Corvayne carefully moved around a puddle, pooling in a spot where marble tiles had melted like swiss cheese. Every bit of liquid in the acid drenched sub-dungeon or 'hidden realm' or 'treasure realm' was hostile to his stolen cowboy boots, which were desperately regrowing but often leaving his toes to burn.
The scenery inside the towers was a mix of opulence, medieval torture chamber, horrific corpse-like body, and airy gardens. One of the creatures the dungeon spawned just seemed to roam around fixing the terrain after it melted too far, ignoring the interlopers as they moved through breezy corridors that were often open to the horrible colored clouds that floated through the floor's purple sky.
Other lifeforms were not nearly as benign. Corvayne clicked his cheek once and everyone stopped. He gestured with his spear at what looked like a metallic zit on the wall, easily mistaken for one of the melted lumps he guessed were once iron sconces. They looked around, as usually there were 'packs' of the monsters. Sure enough, in one of the arches above he could see two more. He suspected if he was foolish enough to keep walking, there would be one on a pillar supporting the hallway between two wings of the tower.
They backed up a good fifty feet, as they didn't want to stand near the open windows and get blown off the floor. There was what looked like a patio and pool about thirty feet down before a melted iron fence, but Corvayne knew the pool was full of acid. The other side was a garden path, also 30 feet lower, rimmed by reddish trees whom had insanely corrosive bark, strong enough to harm creatures that lived and breathed the acidic vapor that surrounded them.
They retreated to the previous hexagon of the tower, back into the shadows, then moved to get behind cover as Corvayne readied [Cross Skill: Whirling Axe] then yanked his spear back, sending a spinning green projectile shooting off at the zit. He moved to cover, making sure that Lady Blood Claw wouldn't be hit. There was a short whine then an ear-shattering chain of noises as each of the metal zits triggered each-other, shaking the floor and sending metal shards into the floor, forming more little holes.
Corvayne waited a few seconds, as sometimes the zits took a while to trigger. “Clear!”
He went first, of course. Lady Blood Claw was mostly encased in vines and he was by far the best at recovering from traps and ambushes from monsters. Some of the pillars were missing, which he would think should collapse the covered walkway, but there were chunks of material also floating. It might weigh a lot less then he'd assume. The blasts extended into the next room, which hadn't been in great shape before. Melted skull-like faces in the green marble were drooling smoking goop that had eroded almost half the chamber, blocking off one of the doors to a covered stairway up.
Corvayne took a step near the cave-like crater, the bottom melting through part of the hall under this one. Little Spur was looking at each of the doors, clearly considering them. Corvayne could see they all had sunlight sections. Despite a lot of penile alien-faces, the entire dungeon was well lit, and what he would consider 'airy' most of the time.
Corvayne leaned over. “Figure something out?”
“No, I was wondering if these buildings really count as being inside, since they have so many holes in them.”
“Mostly to let fliers attack us.” Or risk them falling off or getting blown into the air out a window. Some of those metal mines pretended to be tiles. If not for gravity powers, he might still be on his way to finding out what was at the bottom of the floor.
Of course, some of those faces would vomit acid on them, so there was spear poking at the doorway before they determined it was just an ugly design. They passed a room that looked like an art gallery that had started to melt; warped gold frames had just fragments of the paintings in the upper corners, everything else warped by chemicals, turning what Corvayne guessed were beloved aristocrats into garish stains on canvas turning a thousand metallic poisonous colors. Some works had been placed on granite stands some time ago and now were just streaks on the floor, pooling in low spots.
No traps, only a few standard monsters, ones that in another dungeon would represent a grave threat to their gear. At this point, everything they had was either immune or could repair itself through the damage. Bayou, for example, had been given a robe that didn't dissolve in the vapor. Little Spur had an odd combo going with his stitched boarskin shirt. He had grabbed red silk shorts that had some incredible ability to completely repair even when submerged in acid. Lady Blood Claw had enough brush coming out of her that she was probably better clothed then any of them, her pale purple flesh barely showing through the endless brush pushing out of her.
Corvayne would never tell her that he had 'baby birded' her boar meat to boost her acid resistance. Nor that he suspected Little Spur sometimes was staring at her butt, mostly that Bayou would elbow the young cowtivator now and then.
There were other rooms, all of them somehow connected to a view of the outside even though Corvayne was pretty sure the rooms were in spots that had been open air. Nobody else commented, though he was sure they looked confused after six right turns in a row from compass put them at the foot of a bridge they hadn't scouted the last chain they had been on. A few boars tried to stop their progress, but Bayou's rabbit could take a group of three on it's own, let alone with everyone pitching in using the few weapons they had found in a chest.
Bayou had grown leaps and bounds with a crook made of the horrible burning wood, even though some of the oil leaked through it's wrapped handle, moving forward to use [Shepard Strike] which seemed to teleport the insect-bunny onto the enemy for an attack that resulted in the monster skidding to a stop dead.
Little Spur found a pair of knives. They looked to be too short to use in combat, but seemed to have some sort of high powered air blades attached to them, each attack making a cracking noises before they severed enemy limbs.
Lepin had found a rusted blade that shed flakes of rust but would heal itself. It had some horrific blood-seeking property that made it fall apart when it got into a monster then snap back together, carrying lots of blood and gore that melted into it a moment later. Corvayne thought it looked like the blade was getting healthier. Well, it didn't feel hostile and neither did Lepin. He guessed it was just an edgy blade rather than being cursed. Corvayne did instruct her how to use some of the sword forms he knew, with [Crescent Blade] and [Light Cut] coming fast but [Sundering Strike] not working, which he thought was odd. He would assume the blade would have an affinity for half of [Combo: Rust Storm] given it's form.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Boars dead, Corvayne skinned them and stored the meat and bones, leaving pretty much offal and a few random organs that were useless to anything he or Little Spur could craft or brew. He kept an eye open for 'bullseye' moss, which was the limiting factor in turning the boars corrosive bones into a potion that burned all the way down but at the same time gave them incredible regeneration to survive drinking it and for a few minutes afterwards.
At least all the crafting of clothes and tools and cooking made Lythandies happy. His mends seemed to be getting better too. Maybe there was a skill attached to it?
There was buzzing, and the group crouched, Lady Blood Claw somehow making a shield of wood even though she was asleep. Corvayne peered through a crack, tracing sixty smaller fliers around a big one. He wouldn't bet it wasn't looking for them: they had to abandon camp one night when danger sense warned him of something like a mega boar, a seemingly normal sized boar that bled drops that turned into copies of itself... and was hunting them.
Lepin had given her theory, many rooms later: “This is shaped like an expedition dungeon. There's areas that are 'outskirts' and then places and monsters you need a group to dispatch. That boar... to kill it probably requires bleeding it out and keeping it in place while whole packs of cowboys unload into it's children before damaging it a little. A big bug with sixty flies? It's meant to have several people who can distract the little swarms until they can be whittled down.”
Corvayne nodded. “I'm keeping us on 'the safest path home.' We'll try to stay between the hotspots.”
She had taken his arm. “We keep our eyes out for places where we can take treasure without risking the big dens. We need to get stronger, and it's known to the brave and foolish that dungeons like this, especially ones noone knows about, can grant us great treasures, things we would not lay hands on in a thousand thousand years otherwise.”
They had found a few chests, and while he suspected a few of the new tools would be 'blue' or 'purple' on the Hari scale, he didn't think any of them seemed like they were worth the trouble. He considered if he should try to sniff out easy pickings rather than just stay on the safest path. The buzzing had died down, but the wind was picking up. He sliced part of the wood open and stored the blood logs. He had made enough wooden javelins to cover the dwindling supply of bullets, but it wasn't a great counter to monsters who could spit acid from hundreds of feet away.
They stuck to the middle of the bridge, detonating a huge colony of metal bombs he was sure would send the bridge plummeting. Again, despite cracks, the huge bridge held, letting them move into the shadow of the largest tower they'd seen.
Corvayne had them slow and he crept forward, once more missing his cloak as he moved around the pillars on the bridge into a gently sloped hallway divided by a stream of neon green acid hurtling down it's white and blue bricks. There were open sections of wall letting in light, a shade of yellow that the sky didn't match. He spotted something holding what looked like a squirt gun with red bulbs attached, in a dark corner further up the exterior hall.
Lizardlike, but with a sort of combined eye-bar and various holes that looked like they could be mouths. [[Unity]] and [[Understanding]] gave him the same baseline hostility that everything in a dungeon had, while also hinting at directives to -Find, Shoot, Alarm- in that order.
He moved back to his allies.
“You say your ally is asleep, but her unseen hand colors you both.”
He was so used to LBC on his back it was like second nature to climb, leap, and sneak with her. “I'm changing colors?”
Bayou nodded. “The tree she's growing was. It matched the walls.”
“I may be testing that in a moment. I'm going to slit a monster scout's throat. Be right back.”
He retraced his steps and used gravity to climb up the wall to a place he hoped was less conspicuous , than creeped along a ledge decorated with statues with empty eyes in melted faces, holding up scrolls with alien language on them. His translation would be 'Matter' 'Justice' and 'Obedience', with a few odd ones like 'Sandwhichatude' which suggested it was just nonsense.
He moved above the squirt-gun snipers alcove, dropped, and pulled a sharpened boar-tusk dagger across the monsters throat, activating [Back Biter] as he did. The effect was both a torrent of gore that looked and smelled like toothpaste, and a refreshing torrent of life.
That actually worried Corvayne, as it suggested the monster he killed was actually a high level threat. Still, it had an intact raincoat and the squirt-gun, which he looted along with red bulbs that looked like a reload.
“Well, if I can do it to one...”
A few minute later, Corvayne returned and dumped about twenty squirt-guns of various shapes at the groups feet, as well as numerous pieces of ceramic looking armors and acid-immune clothing.
“What did you DO?” Lepin grabbed him and pulled him up. “What the FUCK is going on?”
Corvayne blinked. “I just took a few stragglers out.”
“I just hit FOUR KNOTS. They gained fifty levels just now!”
Uh oh. He forgot that he was still in a party with Prishe on top of all his [[Growth]] modifiers. “Uh, is this on a game on your jade tablet?”
She looked graven. “I advanced two full levels of Cultivation! I've got to meditate, SHIT, this is going to burn out my spirit deer trails!” She started shedding her crude clothes, tossing them into a pile before sitting down on the floor and revealing that at some point she had tanned just wearing a bikini, probably. There was a sizzle and she cried out. “Fuck!”
Corvayne took one of the hides they had cleaned and set it down, and Lepin moved over. “I'm having an inspiration and the floor is burning my pussy. What did you do?!?!”
“Why not leave your clothes on-”
A moment later something like gray goop sprayed out of her skin, the liquid smelling fouler than anything he had encountered since back in the Watchers village cleaning a latrine out. It leaked from her closed eyes, her nostrils, her nipples, and probably a whole bunch of other places. It started giving off terrible pearls of black oily smoke as the corrosive environment hit it.
Bayou called out. “What happened?”
Corvayne looked back and saw she had covered Little Spurs eyes as well as the rabbit-insect on her shoulder. Little Spur, for what it was worth seemed to be amused. “When you have one enlightenment, let alone two, it surges your tier. Cultivation in general is about raising your tier and cracking your class, race, and other refinements without ticking every box. It is a defiance of heaven-”
Corvayne scratched his head. “I thought that if you built a solid base, you could create a tower that reaches the heavens or however they say it-”
Little Spur cast off Bayous hand and started throwing his clothes off, causing her to cover her own face as he dropped into a lotus position and also hissed.
“Corvayne, could you do a martial brother a favor-”
Corvayne winced and put a hide down as Little Spur shifted, a little wisp of smoke coming from his folded legs.
Corvayne collected their discarded clothes. “You would think he'd learn from her example-”
Bayou was bent over, holding her stomach. “I think I gotta do it too... oh god my skin smells terrible. Help me take it off!”
She started ripping her hides off, and Corvayne dropped a hide down as she also started leaking gray fluid everywhere. Lepin, meanwhile, had a lotus with a horse shoe above it materialize above her head. At the same time, it looked like Little Spur was immolating, fires erupting from his pores as the gray fluid spurted and veins on him went black for a moment, energies pulsing under his skin.
Corvayne considered asking if they were awake, but they were all breathing and twitching in a way that suggested he shouldn't bother them (not to mention the stench of gray goop they were exuding).
Corvayne looked around. No clouds coming, but he started building little igloos around them with Lady Blood Claw's help. Mostly so he wouldn't stare at Lepin or Bayou's breasts. That and it helped keep the smell from overpowering him: There wasn't much ventilation in the little arched ceilings between the pillars.
The little insect-bunny hopped on his shoulder. “You going to start spewing goop and fall asleep too?”
It mimed thinking, a little claw paw against it's mouth. All six of it's eyes squinted as if it was thinking. Then it shook it's head.
“Suit yourself.” Corvayne started seeing how well the squirt-guns worked, and if he could make new clothes out of the stuff he looted off the bodies. He figured it was going to be a while.