The Martial Unity

He lifted the corpse up briefly, paying attention to the hips. “An anterior pelvic tilt, which generally implies an unhealthy amount of time continuously spent in a seated position.”

He opened up the mouth of the corpse glancing inside. “A mouth-breather with enlargened adenoids and constricted airways.”

“Regular grooming of facial based on the inclination of hair despite clearly not being groomed recently.”

“Deep calluses on the sole of the foot, indicating a lot of time spent barefooted despite rough environments.”

“Low of minute old scars on the finger, most likely from repetitive mistakes caused by using small, precise but sharp tools.”

“Long-time user of spectacles based on the subtle marks on the nose, most likely broken and/or lost in his time in the dungeon.”

“Married based on the ring indention on his ring finger with a lighter skin tone. But more importantly, that eliminates several possible geographic origins of such a person.”

“Lost a lot of weight recently, not just from being in the dungeon based on the stretch marks around his body.”

He continued to inspect and infer a great number of facts about the corpse, analyzing every inch of it as Kane watched with bewilderment. He had thought that he had made some sharp deductions, but Rui showed him how wrong he was about that as he seemed to conjure up information where there shouldn’t have been any information.

“In conclusion, this man was a small-time married craftsman living on the outskirts, or even entirely out of the Shionel Confederation in a small village or settlement, probably making a living selling small crafted trinkets outside the Shionel Confederation in the flea markets that we rank into when we were entering the Shionel Confederation,” Rui concluded.

“How are you getting all of this?” Kane furrowed his eyebrows.

“The science of deduction,” Rui replied while analyzing the corpse. “You gather all the pieces of information that you can and infer truths from them. But it’s not absolute, far from it. My conclusion could be wrong. And there are things that don’t really make sense.”

“Like what?” Kane asked.

“It’s hard to judge because this sickly black color of his skin is from poisoning, this is not natural rotting,” Rui explained patiently. “I can also sense esoteric substances of this dungeon inside his body based on the fact that my ordinary senses are not able to sense through his body as clearly as they should. But the issue is that he hasn’t been dead for too long as established, yet it seems clear that he has been in the dungeon for much longer than he has been dead. What question naturally presents itself?”

Kane’s eyes widened as he understood what was wrong. “How the fuck did he survive this long in the dungeon?”

“Exactly,” Rui nodded. “This is a revolutionary discovery. Frankly, I’m unable to come up with a compelling hypothesis as to how this could possibly happen. What’s even more astonishing is that he did not die of a wound.”

“Which means that he wasn’t killed by a monster this entire time?” Kane frowned. “That’s impossible! Even Martial Squires die when they get lost in the dungeon. To other monsters.”

“Exactly, yet this fellow died due to an affliction with poison despite having clearly spent a lot of time in the dungeon based on the scraps that his clothes have been reduced to, the clearly overgrown facial hair among other things,” Rui paused before continuing. “That just means that this man somehow survived this long in the Shionel Dungeon. Hell, he’s outsurvived even Martial Squires. There are loads of esoteric substances in his body. It’s actually a miracle that he did not die instantly.”

The two of them silently pondered about it for several seconds, before agreeing to give up. It was a fascinating curiosity, but ultimately not too relevant to them.

“What should we do with the body?” Kane asked.

“Not much to be done,” Rui shrugged. “It’s a corpse. But I am interested in which direction came from. Maybe we can trace the man’s footprints.”

“Will they even be discernable beyond a certain distance?” Kane frowned.

“Not too, but I can work with anything,” Rui closed his eyes as he focused Riemannian Echo across the tunnel, following any traces of human footprints that he could. “It helps that this tunnel route is not subject to wind drafts, or other things traveling across it too much. Otherwise, it would be long gone.”

He opened his eyes. “I’ve found a brief path, but it stops at a certain point, might as well investigate it.”

Kane shrugged. “Sure thing.”

The two of them proceeded to swiftly follow the path that the corpse had taken.

“It’s undiscernible beyond this point,” Rui announced as they arrived at a juncture of many tunnels. They couldn’t tell which direction the man came from.

“Well, why not just do a super long-range sweep anyway?” Kane suggested. “We can proceed normally from here on out.

“True,” Rui nodded, before extending his senses in one direction. “I doubt we’ll find anything worth-!”

His eyes widened as his jaw opened up a bit.

“What?” Kane noted his reaction, raising an eyebrow. “What is it?”

“It’s… It’s a new floor!” Rui grinned. “Let’s go!”

He rushed forward before Kane could even respond to him, forcing the latter to break into a run to follow him.

“Here it is,” Rui stopped a few meters as a large tunnel opened up to an enormous cavity. “This is the thirteenth floor!”

“Woah…” Kane peered in, squinting. He wasn’t able to see too much due to the vision range limits. “What’s it look like in there?”

“Hold up, let me scan it properly first,” Rui replied. “It’s pretty big. As for what inhabits it, I’m only seeing some-!”

A genuine expression of shock and bewilderment suddenly occupied his face.

“What is it?” Kane grew more nervous at his even exaggerated reaction.

“This can’t be,” Rui murmured. “This should be absolutely impossible. How can there be even more humans on this floor?!”