Three hours into the ride, the dysrhythmic bumps of the caravan had became therapeutic for my sore body, like a massage that just kept on going. God knows I needed this. A soft moan escaped my thoughts, masking the subtle sounds of two manaflies making love on the caravan roof. Here's what they were thinking:
'Oh George, thrust your thick, wet dick into me!'
'Oh Margaret, you're so warm and moist!'
'I want to have babies with you, Georgey-poo. Give it to me deep! Hiii! <3'
'Honey... if you go any harder, then I'm going to... going to... Ahhhh!'
Squeak!
Huh, what was that noise? I looked up to see a small dark stain on the roof. Was it raining? Strange.
----------------------------------------
Coffee had fallen asleep, and was currently making snot bubbles the size of her fist. She had complained about her head bumping against the floor, and kept bugging me until I made a bed for her using my modified Air Space. I felt like the whipped boyfriend who studied computer science for the sole reason of programming a personalized organizer for all of his girlfriend's clothing and accessories.
Across from me, Liz was sitting upright against the caravan wall with her eyes closed, Kalli still snoozing away on her lap. She was either sleeping too, or silently contemplating about whether she would help Coffee and I complete the final mission. I could imagine that it was a huge request to accept, considering that she had so much riding on her being able to bring Kalli to safety.
As for me, I'd been trying to get this damn dungeon hive to communicate with me and give me more information. I tried everything from talking to it, to hitting the blue bracelet against the floor, to gently caressing it. I even tried tampering with the magic imbued into it, but was repelled by some invisible force.
'Oi,' I said, tapping the blue bracelet on my pseudopod in a final, feeble attempt. 'Hello? Sigh...'
Quest Update: What do you want, bitch?
...
I was glad that I got a response, but...
What was the dungeon hive's character supposed to be, really?
'Uh, mister dungeon hive... mind... sir? What should I refer to you as?'
Quest Update: You think we got time for your pussy little ass? We're the dungeon lord, bitch.
'Nice to meet you, Bitch.'
Quest Update: Haha. You've got balls, bitch. Now go shove them up your ass. Our name's Xylene, by the way.
'Thank you, Xylene. I have a few questions I'd like to ask you about the missions.'
Quest Update: And why should we tell you anything, bitch?
I smiled forcefully, trying to ignore the fact that my new nickname seemed to be 'bitch'.
'You've obviously got something to gain from me completing them, especially if you'd go as far as to reward me with a curse removal scroll,' I commented. I'd been thinking about this for a while now, and I still couldn't understand Xylene's motivations fully. What was clear, was that they had something to do with Coffee.
Xylene had granted me a mature mana core, conveniently at a time when I could use it to stall the goblin-mimic and save Coffee. It had given me information when Coffee's curse was acting up, and provided a means to help her. This also meant that it could not directly interfere and help her itself, but rather had to rely on me to do its work. I didn't particularly mind, because our motivations seemed to be aligned right now.
Quest Update: Sharp one, aren't you bitch. Fine, you can ask three questions, and that's it. I've got a dungeon to run.
What is it that you really do, as a dungeon hive? I had to swallow this rhetorical question to ask the more important ones. And right now, there was one that took top priority.
'Are my parents okay?'
Quest Update: Yeah.
...
That's it?
'...That's all you're going to give me?'
Quest Update: Yeah. And that's number two. One more question left.
'Hey, that's not fair! That wasn't even a proper question!'
Quest Update: Gee, what a stuck up little bitch you are. Two more. You happy?
What a jackass! Seriously, what was up with this dungeon? I want the first dungeon hive I talked to at the sanctuary back, please. The second encounter was like talking to an internet troll, and this third time was like talking to the worst rendition of Daniel M Jackson.
At least I found out that my parents were 'okay', but what parameters did it use to define 'okay', in the first place? ARGG! This was so frustrating! Sigh... Calm down, Bell. Just focus on the second question. And make it more specific this time.
'What does the final mission of the Great Manamoo Caverns entail?'
Quest Update: After reaching the Temple of Figus and defeating the false Moob King, a one-way portal will open, leading you to the secret cow level. There, you will slaughter countless manamoos and ultimately defeat the true Moob King, bitch.
I nodded and smiled. Yeah, that sounded great.
LIKE HELL IT DID!
If I could breathe fire, I would set this world ablaze to show my defiance. Not only did the final mission sound impossibly hard, but it would also require us to go through a one-way portal? There would be no way for us to return and leave through the secret exit Liz was talking about. The one that would transport us near the Vampire Kingdom. Moreover, if my memory served me correctly, the true exit of the dungeon would just transport us back to the entrance in the Mimic Kingdom.
How the fuck was this fair?
'Is there any way to go back from the secret cow level to the Temple of Figus?' I asked desperately.
Quest Update: Nope. Aaaand that was three! Good luck and goodbye~
'Xylene! Stop, I have more questions!'
I tapped on the blue bracelet furiously to no avail. That bastard!
So in the end, it was a suicide mission to save Coffee? I thought our goals were aligned, you damn dungeon! Frustrated, I stomped my feet on the caravan floor.
'Bell?' Liz looked up, probably woken by the sudden noise. 'What's going on?'
Kalli also got up sleepily, wobbling from side to side as he tried to balance himself on the moving vehicle.
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Bang!
The caravan jolted upwards upon hitting a rock, sending poor Kalli on a tumble. He hit his head against the caravan wall and was holding his head with both hands. Liz lifted him up and placed him between her crossed legs, hugging him to prevent him from flying off again.
'Aweh, Kalli, don't cry,' Liz comforted him. 'So, Bell? Why were you stomping about?'
'Err...' I looked at the blue bracelet, which had returned to its normal mission status screen. Do I tell her that the final mission was a suicide mission, and that even if we succeeded, we'd lose the opportunity to use the escape route? Informing her seemed like the right thing to do, but it was obvious that her decision would be cemented if I did. 'I was frustrated about something. Were you awake the entire time?' I deflected, deciding to think about it some more before dropping the bomb.
'Mhm. Didn't you hear the amazing, sensual sounds going on up top? Those manaflies are going on round 5 right now,' Liz drooled.
I looked up in horror to find five dark spots on the roof. You mean to say that those are...
"Stop the vehicle!" A familiar voice shouted from ahead. It was coming from the other caravan.
'What's the matter?' I shouted back, shaking myself from the terrifying thought of bug sex happening while I was in that dilemma. What the fuck was wrong with the author? (AN: 39 degree fever, that's what)
"We're going to take a fifteen minute breakfast break at this pit stop, and then continue on our way," Onnie said, jumping out of his van. The other four vegetables jumped out as well, and the five of them clambored down onto the street on their backs in a straight row, staying absolutely still.
"Ahhhh, photosynthesis," Toto moaned.
It honestly looked like a vegetable kebab without the stick.
...
Liz, Kalli, and I just stared at them judgementally.
"Do you young'uns want to join us?" One of the other vegetables asked. "Feels great!"
'No thanks,' I responded.
'Doesn't that... look painful?' I asked in a whisper. The sun was high in the sky, and it was probably at least 30 degrees celsius.
'Yeah, it seems a little hot,' Liz replied. For once, without a sexual connotation. Literal steam seemed to be coming off their skin.
'Steamed veggies!' Kalli exclaimed.
'FOOD?!' A loud voice cried from behind us. Oh fuck, no.
A small figure burst forth over our heads and sank its teeth into the nearest vegetable, Toto.
"M-miss vampire hero, w-what are--ACK!" Toto's eyes rolled back into his head.
"S-s-stop h-her!" Toto's four warriors shuffled to their feet and raised their swords as Coffee chomped down on the tomato, drenching her in red tomato sauce. What was I horrified about before? Bug sex? Yeah, that was nothing compared to the looks these guys were wearing on their faces.
'Liz, Kalli, let's back her up,' I whispered. They sternly nodded, acknowledging that the situation had gone too far, and we wouldn't be able to recover from this mishap. Well, Liz would probably feel this way. I'm sure Kalli was just hungry. I'd have to remind Liz to feed him some of those manamoo strips we packed earlier.
I summoned my modified Air Space from within the caravan and fired it towards the veggie warriors, knocking two off their feet and distracting the other two, who fought back the invisible force of air with their absorption-imbued swords or via evasive maneuvers. This would be enough time to let Liz--ah, nevermind. Coffee already started eating the two who had been knocked to the ground. Alive.
"AHHHHHH! MOMMY, HELP M--"
"FUCK! MY LEG! MY ARM! MY HEA--"
I shivered watching their last moments, eaten alive by a voracious Coffee. I knew they were vegetables, but it was still quite graphic. Liz was covering Kalli's eyes instead of helping out with the battle. Then again, I didn't think Coffee needed any more backup at this point. She was like the main character of that one really popular food anime, reincarnated in the body of a little girl.
Two minutes later, all of the vegetables who were lying on the street were gone, and in their place was a snoring Coffee, with a bloated stomach the size of a large beach ball. Moreso than what had happened, I was surprised that she could stand to be in the sun--
'Bell, please help me into the caravan. The sun burns,' she whimpered. Not asleep after all, huh?
'No, you need to know what you did,' I shot back, already moving the Air Space underneath her to transport her to the vehicle. I was so nice.
'It was the curse again. It wasn't my fault,' she groaned. She breathed a sigh of relief as the shade rolled over her.
'Dammit, they're all dead. What the fuck do we do now?' I threw my pseudopods up in the air. More complications. Always. Never ending, complications. I was almost ready to give up.
'The mission didn't say anything about transporting those guys to the city, right? Wasn't it just about defending Orbis City?' Liz asked.
'Yeah, but how are we supposed to defend the city if we just lost our primary strategic advisor?' I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples.
'Weren't you creating strategies and stuff earlier with Kalli?' Liz smiled. 'I'm sure you could do a better job than Toto. He was kind of an airhead, in my opinion.'
'Yeah, woooooh, go Bell, master strategizer!' Coffee laughed. I flicked her on the forehead with my pseudopod.
'You don't have any right to make fun of me, Ms. Glutton,' I retorted.
'Who are you calling a glutton?' Coffee stuck out her tongue at the caravan roof, unable to lift herself to face me because of her immense weight.
'Big bro, I think you can do it!' Kalli nudged me from the side and looked up at me with sparkling eyes.
'Err... But why would they even trust me in the first place? Weren't they expecting Toto to come?' I was looking for any excuse possible to not have to be the strategic advisor. I didn't have any experience, nor did I have any confidence in my abilities.
'You can use Advanced Shapeshifting, right Bell?' Coffee asked. 'You can just become a tomato for the time being and call yourself his son or something.'
'That's right!' Liz encouraged. 'You can be Toto Jr. for the time being. It's foolproof.'
'Big bro the toma-to!' Kalli said gleefully, clapping his hands together.
God dammit.
----------------------------------------
'Pfffff-hahahahahaha!' Coffee rolled along the floor of the moving caravan as she laughed her ass off.
'Ahem. It looks... uhh... nice?' Liz tried to be optimistic.
'You look weird, big bro,' Kalli commented.
I had tried to create a mental 3D rendition of a younger looking Toto, and applied manifestation vectors just like when I had transformed into a mimic. The problem was that whereas mimics were boxy, tomatos were spherical and slightly oblong. I had trouble getting the right curvature, and ended up stressing the manifestation vectors, causing them to bend at weird angles. All said and done, I looked like a white tumor with arms and legs growing out of it, and a disfigured face to boot.
'Maybe we could say that Toto forgot to use protection when he banged a broccoli,' Liz suggested.
"Phwuck you guish," I said.
----------------------------------------
It took me four tries to actually transform myself into a passable tomato, but by this point everyone was laughed out. We had been traveling for a long time, and we were past three-quarters of the way to Orbis City. Everyone but me was asleep, partly because I was never really a heavy sleeper. The other reason was that I was enticed by our magic items.
For the past while, I had been studying the void ring, and figured out a little bit about how it worked. The ring itself was a sophisticated magical conduit that drew in mana from the user and amplified it several thousand times. This was only possible because of the material that it was manufactured from, and it was one that I had never seen before. I could only imagine that it was rare and priceless, to have such an effect.
After amplification, the conduit created a small rift that was infused with a strange type of mana that seemed to keep the void space beyond the rift frozen in time. Extrapolating from the subdungeon's time flux properties, I first guessed that this mana would be Flux. But I had another theory, which utilized manifestation mana.
I assumed that manifestation vectors were used to create a storage space inside the rift that could be accessed via macro through a specific channel in the ring, just like I did when I summoned my macros. The difference was that the creators of the void ring may have manipulated the vectors to surpass three-dimensional space and keep the storage space suspended in the fourth dimension, time.
I would have loved to learn more about time based vectors, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't perceive it. I assumed that this limitation was due to being unable to sense the fourth dimension. Was there a species out there that could see into the fourth dimension? Or was it a skill? Perhaps it had something to do with that divination stuff my grandfather had mentioned in his journal, or the time flux ratio associated with this subdungeon.
Regardless, the void ring did give me an idea. I never really considered the possibility of sending spells through the void matrix. I broke off a piece of the modified Air Space that Coffee was sleeping on, and discovered that I could transport it through a Jux without expending any mana!
There could be so many applications of this spell, like... like... uhhhh...
...
Well, at least it was cool.
Maybe I could use it to send air from one area to another or something. Like blowing Coffee's morning breath away.
The other thing I was playing around with was the Relic we found at the mansion. It was as golden and shiny as ever, and I was careful to not infuse any mana into it, particularly since Coffee warned me that it could seal a unique and powerful spell. Using mana perception, I studied the intricacies therewithin.
It was like peering into the inner workings of a computer, except that the circuitry was more complicated than even the void ring, and the parts were more minute. This compactness and sophistication would put the technology giant Orange to shame.
As to what the Relic's functionality was, was anybody's guess. Without the initial application of energy to boot the system up, it was like looking at a circuit board dimly laced with a concoction of mana types that blended perfectly and prevented me from dissecting it. I wondered if there was a circuitry expert who could help us decipher it, but I doubted it, especially if the creators of the void ring were all executed. This Relic was more advanced than the void ring itself.
I slapped myself with a tinge of regret. Damn, I should've used the last question Xylene gave me to ask what this Relic did. It could be the line between success and failure in this mission, if it was as powerful as Coffee made it out to be. I tapped on the blue bracelet again to no avail. I wondered if Xylene would even respond anymore for the remainder of the quest. Sigh.
Storing the Relic back into the void ring, I woke Liz up to continue powering the caravan with mana, and dragged myself beside the sleeping Coffee to take a nap against her back until we got to the city.
...
It's not like that, alright? I just... I just wanted... Shaddup, what's wrong with a man wanting physical comfort, huh?
Mumble mumble zzzzzZzzz...