“I am starting to regret coming in here,” I tell Galea. I toss a handful of fire down the hallway, setting alight the vines clinging to the wall at the end of the hallway for light. The monster at my feet, something called a Vine Creeper, disappears into pink smoke.
“You have defeated thirty-seven monsters so far, Mistress,” Galea informs me.
“But they’ve all been weak,” I complain. I take a seat with a sigh, opening the window for my inventory and looking through it. It is safe to say at this point that these fungus monsters don’t tend to be edible, and the ones that are don’t carry many, if any, strong affixes in their flesh. The best I have managed so far is a slight Decay Affix from two of the monsters I have found in here, but I would need to kill at least sixty of the things to build up enough usable mana to do anything with it. Not that I could really do much with the Decay Affix in the first place. My skill with enchantment is incredibly rudimentary and I am missing the most vital part of enchantments, an object to actually enchant.
In my inventory, there are three weapons: the dagger that I found in the mud forest and the two swords that we nabbed off the group that ambushed us in that kitchen. The swords are useless to me. For some reason that I still do not understand, they try to sap the life out of me whenever I hold them. The dagger is nice, but it already has an enchantment on it; so, no luck there.
I still have a set of spare clothes in my inventory. Just looking down at the shirt I am wearing and the reddish-brown stains of my own dried blood on the otherwise white fabric makes me cringe, not to mention all the dirt on it. I prefer to save the spare clothes for when I finally leave here. Enchanting them is impossible as well, since it was made clear in the books I have been reading on the profession that enchanting fabrics requires infusible thread. The only infusible materials that I have to work with are the copious amounts of gold and silver that are continuously building in my inventory. At least there is one upside from burning my way through these confusing corridors.
My disappointment with the power of the monsters in here isn’t the same as me being lax and incautious. Since the initial surprise in the first hallway, it has become my policy to scout far ahead with my fire and to pour buckets of flame down on anything I see moving. That has worked. The monsters in here last a few seconds before succumbing to my fire, and many of them leave behind materials infused with magic when I disenchant their corpses. The issue is that without a proper enchanter’s kit, I have no way to extract mana from materials other than by eating it. Additionally, the fact that I haven’t found anything in here above rank one and that despite burning nearly forty monsters to a crisp, I haven’t gained a single level. This entire expedition is just proving to be one big disappointment.
“It might be a better idea to turn back and start our trip north,” I tell Galea as I pull myself up. The slight smoldering down both directions of the hallway gives me enough light to see decently well by. The longer I have been down here, the better my eyes have adapted to the complete darkness.
“You have likely made it more than halfway through,” Galea says.
I tsk, looking back up the way we came from. “How many flights up is it?”
“It will take seven levels to reach the entrance once again,” she informs me.
I turn back towards the unknown. “Best not to give up too early then.”
Ten minutes and two weird monsters later–they look like spiders with human-like hands and mushrooms for heads–I stand on the precipice of a big hole. Making sure to light fires on the other side of the hole, I stare down into the inky blackness below me. A part of me wants to throw some fire down right away, but I hold off for a moment, inspecting the edge.
“This looks old,” I say, hovering my burning hand over the crumbling edge of the pit. Green roots bury into the stone around the edge of the hole, the cracking stone beneath held in place. There is a layering to the roots, as if years and years of accumulation have made this hole a permanent fixture. The light of my hand illuminates a similar hole in the ceiling above me five feet further ahead. Something tells me that if I climb up into that one, I will find a similar sight in the next floor up. “Something broke out of here.”
“As you say, Mistress Charlene.”
I stare back down into the dark, seeing nothing. A thought strikes me, and I leap across the ten-foot hole, landing on the other side and turning back. Sure enough, there is a slight light far in the distance, another hole in the floor beneath the one I currently stand in. A series of holes lead down deeper into the dungeon, a slight white light coming out of the darkness further down.
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“There might finally be treasure to be had. Can you make out what is down there?”
“The light appears to be out of my range of perception,” Galea says.
“You could just say no.” I mull over what route to take for a moment before deciding to plunge ahead. Dropping down to the next level, I toss bolts of fire in opposite directions, hoping to catch any lurking monsters by surprise. The fire splashes into walls on either side of me, and I find myself crouching in a large room of stone. Thick growths cover the floor and walls, the root-like growths pouring down into the hole a few feet away. I inch closer, repeating the jump down a few more times until I stand on the precipice of the final hole.
The source of the light in the deep shadows below is visible now, and my eyes widen as I see it. The floor to the next level and the one beneath that appears to have collapsed a long time ago, leaving a cavernous space open to the overgrowth that permeates the dungeon. In the cavern, right in the middle, rests a mass of golden lights in a clutch: spawn seeds.
“How many of them are there?” I ask Galea.
The spirit flutters around for a moment before turning back to me. “Thirty-nine,” she reports. The light that the seeds gives off offers a wan illumination to the overgrown cavern beneath me, displaying a vacuous space filled with roots and vines as thick around as my leg.
“Thirty-nine spawn seeds,” I mutter. There is no way that I should be capable of making use of that many seeds. My consumption of them in the last few days has helped me boost my attributes, but I have also felt that I am coming close to the limit for their use. Still, those natural treasures are worth more than their weight in gold. “Are there any enemies down there?”
“None that I can perceive.”
Caution whispers to me, and I heed it. I sit at the top of the hole for a good hour, waiting for any sign of movement in the cavern below. From what I have pieced together about these mycose monsters, they are a bit unnatural. They are created by other monsters rather than appearing from the ether. Until now, I had thought that the territory bulbs were the only monsters capable of producing the spawn seeds, which would then be carried away by the Wandering Spawners to claim more territory. With so many spawn seeds concentrated beneath me, I might be closing in on the source of the bulbs. Would the source of such a large monster colony be something that I am capable of fighting?
With the time elapsed and having seen no monsters down in the cavern yet, my decision is made. Crawling up onto one of the thicker roots that pours down through the hole, I slowly slide my way down towards the cavern floor. The green moss gives dangerously as my boots clap down onto it, springy. A fully channeled Dragonfire Bolt rests in my open palm as I stalk forward towards the clutch of spawn seeds in the center of the cavern. I look about, each step I take across the moss-covered floor slow and measured. I can’t shake the feeling that the second I touch the spawn seeds the entire chamber will come to life and try to eat me. If this cavern were a monster, Galea should be able to tell me about it though.
Nothing happens as I inch my way forward. I stand in front of the clutch of spawn seeds, flaming hand held high as I cast light towards the shadows. Still, nothing.
“You know the way out, right?” I ask Galea.
“Of course, Mistress,” she says. I can see greed in the dragon spirit’s eyes. She wants the spawn seeds as much as I do.
“You still don’t detect any enemies?”
“None.”
I take a long breath, stepping forward to lay a hand on the clutch of spawn seeds. The warm magic of the spawn seed flows into my fingertips as I touch it. I sense no reaction in the chamber as I pocket the seed in my inventory. Diving ahead, I put all of the seeds in my inventory, I can go ahead and deal with sorting and consuming them later. The light in the cavern wanes as the seed disappear one by one until the only illumination comes from the flickering flame I hold in my hand. No vines begin to shoot out of the walls towards me, no earthquake as the ground itself comes to life.
Turning, I start to push strength into my legs to spur me ahead but stop after a single step. There, standing fifteen feet away from me, is a humanoid monster that had not been there a second ago. The orange light in my hand reflects off of the fitted white plates that make up its skin, budding lichen and fungal growth showing through the cracks between the plates. Unlike the Spawners, this monster is thin, its form lithe and almost artificial. It’s face is a mask, two eyes that glow a hateful amber color shining in my direction, the thin cap on its head looking more like a wide-brimmed hat than a mushroom. In its long-fingered hands it holds twin axes heavier than even Kendon’s hammer had been, ancient things that have long rusted over.
“An enemy!” Galea shrieks in my ear.
My bolt of fire is already soaring across the space between us. In a smooth motion, the monster moves one of its axes, catching the bolt of dragonfire on the head of its weapon and deflecting it. The bolt carries past the monster, exploding against the wall in a burst of flame.
???(???)
“Galea, what is that thing?” I ask as I push myself to concentrate as much burning mana in my hand as possible.
“I don’t know,” Galea whines. I hear a fear in the spirit’s voice that she has never shown before. “There are no hits from the archive and its providence is being obscured in some way.”
“Wha–” Before I can ask, the monster is in front of me, close enough that I could touch its face. The air splits in a scream of wind, the rusted head of an ax coming up to meet me.