Blood splattered onto Kanos's cheek. The liquid was warm, but strangely, it didn't reek like monster blood.
Kanos blinked rapidly. Right in front of him, Garrick's left arm had a long gash. The brown-haired adventurer had just pulled his body in front of Kanos, blocking a spiked tail swipe from a pale lizard monster attacking from a blind spot.
"Focus, Nos!" Garrick yelled. The man didn't step back even though blood was pouring from his arm. His right hand, holding a short sword, instantly slashed the monster's neck completely off.
The pale lizard's carcass collapsed against Kanos's legs.
Kanos hurriedly backed away, his breath hitching slightly. "Why did you take the hit? I could've dodged."
"Dodge where? Your back was already against the stone wall," Garrick replied with a soft chuckle. He flicked the remaining blood off his sword, then examined the torn wound on his own arm. "Just a shallow scratch. Don't worry about it."
Belida walked over from the end of the corridor. His greatsword, covered in monster blood, had just been sheathed on his back. The giant man looked at the pale lizard carcass on the floor, then shifted his gaze to Garrick's badly injured arm.
Belida pulled a roll of dirty bandages from his belt pouch and tossed it at Garrick's chest.
"Your reflexes are decent for someone who talks so much," Belida said flatly.
That was a compliment. Coming from a stiff knight like Belida, that sentence was the equivalent of a medal of honor.
Garrick caught the bandages with a wide grin. "Thanks, big guy. I'll take that as a declaration of love."
Kanos let out a sigh of relief. His tension slowly melted away. He wiped Garrick's blood off his cheek. In his entire life, this was the first time someone had been willing to bleed just to protect him from a lethal blow. His feelings were a mix of guilt and... safety.
"We rest here," Belida decided, looking around the fairly wide corridor. "This corridor is a dead end on one side. Easy to guard."
Garrick nodded in agreement as he started tying the bandage around his arm using his teeth.
Kanos immediately took up a spot in a dry corner of the cave. He pulled out his chunk of charcoal, then drew several thick circular lines on the rocky ground. His brain pictured a thick iron bowl with an air cavity underneath for a hearth. In a matter of seconds, blue dust flickered, and an iron stove the size of a helmet materialized with the sound of heavy metal dropping.
Kanos tossed in the leftover dry twigs Belida had picked up along the way, then gave a signal with his chin. Belida stepped forward, struck his two flint stones from his pocket, and a small fire instantly sparked, warming the freezing corridor.
Garrick sat with his legs stretched out not far from the fire. His sharp but friendly eyes studied Kanos's homemade stove.
"Your magic is absolutely insane, Nos," Garrick said, shaking his head. "I've been going up and down this hole for ten years, met fire mages to high-class summoners. But none of them can make an iron stove just from a charcoal doodle. Do you even realize how valuable your skill is for long expeditions?"
"I'd much rather have a stab-proof skill than bother drawing stuff like this every time I want to sleep," Kanos replied, leaning against the cave wall. His head was still a bit dizzy from having his HP drained to make things, even if it wasn't as bad as yesterday.
"Not everyone has to be a brawler," Garrick said casually. He pulled three pieces of dry bread from his backpack and tossed one each to Kanos and Belida. "A good party is like a chain. Someone takes the hits up front, someone watches the blind spots, someone keeps us alive with logistics. If everyone was a muscle-bound maniac like our big guy here, the party would starve to death by the tenth floor."
Belida didn't protest. The giant bit his bread in silence, his eyes watching the darkness of the corridor ahead, but his posture was far more relaxed than last night. Belida was slowly starting to place his trust in the veteran in front of him.
Kanos chewed the dry bread slowly. It tasted bland and dry, but the atmosphere made everything feel so much better.
Ever since falling into Yomalvara, Kanos always felt like his brain was forced to work at two hundred percent just to figure out how not to die in the next five minutes. With Belida, he felt like a boss who constantly had to direct a stiff employee with zero tactical sense.
But with Garrick, everything was different. This brown-haired man understood the rhythm of the dungeon. He knew when to advance, when to stay quiet, and strangely enough, he constantly checked on Kanos's condition in the backline. Kanos felt like he finally had some genuine protection.
"Are you sure you want to go down to the Red Spider nest tomorrow?" Kanos asked, breaking the silence. "I heard from the merchants up top that those monsters move in swarms."
Garrick nodded firmly. "They do swarm. But they have a pattern. As long as we don't enter their main chamber, we can bait them out one by one into a narrow corridor. You make barricades to cut off their escape routes, Belida smashes their heads in, and I chop their legs off so they can't climb."
Garrick looked Kanos in the eye. The smile on his face looked incredibly warm and genuine, illuminated by the campfire.
"In this hole, we only have each other, Nos. You watch my back, I watch yours. I'm not gonna let you die a stupid death down here," Garrick said softly, his voice carrying an undeniable weight of past regrets. "Nobody is dying on my watch."
Kanos went quiet for a moment, then gave a faint smile. It was truly the first smile of relief he had shown since arriving in this world.
"I'll hold you to that, Garrick."
That night, for the very first time, Kanos was able to sleep soundly inside the dungeon. Belida's soft snoring and the casual footsteps of Garrick taking his turn on watch became the background noise that let his brain completely relax.
A perfect comfort zone. Kanos had completely forgotten that in this badly designed world, comfort was usually the deadliest trap of all.