Harem System novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Floor One

The first floor of the Trial Gate was a long stone hall lit by pale moss on the walls.

Nils walked three paces behind Ruenna with a pack on his back.

In it he had water, rolled bandages, a jar of salt paste and the rest of the bread.

"Stay behind me," she said. "Whatever happens, behind."

"I know."

"I mean it."

"I heard you the first time."

She grinned at him over her shoulder, and it was a different face from the one in the antechamber.

She looked happy.

The first horn-beast came out of a side passage at a dead run.

It was the size of a pig, with gray hide and two curved horns as long as Nils's forearm.

Ruenna drew a short blade from her hip and stepped into it.

She cut once across its shoulder, spun clear of the charge and drove the blade up under the jaw.

The beast went down and did not get up.

She wiped the steel on its hide.

"One," she said.

"Behind you, left," Nils said.

She turned.

A second one was already coming out of the dark, low and fast.

She killed that one too.

There were three more in the next hall.

Nils called out each one before she saw it, because he stood back and watched the whole room while she fought, and she began to trust it.

By the fifth hall she was turning to him before she moved.

"Where?"

"Right wall. Two. Wait for the second to commit."

She waited.

When the second committed, she took its legs out from under it.

At the end of the sixth hall a heavy iron door stood closed across the passage.

Ruenna put her shoulder against it.

It swung open on a round chamber with a stone ring in the floor.

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