miri whined, that one hour of searching felt more like ten hours in her eyes. “Are you sure the high-ranking mages around here even have the key runes to begin with? We have searched about a dozen skeletons—all wearing the same royal mage robes—and none of them seems to have that rune.”

  “Well, what I suggested was only a theory, after all,” Anne replied. “I would be equally upset if that theory turns out to be untrue.”

  “Or, maybe your theory is still true but, for some reason, the key runes are still nowhere to be found,” Miri suggested. “Maybe the high-ranking mages, since they are so high-ranking and all, were the first ones to ditch the place as soon as the rampaging incident started, leaving their underling mages to fend for themselves. Since they were all able to leave this keep alive, they had likely taken their key runes with them, thus making this entire trip practically pointless.”

  “That may be true. Or, maybe there’s another equally dark possibility,” Anne said, a grim expression on her face. “Maybe since the high-ranking mages were the ones with access to the main ritual room, they were forced to use the room itself to barricade themselves from the chimeragon during the attack. Since the door to the ritual room is so fortified, it would make for the perfect barricade, one that not even the chimeragon could break through.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “At the same time, since they are too fearful of the chimeragon, they ended up keeping the door to the ritual room sealed shut, thus leaving them trapped inside. Since various attempts to kill the chimeragon shortly after the incident had been unsuccessful, these high-ranking mages were essentially left for dead at that point.”

  Miri and Anne took a brief, silent moment to consider which possibility was darker.

  “Man, neither option seems to be in the high-ranking mages’ favor,” Miri remarked. “Either they were scummy for abandoning their underlings or they were unlucky to be abandoned themselves.”

  “Miri, look! I found someone!” Anne cried out all of a sudden, spotting a body amongst the scattered skeletons within one of the dark, deserted areas. “And…he is alive!”

  Miri hurried towards Anne to check the body. It was that of an unconscious young boy, about 14 or 15 years old, in fresh leather and linen attire of a typical adventurer. He had a head of short, dark, curly hair and olive-toned skin. His head seemed to have sustained some kind of blunt-force injury as stains of dried-up blood flowed from his forehead down to one side of his face.

  Anne began performing a quick medical diagnosis on the boy to check his vital status—doing things like checking his pulse, examining his pupils, and such.

  “He’s still alive, but barely,” Anne said urgently. Then, with a cast of Vital Healing on the boy, imbuing its head with a swirling of yellow light, the boy was finally able to wake up. “Hello, there. Take it easy now. Are you alright?”

  “Uhh, yeah…I think so…what happened?” the boy said with a weak voice.

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out as well,” Miri said. “We just found you lying here all by yourself, knocked unconscious. Given your attire, I’m guessing you’re here to hunt down the runes as well. You seem a bit young to be doing this sort of thing, don’t you think?”

  “Miri!” Anne scolded lightly.

  “What? I’m just saying,” Miri replied to Anne before returning her gaze to the boy. “What’s your name, kid?”

  “Umm…my name is Isaiah. Isaiah Victorstein,” the boy answered.

  As soon as they heard the name, Miri and Anne briefly glanced at each other with looks of shocking surprise.

  “Wait, did I hear that correctly?” Miri questioned. “You said your last name is…Victorstein?!”