You have defeated Lion Roach Chimera LVL 22.
You have defeated Lion Roach Chimera LVL 20.
Of course, I didn't account for the goddamned chimeras.
The item rooms situated at the outer regions of the Labyrinth were easy enough to access, but those nearer to the dungeon heart posed an entirely different ballgame.
A new type of enemy—the toughest I had yet faced—populated the corridors. They stood over seven feet tall with a lion’s head, complete with a mane, crowning the body of a cockroach.
Large wings trailed behind the monsters, thankfully ineffective. Short barbs, about the size of needles, ran along the lengths of their limbs. As if that wasn’t terrifying enough, the monsters also possessed a fascination with dying flesh, including the bodies of their companions.
The instant any member of their group suffered a fatal wound, the others piled on it and devoured its parts.
What was a collection of lion roaches called, anyway? A pride? A cluster? Or, maybe, an infestation?
“Morbid,” I said, backing away as the chimeras made short work of their dying brethren.
One of them looked up at me and hissed. A torn limb dangled in its jaw. I retreated into the shadows before it could advance, but the Lion Roach didn't relent that easily.
It skittered forward with its snout raised in the air and sniffed a few times to find my scent. Sensing nothing, it returned to its meal and ripped the palp clean off a carcass.
That’s your brother you’re eating, you fucking bastard!
The three surviving chimeras gorged themselves on the bodies of their fallen comrades, giving me a chance to ingest a health potion.
Every nerve in my body screamed at me to flee the battlefield, but I ignored them. The trauma of being attacked by giant cockroaches that could jump, crawl, and scale dungeon walls would never truly go away . . . But, without access to the Traveler’s Room, my teammates had it worse wherever they were.
This was no place to quit.
I placed three Sticky Bombs in front of my path and mentally prepared the four moves needed to end the fight. I banged my knife against my gauntlet to get the chimeras’ attention, and like clockwork, they came running, falling over themselves in a bid to get to me . . .
. . . Which made the resulting explosion even better, as all three charged into the epicenter.
It didn’t kill them.
Three moves to go.
The first overgrown roach reached me from out of the blaze, limbs extended with intent to mutilate. I stabbed the Dagger into its neck and ducked to avoid death by barbed limbs.
The monster lunged after me, undeterred by its wounds. Its thick mane complicated the issue, blunting the effect of my strikes. I finally cut through on my third attempt and severed its head from its shoulders.
Two.
I left a [Decoy] for the other roaches to pounce on and struck from out of their blind spot. The chimeras reacted much faster this time. A clawed limb glanced off my breastplate about the same time that a haymaker threw me into a wall.
My newfound armor protected me from the needles. But, that had come too close for comfort—
I flipped out of the way as one monster dove for my throat and buried my blade into its cheek.
One.
The second lion roach barely crumpled before the third and final monster jumped into the fray. This one, unlike the others, retained a smidgen of HP. [Fear Aura] flooded the corridor, rushing from out of me to sink hooks into the wounded monster.
The lion roach stalled for a single second. Enough time for me to lunge up into its thorax.
Zero.
The monster survived the hit.
Oh, shit . . . It survived?!
I raised my arms in time to block a claw attack and felt the barbs press into my gauntlets.
Again, I found myself thrown into a wall . . . and, fuck this. Man killed the bugs, not the other way around!
I exploded into a flurry and struck the creature with my Fear-enhanced blade until it stumbled under the weight of accumulated injuries and tumbled to the ground. Lymphatic fluid issued out of its wounds, making squelching noises beneath my boots.
I stood over the dead creatures—delirious, disheveled, disgusted—and sneered as [System] messages populated my vision.
My current leather armor, which I had salvaged a few hours earlier, now hung mangled beyond repair. I discarded the ruined armor pieces and trudged into the item room that had been guarded by the chimeras.
This room, like many others I had visited, lay stripped of its most valuable treasures. It had been looted in a considerate way, however—a quirk I had come to associate with Kajal. Unlike other rankers, she only grabbed the items she truly desired, leaving lots of scrap in her wake.
That scrap had filled my inventory to bursting, enough that I considered abandoning the Egg of Labyrinth. None but a few of the salvaged items qualified as ranker-grade. But, given their sheer quantity, I could make a pretty penny selling them to Liliana.
Would that penny suffice to buy off the Ainsworths' indenture? That remained to be seen. However, my inventory had massed into a small fortune in the interim, and I didn’t intend to stop.
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I shoved everything left standing in the item room into my inventory: weapons, gear, alchemically created bombs . . .
The latter in particular were my favorite. I’d discovered three variations of them during my travels that I'd nicknamed: Sticky, Smoky, and Boom-Boom. The sticky version remained the most tactically efficient due its ability to be detonated at will, but the smoke and concussion types were no slouches either.
I grabbed a helm that felt too delicate to serve as anything other than a decoration and stopped in front of an armor rack covered in dark, lightweight clothing.
My breathing faltered.
Night Scout Armor [Common]
A favorite of Rogue classes. When equipped as a full set, this armor grants bonuses to [Stealth] and [Intimidation].
Requirement: [2].
Kajal had abandoned this?! Then again, I hadn't met a more enigmatic person. She probably didn't meet the list of requirements and could intimidate people just fine without a secondary boost.
The current level of my identification skill didn't allow the full unlocking of the item description. However, a single touch of the armor would inform me if it was appropriate for use.
I laid my hand on the cuirass and waited for the usual flare that signified incompatibility. When that didn’t happen, I shed my clothing and slipped into the black, velvety material of the Night Scout Armor.
Unlike with regular armor fabricated without monster cores, each piece of the Night Scout Armor expanded to fit snugly around my form.
For the first time since arriving at Skeelie, I looked the part of an Assassin. Felt like one too. Regular armor simply couldn’t compare; no wonder Paz preferred to go shirtless.
The black cuirass terminated in a pair of tassels that hung down to my thighs, complete with boots, pants, gauntlets, and long, fingerless gloves. Four large pouches sat attached to the belt, and I shoved bombs into them just to feel more secure.
I retraced my steps to the Traveler’s Room which I had converted to a shelter of sorts over the past two days. The Traveler’s Map revealed that I had visited all of the dungeon’s item rooms save for the last, which stood precariously close to the center of the Labyrinth.
Assuming the current pattern of monster spawns continued, the final region would contain the toughest chimeras in the dungeon. Tougher even than lion roaches—a thought that sent shivers creeping up my spine.
Despite combing through a good portion of the Labyrinth, I still couldn't complete the relevant quest. [Damien the Explorer]—totally not copyright infringement—promised rewards in exchange for uncovering the dungeon’s secrets. However, what other secrets existed in the Labyrinth?
The Traveler’s Room was by far the most interesting thing I’d found, but the [System] considered it a separate achievement. I’d also pieced that the Labyrinth had been constructed by ancient people at the behest of a powerful being . . . but anyone could arrive at that conclusion by looking at the diagrams.
The only other place of note was the center of the Labyrinth. If any region harbored secrets to be discovered, it had to be it. Kajal had warned against pursuing the dungeon heart, and something about her tone made me inclined to agree . . .
But, what about the Ainsworths?
Should Nicola fail to escape the dungeon, I would become the last chance her siblings had at liberation. And, I would never live with myself if I broke that promise. Not until I had exhausted all available options.
I settled into a meditative pose. The pain from my injuries faded away as my consciousness detached from my body. [Meditation] helped out in a pinch, though it didn’t provide as much comfort as a good night’s sleep.
I approached the Traveler’s map once I was done, brimming with resolve. [Map] expanded until it covered my vision, and then it followed my prompt to settle on the final item room.
Destination selected.
Beginning transfer . . .
Transfer completed. You may disengage.
The atmosphere around me changed. An ominous aura filled the room, marked by a transformation in the ambient lighting. The pinkish hue that erstwhile saturated the dungeon had turned a deep red: the color of fresh blood.
I glanced over my shoulder with a dry throat, expecting monsters to lunge out of the shadows.
Nothing moved behind me. Not even a breeze.
Hey! It seems you are afraid.
+1 has been added to all stats.
Ugh. That was a new low for me. As if I needed more reasons to avoid the center of the Labyrinth. All that was left was for chiptune boss music to play in the background. You don't need to scare me that much, Labby!
I poked my head out of the doorway to find a sterile, empty corridor that stretched almost twice as wide as usual. That by itself was enough to give me pause, but concerning sterility . . . how did the Labyrinth manage to look so pristine?
Between my party and the other rankers, we should have butchered over a thousand chimeras. And, three years before that, a separate group of participants had done their fair share of butchering.
Where did all the corpses go?
Eerie howls emanated from far off into the dungeon, interrupting my train of thought. Muffled shouts accompanied those howls. The shouts sounded too similar to the screams of fighting and dying men. The final item room lay in that direction—Lord, I didn’t want to go.
Who said I needed to loot it anyway? I could just wait out the rest of the exercise in the Traveler’s room until the exit portals activated and try my luck selling my entire inventory. Let my betters compete for the dungeon heart; I had gained enough goodies of my own.
But, what about my teammates?
Paz and Nicola wouldn’t stop searching for me as long as they lived. That much I could count on. They’d do their best to make it to the dungeon heart, just like we’d promised. And, they would assume the worst should they find me missing at the center.
Where else would I find a crew that complemented me as well as they did? And, how could I leave them without my help should they suffer a second encounter with Byron?
Fuck that murderous asshole.
I slunk down the passage toward the terrible noises, prepared for the worst. The final item room stood embedded into a wall at one end of a crossroad, again larger than I was used to. The sounds of fighting worsened as I got closer—did a battle rage right next to the room?
My foot snagged across a protrusion that jutted from the ground. I leaped aside with my throat dry in anticipation of a trap. Nothing happened in the long minute that followed, forcing me to glare down at the culprit.
A human limb lay beneath my feet: A full arm, decked in blood and dark armor, complete with a sword glittering in its grasp. I balked at the macabre sight, then turned around the corner to view the rest of the corridor.
Guts and body parts lined every inch of the walls, just when I’d wondered about dungeon corpses . . .
The word ‘carnage’ couldn't describe what I looked at, for it was an occurrence far worse than that, given the nature of the bloodbath.
Corpses lay strewn about like confetti. Chitin and lymphatic fluids littered the ground—a sure sign of battle with Lion Roach Chimeras. The snout of what seemed to be a giant dog sat among the pile. And, enmeshed among the morbid salmagundi, were the bloodied limbs and torsos of human rankers with eyes staring lifelessly in their heads.
I shrank back from the gore and the smell of offal and resisted the urge to hurl at my feet.
Death was a reality in the Labyrinth. That much was certain, but why so many people at once?
More yells echoed from an area just beyond the crossroad. I wanted nothing more than to return to the Traveler’s Room, but an image of a beaten, bloodied Nicola flashed before my eyes, ridding me of that notion.
I needed to aid the survivors in any way I could. Failing that, I had to ensure that my friends didn’t count among their numbers.
I glanced at the glittering sword beneath me, unable to bring myself to toss it into my inventory. The rest of my journey through the corridor broke something in me as I waded through mounds of gore and filth.