Leo stood motionless between a familiar archway under the rays of moonlight creaking down from the shattered ceiling of the countless stone above them.
Neveah lifted her finger, signaling to Leo that they only had one moment left until the beast returned.
It was a nuisance of a monster, attacking only in intervals of distant countdowns from twenty, which had taken Leo and Neveah only three and a half hours of fighting the thing to learn its natural attack patterns.
Leo let out a low exhale, watching as the cold breath from his lungs filled the air in front of his face.
"Now..." Leo spun on his backfoot, violently pulling his bronze battle axe upwards to meet the monster resembling a giant eyeball with a gaping maw at the center of its retina.
Sure enough, the sound of flesh tearing filled the blackened dungeon around them.
Leo scoffed at how easily his axe tore through the fleshy carcass of the eye-monster.
"Don't get cocky, we still have about ten more floors until we return to Rakshaa's domain." Neveah calmly mentioned as she rubbed the dirt out from under her eyes and sat down against the archway.
Leo himself felt ragged and unable to put anymore effort into this expedition.
However, Leo himself was already determined on finding Reinhart within the ruins of Olympia, but just as both him and Neveah suspected, even with the amount of preparations and familiarity that were set upon this reunion with Olympia... The place had changed.
Somehow, the entire layout of the ancient dungeon had been completely altered since they had last been.
Even the number of floors had somehow changed, seeing as they counted eight floors down this far last time, and nearly twenty down already this time in seemingly the same amount of time.
"This is weird..." Neveah said, breathing heavily as she leaned her head back against the archway made of old stone bricks.
Leo looked down at his busted up gladiator armor made of pure bronze and sighed.
"I'm no good without energy... Can't even repair my body when injured anymore..." Leo grit his teeth and balled his fists up, his right hand tightening so hard on the handle of his battle axe that his knuckles went white under the shadowy ruins of Olympia.
"We already agreed that we would find a way to get your catalyst restored... Remember? You seen the horror of Reinhart's original wound first hand and up-close, and yet he still used mana in front of us a couple of years later... We will find a way, and maybe think about what you can learn from this... Ya know? Maybe you will value your own body enough after this to not rely so heavily on your affinity to instantly stop the pain. Your body remembers stuff ya know?" Neveah rambled on, lecturing and pestering Leo for nearly an hour before they got anywhere where Leo wasn't pulling his own long orange mane in hopes of getting attacked and ending said lecture.
Although it wasn't all going in one ear and out the other, as Leo did understand where Neveah was coming from, and she was right... After all, Leo's body carried more trauma than it could hold, as even though he was physically immortal, he could still feel the pain of an enemy's attack just like any other soldier.
Leo took a deep breath, resting on the other side of the arch as Neveah.
He looked at her, slowly he took in her appearance and compared it to his own.
She looked terribly tired, and although hard to see under the darkness of the underground world: She too was covered in bruises with her armor at the point of no return.
Leo looked down at the scarring on his ribcage.
Then...
"I sense something..." Leo growled... His eyes darting down the corridor and towards a barely visible bar covered door down the hall.
"That wasn't there last time..." Neveah confirmed his thoughts aloud.
"Come on..." Leo said, stepping down the hall with the blade of his battle axe pointed three feet in front of him.
As the two slowly got closer and closer... A pair of bars was revealed at the top of the metal door, showcasing the potential of this being some sort of prison right before their very eyes.
"Leo..." Neveah muttered quietly, clutching the handle of her greatsword tighter as they got closer to the barred off door.
Then...
A pair of crimson red eyes lit up from the other side of the small window...
Leo slowly crept closer, pressing his left palm against the cold metal bars of the window and standing on his tiptoes as he peeked in from outside.
A large man covered in a large dusty cloak slowly looked up, his crimson eyes meeting Leo's from the opposite side of the door...
"Rakshaa...?" Leo slowly asked, tilting his head and eyeing the burly figure up and down.
Then...
That terrible croaking voice returned... Low and full of a terrible power that is entirely capable of killing both Neveah and Leo where they stood.
And yet he did not respond, only making an effort to groan in annoyance... Then slowly leaning back and folding his arms within his prison.
"How did ya get stuck in there, buddy?" Leo asked, flashing his teeth from the safety of whatever had bounded Rakshaa to this new form of capture.
"Leo... Don't..." Neveah shook her head, placing a hand on his shoulder and slowly pulling him away from the door.
Leo's spine froze...
"Does that boy... Still carry my Axe...?" Rakshaa growled dejectedly from the other side of the door... His eyes still violently glaring through the small window.
Leo took a second to respond, but he was already ticked off, already remembering the trouble that this singular troll put the lot of them in.
"Yeah, and good luck getting that back you S.O.B, that "Kid" is gonna roll you like a pack the next time he gets his hands on you... Got it? Now tell me where Reinhart is... Or we walk away and let you rot in that dungeon..." Leo flashed his teeth again, while Neveah silently shuttered behind him.
Rakshaa boomed with laughter...
"Ohhhh... I'll tell you where the Reinhart boy is..."