Three days. Three days of slogging through a veritable jungle of deadly mushrooms and hordes of Undead Goblins and the occasional human zombie. Three days just to get through the first layer of the Dungeon with a party of experienced adventurers numbering twenties, now nineteen, strong, when a party of four novices could have done it originally in just one day.
Three days of constantly getting hounded at all hours, their only rest being when they can barricade themselves in a room, and even then, their rest can hardly be called restful. Stuck in their hazmat suites, forced to drink discussing food out of a straw, not even being able to take a shit like a normal person, and now, stuck inside of a room as some monstrosity is pounding on the wall and trying to break in!
Elaine finches as the thing smashes against the wall blocking off access to the room again, loud wet moans escaping a multitude of dead lips and mixing with the bestial gurgle of some unhuman throat as it rams against the wall again and again. With every moan that escapes the yet to be seen monster’s lips, there is that infernal clicking as layers of hardened mushrooms inside its many throats slap together and ring out like a death’s call.
Susan watches as the stone wall shakes and dirt falls off its surface, certain that it is multiple throats making the noise as a single being would never be capable of making a noise like this, no matter how mutilated their body becomes. And further, it can’t be multiple zombies slamming against the wall. No, the hit always comes at once, from a single source, which would be impossible to have happen unless the hordes are somehow able to move in perfect synchronicity.
Whatever is out there is big, and it wants inside.
Initially, when it had showed up, most everyone had been sleeping after a long day of trudging through the Dungeon, exhausted, irritated, and in desperate need of some rest. The first sign of it had been the stomping of large feet against the stone floor outside and the snaping of mushroom stalks as it moved its large frame down the hall.
Still, most people had slept, those who were awake remained quiet and waited for it to pass. And yet somehow it knew they were there. It slammed against the wall and people awoke cursing, weapons getting drawn as people pulled themselves up from wherever they had passed out on the floor.
Orders were given for everyone to be quiet, to hold their ground and hope that it will give up and leave. But it simply continued to pound on the door like door-to-door salesman trying to sell them life insurance.
When cracks started to form in the barrier, Vinny rushed forward and reinforced it, adding more and more earth to the wall as whatever is on the other side continued to slam into it with the determination of the dead.
“Keep it up Vinny. Keep it out until we are ready.” Susan yells over the noise of flesh smashing against stone as she and Dale point and direct people to where to stand, quickly organizing everyone for battle. “Let’s make this quick people! The last thing we need is this thing drawing in even more Undead to us from all this noise. We make it quick; wall goes down and we lure it in, then strike with everything we got. Vinny, after it enters, wall goes back up, understood?”
“Yes ma’am!”
Another smash against the stone wall leaves large cracks growing down its surface, Vinny cursing as he pushes more mana in to mend the construct, forcing more dirt into the cracks as earth moves up against gravity’s will.
Quickly moving around as Dale barks out orders, everyone gets into position and gathers behind the tanks, ready and waiting for anything, their fatigue from earlier pushed to the back of their minds as they clench their weapons in anticipation.
“Drop it!” Susan orders once she gets a nod from Dale.
Vinny, with a quick adjustment to his spell, commands the earth to return back the ground and then quickly turns and runs to get behind the nearest tank, the monster on the other side busting through hardly a second later in a rain of rubble and dirt as it forces its large frame into the room with a gurgling and clicking call of many voices.
“By the Goddess, what the fuck is that thing!?” Susan hears someone curse as the large thing crashes into the room and rams into the tank in its path, the man bracing his shield with his whole body as he digs his feet into the ground to stop the charging, his feet carving furrows into the ground as he is pushed back nearly three feet further into the room.
Arrows fly out almost immediately when the tank and the Undead come to a grinding halt, the projectiles finding rotting flesh and burying themselves into bone with loud ‘thunks!’
At the entrance, Vinny is already chanting as he works to raise the wall again and two others are fighting to keep out any Undead that are trying to sneak in.
“Spears, immobilize it!” Dale orders and four men hush forward to stab their weapons into the massive Undead’s flanks and legs, holding fast as the thing starts to buck like a horse and smash its tusked face against the shield. The tank returns the blows, smashing his steel plated shield into its face as he stabs with his short sword, aiming to take out any of the multitude of blood-filled eyes that are staring him down.
More arrows sink into its sides as a second tank charges in and shield bashes the thing’s side, forcing it off two of its feet for a moment and further impaling it on the spears stabbed into its opposite side.
Against a normal beast, such an attack would have disabled it, or potential been the killing blow, but the Undead seems Unfazed even as more arrows turn it into a pin cushion and the adventures continue to cut at it and stab it with their blades from behind the protection of their tank’s backs.
Rearing up on its hind legs, the beast kicks forward, a pair of massive hoofs hoof denting into the shield blocking its attack before then slamming back down and headbutting again. Behind, it kicks out and a hoof meets one of the spearmen that wasn’t able to move out of the way in time. The man gets sent flying back, all the air in lunges escaping as a loud ‘oof!’ as his spear gets left behind in the Undead’s side.
“Medic!”
“I’m on it!” Elaine yells as she rushes over to tend to him, a healing spell already on her tongue as she runs for the downed man.
Replacing the spearman, another tank charges in and smashes into the beast’s side, helping to sandwich it in pace as the men fight to hold it still and block its wild kicks, their shields being left with dents as they get pushed back again and again by the rampaging thing and their shield sounding out like gongs with every blocked blow.
“Fucking hell!” One of tanks curses as withered hands grab his shield’s edge, pulling and wrestling against his as they try to pull his shield out of his grip. A human head is quick to join the hands, its jaw clamping down on the top of the shield, a woman’s withered and mushroom covered face showing over the top as her glassy and dead eyes look down at the man, her bloodied hair spilling over the side and falling out in handfuls as the beast continues to fight below her.
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Another of the spear men reels back as a pair of arms tries to grab him, a human corpse growing out of the monstrosity and reaching for him with what could almost be considered as pleading, an upside-down face of a man lock in fear, calling out to the adventurers as tears of poisonous blood falls endlessly from his eyes.
A swords blade is stabbed through the face of the crying man, cutting its endless wails short, but the body continues to move, and the arms continue to try and reach out for anything it can grab, the sword quickly having to be abandoned in its new rotted sheath as its owner pulls back from being grabbed.
With another ground slam, the mushrooms covering the Undead’s body erupt into a shower of spores, filling the air of the enclosed room in a rain of colors as if a glitter bomb had just gone off in the room.
Visors are obscured, filters get jammed up, and in the brief moment that everyone is blinded, a shield gets ripped away from the tank on the Undead’s left side, the beast suddenly turning and striking out with its massive tusks to run the man through the gut.
Screaming in pain and coughing blood up into the helmet of his hazmat suit, the speared tank is lifted off the ground and shook around like a ragdoll, his short sword getting dropped as he desperately calls for help and the tusk is forced further into his body and out the other side. Atop the beast of an Undead, the mourning human corpses reach out and grab his arms, shoulders, and head, pulling on him with inhuman force and trying to drag him up and onto the thing’s back malformed back despite him being pinned on the massive tusk and unable to move.
“No!” Dale screams just as he is finally able to clear his visor of the spores enough to see.
He charges forward to try and stop it, his war hammer raised and ready to strike, but before he can reach the man, the poor tank lets out one last scream as his body is violently torn in half at the middle, his lower half now held in the mouth of the beast as his upper half is pull up top.
Guts spill and fall from his body, spilling onto the floor and onto the back of the beast, wetting everything in a fresh coat of crimson as his screams finally go quiet. In the mouth of the Undead, his lower half disappears as it is swallowed, but his upper half, it is pulled up and up, mushrooms already starting to sprout from his intestines as he is pulled into the embrace of those on top.
With a wet squelching noise, he is unceremoniously planted onto the back of the beast along with the others, the mushrooms gladly growing in fresh soil as they move to hold everything together and he is left their, yellow-green hazmat suit sticking out like a morbid flag atop a hill.
And then he jolts, his body suddenly jerking back into motion as his hands reach for the heavens as if begging for salvation…
It took only a matter of moments, but the cursed Undead had grown in size through an unholy union of flesh.
“By the Goddess…”
“What the fuck!?”
“Chuck! No!!!”
Someone rushes forward, but is quickly grabbed and forced back, the man screaming bloody murder at the hellish monster as he looks up at the moving corpse of his best friend on its back.
Dale is quick to bark out orders and get everyone back into order, having just cut off his own charge before disorder can break out.
“Form up! Shields in the front, force it against the wall! Those that need to, back off and change you filters and clean your visors! Archers, aim for the ones on its back!”
With a roar, the three remaining tanks charge forward and smash into the Undead monster, slamming into it with the full force of their weight and rage. Almost toppling the thing over, they force the thing back until it is smashing into the wall, one of the human corpses on its back getting reduced to a nasty paste as it gets caught between a wall and a hard corpse.
Arrows fly out and pierce into the human corpses, pining arms to flesh and torsos and stabbing out eyes.
“Ben, burn this fucking thing!” Dale orders as he smashes down on it’s skull with his war hammer.
Over the din of battle, they can hear as he starts to chant, the mana in the air moving under the control of his Field and Fire mana filling the room with warmth. Once his chant nears the end, everyone disengages without needing to be ordered. The tanks give one last shield bash into the beast before pulling back, the giant Undead letting out a roar of clicking moans and gurgles as it is sent reeling back.
“- and burn my enemies! Fire Spear!” Ben finishes, a flaming spear a meter long erupting from his open palm as it cuts through the air and stabs into the body of the beast.
It immediately erupts into flames, human and beast throats alike screaming out as fire licks over dead flesh and covers it in its entirety.
“Get behind those shields!”
Reacting to the flames, the mushroom covered Undead explodes, flaming spores flying in every direction as the body of the beast and those poor humans on it’s back are suddenly blown into a spray of flaming shrapnel of flesh and bone.
Meat clangs against their protections, the fires spreading to burn away at the loose spores that had spread through the room earlier and quickly lighting the floor on fire.
With their hazmat suits, the burning floor is not an immediate threat, but Ben quickly casts a spell to bring all the flames under his control and smothers them all. In a matter of moments, the room is left smoking and the giant corpse of the Undead is left as a charred and exploded mess in the corner, whatever is left of the blackened human corpses are reaching up as if trying to grab on to something in their final moments.
The corpse doesn’t move and people promptly collapse as their exhaustion finally catches up with them. They had already been resting from a long days trek before this started, but then that had been interrupted. Everyone is exhausted now.
Dale forces himself through his own exhaustion and barks out a roll call, calling out names and demanding a status report. While he works, Susan cleans some gore off her blade and looks over the burnt corpse, Chucks body still clearly visible on its back, having been mostly protected from the flames by his suit, his body alone still squirming atop the dead mass of flesh now.
“Fuck me…”
Walking up to the thing, she looks it over, zombie Chuck reaching out and grasping for the human that just approached him. She can’t see his face behind his tinted visor, but she can hear as he is gnashing his teeth and moans.
Why is the first boss out here? Why isn’t it in its room? How did it and these people end up like… this?
“I’m sorry, Chuck. Please, rest in peace.”
Giving him her final words, Susan strikes out twice with her sword in a quick motion. The first removes his arms, letting her get closer as her sword quickly returns takes off his head, her blade slicing through the hazmat suit’s leather and chainmail both with practiced ease. With a third strike, she pierces his heart and the corpse finally goes still.
Once everything has calmed down, Elaine carefully walks over to Susan, nervously watching the charred remains of what used to be a giant boar fused with several human corpses.
“What is this thing? …How did it end up like this?”
“I don’t know… The boss shouldn’t even be able to leave its room and, honestly, I didn’t know that the Undead could do, well… this…” Susan responds as she looks the thing over, noting how it wasn’t just the mushrooms that were holding everything together, but that the meat of the different corpses seem to have fused together. The corpse of Chuck, from what she can tell, had apparently already started the process before dying, with half of his torso already melding into the meat of the boars back with his intestines still spilling out on the open side. They just hadn’t been able to see it happening with all the mushrooms in the way.
“This isn’t anything like the Undead Dungeon…” Elaine says as she gives a mournful look towards Chuck’s severed head where it had fallen on the floor, his tag lying beside it. She gingerly picks up the tag and holds it close.
“Mhm, you trained there, right?”
“Yes… It wasn’t a pleasant experience, but it helped me improve my magic. But the Undead never did anything like this. They never changed. They were always just the same walking corpses…”
“I guess this is just the difference between ones made by a Dungeon and ones made by a Necromancer… I’m looking forward to fighting her. If she can make monsters like this, then she must be strong. I hope she puts up a good fight.”
Elaine just look towards her boss, not certain about what to say.
After a moment, Susan lets out a sigh and then steps towards the corpse.
“Well, let hurry this up, help me see if we can find these people’s tags. Then, after some more rest, we need to hurry and get to the boss room. I’m not looking forward to whatever it is we might find there…”