They walked on for hours, and eventually Seras had to call a break. Both of them were iron rank, and could have gone on for longer. But they both needed to be hypervigilant as they moved through the Labyrinth, and that had a draining effect on their mental faculties. Even Seras needed to sit and rest.
They slept in shifts, Seras going first.
She checked her map again and was both pleased and dismayed by how far they’d gone in a day of walking. The tunnel twisted, rose, fell, and seemingly doubled back on itself. The kind of thing that Seras wouldn’t have believed to be natural.
One trend, however seemed to be consistent, the tunnel continued heading east.
“Looks like we’re still heading east.” Seras muttered out loud as they got moving again.
Athena considered her words, “I’m not familiar with this region, is there anything important that way?”
“Not really, mostly a ton of desert and dry grass land.” Seras said while staring at her map.
Cupric was founded around one of the huge rock columns that tended to form over some astral spaces in the five deserts. That column was in the center of a broad desert valley hemmed in by mountains. The Omeda camp had been in the foothills of the northern range, near some of the trails that led north to a region called the Dells.
Before they received their mission Dustin would have brought them up through those trails in order to continue on their journey to Basal. But that wasn’t their original route, they were supposed to follow a series of desert valleys to the city of Volkis before going north. But they had been forced to reassess their original path because herds of Toruach had migrated into their path and halted all travel to Volkis via Cupric. Somehow the labyrinth had disgorged a massive amount of plant quintessence.
Seras kicked at the moss as she worked something out. “There’s tons of Toruach to the east, drawn in by a load of plant quintessence. It's been forcing travelers north through the narrow trails and passes. And here we are in a tunnel leading east filled with plants.” Seras murmured.
“You think it’s all connected?”
“It’s obviously connected, I’m just wondering if its intentional or coincidence.” Seras leaned down and ripped up a handful of moss. “Where did all these come from anyway, we’re underground? These can’t be the best growing conditions.” She gestured to the tunnel.
Athena shrugged, “I don’t know, but magic makes things weird sometimes.”
“Hmm” Seras hummed. She didn’t know why, but it struck her as suspicious.
As they continued walking Seras began a list in her head and began writing down notes. Sometimes having an organized place to dump your thoughts into was helpful. Hours later Seras gave up on puzzling out some sort of reason and went back to the magi-tech manual.
The current section was devoted to how magic could mess with electrical currents in fixed systems. An issue Seras had trouble figuring out previously. The manual essentially told her she either needed proper shielding to make the electricity flow like normal, or to accept the interference and work with it. The second option opened up a lot of interesting possibilities.
However, Seras’ reading was interrupted when her ears picked up a strange, new sound from far ahead. She held out a hand and began fiddling with her ear sensors. They could pick out a vast amount of sounds from very far away, but that often led to sensory overload, so she kept it tuned to the background. Now she isolated and boosted the noise.
“What is it?” Athena asked, her voice a little weird with her ears tuned for something else.
Seras reverted her settings and gestured forwards, “I’m not sure, but I think the tunnel opens up ahead of us. The air sounds different that way.”
“Do you have a perception ability for your ears?”
Seras quirked an eyebrow “that’s a thing? No, of course it is.” Seras lifted a hand and tapped her ears, “My ears are a lot more sensitive to sounds if I want them to be.”
“I see, so it works like a perception ability, just without needing the awakening stone.”
“Something like that.”
“That’s unfair!” she complained.
Seras snorted, “maybe, but it’s like ordinary biology. Smolders handle heat better, Leonid’s have endurance and hulking physiques, and human’s… what do we humans have?”
“Nothing at normal rank, we can run well enough, work hard, learn well, but it's always middle of the pack. Humans are just adaptive and averagely capable, its why you can find humans in almost every land. We make up for it in our Racial traits, a faster essence advancement and a better chance for special attacks, as well as four unique traits depending on our essences.” She bit her lip and then added one more item to the list “we also generally have better chance at inheriting non-human abilities if one of our parents are non-human.”
Seras frowned, “I’d never heard of that one.”
“It’s not really well known. Some people tried really shady breeding programs in the past. I only know because my mom was an elf, I got her life affinity instead of the special attack affinity. Its why I got the essences I did. Otherwise, the odds of inheritance are super low. And you rarely get the physical traits, though I met a Leonid with Smolder mom once, he had red eyes.”
“Right, well disturbing implications aside, the tunnel widens up. By a lot. I’d say it’s about the size of a city square, but that’s all I got. I’d say given the odds that there’s likely to be some sort of monster in there, so keep your guard up.”
Athena’s face became serious, and she nodded once. “Alright, I still have your rifle thing, not that I can aim it very well.”
“It’ll have to do, let's take this nice and slow.”
They both crept forwards slowly, careful not to alert anything waiting for succulent humans to wander in. Well one succulent human and a very inedible cyborg.
Some several hundred meters later they entered into the massive room, it was a roughly circular room, with a high ceiling and a massive plant in the center. The plant was tight tangle of thorny vines with thinner vines spider webbing away to cover most of the cavern, Seras was instantly suspicious of it.
She looked around the room and saw two, maybe three other tunnels. It was hard to tell from her angle. But to get to any of them they’d need to move past the bramble.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Seras pointed to the bramble and then at the mostly circular web of smaller vines; Athena nodded her head. She thought it was suspicious too. Seras tried to identify it, but at this current distance her power didn’t seem to work.
Seras pointed to the ground and indicated that Athena should stay here, she nodded her head. Seras turned back the bramble and summoned a grenade to her hands, her pulled the pin and tossed it in. As it flew it Seras stepped out of the tunnel and into the cave, the moment her foot landed the vines began to unravel and reach out for her.
Just as she had planned.
Seras had guessed that the nearest vines would be the ones coming for her, so she made sure to throw the grenade for that exact spot. As she began running to avoid the probing vines the grenade landed within the tight bramble cocoon, right where the vines had been.
It exploded in a huge ball of fire that threw sticky alchemical fire jelly all over the monster.
The bramble cocoon opened up as the vines flailed around, trying to shake off the fire jelly.
Now the stuff she used wasn’t actually napalm, but it was damn close. The alchemist who sold her this was more than happy to be rid of it as it was a by product of her stamina potion recipe.
With the vines out of the way Seras could see the monster’s true body. At the center of the vines was long stalk of bright purple flowers, they would have been pretty if Seras hadn’t seen the bones and half dissected bodies of other weaker monsters and the occasional animal.
She even saw some human bones in the yellow center of one of the flowers.
Bronze rank Voracious Kudzu
Voracious Kudzu has suppressed your iron rank aura. Speed, strength, and damage reduced.
Boon: Limit Breaker, has been activated. All rank suppression has been resisted.
Aura of Ruin has inflicted enfeeblement on Voracious Kudzu.
Aura of Ruin has failed to inflict Enfeeblement on Voracious Kudzu.
Aura of Ruin has inflicted enfeeblement on Voracious Kudzu.
Aura of Ruin has inflicted enfeeblement on Voracious Kudzu.
Aura of Ruin has failed to inflict Enfeeblement on Voracious Kudzu.
With the magical fire from the grenade still burning the plant monster was slowly accumulating stacks of enfeeblement, but that didn’t mean the monster was down and out. It seemed to have enough intelligence to understand that Seras was the one who had hurt it. Thorny vines reached out for her, Seras ducked under one, jumped above another, and a third she shot point blank six times it quick succession, each shot going up the length of the vine.
Aura of Ruin has to inflict Enfeeblement on Voracious Kudzu
Seras continued to run, and to her horror she saw several vines hacking at the flaming ones, cutting them off from the main body. Just as several vines fell to the ground, left to burn on their own a loud BANG, echoed through the chamber.
Athena pulled the bolt back and fumbled with the trap to reload, not nearly as smooth as Seras would have. But smooth didn’t matter, Athena had seen the opening Seras left and fired right into the flower stalk.
One bud burst in a yellow gooey explosion, and the monsters let out a low moan of pain. Before it had been instinctively reacting to the danger of fire and the potential prey that was Seras. But now it was in pain and lashing out with rage.
But Athena was still outside of its radius, and it seemed to only be able to detect things on its root network. So instead it redoubled its efforts to get Seras.
Even with Enfeeblement slowing down its vines Seras was still hard pressed to deal with the sheer amount of them.
She made a quick dash to the left, darted back, and then crouched down for an elastically high-powered jump. Seras went high into the air, nearly scraping the ceiling as she leapt over the flower stalk of the monster. She twisted mid air and latched onto a flower bulb with control bullets and fired, it burst and she changed targets, and again, and again, and-
Something latched onto her and threw off her aim. The thinner, fast moving vine Seras hadn’t noticed before was wrapped around her ankle, and felt little pricks as tiny roots infiltrated her smart skin.
Voracious Kudzu has inflicted paralysis.
Paralysis has been resisted due to Bio-Mechanical physiology.
Paralysis failed to take effect.
Seras tried to reach for the vine around her ankle, but had no time as it whipped her around and smashed her into the stone ceiling of the cavern.
Her optics glitched from the force of the blow and she had to wait a whole three seconds as they rebooted. When they came back it was just intime for Seras to see the yellow center and purple petals of the carnivorous flowers. She tried to struggle, but the yellow center was stickier than hot tar. And worse, it was acidic.
Acid damage has melted Smart skinTM , time to repair 1 hour and 2 minutes… 1 hour and thirty minutes… 2 hours and…
She heard another BANG, but I didn’t hit anything vital. And worse yet the monster was closing itself off again to dissolve Seras.
Seras struggled harder, but it only made her sink faster. The light was quickly being cut off as the vines closed, so she changed course. Seras summoned another pyro-grenade into her hands and popped the pin, but instead of tossing it she stuck it inside the yellow goop.
Seras waited for an impossibly long few seconds, and then her vision flared with light. The burst of flames with the goop forced Seras outwards, until she smacked against the vine cocoon from the inside. The monster wailed, but the fire was all over its flowers and burning hot.
It was too distracted by the pain to notice Seras laying against its vines. The vine cocoon quickly filled with smoke, and Seras tossed another one down onto the base.
The moment the second one was out of her hands Seras summoned up the large metal ritual board to shield her from the alchemical napalm.
Light flared, the heat intensified, and the smoke became unbearable. Fortunately for her she was used to more toxic air than this.
The monster let out more pitiful wails, but without a means of handling the flames inside its cocoon it just tightened its vines as if it would held. But try as it might, it couldn’t create a perfect seal to cut off the air supply.
Seras occasionally heard the muffled BANG of Athena firing the rifle, from the pacing she guessed the poor girl was fire and reloading as fast as possible.
Seras just sat and watched as the monster burned from within, until the strength holding it together faded and the vine cocoon slowly unraveled. She stood up and stumbled her way out of the cocoon,
“Seras!” she heard a shout and looked up to see Athena rushing towards her.
Seras held up a hand, belatedly noticing the shiny titanium fingers. She pulled her hand back and stared at it, the skin had been melted off down to the wrist, her checked her other arm, but it was fine. When the Voracious Kudzu had stuck her into its digestive acid it was on her right side, leaving half of her body okay.
Athena had stomped up to her and almost tackled her in a hug, but held off at the last moment. She looked vaguely uneasy.
Seras rolled her eyes, “its just a bit of skin off my arm, it’ll repair.”
Athena coughed, “uh, its not just your arm.”
Seras looked down and saw part of her shirt and vest were gone, and parts of her sides were missing. Athena tracked her gaze and then surreptitiously tapped the side of her pace. Seras lifted her hand to touch her face, and heard the click of metal on metal.
Part of her facial skin was missing. “Oh, uh, oops.” She said as an embroidered blue neckerchief appeared in her hand, “help me tie this up.”
“Its fine, I can manage.” Athena lied while looking green.
“Well maybe I can’t, just help me tie it off. It should repair in… five hours! Fucking hells.” Seras cursed.
Athena helped tie the neckerchief around her head to cover her missing face, and then helped her slide out of her ruined clothes and into a spare pair.
When it all down Athena was looking a little more comfortable around Seras. “I thought you were a goner there.” She said after a while.
“I know. Wasn’t expecting faster tiny vines to get me. Thought I’d be undetectable while off the ground, but of course it would know it was being shot. Glad the fire worked.”
“More of those weapons, the grendades?”
“Grenades.” She corrected.
“I was wondering what the burst of flames meant.” Athena said.
They both turned back to look at the burning monster, they watched until its aura faded away and it stopped writhing, now it was just a burning bush with no life.
“Dead gods, I hope we don’t find any more of those.” Seras muttered as she collapsed against a wall.
“Probably not.” Athena said as she sat next to Seras. “But now we know why we didn’t see any other monsters. This thing was cutting off the other tunnels, those two snakes like manifested in those tunnels instead of slithering in.”
“Fuuuck.” Seras moaned, “that means were gonna be fighting more monsters as we go.”
“Maybe not,” Athena said, she pointed to a hidden tunnel in the ceiling where the smoke had revealed. It wasn’t just flowing upwards, it looked more like it was being sucked upwards.
“Huh, you know, the last time I was in the Labyrinth I had to climb out as well.” Seras remarked.
“When was this?”
“When I first came into this world. I was in this Astral space deep below the surface, had to climb up for a long time before I eventually found an exit, it was unfortunately filled with angry bee monsters. Had to jump off a cliff into a river to escape.”
She frowned, “and you survived at normal rank?”
“I keep telling you, I’m the pinnacle of engineering. It takes a little more than water to kill me.”
“Right, I really shouldn’t be surprised. You survived being eaten by a bronze rank flower just a minute ago.”
“Yup, I had some really potent acid, my skin’s supposed to be resistant to it.” Seras said while looking at her arm.
“Might have been a magical acid. They tend to work on things not normally weak to acid unless you have a resistance.”
“Yeah, must be. Makes me glad theres no magic on Ruin, otherwise acid rain would be a thousand times worse.”
“I’ll probably regret this, but acid rain?”
“Yup, super nasty, part of why every needs to replace their skin. Overwise you’ll melt or slowly succumb to blisters.”
“That’s so strange, I’ve never considered fearing the rain.” Athena said while shaking her head.
“Its not that weird. When its cold you put on a coat, when there are sharp stones your wear boots, and when the rain melts your skin and the air poisons your lungs you opt in for cybernetics. I got splashed in the eyes once and went blind before a Doc could replace them.”
“Your world is a very scary place.” Athena said “and we have monsters.”
Seras grinned under her neckerchief “So do we, they just happen to walk on two legs and smile at you.