I know I asked for it, but I didn’t expect it to actually try something like this. Damn… the Dungeon really wants me dead…
Bug looks away from the dying boss and towards the second.
‘Lvl 30 Bloody Queen of the Forgotten Stone Jungle. A secret boss reserved for protecting the Dungeon's secrets. All will be cleansed.’
Compared to the Level eighteen Brood Mother that Bug had been murdering, this thing feels like an actual threat. Bug can feel her spine go cold as the thing looks away from the adventurers and towards her, clearly marking her as a target. In the corner of her vision, Bug catches movement. Ripping her eyes away from the thing on the ceiling, she looks down towards her feed.
//Warning! All sapient class entities on Floor [10], a cleaner has been activated!
//Advisory! Remain far away from the cleaner at all times. The cleaner is not programed to avoid friendly fire!
//Advisory! Avoid staying near any Intruders until the Cleaner has emptied Floors [6 – 10] of all Intruders!
//Advisory! You are advised to make way to the Back-Stage Access Tunnels!
//Error! User is lacking permissions for Back-Stage Access!
//Error! User is currently in main/Boss-Battle [2]!
//Initiating User Safety Overrides…
//…
//Error! Overrides Canceled by Dungeon Manager Clearance!
//Issuing Admin request for overview…
//…
//Request overridden. KOS Order is in effect.
//Warning! Boss Room [2] has entered lockdown mode. Good luck…
…
“Well, shit…” Bug curses as she looks up from her feed that is streaming with more warnings and errors. When she looks up, all she sees is the Bloody Queen, or the Cleaner as the System was calling it. It had finished crawling its way out of the hole and is now standing upside down from the ceiling, eight blood-red eyes staring down at Bug with no emotion to be found behind its gaze.
Where the boss seemed to have some personality behind it, this Cleaner thing has nothing. It is simply like a machine as it stands stock still on the ceiling.
Until suddenly it isn’t.
Bug only gets a slight warning before the thing moves, its spike covered limbs tensing ever so slightly before it is suddenly rocketing through the air towards Bug, growing larger and larger by the second.
Fighting down her bodies instincts to scream and freeze-up like a cornered rat, Bug forces herself to move, exploding off the spot as she makes for the underside of the first boss who is still somehow standing despite having nearly finished bleeding out.
The moment the Cleaner hits the ground is like an explosion going off, its limbs blasting apart the stone floor of the Dungeon and throwing up rubble in every direction.
Just as the first boss is turning to try and fight Bug again, its limbs shaking as it tries to carry its massive weight, the Cleaner moves and slams into the boss, smashing it against the nearest wall and breaking two of its limbs.
The kill notification comes a moment later, confirming that the boss had just died instantly.
“Fucking hell!!!” Bug curses as she dodges a massive, spiked limb that tries to crush her underfoot, just barely managing to move out of the way in time. The shockwave of the blast carries her light body up into the air and sends Bug flying back.
Sticking the landing after a couple of rolls, a scream draws Bug’s attention to the side. The adventurers are already surrounded on all sides, swarms of giant spiders constantly spilling out of the crevasses in the wall as if they are being generated out of thin air by the hundreds.
The scream had been Hannah’s, frightened as a spider had nearly gotten her, only just barely held back by the blade of an axe taking the thing’s head off.
No more time for games! Damn Dungeon had to cheat, so I have too as well!
“RAISE UNDEAD!!!”
With her scream the air in the room starts to grow cold, Death laughing as their gift is being put to good use.
The Death mana smashes into the corpse of the dead Brood Mother, filling it with un-life as the chitin covered limbs start to click and clack.
“Enhance Undead! Distract the Cleaner!”
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
The Undead Brood Mother begins to radiate with a chilling mist from every wound on its body, its dead eyes locking onto the larger spider as it lets out a gurgling hiss of a challenge, bone-chillingly cold poison dripping from its mouth along with whatever blood was still left inside the thing.
Spitting out a stream of frosting fluids, the Undead Brood Mother attacks the Cleaner, spraying chilling fluids all over its opponent’s body.
Bug takes her chance in the split moment that the Cleaner is distracted and bolts, running as fast as her legs can carry her as she makes for the adventurers.
Jumping over the hordes of spiders, she screams out, “Hurry the hell up and get in here already!”
Hannah lets out a call, temporarily grabbing everyone’s attention. “The light! The ceiling is closing up!”
Max orders, “Hannah, quickly light a torch! Now!”
Up above, just as the hole in the ceiling, the one source of light in this room, is about to be closed, a flock of Undead birds comes pouring through, dirty feathers raining from the sky as the zombie avians stream in by the tens of dozens.
The hole finishes closing, blocking out the last few of the zombies from entering and crushing some into paste as they get caught. But all that matters is that Bug has some of her forces now.
Jumping over the heads of the spiders and cutting down any that refuse to move out of her way, Bug finally manages to reach the adventurers, the swarming flock of Undead birds crashing into the spiders on the walls with sheers force of numbers, with no regard for their own wellbeing. Pulling out a still lit and burning torch from her inventory, Bug hurls it to the adventurer's feet for Hannah to quickly snatch up and grab, using it to light more torches.
“Bug! What the hell is happening!? We need to get out of… here…” Max trails off as he witnesses what Bug does upon arriving before them, happy cheers of relief dying on the humans’ lips before they can even be uttered.
…
Hannah watches the moment as it happens, freezing up as she is in the middle of lighting a third torch. As Bug reaches out her hand and seemingly pulls something out of thin air, a wave of light being the only indication that space is being bypassed and that something is being drawn out from a space unseen.
It takes but a second for the thing to appear, simply materializing out of thin air as if it had always been there.
In the blink of an eye, a new figure is standing before Hannah and the adventurers. It is humanoid, but inhumanly tall. With far too many arms and a body adorned in spikes and frost coated plates of bone-white, the figure towers over the humans at almost eight feet, its horned head giving it an extra foot of height on top of that.
Standing there with empty eye sockets and chilling mist radiating from its body, an inhuman skeleton wielding many shields stands before the humans.
And then there was another, and another, and another. Each one more horrendous than the last. Arms like axes, clawed hands like some creature of nightmares, sharpened and twisting bodies of mixed together in an unholy fusion of bone. Each one looking as if someone had ripped them straight from the Holy Tomes of the Goddess and its depictions of the Demon Queen’s most horrible creations.
Each one is armed to the literal teeth in every way imaginable. From spikes dripping in poison or coated in frost, to the weapons permanently fused into the very limbs of these hellish creatures. One of them is truly a thing of nightmares, looking to be two people mixed together in death to create some insectile abomination with far too many legs and a pair of tails like a scorpion.
Hannah doesn’t even have the chance to think or even scream at the sight of these things before Bug yells out her orders over the chaos of the battle, knocking everyone back into their senses.
“Protect the humans! Use yourselves as shields if you must! Kill the enemies!”
The walking horrors of bones move with deadly precision, instantly going on the attack as they dive into the hordes of spiders and begin to tear them apart with violence. The skeletons move to surround the adventurers, cutting through the spiders and giving them some much needed breathing room as their large bodies become bastions against the flood of chittering spiders. Notably is one that seems to be the skeleton of a giant boar, its large frame becoming practically a wall as it crushes spiders underfoot and gores them with its massive, bladed tusks.
Jakub curses. “What the hell is going on!? What should we-“
“No thinking! Just focus on staying alive! Focus!!!” Max interrupts as he moves to join the skeletons in pushing back against the tide.
Sam doesn’t even complain, having already been in enough life-or-death battles to know when to shut the hell up and just focus on swinging her axe. She can ask questions later if they get out of this mess alive. All that matters is that the Undead are clearly on their side right now.
Around the battlefield, the birds continue to dive into the hordes, crashing beak first into spiders in kamikaze runs, destroying themselves as they also break the bodies of the spiders. Each time the flock makes a pass, they fly away with even less members than before until they are slowly reduced to a spare few birds.
Through all of the chaos, Hannah watches as Bug turns away from them, turning back towards the two fighting behemoths on the other side of the arena.
Letting out a breath of frosty air, the space around Bug begins to feel cold and lonely, like an empty grave in an abandoned cemetery. She spreads all four of her arms wide, her cloak parting as it to raises in the air as a massive pair of bat wings, a third set of hands adorning the wings at their midway point.
With a flap of her wings to stretch out their scale covered membranes; she lets out a breath full of relief at finally getting to move an underused limb. The membranes slowly close after stretching to their full length and tuck back into the limb as they fold at the third pair of hands, turning her wings into a third set of arms on her back.
Bug’s mouth moves, uttering words that are barely heard over the din of battle, but are felt as the air around her radiates with the cold embrace of Death’s touch.
“Become Weapon.”
Bug’s body starts to violently crack and shift as her arms and legs move at disturbing angles. Her posture shifts as she grits her teeth and holds back a scream full of pain. The bones in her lowest set of arms and in her legs being forcefully changes as she is made to switch from biped to quadruped posture, the limbs growing to become longer and feline like in form until she is standing at nearly the height of a full-grown man on her extended limbs.
A rat like tail worms its way out from her shorts, waving in the air in relish of its freedom, as her two upper limbs also change, shifting to become blade-tipped tendrils that are already lashing out in every direction to mow though the surrounding spiders, her wings having changed so the final, folding length of her wings are now a pair of great swordesc things, the hands on her wings changing to become clawed with large grasping fingers.
Finally, as her body seems to grow in size despite her torso remaining unchanged, her body becomes covered in sharp spikes that run down her spine and grow from shoulders and elbows, her crown like horns of thorns growing to become ram-like things that are perfect for smashing into targets. To further add to her monstrous appearance, tentacles grow from her body in a haphazard mess of searching limbs, the slimy things reach down and snatching up spiders to twist and rip them apart before tossing aside their broken bodies.
With a blood-soaked scream full of pain and anger, Bug reels back like some disformed monstrosity, her mouth full of long, serrated teeth and blood running from her eyes like tears. Her voice carrying out across the battlefield in a Death filled war cry that leaves everyone’s soul feeling cold.
She moves.
She simply disappears from sight as her powerful limbs send her rocketing across the arena, bladed wings spread wide as she hurtles toward the two fighting giants.
…
“Bug?”