At this distance even my human nose noticed it before my eyes did. "T-that's..."
"A corpse. Damn nuisance."
Monster corpses, if left alone in a dungeon, would mysteriously disappear after a while. But this was a human corpse. It would remain until removed. Or, in some dungeons, be eaten.
Miss Sable set down her backpack and took out some leather gloves. Upon donning these, she began searching the body, and in no time found the poor soul's ID plate. After a brief inspection, she replaced the plate with a sigh, and an expression that suggested she saw something she fully expected to see, but nevertheless wished she hadn't.
"Did you... know them?"
"Never met 'em in my life."
She unrolled a burlap sheet that had been tied to her pack, and carefully laid the body onto it, before rolling it up and securing it with rope. "Another overconfident newbie who didn't know what they were getting into, and wandered in here solo. Their family felt they'd been gone too long, and hired me to track them down. 'Course no one ever has the decency to still be alive when I find them, so I have to carry them back if I want to get my full pay."
So my hero was only here in the first place because of this unfortunate stranger. Their death is the reason I'm alive.
I have a lot of feelings about this, and I'm not wholly comfortable with any of them.
As I stood about processing my guilt, Miss Sable finished wrapping up the body, and hoist it onto her shoulder as though it weighed nothing. "Well then," she said. "Let's get to the boss room and get ourselves out of here. I'd rather not have to lug this one around longer than necessary."
And so we returned back the way we came, and headed for the boss' room.