Five pairs of eyes stared at the dungeon entrance. It was like someone and flipped a giant tree upside down and jammed it into the ground. Enormous roots climbed toward the sky, twisting and curling in various directions. Near the center of the root formation was a dirt path that sloped downward and, presumably, into the dungeon. This was confirmed when one of the plant beetles skittered up the slope.
The little beetle let out an alarmed chitter and rushed at Penry. The big man put a heavy booted foot on one of the bug’s pincers while Meia calmly walked around it and jammed her sword between the armor plates and into its brain just as Brivaria instructed the night before.
“I like them better when they come alone,” Penry commented. “Maybe we could just stay out here for the day and collect a level or two from these little things.” He threw his hands up in surrender as both Rake and Meia gave equally annoyed looks for different reasons. “Just a thought.”
Meia inspected the dirt slope and insisted on staying well ahead of the group. Brivaria and her abysmal 17 awareness had no room to object. Her awareness had been awful before the level loss and it seemed even worse now. Angels were many things but perceptive was not one of them. Post-rebirth she was now particularly bad at it.
Meia called for the group to halt upon reaching the entrance into the dungeon proper and then asked Brivaria to join her. No one could see in the dark and Brivaria’s Produce Light skill could be active almost all day so long as she kept the brightness down and didn’t get fancy with it. Brivaria filled the room with gentle light and Meia went to work.
Outwardly it looked like the group was entering an upside down tree. The inside shared that aesthetic with floors, walls, and ceiling that looked like someone had hollowed out the inside of a tree even down to the rings indicating age swirling on the ceiling and floor. None of it made much of an impression on the angel as her foremost experience with trees had been of the living kind trying to crush her. It wasn’t a positive impression and she greatly preferred the inert variety.
“There are chest-high holes in the wall. They looked like the dungeon equivalent of an arrow hole. I’m guessing we step into this room and get peppered with-” What Meia was about to say died in her throat as the trap activated. Trixie had come down the slope with Brivaria and innocently padded into the room.
“Run! Get back, get back!” Meia shouted. Everyone backed up as Meia and even Brivaria scrambled out of the path of dozens of razorsharp thistles. They shot from the wooden walls of the dungeon with the force of crossbow bolts. More and more poured from the room, slamming into the soft earth where the two had just stood. All four adventurers heard Trixie’s barking and the soft impacts as hundreds of projectiles no doubt flew around the room.
After minutes of listening to the trap spewing its projectiles, finally the sounds came to an end. Everyone crept down to the entrance afraid of what they would find. Brivaria shined her light into the room and it came to rest on a happy, golden dog sitting in the center of the room panting. Everyone flinched as the dog ran toward them but nothing emerged from the walls.
“Trixie, bad girl!” Meia scolded the dog while Brivaria knelt to check Trixie for thistles. The dog was entirely fine. She’d been below the height at which the thistles fired.
“Yeah, bad girl,” Rake echoed but without feeling. He was peering into the dungeon and looking at the stacks of thistles around the perimeter of the room. Several walls looked like cacti with many of the long thistles sticking out but most of the projectiles ended up on the floor. He piked one up, careful not to touch the point, and tentatively threw it. It flew unerringly through the air. Rake’s face lit up.
“They have a light flying or throwing enchantment. Let’s each collect a few bundles and wrap them in towels just in case there’s some sort of contact poison on them. They might be valuable. If not for use as weapons, they’ve got dungeon mana in them and that might be worth something.” Everyone started collecting thistles except Trixie and Brivaria.
The angel waited for the others to get a few bundles and then activated Tailwind very briefly. A gust of wind blew a significant number of thistles into a corner. She walked over and lowered an armored boot on top of them. Every thistle she touched disappeared, instantly whisked away and into her inventory. Her foot touched the floor after adding a couple hundred of them to her inventory.
“I’ve been meaning to ask about that,” Meia said while watching the display. “Do you have a bag of holding or other storage container that lets you do that or…”
“I have the Inventory skill,” Brivaria answered cheerfully.
“I’ve heard that skill doesn’t show up on a class skill list until you get into the eighties, level-wise. That’s amazing. Just how high level are you?” Rake asked with incredulity. Meia jabbed him in the side with an elbow.
“That’s rude a question. Also I think Trixie did us a favor. There are so many of these thistle holes that there’s no way I’d have been able to gum them all up even if I had enough of the sticky gum on hand. We’d have had to crawl through the place or send Penry in with two shields and a couple packs as make-shift armor to absorb them all.” Penry paled at Meia’s words. That was not an appealing mental picture. Trixie wuffed upon hearing her name which prompted Brivaria to reach down and scritch the dog’s side.
“Well we’re one room in, let’s keep it going,” Rake said, moving swiftly past his own faux pas. Brivaria wasn’t offended or bothered by the question. She didn’t understand why it was rude but chose to trust Meia’s word on the matter. Taking about one another’s levels was not a thing they did. Her level was not very flattering so the angel was fine with that arrangement.
The next room was an intersection. There were four exits. One lead back the way they came. Opposite that one was an archway with no door and an apparently empty room beyond. Flanking the open archway on either side were two more corridors. The path to the left curved out of sight while the right was barred by a slab of wood which which was door-sized but sans any sort of visible handle.
“Penry, take up position in front of the left hallway. Front is empty and right is barred. If there are more bugs coming then they’re probably coming from the left. What do you think, Meia? Want to check the room ahead or the right path?” Rake looked to the rabbit girl as Penry took up position. Brivaria hung back, flooding the room with light, while Trixie stayed close to her favorite source of pets and scritches.
“Room ahead first.” At Meia’s words, Brivaria moved to stand in the intersection where she could shine light in all three directions. Meia moved toward the room ahead. She stopped at the archway and frowned. Kneeling, she pulled a glove off and ran a finger along the floor.
“There’s a pit trap here,” Meia proclaimed. She pulled a small rope from a satchel and tied it around one of the bundles of thistles they’d just collected. Then she hurled it into the center of the room. Nothing happened. She continued frowning. “Either it needs more weight or only triggers when a person is actively standing on it.” Brivaria looked up and down the room with the supposed pit trap. There was enough room for her to fly up without immediately hitting the ceiling.
“I could try triggering it. I can fly up and back if it opens up,” the angel suggested.
“Brivaria it is. Penry come over here. We’ll tie the rope to you and Brivaria so if we need to pull her back then we’ll be able to.” The lizardman braced against a wall while Rake took up sentry duty. Meia stood near the seam of the floor where she determined the trap to be. Brivaria leaped into the middle of the room, light spell illuminating everything, and wings poised to flap if the floor opened. It did.
The center of the floor split and each side rotated downward. The two halves remained open for a couple seconds then immediately snapped upward and back into place. It was enough time for Meia to see what she needed to see.
“There’s treasure down there.” Her voice was filled with excitement as Brivaria touched down at the entrance. Everyone else came to see what Meia was talking about and Meia looked at the angel. Oh. Brivaria performed the same maneuver as before, she leaped into the center of the room and pushed off with her wings just as the floor opened up.
Down in the room below was a swarm of the plant beetles just moving around and chittering. In the center of the mass was a small pedestal with a chalice. The adventurers gave it equal odds of being enchanted or cursed but it was treasure either way. They could pay to have it identified or try to sell it to a buyer will to risk the outcome being one or the other. There was only one problem.
“How do we get it?” Rake asked the group. Meia possessed a solid metal rod which could be used to jam the pit trap from reseting itself but they could only get it far enough along the seam to allow for a gap that a single person could fit through.
Brivaria stared down into the room below. Her view was limited by trapdoor but her eyes stopped as she saw something she recognized. Her lips turned downward into a sour expression.
“We should leave it alone for now. There’s terrantapillar down there. Fighting one of those while surrounded by the beetles would be extremely dangerous. They’re fast and their bites can penetrate unenchanted armor. The ones I’ve seen in the past also inflict poison with their bite.” The angel remembered fighting the many-legged monstrosities across a few interventions. They looked like a combination caterpillar and centipede with the body of a caterpillar and the long, flexible legs of a centipede. They also had the bark-like armor of the beetles. The resemblance to the demon from her last intervention caused an involuntary wince. The other adventurers noticed her facial expression and didn’t ask any further questions. They began working to wrench the rod from the trapdoor.
“Let’s explore the other areas then. We can come back to this one if we have an idea about how to get the chalice safely. I wouldn’t mind trying to snag it with a rope but I don’t want to spend all day trying or, worse, have one of those bugs drag someone down there with their vines.” Everyone nodded at Rake’s words.
They returned to the previous room and elected to go with the left corridor which became a curling set of stairs. Meia thoroughly checked each step so progress was slow. There was one trap but Meia couldn’t find an obvious mechanism to indicate what it did. They very carefully stepped around it. The group reached the foot of stairs eventually.
The next room was wide and apparently empty. Meia scanned the room for traps and noticed nothing. Everyone filed in noting the door to their left which likely lead toward the room with the chalice and a door opposite the one they came through. They were already starting to discuss plans to open the door when the ceiling shifted. Having been the only person staring up at the ceiling, Brivaria called out the warning.
“Monster on the ceiling,” came the angel’s shout of alarm. Discussion about the door immediately ceased and all eyes turned upward. Brivaria’s light shined upon the form above them. A flower was growing toward the group—green stem, green leaves, and a red corolla which resembled a rose.
The monster plant blossomed. The red corolla opened to reveal petals with sharp inward growths. It resembled a gaping maw with pointed teeth as much as an enormous rose. Worse, the blossoming came with an eruption of pollen. Brivaria didn’t want to find out what that pollen did so she activated Tailwind. The wind blew the massive gout of pollen across the room. It completely coated the wall, painting it yellow immediately.
“Penry, get its attention. Meia, stay back with me. Use your daggers or those thistles we found.” Rake’s words got everyone’s attention and they moved. They were a copper-ranked adventuring team with aspirations of progressing further. A plant monster was not surprising in a plant or nature-themed dungeon and no one in the party was caught too off-guard. They all spread out while Penry moved toward the enormous plant, shield raised.
Unfortunately for Penry, the deadly rose monster was incredibly large. It was large enough to get its mouth around the shield and snap his arm off, if he let it. Realizing the bite attack’s danger, he stepped back as it snapped at him. The jaw bit down but it was on the metal of the shield rather than Penry’s arm.
While that was happening, Rake drew his bow. Brivaria had seen him fighting with sword and shield the day before but that was not where his true talent lay. That much was obvious when he released an arrow that caught fire mid-air. It struck the red petals solidly and scorched the area around the impact. This did Penry no favors as the monstrous plant reacted frantically. Penry was lifted off the ground, jostled in mid air, and flung across the room. He crashed into the door to the chalice room, partially caving it in, and causing the occupants of that room to notice the commotion. Things got worse.
Brivaria and Meia were doing slightly better than Penry but only slightly. Meia’s knives had been the first things to impact the monster which then caused it to hurl leaves at her. Leaves are normally harmless and definitely didn’t flight straight like this one did. Meia dodged the first leaf only to have it lodge in the floor nearby. It looked like a leaf but had the weight and cutting power of a steel discus. Dodging the deadly projectiles was now the priority. If one of them hit her or Rake then they weren’t make it out alive.
The angel saw the leaf hurled toward Meia and went to work trying to cut at the stem. While the central column was incredibly hard, the branches that grew the leaves were vulnerable to her sword. She had the same thought as Meia that the leaves were potentially an even more deadly threat to the group than the corolla so she began flying around the stem, trying to cut branches off before the leaves could be thrown.
Having Penry attract attention while the other three focus attacks on the plant was a solid plan. That is, it was a solid plan that was utterly ruined by the monsters streaming toward the now partially collapsed door toward Penry. The big lizardman immediately shouted an alarm.
“Horde over here, I gotta block them in,” he called to the group. Rake glanced at the man and made decision.
“Meia, help Penry. Bee and I will handle the plant. Penry, stand slightly to the side. Make them turn to face you so Meia can get easy kills.” Rake said everything while running and preparing another arrow on the giant flower monster. Brivaria noticed his flaming arrow skill was doing more damage than anything else to the big plant with the burn scars slowly healing if at all. Neither of them were surprised when it went after him.
The swarm of beetles were the first to reach the door. Penry took a stance leaning forward with his shield raised. One beetle after another aggressively leaped at the armored warrior. He was familiar with their tackle attack now and was braced to resist it. Meia was there to slide a blade straight through the back of each bug that jumped through the doorway. Penry actually began using his Heavy Blow skill not to kill the bugs but to knock away the rapidly growing pile of bug corpses. If they got too large then the bugs might do something else. Their plan of having him block and Meia kill was working, for the moment.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it,” Rake shouted as he ran around the room. The flower monster proved… stretchy. It couldn’t quite chase him but it repeatedly lunged at him and then retreated as though the head was attached to an elastic cord rather than a hard stem. Much to Brivaria’s annoyance, the stem of the plant seemed indestructible to her sword. She was certain with a couple skills or an extra fifty points in physique she might be able to cut through it but level nine was insufficient for the task.
Rake was starting to run out of stamina as the angel could see the bowman slowing down. Humans had one of the better endurance attributes but every faster-than-average dodge cost stamina. The sound of loud barking caught all three by surprise—human, angel, and even monster. Trixie was barking at the giant plant. The golden dog’s loud barks were especially painful in the dungeon and must have bothered the plant somehow as it switched targets to Trixie. It was her turn to run for it.
Rake had been good at evading the plant’s lunges but Trixie was better. Four legs were absolutely better than two. The dog’s only problem was the smoothness of the floor. The interior of the tree-like dungeon may as well have been polished stone and cornering was tricky for the pooch. The dog was all but bouncing off walls as she scrambled to run circles around the plant just like Rake had done.
Brivaria had to think of something. Trixie was buying them time but she’d run herself out of stamina before long and they’d be back in the same position as before. Cutting the branches would work if she had a lot of time but only Rake’s arrows had really done much against the plant. He was taking aim with his bow now but it would be a difficult target with its speedy attacks.
The angelic warrior beat her wings to give herself some distance from the plant and took in the scene. The winged girl was level nine but she couldn’t afford to act like a level nine. What did she know? The corolla was the most vulnerable part of the plant. The stem was invulnerable and elastic meaning the monster could lunge but didn’t have perfectly fine control over its movements. As she watched Trixie run around the plant, she had an idea.
Trixie leaped away from yet another strike and was barking frantically. Rake didn’t want to abandon the delve but he just couldn’t hit the damned flower with an arrow. His third arrow went wide when he noticed Brivaria flying into position behind the corolla. As the plant retracted back, Rake saw the angel bring up her shield. Brivaria slammed the side of the plant and he saw a glow indicating she’d used a skill. The human lowered his bow when the plant’s corolla violently snapped to the side.
Brivaria flapped her wings and shifted in the air. She’d used Holy Bulwark with a shield slam to send the plant off course. It spun in an oblong path and then the angel was there to use Holy Bulwark a second time. As the human and dog on the floor watched, the angel locked the plant down completely… with her shield. She would slam into it causing it to spin one direction and, before it could arrest its momentum, she would slam into it from the other side to reverse the spin and send it careening the other way. It was like watching a clock hand be forced into spinning clockwise then counterclockwise. Holy Bulwark was a skill meant to brace against powerful blows so the skill and shield prevented the angel from being knocked back. The tactic was frighteningly effective with the winged girl’s shield pulverizing the flower every time the two met and more of monster’s strange, teeth-like protrusions snapping off.
Rake could have sworn the monster was limp by the time Brivaria spun in the air bringing her sword to bear. The size and force of the plant was enough to knock Brivaria out of the air but not without the impact causing her blade to bisect the flower. The angel crashed to the ground and slid toward one of the room’s walls while the flower gave off the wisps of mana that suggested the dungeon creature was dead. The human’s jaw dropped while the dog went over to check on the fallen girl. Rake didn’t have the luxury of staring at the dead flower or even going to Brivaria’s side. One thing stole his focus completely—Penry was screaming.
The human looked over to see Penry on the ground. Rake hadn’t seen what caused the tumble but he quickly knocked an arrow and fired at the beetle trying to climb over Penry’s shield. Meia was trying to stab past the dead beetle corpses when the situation went from bad to worse. That big monster that Brivaria called a terrantapillar evidently got tired of waiting and bulldozed through everything. The dead bugs, live bugs, and Penry were knocked away. Meia jumped back only to have the large, multi-segmented insect rear up and look down at her.
“Oh come on,” she said with exasperation while continuing to hop back. She emptied the last of the knives her from her bandoleer. While the terrantapillar’s armor blocked most of them, some landed in the gaps between bark-like armor plates. The beast scurried along the ground toward the rabbit girl. Meia landed a sword strike directly between the proverbial eyes but it didn’t so much as stagger the beast and Meia had to be extra quick not to lose her primary sword arm. The most she could do was get it facing away from her teammates so they could hit it from behind.
Everything had been going just fine for Penry until one of the damned bugs got its vines under the corpses and yanked his feet out from under him. Everything had gone sideways immediately after, literally and figuratively. Thankfully the lizardman was saved from having his face crushed by a pair of beetle pincers when the terrantapillar charged through the door, bowling everything over. Unfortunately there was already one of the beetles attached to a foot and it was happily crushing said foot with its mandibles. Penry tried to sit up to beat it to death with his mace but more vines wrapped around him from behind and he was certain the bug with those was coming for his head. He shouted for help and immediately the vines holding him down went slack.
Rake put an arrow into the bug holding down Penry and the lizardman immediately began doing everything to pull his foot from one bug’s mouth. As he seemed to have it in hand, Rake began picking off the other beetles. Yes, there was a beetle chewing on Penry’s foot and that was important. Yes, there was a giant monster chasing Meia and that was very important. However if either of his friends got tangled up in vines from a stray beetle then they were going to die. Rake had to trust that Meia could survive against the big one and Penry could get his foot free. Though, Rake was still making his way toward a position to shoot the one holding Penry. If the lizard man wasn’t able to free himself then Rake would do it… eventually. It was just thoroughly unfortunate there were so damn many beetles still alive.
Penry was able to free himself, albeit with some effort. Rake was doing good work holding off the beetles but Penry realized he wasn’t going to be able to rejoin the fight when he tried to stand. Putting any sort of weight on his injured foot resulting in shooting pains through his entire body. That is, he wasn’t going to be able to until he felt a hand on his back and the pain began melting away.
The problem with the beetles, Rake thought as he was surrounded, was that all of their armor was at the front. That made his life as an archer damn hard. Better archers could perform trickshots with skills but he didn’t have any of those. He’d about run out of mana and stamina as it was. The human archer had maybe two more fire arrows left and then he was completely out. It was to his great relief when Penry’s mace came down on one of the last few beetles. The tide was turning.
Meia’s impromptu duel with the terrantapillar was going well, all things considered. She was alive but wounded. It was alive but wounded. The rabbit girl wasn’t certain who had done more to who but a couple dozen thistles stuck out of gaps in its armor. The sword had been abandoned when it failed to do anything to the hard head of the beast for the third time and nearly got her arm taken off yet again. The thistles didn’t seem to be doing much better but she’d keep throwing them until she ran out and then… well, she’d worry about that when it happened. It was at that point that a powerful gust of wind swept past her along with a figure.
Brivaria’s sword took the beast not from above but from below. The angel swept her blade upward as she drove it through the softer carapace underneath the terrantapillar’s body and into the fleshy bits. Wounded and tired as she was, it wasn’t a killing blow but it as enough to halt the creature’s momentum. That was a fact that greatly assisted Penry as he barreled straight into the beast. It was the giant plant bug’s turn to be run over as the big lizardman rammed it straight into the nearby wall.
Penry’s mace came down. Several arrows appeared in armor gaps along the beast’s body. A dozen thistles joined the arrows. All the while Brivaria’s sword cut its way forward, inch by inch, toward the creature’s brain. The terrantapillar fought as best it could but the telltale sign of mana dissipating heralded the end of the fight. All four adventurers collapsed to the ground.
Brivaria was completely out of mana. The Tailwind she’d used to strike the beast was the last of her pool. The angel felt a nudge against her shoulder and turned her head. Trixie was there and holding a bejeweled metal goblet in her mouth. Her tail wagged as Brivaria looked from the goblet to her. It was dangerous to touch magic items in a dungeon but the angel didn’t have the heart or the energy to lecture Trixie on that right now.
“Good dog.”
Trixie’s tail wagged even faster while System notifications danced at the edge of Brivaria’s vision.