Despite all the energy that the loops were directing towards spawning creatures, the dungeon vines continued to grow. Beneath spherical white sand, roots dug deep and pierced through to the dungeon underworld.
Multiple Worldlet Anchor Points Detected. Worldlet Stability Greatly Increased. Mana Generation Increased Approximately 1%. Congratulations.
_ Select Dungeon Reward:
• New Material
• Unlock Spawn
• Unlock Treasure
• Entrance Feature
_
_ Random Selection: “New Material” Selected. Select From Available Material: … _
_ Random Selection: “Obsidian” _
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A wave of vertigo sent Punch crashing into the tunnel wall with his shoulder. The bandits behind him cried out as they also momentarily lost their balance. The vertigo passed after only a moment, and Punch reached down to help the torch-bearer to her feet. The “torch” was a hollow frog skin–stretched over a frame, filled with motes of light from the quicksand floor, and mounted on a short stick–but even a weak light source was effective in the pitch black tunnels. A bandit near the back of the group had been caught by a pair of rabbits and was struggling to keep his face intact. Punch waded back through the group and knocked the rabbits away with the shaft of his spear before ordering the group of bandits to keep running.
The group almost immediately stopped, however. “Punch! The tunnel’s gone!” The torch-bearer shouted back.
“What do you mean?” Punch shouted forward as he waded through the group again.
“Look! It supposed to branch right here with quicksand on the left and pebbles on the right. Now it leads under the swamp with no branches.” The torch bearer pointed at the floor when Punch arrived. Punch frowned at the floor of the tunnel, which now had shallow potholes filled with muddy water.
“We took a wrong turn.” Punch said.
The torch-bearer shook her head. “We didn’t!”
“We’ll backtrack and see where we went wrong.” Punch said. He grabbed the torch-bearer by the arm and dragged her through the group. The bandits ran back along the tunnel, killing a few dungeon monsters unlucky enough to block their way. After a few minutes, the torch-bearer stopped and pointed at the ground in a rising panic.
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“This is wrong! These tunnels never connected with lake tunnels before!” Her pointing hand shook with anger and fear.
Punch struggled to think. Running back and forth would just wear them out and make them easy prey for the flood of monsters. They needed to find an exit, but their guide had gotten them very lost, unless… “Did the tunnels change?” He wondered aloud. He regretted his comment–it didn’t seem like a good “second-in-command” comment. Punch refocused on the tunnels ahead of him. The lake tunnels had a thin pathway between small boulders on one side and a long pool of water on the other side, but they were not the worst tunnels. “Can we get to the exit floor from the lake tunnels?” He asked the torch-bearer.
She gestured helplessly at the floor. “We could yesterday. I don’t know now.”
Punch gave here a small push forward. “It’s the best chance we’ve got.”
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Violet watched helplessly as the giant snake slammed its body against the walls and ceiling of the wooden cage. Violet had used acid to open several of the other tunnel openings, but the snake was insensate and didn’t realize it was free. Dungeon creatures died by the dozens under the crushing bulk of the mad snake. Violet wasn’t sure what to do–he had never had much of a relationship with the snake, that was Yrryth, who had shared the tunnels with the snake for a long time, even before becoming a gargoyle.
“Snake!” He yelled down. “I’m going to find Yrryth!” Violet pulled together a sleep spell and cast it on the snake. It wasn’t much of a spell–he had mostly cast it on himself to cure stress-induced insomnia. The spell failed to have any effect on the giant snake. Violet cast it again, then a third time. He shook out his hands and prepared a different spell. “I’m sorry, snake!” He yelled one last time and cast a paralysis spell, one he had learned from a book. Violet felt the spell settle on the snake. The giant snake’s body froze in place, but it’s eyes continued to roll around wildly. Violet could tell that the spell wouldn’t hold very long, so he dropped to the ground and summoned a visual scanner as he ran into one of the tunnels to find Yrryth.
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Chaney had finished showing all the tunnel entrances to the raven. “You know all the entrances now, I’m going down to fight, is that alright?” He asked the bird. The raven croaked and launched off his shoulder, slapping him in the face with black feathers. Chaney shook his head and focused on the moon cat. She made no sound, but Chaney felt her mounting eagerness to hunt. The two joined the flow of dungeon creatures and descended into the underworld.
Unsurprisingly, the tunnels were dark. The moon cat confidently let Chaney down a tunnel which led away from the main group of dungeon creatures. That confidence turned to confusion what the sandy tunnels under the delta worldlet changed to the rocky-wet tunnels under the lake worldlet.
“That’s not right.” Chaney said. “This branch should have led us to the oasis tunnels.” The pair drew back as a faint light appeared a ways down the lake tunnel. They remained silent and hidden as a group of bandits jogged past the opening to their tunnel branch. The moon cat and the man padded silently down the tunnel and turned at the intersection to follow the bandits.
As the bandit group jogged around a curve in the tunnel, Chaney lashed out with his metal hook and snagged the last bandit by the neck. The bandit lost their footing and fell to the ground. The tree spider moon cat pounced and sank its fangs into the bandit’s neck. When the bandit was dead, Chaney and the cat ran silently to catch up with the remaining bandits.