---Richard---
Richard was pretty happy with his situation – a confident swagger leaking into his gait as they headed deeper into the city.
Was his current friend an unlikely companion? Yes – even he would admit that readily to anyone who questioned it but…he was also having fun. If anyone started judging his companionship fuck em. He’d double down on becoming James’s friend purely out of spite.
Every time he thought he’d start getting bored, James would say something or do something and flip Richard back into being interested.
Hey! His new friend had that trait he liked as well. That willingness to go along with Richard’s ideas no matter how stupid they sounded.
Richard wanted to have a barbeque in the dungeon. Roast some hotdogs – okay all he found were some sausages like meats so they technically weren’t hotdogs…it was the thought that counted. They could have a mini party.
Silly idea given for no reason other than it made fun of how seriously people were taking dungeons. A lot of people would probably say no and move on… Not James though. James had said yes instantly catapulting him into good friend status.
’Yes’. ‘Sure’. ‘Alright’. All fabulous fucking words. Richard liked confirmations.
Now! Was Richard acting a bit dumb? Was he latching a weee bit too hard to James?
….maybe.
If he was being honest…probably.
Despite that admission, it was hard to care. Richard had made a solid attempt to do this whole ‘solo gig’ so far. Solid week of soloing this game but that just wasn’t really his style. One man army? Richard couldn’t even be bothered to get skills by himself because leaving people to do some boring grinding on monsters or other PVE shit hadn’t interested him in the slightest.
Richard was a social creature. An extrovert. He liked being social – he loved interacting with people and having friends. Even if he always picked wrong, even if he was drawn to people with something messed up with them he couldn’t help it. He kept breaking and trying again. It had only taken a week this time before he caved.
Fuck he was weak.
Of course if he hadn’t found James he’d probably still be going through whatever dungeon they picked alone – he wanted more skills and felt like he was falling behind with his one ‘slot’ and one broken passive skill that was forgotten due to being a passive…
But why go alone when he had access to a partner? Especially one who could hold his own – the way James had fucked up that super powered robber mook…well it made Richard hope he wouldn’t be the one ending up as dead weight in the dungeon.
The pair finally reached the dungeon district.
An enclosed city inside the outer city – it kind of reminded Richard of china town if he was being honest. This place looked more natural…more ‘grown’ than anything else he’d seen so far. Slightly seedier and older looking than the city around it, the buildings were various shapes – a majority a blocky rectangular footprint instead of the triangles of the modern section.
Brick walls were spray painted with guild signs, advertisements for enhancing drugs and gear. Contact info for prostitutes and combat ‘modifications’ vying for space beside drawings and scribbles. All the writing was in a foreign language – it seemed no one here cared about accessibility but the pictures helped show off what was being advertised.
This was actually Richard's second time being in this place – he had been here once before to sell a bunch of his shit and scout out the area. Confidently leading the way over to the actual dungeons Richard began to talk – filling James in on the place.
Dungeons were weird. Mainly due to them being ‘closed off’ they had all sorts of strange abilities like a shifting floorplan that didn’t seem to match reality. Mechanically if a dungeon was ‘broken open’ to try and figure out how it worked it would fall apart. The act of digging down into it from the outside…even the act of trying to map it out externally – either through GPR (ground penetrating radar) or similar – that all… damaged the structure somehow.
Of course people had still tried and some funky pictures had been taken of dungeon internals before the external probes had smashed things – but for the most part it simply wasn’t done.
All that was, was a roundabout way of saying it was illegal to try and mess with a dungeon and dungeons rarely if ever had proper maps. Even the ones that did have maps often had several different variations that seemed to contradict each other as a dungeon shifted day by day person by person.
Going into a dungeon there was a weird ability many referred to as ‘instancing’. It wasn’t perfect but it usually meant as long as you waited a few minutes between entering a dungeon you’d never run into another delver as long as you delved. Obviously there were exceptions – ones no one could explain where, you’d suddenly come across a party midst battle or find traces of their passage moments before – but most true delvers knew not to question it.
Dungeon’s a dungeon. Why did X happen? Dungeon bullshittery. How does it do Y? Dungeon Bullshittery. It was a black box you couldn’t figure out without breaking it.
At least that’s how the guy buying his loot had described it.
The dungeon district was special for quite a few reasons.
Dungeons usually didn’t do well too close together – dungeon engineering usually involved making sure they all had enough room to do their thing – so each dungeon in the district had an entrance a street or two apart. Despite those entrances it was nearly guaranteed the dungeons should be overlapping beneath their feet…but the dungeons themselves nearly never intersected it being nearly impossible to stumble into one of the other dungeons while you were down there.
The district had six separate dungeons. They were laid out in a very very rough pentagram pattern each two to three blocks apart.
Three of the dungeons were ‘rank 1’ – with one being ‘rank 1’, one being ‘rank 1+’ the third ‘rank 1++’ to denote difficulty. Two dungeons were ‘rank 2’ – one being ‘rank 2+’ the other ‘rank 2++’. Finally, a single dungeon known as the ‘death pit’ was ‘rank 3-‘ – what the difference was between ‘rank 2++’ and ‘rank 3-‘ was the description hadn’t been clear on, but it was specifically denoted as different and harder.
Obviously the death pit sounded the most metal but it had stricter rules to enter it an approval process and a bunch of boring bureaucracy.
They could always try to break in, but considering they were also bound to die with how ‘hard’ it was, that seemed like a waste. Especially with a stingy three lives.
Going into a weaksauce rank 1 dungeon wasn’t a good way to get new skills, so the two rank 2s were their options.
Richard walked past and pointed them both out to his new friend – pretending to be a tour guide the whole time. He found himself talking in a funny accent while pointing about.
“Slightly easier one’s called ‘emerald’. Has a poison, acid, radiation, swamp type theme. Everything wants to slowly wittle away at you – the air itself is toxic and when stuff hits you those hits tend to linger…between it and the other its supposedly easier option because antidotes are sold for literally every type of poison or effect and there’s equipment you can get through most of it. See over there, masks with cartridges for the three main types of gas you might breathe. Shift out an organic poison cartridge for a metallic one or whatever,” Richard waved over to a stand full of various canisters and gas masks.
“Second option is slightly harder – again ‘supposedly’.” Richard made air quotes with his fingers as they made their way over. “It’s called something dumb so I renamed it to ‘bees’. Main thing you have to worry about, is that a lot of attacks or monster are small and fast as a bullet. Second problem is whatever’s not fast and small, likes to stick you to things. Basically from what I could tell, The dungeons full of waxy glue that holds you in place and bees that bombard the fuck out of you. Take your pick between them.” Richard waved to the second option.
He’d probably do better with his toxic defense in the emerald dungeon but he was kind of hoping James would pick the second. Two main reasons – for one, it sounded so much less annoying, and secondly a swamp would be a much worse place to have a picnic. The toxic clouds would probably ruin the taste of the hot dogs!
James paused for a second then made the correct choice. “Bees,” he said.
“Beautiful! I knew that sounded better didn’t it?”
Leading the way over Richard walked over to the unguarded door and turned the knob.
Opening the door wide, both of the adventurers stepped into the dungeon.
…
The dungeon wasn’t quite what either of them had been expecting. Instead of a dingy cave that probably had bad air circulation, what met their eyes was a slightly bumpy path full of weird architectural decisions.
The walls were made of white triangular bricks. The triangle theme again – nothing above had been made with bricks like this. Equilateral triangles were awfully inconvenient shapes to brick lay with but the surroundings looked sturdy enough.
The mortar between each brick was an off white colour – slightly yellowish at times, slightly pinkish at others.
It looked like a child had used a fuckton of crafters glue to stick his ‘recognize this shape’ blocks together.
Kids had those right? They were too stupid to know a triangle was a triangle until they gnawed on it a bit? Richard moved on.
In and amongst the goopy looking brick walls were what looked like partly formed bug nests. Wasp hives and ant dens – there would be portions of brick absolutely peppered with holes, tiny bits of white marble carted over and glued into mounds.
No visible sources of light were anywhere to be seen, but everything was somewhat uniformly visible in a sterile-looking manner.
Took Richard a hot second to figure out the blocks were all glowing ever so slightly and illuminating everything else.
After a minute of silent walking, the pair came across what looked like a stalagmite of glue directly in the center of the path.
It swayed slightly a single whiteish drop falling down every second.
“Looks like semen.” Richard began glancing over and doing a double take when he saw James sticking his finger into it then licking it.
Can’t be outdone can I? Fuck. I should have done that first.
Sticking his tongue out Richard stared James down as he licked the slimy tentacle.
It tasted like nothing – like sicky slightly slimy nothing.
Shuddering the tentacle in front of them started to pull up into the ceiling.
“Get back here you sticky tit” Richard yelled jumping as far up as he could and wrapping his arm around the sticky appendage.
Pulling down as hard as he could a pained squeal rang forth even as the roof buckled.
“Come on now” Richard grunted wrapping the tentacle around his arm a few more times then putting his entire body weight onto the thing.
With a wet, squelching sound, slowly but surely the monster was ripped out of the ceiling.
The bricks bulged a bit worryingly near the end before a slight pop rang out and the creature was free smashing down to the cobblestones below.
“What have we here?” Richard asked peering down at the creature wrapped around his arm.
It was a clam of sorts – its long ‘foot’ sticking down instead of up out of the sand. Its body was shaped like a shell but did not look very hard – instead its shell was rubbery looking and bright yellow like a traffic cone.
A tiny mouth with lamprey teeth sat directly under its ‘foot’, protruding teeth undulating slightly. The creature itself squealed like a pig and spat copious amounts of thick white liquid everywhere nearly completely at their mercy.
Making a decision Richard unholstered his mini shotgun pointed the round directly in the footballs forehead and pulled the trigger.
One satisfying bang and one sticky explosion later, the pair looked down at a mostly dead monster.
The entire hallway was coated with its insides and a faint sulfuric smell was beginning to fill the room.
“What the fuck was that encounter?” Richard said looking down at his arm in confusion. The glue was rapidly beginning to harden, his limbs becoming annoyingly difficult to separate.
It was like super glue actually. The whiteish substance at the start coated everything and then something else in the body – the body that was now exploded and coating the place – activated that substance, hardening it in seconds.
“I don’t know” James spoke, wiggling about his feet fused to the ground below.
Grimacing slightly his limbs began to blur and James did a strange sort of jumping shake – popping both of his feet out then landing on his knees which also stuck slightly to the ground.
Thankfully by this point, the superglue-like effect was weaker and it didn’t take much for James to pry himself out once again.
Richard had a bit more trouble getting undone. Most attacks required defense to deal with – this seemed to require power. Of course the defense might have been doing something but Richard couldn’t tell. All he knew was he didn’t seem strong enough to get himself out of this.
“Time to cheat I guess” Richard muttered pulling out his stone scooper and pointing it towards his magma covered feet. It would be a shame to lose his cool boots, but at least he’d get out of this mess.
The ground vibrated a faint hum passing through the area and Richard's feet tingled like they were touching a live wire.
It didn’t take much at all to loosen his feet – part of the ground fusing to his boots even as they mushed slightly after turning to playdough.
Pointing the other end at it, Richard let his boots harden again – now entirely different and marbled with white streaks. He made sure to smash his foot down slightly as he did so – to force his feet into a flatish shape before they hardened once more.
While he worked on getting himself unstuck, James had picked up a chunk of clam meat and begun gnawing on it.
“Tasty?” Richard asked – what was James’s thing with eating everything so far?
James mumbled something and then seemed embarrassed and spoke up. “Tastes like sugary fish.”
“…is that a good taste?” Richard paused trying to imagine it.
“…no. Could probably make it work but this isn’t a good taste…imagine a can of tuna with a cup of sugar mixed into it” James responded taking off his backpack and searching around inside for a vial of something. He pulled the spice out, shook it onto his chunk of meat then took another bite – a slight smile flickering across his face at this version.
And he fucking takes another bite. Wild.
Richard didn’t feel like matching his partner’s desire to eat everything – it was funny the first time but now it just seemed like his thing.
Taking a moment to consider the creature they had slaughted Richard tried to consider it realistically.
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They wouldn’t even have learned anything about it if they had just walked past the tentacle. This right here wasn’t the ‘challenge’ of the dungeon. It was a hint. A hint at the challenge – a taste of what they might face further in.
How could he deal with it?
Realistically how could he prevent himself from getting stuck to things and annoyingly being trapped and at the mercy of the bees to come?
It didn’t matter how resistant to damage he was if he was just held in place without being damaged by the stuff.
Was putting everything into defense the problem? No it was the sticky stuff that was the problem!
Richard had his first truly stupid idea of the dungeon. Licking the monster tentacle hadn’t counted – that had been an important test for science.
Pulling out his own vials and powders Richard squinted down at his supplies. Fuck some of these were unlabeled weren’t they? What even were they again?
Picking a corrosive pair, Richard sprinkled the base onto his arm then ‘activated them’ with the second catalyst. It was a lot like the super glue reaction the sticky creature had made.
A faint burn quickly started singing into his flesh as the reaction started. The looted corrosive acid melted into his flesh…then after a few seconds his skill kicked in and the burn disappeared. After a solid minute, Richard could almost completely forget it was on him – despite the faint cloud and occasional sizzle ringing out from below.
The reaction actually grew stronger as time went on but body of chaos shifted him faster than the reaction increased.
Reaching down again Richard touched some of the only lewd white stuff that wasn’t reacted then rubbed it in the clams juices.
Yep. Acid burned through the group – the reaction overpowered whatever the sticky reaction was at least. This would definitely work…main problem was Richard had barely enough to cover his whole body and that was if he used it all…it was meant for shoving in bullets as a payload not for self protection through skill abuse – still at least now Richard had a plan to feel smart about.
Turning to see James’s stare, Richard scratched his head which caused a bit of his shirt to melt off and flop onto his head.
“What?”
“Is that how you melted off your clothing last time?” James asked.
“Nah, that time was magma not a weak ass acid – hey! Good thinking actually!” Richard reached down and pulled out his trusty mcgruffin item. His wonder tool was flipped around and began to ever so slowly soften the wall.
Sliding the tool along without letting it scoup and form bullets Richard started grabbing handfuls of softened stone creating a ball the size of a football.
“Going strip, turn around for a sec to make this less weird” Richard warned pulling off his shirt first.
James turned with a strange look on his face even as Richard crafted his new armour.
‘Armor’ was of course, a verry loose term.
‘Lumpy diaper-looking thing’ might be more accurate – it looked like someone’s arts and crafts project complete with literal fingerprints and uneven application.
His chest plate looked like those sandwich boards people would wear – it had a flattish front and flattish back – badly connected around his head with two bent strips in the middle.
A few moments into this craft and Richard had quickly given up on the idea of a full body suit.
He was more interested in the modesty of his current crotch armor anyways – without so much physical defense this would chafe like a motherfucker wouldn’t it?
Last step was to slowly melt out a flat stone shield with handle.
“How do I look” Richard twirled showing off his stupid-looking outfit.
“…you look fine.” James finally said after seriously looking him up and down.
“Can I have a shield too? I want to block anything sticky from hitting me.” He asked after a second.
…damn, that shield was annoying to make. Richard mentally weighed just giving James the one he had just made and finally went back to arts and crafts a final time. This second shield came out a bit better – Richard was getting better at stone shaping it was almost like the tool was an extension of himself. The longer he burned aether through it the more it felt like it was ‘his’.
The shield he was making for James was slightly bigger – if Richard was generous he’d call the swat style shield a ’tower shield’. If he was honest, he’d call it a cry for help.
Handing off the shield Richard prepared his acid – ready to rub all over himself at a moment’s notice – and then he was ready.
“Let’s go dunk on the dungeon” he spoke stretching a single arm around and around.
…
It took several minutes of walking through silent and claustrophobic feeling hallways before suddenly the passage opened up.
In front of them was a massive circular cavern surrounding an old ruin. The ruins seemed almost like an excavated area – the crumbling buildings contained within partway unearthed from the ground below. From the ceiling high above, long undulating tentacles hung – some of the ‘clams’ with those sticky ‘feet’ had to be the size of a bus. Many clams actually had their bottoms peaking out of the ceiling – creating yellowish domes crowing from the tiles high above. It looked like the whole ceiling could fall at a moment’s notice – where were the supports? How was it being held up?
The ground also had a variant of the clams. Tentacles came out of the ruins – snaking out of ‘doors’ or ‘windows’ – the holes in the stone buildings that used to be openings.
A faint rustling sound filled the room. Like just out of sight things were watching and waiting.
Richard slowly walked towards the center of the cavern. All the walls were coated in white cream. The tentacles there were better able to attack them.
The main problem with this room quickly became clear.
Where was the exit? Which way were they supposed to go? Other than the entrance to the cavern far behind them the room felt empty.
Suddenly one of the tentacles nearby sort of undulated and shot a gigantic globule of white sap towards them.
Richard just barely blocked some of it with his shield – it seemed James partly behind him had done a better job managing to block everything that would have hit him. Frantically rubbing acid on his calves and then going ham on the rest of his body, Richard just barely heard a faint whistle and then with a crack he was punctured.
A hole shot through his entire side – so fast and so aggressive it blew straight through Richard's defenses stone flying off in all directions.
He’d called this dungeon ‘bees’ after the description – guess they’d found the bees.
Ignoring the puncture wound, Richard finished his acid bath then spun around trying to figure out what direction the attacks were coming from.
Crack.
Richard barely felt it but there was now a hole in his arm. Blood spurted out onto the inside of the shield, Richard's flesh ripped and strange-looking thick blood seeped through the hole.
Spinning Richard aimed his shield towards where that shot had come from – getting into place even as he heard the newest crack.
Richard got sprayed in the face, his eyes stinging. It took a good solid second to realize what had happened. His shield had been hit dead on by the bee – and the stone that made it up had literally been obliterated. The entire top left corner was now gone and turned into shrapnel that had peppered his side and face.
Those shots pierced stone! Sure they had pierced him first, but Richard still hadn’t started equating his own defense with that of rocks.
It turns out that if you wanted defense in a rank 2 dungeon dedicated to piercing damage, it needed to be stronger than a chunk of rock.
Despite the holes Richard barely felt scratched. He fumbled around in his pouch, dipping his grubby fingers incredibly roughly into the healing salve and roughly applying it to any unwanted holes.
Glancing around, Richard spotted James hiding in the nearest house.
His friend's dark eyes darted about, a single deep scratch on his face.
“Good idea” Richard shouted even as another crack herald another piercing hole…his skill was starting to increase his piercing defense and that last shot felt more…violent because of it. A rip instead of a perfect punch.
Jumping into his own house, Richard was just in time to be spurted with white cream from several tentacles.
“Oh fuck off” he shouted even as what looked like a clam with crab legs crawled out of the ground and exploded showering Richard in its inner juices.
…right about now, Richard would be completely immobilized and at the mercy of the bee sniper but his acid trick was working – the sticky reaction was overpowered by the acid reaction, the acid almost eating the stomach fluid and flaring itself to be stronger.
James exited his house with the shield held in front of him – it looked like he was holding the door to the house and when he burst out he was ripping the door out with him.
Behind him, a faint telltale spurt sounded off a glue clam exploding.
“I miss having a mech” Richard shouted then exited his hole as well – holding his partly shattered shield up in the hopes it would block any of the sniper shots.
Crack.
This time either the shot was slowed down by the chest ‘plate’ it punctured through, or Richard’s skill had increased his defense high enough to stop it.
With a thudding impact, Richard was pushed backwards a full step. There was a wiggle in Richard's chest and he could finally see the monster that was attacking them.
Just based on the description, Richard had jokingly called them bees… but now that he got a good look they had more in common with swordfish. The creature was mostly embedded in Richard’s chest, its feet flailing about – each kick letting out a faint crack and pushing it deeper into his flesh. Reaching over one handed, Richard yanked the blood covered monster out and finally got a better look at the little bastard in all its glory.
Long nail shaped nose/tusk/horn. Grey tipped with pink and hard – it somehow still intact, despite having been smashed through stone and Richard.
Silvery body with faint feathery scales that seemed to breathe with each flap. The way they radiated outwards from the tip, kind of reminded Richard of the fletching on a dart or arrow – the monster didn’t seem to have a mouth but it was breathing through what looked like gills all along its length.
Finally the back of the creature. Long but strong-looking legs surrounded by both muscles and what looked like tiny strands of string pulling them back and releasing them in sequence.
The monster’s four legs continued to kick – each kick breaking the sound barrier and moving fast enough to blur into strange streaks in Richard’s vision.
Flying fish darts with ‘fast as fuck boi legs’. These are definitely not bees.
…there’s a bigger fish theme than I thought. Clams, crabs, flying fish. If it weren’t for the fact that everything was sticky and above ground, Richard would have through it had an ocean theme.
Why didn’t the monster have a mouth? Where was it eyes? How did it eat? How did it get enough energy to kick that hard?
Richard breathed out. He almost forgot the most important rule. “Dungeon bullshit. Don’t question it” he softly repeated to himself.
Another crack rang out – there didn’t seem to be any new holes in Richards’ body so that was probably a shot aimed at James.
Pressing the still wiggling fish against the shield, Richard pushed and pushed – ignoring the legs scrambling about. He continued to push until, with a tiny crack – so much softer than the sound coming out of the legs or sounds of sniper shots flying past – the fish snapped.
Deep yellow blood leaked out everywhere as the legs wiggled a few times more and then was still. A distant roar rang out. It seemed directly related to what Richard had just done…actually several cracks started rapid firing immediately so it was definitely related.
Each shot hurt more than the last – even if Richard ignored the fact they were doing less damage.
It was like Richard had an invisible health bar and each shot was bringing that bar lower and lower. That was what his aether mutation was supposed to do after all – nice to know it was working.
Richard had definitely pissed something off – within a few seconds he was hit by half a dozen shots rapid fire. The last three embedded into him and Richard was left with a very important decision.
Run and hide or decide to continue his antagonization game – Richard pulled out the wiggling fish one by one and snapped them each like twigs.
A shot pierced his head.
Directly into the side of his head, the flying fish wiggled and churned – the end was definitely ripping up where Richards brain should be.
Richard JFK’d for a second dropping the fish he was about to break – a reflexive ‘fuck’ was yelled even as his arms ripped the fish out in a panicked flail and toss. It looked like the jerking throw someone would make when a surprise spider landed on their face – not the actions of someone who should have brain damage by now.
🎯 Achievement get: Survive a headshot (rare)
Description: Finally at the point where you can start seeing the effect of all those defensive stats you’ve been shot in the head and are barely worse for wear.
----------------------------------------
Stat: +9 body piercing defense.
Feeling only slightly fuzzy – despite the gaping hole in his head – Richard fumbled about for the healing salve then dropped it with a second curse. He bent down to grab it once more –
☘️ Achievement get: Accidental dodge. (uncommon)
Description: Dodge an attack moving much faster than you should have be able to dodge – either you just predicted the future or (most would guess) that was all luck. Either way congrats on the near miss!
----------------------------------------
Stat: +3 Body speed
Ignoring the achievement, Richard scraped up some goop and roughly pushed it into his face hole – literally feeling it scab over in real time as his body sucked in the drug and converted it into flesh.
He was starting to get pissed. This was purely a combat challenge so far – where was his chance to have some fun?
Richard paused.
Having fun was just a matter of opinion wasn’t it? In other words the problem wasn’t this dungeon – it was him.
----------------------------------------
---James---
James ran, the thrill of finally returning to combat ringing through his veins. He heard a tiny click – the sound that had preceded every shot so far and immediately reactivated haste – throwing himself to the ground as fast as he possibly could. A crack rang out and the angry bee shot above his head.
💨 Achievement get: SSSS Rank. Supersonic split second slide. (rare)
Description: Dodge an attack moving much faster than you should have been able to dodge – but do so purposefully with the slightest of hints heralding the attack.
----------------------------------------
Stat: +3 reaction speed.
Stat: +3 leg speed.
Half a second to grab my sticky shield again and continue.
James moved in a trance picking up the shield he had tossed to the side to fuel his dodge and continued running. In the distance several shots began ringing out – faster than before. Each was aimed at Richard – looked like he was playing distraction…wonder how he was surviving those shots? James had already seen one punch through the stone ruin he had been hiding in – passing through two walls of sandstone like it wasn’t even there.
Splurt.
James didn’t have a [haste] cooldown anymore. He cheated – pulling the tiny kinetic potential he had gained by getting grazed by a shot and tossed that into his body’s spin.
Twisting his body was now the “retaliation attack” that was being fueled.
Skill break:
Yes? No?
A huge glob of sticky catalyst was parried as he spun – his massive bulky shield catching it and almost throwing it to the side contemptuously.
This thing was useful – and made of stone so James wasn’t worried about losing it or breaking it or anything. Like an upgrade of the boulders he usually used to attack with.
Continuing his spin, James reoriented himself towards the direction most of the shots were coming from, then began sprinting once more.
A few minutes into the run he spied the edge of the cavern. Growing into – or perhaps out of – the wall was this massive…creature? It looked wrong somehow. Not impossibly wrong but…engineered. Like a fleshy pink catapult covered in spikes that rustled continuously.
The source of the piercing shots in this cave was kind of shaped like an octopus with each arm bending into a stiff board. The arm would slowly bend downwards – a cable similar to the ones on each of the babies ‘legs’ pulling it towards its back. Its catapult arms would dip towards the spikes, up one of the ‘babies’ nesting there and locking into place.
Then the catapult would fire, and partway through the arc the baby would jump as well – resonant force through jumping perfectly, making it fly much further and faster that it should have been able to otherwise.
The arms were a blur, the shots fired almost invisible with how fast they left the creatures arms – James saw one of the arms tilt as if aiming towards him and started to run.
[Haste] was off cooldown by now and he flipped it on, lurching forward. His favorite skill. The old reliable boring speed multiplier.
James saw the muscle relax – saw the arm begin to loosen a faint click ringing out as if in slow motion.
He bent his knees holding the shield in front of him and jumped – flying the last three meters in an arcing lunge, the heavy stone slab held in front of him like a toboggan.
There was a pop as the shot smashed through the top of the shield and burrowed through his head – directly through his left eye.
🎯 Achievement get: Survive a headshot (rare)
Description: Finally at the point where you can start seeing the effect of all those defensive stats you’ve been shot in the head and are barely worse for wear.
----------------------------------------
Stat: +9 head 'skin piercing' defense.
His body moved as if on autopilot, the momentum doing half the work as he brought the shield down as hard as he could.
Below him three of the eight arms shattered – his toboggan slam breaking the stiff bones directly in his path.
He was now under the firing range – the arms couldn’t get him anymore – but he wasn’t safe.
The spikes seemed to have a mind of their own – James was now close enough to see they looked like little fish with legs attempting to aim towards kicking off at a much lower – but still lethal – speed impacting his shoulder and arm.
James had a sudden rush of kinetic potential from the series of impacts – grabbing a broken chunk of his shield he lifted it up and bashed it down on the nearest fish before it could attack him.
No, he wouldn’t die here.
He reached out with his bare hands and grabbed onto one of the monster's free firing arms.
[Retaliatory shot]. The skill surged and he ripped the ‘arm’ off. Bringing it up he jabbed the jagged bone down into slippery back then swept it from side to side knocking dozens of fish off the back.
🦾 Achievement get: Got your arm. (unique)
Description: Rip off a creature’s arm, then beat it with it.
----------------------------------------
Stat: +3 arm nerve speed.
Stat: +3 arm muscle power.
Stat: +3 arm skin defense.
James’s body moved as if with a mind of its own. He felt concussed, his one eye blinking rapidly as he ripped and punched and screamed – turning to grab another arm he was just in time to see Richard swinging towards him.
“Aahhhalalaaaaaaalalalaaaaaaaaaaaaa”. A warbling yodel rang out as the man approached quickly.
Richard swung towards James and the injured monster one arm wrapped tightly around one of the roof ‘vines’ his battlecry echoing in the cavern.
The arm not tightly wrapped around the vine was holding his thick-looking gun the tip shifting about wildly as he attempted to aim.
As Richard swung he hit several of the existing vines – and reaching the end of the arc he almost paused in midair.
There was a single moment of complete calm and then he fired – the concussive blast throwing him backwards and accelerating him off into the distance once more.
His shot blasted down beside James, burrowing into the monster's back a spray of gore and flaming liquid flying out in its passage.
…that could have hit James. Almost rude how close it had hit…but James was just happy for the assist.
Half scrambling half sliding off of the beast James felt more clearheaded – no longer flailing about in rage but also more aware of his concussed feeling.
“yooloaohohohohohhooooooo” Richard swung back – coming even closer this time his eyes squinting in concentration before he let lose a second cannon shot his body flying back into the distance once more.
👥 Achievement get: Duo Kill
Description: Kill a monster with a friend.
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Stat: +1 Mental power
Jame’s vision was growing blurry. His body relaxed slightly knowing the threat was gone. As if angry at his lack of care for them, one of the still alive fish jumped smashing into his leg and caused him to yelp.
Adrenaline was beginning to fade and James realized just how much he hurt.
Blinking upwards he noticed Richard standing in front of him. The man said something a worried look flashing across his face as he unscrewed his tub.
“’m goooood” James muttered even as he felt the cream slathered across his gaping eyesocket.
“Hey there buddy. You with me?”.
“yesssh.” James muttered.
“I’m going try and shove it all the way through. Don’t know how much this will hurt okay?”
Shove what through? James felt his friend's fingers poke goop through his eye socket. Oh…that makes sense.
James felt a spasm wash over him and then everything went black.