A-Zone: Traces, Written by AzPhoenix

  Chapter 04

  Almost there

  -

  "Now that we have introduced ourselves, we can move forward right?" A man's voice was heard around the entrance of the upper floor.

  "Yes?" he continued

  "Good" he said while putting two pieces of metal inside a long black piece of metal emitting ominous red light. Giving the duo no time to rebuke and answer, he then continued.

  "Prepare yourselves, Time to move!" the man then grinned and shot towards the sand at his feet.

  *Sha-Boom!* The bullet left the barrel and caused an enormous shockwave accompanied by a sonic boom to happen.

  Inside the explosion of sand, Trace and the skeleton were calmly standing there, they both seemed to be unaffected by the flying sand.

  "Impressive" the skeleton exclaimed, "the power is so much stronger than I imagined"

  "Wait? what? LiLy, don't say you got a power boost?" Trace said while shuddering. There was no answer... as always.

  This was the first time Trace had fired LiLy after it was transformed.

  The skeleton seemed to overhear Trace talking and asked "Is LiLy-san capable of conversation?"

  "Heh, heh" Trace laughed a bit and ignored the skeleton's question.

  After the dust settled, there was and enormous pit of around 10m in depth and there Trace was laughing at the bottom of it. It seemed that they had reached the bottom of the sand and found the 'floor'. He shot the floor with different bullets but only Double Solid and Double Flare bullets managed to pierce through, the problem was that the holes they made were too small as with the Double Solid X bullets was bit bigger than the size of Trace's thumb and the Double Flare X bullet had a diameter of around 10 centimeters.

  "Doesn't seem to work? I think we better be looking at the entrance we came through." Shirou said after examining the damage with his bony fingers.

  "Not yet, I still have something I could try" Trace sighed

  "Sorry LiLy, this might sting a bit" he said while loading first Flare X bullet then followed by another Flare X bullet and afterwards he even loaded a third bullet, which was a Shock X. After loading the third bullet, LiLy sparked, the carving were glowing bright and red streaks of lightning were flashing around the frame. Even Trace's arms were starting to smoke a bit, but he did not dare to drop her or to say it correctly he couldn't drop her as his hold of the gun was almost like glued due to some odd energies.

  After a time that felt like minutes passed LiLy had calmed down, only the letter L of the LILYAN carving had a permanent glow, instead of the normal pulsing.

  Trace grimaced as his grip was locked on to the handle and he couldn't open it even if he wanted to, squeezing the handle as hard as he could, even though the handle felt like it was on fire.

  He then tried to shrug and pointed the muzzle towards the ground underneath his feet (again) and pulled the trigger.

  A Flash, A beam, with diameter of one meter was shot through and Trace disappeared through the hole as he had no footholds left.

  A crazed laughing echoed from the hole, Shirou was looking at the hole that was made into the ground and exclaimed while listening to that sinister and crazed laughter "He, is the final boss, right?" the slime jiggled in approval.

  The whole trio was stunned by the absurdity of the weapon Trace was using, No one in their group had managed to even put a scratch to the dungeon walls before, but this guy, this guy just made a hole large enough for a person to fall through.

  Multi-fusion has been tested on earth before but the Material of the weapon couldn't handle the pressure and it would usually break down during loading or after firing the fused shot.

  -----

  Enter the Lower Dungeon

  -----

  A laughter echoed, followed by a splat... and a pool of blood.

  "Man, I need to think for a better way to fall long distances" he said while smiling wryly, while appearing out of a smoke cloud, he then looked at a curious pool of blood that had LiLyan on it. "This... is mildly inconvenient" he said while picking LiLy up.

  "Will those guys even follow me?...?" There Trace saw a skeleton falling through the hole in the ceiling and *boing* bounced comically when it hit the ground. On closer look the skeleton's feet were covered in bright blue slime (Rea) to cushion the fall.

  Shirou rose up and gave Trace a skeletal thumbs up, as everything went perfectly. Trace averted his gaze and looked at the pool of blood next to him...

  "Trace-san is so skillful, managing to stay unharmed while falling through such a high distance! Even I get a bit harmed with the help of Shimizu-san, Even though I am only bones ho ho ho" Shirou said with a truly earnest feeling resounding in his voice.

  This sentence caused Trace to wince mentally. His landing wasn't that 'graceful'... It was the most brutish thing possible... 'good thing the falling distance was so absurdly high, If it wasn't it would have been kinda embarrassing to ask them to finish me off...' he thought

  Trace cleared his head by shaking it left to right few times.

  "Umm Trace-san... What is this pool of blood? Are you perhaps hurt? I can use some healing magics." said the slime

  "I am fine... It isn't a lie that this blood came from me, but it is kinda one of my... abilities..." Trace froze for a while before answering...

  "But more importantly, Which way should we go from here?"

  "I think it should be that way" the skeleton pointed to a seemingly random direction.

  "Alright, lead the way, We can dispose any monster that stands in our way, right LiLy?" There was no answer... obviously.

  After a while of walking and countless of monsters exterminated.

  The trio were talking among themselves while watching Trace utterly decimating all of the local monsters with ease.

  "It seems like Trace-san's personality changes the moment he enters a fight(?)"

  "He fights quite brutishly, I didn't even know that gun-fu was a thing."

  "Yes, those moves aren't beautiful or refined at all... It is more like he forces his body to move unnaturally."

  "All of his actions during a combat are extremely simple, shooting, dodging and parrying with LiLy-san."

  "His senses are also bit odd, sometimes he just shoots through a wall and when we passed the otherside, there would be a dead monster there, with a clean hole pierced through its head"

  "But, he can't seem to see everything as he has gotten attacked by golems and some of the undead many times."

  "Ghosts do not seem to be doing any damage to him, so he just leaves them be"

  "Ahh, that seems to be the floor boss." Shirou noticed.

  "Trace-san! That one is the floor---" Rea's voice was cut off, because the floor bosses head was sent flying in the air before he could even finish his sentence. "--Boss"

  Trace turned to look at the slime and said something shocking.

  "The enemies here seem to be extremely weak, compared to the ones I was fighting before..."

  "..." The trio was silenced. Then one of them asked.

  "Umm, By the way Trace-san?"

  "Yes?"

  "Why are you wearing such brutish and ragged clothes" Rea asked cautiously.

  She had wondered about Trace's current attire which only had few damaged black wolf fur pieces being held together by few belt like pieces made of the same fur. His legs were bare and from his right shoulder to his waist left side had nothing on. So his left shoulder to his arm was also bare. The long wolf head like cowl was ragged and barely offered any protection with a bandage like eyepatch. Truly a true caveman look!

  "Well... I had some clothes when I arrived here but they broke during the fights and the only material I could use is the fur of the enemies I had killed. As to why they are broken... I fought something like a boss... So right now I really do not have any wearable clothes, there are some pieces of robe here and there used to keep myself a bit more...comfortable?" he said.

  "...something that could give the strong Trace-san so much trouble... who is easily killing everything here..."

  "Well, at least you didn't have to fight for survival every day" Trace rebuked while reminiscing the past he had been through when he arrived to this dungeon.

  Trace then shuddered when he thought about the first wolf pup he had seen...

  "!" Trace jumped and pointed his gun towards the next corner while saying "There seems to be an odd group coming towards here, They are here in less than 2 minutes."

  "What do you mean by odd group?" Shirou questioned

  "Well, they are not what we have seen before. A group of 5, no 4. From what I can see, the one in front of them is a humanoid with large tail and wings on its back and the one next to him is a also a humanoid who is a bit over 2 meters tall, quite wide too, maybe an ogre?. Then following them is a largish spider with a humanoid riding on top of it."

  "Doesn't that sound li-*clack* *Clack*" Shirou's voice disappeared mid sentence and was replaced by the standard common rattling of his bones. The effect of the water seems to have run out.

  Trace prepared to fire LiLyan and take the first strike. But just as he was about to fire he was sent flying hard from behind.

  "What the...!" He shouted in surprise. To his surprise the skeleton Shirou had punched him, also Shirou's jaw was also open due to the surprise that Trace actually flew.

  "*Cla-Clack!*"

  "*Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle*"

  Trace flew in towards the approaching enemies and flew right in front of the big almost 2 meter tall ogre. "!" the ogre was surprised and punched Trace with his big fist, causing Trace to hit the nearby wall with high impact and died...

  "*clackety clack!*" The skeleton came running and shouting(?) towards the ogre.

  "*Oogah?! Uurgh!*" The ogre shouted back at the skeleton, this time it panicked a little.

  "*Grrr, Gruooh*" The one with the wings and tail joined the conversation.

  Soon there were a lot of weird noises overlapping each other, only the spider rider was totally quiet.

  Rea approached Trace's body, upon getting closer her body froze up, Right now in front of the slime was the dead body of Trace.

  "!*Wiggle*!" Just as Rea was going to touch the body it disappeared in light particles, leaving only LiLy behind, causing her to jiggle around in panic. 'This was different' she thought, 'He can't just die like that, that is like a bad gag'. She sobbed(?) *Wiggle* *(insert slime grieving noise)*.

  "Oi, oi, oi, oi, what the heck guys!" Trace said while appearing from the darkness of the corridor. He then noticed the odd slime that was almost totally flat on the ground and walked next to her and took LiLyan from the pool of viscera. Then Trace turned towards the slime and sighted. "*sigh*" he scooped the sad slime from the ground and poured some water on it from his core storage.

  "Wha-Wha-what, Trace-san?, a-a-a-a- gHOOOOOOOOST!!!"

  He slapped the slime as fast as he could *Pojong, wub wub wub*, but it was too late, the eyes of everyone was upon him already...

  The group that looked at him were revealed, their outline almost matched completely to the water silhouettes he had seen before.

  "*mixture of noise's heard before*" They all started to say something, Trace put his hand on his forehead and shook his head in denial. He could handle one or two of them speaking with their 'native' way but a group of them is still too much chaos.

  Trace grinned evilly and pointed LiLyan towards the group only using his right hand as Rea was on his left and fired casually, without saying a word. To this Rea jiggled in panic and was dumbfounded by the bullet that flew.

  Shirou and Ryuji dodged to the side in reflex.

  The bullet that was fired flew and hit the head of the ogre, there was a loud *Clonk* as if someone had thrown an empty can at something. The head of the ogre was still there and a dumbfounded expression was found on its face.

  "See here slimey, I somehow guessed that these guys were at least your friends of sorts, or something like that, I was just going to warn them beforehand and not to just run towards us in like some retarded monsters. You had said that your 'friends' aren't that smart."

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Rea's body sparkled(?)

  "I am sorry, Trace-san"

  The others who were looking at Rea's apology and weird noise's coming from Trace were dumbfounded, only Shiro knew what Trace had done and they also understood that the effect of the 'water' had run out. They also had to explain what was going on with Trace and Rea, as why they could understand each other speaking.

  After a bunch of explaining and self introductions, that went in short something like following.

  Yamakiri Ryuuji, A dragon man, Trace got most of his traits correct. This dragon man was a red scaled humanoid figure with wings and tail on its back, dragonlike head with sharp teeth and two horns sprouting from his head.

  'I couldn't even see the scales and horns with my water sight as the horns do not have water in them and the scales look like skin from far and does not hinder the shape. The Bright blue eyes do not suit his otherwise red complexity...'

  Of course this dragon man was not naked, it was wearing a black uniform adorned with a unfamiliar symbol on the chest it seems to have a lot in common with the shirt and pants that Shirou was wearing minding the holes for wings and tail.

  'So it was indeed a school uniform.' Trace nodded in approval after hearing the answer to his inquiry.

  Hataimo Yuuki, an 'Oni' not an ogre. A red eyed reddish skin towering over 2 meters tall without even counting the additional height he had from his two horns that were on his head. Same as with the dragon man, this oni was also wearing the same outfit from their school. 'Somehow the uniform looks quite good on him, maybe he was a giant before even coming here or these clothes were adjusted mid transfer?'

  Hataimo Hikari, an Arachne, lower body of a huge-ish spider and top half of a long black haired and red (eight) eyed japanese beauty wearing a uniform, most likely their school outfit again, but this time the girls outfit. Also she is the younger sister of Hataimo Yuuki.

  'What I thought was a giant spider and a rider was actually a single entity, what a surprise. It seems like she is also a bit arachnophobic... what a cruel fate. Her personality from what I can tell she is quite timid and doesn't seem to talk much... at least to me.'

  And lastly

  Kou Eino, simply a weird entity, at first he looks like a normal japanese student with his outfit on but the more you look at him the more distorted he becomes in your vision and after a while he blurrs into the background as if he was never there, but in fact he hadn't even moved. 'He also has a problem of not getting noticed by almost anyone, not sure if this was the reason I missed him earlier, but I have to say that this ability is terrifying. Also to note, it seems that the person is itself quite distressed about not being seen by his friends and classmates... even before the whole summoning thing.'

  "Hello, my name is Trace and I am a bit different compared to you guys as I was not summoned without my will... or to be exact, I was hired to test this new Miratech device, which after entering I found myself here. So... technically, I am not unintentionally summoned but no one told me how to log out... Or something of sorts"

  There was a moment of silence until a certain skeleton opened its jaws to change the topic.

  "By the way Trace-san, When I hit you, I did not think you would fly so easily and paint the whole wall red... Considering your body build, your attacking power and your fighting style I thought you would manage a simple slap or a punch. So could you tell us, what did happen in reality?"

  "...Well, I...Am quite... weak by myself..." He answered embarrassed. "This arm..err,fur... protects me from anything sharp but all impacts are felt with almost full power." he continued while demonstrating using a fang from his cowl to scratch the fur, there was no seen damage on it. Then he poked the wall with it and he could easily carve a hole into it.

  The students(?) were mostly amazed, not by Trace's armor but by the sharpness of the fang he was wielding.

  "Umm, Trace-san" Interrupted the slime Rea "Where did you get that fang?"

  "Hmm, You remember the temple entrance where we met right?"

  "Yes? Is it in the temple?"

  "no, You have to walk past countless of ghost-like enemies and then you have to enter these two huge doors. After those doors you will find a horde of these wolves and their queen..."

  "gho-gho-ghosts!?!" Rea panicked, everyone ignored her...

  "How many of these wolves are you talking about?" The dragon man spoke curiously.

  "Around a 3 dozens or so?" Trace answered.

  The dragon mans jaw dropped completely. He quickly fixed his posture and continued as if nothing happened.

  "So, you managed to kill couple of them and retreated from that room, with the carcasses?"

  Trace just shook his head and said, "I went through it! In short I challenged the whole horde and managed to take down one of their leaders. In the end I made a deal with their queen that she would let me pass if I spared their lives. I was also running out of options myself and took only one glowing stone from the dead leader and left the room. It was a freaking dangerous bluff, could have been killed off just like that"

  "Ho-how did you manage to fight them? You can't even handle a single punch from a weak skeleton..." The dragon man asked

  "Well... I have been fighting these wolves the past two months? and I have gotten used to their movements and speed. The reason I got hit by the skeleton was that I did not expect him to punch me so suddenly. More or less a surprise attack?" he answered

  "I think we should start moving soon, but first we need to have a vote" The dragon man Ryuuji said in a commanding voice, he seems to be the groups leader or something.

  "About what?"

  "About you, Trace-san. We are not sure if we want to bring you to our base"

  "Ahh, about that... you see, I don't really need that, just point me to the direction of the next floor and I would be out of your way." he answered honestly

  "All right, then just follow us for a bit."

  Trace and the others have started to walk around the cavernous area and soon found themselves in a huge open space with lots of stony support pillars rising from the ground and reaching to the ceiling.

  There was a low rumbling sound reverberating nearby. The dragon man facepalmed and muttered to himself, "What are they doing, I told them not to come..." Trace was close enough to hear this and was surprised, it seems that Ryuuji seems to know about the noise.

  Not even a 10 minutes have passed and the rumbling was getting louder soon in the horizon there was a large structure moving towards them.

  This structure was made of a large wooden and metallic pieces which resembled a giant ship with giant treads rolling underneath it, there was a lousily painted japanese flag and some text on the side of the vessel. Trace couldn't figure what was it as they were too far apart.

  "What the hell are they doing!" shouted the Oni Yuuki, at the moving vessel. Trace took aim with LiLyan and saw that there was a lots of different colored balls flying at a winged somebody in the air.

  This person/thing in the air just took the balls without flinching.

  "It seems there is someone fighting on board that ship!" Trace commented on what he had seen. To these words the recently met group suddenly dashed towards the vessel that was moving towards them.

  "Umm, aren't you joining them?" Trace asked the odd duo next to him.

  "Yes, Soon... First we need to prepare!"

  "Haa?" Trace was baffled, Soon there were multiple skeletons appearing from the ground just as he was about to smash their faces in, he was stopped by Shirou. It seems like they are not hostile.

  Then something weird happened, the skeletons started to assemble themselves around Shirou, reinforcing his frame and making 3 large pairs of skeletal wings on his back. Then the slime entered Shirou's body. First the slime stretched and covered the whole thing into a layer of slime. The whole imposing combination took flight and headed towards the moving ship.

  Trace was left there dumbfounded with dots as his eyes, he then started to slowly walk towards the moving vessel.

  ---

  At the top of the moving ship a group of monsterfied students were fighting against a group of winged demonic beings by hurling magic at them. But due to their lack of stronger techniques, most of their spells and magics had no effect on them... They did not have enough experience to fight properly. The flying demons(?) were shouting abuses as they were barely keeping up with the moving fortress, the students on board knew what their enemy were planning, they were here to capture one of them, a student for some reason.

  At first when the ship(?) was standing still there was only one of them flying around and harassing the students, telling them to surrender the 'princess' if they wanted to live. After a couple of hours of struggling many of the students were wounded, the second demon(?) came. At this point the person in command gave an order to mobilize the fortress and thus they made their escape. Their destination, towards the last known position of their leader and their strongest exploration squad.

  ---

  When the ship had finally reached their destination there was already 13 demons(?) flying behind them, trying to catch the moving ship. The ratio was already 2 students per 1 demon(?) but some of the students were afraid of fighting and it was in reality only a single student against a single demon(?).

  Amongs the demons(?) three of them looked like a winged humans with red eyes and sharp fangs showing when they opened their mouths. The real identity of these demons were actually vampires. The ten winged monsters were standard vampires and two of the three remaining humanlike vampires were vampire nobles. The last vampire was much stronger than the rest of them he was the vampire king.

  The reason they were attacking the students was that one of the students was a vampire princess in race, as the King has an ability to locate every vampire in his domain, he located this weak vampire princess soon after the students were summoned here. The king knew that the vampire among the students was a high ranking one as he could not control or contact her at all, with his abilities.

  The fight had continued for a long time, only a few students were left standing, luckily no one had died... yet.

  ---

  The dragon man Ryuuji jumped up upon arriving at the ship and tackled one of the vampires in a surprise attack and followed by a searing hot fire breath. 'Good thing these vampires are weak to fire' Ryuuji thought while melting the vampires face off.

  At the same time the Shadow man Kou appeared near one of the vampire nobles and was soon engaged in fearsome melee combat, Kou's claws of shadow against the claws of a vampire.

  The oni Yuuki stood behind and protected the arachne Hikari who started to chant and cast magical spells. Yuuki courageously intercepted all of the vampires who tried to attack Hikari.

  The vampire king just watched from a short distance away, totally confident in his victory. The students only had 7 fighters left, The three other persons left fighting were the vampire princess, a metallic golem who was swinging a largish piece of steel like a club and lastly there was a student who was a mix of human and mantis like creature, flying around with extremely fast speeds and cutting the vampires with its sharp blade like arms, it was also wielding two greenish katanas on both of its hands.

  The defending was not going well as most of the students were already incapacitated and the Human-Bug hybrid was sweating lots and due to its light frame it has not managed to even fatally wound any of the vampires. The vampire princess was also extremely tired from constant combat.

  As the defending group saw that they had reached their destination, the fortress stopped and the others were already joining into the battle and had managed to defeat two of the standard vampires almost instantly, the students saw a glimmer of hope and felt a bit relieved.

  But for the students the situation was not looking too good, the dragon man Ryuuji couldn't infinitely breathe fire and defending against the eleven remaining vampires with only 4 combatants still in fighting shape. But the students knew that their strongest fighter had not yet arrived and their morale wasn't dropping.

  The king noticed this small change in atmosphere and was about to enter the fight but was suddenly interrupted by a six winged skeleton and his large sword made out of bones.

  Soon began an epic aerial fight between the duo and the king. The kings claws clashed with the sword many times! little by little the swords had caused damage to vampire kings skin and arms, but also there was signs of damage shown on the swords bones.

  At this moment the king was getting more flustered and called his subordinate vampires to participate in the combat.

  "Kill, Kill this wretched skeleton!" he shouted his orders.

  And a moment afterwards a streak of red flew through the other vampire noble and penetrated its head, making a clean hole.

  "heh!" The skeleton laughed out loud, he had seen this kind of red streaks multiple times before.

  "What?! Joseph!" The king was surprised, one of his strongest subordinates had instantly died and fell from the sky.

  "I will murder you!" he shouted in anger, only to see another red streak passing him by, followed by another scream of death. this second shot was not as clean as the first one had been but it still had managed to incapacitate the vampire.

  This time the King followed the origin of the streak, with his extremely good sight he had managed to spot the prone Trace approximately 2000 meters away from their position.

  "What the hell is th-!?" the king exclaimed, but was interrupted by Shirou with his sword. Shirou wasn't just standing still during the time when Trace had sniped the vampires and distracted the king. He was reshaping his sword into a smaller more compact sword and repairing some of the damage his wings had taken from the kings attacks. He then took a strike at the king when it was looking at Trace, cowardly tactic but it will have to do, Shirou had no time to think such trivial things, the lives of his fellow classmates were at stake.

  The strike managed to cut through one of the kings wings and with loosing of the wing the king fell towards the ground and landed nimbly with enough graze that it looked like a small performance.

  The fighting on top of the fortress had already finished. The dragon man Ryuuji had finished 4 of the vampires and was collapsed on the deck and panting very hard. Only the golem and the human-bug hybrid were still left standing on the deck.

  At the ground level where the oni Yuuki was holding of against 5 of the vampires and the arachne Hikari had finally finished chanting her strongest magic spell and decimated all of the vampires in a fiery inferno, she then flopped down in mana exhaustion. Even her brother Yuuki, was totally covered in claw and bite wounds from the battle. The oni then dragged his body near his sister and sat down with a look screaming 'no one will be allowed to touch her, while she rests!'.

  The only ones who were fighting were still the shadow man Kou and the vampire noble. The vampire noble's wings were mostly broken and incapable of flight because of Kou's constant surprise attacks targeting its wings.

  If the vampire noble would have gotten into the air, then Kou would have hard time of reaching his enemy. So instead of trading blows he focused on avoidance and aiming most of his attacks towards the vampires wings.

  When the vampire was grounded it was only a matter of time when the shadow man could finish it off, even with its superior senses the vampire noble had a really hard time to follow the his enemy's movements.

  Soon only the vampire king was left standing!

  Intense fighting continued on the ground level, the vampire king was starting to panic a bit, he never would have guessed that such a ragtag group of inferior creatures could have been so strong.

  The king was confident that he could beat all of them in a 1 on 1 fight, the only one who was very hard to deal with was this skeletal monstrosity in front of him. He had never seen this kind of monster before, With his exceptional perception of magical energy he had managed to see two magical cores inside the skeleton.

  Then there was the mysterious sharpshooter, that managed to instantly kill one of his high ranking vampire nobles from a mile away.

  During the fight against Shirou, the king used the fortress as a cover against the mysterious sharpshooter. Due to already been badly injured the fight against Shirou did not go as planned and the king was forced to flee, without one wing he could only run at fast speeds.

  When Shirou noticed that the king was trying to flee he instantly chased after it. Yuuki had carried Hikari on top of the fortress and gave order to chase after Shirou.

  ----

  Meanwhile at around 2000m away...

  After taking few extremely well placed shots and being noticed by the king Trace stood up and started running towards the still fortress. 'I would have never thought that you would be so damn accurate' he thought while carrying LiLy and keeping watch for sudden ambushes.

  Soon Trace noticed that the fortress was on the move again... moving further away.

  "*sigh* seems like they forgot me or something... oh well, I wish them good luck."

  "Now, I think I should head that way" He said to himself, he had looked around a bit earlier and had seen a huge temple like building, not like the pyramid like temple in the desert but something that gave a divine glow when looked from afar.

  "Next destination, spooky temple!"