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Deep under the roaming dunes covering huge swats of land of eastern part of Purgatory, in an area that used to be known as the Sea of Sin –a giant lake of tar-like condensed miasma, stretches a series of partially collapsed, dark tunnels. Masterfully laid bricks and stone, proof of the ancient builders skill, form high arched ceilings over the surprisingly wide passages. Smaller, partially collapsed paths branch off from the main waterways of the old, complicated sewage system; webs and dark sludge cover their walls and corners, making them hard, potentially dangerous, to navigate.

Near one of these side tunnels, crouching, a red imp investigates something laid on the cold, stone floor. The somewhat feminine looking creature, is wearing a gray, frayed cloak and carrying a long - too long, scimitar. The little demon then lifts its head and looks around, carefully scanning the darkness of the corridor. It is clearly an Imp, even if of some rare variety, and yet a skilled demonolog would fast point out that there must've been a succubus thrown into the mix when the creature was born, but wierder things happen in hell so they wouldn't dwell on the subject for too long.

"...There's more in here as well. " The demons breath comes out visible in the cold air of the maze.

The red, rose covered being, seems oddly out of place in this monochrome, underground ruin. It gets back to its feet, carefully, with something lightly held over a clawed hand - a long strand of silk, stretching far into the ominous darkness that nonetheless doesn't seem to impaire the demons vision. It still narrows its big eyes, trying to peer even further down along the thin line, to where the silk dissapears in the haze of miasma that fills the tunnels.

Meow - as that's who he is, rolls the fine webbing between its slender fingers, feeling its texture for... something. The thorny vines covering parts of his body stir as something on the distant part of the wall catches the imps attention.

"Hmpf." It rolls its shoulder while gripping the blade in a firmer grasp, small wings on his back streching a little wider, and slowly proceeds further down while avoiding the dark peddles of sludge and brick debris laying on the stone floor. Slow steps produce the faintest echo in the tall space of one of the main corridors.

When he nears an old crack in the bricked tunnels' wall - without a warrning, he explodes into motion!

With an instant twist of his body, the dark blade makes a graceful arc through the miasma filled air, glinting as he thrusts it into the surprisingly deep scar left on the ancient masonry.

Stab*

Kiiiii* The razor sharp scimitar hits true, and a small voice comes out from the unnatural darkness filling the crack.

Then everything is silent yet again. From where the blade disappears into the blacknes, viscous ichor travels down its edge and drips down to the floor.

Meow stands motionless in the thrusting position for a briefest moment, one brow slightly raised, before pulling his weapon back.

"...Interesting."

A small, malformed, demonic spiderling appears from the dark. Riggid body impaled on the sword as the magical darkness that was hiding it inside the hole dissipates slowly.

"Another one bites the dust." After that remark, with one overdramatic swipe the blade is cleaned of the grime. The demon seems oddly serious despite the ease with which he vanquished the enemy..

"Let's keep going Rose, there is one more tunnel left for us to check. Then it should be enough... for now."

The red imp leaves the scene, the person to whom he just spoke nowhere to be seen.

Besides a few splotches of ichor on the walls, nothing remains of the short violent display; the spiders body is gone.

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Looking into the huge, frost covered room, I can't help but wonder at the stupidly useless resiliance of these demonic centipedes. After so many days I was sure they would have all perished by now and we would come back to find a mountain of dead frozen bodies. But despite not moving at all, they are very much alive, strong magic can be felt emanating from nightmare scene...Well, most of them are.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Huh. I guess there is a limit to what a simple magic trick can accomplish by itlself."

After performing some much needed clean up in the vicinity of our little garden, we finnaly came to check on my little prank that I played on the centipedes. The previously writhing mass of chitin, coiling in the middle of the room is now deadly still. But they survived till now.

There are more of them spread across the wide space of this hall, frozen to the floors and walls and even a few that were stuck on their way in the tunnel outside. Those are the smaller of the bunch, and long since dead - unable to join the ones now concentrated in the middle, and safety they provide to each other, before they lost their mobility to the frigid air and ultimately died.

I put my foot on the head of a demon laying frozen at the entrance, and apply some pressure. Curiously, it looks more like a dark ice sculpture rather than and actual frozen creature. *Crack It shatters easily in a small cloud of diamon dust, reaviling that it was in fact just an empty frozen husk. Mhmm.

"There's nothing left of it."

This space has gotten really cold. The frigid air started to spread to other parts of the maze as well; even our flowers noticed the change and were stressing over it -a tiny bit, they are also not fond of cold it would seem. Althought that wasn't their main concern.

I catch a glimpse of movement. One of the big ones, still alive inside, twitched in response to the sound. I've noticed their antenae and mandibles moving slightly from time to time. But despite us not particularly hidding our pressence, they remain mostly still, clearly more concerned about conserving energy and protecting whatever it is that they are all coiling around than an intruder showing up at their doorsteps. So they remain still in their stupor.

-I have a feeling that would change if we were to carelesly step inside the room though.

Ever since arriving back in hell, I've been getting notifications from time to time, about defeating low level centipedes. Not many, and all of them only level 1 or 2, but that confirmed to me that the magic affecting the centipedes' nest was still in effect despite our trip to the mortal realm. A welcome, if small, trickle of experience. But with the threat of these fucking bugs mostly dealt with, another one showed up it its place in our absence.

-Webs.

Many more of them were spread in the area. Lines of silk trailing the ground where the arachnid demons passed through. Fortunately they mostly ignored the unmoving roses, preffering a more spider-appropriate diet, yet on few occasions some of them tried to build their webs between the thorns. Resulting in our flowers getting their vines tangled when they lashed out at the outrageous invasion of their territory. More importantly, the encrouching webs deprived them of the low level prey and the smaller centipedes now stuck outside of the frozen nest, as well. Our ravenous girls wern't happy with all of that, but the webs proved difficult for them to deal with; strong elastic threads getting snagged between thorns without breaking, their serrated blades surprisingly not as effective at cutting magic silk.

So we had to go around and clean it all up, before finally coming here. Despite being weak, these low level spiderlings proved much more tricky to deal with than the noisy and agressive centipede demons, as they preffer to hide and use traps rather than attacking directly. There was no need to waste mana on them, so I've gotten some practice with the blade, disposing of them one by one.. I've managed to learn something very valuable in the process...

> Piercing Strike I: Thrusting attack with increased accuracy and penetrating power.

...but testing will have to wait until we are done securing our new home.

The balance of power between the denizens of the ruin was broken with most of the higher level centipedes retreating to this place. We will have to investigate where all of the spiderlings spilled into the sewer from; there were some areas here and there that I've avoided before, due to the pressence of increasingly hard to deal with webs, but that's where we should check. There was that one collapsed tunnel that gave me the creeps- something powerful was lurking there.

-What's with all these creepy crawlers, making this maze their home. Better that than some overpowered minotaur you would expect in a maze, I guess. But still, why bugs?

My mussing were interupted when Rose turned my attention back to the room in front of us. I seems that our continuous pressence did in fact aggitate the bigger demons guarding the swarm enough to elicit a response.

Some of them slowly uncoiled themselves from the living ball of nighmare fuel, frost and shards of ice falling down from the chitinous armor, as a familiar looking head poked out from between the mass of shifting bodies.

"Great another one of these." I take a step back into the corridor. "Hey there, where did you ugly motherfucker crawl out from, huh?"

*Screeeeeee!

> Giant Demonic Centipede Guardian (21)

Its shriek is not as loud or spirited as I remember from my previous encounter with this particular type of demonic centipede, but its visage is no less scary even when covered in frost dust. Instead of rushing to attack in berserk-like fury, it is clearly just attempting to intimidate me... It's working, and we slowly step back, into the darknes of the tunnel leading to the centipede room. The cold is definitely affecting its giant form.

-Not yet it seems, but I will be back.

I've already restored, and even strenghtened, the slightly frayed temperature altering magic I've cast on the area, so we might as well retreat for today - until I come up with how to get rid of them all in an easy manner, without having to fight a metro sized bug in such an open space.

As their lethargic bodies keep unwinding themselves from their resting positions to release their Guardian, and smaller speciments fall off lifelessly from the mass of demonic bugs together with the fragments of ice and clouds of frost- I get a glimpse of what it is that they are hidding...

Oh.

"...Yes we will be back."

If they insist on being stubborn and refuse to just die from the cold, a slight push might be necessary. There are plenty of ways to bring down these guys without having to bring out heavy guns. I always prefered to be smart about those things when possible, so we will leave them for now in this sorry state, for just a while longer.

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