Quill went through everything inside the break room as he slowly cobbled together a rough plan on how to deal with his first sin. Once he had everything sorted out, he stored it all into the storage ring and left. He had a few experiments to run.
First was the obvious, would the cursed sins of gluttony eat anything they found on their platform or would they only eat dead organic material.
He headed into the tunnels to grab as many of the dead rats as he could that were near the station's trap door which was more then he had expected but he was killing quite a ton of rats so he guessed that would make sense.
“You know, if you raid those two other rat stations the king had and then kill Ssevenic and his group after the contract is complete, you can see if their is an achievement for committing a genocide.”
“I’m just going to ignore that comment.” He responded as he stored the final rat corpse in his ring and made his way back to the station and specifically the platforms.
He checked all the platform times and chose the one that would arrive the soonest which was the blue one. He then placed an empty crate, a crate that had a rat kin corpse in it, a crate that had a dire rat corpse in it, a regular dire rat and rat kin corpse, a rat kin corpse with a bunch of stuff strapped to it’s dead body, a sword, a spear, and a chest that had some pieces of armor inside it.
He felt like that covered all his bases as he made sure everything was distinct enough from each other. Since the cursed sin didn’t try to eat any of the live rats and did eat the dead ones. But he wanted to see what else it would eat or if it would leave something behind.
“What? Not going to stand on the platform and see if you count as the living beings?”
“Nope! That would be stupid. Not even crazy, just stupid. It’s pretty clear the rats are part of this dungeon, same as the sins, and I don’t think I count as part of the dungeon.” he responded as he hurriedly left the platform and sat down with a huff as he knew what was about to happen.
Slowly the scratching and clawing of the cursed sin echoed through the platforms and slowly the monster appeared.
Yo-
Quill dismissed the fear status screen as he grit his teeth. You’d think having been exposed to the cursed sins this many times was enough to minimize the fear he was feeling but nooooo!
“Oh yeah. I guess I forgot to mention that. The fear thing that is happening to you is some kind of aura attack the cursed sin has that is passively hitting you. The aura will basically always affect you. Pretty crazy that the thing's aura attack is stronger than the rat king's direct attack given its constant effect. I guess that just shows how powerful a cursed sin really is comparatively speaking. Also a testament to how strong your own soul is considering the aura didn’t make you have a heart attack and die during your very first encounter. Though that makes me wonder if the Rat Kin don’t experience the aura given they are supposed to be passive towards them.”
Her words made Quill think on everything which certainly helped with not concentrating on the terror he felt. He soon watched the cursed sin begin to leave the station and as for what was left on the platform. Nothing. Nothing was left. Well that certainly made things easier. Basically it would eat everything so long as it wasn’t alive and part of the dungeon.
He was just going to assume all the cursed sins behaved the same so now the question was which colored cursed sin he should go after.
“The green one.” An instant reply from her which made him shiver a little.
He swallowed. “And why is that?”
“Awww~. It’s cute when you play ignorant. Because it hurt my precious wittle Quill and still lived to tell the tale. It should be the first to die. And it should die in whatever crazy method you have concocted. Plus, the humiliation of dying to something that it shouldn’t die too will be a death too delicious to not witness~. Curb stomps are good and all but I want to watch the thing struggle and die to something weaker than it.”
He let out a breath of air. He thought that might have been the reason. He was leaning towards the green one anyways since it was already missing a hand and any advantage was a good advantage.
Though her comment did remind him of a question he had and he decided to take the potential risk with asking. “S-say. And obviously you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to! But what was it you did to the Rat King after I had killed him?
“You being nervous when asking that question is certainly awakening something in me~. But to answer your question. I prevented his soul from going to the afterlife by destroying it.”
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He practically stumbled at that remark “Destroyed it? Like their soul?? You destroyed their soul????”
“Oh relax, it’s not like the energy of the soul dissipates. It all just goes back to the source. I simply destroyed the sentient being that was the soul. Oblivion was the only option for such a filthy existence.
“Oh! But don’t worry. I made sure they suffered for their transgressions. In the millisecond it took for me to destroy it. It probably felt like a million years to them. The sheer agony they must have felt and they couldn’t even retreat into madness to escape or scream out in relief~. Honestly, a part of me still thinks that was too good for them but I suppose I shall be satisfied with what I got.”
Quill shuddered at her explanation and at this point felt like he needed to change the topic despite having more questions. “Anyways. I think the explosive stuff will work greatly with killing the cursed sins but I also don’t think it will be enough. The thing seems to be pretty bulky and while its arms and hands seem to be easier to cut. I am not sure about how much damage I’ll be able to do to the worm itself.”
“Hmmm. Well I am sure you’ll think of something.”
“Really? That’s it? Not going to offer any words of advice?”
“Nah. I want to see how you deal with this. Plus the quest did say without outside help. The system won’t count the energy manifestation since it’s technically the both of us combined using it so long as I don’t use it myself. But who knows if it will count me giving you advice as outside help. Why risk it?” She explained and he realized that was a pretty valid point. He was going to have to go at this alone for the most part.
He headed over to the green cursed sins platform and looked it over. He doubted that his explosives would do much on the outside so he would need to get them inside which was easy enough given the damned thing would likely just eat it should he leave the bombs out. The big question was how he was going to trigger the explosion once it was inside.
The other big problem was all the arms and hands. He was going to need to get rid of those as well, sure they were easy enough to cut, seeing as he managed to do that when he was a much lower level, the issue being how many there were. And even if he did get rid of them he still had to actually kill the worm itself.
He hopped back up to the top of stairs and looked down the hallway that led to the main tunnel and stairs. If he were to hazard a guess he would say the length of this hallway from the station to the main one was maybe 2 of the worm's length.
“Typical american. Willing to use any measuring system aside from the metric system.”
“Hey, it’s not like we were properly taught the metric system in scho…. How do you even know that anyways?”
“Oh, I’ve been rummaging around in your memories and brain when I have been bored. Your subconscious has a lot of memes in them.”
He felt a chill go through his spine “Please don’t do that. Kinda invasive.”
“Aww. But sweetie” Her voice took that sickly sweet tone again. “It's not like we are keeping secrets from each other. Right?”
“R-right. But maybe just be a little respectful of my privacy. That’s all I ask.”
“Hmmm. Very well.”
He almost let out a breath of relief as he quickly diverted all of his focus and attention towards solving how to kill the cursed sin. Going over all the equipment he had as a plan started to formulate in his head.
He took out the dead crossbow rat kin as it was the biggest body he had in his storage and started to strap all of his explosive bombs to its body, making sure they were secured tightly.
“Why strap it to the body of the rat kin? Why not just leave it in the crate?”
“Well I am going to need a way to trigger the bombs and it will be easier to do so if they are not inside the crate. As for using the corpse instead of something else.” He paused realizing there wasn't really any particular reason why he was doing this and shrugged “Theatrics I guess.”
Next he took out every weapon he had that had a pointy end and started to get everything in place in the halls using rope to try and keep everything secure.
Congratulations! You have earned the skill Trap Maker (Uncommon)
It takes a special kind of sadist to lay something for some unsuspecting fools to stumble upon and get mutilated or killed. Be sure to not accidentally trigger it yourself unless you are also a special kind of masochist. I don’t judge.
“Hmmmm. I think I see your thought process. But this will hardly matter if you can’t get rid of his arms as they will just chase after you if you are running.” she responded in a contemplative tone
“Yeah, I thought about that and while I am not sure how well it will work I do have an idea.” He spoke as he fastened a spear in the tunnel, making sure it was secure.
“Come on! The suspense is killing me here. Tell me!”
“Well, these cursed sins kind of resemble bugs in a weird sort of way with all their arms. And what kills bugs?”
“An Anteater!”
He paused at the confidence of her statement. “What? No! A spider… Why was an Anteater the first thing you thought of?”
“Well I thought spider at first but felt like that was too obvious of an answer so I went with Anteater. Also, don't some spiders in your world eat things like tiny lizards or birds?”
“And Anteaters also eat things like fruit and… You know what. Forget it. It’s spiders. I am taking a page out of the spider's hand book.”
“Well I do love spiders. Something so appealing about a patient hunter waiting for their victim to ensnare themselves in their web, struggling and fighting desperately despite its inevitable outcome. Can totally relate.”
Quill tried his best to ignore the delight in her voice and the sinister implications from that statement as he got to work.