The slavers had sent in a party fifteen strong, five of them controllers. Only two of the slaves were human. The rest were hybrids. Selkies, or sealkin, were some of the oldest beastkin hybrid races, and a common sight around coastal cities. Felikin, or catkin, and lupikin the dog kind were also fairly common. The muskin were rarer. Not as rare as vulpikin, though. The kitsune had made it very clear that one did not make vulpikin if they wanted to survive the kitsune discovering such an affront.
In the old Paetorian Empire, gone almost seven hundred years now, wizards had been the elite, and they had happily mutated their slaves and servants to get ever more exotic servants. Sterility was often a problem with their creations, so it became a point of pride to overcome that defect. Most of the coastal wizards had seen the benefit of having semi-aquatic servants, hence the various tribes of the selkies today. Most of them had escaped before the kitsune instigated the fall of the Paetorians into the Hundred Kingdoms (the name was an exaggeration; at the most, there had been seventy-three, but that was close enough for the common man).
Most of those kingdoms were ruled by descendants of the wizard elite who had had the good sense not to upset the kitsune matriarchs, and so the practice of making beastkin survived to this day. Most beastkin were made from human slaves, though the muskin cam from ebugoan stock. The ebugoans were island dwelling humanoids, reaching around a meter tall at maturity. They had childishly over-sized heads for their bodies, pointed ears, and though physically weaker than humans, their magic was stronger.
Most of the people of Lusfal couldn’t tell the difference between a free born beastkin and a slave made into a beastkin, but they were content to thrust the stigma of being slave races upon them all.
In the slaver’s party were three selkies, two muskin, two lupikin, one felikin, the two enslaved humans, and the five human slavers.
One of the lupikin served as a backup scout for the felikin. They had to crowd into the entrance, and even after picking the right-most door to explore, the pressure of too many bodies pushed the scouts into Prime’s upgraded pit trap.
There wasn’t a point to having aquatic defenders without having some aquatic terrain, so she had added seawater to her pit traps and placed some bonefish in the water traps. They were among the advancements Aide had figured out during that Bullet Time usage in A’Ferun’s first delve. The dancing shiners were diminutive cousins of gar, who were mundane relations of the well armored, shark hunting bonefish. Given that the bonefish were about a meter long, the sharks they hunted were on the smaller side, but it did sound impressive nevertheless.
Bonefish got their name from having a bit of magic that helped them slice through the boney armor of their prey as much as from the reinforcement of their own bone-formed scales.
The controller for the two scouts was lucky enough to be just out of the bonefish’s lunging range, though he did get scratched. With the press of bodies, he wasn’t able to get far enough away from the bonefish for it to switch targets, and the slaves were able to hack it apart after a few minutes of effort.
When it died, it dropped a mana stone. The trap wasn’t attached to any rooms so the defender’s mana pattern immediately broke down.
The slaves sent a selkie down to retrieve the loot, and when he touched the bottom of the pit trap, he triggered the “Efficient Elemental Trap of Mental Clarity”, which Prime had taken to calling the chain breaker traps. She added a chain breaker to every last trap on the first floor.
Breaking the slave seal paralyzed the selkie, which fortunately did not affect his heart beat, but did lock up his lungs. Prime was relying a lot on the trap’s non-lethal mana intent, and she felt reassured that things were working well when the selkie floated up to the water’s surface far quicker than a body should start floating, his head turning to the side to allow him to start breathing again without drowning.
The slaver who had been ordering him about cussed when the trap triggered, and the iron ring he wore on his left thumb had sparked and cracked.
The slaver controlling the scouts stared at the selkie’s back for a moment, then hopped over the trap. “Come on. Leave the dead behind. We’ve still got work to do.”
And when they got to the their first encounter room right around the corner, they still didn’t have enough room. The slaver controlling their brawlers, one of the humans and the second lupiken, moved up behind the scouts, still crowding, still not learning the lesson that less mass is more room to maneuver. They, in turn, got crowded by the slaver with the remaining human and the broken control ring, who was crowded by the selkies sent ahead by their controller.
The two slavers got pushed into the room with the slaves they controlled, drawing the ire of the four dire kraits that had been ordered to mimic corner statues until the opportunity to attack the controllers came about.
Dire kraits traded some bulk for length, giving them strength to hold up the bone scales of their enhanced natural armor. They were still terrifyingly large, their heads the size of a hound’s, and with a jaw that could unhinge into a gaping maw lined with hooked back teeth. Their fangs were fixed and the largest of those hooked teeth, ready to deliver their poison. That poison, unlike for their smaller and less magical kin, was a paralytic. Dire kraits could take all the time they wanted to digest their meals so they didn’t need to saturate their prey with digestive juices. Getting it swallowed in the first place was more their concern.
In the tangle of flailing limbs provoked by the lunging snakes, the brawler’s controller lost a chunk of flesh from the side of his belly, just below his ribs. He went down, screaming from the pain until the venom sent him into seizures, locking up his limbs.
The brawlers that controller had been ordering around dropped their weapons and fell to their knees, immobilized by the seals binding them into slavery.
“Shite! Shite-shite-shite! Ivers! Get the rings! Get them back fighting!” the controller of the scouts hollered.
The slaver called Ivers ordered his remaining slave, “Get Stew’s body back here!”
The slave, tears and snot running down his face, and other fluids down his leg, stumbled forward, grabbed the downed controller, and started hauling the man’s body back toward the corridor. The snake that had taken down Stew smacked the slave away, bouncing him into the wall where the slave crumpled, still conscious but heavily dazed. The snake then unhinged its jaw and quickly engulfed Stew’s head, trying to consume him as quickly as possible.
Gobsmacking amounts of mana slammed through Prime’s Absorb skill, which she fed into building out her halfway-home style plan for the second floor. As fast as the mana flowed in, she shoved it out, the maths song from the Layout skill a deafening cacophony of crescendos that shook her and left Prime dazed when the mana finally stopped flowing.
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«I really wish I could puke,» Prime moaned.
Blearily, she cast her attention over her floors and discovered the slavers had retreated, leaving four slaves behind, and only killing one bonefish and one dire krait.
Aide said, «I kept the snakes from pursuing them out of the room, but maybe the dungeon is a bit too difficult for them?»
«We know what the control pieces look like now, so Plan B is still an option,» Prime reminded him. «I’m going to get the slaves situated, then I’ll come back for a replay of whatever’s going on on the ship.»
«Aye-aye, cap’n,» Aide teased.
Prime really wanted to puke.
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The selkie was still floating in the trap when the slavers made their retreat. Kinser helped A’Ferun lift him out of the water, and they verified the man still lived, or breathed, at least. More than that, the brand of the slave seal was dull, the magic in it broken. Some numbing agent, a skinning knife, and a decent healing potion and the physical mark of the man’s enslavement would be gone as if it never were.
They left the newly freed man on the floorboards and exited the dungeon.
Big Nose stood with his spine stretched, his chest expanded to accommodate his roaring, and his hands raised as he gestured with fury. “—turn back at the first fight?! What broken spine were you thinking with!?”
The hireling with the scouts roared back, “That I want to fucking live to get paid! Stew is dead! Dead! Are you fucking hearing me!?”
Big Nose sneered to that response. “And his death pay is coming out of your ass! I gave you the slaves to train, not to babysit! Your assess should have never been in the fight! So not only are you a fucking coward, you’re gods be damning incompetent!”
The hireling punched at Big Nose, who ducked out of the swing while he hooked his fist into the hireling’s gut. The hireling grunted, but stepped in to head butt Big Nose.
The sailors guarding the room looked to A’Ferun, who waved them back. “Coward’s Law is in effect,” he stated, letting his own sourness at the situation sound in his voice. “Clear out the slaves, stay out of the duel.”
“Aye, Lord,” the senior sailor said, and set to moving the slaves and their handlers out of the room. In the end, the felikin and lupikin scouts were only able to move into the hallway, but the rest were sent back to their pens.
While the room was being cleared, Big Nose and the hireling he impugned continued to brawl. The hireling moved more like a trained combatant, but Big Nose absorbed his punches and hit harder, showing that he had the stat advantage. It took an embarrassingly long time for Big Nose to wear down the hireling down to the point where the man couldn’t swing on him anymore.
Big Nose grabbed him by shirt and leaned in, growling, “You fucking think you can raise your fists against me?”
A’Ferun cut in, “You called him a coward on a Lusfal vessel in front of a noble of Lusfal. You started this duel; you are the one responsible for it.” Turning to the sailors, he pointed to two and said, “You and you, take the vindicated off to the surgeon.” Turning back to Big Nose, A’Ferun said, “You sent in the green snots. You did not ensure they were properly prepared. You sent in about three times the size of a normal clear squad, which meant they had no room to sort themselves out. You also signed the contract accepting responsibility for the consequences of sending your slaves into that dungeon. You’ve had your delve for this day. Do try to find your ass with both hands before tomorrow’s delve, or don’t show up.”
A’Ferun wrestled for a moment with his conscience before his conscience won. “And don’t try to attack that man. Don’t even spit in his shadow. Fire him or give him shit jobs, fine, but if you pursue violence against him, Coward’s Law will force me to have you flogged five lashes for every blow you strike at him or cause to be struck at him.”
Big Nose stiffened, but he nodded and limped off.
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Ratlings worked with dire and giant rats to move the immobilized and unconscious slaves. The selkie was sent directly to the core room and through the portal there to the second floor while the other three were taken through doorway traps to have their slave seals broken before likewise removed from the first floor.
With the excess mana Prime still had, she made three more ratlings and shared with them the knowledge she had about treating wounds and looking after invalids. The smaller human was the worst off, probably badly concussed from hitting the wall, but the two brawlers hadn’t come away unharmed from the snake fight, nor was the selkie in the best of conditions, either. Also, like the selkie, the others suffered a backlash from the breaking of the slave seals.
And speaking of the selkie, he began to stir while the ratlings and their helpers were still in the labyrinthine hallways of the second floor, hoping to secure him a decent distance away from the portal. He quickly went from stirring to thrashing.
The ratling Sneak guiding his bearers called out in the ratling-kind’s high pitched voice, “You safe! You safe!”
Prime ordered the big defenders carrying him to let him roll off their backs and to return to the first floor. The ratling heeded her desire to back away and continue to reassure the former slave.
The selkie did not seem to hear, or was not in a mental state to understand. He scrambled away from the ratling and the departing dire rats, his panic radiating from him. As soon as he gained his feet, he took off running.
Prime sent some reassurance to her ratling that it had done well enough, and at least the selkie was running away from the portal.
The unconscious trio were brought along not long after and safely ensconced in one of the 2.5 by 2.5 meter rooms that branched off of the many, many tunnels. The new ratlings used the blood kelp Prime provided them to start making poultices for the wounded.
Every fifth room had a fountain fed by a set of water stones, and not far from it a jakes. Every other fountain room had a fountain large enough to bathe in, and a heat stone to ensure the water wasn’t too cold to tolerate. The sleeping rooms were all furnished with hammocks and had several large cotton canvas blankets for each person.
In addition to the blood kelp, Prime provided two copper pots with bases into which heat and chill stones could be place to make the pots heat or cool their contents. She gave them a cask of rice, and one of plums, as well as a couple decent sized fish that she deliberately blocked from gaining personality bits when she spawned them. They were food, after all. A wooden block to act as a cutting board, and the daggers that she gave to all her ratlings so far completed the things she thought they would need.
The first pot was used stew the blood kelp enough to awaken its healing properties. In the second, a fish stew was started, with blood kelp added for both flavor and to promote healing.
The brawlers woke first, and after hearing the hasty, “You safe!” calmed enough to discover what they could. The ratlings found words confusing unless their maker gave them the words, so all they really had to say was, “You safe”, or “Water, you drink”.
The lupikin watched how the ratling stirred the blood kelp and took over. “That’s not a proper healing potion.”
“You … po … shen?” the stirrer asked.
“I? Oh! I’m an alchemist, yes,” he said.
Prime had the ratling leave the room to collect the extra kelp she had just made in an empty room. It came back with the cask of fresh blood kelp and said, “Po-shen!” and backed away.
“I don’t have any Aqua Vitae … but blood kelp doesn’t have any poisons to neutralize. I can’t do worse than just making kelp stock, and that’ll be at least mildly beneficial,” the lupiken said, quickly mumbling to himself as he took over the task. He described the tools he needed, and Prime had the ratling run and get each of them from the empty room, as well as an extra copper heating pot.
The human brawler noticed the broken slave seal on himself and on the still sleeping, battered smaller human, and seemed to sink into deep thoughts as he watched the ratlings preparing healing and food for them.
The selkie found them about the same time as the fish stew was ready to serve, and the other former slaves helped calm him down.
The quiet human brawler helped rouse the other human to get some food into him, and after the food was eaten, he asked, “Any, ah. Anyone else notice … our seals?”
“They’re broken,” the lupikin said. “So, we need to get decent healing potions fast so we can cut out the marks. Otherwise, someone’s going to think we’re murderers.” He sneered as he spoke.