“So, let’s fill in the map: Digestive tract 1, far right path; meat only, no sentient beings. What’s going on there?”

The illusory image of the leviathan’s angler-fish-like puppet elaborated on their layout as I quickly sketched a rough map with notes. “Stomach 1, no issue. Stomach 2, small issue. When I eat particularly large things I get a really sharp stabbing pain. Sometimes when I swim too.”

“Where?”

They pointed to the tube between the stomachs on the sketch, so I nodded and circled it with a ‘gastronomic pain’ note. “Okay, that should be a quick fix, hopefully. Now for the real stuff, tract 2, middle right, tell me about it.”

“That is the long dungeon. Chamber 1 is the glow-fungal forest. No issues, no treasure, the red mushroom-shaped polyps must be pressed to progress. Chamber 2, Egyptian Ascent–”

I looked up briefly. “Wow, Egypt, you know about that?”

“No, what’s an ‘Egypt’?”

“Nevermind, keep going.”

At this point, I was basically the doctor sitting in his chair listening to a patient rattle off every odd thing, feeling, suspicious sensation, bodily ache, and a partridge in a pear tree… I think it took more than an hour. Luckily, we can skip a lot of that and dive right into a witty summary.

4 tracts of the digestive system, 1 for actual food, 3 converted to dungeons. Far-right is for food, and the only issue is the stabbing pain that is hopefully a quick fix; I brought enough healing supplies for about 400 square feet of ulcers. Of course, you often say ‘it should be easy’ and then it takes 5x as long as the rest of the job combined, so just shut up and hope for the best.

Middle-right had no issues reported, buuut there’s stuff I could do to make Levi’s life easier, and I had a map of all the secret treasure rooms, which I could clear out entirely as my pay. And if you’re wondering how a leviathan has intact structures with functioning machinery and secret rooms full of treasure in its gut… well, so am I. If you ever find out how that works, I’d love to hear about it.

Middle-left is where the actual problems started. Chamber 1 had a boat stuck in it. Normally, this would not be a problem, as a quick digestive cycle would at least unstick it, eventually breaking it down entirely. However, someone was living in the boat—had been for several months—and leviathan policy is to not intentionally kill sentient beings (tasty whales not included). Ergo, that chamber has gotten crusty. Allegedly, this contributed to chamber 2 feeling awful, including aches, sharp pains, and general nausea. Thus, I would be processing an eviction, or rescue operation, if they were polite.

And then, far-left, the shit-show. Itching, swelling, shooting pains, uncomfortable wriggling sensations… and the sphincter doors were almost unable to open. The symptoms had first appeared about a year ago and gradually intensified to the point that the tract had gone unused for months. Neither bile floods nor white blood cell raids had solved the problem. Joy. That one sounded like the absolute best time ever, so, of course, I saved it for last.

“This is shaping up to be a heck of a job,” I commented as I scanned down my 4th page of notes. “On the off chance that it takes more than a day… is there anywhere safe to sleep?”

“Oh, of course!” Levi declared, emphatically clutching their chest. “We are foremost meant to capture those leaving the bounds of sane existence and carry them back alive. Any chamber from which you have removed unexpected threats is perfectly safe, and if that fails, I am able to watch over you in my mouth - unlike the rest of my body.”

I looked down at the massive, bumpy, slimy, pulsating tongue I was standing on, and the surrounding ponds of saliva. “I guess I oughta get to work then. Is there anything left on the briefing docket before I start?”

“Yes, 3 things. First, the sphincters. I control them. Normally, I don’t let people through until they’ve figured out the puzzle in the chamber, but if you stab one, I’ll open it for you.”

My mouth opened to speak words, and my brain was like ‘what are those?’ so I took a moment. “Umm, you won’t get mad?”

They waved their hand. “I’ve endured much worse. Plenty of people have attempted to burn or blast their way out, among various intestinal torture methods. In fact, if you need an emergency bile flood in your chamber, find some flesh and stab repeatedly. Which segues nicely into the next point,” they began etching a little glowing green symbol in the air, then sent it over to me. “Acid immunity for you.”

“Thank you. For how long? And does it cover my equipment?”

The illusion pinched their chin, but the hand passed through the face and caused it to briefly glitch. “Hmm, it works on anything you’re wearing or carrying, and it lasts until you leave. That covers the acid, so, for the last protection…”

A snap of the fingers commenced a slimy wriggling noise at my feet. I looked down to see a translucent off-white slick amoeba-like thing squeezing out of the massive tongue. It was about the size of a large rat, but thrice as jiggly. It reached up with 2 corner-like appendages, asking for uppies with a ‘meep’.

“Carry this white blood cell of mine. It will mark you as a friend to my cellular constructs within. Probably. Kill them if it doesn’t work; they’re disposable.”

I looked back and forth between my employer and the ridiculous little creature before me. Cautiously, I picked up the 2 lb bugger. It had a rubbery skin and felt like a gigantic flabby stress ball. Never before had I seen something so disgusting still manage to be vaguely cute; shoggoth notwithstanding. I squished him in my hands a little bit, trying to decide how to feel about it.

“I dub you… Gibby.”

And then I put him on my head. Why? I dunno. I also took off my nice duster coat and swapped to a jacket that I wouldn’t mind getting slimy. Went nicely with my waders.

“Gibby?”

“Yes, Gibby,” I stated, earning a ‘meep’. Then, I started to walk off toward the throat, but I stopped. “Oops, almost forgot. Would you please extend the same protections to my invisible associate?”

The apparition eyed a pair of foot-shaped depressions on the tongue. “Oh, him. And here I thought you’d just brought me a treat.”

……

“Welp, unless you have a plan to climb up that, I suggest you stay here until I get back,” I explained, gesturing down the sloped esophagus.

Thing was big, and slippery. You could probably fit 3 whales down it side-by-side. It sure was an interesting system, having a fork in the throat, with a muscle to toggle paths left or right, leading to another pair of forks. Twice right had taken us to the slope, where the actual digestive system ramped down under the dungeon spaces. And, since nobody was supposed to go there, it lacked safety concerns. Such as the ability to climb back up.

I measured my options: My employer had so graciously promised to drain the bile, but left it up to me as to how I planned to get back out. Worst case scenario, I’d throw on my hazard gear and crawl out the intestines, leaving out the anus. Also, ha ha, no. With a deep breath, I flexed my legs and stretched. Carefully, I started swaying side to side, tapping my feet on the slippery ground in the complex casting process of backup dance. After flubbing it 3 times, I got the sigil down and the clock was ticking. 20 minutes to get ‘er done! I whistled twice at the wind.

“Stay, boy!”

Then I jumped and took the slide. I pretended that the mix of mucus and saliva making it all slippery was definitely water and it was totally a sanitary ride (it wasn’t). The esophageal tunnel wound left, then right, sharpening the descent as the only thing fighting back the pitch darkness was a glow spell I’d cast on my headscarf. I shot right over the distinctive bump of an opened sphincter, and my boots hit the ground with a splash.

Now, I pride myself in being desensitized to gross stuff, but I would be lying if I said my first action wasn’t to pull up the bandanna-of-pastry-scentedness around my neck and cover my nose. Hoo boy, that place reeked like acrid death. The whole place smelled like vomit, because, well, stomach contents and vomit are like magma and lava; the name just changes depending on where you find it.

“Meewerp!” Gibby chirped as he jumped off my head and swam off in the ankle-deep bile.

I could only see about 20 feet ahead, but the cavernous stomach I had landed in sounded like one of those cave systems with a draft—because there was a draft—and a distant, slow dripping to boot. So, I cast flare. From my hand shot a bright light that sailed to the near top of the room, illuminating the entire stomach brightly enough to comfortably read a book. It’s a handy spell, when there’s nothing alarmed by a sudden bright light.

At a guess, the stomach was about 200 feet in diameter, round, domed, but thankfully flat-bottomed, hence why I could stand. There were whale bones scattered about, but otherwise it was remarkably clear. Thank you for being honest about fasting for this, Mr. Genderless Leviathan, I thought to myself. So, I started a quick walkaround, looking for anything conspicuously wrong.

A minute or so later, there was the sound of drainage and the few inches of bile quickly disappeared. Gibby came crawling back, all proud with him… (screw it, I’m not gonna dive into gender-neutral pronouns for a fucking white blood cell) himself for fixing the flooding. I wrung him out and put him back on my head.

That said, there was no issue with digestive chamber 1. Huzzah! Any excuse not to linger is a good excuse. I jogged on over to the already open tube toward the 2nd stomach. And yes, it really is a whole separate unit, unlike the normal 1 stomach 3+ chambers. Counterpoint, it’s also a 2-mile-long amphibious whale thing. Not to mention the angler-fish lure with a person on the end. So, you can suspend your disbelief all the way over to the garbage can like I did. Moving on.

I knelt down at the beginning of a very long gash in the floor of the gastronomic tubing. It started at my end and was mostly healed, but as I walked along it kept going and going, easily 80 feet or so. Every few yards, the wound grew fresher, more recent. By the final stretch, it was actively inflamed and oozing blood. That particular rainbow didn’t end with a pot o’ gold, but it was surprisingly close.

“Well I’ll be damned,” I commented with a whistle as I crouched over the helmet.

There was a magic item I actually knew off the top of my head. A spring-horned slayer’s sallet. A little piece worn by an extinct order of monster-hunting knights, who specialized in beasts best killed from the inside. The sallet not only had a magically-maintained supply of air, but was almost completely acid proof—like the wearer, if they had the rest of an armor set—but the key feature was the horns. Normally, the bladed things are flat against the helm, but can be deployed by a voice command. They are wide, sharp, and a bit barbed.

It certainly told a story. Some knight tried his hand at the order's strategy, failed, died, food chain did its thing, bish bash bosh, badabing, badaboom, tummy ache. Well ‘ache’ might be putting it mildly, I had to bust out the potion-thrower to get it patched. Gibby even did his job and crawled along the wound slurping up unwelcome microorganisms as I sprayed over the affected areas. Was it cute?

No.

Stomach 2 was clear as well. The rest of the suit had either passed through or never entered, and I wasn’t contracted to clear out the intestines beyond chucking some brick-sized supplements down the tube and calling it good. It was time to teleport back… by taking damage. You can’t afford to think about it, else you’ll hesitate, and my 20 minutes were ticking down.

I removed a glove and drew my knife. “Hold on tight, Gibby.”

Then I stabbed myself in the hand.

“AAAHHH–” ZWOOP “–HHhh… ow…” I groaned.

I’d warped back up to where the wind was waiting, causing him to jump back and send Debbie (his own white blood cell buddy) tumbling to the floor. I wiped the knife off and put it away, then chugged a healing potion as I always do. All things considered, I should really learn a real teleport spell. Or get an item. It’s on the list.

……

The middle-right dungeon was a nice break. The mushroom forests were chill—as advertised—and at least half the mushrooms were actual mushrooms, not fleshy approximations. Glowy toadstools the size of trees grew from a floor of moss and dirt (I think it’s dirt) and in all colors too, with the primary source of light being the luminous fungi. There was evidence of old shipwrecks and campsites all over, an ideal breakroom if one was needed.

I essentially looked around, pointed and nodded at some neat landmarks. Like a fountain of fresh water that I promptly didn’t touch because where is that water coming from, good sir? The mushrooms were also allegedly edible but equally nope. It only took a good 15 minutes to clear the room, as it was roughly the size of a public park. Or… 3 football fields. I didn’t bring a measuring device.

After a good stab at a sphincter door, I was let into the ‘Egyptian Ascent’, a sandy chamber with some date palms and a miniature pyramid taking up most of the floorspace. It even had the historically-accurate layer of polished limestone on the outside! Though, instead of a golden triangle at the top, it had a fake mini-sun to light the room. Shame, it would’ve been fun to go all British and knick it.

That didn’t mean no money, though. There were a dozen rogue constructs I had to deal with. Tall, lanky, humanoid things, striped with blue and gold. Stylized Egyptian security droids, basically. Something you might see on Stargate if the prop department took (more) drugs. They had a nice shell, but lots of gaps where you could see internal gears and stuff, and, well, we’ve established how much I like that little robot-killing dagger of mine.

In hindsight, it could’ve gone south really fast. Those things had functioned for thousands of years because they regenerate, and quickly too. My saving grace was the 2 dozen constructs piloted by cells, who took my corner. They fought about the same, but the real mechs didn’t recognize them as an enemy. Yup. Curbstomp.

Then I spent 2 hours stripping out parts and dividing them into separate bags in a way that kept them from reforming into anything dangerous. Hopefully. It helps to tie things like that up very tight with good twine. It was worth taking the time, too, since people pay good money for parts that survive 10,000 years of continuous use. Oh yeah, there was a treasure room in the pyramid. The gold and gems went for less than the components.

Next came the Calcifine Caves, a neat little system of tunnels inhabited by lithic spike bats. Those little guys are dangerous if alerted, but deep sleepers. It was a stealth section and by the grace of not wearing metal armor (and various sneaky buffs) I had turned it into a gimmie. Yet another opportunity to feel grateful for being briefed in full, as I am thoroughly unqualified to tell which stalactites are the sleepy fledermaus and which are not. Even if the gemstone guano I collected made for a pretty good hint.

After that was a particularly surreal chamber. It was some sort of magic tesseract cube. It took up the whole stomach, to the point you entered and walked up to a marble wall. It had massive extradimensional spaces, and the expensive kind that don’t interfere with E–D sacks at that. The whole thing was a self reorganizing maze that I feel like I saw in a rather gory movie once. I had 2 options. Enter, hope I found everything important, pray I escape alive, and maybe burn a whole day on it…

Stolen story; please report.

Or punch in the 165-digit admin code.

I chose the code, which saves time as long as you get it right on the first try, which I didn’t. In fact, I conscripted the wind to punch in the numbers while I carefully read them off my notes, never once looking away from the paper, and using my finger to keep place. We did it eventually. Sigh. The reward was worthwhile, of course. All 37 rooms set in a straight line with the doors open, lights on, and traps off.

There was also a crystal ball that followed me around whining about material shortages and maintenance concerns. Typical. I had agreed to refill said stocks sight unseen, so I made a list of all the crap it wanted to be shipped in at a later date. That was some profit margin out the window, and like, too much math, man; it listed the needed items and weights separately for each room! If you’re gonna make a sentient entity to govern a multidimensional, self-reshaping maze, would it be too much trouble to have it do a little math, pretty please?

Oh well, I could pawn it off on Cam later.

Next came a boss room, which was a piece of cake. The big ol’ blob monster was a cellular construct, so it ignored me while I looked around the stone coliseum for anything that needed fixing or looting. Nothing of the former, but plenty of the latter. Following that quick inspection, the free and easy part of my job had come to an end.

This… smell hit me as we took the left fork. It’s hard to describe… the best way I can put it is that sickly, biting sweet stink you can smell on your sneeze when you’re starting to get sick, mixed with the bitter ammonia of bat guano, but worse. I’ll refrain from further description, since there was depth, even nuance to the awfulness. A sense of dread was rising as I picked the middle-left route. It’s not as fun working with a looming sense of inevitable shit storm.

Alas, I had a frying pan to play around in before I jumped into the fire. I stabbed the door and waltzed into Shipwreck Shores, a name so video-gamey that it HAD to be in one somewhere. It was a lovely little beach scene with a dangly uvula thing at the top of the fleshy chamber giving off fake sun-ish light. There was seawater splashing about, trees dotting some of the sandy bits, and the split remnants of a half dozen boats of various sizes, some of which were part of the scenery, save the standout.

While most of the ships were sailboats and broken up into pieces to litter about the place as terrain, right in the middle was a beached ‘paddleball’ as we call them. One of those fantasy ships with the waterwheels on the back that propel it by spinning with no apparent source of power. The one in front of me looked, honestly, like a bit of a yacht. I gave it a little thought, nodded to myself, and flipped the valve on my potion thrower from healing to lightning juice.

It stood myself next to a piece of shipwreck that I could duck behind, then cleared my throat.

“Helloooo? Anybody in there?” I yelled, hearing it echo through the chamber.

A minute later I was about to yell again when a head poked over the side. “Who’s there?” a woman called back.

“The legendary hero of your dreams! Or maybe just someone here to rescue anybody stuck in this critter!” I answered, squinting to make out her features.

She finally spotted me. “Really? Yes! Please, hel– ACK!”

Her face disappeared back under the railing of the boat as I could hear a scuffle break out. She was shouting incoherently, with a mix of distress and abject hostility. I got over the surprise and made a break for the boat, burning some magic on mobility to zip right up to the deck. I gasped in surprise as it was… a naked woman, face down flat on the floor with her arm pinned behind her back, and a gigantic white blood cell hovering a few feet over her.

“Duude, why so aggro? I thought this was a rescue,” I griped at the wind.

She lifted her face up from the floor, flailing her feet trying to get out from a pretty convincing pin. “What is this thing?” she yelped. “Get it off me! Urk!”

Her window to talk ended with a nasty chokehold. I was exasperated, honestly. I scanned the deck, seeing nothing but assorted leisurely benches and a nice picnic table on the raised prow. There really was nobody else, and not a critter in sight. I addressed the wind, lowering my potion thrower.

“Uhh, I’m gonna need an explanation, my guy.”

There was a long pause before the unexpected happened.

“Succ… bus,” came the garbled whisper.

I squinted judgmentally. “Really? Your first word after all this time and you admit to assaulting a minimum-wage ‘independent contractor’? That’s [chocolate company] levels of fucked up.” I crouched down by the lady. “Is my associate correct? Let her talk.”

Fear and confusion were playing across her face. She was weighing her options, of which there were close to none. In the end, she resigned. Brown hair went black, her complexion turned red, and the horns, wings, and tail appeared. Then, god forbid, she was permitted more than 0.5 seconds to explain herself.

“Fine, I am. I don’t even care anymore, just kill me and send me back down to the Hells,” she grumbled defeatedly.

“Nah.” I sat my butt on the stairs to the raised prow deck. “Let her sit up, dude. I’m curious for once.”

Ms. Succubus visibly un-pancaked, at which point she sat up and covered herself with her rematerialized wings. She seemed lost as she glanced around.

“You… want to hear what happened? No violence?”

I shrugged. “I mean, I could kick your ass if that’s your preference. If not, let’s start with your name and why you’re here on this special episode of Naked and Afraid.”

Relief was plain to see on her face as she cautiously moved to a bench opposite me. “I’m Zerxhe. We had a few outfits but… the slimy monsters in here destroyed them all.”

“Mmhmm. Nice to meet you, Zerxhe, I’m Dennis.” As I finished the rather dry greeting, I tossed one of my spare outfits at her feet. “Here. They’re not your size, but better than nothing.”

Zerxhe sniffled. “Thanks.”

I watched her in my peripheral vision as she summoned her purse from thin air, then unplugged the wings from her back and folded them up to be put away. She was dressed in record time, almost as fast as she could undress; minus the bra fling. And she was talking the whole time.

“It’s been an awful, rotten few months. I was working this big catch. A philanthropist from Port Novelikta; big business portfolio, well liked. It was all going so well. I’d gotten him to loosen up, drop the self-discipline act and give in to some desires he’d buried deep down.”

Her story soured with frustrated sobs. “It’d all finally lined up. He was cheating on his wife with me, he cut pay to his workers and stopped giving to charity… then he got this boat and we sailed out to sea. He even told his wife it was for a venture!” she added with a pained chuckle. “I was so close, so fucking close. It was maybe 3 more good rolls in the sheets before I could rip his soul out and drag him to Hell.”

I leaned back on my elbows. “So… how’d it go wrong?”

“Ugh. This damnable idiot plotted the course wrong and was too… busy,” she added with a mimed blowjob, “to notice the leviathan about to eat the whole ship. And he was so blessin’ brave too. He told me he’d get us out of here and then he fucking died. He died ‘defending someone he loved’ and I hadn’t corrupted him enough so he fucking went to the Heavens and I’m stuck here with nothing. Nothing!” she blubbered.

“And now I can’t escape, cuz there’s a door that won’t open one way, the awful monster that ate him the other, and I can’t even afford to die or I’ll be coming back empty handed again and they’ll fire me and cancel my insurance retroactively and I’ll have to pay for the reconstruction.”

Then, she broke down crying for a bit. I gave her time to let it out. I sprinkled in a ‘damn that sucks’ or ‘that sounds awful’ as the opportunities arose. A few, long, awkward minutes later she was ready to resume a modicum of 2-way conversation. Just in time for my plotting to get a move on.

“Well, that’s enough holding the metaphorical bucket. Zerxhe, give it to me straight. How much of a hole are you in?”

“3 soul tokens,” she sniffled.

I whipped out some paper. “In that case, I am claiming this vessel under section 1-4 of the Decree on Abandoned Self-Propelled Vessels For Legendary Heroes—the Wyvern Mission act, for short. I will pay you 5 soul tokens to captain this vessel to Puerto de Sueños Azules, then the port city of Rockdock, where you will hand it off to employees of my company. Deal?”

She looked side to side. “You… have an account to pay in soul tokens?”

As she finished asking, I passed her the hastily made contract, spelling out the aforementioned terms in more or less wriggle-resistant wording, along with the demonic sigil that translated to my account number.

She signed. Got a free white blood cell too. The wind seemed eager to pawn Debbie off.

……

Like the mushroom forest, Shipwreck Shores was devoid of loot and issues, so one telling off of the local slime monsters later and I was onto the next chamber. The moment the sphincter opened, I backed up to regroup. A shoggoth. I could smell it right through the bandanna. It’s a stink you simply cannot forget. The passage shut itself a few moments later, and I let out the compressed air from my lungs.

“Fuck, man. At least we know what happened to the guy.” I blew some air. “Damn, how the hell am I gonna fight that?”

Admittedly, I was jumping to conclusions. I could speak enough Tongues of Ancient Madness to order a pizza, and maybe hold a polite conversation, but that would only work if the 1,000-95,000 lb shapeshifting cthonian murderbeast was in a talkative mood. I didn’t like those odds, so… superweapon time. I fetched my drone and the glove, then cast backup dance on the safe side of the door. As I entered the danger zone, I wondered to myself: What happens if I accidentally hit the leviathan with the containment beam?

Well don’t miss, then!

With that reassuring thought, I strutted into the Aqueducts of the Damned, a supposedly undead Roman-themed sort of place. The lights were out, there was no movement, but the stink was too fresh for big blobbo not to be nearby. I took a deep, regrettable breath, and cast flare.

“Tekeli-li!” I cried into the echoing darkness.

My words resounded into the reeking air for long moments, until I heard something large rousing in the shadows. The splashing of hundreds of limbs crawling, slithering about just out of sight. I saw a massive silhouette pass through a thin strip of light from my insufficient spell, it was big, huge even. I gulped. The nature of the drone’s capacity came to mind. It was the upcoming model with volume-based limitations, right?

Etiquette dictated that I not say anything until I was greeted back, which wasn’t happening. I felt my hands balling into fists as my heart picked up the pace. If it wanted to talk, it had the chance a long, long time ago. I widened my stance, squinting my eyes as I constantly looked left and right. Cowboy standoff music started to play in my head.

There was no more movement between the various ruined pillars and piles of waterworks rubble, so all I had to work with was that it’d gone left. What irked me was the increase in open ground to the left, giving me more time to react if it came barreling at me at 65mph (actual top speed BTW). Yet that was theoretical, as it simply hadn’t. It all culminated in the age-old adventurer’s mantra.

Look up, you fool, you fucking idiot, you absolute buffoon. LOOK UP!

Mhm, yup, 20-some tons of angry muscle and teeth on the wall right above me. Jumping off the wall right above me. Remember when I was concerned about aiming carefully?

“SKREEEEEEE!”

ZAP

I stood frozen in a slightly rockstar pose, with my wide stance, off hand at my side, and my index finger skyward. The only thing I lacked was bravado, as I was a little too close to pants-shitting terror on the mood spectrum. Right as I let out a sigh of relief that the capture had worked, a loud, wet thunk occurred to my left. I tried to make an aggressive stance, but probably looked like a deer in the headlights as I wheeled about to see the drone sitting on the floor.

Wobble…

Wobble…

Wobble…

Click.

Gotcha!

It worked! Kinda. The magic macguffin had taken out the threat, as they do, and promptly ceased functioning… as they also do. My elation found itself at odds with an adrenaline fueled rage.

“Goddammit, I just got that fixed! Hunka junk!”

I reared my leg to kick it, but was abruptly lifted off my feet and carried a away by a calmer, less visible mind. My company set me down and smacked me in the face. After considering it, I got the message.

“You’re right, don’t kick it, bad idea. Deep breaths, hooo, haaah. Just… pack it up carefully, handle that problem later.”

……

Well that place was screwed up. Everything pretty, functional—or otherwise not already a pile of rubble—was smashed, the skeletons were ground to pieces with their marrow sucked out, the imitation ghost projector crystals had been used as hard candy until shoggy drained all their magic, and there were tears in the flesh where the guest of honor had simply removed large amounts of material and, presumably, ate it.

The whole room was unsalvageable. It needed to be cleaned out and redone if it was to have any dungeonesque value. Fortunately for me, it was so damaged that it was no longer my job. Instead, Gibby summoned several thousand cell thingamajigs that started to clear out small rubble like a colony of ants, whilst I was spraying the wounds with my potion thrower set to healz. Fast-forward 2 hours. Unless you want to hear the juicy details on hemoglobin and pus…

……

Man, it was getting on in the day, but no rest for the wicked. Next room, Streets of Gargoylia. About 4 blocks of dense, Victorian English cityscape. Gothic architecture, rife with businesses and flats (apartments, for people who speak correctly), topped by a ceiling coated with luminous gray paint for light. It was also raining.

I had very clear instructions—which I have since thrown away—so this is not entirely accurate, but it went something like: Turn left, straight, right, right, through the cellar at 215 Alice ave, straight, left, left, right, straight, in the front door of 111 Townsend Blvd, etc etc for about 20 minutes, stopping in 5 separate houses to turn on or off a specific gaslamp. If followed correctly, you pass through no gargoyle aggro zones, and input the secret code to shut them off.

It worked. I was almost disappointed, as I heard that zip-gargoyles were quite a sight to behold. If anyone ends up there, good luck! I hear you have to destroy the core gargoyle or it’ll keep possessing nearby statues to attack you. Sounds rough. Not much loot either; must’ve been in the museum. The treasure of the hour, however, was a warm bed in a furnished house, and a bath that I refused to use because, again, where’s the water coming from? Nonetheless, I'd picked my inevitable crashing spot.

The place had little wrong with it, and the alleged crustiness quite fit the dreary city aesthetic. I directed some cellular cleanup crews and they set to work polishing the stones or whatever they did, I wasn't paying attention to that detail.

Finishing the line on the boss fight, there was a boxing ring where you fight kraken tentacles as they pop out of a moat around the ring, and you do it with a magic mech suit with big boxing gloves. Rad as hell. Also not much to do there for me cuz boss room. Moving on to the far left path.

……

It only took making it halfway down the hall to decide on wearing the quarantine getup. Even with a casual whiff through a closed door, I was already willing to trade my valuable sense of smell for maximum biohazard protection. Quite generously, I passed a pair of nose plugs to the wind, who took them and appeared to consider them for a long, difficult moment before handing them back. Dude trades nothing for the sake of his invisibility - respect, and condolences. I stabbed the door.

Aaand it didn’t open. Well, it opened about 6%, but that’s a bit tough from a door that’s 40 feet tall and opens middle-outward. Eyeroll. If only the ceiling were higher I could have cast pop-up. Instead, a grappling hook had to suffice. What a sight it was, climbing up to the precipice of… something.

The room had been described to me; what to expect, what to do to check the nooks and crannies, and what might need maintenance. Take all that, chuck it in the dumpster. Shit. Everywhere. Floor, walls, ceiling, every terrain feature coated in it. It was dark brown and gooey with oily iridescence in the faint light coming from god knows where. And it was writhing. Numerous shapes were slithering and wiggling around in there. Nope, back up, not going in there without a plan.

I climbed down and pinched the chin barrier of my hazard kit. “Well, it’s bad news in there all right,” I stated to nobody in particular.

Gassing the place was not quite an option. Most of my options had been left behind as they would either cause significant damage to my client, or simply couldn’t fill a room that size. I had 10 lb of mud-pixie dust, which amounted to diatomaceous earth on steroids, and I had prototype pyre javelins. The former required dry conditions to have any lasting use—which really brings into question why I brought it at all—and the latter were essentially magic torches with issues, namely, not shutting off without manual intervention.

The decision seemed to be made for me. I produced all 3 javelins, set them to ‘signal fire’ and threw them into the room in a triangular formation, thanks to my throwing magic. Given enough time, they’d reduce the oxygen content of the room as unrealistically low as 5%. I got the grappling hook down and—noting that no effort to close the door had been made—addressed my nearby compadre.

“Stay here and make sure nothing comes through. I’ll go tell Levi to close this right away. After that, come find me in Gargoylia. Got it?”

A heavy, resigned sigh was answer enough for me. I ran off and left the nose-plugless plebeian where he stood. I reached the mouth in minutes and whistled sharply. The illusory gentleperson manifested with a cheery look.

“Hi! How goes your work?”

I grimaced a little. “Pretty well. I’ve done the 3 easy paths now, but I haven’t reset them back to a ready state yet. Hey, umm, before I go into more detail, would you please shut the first door of the far-left path as tightly as possible?”

“Certainly,” the dapper illusion assented. They made a number of pained faces and tensed up briefly. “There, that should do it. That region is quite painful right now. Have you done anything to it?”

“Yes and no. I had a look and it seems some sort of… I don’t know, parasitic life has made itself at home there. I was hoping you could shed some light on what it might be.”

¡Tactical timeskip! You don’t need the gory details again!

After hearing my description, Levi nodded. “Yes, it sounds like parasites.”

I blinked. “Any… more insight?”

“No. If I had to guess; they’re big and mean enough to fight off my white blood cells, and have some way to survive a bile flood. There are so many different awful species, so classification beyond that is irrelevant. I trust they will be reduced to a great deal of smoldering corpses soon enough, and it will not matter by then.”

“Hard to argue with that logic. I don’t know how long the javelins will take to eat up the oxygen, but if you could cut off the supply that’d be great. Now, about the boat and the person in Shipwreck Shores…”

……

I rested on a mediocre Victorian bed in a random apartment near the corner of the fake city, satisfied with my day. The work was 75% done on paper, but at least halfway in reality. I was field-showered, the wind was bravely trusting the plumbing to draw his 2nd bath, whatever horrific infestation was going on in the leftmost route was slowly asphyxiating, and Zerxhe was moving the boat to the oral lakes thanks to a little swallowed seawater on Levi’s part. For a moment, I felt like it’d all go smoothly and I could even squeeze in a full 6-8 hours of sleep.

I’m an idiot.

45 minutes into my strictly theoretical 8 hours, the entire room shook as Levi spasmed. Angry whale-like noises reverberated throughout the cityscape. I rolled out of bed involuntarily, landing face-down on the floor. On the plus side, a smack to the nose that sharp wakes you harder than an espresso. My head sprang up and I shouted my first, unfiltered thought.

“Shields up! Red alert!”