Chapter 39 - Go Monster Slaying

I ended up cannibalizing some of my gold coin collection to help with the water problem. One good thing about gold is just how conductive it is for heat, and it made for a pretty good boiler. Add to that a bronze tube that fit perfectly on top and another container to catch the condensation, and they would probably be able to get a couple gallons of drinkable water out of it before I got back. It took some of the pressure off of our supplies at least.

Trix handed me my pistol as I was leaving.

“I’d much rather you came back alive than have a weapon to hand while I watch the mold grow. I still haven’t fired it,” he said.

I nodded to him in thanks and handed him a glowing purple rock. “I’ll be back with it soon enough, and, if you’re lucky, with a big monster you can shoot.”

He took the stone and rolled it around in his paw curiously. “Please do not do that on my account. What is this?”

“If that stone- uh… explodes or suddenly stops glowing, it means I found something bad. I’ll do my best to get back to you if it’s safe after that.”

Trix raised an eyebrow and set the stone down carefully on the pile of stones we’d cobbled together in the middle of the intersection. “Perhaps it’s best I not keep it in my pocket then.”

Choosing the tunnel that led in the opposite direction of the marked out smuggler’s arrow, I set off at a jog, water splashing around my shins. I kept a finger sized rod of the cobalt alloy in my hand for light. The light was weak, but I didn’t need overly much light thanks to the tunnel being so small and the water reflecting a good bit of it. At every intersection, I marked the way I went by scratching an arrow on the brick at about shoulder height.

Detect Cobalt was going nuts.

When I started out, only two of the wires ran through the mortar of the brickwork, but that changed quickly. At each intersection there was always a clearly more densely wired passage to take, a place where the strands seemed to flow together. While my passage had two, they would knot up with others in the ceiling of an intersection then continue on through another tunnel. It was as good as anything to follow.

Soon, the tunnel I was in practically glowed to my extra sense. The wires were a twisting nest of barbed weirdness running on into forever channeled by the mortar highways they'd chosen as their habitat.

I was so focused on Detect Cobalt that I almost missed the slow change in the environment. I didn’t realize there was light or that the water was practically a puddle on the floor now, going from splashing under my feet to simply being slippery.

Then the smell hit me.

It wasn’t just rot, though that was certainly a way that I might describe it. It was subtly different, the air thick with stagnation, stillness, and stale death, as if something had putrefied but even microbial life whose entire purpose was to break down the dead and dying wouldn’t touch this. It repulsed me in a way I’d not felt before..

Once I realized something was wrong I crouched down and stowed my light in my spatial storage. Then I listened for a solid minute. Air moved through the tunnel oddly at the best of times, blowing against my face one moment, at my back another. The slow trickle of water down the slimy walls was almost ubiquitous. Underneath that, I heard a sputtering hiss so quiet, I might have mistaken it for my own breathing.

Stealth is now level 10.

Upgrade paths available:

Subtle Casting

Blur

Knife in the Dark

Well, that confirmed that I wasn’t alone, but it also confirmed that Stealth was working on something.

I took that as an opportunity to stop and listen more. I had a choice to make.

Subtle Casting: Your abilities are much harder to detect through means magical and mundane.

Blur: Your outline is blurred to even the most observant onlooker, as long as they are not aware of your precise location. Once detected, Blur is removed until line of sight is broken.

Knife in the Dark: Opponents that are not paying direct attention to you take X additional damage from your attacks and abilities where X = Stealth/5.

All of them looked useful in the short term and long. However, Knife in the Dark held an opportunity. As Nali had said, I channel myself into the object I Shape. Was that because of the type of mana I used, the ‘me’ type?

If that were the case, I used ‘me’ type mana in everything I did with the exception of Volatility. Would something like my turret construct get the damage bonus? How much “me-ness” did my mana retain? Choosing Knife in the Dark would answer these questions, and that would be worth missing out on the others if only to know how it worked in the future.

The worst that could happen if I took the ability would be if it was a straight up flanking skill, and even then that would be legitimately useful.

I made the choice.

Back in the moment, slowly, carefully, I set one foot in front of the other. The light coming from up ahead didn’t strike me as daylight or the gentle glow of the filament stuff they used in the Undercity. It was a sluggish, red hue that turned the world into a blood-soaked blur, that is until there was a spark then a flash, sudden and violent, that pulsed down the tunnel, bright enough to hurt my eyes and leave little tracers in my vision. I found it easier to look down at the water and my feet instead of directly ahead or to pay attention to Detect. The tunnel was absolutely riddled with wires here, and the concentration grew thicker by the foot.

I continued on until I found myself at an intersection unlike the ones I’d seen before. It was bigger- no, grander than the others. It was a circular cavern type room with many different archways to tunnels that intersected this one. The high, vaulted ceiling, maybe fifty feet up, came together where a deep red crystal hung from the architecture, giving the room its light. Being this close to the thing didn’t help the visibility problem much. Everything still appeared dreamlike in my vision, indistinct and shifting.

Detect cobalt told me that all the wires were headed up that way just like the other intersections, until I lost them at the edge of the ability’s radius, but I could make out naked silver further up the walls. Maybe there just wasn’t room in all the mortar for the concentration of tendrils in this room

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Then there was an explosion of sorts, a gout of white flame and an incandescent shower of sparks that trickled down to the floor to reveal a-

What the hell is that?

It was a creature of some kind, splayed on its back underneath the crystal. It was huge, longer than it was thick, maybe the size of a couple train cars put together, vaguely reptilian or maybe amphibian with mottled yellow-pink skin. Its head was partially obscured, but it was wider than it was tall. It’s mouth gaped wide open to expose multiple rows of finger-sized teeth.

The thing’s eyes were closed, and though I wasn’t an expert in extra-universal biology, it looked like it was enjoying itself. It stretched languidly under the blinding light and burning sparks like a cat in a sunbeam. Its multitude of long, muscled legs that all ended in two toed claws, curled and flexed with pleasure, and its muscled tail slithered back and forth as it basked in the presumed warmth.

The sparks gave me a better view of the room as well. There was a gap in the floor in my tunnel’s threshold as it fed into the room, wide enough for me to fit inside. Flaps of pale translucent material hung from quite a few of the naked wires running through the open air. Piles and piles of vaguely organic refuse were scattered about the room, and though it was hard to estimate their size, I suspected they would do much to block my view if I were to sneak through the room.

I’d seen enough. It looked like I’d chosen the wrong way. The only saving grace here was that the creature seemed too big to fit into our particular tunnel, so I would need to count that particular blessing once I was far, far from this place.

Even as I backed away, I reached out with my will and, hopefully, set off Trix’s stone. I’d never tried it from so far away before, and, if it worked, it would make for a good data point on how the ability worked.

However, as soon as I sent the mental command, the creature froze, mid slither, so still it looked more like a corpse than a living thing.

I froze too.

Had it heard me? Had it heard Trix’s rock? That shouldn’t have been louder than a pop, and it was so far away. I had to imagine the party’s footfalls and voices would have carried farther than that.

I stared at the thing, unblinking, afraid to move.

Stealth is now level 11.

With sudden, explosive force, the creature was upright and moving fast, its dozens of powerful legs carrying it smoothly over the cavern floor, between the piles of refuse and up onto the walls where it circled erratically, sniffing, turning its head this way and that. The motion was so quick, the thing had already almost made a lap around the room before I even had a chance to take a breath. It never made even a whisper of a sound.

The creature didn’t seem to have eyes, though it did have some sort of vestigial sockets whose hollow appearance made me uncomfortable when they were turned my way.

Nope. Time to go.

I took a step back, slowly so as not to disturb the puddles on the floor, and I was about to turn away when my eyes brushed over a marking on my tunnel wall, a full arrow that was pointed down my tunnel.

My magic metal heart sank.

I’d chosen the “right” way after all, but our assumptions were wrong.

Possible danger in front, definite danger behind.

My mind conjured the image of a group of men carrying packs through the dark, a routine trip for them, transporting illegal goods from here to there, but as they reached this room, they found themselves set upon by a huge salamander thing.

Would they stick around to cross out their yellow arrows near the creature’ den? Probably not. Instead they probably marked passages as unsafe where they could.

Definite danger here, but…

This creature was so large, too large to fit into my tunnel, and the way out was definitely this way.

Lucky me, I knew someone that specialized in ranged combat.

Remote ranged combat.

I backed down the tunnel at a glacier’s pace, not daring to disturb the water or make a sound until I was well out of sight and out of the red light.

Once I was out, it was time to build.

—----------------------------

When you are Triggered, feed mana into the aiming arms. Bring the sight as close to your target as possible. Feed a small burst of mana into the firing Trigger. Repeat.

Do not shoot at or through me.

Automate depth increasing [2 of 3]

Apparently, the System had been waiting for me to use Automation to start increasing its Depth. I might have been frustrated if not for my brain entirely engaged on my design process at the time.

I inserted the little automated wafer into the brain housing on my new turret and Shape sealed it shut, running through the final checks to make sure everything would work smoothly. Where my junk turret that fired ball bearings was long and slender, this monster was a bulky, squat sort of death machine with chunky legs, a barrel thick enough to swallow my hand, and a low center of gravity that would keep it from toppling over when it fired its substantial payload.

Speaking of…

I grabbed the three pieces of my prototype shell casing, one that would break apart once it left the barrel and expose the real shot. Then I carefully began to pack the ammo inside. In this case, the ammo was thirty-four wickedly sharp cobalt-nickel darts wrapped around a foot long cobalt-nickel alloy spike, the tip of which I was touching now.

When you are struck, feed mana into your Trigger and burrow into anything softer than yourself. Do not burrow into me.

Thirty-four times I’d had to give that command and channel that mana. It had used the last of my stored scrap wood, but if this paid off, it would be worth it. I wanted to end this fight in one blow, a surprise attack from the dark that would guarantee death or retreat from the creature. I didn’t want it to surprise me with a ranged attack or go hide somewhere and wait for me to come into its lair.

I wanted a one-and-done.

The entire thing, loaded and ready to go, had to weigh as much as a full grown man and then some… maybe more since my scale of physical fitness was out of wack now that I put points into Body. Cobalt was heavy stuff, and I’d made the whole thing to last after scavenging a lot of wire from the tunnel walls. Unfortunately, it was too massive to put into my dimensional storage, so that had me lugging the whole thing back up the tunnel to the creature’s den a good mile away.

By the time I was back in the red light, my back hurt, and my heart was humming away like it had something to prove. I couldn’t allow myself to breathe like I wanted to, and that had me seeing spots in my vision.

Once I got close enough, I heaved my new turret off my shoulders and gently set it down on the stones with the barrel angled toward the mouth of the tunnel behind me..

Then I sent mana into the Trigger to key the activation.

Now, it would just be a matter of luring the-

“You have returned.”

The voice, low and sonorous, smooth like sandy silt at the bottom of a river, spoke to me. The force and will behind it was staggeringly huge. It scrambled my thought processes and shook my insides simultaneously.

Hot, fetid breath tickled the small hairs on my neck. Then the smell, the turgid stagnant rot flooded my nostrils.

Slowly, I turned around until I was face to face with the creature.

Its mouth, wide enough to stretch from wall to wall of my tunnel, was slightly open, its jaw relaxed enough to display rows and rows of teeth in the gap.

Nothing happened to me physically, but I had the sensation of my ears popping. Then, suddenly, I could hear the creature’s breath, its tongue slapping wetly against the roof of its mouth, the scratching of its claws on the stone, and the distinctive sound of bones snapping as it wriggled another inch into my tunnel.

The creature literally filled the hallway. It was packed from wall to wall as if it was a liquid.

“What strange tasting magic you are,” it said. The sound came from its mouth, but the mouth didn’t move. “It fooled me once, but now that you have troubled my home for the second time, I have you. If not for my many centuries in the dark my senses might have slipped over you and never been the wiser, little ape. My mind slides from yours so easily, as one might slide from a mossy rock into a grotto. My mind is drawn to the water, the air, the light, the stone, the other… never you. So familiar, so known, yet mysterious.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I simply shrugged, doing my best not to look back at the turret I’d just activated. A step to the side, and it would have a clear shot.

“Do not run, little ape. That path has availed no one thus far,” it said.

I cleared my throat and attempted to call some moisture back into my dry mouth. “I had thought about it,” I said. I kept my posture open and my movements slow, lest my host take sudden movements as an insult, or worse, get us right to the eating part of this encounter.

“They all do, but it all ends the same. Very tedious. If only they knew. My name means nothing to transient beings such as yourself but know this, the beasts of this world build shrines to me when food is scarce and starvation drives them to desperation. If you force me to chase you down, I will indulge my baser instincts only sapient prey can satisfy.”