Velua took point of her party, the angelic slimes behind her acting as a wall to protect the squishier dwarves in the back. She had never had dungeon monsters help her in battle before, but then again this dungeon had hardly acted normal. She looked at the doorway that had opened upon uttering the answer to the riddle. There was a hallway lit by torches leading deeper into the temple. She took a deep breath before marching ahead, listening to the only sounds that were nearby. The gentle thump of her heart in her ears, and the footsteps of those she had yet to fail. She wondered how long things would remain that way.
She approached the door and put her hand on it gently, finding that it was shaped to be a miniature mural of a battle scene. Demons rose from a crack in the earth with angels flying down from on high. It was a rather intimidating door, to be sure, but that hardly was going to stop them here. Death or glory was the motto of the dwarves in this world. You either die on your feet, battling your way to the goals that lay so far out of reach, or you live long enough to always have a full cup and a stuffed belly. The deeper into this dungeon they went, the more and more the former option sounded like her fate. However, the dungeon was benevolent, kind enough to save the names of her lost kin.
She marched forward, the sound of her greaves clicking across the stone as she tried to think of what could be waiting for them. It could be a miniboss battle, something that marked the halfway point of the floor, or it could just as easily be more rooms to wear them down. She held her breath as they arrived at the next door, showing a much different scene than that of the previous.
On this door were two sideways teardrops with a dot floating in the larger part of each. It looked like the drops were pushed together to make some kind of symbol, one being black and the other white, with dots of color the same as their opposite. There were so many things within this temple that didn’t make sense, a large amount of symbology lost on her as it corresponded to nothing she had seen. She could only assume that it had something to do with light and dark, if the colors meant anything.
She touched the door and the two symbols swirled like fish within a pond, twisting around each other before the door opened and parted down the middle for the approaching party. The burning smell of demonic slime entered her nostrils, the scent becoming very familiar over the past day. What new smell came afterward was the actual shock—the smell of rot. When the doors fully opened and the torches lit within their sconces, the group was shocked by what they had found.
Across the floor were the splattered remains of slime demons, a single soldier leaning against the wall as he looked back at the gathered party. Nearly half a dozen of those purple slime cores lay smashed upon the ground. It was clear a different battle had recently happened here, but she doubted the concept of there being another party of delvers doing the same quest. The dungeon could have easily fabricated false slime cores to give the appearance of a battle happening. But what was the rotting smell?
”Turn… back…” Burbled a noise from the demonic slime, its head faced right towards Velua. As she looked at it, she realized that this one was different from the others. The previous slimes were just like the angelic ones behind her, naked and unintelligent. Their slightly opaque bodies show nothing but the base intelligence of dungeon minions. This one understood pain, and language, and was here for more than just another fight. It was a named monster.
“We seek the Queen of this floor. She must be returned to her people.” Velua said firmly as she looked at him, the slight masculine nature of the gurgling slime the only indication that it was masculine. She trailed her eyes over it, seeing that it was wearing dried slime as leather armor, with bits of golden chitin placed at strategic points. This was the commander of the demonic forces on the floor, and it was dying from a massive oozing wound to its side.
“Queen… has gone mad… will rot you…” He warbled as he cringed, the act of speaking making more demonic innards pour out of him. Velua could see him visibly shrinking as his slime flowed out.
“Sounds like we know the boss of this floor, now. The Queen of the Fairies. We need to either save her or take her crown to complete the quest.” Velua said as she looked behind her at her party, wanting to explain things properly. She blinked however as she realized she could see the other dwarves, no wall of icy blue slime blocking her vision. She turned back around to see the three slimes gather around the demonic leader.
“Fools will die… heroes will fall… When the Queen of Toxic sees you.” It gurgled with what sounded like laughter, its arms outstretched before the angelic spikes began to club it to death. Their pseudopods becoming mallets and hammers to smash apart their most hated foe. The slimes were brutal with how they dispatched the demonic leader, his form gushing and splattering against the walls until nothing was left but his core.
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Velua watched as the angelic slimes resumed their position in the formation, approaching the spot where the body was destroyed. “Molin, think you could identify?”
”’Course, I can. Just give me a second.” He muttered as he approached and looked at the core, reaching down and grabbing it before turning the small dark purple marble over in his hands. He muttered a few things, magic coming out of him like breath on a cold morning. It only took a few moments before he smiled happily and handed the pearl back.
”Must be a rare drop. Summons a pet demonic slime to fight for ya.” He said with a grin, summoning items being valuable. A summon item meant that it would bring a creature into the world that was bound to the summoner, and the summoner could never be betrayed by their new loyal friend.
“Fuckin’ hell! Now that is a nice reward!” She said with a grin as she tossed the pearl up in the air, realizing that they had not collected much loot in the dungeon. She considered going back to the battle room to see if any of those demonic slimes had dropped anything. She shook the thought away, knowing it was best if she focused. She would also not be summoning the slime just yet, since she didn’t want the angelic slimes to immediately throttle her new pet.
“Can we get movin’? If’n he was ‘ere to warn us, gotta mean the queen is nearby. Means we might make it outta ‘ere alive.” Dle commented as he searched the room, finding a few things worth looting. Most of the core fragments since they could be refined down into potions or mana stones, a few demonic slime horns, and of course the pants of slime leather armor. It was human or elf-sized, but it would at least sell well.
“Yeah. I think we just might.” Velua said with a smile as she turned towards the final door. After viewing this final one, she finally realized what the dungeon was trying to convey with these rooms and doors. She didn’t understand the room with the strange symbol puzzle, and the door with the two light and dark patterns could only be symbolically figured out. It was viewing this last one that she realized the entire temple was centered around faith.
“Clever dungeon. Making a temple to the idea of faith so no gods get upset.” She chuckled as she put her hand on the dice-shaped door handle. The door was a scene of gambling leprechauns, dice with clovers instead of pips. A shining pot of gold at the end of a rainbow behind them. It was a door that had a two-pronged meaning.
“What do ya mean, Velua? A temple of faith?” Molin asked curiously, wondering how she had come to that conclusion.
“Ain’t it obvious? Each room is a different kind of faith. First is a god with offerings, second is in fate, third is faith in one’s strength, fourth is afterlife, then the doors showing heaven and hell, dark and light. This one’s got two meanings. Faith in one’s luck, and that we should feel lucky to have come this far.” She said with a small chuckle as she looked at the doors. “Even out there, before the temple. Faith in a monarchy.”
The three of them all paused as a notification window appeared in front of them, seeming to be triggered by Velua’s recognition of the theme.
Secret Unlocked!
Shh!… its a secret!
You have discovered the theme of this floor. A reward will be dispensed for the party.
Reward: All weapons do double damage to objects or individuals that are worshipped during this delve.
“Beautiful! Maybe the door is right and our luck is turning around.” Velua mused happily as she slipped back into her noble tongue, too tired to keep up with drawling lower speech for more than a few sentences. She grabbed onto the door handles and pulled them apart, the scene of leprechauns gambling splitting in half to reveal a well-lit room. It was a simplistic room, but the stench of rot wafted out and made her second guess that. Velua glanced around and saw that there had once been wooden pews lining the pathway, rotten boards, and scraps of seat cushion all that remained. Following a stained and moldy carpet to the back of the room, she could understand that it had once been meant to look like a church. It was now a desiccated hall where everything rotted, the only pieces of furniture that remained were a podium in which a glowing sphere balanced, and a chair holding a limp woman in a large ball gown.
“That canne’ be,” Molin muttered with shock as he stepped past one of the slimes to get a better look at the room. The sphere was easy to identify without magic, swirling red energy within, the overabundance of mana, and the way it was perched just so on the podium. That was the dungeon’s core, meaning that a group of skilled dwarven adventurers had somehow managed to be decimated by a first-level dungeon.
“Oh… but it can.” A feminine voice came from the back of the room followed by a series of cackles before the figure in the chair shuddered and the head lifted. The beautiful face of a pure-blood fey looked at them, wild eyes glancing between each of them as her smile widened. She had streaks of purple gunk running down her face as if she had been crying pure venom from her eyes. She raised her arms, blemish-free blue skin shining in the torchlight just between where her gloves almost met her dress.
Her long beautiful locks cascaded around her shoulders, like waves of pink candy framing her beautiful blue face. She stood and her gown was made known to the group as the beautiful black and purple fabric puffed out in all the right places. The material was as perfect as the body of the woman beneath it, though the same could not be said for her mental state. The cursed look was still there as her cackling died down with the party entering her cathedral.
“Welcome to the core room of the Red Dungeon! I am Lotus; Queen of Toxic, Baroness of Bile, and Duchess of Rot. You will die here, for this cathedral dare never be witness to love again. Not after the anger I have felt.” She snarled, baring her perfect white teeth as the dwarves all readied their weapons.