Chapter 21: Descending

Chapter 21: Descending

It was not a good sign for my longevity as a dungeon that I was already sick of adventurers.

Three days, by my best guess; three godsdamn days after an attack before another party had meandered their way through my doors and decided to plant themselves amidst all the things I needed to be doing but was quickly deprived of the time to do so. Fantastic.

And to make matters all the better, they had figured out I was a dungeon just in time for one of them to escape.

Someone upstairs was conspiring against me, I just knew it.

Full of mana again, though. I let the three souls flow through me, rich and taut with knowledge—Collectors for certain, if what snippets I learned of foreign creatures pointed in the right direction. Half of their thoughts were flooded with stormtoothed jaguars and gemfruit maples and magma-core rock snails, giving me all the more delicious ideas to fill my lower floors with.

If I was able to get that far.

No Bronze-ranked mana, though, which was unfortunate. Their mana filled me pleasantly only up to twenty-three points; not enough to strain my core or make me lose the excess, which I appreciated. Gods know I needed every advantage I could get.

My creatures grumbled and hissed but slowly relaxed back to their previous levels of existence, the sudden increase in ambient mana from the three kills trickling through their system. The jeweled jumper merrily ignored the massive blast flooding through his, sucking Lália's body into a dessicated husk with nary a thought to how I might need to break down her corpse into additional mana. Ah well. He'd earned the kill.

The greater crab hissed and clicked but did allow me Nil's body. How generous.

For Brus, however?

He had run. Run out the cove entrance, ready to head right back to the lawless Calarata and bring the Dread Pirate back. At that moment, I hated him almost as much as the man that had killed me.

No sense in festering on that. I had work to do.

I dissolved all of their various knives, confirming what I'd guessed; the thin, narrow blade was for skewering soft-skinned creatures and also a scalpel for harvesting materials, and the wide, curved knife more as a general-purpose blade.

Nothing too interesting in their clothes. Lália had leather boots, but as much as I dissolved them and poked my way through what made them up, it just wasn't enough for me to learn the schema from whatever creature they were made of. Annoying. Looked like I couldn't use just leather or skin to make a schema—but maybe if they brought both leather and something else? Surely some adventurers had to build armour sets that focused on one specific creature, and then my Ressurector title could help me bring them all back.

Questions I had little doubt I would find an answer far too soon for my tastes.

I pushed my way around my first and second floor, healing up creatures with stray threads of mana for those that had been trampled or injured in Brus' panicked run. My jeweled jumper finally finished eating more than his fill and stepped back, practically vibrating under the pressure of all his new mana—he sprang back up the bark of the vampiric mangrove and scuttled deeper into the floor. The rest of my creatures finished settling back down.

Then I finally started poking through the messages skittering over my core.

Your creature, a Cave Spider, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Webweaver (Common): Spiders are a territorial species—but this beast has ignored that and created a communal web, the work of dozens all spanning together to create an inescapable trap. Not yet a hivemind but through releasing pheromones, they communicate across the miles their webs can span, and any foe that falls to them is split evenly between the lot.

Spurred Spider (Common): For defense in the open areas it frequents, this creature has grown armoured spikes of bone and chitin. Though this slows it down, its massively increased bulk and puncturing power of its newly-grown mandibles leaves it well-prepared for any approaching threat.

My third floor would be a massive expanse of water, endless and impossibly deadly; for too long adventurers had avoided my canals and the dangers present. No longer.

If what I really was got out, I would need all the protection I could muster.

-

She did not enjoy this.

Her scales protected her from bleeding but the thorns still tried to break past her palms as she skittered up the trunk, claws digging into the wood in turn; the great tree groaned and twisted as she crept over an extended branch. Her breath caught in her throat.

She stayed strong. As badly as it wanted to attack her, she wanted to attack something even more.

Those same big thoughts kept running through her head, far too big for a lowly kobold; the Dragon, core of the dungeon, had still never looked at her but she could feel His presence, a fire reawakening in her chest. She was so close.

Her chosen target poked its head into her room.

It was still so much larger than her, heavily armoured with its strange, shelled back—but it was slow. It was stupid. It didn't have the big thoughts.

She flicked her forked tongue, gripping tighter to the branch as it plodded closer; it didn't look up. Didn't notice her.

Her chest burned.

It crossed directly below her. She dropped onto its back.

There was a second before it reacted, her clawed feet smacking into its back as she scrabbled for a hold—it bellowed, swinging wildly, lashing its feet against the ground. She clung desperately to the tiny plants rooted against its scales, horns clattering against her skull.

It didn't attack back but instead hunkered down, legs popping into its... back? What? She lunged forward to try for its head but another second and it was gone, far away from her claws, safe within its scales.

She hissed, clawing furiously at its back; scraps of little green things flew off but they didn't seem to be attached to it. It didn't even flinch.

A failure. She hoped the Dragon wasn't watching.

Warily, she slithered off its back and scurried away, glaring at it from behind a tree; it stayed hidden away, its scales too thick for her to do anything. Her claws were dull, nothing like His; she couldn't rip past its defenses.

She leaned closer and accidentally brushed against the tree. Its hidden thorns stabbed at her muzzle, doing nothing but shocking her.

...but they were like claws, weren't they?

She paused, examining the wood; claws like hers, but not limited by her arms. Claws she could hold further away from her body, claws to attack the head of the beast before it could hide away.

Weapons.