Dean was poisoned again. Nausea churned his stomach and made him wish he could vomit. Instead it just continued to make it uncomfortable to do anything, to live. It would pass, that he knew. He had already been poisoned a couple of times from this boss. Tiny little globs of slime would detach and fire off like bullets from the colossal poison slime. Their speed was just too much for him to evade all the time.
During their trek through the city Dean and Nadira had been extra careful around the poison slimes they encountered. It wasn’t that the poison effect they caused wouldn’t fall off eventually, the problem was the discomfort. Bruises stopped hurting rather quickly and burns were something they could endure. The poison was just torture. Fighting while poisoned was just more difficult and they had suffered more injuries when they were afflicted.
It was just their bad luck that the boss of the dungeon this time was a colossal poison slime, topping off at seven feet tall. They were having trouble to say the least. Nadira kept slashing at the gelatinous foe with her glowing claws and that was doing a little damage. Each mana empowered strike sliced through the sickly green slime of the body, causing a small portion to dissolve. But it wasn’t enough.
So far Dean had hit the huge monster with fire, which looked like it burned some of the slime away, but it didn’t penetrate very far. The whole time the slime was launching small bullets of slime that caused the poison debuff that was so uncomfortable. Worse still, the debuff from the boss monster stacked, which wasn’t the case for the smaller poison slimes they fought. If they didn’t end the fight soon they would die from the after effects of the slime’s attacks even if they killed it.
Rolling to the side to avoid another barrage of poison, Dean switches up his attack. Lightning flies from his fingertips, only to be blocked by a blob of green slime that detaches from the main body. Stunned, Dean watches as the slime moves to absorb the slime shield after the electricity has had time to dissipate.
Thinking fast, Dean understands that he can cause some serious damage if he should hit the main body with his Arc spell, but the boss seemed to be ready for him. With his new spell he figured there was no time like the present to try it out. Another dodge and when Dean stands a purple cone of energy floats above his hand. A pushing motion with his right hand sends the spell streaking forward.
Another blob of slime comes free of the main body to block. When Dean’s attack lands on the blob some of it dissolves. The colossal slime slides over to absorb the detached body part just like before. When it does, the boss freezes in place. The action is as though the slime is stunned by the fact it was infected by the affliction from his magic. That may have been Dean’s imagination though, since he wasn’t even sure that it had the intelligence enough to be surprised in such a manner.
He wasn’t about to let that opportunity pass him by though. Nadira slides over to attack, slashing furiously into the other side of the slime from Dean. Meanwhile, he is pumping mana into his hand. The boss slime is recovering by the time he releases, but it’s too late. An Arc twice the power of his normal spell jumps from Dean’s palm. The slime tries to defend, but it can’t get a blob of slime free as his lightning travels at the speed of light.
That got Dean thinking. It almost looked like the slime was moving before his Arc spell even formed on the previous try. Otherwise it would never have been able to defend successfully. Did this monster have the ability to sense his mana building before he released it? Such thoughts would have to wait, as the dungeon boss wasn’t done yet.
Sluggishly, it rolls forward toward Dean. More bullets fly in his direction as it focuses on him to the exclusion of all else. Nadira doesn't let up as her quick slashes get faster and faster, until Dean only registers a blur of motion behind the slime. Still it advances and Dean is afraid it will just roll over him to smother or drown him in its sludge.
With a shudder, he resolves to not go down that way. Jumping back to get a little more room, he starts charging another spell to his left hand. After a second he charges a quick fireball in his right before releasing it as fast as he can. His feint works and a blob detaches to intercept the fireball. Another overcharged Arc flies behind his first spell to connect with the main body. The reaction was explosive.
Slime bursts from the boss in every direction to cover almost everything in the main hall of the temple-like building they were fighting in. That included Nadira and Dean. The nasty gunk that covered them posed another issue for the two. Dean quickly found out that it added another stack to the relatively weak poison and made the side effects far worse.
Whether it was just the effect of the poison itself or the combination of that and the disgusting nature of what covered him Dean didn’t know. Either way the result was the same and he emptied his stomach right where he stood. During his retching he heard a similar sound coming from Nadira as she had the same reaction.
The dry heaving continued for a minute after there was nothing left to expel. When he was able to get control of himself a horrifying realization was voiced by his partner in this dungeon. “The poison debuff won't drop off our status while the slime is still on us.”
The panicked scream from Nadira jerks Dean into crisis mode as he starts stripping his soiled clothes off. On the other side of the epicenter for the goo explosion Nadir is doing the same. When they are down to only their underwear they both start using the goo covered cloths they just removed to scrape as much of the green slime from their skin as possible. Nadir pulls out a couple one liter bottles of water after that. She tosses one to Dean before shouting in her hurry. “Use that to clean as much off as you can.”
What follows is a furious scene of splashing and scrubbing until all the water is gone. As soon as he is done Dean checks the status page again. He releases a sigh of relief when he sees that the little infinity sign over his poison debuff has fallen away. Now it’s just showing a X10 and a ten second countdown.
At this level of the poison he will lose one HP per second for the next ten. At this point he was getting worried. Already he was down over fifty of the total 90 HP he had. At least it would be over soon and he would recover. If only he didn’t continue to feel as if he would vomit at any moment.
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Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the poison debuff falls off when done running its course. Instantly all the pain just disappears. The relief is so intense it’s almost pleasurable in the absence of such discomfort. Glancing to Nadira shows Dean that she also is recovering now that the poison is gone.
“Let’s not do that again,” he says to her.
“UUhh, agreed.” She doesn’t say any more, just rubs her stomach, cramped from all the heaving. Avoiding where they both were sick, they loot the boss and collect the larger than normal slime core.
Both of them take a seat on the floor then, to rest and recover their HP. In the silence Dean decides that this is as good a time as any to check over the notifications he got today. His time in the dungeon was quite productive and there were a few pleasant surprises. For his Special Skills, he gained a new level in Death Magic, two in Energy Absorption, and two in Magic Resistance.
The fact that he gained level in Magic Resistance made him wonder how. It was explained when he looked through his ability increases. He had gained a new one, Poison Resistance, and it had increased by four levels after all the use it had gotten. Along with that he gained another level in True Sight too. It was a shock that he had gained so much in his new resistance, but it made a little bit of sense after being covered head to toe in the green sludge.
Next thing he reviewed were the increases to his Skills. Dean was using plenty of magic during their exploration of the dungeon and he was happy to see that it had paid off. Spark, Kinetic Vector Shield, Flamethrower, Arc, Deathtap, and Necrotic Bolt all gained a level. All the increases were enough to push him over to the next level and Dean was now level 39. That added a new point to his INT and also increased the size of his mana and essence pools.
When he is done Dean walks over to where Nadira is standing by the back of the room. As he heads over Dean takes a better look around the room. At first he thought it was like a temple when they were approaching. It is bigger than all the other buildings in the town, but that was deceiving. All the buildings were only two stories tall at the highest. From closer up he can see that this building is more like a town church by the size of it.
There is dust and markings on the floor in what look like the shapes of pews. The windows high up in the main chapel are stained glass and depict odd scenes. One is of an indistinct figure, Dean guesses that it’s female, standing in front of a rising sun. Rays of light shoot out from behind her and look much like a halo. The woman is wearing a white robe and sandals. In her right hand is a sword that she is holding up to the sky. In her left hand is a wand, held down by her side.
Looking around at all the murals shows him more scenes of the sword and wand wielding woman. In some she is fighting monsters that are all angles, like a Picasso painting. Other windows depict that same woman, but her sword is laid aside and the wand is pointed toward wounded people. The nearby windows create a scene of her healing the wounded.
As interesting as he finds the stained glass, his attention is brought back to the rest of the room. In the back where Nadira is standing is a small dais with a few steps leading up. When he is near, she goes up. “The exit portal is in the back room. It’s much faster than backtracking all the way to the beginning.”
Dean doesn’t respond, just follows as she goes through the only door in the room. What Dean finds is a long hallway. Surprisingly, there are no other doors besides a single dark wood door about a hundred feet back. It feels odd to him that there are no doors to the sides of the hallway. The building was a normal square from what he saw on the outside, so there had to be something on the other side of the walls.
When Nadira gets to the end of the hall and opens the door Dean can see that there is only a small room on the other side. Inside there are no doors and the only thing there is a swirling rainbow portal at the center of the room. Dean wants to check out the weird shape of the building and what the missing space leads to, but he is anxious to get out of the dungeon.
Ever since entering Galgorath Dean noticed that his connection to the undead rats he left behind is even weaker, barely there. If it got any weaker Dean feared it would snap altogether, leaving his minions feral. Feral undead attack the living indiscriminately. For something like his little rat minions that wouldn’t be so bad though. And in the guild building it would mean they instantly got squished should they be caught. Most people might not even realize they were undead before they killed one.
That wasn’t the point though. Dean had left those undead rats there for a reason. That reason is far more important than his curiosity about this ancient dungeon and what secrets it might hold. Because of the importance of their task, as soon as he sees the portal he enters it without hesitation. Dean forgot about the effects of the portal though. In the dirty basement of the warehouse where they entered the dungeon from, Dean steps out and stumbles. Grabbing his stomach he feels it clench, nearly causing him to vomit again.
He is followed shortly after by Nadira. Like before, Dean can tell that she also feels the aftereffects of the dimensional travel too, but is much more accustomed then to it than he is. Standing upright, she is warily eyeing something on the other side of the room with her claws out. It took a minute for Dean to recover and understand what was happening.
Eventually Dean is able to marshal his wits to look in the same direction as Nadira. What he sees causes him to straighten up. A team of five people are looking at them. They aren’t The Lost Sheep though. The team consists of a mix between a wooden looking humanoid species and lizard men. The group still looks surprised to see anyone else there, even though it has been a minute since they arrived. All five of them have also drawn their own weapons.
Dean wasn’t sure who was reacting to whose actions, but he knew who he was going to backup. With a wince, Dean takes a position next to Nadira as she addresses the unknown team. “What do you want?”
The foreign team looked a little confused at the question, but a tree-like person stepped forward to answer. “We are just here to test the dungeon. We don’t want any trouble.”
Realizing her mistake, Nadira lowered her claws and took on a more casual stance. “Sorry,” She said, a little sheepishly. “It was a tough fight at the end there.”
The other team seemed to understand and relaxed a little as they lowered their weapons. One of the other tree people steps forward and speaks with a rich, male sounding voice, even though gender is completely indecipherable from its looks. “Sorry about surprising you. I hope the rest of your day is more relaxing.”
Nadira nods to them and apologizes again, before moving out of the way. The rest of the other team nodded to them before walking into the portal. It was then, after the immediate danger was passed, that Nadira and Dean were able to relax a little. It was an ordeal to go through the dungeon with the two of them. It felt like they were taking a big risk after such a harrowing battle with the dungeon boss.
His immediate attention no longer drawn to the events unfolding around him, Dean noticed something else happening. Something was insistently trying to make itself known. A moment of confusion is replaced by understanding when it occurs to him. The undead rats were clamoring for him to listen.
Their targets have arrived.