*Yaaaaawn*...finally.
I jumped off the rock-boat-thingy and walked around the shore area, or whatever you call it, that was connected to the 6th-floor entrance. And while doing so, I regretted it. I failed. This stupid quest, is it for real?
Quest: Cutting the Water-Knot, Part 5 Quest giver: World System Administration Quest Description:
Located somewhere on the 5th floor of the "Water-Knot of Glavras" is a special command room, an area that controls most of the Dungeon's facilities on the upper floors. Locate it and destroy it.
Quest Content:
1. Destroy the command room on the "Water-Knot of Glavras" Dungeon's 5th floor.
Rewards:
* 7 Skill Points.
In the whole Dungeon, this floor indeed feels the most "industrial"-one, so I wasn't that confused when I read this quest for the first time and got to know about this "command room"-place.
The problem is that there are no clues to this room's whereabouts!
You see, I could have arrived at the shore much faster than the long days on the boat, but I deliberately chose a longer route that brought my "ship" all around the floor so I could scout for the potential location of the "command room".
The result was just a big waste of my time. I'm even starting to run empty of eatable food in my Storage. I filled the free space with some of the hiding grass that the snakes don't like, plus some prototypes of a new throwing weapon I've developed.
Okay, so what now? I think I know the general location of the room. There's a huge pillar on this floor that stretches down to the next floor, and it's shaped unnaturally as opposed to all the other rocks in this Dungeon, sans for the roads. Even the "labyrinth walls" on the 9th and 1st floors weren't this precise in their construct.
The problem is that the assumed command room doesn't have an entrance. It's isolated from any rivers, or paths, there aren't even any vines I could do a Tarzan swing from. I could try to do that with some spider webs, but that would attract the attention of the other snakes. The reward is tempting, but not enough to risk my life for them.
Not that I'm against a plan B. B for the back entrance. Or, the front entrance in this case.
You see, remember what I said about the command room reaching the next floor? That's prolly where the entrance's located. I just need to find out where...
---
And that's why I've returned, 6th floor!
Ugh, the "abyss" is horrifying as always. I hope I don't have to go down there.
Anyway, let's try to find that hidden entrance. Specifically, at the area right below the presumed location of the command room. So, I've been tapping the whole wall for a good while now, to less than good luck. Did my reasoning fail me here? Maybe it is actually on the 4th floor...?
*Ghostly wails*
...It could be the "oooo~ooooo~~"-wailing that works as this floor's BGM that's messing with my thinking box. I seriously hope the entrance's on solid ground...
Now that I have gotten another look at it, I'm starting to think that the "abyss" is related to that Dread Spirit I met on the 1st floor. Not to mention that swarm of ghostly creatures I saw when I fled the 10th floor on the first day of this second life of mine. They may be from the same cloth. But I hope I'm wrong. Those things are damn frightening...
*Clack*
Ah, there we go. I've found something promising. A part of the wall can be pushed. A doorbell? Entrance switch? Don't be a trap button...
*Rattle, rattle, rattle*
The wall opened up. It was the entrance switch. Go me!
Ulp, forget that last part. Something's coming! So it was the trap button after all...is not what I should be saying, er, doing! Hide, hide, I gotta hide!
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I hurled myself into the cover of the boulders just in time for the "trap" to make his entrance.
A large snake. Bigger than the normal-sized cobras, but smaller than the Floor Boss on Floor 1. Maybe halfway between those two? Other than that, its scales were golden at the ends, so it had a more regal appearance than the other guys. Prolly an evolution? I'm not gonna Identify him and risk getting caught though, but he seems strong enough to swat me like a fly.
"......Is the door broken? Back to work...*sigh*" - Giant snake
The big snake went back into the lair and closed the door behind him. Wait, what? The snake spoke? And in human language!? At least, the language I overheard that Black Baron fellow and his tin cans spoke with, but that's not important right now. Rather, it's prolly thanks to that Language-skill I seem to have from my status as a Migrant. Well, don't look a gift horse, er, skill in the mouth.
I looked up the snake in the Kigal-Note and discovered that it was a "Glavras Ophagus". A further-evolved snake than the boss on the 1st floor. I bet a rock to the head won't kill this guy unlike the previous one.
...maybe all the floors have some kinda "floor boss"? The big snake must have been the boss on the 1st floor, then there's the two-headed snake-turtle-hybrid I saw on the 2nd floor, and then there's the bigger raptor-looking monster I once saw while wandering on the 3rd floor.
I didn't encounter it, but I guess there would be some kinda spider boss on the 4th floor. These "bosses" seem to be based on the most popular Glavras-type monster on that specific floor, and I only saw Glavras-type spiders on the 4th one, so I must be right here.
And this time around, we've reached the snakes again, just one racial rank higher than the 1st floor's boss. I'm getting more and more against going to the lower floors by the second.
But if I want that AP reward, I need to find a way to lure that big guy out of the room for a longer period than the ding-dong-dash prank just now.
After some searching, I found some kinda hole above the hidden door. Maybe it works as some ventilation system? But it's too small for me to crawl inside, even if I'm only half the size of an adult human.
...K-N. Mind telling me more about the grass I picked up on the 5th floor?
Acknowledged. The grass in owner Garami's possession is commonly called "Snake Killer Grass". They induce an allergic reaction when exposed to snake-type creatures. They are not harmful to other creatures, and even the snakes will not be fatally injured.
Mean they're only giving hay fever to snakes? That's... pretty evil. Good going, grass. Now, where can I find some good rocks around here...
---
Glavras Ophagus' PoV:
"Another boring day on the job..." - Glavras Ophagus
I glared tiredly at the screens in the small room as I killed a yawn..., not that I needed to. It's only me in here. Nobody's going to be mad about me yawning a little. How many years have I been following lord Glavras' orders and watching these screens while looking for intruders and keeping an eye on the water's purity?
...too many. That's the answer. I've been in this shithole for too many years. The only thing that's happened recently is that strange Aquarect-looking creature who started cutting down all that "pain-grass", or whatever my subordinates call it, up at the 5th floor. Maybe one of the creatures upstairs evolved because they couldn't get any more food from the higher levels after they were mysteriously blown to pieces?
...and why should I care about some bug eating all those disgusting weeds? Damn, I want to "retire" or whatever it's called in the outside world! I hate my life... Can't someone just blow up the rest of the Dungeon? Not with me in it. Hehehe...
*Sniff, sniff*. Is someone grilling something? It smells...-!?
What the f*ck!? This smell...it's HORRIBLE!? It feels like someone let a Greycave Rat lie in a corner for a few years, then mixed it with the dirt that was filtered by the mangrove on the 3rd floor! And it hurts! The smell's so bad it hurts my nose! And my eyes! It feels like my eyeballs are going to melt! My scales feel like they're decomposing and falling out of my eye sockets! And my tongue, the worst of them all, feels like a bunch of those insects on the 4th row is trying to eat it out of my mouth!!
This isn't the time to be describing my pain! Where's this smell coming from!? ...the vents! Damn, I never trusted those things! Why did lord Glavras install those? He's too easily influenced by stuff from the outside world!
Tch, the whole room's starting to be filled with this...poison gas. Tch, I better flee. And have someone fix those defective vents!
I finally reached the exit while withstanding the urge of shouting out in pain and rolling around the whole place...and only released way more smoke into the room. Eh?! There's a fire here!? And-*cough*-, more poison smoke!?
Crap, all this "death smoke" is clouding my vision and my brain. Literally and figuratively respectively! No, maybe they're both literal..., and I don't have the time for this! The poison's making me feel like my flesh's falling off my bones!
There's less smoke over here. Damn, this can't be natural. When I get my tail on whoever did...where's the floor?
C-crap! It's the Abyyyyyyyyyy.........
---
Garami's PoV:
...that worked way better than I expected.
Having less food in my Storage turned out to be a good thing. It let me gather much more of that killer grass. And I got a LOT! The monsters of the 5th floor didn't seem to mind. Rather, I think some of them gave me thumbs up...if they had thumbs. They're snakes after all.
And after I'd gathered enough grass to make a farmer proud and spread it around the floor close to the hidden entrance, the problematic part of my plan became clear and cost me a whole day's worth of time: making a fire.
It could be due to the Arachnid trait (since it made me weaker to fire and cold), but I couldn't buy a fire-starting skill. And it's not a recent thing. I've often dreamed of trying to stir-fry the veggies that I can find in this Dungeon, but no matter what, I couldn't find such a skill when I had more than enough AP.
Maybe I'm just not a good fit with those skills? Through the Kigal-Note, I discovered that there are some skills certain people can never obtain through AP for their whole life, and those are skills one personally has a bad affinity for. It's easy to get Light skills, despite those being part of what demons generally are weak against, but both Fire and Ice seem to allude to me, even before I evolved into this Reha Zera species.
But enough of that. I managed to finally master the art of making a fire with two rocks. It was difficult enough to find something that matched the old survival documentaries I faintly remember having watched in my previous life, but getting them to work was even worse.
Not that I didn't make it. This smoke-filled floor is proof of that. Strangely, I'm not feeling discomfort from all this smoke, but the snake from before must have had it rough. He was leaking unspeakable liquids from all parts of his face when I saw him rush out of the hidden room. But why did he jump over the edge? I think I'm never gonna understand those reptiles.
I did consider using the [Glow Web] skill to make glowing arrow marks on the ground with my webbing, but the threads would have burned and they would be too suspicious anyway.
Anyway, time to reveal my secret weapon to this hidden lair. I hope they're enough...