The darkness clawed at the area around Ambrose, causing him to dodge away from nothing as large scraggly branches came out of nowhere like wicked claws. Slowing down to a walk, Ambrose took the time to remove his panic and focus his Perception, if a creature like the Dungeonese Wolfspider were to jump at him from the edge of the light, it would be able to crush him before he would be able to react in his tired state.
Knowing that the light was only acting as a distraction, he placed the orb on the ground and grabbed hold of the mace with two hands, his shoulder was still sore from the previous battle but he found himself still unable to wield the weapon single handily, forcing his use of both hands. Ambrose took a steadying breath and stood over Prism, closing his eyes.
Ambrose dropped into a light meditative state, forcing the encroaching timer ticking down to a painful and potentially permanent death out of his mind. He was unsure of how much time had passed before hearing the first sounds echoing from beyond the light. The sounds of breaking branches repeatedly met Ambrose’s ears, the incoming creature clearly unable to see in the darkness, likely further blinded to the forest as it approached the death arena denoted by light.
Eyes now open and adjusted to the glow, Ambrose faced his oncoming opponent, his fear slowly growing as the seconds stretched. The creature had somewhat slowed its approach through the woods, attempting to sneak up on the circle of light, or at least trying to avoid running into trees. Ambrose readied the hammer for a strike as he peered into the darkness, slowly backing up so he would have more visibility in the coming fight.
As the creature sped out of the forest upon spotting Ambrose, his fear peaked as he recognised the approaching sound of many clawed feet. A Dungeonese Wolfspider pelted out of the darkness towards Ambrose, its eyes squinted as they adjusted. The creature pounced, its powerful legs violently propelling it towards Ambrose, who stepped to the side and went to swing, once again prepared for a fight to the death.
The wolfspider had caught a scent it remembered from ages past, she couldn’t remember what it was but as it reached her sensitive nose she grew angry. She was near a part of the forest that had long annoyed her, a place where the woods was briefly broken up by a path leading nowhere, simply ending in the stone wall at the end of the world. She had traversed the area many times over the endless cycles but the memory of why had long since left her.
If she could follow the scent maybe she would be able to please The Mother. Before she could begin her hunt, the sky disappeared as something tore at her body in the sudden darkness. Snapping out at the unseen enemy that was ripping the energy from her body as she heard the shouts of other inhabitants of the world, including some of the rare meats that used to be plentiful. Her snapping had clearly wounded her assailant as its attacks ceased, though she hadn’t felt her bites connect with anything.
She could see a light faintly in the distance, coming from the same general location of the strange scent. Unable to find her assailant and wary of the potential for more unseen foes, chasing down the light was her best chance at safety. The journey towards the light wasn’t easy, the light was so faint and distant that while she could tell it was lighter in one direction, it wasn’t enough to see, forcing her to slowly creep forward, using her front feet to feel for the trees.
She spent minutes travelling towards the light as it finally began growing closer and brighter, unable to see but drawn to the light and something in the back of her mind egging her on, the wolfspider began to increase in speed, accepting blows to her sides and snout as she ran into low branches that her legs hadn’t felt.
She closed on the scent, it was fresh. Her mind screamed in indignant rage as she approached, realising that the memory was not of her own, but one passed down to her, one a part of her very being. The Mother would be ecstatic.
Instincts given to her pushed her forward, hunger long suppressed bared its teeth once more. Her prey was in sight, standing ready, she could smell the sweat and fear dripping off it. All the mental screaming, fear, and hunger overwhelmed her mind as she went into a feral rage and rushed her prey, leaping towards its tender throat. The hunger was too simply too much. The Mother need not know.
Teeth snapped at the prey, her blow missed as the prey stepped to the side. In her blind fury she didn’t see the large mace heading towards her, its gems and metals sparkling in the blue light.
Crunch
As Ambrose moved out of the way of the leaping wolfspider he had swung the mace towards the snapping teeth, wanting to start the fight with a solid blow for once. The creature’s skull caved under the blow, its skin ripped right off as the momentum helped rub against the immensely sharp and jagged crystals and metals. Blackened blood spurted out near Ambrose, who sat in momentary shock at the devastation he had caused in a single strike.
Deep inside the mountain within the dungeon sat the core that controlled it all. Neterin had been slowly dying for nearly a century now but she couldn’t simply lay down and accept it, metaphorically of course, she couldn’t lay down ever due to being confined to a larger version of the Nightlights she provided to her Residents.
The first time an Outerwolder had arrived she was excited, he was a simple human dropped off by a first tier god but she knew better than most the chaos a Sponsored could attract, hoping that this would then bring many powerful people towards her dungeon once more. Her luck wouldn’t hold, the Sponsored was unaware of how the rules within a dungeon worked, breaking them in multitude forcing multiple punishments to be born. The few groups of adventurers that would come by stopped right after, unable to face the horde which had remained in the dungeon far longer than they should have, staying long past the Sponsored’s death causing havoc until they were killed off or eventually ran out of mana a year later.
A second Sponsored had arrived a decade later, similar to the first but managed to obey the rules. He had even returned hope to Neterin as he began restoring the crafting halls and working towards beating the dungeon trials, if he could beat the final boss she would be saved. That hope had been short lived however as right after the Sponsored’s greatest crafting success yet, evolving a Skill and granting Neterin some much needed energy, his corpse had been dropped within the entrance to her eternal prison.
Again over a decade passed, another Sponsored arrived. She was confused immediately at how familiar he had felt, but didn’t want to waste the mana on combing through his details in case he wouldn’t remain. Her decision seemed correct as she watched him break a rule immediately and rush out of the dungeon. Angry at the events, she withdrew the Nightlight he was talking to.
He had returned shortly after and managed to absolve himself by killing his punishment, normally an impressive feat but the lack of mana had damaged its birth, greatly weakening it. Either way she had no choice but to return the Nightlight to him now that it appeared he would stay. He had begun talking, drawing her full attention when he announced himself under the same name as the previous Sponsored, and while she hadn’t learned the name of the first, and long forgotten his face, he was likely the same Sponsored who had doomed her decades ago.
Curiosity peaked, she had the Nightlight trigger Piercing Analysis, gaining access to his full sheet, confirming what he said to be true.
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BE AWARE DUNGEON CORE
You are in violation of pact rules.
‘Resident items contained within specified areas may not be removed by the dungeon.’
‘Dungeon items needed to complete a Resident quest cannot be removed unless alternatives are available.’
All relevant items will be returned automatically.
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The already immensely low ambient mana levels began to drop even lower as items began to be generated. Neterin had to shut everything down immediately, the sky went dark, the Nightlight she had just made fell to the ground, she left it however, leaving Ambrose with some light. Creature and plant generation was shut down as much as possible, she was even forced to shut down air and water. Her stores were too low, it wouldn’t be enough.
As only a second of real time passed, Netrin watched on for minutes of personal time as her resources violently tanked before reaching zero, mana was being ripped from the dungeon, destabilising the subspace, it even ripped it from the bodies of her creations as the first items had begun to appear in the area around Ambrose. Once again his arrival had upended her existence, and once again she was forced to put her hope of greater survival and now even immediate survival in his hands. As the final items finished generating and began placing themselves nearby, she looked through the queue and grabbed the item that would hopefully get both of them through this cataclysm, placing it at his feet, hoping that he would know what to do. With nothing else left that she could do, Neterin shut herself off, sequestering the whole of her perception within her core to conserve as much mana as possible, effectively going to sleep for what very well could be the very last time.
Ambrose had been ready to strike a second time but it wasn’t needed. He tried to check over the creature with Assess but couldn’t get a read, when something died it stopped being classified as a creature and usually became an untiered item meaning he also couldn’t Identify or Inspect it, only once he harvested the creature successfully would he be able to get any information. He knew he had grown drastically since first encountering one of these creatures but he couldn't shake the feeling that it had had the Malformed or similar debuff weakening it.
Either way he was still in danger so he yelled out once more, slowly moving deeper into the forest in search of prey. As he crept onwards Ambrose began to search out for trails, needing to find some monster den hopefully full of hiding creatures so he could stop the sky from falling. Time kept ticking down, nothing had approached Ambrose and he was struggling to find any sign of creatures recently passing.
He couldn’t be sure of how much time was left, but felt he was drawing down to the final fifteen or so minutes and was growing desperate. No choice left, he began to run, screaming the whole way, directly into the darkness of the forest. It appeared as if this was the correct choice as he found evidence of recent creature movement and followed. He started hearing creatures trying to avoid the screaming light heading towards them and beelined towards them hunting the group down.
He had stumbled onto a group of strange giant bugs, looking like a cross between cockroaches and centipedes, with a hardened carapace and antenna but a long thick segmented body. It seemed the group had been feeding on the remains of some other forest creature before the lights had been turned off as Ambrose squished through bloody ground as he began smashing the creatures, killing most with a single blow thanks to the immense bludgeoning and tearing power of the royal sceptre.
The creatures attempted to scatter from the light but appeared to be blinded, running into the trees or each other as Ambrose crashed through their feeding ground, smashing them to pieces in his adrenaline fuelled rampage. He killed five of the long roaches before the area around him went silent once more, he ran off yet again when nothing changed, hoping that by abandoning his kills the dungeon would be allowed to absorb the bodies quicker to gain more mana back.
Five minutes remained when he spotted a faint light in the distance, he was worn ragged by this time and was forced to start slowly burning his Skills that formed his The Flame That Burns Character Ability just to keep from collapsing from exhaustion, hoping that the levels gained in Running from traversing the complicated environment at speed and straining his Perception to find anything would offset some of the loses.
Due to being within an area of light, it had made it harder to spot the faint glowing in the forest, as he burst through the next lot of trees he immediately came to a small pond where the dull glow was originating. Several different creatures were having a stare down, spread around the pond as they waited out the darkness in this small space of light created by a glowing white ball. Ambrose stared at the ball, enthralled by its beauty briefly, but was snapped out of the reverie as he registered the spread out creatures that had all turned to face the intruder.
There were four in total that Ambrose could see excluding the orb. A massive black bear covered in dark blood red markings and fresh wounds, a small tree ent, and a pair of wolfspiders. There were several corpses of other creatures in the area, and the pond's water was stained red with blood. The creatures hesitated, worried that any of the three groups would break their uneasy alliance by attacking them instead of the newcomer.
The wolfspiders with their anticoagulant venom would be countering the bear, the ent would then counter the wolfspiders due to its strength and lack of blood, that meant that the bear would likely be countering the ent somehow. Ambrose took this information in the moment the creatures were hesitating, deciding that the bear would likely be the biggest threat that he could still beat, the ent being a type of creature he hadn’t yet fought, not knowing its strengths and weaknesses or how he would even be able to kill it, was he meant to beat it into oblivion until it was nothing but splinters? Or would even that not be enough and you had to burn it to cinders and ash?
Target chosen Ambrose ran forward, pelting Prism towards the bear’s face to blind it from the sharp increase in light as well as the impact. He slammed the hammer into the bear's face, tearing at its flesh destroying at least one eye and shattering some of the bone that made its snout. The bear was seemingly unphased by its missing face as it blindly swung at Ambrose who had already increased the distance between them as he moved to get behind the large beast to try and disable it while also bringing the other opponents into view.
Meanwhile the two two wolfspiders rushed towards the melee, eyes filled with bloodlust as they glared at Ambrose as he disappeared behind the wildly swinging bear. The tree ent sat unmoving in its place by the water, watching. The bear was already bloodied by the time Ambrose had entered the fight, blood leaking from many wounds, including several that were heavily flowing from where a wolfspider had inflicted a bite. Seeing the significance of its wounds Ambrose changed his plan. Instead of exerting his limited energy on capitalising the weakness of the bear, Ambrose continued to use it as cover, staying quiet and out of immediate range.
The wolfspiders rushed around the pond, forced to both come from the same side lest they fight the tree. Their bloodlust was showing however as Ambrose baited them in coming too close to the blinded and raging bear who lashed out, catching one of the wolfspiders in its large hairy arachnid leg. The spider that had skirted further around paid its companion no mind as it was forced to fight with the bear.
Ambrose was ready for the spider, jumping forwards towards it as swung his mace across his body and down towards one of the creature's front legs the moment it came into sight, not leaving it time to react. The leg cracked inwards and crumpled under the impact. The creature was snapped from its single minded desire for Ambrose’s blood as it used its remaining legs to back up from Ambrose, who was already moving around to the creature's stronger side, pinning it between himself and the bear.
The wolfspider barked a warning to Ambrose in fear, preparing to pounce forward if Ambrose continued forward. Following his plan, their blinded opponent heard the creature, thinking it to be its own opponent, who was trying to remain quite to get quick bites it, the blood red runes had been slowly growing deeper in colour and flashed as one of the legs of the wolfspider met with body of the bear by accident when Ambrose drove it back by swinging the sceptre. The bear turned its head towards the creatures as the runes went dull blending in with the fur. As it bit at the air the blood in the area swelled up and formed into a giant replica of the bear's maw and crunched down on the wolfspider. The dark blood of the spider shot out in all directions, coating the bear and Ambrose in the liquid, and further tainting the once clean pond.
The attack faded out, the blood that was used in the attack turned into a steam momentarily as it evaporated, leaving the mangled corpse of the wolfspider on the ground, looking like someone had taken a large bite of a meal before deciding they didn’t like it, spitting it out, which Ambrose supposed wasn’t far from the truth.
The bear roared in triumph at its believed victory, the other wolfspider saw its opportunity and lunged forward, tearing into the bear's throat. The roar cut off into a gurgle as the bear stood on its hind legs, pulling the spider off the floor and pulling it into a crushing embrace. The wolfspiders odd exoskeleton endoskeleton mix snapped as its blood leaked out over the bear. The bear dropped back down to all fours, its front legs failing it as its face smashed into the ground heavily as its blood gushed over the surroundings, a small river of blood to feed into the pond.
Ambrose felt bad for the creature, in better circumstances it would have been a truly formidable opponent, instead it found itself beaten down by an opportunistic opponent as Ambrose slammed the gem mace into its skull, putting the creature to rest. Eyes glancing back over the pond, Ambrose saw the ent still stationary, watching him. He also noted that the orb hovering over the pond seemed to be slightly larger.
Ambrose was exhausted, the slow burning of his Skills was all that was keeping him in the fight, but the excessive use was wearing on Ambrose’s soul, causing more of the odd internal damage he had experienced when he first broke through. The light around the pond began to move, forcing the shadows to violently shift, startling both Ambrose and the ent who both moved their arms to defend themselves.
“Once again you have brought chaos upon this dungeon. Thank you for undoing at least some of the havoc you have caused.”
Ambrose flashed a bright weary smile towards the once more floating form of Prism as he dropped to the ground, vision going black as his consciousness escaped him. The last thing Ambrose’s mind registered before he was taken by darkness was the cracking sounds of branches approaching.