It was a risk summoning Erebus as early as this. While I fully believed in my ability to regenerate my mana in a timely fashion, to stop anywhere that wasn't the safezone in the dungeon was to flirt with danger. There was no guarantee that a horde of monsters wouldn't just show up within the next ten minutes and try to wreck my shit. At least in this, I was fully willing to let Arturous go crazy if such a scenario came to pass.
Erebus spawned into existence above my hand while preserving a good chunk of my mana. The little guy was so excited and earnest about being able to loot something new that he was practically radiating a constant stream of excited thoughts.
Chuckling at the eager display, I set the two halves of the fish down into the water just before my feet. Lifting Erebus up, I gave him a little head pat before activating my Spirit Lord's Invocation. His form broke into motes of purple light that sunk into my body.
Upon observing the process once more, I traced the flow of mana through my body and memorized how the skill was activated in each channel. As soon as the process was complete, I symbolically began the looting process by clapping my hands once.
Crouching down till my knees were submerged in the water, I reached for the fish's corpse. Slowly but surely, I sunk my senses into the skeleton and watched as my fingers pushed into the bones. Immediately I noticed something different about looting the dungeon monster.
Where looting the beast corpses outside the dungeon felt like pushing into a thick membrane that wanted to remain unpunctured, this was different. The resistance that I expected was almost nonexistent. Instead of pushing into jello, it was more akin to sliding to breaching the surface of a puddle.
My mana sunk into its flesh, and my whole hand disappeared. If I wanted, I could channel my mana and begin the looting process, but instead, I withdrew my hand from the corpse and examined it.
It looked the same, with white chitin covering the fingers. When I tried pushing into the corpse again, they sunk just as quickly as the last time. Scratching my head, I started to toss around ideas as to why this was different.
The only thing that made sense was that the dungeon monster's body was made up of energy rather than being a biologically grown creature. Rather than produce its own mana, it drew existence from the dungeon around it. At least, that was my only sustainable theory at the moment.
Restarting the process for a third time, I let the world fall away and watched as the combined mesh of death and darkness mana pushed into the corpse and spread to encompass a section inside its body. Diving deeper with my mana senses, I ignored the skill's death aspects and watched as the shadow aspect shifted the physical world around it.
My hand was in the fish but not moving. Slowly from one end of the corpse to the other, I felt around for the rib bones, but I touched nothing outside of a vague idea of the bones around my fingers.
Saying that I was pushing into another plane of reality felt wrong. Despite my intense concentration, I ignored everything else and delved deeper.
Suddenly that was when it hit me. It wasn't that my hand was in an entirely different dimension, more that it was, but not at the same time. Moving my hand slowly, I stopped where I knew a thickened rib bone would be and tried to focus on the vague feeling beneath my fingers.
It was as Isaac described. I wasn't delving deep into the plane of shadows. I was merely skimming below the surface. If I pushed deeper, I would start delving into the shadow plane for real, but the skill naturally guided me toward the shallow end.
Surrendering myself to dark mana, I began retracting my hand until the exact moment I felt the vague feeling sharpen in my mind. Grasping tightly, I ripped my hand out of the corpse and held the enclosed fist to my eyes. Slowly opening my fingers, they uncurled and revealed a piece of thick bone the width of my pinky.
Pumping my arm in the air, I couldn't help but shout. "Haha! Eat your heart out, Isaac. I finally get it."
Arturous growled in confusion and annoyance at the sudden outburst, but I waved him off and tossed him the bone. The bone was absolutely tiny compared to the size of his mouth, and I watched him swallow it with a loud chomp. There wasn't even a cracking sound as the bone disappeared deep inside the bear.
Shaking my head, I looked down at the fish corpse, ready to loot it for real, only to discover something was wrong. The body of the fish was wavy and half-melted. In particular, around the area where I snapped off a bone was a massive hole where the rib used to be.
I must have triggered the dungeon's destruction timer by technically looting the body.
Pushing my hand into the only spot along the spine that wasn't melted into goop, I slid into the pseudo-dimensional space and flooded my mana channels. As the looting process began, the rest of the corpse dissolved into the water below. And by the time I grasped my hand around a congealed orb made of my mana, the rest of the body fell away into nothing.
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Arturous sniffed the spot where the corpse was and growled quietly. He was probably sad there weren't more bones for him to eat.
Holding the loot orb in my hand, I stood up and searched the hallway. Walking to where I thought the bones of the other fish were, I bent down and ran my fingers across the floor. Eventually, I found a shard of what was probably the thing's spine and picked it up. The fragment in my hand confirmed that my skill triggered the corpse to dissolve and not the dungeon.
Walking back to Arturous, I scratched behind his ears and crushed the orb. What popped out was a small vial made of darkened glass. It had a wooden stopper keeping the lid sealed along with what looked like a line of runes etched into the bottle.
Inside the vial, no larger than my palm, was a glowing blue liquid resembling the ectoplasmic goop that made up the ghostfish's body. In the gloom of the hallway, it glowed bright enough to serve as a small light source, albeit a crappy one.
Undoing my skill, Erebus reappeared and crawled over to the vial. He tapped the glass inquisitively before clicking his mandibles, satisfied. I was tempted to open it and see what it smelled like, but I didn't want to break whatever seal the vial had that kept the obvious ghost goop contained.
"Thanks, Erebus. I'll summon you again before we leave."
Erebus clicked his mandibles and disappeared into my chest. With a quick check on my mana pool, I quickly activated three skills. Zharia and Áine appeared along with Chomperz.
The girls flew over and landed on Arturous' head while Chomperz vacuumed the vial out of my hand. I tried to give the little dragonling a boop on the snoot, but he swerved out of the way and settled back into my soulspace. With a sigh, I picked up my spear and continued my trek down the hallway.
Zharia took point, and we were off.
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I grabbed the monster's skull and smashed it into the wall. A strand pierced my arm at the wrist, causing me to grit my teeth in pain. With blood on my tongue, I continued my destruction of the fish monster's head.
You stupid. Fucking. Rotten Carcass. Fuck you! Eat shit and die.
I didn't stop after the faceplate of the human-like skull shattered. After I swung the skull again into the stone wall and the jaw flew off into the darkness, I changed my grip and moved to the tail of the spine. Each swing was pure catharsis. A new section of the spinal cord flying off soothed my rage.
The monster was well and truly dead, but I didn't care. I wouldn't be satisfied until the bones became goop beneath my feet. Yet, it took me another minute of smashing bone fragments against the dungeon wall to realize that the six strands piercing my body prevented the bones attached to them from flying off.
Frustrated but somewhat mollified, I dropped the fingerbone-sized spine fragment. The thing was small, but the plop into the water below was loud enough to be heard inside the hallway. It was only then that I realized how silent it was.
Turning around, I looked over and saw everyone staring at me from a couple of meters away. Being stared at by all three of them suddenly made me feel awkward, and I fake coughed to clear my throat. "Sorry about that. I'm good now. I think."
Zharia trilled sadly and stayed sitting as Arturous came lumbering closer, but Áine took to the air and flew to my shoulder.
"Master. Injured. Heal now?"
I gave a weary smile and nodded my head. Not wanting to make her waste more mana than she needed, I began yanking out the fleshy strings from my body. One was in my wrist, one in my side, two in the left leg, and two in the gut. It hurt like hell to pull them out. The ones impaling my stomach were especially deep.
The pain was enough to make me want to start finding the other fish's corpse and begin crushing it to dust, but instead, I sank down into the water and closed my eyes. With Áine's healing mana, I could temporarily ignore the smell of stale dampness and dust and let the scent of flowers and pine fill my senses.
When a large wet nose pushed into my face, I ignored it, but I soon had to open my eyes to fend off the concerned beast. Scratching behind his ears, I leaned into his furry face and rested my head on his.
Zharia hopped closer and joined in. "I'm sorry, Master. I should have seen it. I... failed you."
I instantly raised my head and sat up. Zharia's feathers wilted, and it nearly broke my heart. Instead of letting her emotions filter through our connection, I flooded it with thoughts of pride and care, along with a firm assurance that I was not mad at her. "Hey now, none of that. There was no reason for you to think there would be three monsters. Don't worry too much about it."
My words helped, but it was obviously not enough. Adjusting my arms so that I could reach over and lightly bop her on the head, I waited till she looked me in the eye.
"Hey!" She flared her feathers, and a tiny trace of golden fire lit the end tips, but they soon died, and she lowered her head. "You almost got killed. And I made you angry. I'm sorry."
"Hold up. Even if the first was true, I trust in Áine. She is amazing at what she does, so I wasn't worried." I felt the little fairy hug my neck, and I smiled. Letting my feeling bleed through to Zharia, I watched her perk up, if only a little. "And you didn't make me angry. That was... that was all on me. You know what Cal said about that. That's on me to learn how to control my temper, okay? So stop worrying about that."
"Okay."
We sat there in silence, huddled against the wall with Arturous as a giant cuddly pillow. After Áine's healing stopped and she removed her hands from my neck, I idly rubbed my hand over the newly mended flesh.
As good as new. Not a blemish nor scratch, little demon.
"If you are still unsatisfied with my answer, how about this? Let's take this moment to learn and improve for the future—after all, Zharia, Áine, even Erebus and Chomperz, all of you. I plan on ascending, and that means I'll be relying on you guys to ascend with me. So, don't worry too much about this. It'll simply be another moment in our long journey there. What do you say?"
The girls roared in their own way, and I grinned as wide as I could. Groaning, I used Arturous as a brace and stood up. Water fell from my clothes, and I squeezed a small section from beneath my leather vest. They were completely soaked and cold to the touch. Thankfully I felt perfectly fine, albeit a little wet—small benefits from being a god's son.
The more I thought about it, the more I felt I should demand a raise. The perk was nice, but it felt a little underwhelming. It was yet another thing I had to add to the list. Somehow the perk felt incomplete, and I wasn't sure why.