Waking up feeling relaxed and cozy, Bug pulls herself out of her sleeping roll and does some stretches to help wake her body up. Pushing her muscles to go as far as they can stretch, Bug marvels at how much more flexible she is now compared to the last couple of days.
Probably from increasing my Dexterity so much…
Something pops as Bug pulls on her shoulders, and she can’t help but to let out some happy noises. “Mmmmmm, feels good~”
Pushing her legs to be spread apart as far as they will go, Bug holds the position until it burns and then slowly lets up as she lets the burn fade. Pushing it again, she finally manages to push her legs to the point that she is sitting flat on the ground with her legs pointing in opposite directions.
//Congratulations! You have earned a Skill!
//Flexibility lvl1 unlocked!
“Yes! Finally got that one. Hmm, definitely feels like this just got easier. I should try and find some more Skills that I can practice in my down time…”
Working out some last few stretches, Bug pulls herself up, gathers her stuff, and then leaves her hidey-hole, ready to start the day.
Giving a smell of the hallway, Bug can’t help but grimace as she looks over her hoard of zombies. “Uhg, some of you guys are really starting to smell bad… Maybe we should fix that today as well? Well, first, I want to find the stairs leading down, then we can find a safe spot to do stuff. Alright! Get marching! Goblins in the front and back, Humans in the middle, mobs… just mix in with the Goblins I guess…”
Honestly, I am surprised that I still have any of them left. Well, except for Billy the Retriever. But his job is just to protect Bob the Archer and retrieve arrows after a fight is over. So, it makes sense for him to still be around…
With a horde of zombies marching through the halls, Bug maps out the floor as she looks into every room they pass.
Usually, Bug would be collecting and selling trash as she travels, but here on the fourth floor, there is notably much less trash to be found.
Probably means there are less humans this far down. That’s good, but it also means less chances to earn some good experience… Not sure how I should feel about that.
Pushing aside that concern, Bug looks into another room as her hoard passes and gives it a quick check. Just like the last few rooms, this one is filled with birthing pods that should be hatching soon.
“You four, go into that room and wait. When the pods open up, start killing as many of them as you can.”
This is the fifth birthing room that Bug has left zombies in on this floor so far, and here soon she is expecting quite a bit of experience to come rolling in. The mushrooms on the above floors are still considered hers for maybe a day or two more, and as soon as the new monsters get born, they are going to be getting infected and poisoned. As for the first and third floors, Bug has no idea if the mushrooms have spread that far yet, but it would be nice to get even more experience from them as well.
Now, the only issue with doing this on the fourth floor is that her zombies are going to end up making more zombies here on the fourth floor, so Bug will have to be careful about wild Undead later.
Or, she would, but she isn’t planning on staying on this floor for very long.
“I want to fight the boss! Or, well, have my zombies kill the boss… Doesn’t matter, I guess. Just gotta find the stairs… Any ideas Bob?”
“Mehuu~”
“Hmm, hmm, right… I really need to get someone to talk to… Maybe the boss talks? Hmm, probably not. And with the Kill on Sight order, I doubt it would want to talk with me for very long anyways… Ooh! A mana crystal! Nice!”
Running over, Bug snatches it up and stores it with the rest. Her collection has been slowly increasing, and one of the bags from a human she killed even had some stored in it, so Bug is quite happy about her growing collection of beautiful rocks, happiness filling her every time she sees the little number in the corner of their inventory slot tick up by one.
…
Continuing her wandering, Bug watches the clock. “Shouldn’t be too much longer until the pods hatch…”
A few turns later, Bug find another room with a large spring of fresh water. Filling the room is easily about twenty pods or so.
I’ll come back here after I find the stairs, then I can play around with my new spells.
Placing a marker on her map for the room, Bug redoubles her search for the stairs.
Thankfully, it is just a few turns away. Pumping her fist and feeling proud, Bug takes a look down the stairs really quick and notices a couple of things. One, there is a safe room about halfway down, just like all the other floors had. And secondly, at the bottom of the stairs, where it would usually just open up to the next floor, is instead a large set of ornate stone doors with depictions of boars carved into their surface. Above the double doors is a large, green glowing stone.
No idea if there is anyone resting in the safe room or not. Don’t think I hear anyone in there. Well, I’ll just check it out later, on my way down.
Placing a marker for the stairs on her map, Bug gathers her horde and makes her way back towards the room with the spring.
…
Walking into the room, Bug spreads out her zombies until they are all surrounding the birthing pods. Looking one over, the pods definitely look like they are close to bursting.
It thankfully only takes a few moments longer before the first ones start to open and their contents are released onto the cold stone and dirt floor of the Dungeon.
From elsewhere in the Dungeon, Goblins and even the other scavenger mobs like the Jellies, and the big rats and spiders that Bug occasionally finds, start coming in as Kill Notifications.
“Kill them.” Bug orders with a dismissive wave of a hand. Turning away, Bug heads over to the spring and sits down to soak her feet in the nice cool water.
Following her command, the zombies start to slaughter the helpless Goblins that are still soaked in amniotic fluid and have only just started to crawl towards their parent plants to fill their stomachs.
They all quickly succumb under the violence, barely having lived a few moments past their first breaths. All the while, Bug simply relaxes as the violence unfolds behind her.
Looking over her notification, Bug is both excited and cringing as she watches all the numbers go flying by faster and faster.
“It’s great that I am getting experience so quickly, but it honestly feels like I am cheating… Oh, well. It is what it is. I’m just going to take the free levels and not complain.”
Issuing out a silent command, Bug has her zombies grab all of the corpses and drag them out of the room, being very careful to not get any of them in the spring's water. While yes, the Dungeon would just clean the water again even if a corpse or two fell in, Bug doesn’t like the idea of using a spring that had corpse juices in it. It’s just nasty…
Standing up and leading the zombies out, Bug directs them to another room nearby and gives them an order.
“Strip the corpses of their flesh. Don’t damage the bones.”
The zombies set themselves to this gruesome task, ripping flesh and muscle from bones, before casting them aside and littering the floor with scraps and fistfuls of bloodied meat. Bug has to hold back a gag as she watches, the tearing of flesh and the spilling of bowels definitely not making for a very appetizing show.
It takes a while, but with the whole horde working on it, Bug eventually has a collection of Goblin skeletons lying about the room.
One starts to get up, the curse already doing its work, so Bug uses Turn Undead on it before it has a chance to do anything. The others, she quickly casts Turn Undead on as well as soon as they start to move. The ones that don’t raise on their own, Bug casts Raise Undead on, adding them to her ranks. It is cheaper mana wise to wait for them to raise on their own, as turning them is much cheaper.
‘Lvl 6 Goblin Skeleton. Control = Complete.’
…
With twenty-one new units added to her little army, Bug gives an order to her original zombies. “Those of you that have clothing, armor, weapons, or anything else like that, take it off and place it by the wall over there for now.”
It takes a while for the zombies to follow through, and Bug has to help a few of them with removing their armor, but eventually, all of her human zombies are stripped down to their nude rotting flesh.
“Eww… Death really doesn’t do you guys any favors… And this one is getting all bloated… Yuk! Alright! Stand over there and tear your meat off until you are nothing but bones. Skeletons, help them out.”
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The following display is somehow even worse to watch for Bug, but thankfully the process passes quickly, as most of the zombies already had their meat practically falling off the bones.
About thirty some zombies turned skeletons later, Bug now has a little over fifty skeletons standing around in a room littered with rotting meat all over the floor.
There are another twenty zombies scattered around the fourth floor of the Dungeon, still busily killing everything being born and probably making more zombies, but Bug isn’t counting them as part of her army right now. In fact, they will probably be left behind to continue roaming the fourth floor until they are no longer useful or get themselves destroyed.
“Uhhg, it smells horrible in here now. You idiots punctured some of the intestines, didn’t you? Yuck... Ok zomb- skeletons, grabs your stuff and follow me. We can get you redressed in the other room. Once I am done with the spring, I’ll have you guys wash yourselves…
Leading the horde of blood-soaked skeletons back to the spring, Bug notes that they are much quieter now that they don’t have throats for making gurgling noises. As corpses, even though they don’t breathe, the zombies would keep getting air and other gasses in them, and then they would make noises as the wind escaped them. This also resulted in a lot of burps and farts, which Bug is thankful that she won’t have to smell anymore…
Back in the much cleaner room with the freshwater spring, Bug notes that the Dungeon is already busily absorbing the blood stains and the plant pods. After quickly getting the skeletons spread out and ready for an ambush, Bug helps the few skeletons that need it with getting their clothing and armor back on.
A few of the skeletons are still missing an arm, or a hand here and there, with even two of them still missing their heads.
Bug will fix that later.
With the skeletons taken care of for now, and the ambush for any bath peepers set, Bug stores her outfit and then climbs into the spring.
“Ahhhh… Feels nice~”
Giving herself a quick wash, but not using any soap or anything yet, Bug gets herself feeling good and relaxed. Once she is feeling ready, Bug gets to work on using the first spell.
“Grow Limbs.”
Bug has been living with only three arms for long enough now, and she is now certain that she wouldn’t mind having a fourth. Gritting her teeth and grabbing the bank of the spring in a death grip, Bug screams as a new right arm is born on her side.
//Congratulation! You leveled-up a Skill!
//Pain Tolerance Lvl 1 is now Lvl 2!
So thankful that I got this Skill last time with my first new arm. It only helps a little bit with the pain, but any amount of reduced pain is good.
The process continue until the arm is fully grown and Bug is left with four arms. Two right, two left, one just above the other and perfectly mirrored.
“Haaaaah, finally.” Bug lets out a sigh of relief as the pain fades and feeling slowly comes to the arm. Which is shortly followed by the buzzing.
“Ahhh! Buzzy, buzzy! Ahhhh! Stop, stop buzzing. Ehhhu~”
…
Resting for a bit in the spring, Bug watches as the Dungeon absorbs her blood from the springs water. The red color slowly fading away until the pool is left perfectly clear again.
Off in the corner of her vision, the kill notifications continue to come in and Bug gets yet another Level-up.
“Really feels like I am cheating. But I guess Death magic is just that strong. I definitely wouldn’t have been able to do this with fire or ice magic…”
Watching the notification tick by for a bit, Bug finally moves on to the next spell. “Grow Horns and Spikes.”
Looking at her reflection and pulling up her build window that shows an up-to-date image of her body, Bug pushes the spell to grow horns from her temples that arch forward, up, and then back over her head with a set of small spikes growing upward from the horns. By the end, the horns look almost like a black crown resting atop her head.
Looking herself over from a few different angles, Bug nods as she is satisfied with her new horn. They are good enough that if she wanted to, she could headbutt somebody, and they can even take a blow or two in place of her skull. Aesthetics plus defense, all in one.
With the spell still going, Bug directs it to the elbows of her four arms and grows some short spikes out and then some spikes on the tops of her knees as well. The spikes themselves aren’t sharp or anything, nor are they long, but they are just there in case Bug needs to elbow or knee somebody. If she needs to, she can always use the spell again, and turn them into actual weapons. And finally, she finishes the spell by growing a line of nubby spikes down her spine.
A good part of the spell is that, while she can’t undo growing the horns and spikes, Bug is more than free to modify them as she pleases. So, in a moment’s notice, Bug could have four perfectly good stabbing implements on her arms, spikes growing out of her knees, grow out the spikes on her horns and stab somebody in the face that way, or even grow the spikes on her backs into dangerous things for stabbing anybody that is holding her from behind.
But, when they are not needed, Bug doesn’t want to have a bunch of spikes everywhere getting in the way, so for now, they are all just little, hardly noticeable, nubs.
Ending the spell, Bug dunks herself under the water and washes off all the fresh blood from her new changes. Her head alone already has a bunch of blood on it from growing horns.
“Ok, next one... Grow Armor.”
Directing the spell, Bug watches as all the fur and hair falls of from her body in clumps and gets washed away by the spring. Before she knows it, she is well and truly naked for the first time in her life. A wave of embarrassment passes over her as she sees her body in a new way for the first time, but thankfully, the spell is quick to move on to the next part, following her wishes.
Starting at her hips, just below the navel and over her core, green and black scales start to grow in and spread up and down her body. Moving down her legs, the scales make it about halfway down her thighs before transitioning to newly growing fur. The new fur grows in with varying shades of grey and blacks, leaving striped patterns flowing down her legs and to her rat-like feet, which now have a layer of scales protecting them.
Elsewhere, the green and black scales work their way up Bug’s sides, her rear, and then her back in a strip that runs along her spine and then up to her four shoulders. From there, the scales run down her shoulders and to her forearms until transitioning back to more grey and black fur that terminates just before her hands, switching back into scales and covering the backs of her hands before meeting up with the base of her claws.
Moving from the shoulders, the scales grow to cover Bug’s collar, the topmost portion of her breasts, and then move up her neck, stopping at her chin, along her jawline, and just under her big currently not fluffy ears.
Finally, the spell moves to her head and Bug’s hair grows back out, along with the fur on her ears and the fluff that fills them.
It all comes in as black with her hair ending in light grey highlights, to match the striped pattern that now runs through her new fur and scales. Her hair stops growing just as it reaches her shoulders.
“Uhhhg, that felt weird… At least it didn’t hurt any, so that is good. Still, gotta take a break before the last one.
After relaxing for a bit, Bug stands up in the water and looks down at her reflection. Marveling at the green of her scales and how they reflect the light of the glowing mushrooms. Unfortunately, Bug wasn’t able to pick the colors for her scales and fur. Apparently, the scales are influenced by her magics, and because of her heavy use of Nature and Death, her scales came out as green and black. They might change if Bug starts using other magics like Ice and Soul, but Darkness and Time would just add more black and even some purple to her scales.
Regardless, Bug likes them and thinks they are pretty. And that is all that matters.
As for her new fur and hair. The color is similarly locked to greys and blacks, but for different reasons that Bug doesn’t fully understand. Something about carbon structures or whatever. The spell doesn’t really teach her anything about it.
Regardless, Bug's new hair and fur are much more resistant to cutting and tearing. And honestly, Bug never really cared about her old colors, so the change doesn’t really matter much to her.
The striped pattern is cool though. I like that.
Finally, looking down at her reflection, Bug blushes as she sees the in-between of her thighs. With the top half of her thighs and her hips covered in scales instead of fur now, like it used to be, her crotch is now much more easily noticed. It used to be that everything was hidden behind a layer of thick fluffy fur, but now it is all on display. Even her rear is only covered by a layer of smooth scales now and leaves nothing to the imagination.
Looking up her body, Bug notes that she had left her stomach and chest without a covering of scales, and that only the top half of her breasts – over her heart – is covered in scales. The rest of her torso is simply still exposed and naked.
I wonder why it is that I stopped myself from covering my entire body? I even left my face exposed… I, I guess that I just don’t want to change too much? I was born with nothing covering my torso, so maybe that would be changing too much? Anyways, it does look… Good? I think? I don’t know, some part of me likes it like this… At least I covered my vitals, that is all that matters.
…
“And besides, I wear underwear and clothing like a normal person. It’s not like I am planning to run around naked or show myself off. I’m good like this, and at least now my fur won’t get in the way when I have to use the restroom… Wait, what the heck is a restroom, and why do I know that word? Hah, weird System and its half-baked Knowledge, I swear…”
“Haaaaaaah…..” Letting out a long sigh and plopping back into the water, Bug waits and rests as her mana slowly refills. There is still Death present in this room from when she had her zombies slaughter the Goblins, but it is slowly fading as her core drinks it all in. It also doesn’t help that the Dungeon is absorbing it to, but she can’t really stop that from happening.
Still, until the presence of all the Death mana goes away, Bug’s mana regeneration is working nicely to help keep her topped up.
After a short break and playing around with her new scales and fur, Bug readies herself and starts her last changes. “Grow Limbs, Grow Wings.”
Even if Bug can’t really use her wings to fly around in the Dungeon, Bug still wants to have some. Which is why, while she was wandering around the halls, Bug had an idea. If normal wings would be useless in the Dungeon, then why not grow some that are useful?
Now if only she didn’t have to endure the pain of growing two whole limbs at the same time…
Bug screams, for the second time this day as her body is forcefully changed, bones broken and reformed, skin is torn open and new muscles grown. Starting from her back, set in-between her shoulders and grafted to her ribcage, new joints and libs form out of Bug’s back and grow upward like a pair of new arms. Only, instead of stopping at where the new hands now grow, the structure continues to grow as a further extension from where the little finger and ring finger should have been. From there, the arms turned wings, continues to grow out into foldable segments and a skeletal structure resembling a large, stretched-out hand.
Muscles, nerves, veins, and flesh are quick to follow as they flow over bone, and finally, a layer of green and black scales and tissue forms over the limb and wings, filling everything in and connecting to the base of the wing a short distance down Bug’s back.
//Congratulation! You leveled-up a Skill!
//Pain Tolerance Lvl 2 is now Lvl 3!
…
“Ouch… mmmmmmnnnnnnnn…”
Laying against the bank of the spring, back soaked in blood that is slowly being washed away, Bug just lays there as her newly grown massive pair of wings floats behind her in the water.
Tired and exhausted, she doesn’t even complain as the buzzing starts and her new limbs slowly come to life. She just lays there and waits for the energy to live to come back to her.
That fucking hurt… Even with Pain Tolerance Leveling-up again, that still hurt… Ouch…
As she lays there and rests in the cool water, Bug turns her eyes and looks at her notifications. “Oh, another Level-up… Really feel like I am cheating. Oh, well, I earned it, so I don’t care…”
Once Bug has restored her energy a bit, she experimentally moves around her new wings and tests their range of motion. Notably, they are quite heavy, and Bug is pretty sure that she just grew a new pair of muscles in her chest from how it is hurting. Probably meant to help move her wings somehow or other. Bug doesn’t know how, maybe she should just hurry up and get a Knowledge about anatomy already… Maybe later…
After moving around her wings for a while, Bug tries the main feature of her wings that she wanted. Folding them up on themselves, the pair of wings quickly becomes almost like a third pair of arms, ending in hands with two clawed fingers and a thumb each.
Moving them around as arms, they are longer than her other four and can even reach out in front of her to be used like normal hands for the most part. Extending the wings from there, they stretch out even further to where they end with a claw at the end of each wing, ready to be used at a moment’s notice.
Even without testing it, Bug is certain that the range of her wing's claws are even further than if she were to swing one of the human’s swords around, and with Bug’s ability to manipulate her own claws, they may as well be swords on the ends of her wings at a moment’s notice if she wants.
“Yay, I just got a lot more deadly. And all I had to do was make myself hurt enough to level Pain Tolerance twice… Better be worth it…”