//You have now entered Floor – 8.
//Killed lvl 1 Gremlin – 5 exp gained!
//Killed lvl 1 Gremlin – 5 exp gained!
//Killed lvl 1 Gremlin – 5 exp gained!
//Killed lvl 6 Goblin – 16 exp gained!
//Killed lvl 4 Goblin – 12 exp gained!
//Killed lvl 5 Goblin – 14 exp gained!
//Killed lvl 4 Goblin – 12 exp gained!
//Killed lvl 1 Gremlin – 5 exp gained!
//Killed lvl 1 Gremlin – 5 exp gained!
//Killed lvl 1 Gremlin – 5 exp gained!
//Killed lvl 3 Goblin – 10 exp gained!
//Killed lvl 4 Goblin – 12 exp gained!
//Killed lvl 1 Gremlin – 5 exp gained!
//Killed lvl 1 Gremlin – 5 exp gained!
//Killed lvl 1 Gremlin – 5 exp gained!
//Killed lvl 5 Goblin – 14 exp gained!
//Killed lvl 4 Goblin – 12 exp gained!
//Killed lvl 1 Gremlin – 5 exp gained!
//Killed lvl 1 Gremlin – 5 exp gained!
//Killed lvl 1 Gremlin – 5 exp gained!
//Killed lvl 3 Goblin – 10 exp gained!
//Killed lvl 4 Goblin – 12 exp gained!
…
…
…
And it finally stopped for the day... Not even enough experience to get me one Level-up anymore and I am pretty sure that I just wiped out almost everything in the first layer again. Feels like less kills than last time though… Kill notifications have been coming in all day, but I imagine that quite a few of the mobs up there have been killed by the wild Undead. Mmm, today is probably the last day that I will get any experience from my mushrooms upstairs. A shame, but I’ll make do down here. The important thing is that the mushrooms and Undead should help keep any bounty hunters from following me for a while.
Standing out on the branches of the eighth floor, Bug looks around but notes that, despite being lower, everything mostly looks the same as it had up above. At the very least, there are less birds down this far, as they seem to reside mostly on the higher branches, but instead, there are now other critters roaming about.
Off on a distant tree branch, Bug watches as a giant snake is busy swallowing one of those giant tree frogs. She has to hold down a shiver as some part of her instincts reel back at the sight of the snake.
Dumb instincts. I’m not some prey or a mouse. Why should I be afraid of a snake? Even if it is big enough to swallow me whole… Ok, you know what, that is pretty scary. Never mind…
“Bug, you ok?” Asks Hannah.
Bug turns to look to her, the girl had been busily catching her breath after climbing down the flight of stairs, and everyone had been waiting on her. Bug just points to the snake in the distance and doesn’t say anything.
“Huh? What is that?” Hannah asks as she squints behind her glasses.
“Oh, it’s a snake. Titanoboa, I think. What is it eating?”
“A frog.”
Hannah just looks down to Bug before turning back to the snake in the distance again. “Wow, you have really good eyes…”
“I used my magic to enhance my vision earlier while we were waiting. If I focus, I can see further now… Titanoboa, are there a lot of them down here?”
“Hm, no. This far down, they are sort of the apex predators. They’re the biggest things we’ll find on this floor, but that also means that they are few in number.”
“Are they strong?”
“Yes, it usually takes a full party to take one on. It is dangerous to fight one alone, because they will wrap you up and constrict you. Plus, they are highly venomous and have thick scales.”
“Right, thanks.”
Watching the snake for a while longer as it swallows the frog, Bug gets to see as it yawns and snaps its jaw back into place. Tasting the air some, the snake honestly looks pretty satisfied after its meal and has sleepy eyes. As Bug is about to look away from the snake, she notices it snap its head upwards in surprise.
Looking up to see what is happening, Bug gawks as a bunch of creatures are falling from one of the upper branches and are plummeting down towards the massive snake. Among the creatures is a bunch of those giant centipede, and other big bugs, a whole flock of birds, and most notably, a frog.
Examining the creatures, they are all rather rotten and bloodied up. Many are missing limbs or are practically nothing but bones. And what takes Bug by surprise the most is that the frog is definitely the same one that had ate her flyer. And she knows this, because her flyer is still trying it darndest to claw its way out of its mouth, even as the frog falls through the sky and lands on top of the snake like a freaking comet.
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The scene over their quickly turns to chaos as the snake tries to get the Undead things off of its body, but they just keep attacking it with wild abandon.
Bug isn’t the only one that notices this, as Hannah is even watching with awestruck surprise.
Bug pops her lips and says, “Well, this isn’t good.”
“What isn’t good? What is happening over there?” Hannah asks.
“Undead. All of those things are zombies.”
“Oh no… That really isn’t good. Max! We need to go! Now!”
Max turns around from where he is chatting with his teammates and looks to Bug and Hannah curiously. “What is it. What’s wrong?”
Hannah points, “Undead just came down from the floor above us. We need to move.”
Bug pipes in, “The necromancer is probably close by. If we aren’t quick, we might be the ones getting ambushed instead.”
Max runs over to them and squints as he watches the distant snake fight for its life, but it is quickly weakening.
“Crap… Hannah, what’s our quickest route to the next floor?”
“I have three routes we can take, two of them will take us about six hours to get there depending on fights.”
“What about the third?”
“It’s the quickest route at only two hours, but it takes us straight through a nest.”
“What kind?”
“Monkeys…”
“Hmmm… Bug, if we had to fight an ambush from the necromancer with your help, what do you think our chances are right now?”
Bug tilts her head for a bit to think, shrugs, and then points towards the snake. It is dead now, and as everyone is watching, it slowly gets back up and slithers away with the rest of the horde that had jumped it. Bug watches as her flyer desperately flaps its wings but can’t get away, eventually disappearing along with the frog into the distance.
“Do you think that you guys could have fought that snake?”
Max grits his teeth and frowns, looking back to Sam and Jakub, they shrug. “Maybe. It would be a hard fight.”
“Well, that snake just got taken out in an ambush, and the necromancer wasn’t even there. If we get jumped, and she is there, I’ll have to handle her while you guys keep the Undead occupied… and well… You saw what happened to the snake.”
“You're right… We need to fight her on our own terms. Get the advantage from being the ones springing the ambush.”
Bug just nods without saying anything else, glad that the wild Undead had made such a timely appearance.
With this, they should be even more certain that I am on their side now. This should make things easier.
Max turns to Hannah after looking to his friends and getting nods in return. “Ok Hannah. Lead us down the quickest route. We should be able to handle some monkeys, especially with Bug here. We need to hurry, so we will be skipping our next break.”
“Got it, just know that the monkey nest is dangerous. Most people prefer to avoid them…”
“Don’t worry, we can handle it. Alright, let’s go guys!”
With Max leading the way, and Hannah giving direction, they all set off at a quick pace towards the next floor. Following from behind, Bug can’t help but smile as she looks up towards the upper floors. In some areas she can see as the wild Undead continue fighting and spreading their curse up above, her enhanced eyes watching as her flying flocks of zombie birds continue to decimate the local wildlife on her orders and leaving behind countless corpses in their wake.
The mushrooms may have stopped being a valuable source of exp in the first layer, but I still have this entire layer to squeeze dry for Levels. And when I leave this layer behind, I’ll fill it with mushrooms too.
Bug looks down, back towards the adventurers. Hannah is peeking over her shoulder at Bug, but she is quick to look away when Bug catches her looking. Bug just smiles at their backs.
In the meantime, I’m going to keep having fun playing adventurer with these humans.
----------------------------------------
A monster house, nests, ambush spots, clusterfucks, etc. The adventurers have a lot of words for these places in the Dungeons, but in the end, what they are, is very simple. It can be a trapped room, a short cut, a dead-end, or even just a random hallway that suddenly gets filled with monsters, but in the end, they are all the same. It’s a place in the Dungeon that has a shit load of monsters for the express purpose of overwhelming adventurers with sheer numbers.
One such place is currently right before Bug and the party, and it is very obvious about what it is.
From what Hannah was more than happy to teach Bug, nests like these start to appear as soon as the first floor, with maybe a small mana shard as the prize to lure in adventurers to fight against upwards of a dozen Gremlins, seemingly intended as a learning experience for new adventurers on what to expect deeper in.
Well, I definitely experienced a couple of those rooms. That’s where I got some of my first crystals…
Bug directs her attention back to Hannah as everyone else preps to go through the obvious trap.
“The deeper you get into the Dungeon, the more dangerous the nests will get. They also won’t be anywhere near as obvious as this one. You might walk into a seemingly empty room, only to have dozens of monsters drop down from the ceiling. In fact, I read of one story about a swordsman that was the only survivor of a particularly nasty one.”
“What happened?”
“He was a more experienced adventurer working with a new team that had somehow managed to recruit him, even though he was planning on retiring. Well, with his help, they had managed to push much further into the Dungeon than they had ever before. And during their delve, one of the party members had found an empty room with a single chest sitting in the middle. The party celebrated and ran into the room to claim the treasure, even as he had tried to stop them. Before he could get them to leave the room, one the guys in the part tried to open the chest, and that activated the trap. The room sealed shut with all of them trapped inside. Then, stone golems started to teleport into the room. The party and the swordsman tried to fight them off, but they just kept teleporting in until the room was practically filled. The party was quickly overwhelmed with the swordsman being unable to save any of them…”
“So, what happened to the swordsman?”
“He survived. He continued fighting for hours until the golems stopped teleporting in. Once the room was cleared, the door opened, and he was free to leave. He retired from adventuring shortly after and the author wrote that the swordsman spent most of his time in a tavern, finding solace in the bottom of a bottle after that… Supposedly, he was in love with one of the girls in the party, which is why he even joined them in the first place.”
“Huh.”
Jakub walks over and cuts in as he checks over his many knives and daggers. “I heard that one before. I’ve always been of the opinion that he led them into the trap and that it is all a lie. Stuff like that happens all the time. Assholes find a rich kid and trick them into the Dungeon, pretending to be friends. Then, ‘Oh no, we ran into a trap, and he died. Boohoo…’ And then to no one's surprise, they come back a bit richer and with some extra gear to sell.”
“I don’t think the story is a lie. At the end, the swordsman seemed really remorseful, and there was no mention of him selling his parties gear afterwards.”
Jakub shrugs. “He was good at acting and just hid the stuff to sell later. Or, he had someone help him out. Besides, how would a single swordsman survive against a roomful of stone golems for hours. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you, but stone golems are made out of, stone. Swords don’t usually work very well against them.”
Max walk over with his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. “Don’t underestimate a real swordsman. Sure, I can’t cut through stone yet, but there are some real monsters out there. You hear about them all the time, cutting through men in full plate armor like they are made of butter. I even met a mercenary once that could supposedly cut through both a man and his horse with a single swing from his great sword and even fought off a hundred men single handedly.”
“Sounds like bullshit to me.” Jakub tells him.
Max just shrugs. “Might be, but there was no way in hell that I was going to call him out on it. He seriously looked like he could do it, and I was more than willing to believe it.”
“What was in the chest?” Bug asks.
Hannah turns back to her, a bit surprised, but is quick to realize what Bug is asking.
“Oh, uhm. The chest had an enchanted top hat that apparently helps make the wearer feel more confident and helps them be more persuasive when talking with others.”
“Huh, cool hat.”