“Back, back, back!” Max yelled and motioned everyone away from the exit door.
Everyone jolted into motion and ran to the other side of the room. The enormous tentacles retreated through the door. The high leveled parasite slid back and lowered its body so it could stare through the door at them. It coiled and uncoiled its tentacles, eager to add another body to the pair in front of it.
The sight of Ashley’s bisected body made Max nauseous. He turned away before he threw up. How... why... This wasn’t right. The monster in the twelfth room was way too powerful for this floor, it was a huge jump in size and strength. There had been a steady linear progression in the dungeon so far, the boss monster should be a third that size at most. This behemoth shouldn’t be here. It didn’t even fit in the room it was stuffed into!
The thought of attempting to kill it sent chills down his spine. Nothing they had would even get through the giant’s skin, let alone kill it.
They were going to die.
That realization hit Max with the finality of a gong. It rattled him to his core and he backed up more. He hit the rear wall and slid to the floor. James stood next to him, breathing hard. Lily left the room, heading back to the tenth room. She came back when she realized no one was following her.
Minutes ticked by in silence.
Max slowly grew angry. This isn’t right. Ebba would have warned them if something like this was possible. She said the real hard stuff didn’t start till the third floor. Even though the purple skinned alien was stronger and faster than any of them, she would have real trouble fighting a gargantuan parasite like the one in the twelfth room. What level was it anyway?
The curiosity got him moving again. He stood back up and moved so he could see through the open door. He made sure to keep well out of reach of its tentacles. He stared at the monster long enough for Insight to trigger.
Mutated Blood Parasite Level 36
The monster was only level 36, but that was like saying a skyscraper was only a building. Size mattered. The other important thing was that it was mutated. He didn’t know what that meant exactly, but he knew it was an important clue.
Lily took a deep breath and said, “I think we should go back to the first room with the custodian. I know he said he would attack us if we came back before clearing the twelfth room, but that’s clearly impossible. I’d rather fight one little bug person than that abomination in there.”
“Nah, that’s not how these things work. There’s gotta be a way to kill it. It’s a boss, but we got a team. Well, most of a team anyway,” Gus said.
Lily swore at him and flipped him off. “Don’t you get it? The Builders don’t care if we live or die. They lied to us to get us to come here. None of us are heroes. I’m not throwing my life away because you have some schoolboy fantasy that you are one.”
“I ain’t stupid. I know it’ll be tough. But it’s our only hope. Killing that custodian won’t help none. The only way out is through.” Gus folded his arms.
“I’m willing to try both plans, but let’s try to kill this bastard first,” Max said. “Gus is right. There has to be a way to kill it. Remember, none of this is real. A dungeon designer thought that the team that fought through rooms one through eleven would be able to kill the final boss in twelve.”
“I don’t see how,” Lily said and folded her arms, mirroring Gus.
“I don’t either, but we have some clues. It’s a mutated parasite, level 36. Maybe there is something we missed in the trait libraries that could help.”
James snapped his fingers, “What about that dead guy in room six or whatever? Maybe he has a special weapon under his desk that he was supposed to give us.”
Max agreed and they went back through the rooms, searching for clues. They found a few interesting ones. The dead ant/lobster/person did have a weapon, but it was smashed beneath its body. The trait library was accessible without the robot arms, you just had to browse manually. They found a few interesting genetic traits, but no way to use them. Eventually, they wandered back to the eleventh room.
“There are a few things we can try,” Max said. “It’s trapped in there and we have some ranged attacks. James, you are up first. Use Decay on the same tentacle, over and over again. Use up your whole mana pool and we’ll see what effect it has. Once he’s done, Gus and Lily can use their cards at the same time.”
James moved some debris and sat down where he could see the monster. It crouched down and stared back at him. He lifted his arm and tiny distortions zipped through the air, one after another.
While he worked, Max decided to see if his own cards could be useful. The only thing that might make it through the giant parasite’s skin was his Drill card. The only issue was delivery. He liked the idea of drill tipped arrows, but he couldn’t reconstruct his crossbow here.
Drill tipped spears was a possibility. He needed a long shaft first. He had just been through the debris of all rooms and knew there wasn’t anything ready made. He would have to make his own. He grabbed some electronic wreckage and transmuted it into a war hammer. He made the shaft long and the head tiny.
Attaching a drill to the side of the head would leave the spear unbalanced. He solved that problem by transmuting a second drill. With both drills attached to the head, it was balanced again. It took a liberal application of duct tape, but he had a spear.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
He walked over to stand by James.
“I don’t think this is going to work,” said James. “I used up my whole mana pool on the same tentacle. I thought it might be working towards the end, but it healed the damage almost instantaneously.”
“Well, shit. Can you level your card up at all?”
“Already did before we entered the dungeon. I can’t level it up anymore with white orbs. I need the bigger stuff, and none of these monsters drop orbs.”
Max nodded, not having expected anything different. “Lily, Gus, let’s try our attacks all at once. I’ll kick us off.”
They joined Max and waited for Max to attack. He threw his spear as hard as he could, activating both drills as he did. The magic pierce activated moments before it hit a tentacle. Small holes appeared in its flesh and were plugged by the drills that made them. The tentacle flexed and the spear fell out. Despite the magical assistance, they didn’t pierce deep enough to stay in. While he was throwing, the other two activated their cards.
The mushroomantis got off a few scythe strikes before it popped. Surprisingly, the Warped Mirror card didn’t do much better. It didn’t create a slightly weaker clone, it was substantially weaker. In fact, it was the same size Gus had created last time, it didn’t grow at all to match the larger foe. It was popped a moment after the other summons.
Gus turned and shrugged. “That’s as big as it gets until I level it up. Same problem as James.”
Max ran his hand through his hair. “Yang, any tricks up your sleeves?”
“No. I thought Convection would be useful, but my card won’t work on the beast. I believe our level difference is too great,” Yang said. “I don’t believe throwing bits of molten metal at it would work either.”
Max swore.
Gus tapped his chin. “I still think there is a trick. Some clue we haven’t found yet. I’m gonna keep looking.”
Max shrugged. It couldn’t hurt to look.
“Lily, how much time do we have until night falls?” James asked.
She checked her watch and said, “Just under three hours. Dinner would be a good idea, as long as it’s better than lunch.”
“Hey! I didn’t see any of you cooking earlier. None of you bought food, you just assumed I’d take care of you. I’m doing my best,” Max said, perhaps a little too defensively.
Lily’s expression softened. “I’m sorry. I know you are doing your best.”
James put his arm around Max’s shoulders. “Yeah, buddy. We know you are trying your best. You can’t help it if you suck balls at cooking.”
“Hey!” Max said as he laughed. He shoved James away and said, “That’s it! You are cooking dinner!”
Max walked away, ignoring James as he called for him to come back. He wasn’t mad at his friend, but he thought the panic in his friend’s voice was hilarious. Yang took pity on him and offered to help cook.
While they muddled through, Max sat himself down where he could see the monster. One monster separated them from freedom. It was trapped in that room, but they were trapped in this dungeon with it.
He let his mind wander, trying to come up with a new plan of attack. They hadn’t tried traps, but it wasn’t worth trying. None of the materials they had could stand up to the strength the level 36 parasite had. He wished he had a home depot, then he could build the perfect trap.
The next best thing was creating the materials he needed himself. He had already discovered the secret to changing his hammer into whatever metal he wanted. He just had to have the exact atomic components and electron shells memorized. He pulled out his e-ink tablet, glad it still worked. He realized he couldn’t count on that though.
He took a few minutes to write down the number of protons, neutrons, and electrons for all the metals. He made sure to include the electron shells. It seemed like electron shells were the secret sauce for citadel cards. There were plenty of people who had the atomic number of various elements memorized, but he doubted many had the electron shell numbers memorized. That explained why citadel cards were said to be hard to change.
When he was done, he slowly browsed all of the Wikipedia articles on metals.
There were a few radioactive metals on the list that might make for a good weapon. Radium was a metal, that sounded rather deadly. Max realized that anything radioactive enough to kill the monster was radioactive enough to kill him from exposure. Toxic metals briefly held his interest before he realized it would take forever to poison the monster, if it reacted at all.
He vaguely remembered some of the metals reacted with water and exploded. He dug around until he found alkali metals. Lithium, sodium, potassium, cesium, all underwent exothermic chemical reactions with hydrogen gas as one of the byproducts. The heat was enough to make the gas explode.
Could he make a cesium hammer and make the monster explode from the inside? Turns out, that would be a bad idea. It was liquid at room temperature. Potassium would cause skin burns. Sodium was the most reactive metal he could safely create.
He decided to give it a try. Sodium has 11 protons, 12 neutrons, and 11 electrons in a 2, 8, 1 shell pattern. Simple enough. He grabbed a bit of detritus and focused his mind. A mental click later, and hundreds of bright lights transmuted the material into a metal hammer.
It was solid metal, the shiniest he had ever made. As he held it in his hands, it started slowly oxidizing. He had done it. He made a solid sodium hammer.
Max stood up and hefted the hammer. If magic didn’t change things, this hammer would create flammable hydrogen and caustic sodium hydroxide on contact with water, or blood. And the parasite was covered in the stuff.
He shuffled over and lined up his shot. Then he threw his new hammer at the monster as hard as he could. It spun through the air in an almost straight line. The hammer deflected off the monster’s head and settled atop one of its tentacles.
Max held his breath.
For the first several seconds, nothing happened. Then a bit of smoke started wafting up from the hammer, then more. A few seconds later, it started billowing up. The parasite felt it now, and wiggled it off its tentacle. It was slightly too slow. As it fell, the hammer heated up enough to ignite the fumes. For a brief moment, it glowed with an incandescent light. Then it clattered to the floor and the chemical reaction stopped.
The monster’s tentacle was badly burnt. It was slowly healing, but Max could tell it would take a good chunk of time before it was fully healed.
“What was that?” Lily said.
She had walked over while he worked and watched the experiment.
“That was a sodium hammer. Sodium reacts violently with water. Blood is mostly water,” Max said with a wide grin.
“I can see that. Can you do that again?”
Max did some mental math. His mana pool was 36 and the level six Hammer card cost 28 mana. With his regeneration rate that would mean... “I can do it twice more before nighttime. If we are going to kill this monster today, I’ll have to try something different.”
“Different how?”
“I have a few ideas,” Max said as he grinned maniacally.