Edited By Netlord
I could have expected that. I should have expected that. The question remains, if that’s the case, why I didn’t predict that? It was totally Gisele’s style to jump at fucking
Yeah, most likely the last one. Remember kids, never use waterslides riding with your face down. And definitely don’t use them when your waterslide is deprived of water and is leading you into heart of a beast-filled dungeon. That sucks, trust me.
- “GISEEELEEE! I SWEAR TO GOD! AS SOON AS WE WOULD LAND DOWN I WILL…”
- “WHAT DID YOU SAAAAAAY?” She yelled from above me. The tempo of our journey below and my unfortunate position - with my face on her thighs - made my words inaudible.
- “I SAID THAT I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU!”
- “WHAAAAAT?”
- “KIIILLL YOOOU!”
- “WHAAAAAAT?!”
Oh for fuck sake!
Another rock hit my head. Nothing serious, just annoying. I clenched my teeth trying to bear with current situation. For now.
After two or so minutes of our crazy ride down I finally got a mouthful of earth and dust as vertical tunnel spat as on to the lower floor.
I got up with dignity, removed the dust from my shoulders, and spat out the dust from my mouth as I faced Gisele.
- “I said that as soon as we would land down I would beat the shit out of you.”
- “Would you hit a lady?” she fluttered with her eyebrows
- “Aye. The hammer of justice is unisex” I said delivering a quick strike at her gut, making her grab her belly gasping for air. “Think, idiot, think before acting. This could be really dangerous, not speaking that it was very uncomfortable.”
- “It was just a prank, Zari! No need to be so cruel!”
- “Aren’t you the one who is hitting me each time I would tease you?”
- “That’s something different!”
- “How is that so?”
- “… actually… I dunno. It just seems like the right thing to do.” She shrugged her arms after giving her words a second thought.
- “Just focus. I am getting sick of this dungeon. I am considering a speed run.”
- “Ho!? Wait, what did you say few hours ago? We are getting paid of making maps of the dungeon! We need to explore every corner! What happened that you changed your mind?”
- “My attitude toward you.” I hissed quietly
- “Oh come on!”
- “Come on indeed. Start moving. We have a dungeon to explore.”
- “Don’t act like a crybaby!” she rolled her eyes.
- “I am not. I am merely focused on not dying. You are making it much harder.”
- “Geeez! Whatever. Lead the way, as long as it means that you will shut up!” she started losing her temper too.
Good.
Was that childish of me? Maybe. BUT SHE WAS THE ONE WHO STARTED IT!
I opened map-mind in my head trying to scan our surroundings a little, marking every tunnel, corridor and corner. Once again I checked my equipment, tried to swing the new blade attached to my belt and moved deeper.
30 minutes later.
- “eh? He-he-he… Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! MUA-HA-HA-HA!”
If you are concerned who started acting like an idiot, I will give you a subtle hint: It was Gisele. Probably if I was in her shoes my reaction would be similar. We encountered another nest of meat-weavers. So what was the reason for celebration? These were bit older, which means bigger, and bigger means easier to be targeted by Gisele.
- “Be gone! Foolish monster! I am your conqueror!” She yelled jumping from elevated ground right into mass of beasts.
She could use surrounding to gain advantage, or even an element of surprise, in the very end she could position herself in such way to make the beasts get into each-others way. But no. She jumped in. The only good thing in her act was that she completely focused all monster attention on herself, no beast “looked” in direction of me, still sitting in a safe spot, I started singing quietly.
Another group of meat-weavers jumped on Gisele’s shoulders. She quickly rammed her back into the wall squashing them into a bloody pulp. Her sword danced in the air performing a killer’s deeds, delivering certain death with single slashes and stabs.
She needed to blow some steam off. The whole 1st level was frustrating to her, making her run in all directions instead of fighting on equal ground most of the time. Right now she was pouring all her irritation and anger on her blade.
My spell was ready, I could easily purify the room, yet I allowed Gisele enjoyed herself a little more, focusing a fiery gale only on the beasts behind her or on her sides, letting her butcher everything on her path. I had my fun with the fiend’s hounds. I would not deprive my dragon of her share.
For one last time dragoness twisted her body in savage dance slashing three remaining beasts with one blow. The carcasses fell to the ground behind her.
She stretched her body exhaling air loudly.
- “Damn! I needed that!” she moaned quietly as her joints cracked.
- “Cleared your head a little?” I asked once again to tease her.
- “Screw you!” she pouted “… but I guess that maybe… a little?”
- “So you won’t jump into next tunnel you see right away?”
- “ZA-RI!”
- “What!? From the very start you are doing everything to get us killed!”
- “A-ha, maybe if you weren’t so self-centered bastard and would think about people around you a little more then…”
- “Oh! Really?! I am not thinking about others? Gisele! Every action I perform is changing this world! How many lives did I affect merely by destroying alchemist’s guilds monopoly!?”
- “One: It’s not what I meant, and you know it! Two: you didn’t do that for others! It’s nothing but side effect! You did that for yourself and only yourself!”
- “HA! Still, my side actions did more good than…”
… why was I that angry? And how did we actually get into this topic?
- “Than what? Spit it out already!”
- “Gis, calm down.”
- “OH! Now you hit the spot! You were the one who made me furious and now…”
- “Gisele. Think about what are we arguing. This is not natural.”
I quickly appraised myself and Gis. I noticed the [???] effect under our statuses.
- “You are the only not natural thing here! Bloody abomination!”
- “Is this really what you think? Would you ever call me something like this?”
She froze for a moment
- “Damn. No…. I mean… I am not even thinking like that.”
- “Great. Both of us are vocalizing thoughts that don’t belong to us, which means one thing: we have a fucking psionic somewhere around here…”
In that moment something moved on the opposite side of the chamber. It shape made me shiver a little. I was more than sure it was something crawling over the walls.
I quickly jumped in that direction. Psionics are dangerous only from a distance, maintaining their powers requires lots of focus and mana control, which means that if something would charge at it, it would be forced to stop spell-casting and run.
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What I saw on the wall was very small tunnel in the wall. The squirrel would have problem fitting in that hole.
- “It ran away. Fucking perfect.”
- “Swarm monsters, agile monsters, magic casting monsters… “ Dragoness started counting
- “Don’t forget about the rocks that are twisting light around it.”
- “The fuck is this place?”
- “Dunno. But I don’t want to stay in same place for too long. Not when damned psionics are crawling in the walls.”
- “So? What are we doing?”
- “… A speed run. Definitely a speed run. We were not prepared for this.”
She nodded. There was no place for arguing.
Gisele quickly wiped out blood from her sword.
- “Gis, love, I know you are hot-blooded, but if you would start feeling… too angry, weirdly-angry, let me know.”
- “Will try.”
We resumed our forceful march onward. We stopped playing around – no longer killing for fun. We were brutally efficient, doing everything to deprive ourselves from every unnecessary emotion to leave psionic without its fuel – the more unstable your mind is, the easier you are to manipulate. It’s much easier for mind-stalkers to control someone that is mad or extremely happy, than meditating calm monk. We knew it, and apparently the creature knew it too. On whole second floor we weren’t attack by weird beast again.
Leaving around half of second floor unchecked we dived deeper, further into dungeon.
The monsters changed, hound-hybrids were nowhere to be seen, rock like lizard-turtles vanished completely. Monster started resembling more and more some twisted abomination. Bah! One could say that these monsters were literally turned insides out. Or at least that was my first thought when I saw pink bat-bird monster that flew over my head.
Huge ears on its head, long curved beak on its mouth hiding needle like teeth. It’s skin was deformed, its muscles were visible as they were covering outside of the monster body.
It let out barely hearable scream that made our head almost explode because of headache as it was flying over our heads trying to exhaust us before feasting on our unconscious bodies.
Gis, holding her head with one hand grabbed a pebble from the ground and throw it at beast, turning it once again into bloody mess. Such pleasant monsters were all over floor number three.
Floor number 4 wasn’t less insane. It was as if we entered completely different dungeon. It looked like a hidden paradise, like the Garden of Eden.
… Or that was my first impression. At least I can’t imagine garden of Eden trying to kill you on every step you make.
It was filled with soft carpets of moss, that were covering treacherous swamps which were only waiting for prey to step on it, to swallow it and drown in sticky mud. All around the place there were brighty blue mushrooms, that exploded into toxic spores after sensing presence nearby, ending on beasts with attached to their backs parasite flowers which smell lured you into sleep, from which you would never wake up.
Not quite Eden you would imagine, I bet.
Pain seized my heart as I used my flames to burn plants down and my new blade - sword of embers - to kill plant-beasts roaming all over this floor.
Why? Maybe because I was druid? I was greatly admiring this scenery, all those thorny plants and poisonous mushrooms seem so beautiful to me. So right! I hasted myself to get through those plant-floors faster.
Floor number five was a single chamber-arena.
Here we meet the breeder of the nightmares from first and second floor – the Meat Weaver Queen, living in bee-nest like hive made of flesh hanged on the huge, single tree in the center of the chamber.
Battle was exhausting and deeply satisfying. A story that we would most likely share in the inn after we would get back…
… a story for a different time. All that matters was that after over a hour of exhausting battle we looked at massacred body of huge, twisted spider morph. Swallowing my pride I begun feasting on her flesh. It was worst meal I ever had. Her meat left rotten-like aftertaste, maybe because it used it (the flesh) as her nest? I needed to fight back desire to puke multiple times. Still, after fighting with her I knew how dangerous her abilities were, I couldn’t let myself leave her DNA unabsorbed.
This was the place we decided to use as camp. Ignoring odor of the nest above our heads we quickly set up the camp and drifted into world of Morpheus.
That night we had terrible nightmares from which we had troubles to wake up from, when we raised up we once again noticed a creeping shadow scuttle through the dark, this time I managed to throw a single glance at the monster.
It was a single tentacle with eye at its end, it quickly retreated to back into the hole in the tree, the one we ignored before.
Once again we started marching onward, exhausted and irritated, deeper, lower, and further.
Floors six seven and eight we crossed quickly, mostly because of huge dose of luck as we kept finding shortest way to the tunnels leading deeper to the core.
And once again, the floor seven gave us idea that we jumped into completely different world – hell itself. It was built out of flesh. Living flesh that pulsated and twisted, some of the “doors” was ended with teeth , passing by them you needed to be careful, for teeth like gate acted like actual mouth trying to bite you in half. From time to time muscles like structure twisted, turned and spat a monster, abomination just like this place itself. A construct of flesh and bones. Its legs were sharp resembling rib like bones clothed in meat, center of its body was a single round mouth with teeth from which a sharp tongue with needle would be thrown. The needle was, of course, venomous, cuz, why not?
Terror started taking its harvest from us.
The walls were playing with our sense of vision, the one eyed tentacle that came here and there from a wall was tricking our senses as exhaustion was driving us nuts.
And then hell broke loose at floor number 9.
Do you remember as we said that when adventurers are getting closer to the core, dungeon goes into berserker mode? Spawning monsters in thin air, shutting corridors forcing us to take longer routes?
It was happening right now.
From hole in the chamber dozen of psionics came out aiding monsters within the room. It did everything to stop us.
And this made us euphoric. It was trying to get rid of us! It was terrified! We gazed upon each other, savage pleasure was boiling is us as we knew we were getting closer and closer.
And then, we found it. The end of our journey. At the end of corridor there was one last tunnel down, looking like throat of the beast. As we started heading that way it took one last try of defense. It opened another corridor. Corridor, behind which we saw a glyph of return and dozens of treasure chests.
I hesitated.
- “What are we doing? This offer is quite generous?” I asked mostly because I know Gis’s greed. If she wanted the treasure, I wouldn’t mind it.
- “No fucking way. There is hundreds chests in hundreds of dungeons. But his fucker… is too dangerous. It needs to be taken down.”
We shared this idea.
We jumped down.
As we landed on deepest floor all we saw was single made of flesh corridor.
We starting marching through it. With every step dozens of return glyphs appeared on sides of the corridor, as if begging us to leave.
The corridor was getting wider and wider, turning slowly from tunnel into a chamber. And if you think that last three floors were crazy, then this place was madness itself. Countless crystal shards were floating mid-air, as if hanged in the vacuum, each time we would move past it they would create a phantom picture of me and Gisele on the lower floors, fighting, sleeping, talking.
- “Aaawayyy…” voice sounded from everywhere and nowhere “… you are not…. Welcomed here…”
It was using voice of me and Gisele. Words out of context, as if he was playing random words from recorder. The beast, whatever it was, was studying us. It couldn’t speak itself, so he learned out vocabulary from my conversation with Gisele, and was playing it in order to communicate with us.
- “Be gone…. You will not… conqueror… this place… Be gone…. What nests here… is abomination.”
I knew that it wasn’t what it meant, yet it was limited only to words we spoke here.
- “You mean you are one of the kind?” I asked.
- “Yeeeessss. One of the kind. Abomination. Like yourself.”
- “Show yourself.”
Up until now we thought we were alone in the chamber, only with lump of meat like tumor formation in the middle. Yet tumor turned around, what I thought to be a part of dungeon as actually… dungeon itself. Clothed in flesh. Hundreds, if not thousands of eyes looked at me.
I was wrong, it wasn’t the psionic beast playing with us. It was the dungeon itself. A dungeon that somehow became…
Alive?
No, dungeon’s heart is a crystal…
…. But what if it melted with a body? From where it would get flesh? We were the first adventurers to ever get here.
- “I am alone. I am abomination. I am …. Only knowledge.”
- “Seeking?”
- “Yeeeessss. Seeking only knowledge.” It answered with my voice from the crystal.
- “Why did you try to kill us?”
- “On higher floor… not kill…. Force into… feeling… I learn from feeling. I learn from watching. I learn from listening. On lower floor… tried killing you… to make you return.”
- “Why? Why are you so obsessed with knowledge? What do you want to achieve?”
- “Achieve knowledge. This my goal.”
- “For what?”
- “For nothing.”
- “What?”
- “Knowledge isn’t a … tunnel…”
- “Path?”
- “Yessss.. isn’t a path to goal. Knowledge is the goal.
- “… from where do you have a flesh to construct your… vessel?”
- “I send my creations away. They return with … bodies… of lesser life forms.”
- “Lesser life forms?”
Huge tumor moved again, revealing bones under flesh-floor.
It was more than enough to fill a graveyard. Countless skeletons of birds, wolves, deers…
- “Zari… there are humans in here” Gis said quietly
- “Lesser life form. Serves as food. Serves as material. For stronger. For wiser. It is …. Command….Of this world. Feast on weak. Grow stronger.”
So this is a true nature of this creature. Even if it was barely taken into consideration to leave you be, now you left us no choice.
- “You need to be erased.” I said pulling sword from my belt.
- “Lack of logic detected. Cooperating would serve us better. Both parties… benefits.”
- “Unfortunately there are goals I wish to achieve, and I need those, as you call them, lesser life forms for that.”
The tumor rumbled.
- “Lack of logic detected. Acting against common sense. Casting aside possible gains. Reevaluating opinion about target No. 001 and 002. Reevaluation complete. Targets considered as lesser life forms. Kill-digest-use sequence activated.
Mass of meat started changing itself. Crystals with data it learned started flying toward flesh-body dissolving in it as it started switching form.
- “Data gathered sufficient for transformation. Beginning process.”
Meat started compensating itself into much smaller body.
- “Optimal vessel chosen.”
It slowly start turning into humanoid form, his skin started turning from pinking-muscle color into more “human”-like shades of healthy body, it grew hair from its head as it finished its transformation.
When it was done I was looking at almost perfect, naked, copy of myself. With just few differences. One, it was genderless. It literally had nothing between its legs, two: it had third eye growing in the middle of the forehead. The same eye that was in the middle of tumor we talked with a moment.
- “Initiating a battle sequence.” It said with my voice, yet somehow deprived of any emotions.
Ay'zalin - The Seeker of TruthLevel79Hp[9897/10 000]Mp???Sp???Titlesof Flesh and Bones
Self Animated
Dungeon's Heart