Drayya retrieved a torch and fire striker from her pack to illuminate the corridors of black quartz. The light of her fire reflected from the polished surface as if it was made from the purest glass. A chorus of indeterminate growls and snarls bounced through the remnants of the layers to ward away any intruders.
“Who knows how many more of those things are prowling these halls… or what remains of them, at least.” Drayya said, “If you hadn’t been so quick with that barrier, you would have been dead before me or any of the thralls could have reacted.”
“Amorphic aberration from beyond the stars or no, a beast is still a beast.” Lieze’s pale skin turned orange before the torchlight, “-And a beast can always be outwitted.”
Something more sophisticated than brute force or sheer numbers would be needed to kill the Void Beast. From what Lieze had observed and experienced, it seemed to be an ambush predator, leaping from the shadows to deal a critical blow and retreating just as quickly if its prey wasn’t weakened enough for the kill, only to repeat the cycle until it was.
“Bait.” Lieze said.
“What?” Drayya blinked.
“We need bait.” She elaborated, “The Void Beast won’t attack unless it’s sure it can escape in a pinch. As long as we stick together as one group, it’ll be too wary of the Gravewalkers to attempt another ambush.”
“Surely that’s a good thing, no?” Drayya replied, “We don’t have to kill it.”
“I didn’t come on this expedition just to sift through a trove of useless magical items.” She continued, “I want to diversify our army with units more specialised than Gravewalkers or Rot Behemoths or Briarknights. That Void Beast will be an excellent starting point.”
“It’s never easy with you, is it…” Drayya frowned, “I can’t deny that you’re right, though. Having a monster like that on our side would open up a world of possibilities for espionage.”
Lieze commanded one of her Gravewalkers to approach. The corpse was once a young and rather handsome man, but in the wake of its undead ascension, what remained of its chiselled cheekbones and jawline had been marred with strands of rotting, fatty skin. Without a moment of hesitation, Lieze lifted the Gravewalker’s wrist with one hand and placed her dagger against its exposed bone. All it took was a gentle application of pressure to cut straight through the brittle blockade, and a few extra seconds of sawing to sever the remainder of its flesh.
Lieze resisted the urge to shudder as flaps of the hand’s sloughing skin slipped off like a tattered glove. It wasn’t the most appetising morsel, but she figured that monsters lurking in the depths of labyrinths wouldn’t be particularly picky about what they ate.
“Ugh… better you than me.” Drayya grimaced, “If that works as bait, then fine. But if the Void Beast can simply disappear into the floor cracks, then how are we going to catch it?”
“Follow me.” Lieze stuffed the severed hand into her Bag of Holding and beckoned for Drayya to follow, “I have an idea.”
They proceeded further into the layer’s crumbling remains. Lieze took command of the torch and walked with excruciating slowness, stopping every few seconds to examine the architecture of the walls. Just when Drayya was about to complain about her speed, the girl held out a hand to prevent her from passing.
“Look there.” Lieze pointed the torch towards a great fissure in the wall, where a complex network of metal tubing could be seen through the gap. A circular, iron vent was poking out from a mold in the quartz where it had once rested perfectly.
Drayya tilted her head, “What’s that?”
“A gas trap.” Lieze replied, “Normally they’re incredibly difficult to spot, but thanks to the damage we’ve done-”
“You’ve done.” Drayya interrupted, “The damage you’ve done.”
“Yes… fine.” Lieze waved her hand, “-Thanks to that, they can be spotted with the naked eye. It’s primed to activate whenever a living creature draws close, then a cloud of poisonous gas will fill the corridor.”
“I see your logic.” She nodded, “We can use this to weaken the Void Beast if you lure it here with bait.”
Lieze smirked, “Not only that…”
She retrieved the severed hand and her focus before closing her eyes to commune with the Blackbriar’s will.
“It’s a little frustrating not being able to see how much MP my focus has stored…” She thought, “I wonder if I could command the system to show me that instead of my personal MP?”
[Settings Changed] If a spell is cast using stored MP from a magical focus, the value shown will be that of the focus rather than your natural reserve of MP.
[Staff of Thraldom] Stored MP - 3242 / 3417
Casting [Master Necromancy] on the severed hand, Lieze resisted the urge to cast the extremity aside out of disgust as it stood on each finger like some kind of deformed spider. A block of translucent text appeared above its newly-undead form.
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Undead Hand Level 37 Undead HP - 3,400 / 3,400 MP - 0 / 0 BODY - 37 MIND - 0 SOUL - 0
One look at the creature made Lieze consider just how effective her necromancy had become. For a measly 10MP, she could massively inflate the level of even the most pitiful specimen and transform it into something capable of contending with battle-hardened warriors.
[Staff of Thraldom] Stored MP - 3057 / 3417
Unfortunately, that particular thrall wouldn’t be alive for much longer. Lieze used her focus to cast [Proximity Corpse Explosion] on the hand, adding a [Mercurial Enhancement] for some much-needed kick.
Lieze did the math in her head. The hand would be considered level [185] for the purposes of calculating its damage thanks to the addition of Mercuria. If the spell did HP damage equal to 8x the thrall’s level, she was looking at a trap capable of shaving off [1480] points from the Void Beast’s HP, not counting any additional damage done by the gas trap.
“I can hear the gears turning in your head.” Drayya’s voice broke her concentration, “Theory is all well and good, but if it can’t be applied, then it’s of no use to us.”
She had a point. There was no reason to dwindle on numbers when the cathartic barbarism of real combat wasn’t something that could be so easily quantified. Lieze would simply have to trust her plan and improvise wherever appropriate. She tossed the Undead Hand towards the length of the corridor at risk from the gas trap and commanded it to remain still.
“Let’s retreat and observe from a distance.” Lieze said, “The Void Beast shouldn’t be intelligent enough to identify a trap even in plain sight. Once it activates, we’ll make use of the confusion to move forward and engage it with our Gravewalkers.
The tag of [Undead] was useful for two reasons: firstly, creatures that were not considered ‘alive’ would not activate traps without pressure plates or some other form of physical mechanism. Gas traps were in fact the only trap that had posed a threat to Lieze and Drayya over the course of their delve, as every over trap could be triggered and neutralised by allowing thralls to take the lead.
Secondly, [Undead] creatures were immune to the effects of poison. This simple fact would allow Lieze and Drayya’s Gravewalkers to attack the Void Beast once it activated the trap without fear of falling prey to it themselves.
Once they had rounded an intact corner not far from the gas trap and extinguished the torch, all that remained was to wait and see if the Void Beast would take the bait. Lieze assumed that the feral and deplorable denizens of a dungeon wouldn’t hesitate to feast upon rotten meat, and her prediction was soon proven to be true as a familiar stew of starry, formless flesh began to emerge from the cracks in the floor further down the passageway.
“Oh… you were- mmf!?” Drayya went to whisper, only to have her mouth covered by Lieze’s hand.
“Shh!” She frowned, “Don’t get too excited…”
The Undead Hand did its damndest to play dead, accomplishing the exact opposite effect with its spider-like mannerisms, dropping onto its back and curling its ‘legs’ inwards. Once the Void Beast was fully-formed, however, it didn’t seem to regard the hand’s strange position with any suspicion. It crept forward with its nose pressed to the ground, and would have been invisible in the darkness were it not for the glowing pinpricks of light studding its flesh.
One overconfident step brought the gas vent hissing to life, earning a startled growl from the creature. Before the thought of retreat could cloud its mind, the Undead Hand unfurled from its false death and leaped from the ground to latch onto the Void Beast’s feline nose. In a moment of desperation, the creature rolled across the floor and pawed at the tiny assailant, ignorant of the emerald cloud suffusing its position with fell smoke.
No matter how the Void Beast’s head twisted and morphed, the Undead Hand would only reorient its grip to find purchase in the beast’s starry flesh. Panic burrowed its way into the Void Beast’s brain - especially as an echoing chorus of footfalls enlightened it to a ravenous group of Gravewalkers encroaching on its position.
An animalistic instinct pushed it to escape into the comfort of the dungeon floor, but its lungs had already partaken of the poisonous gas, inflicting its roiling muscles with paralysis. With nowhere to escape, the beast was forced to accept that it had been bested. A croak of leonine snarls marked its final attempt at resistance as Gravewalkers bore down upon its flesh. Lieze observed from a distance as the Void Beast’s HP trickled steadily down to zero.
“Call your Gravewalkers off.” She commanded, “There won’t be anything left to raise at this rate.”
One by one, the thralls backed away from the Void Beast’s corpse. In the absence of conscious thought, its body had melted into a puddle of formless tar on the dungeon floor.
“Can I even raise this…?” Lieze scratched the back of her head, “Well, it’s worth a shot…”
[Staff of Thraldom] Stored MP - 3047 / 3417
The puddle of flesh began to bubble with enthusiasm, evaporating into a foul-smelling smoke. Eventually, the Void Beast returned to its feline form, only with chunks of the previously-immaculate facsimile missing. Of particular note was the side of the creature’s face, which appeared to be caught in a state of perpetual melting.
Undead Void Beast Level 120 Aberration HP - 23,980 / 23,980 MP - 17,892 / 17,892 BODY - 58 MIND - 50 SOUL - 12
It was a fine addition to her army. The existence of the creature’s MP value made Lieze wonder if it was capable of any spells, but such research would have to wait until after she’d successfully returned to Tonberg.
“At least we’ve got something more useful than Gravewalkers to protect us now…” She muttered.
The Void Beast wandered over to her and sat obediently like a trained housepet.
“Ooh!” Drayya stomped forward, pushing Lieze out of the way, “So cute!”
She knelt down to pet the beast’s half-formed head, quickly finding her hands stained with an unidentifiable substance. She couldn’t have cared less.
“Hehe… good- uh…” She blinked, “Is it a boy?”
Lieze crossed her arms, “Does it really matter? How does a creature like this even reproduce…?”
“Good Void Beast!” Drayya settled on the neutral option, “Can we give it a name?”
Lieze sighed, “No.”