El allowed himself to take a few relaxing breaths, looking at the clear sky above, and the sun that was swiftly losing the battle to stay there.

“Okay, I need some answers,” he said and flipped Trim’s knife in his hand a few times, looking at the slayed beasts around him. “Let’s see what they are made of."

Then he stepped to the big one that almost tore Dmintiz in half, and if not for all the thick leather armor he wore, it would have most likely succeeded.

“This might get a bit nasty,” he warned Alice who stood by him before he put a bit of Mana into the blade to easily slice into it.

“I do not mind. I actually think it’s a pretty smart idea to try and dissect the beasts to find their anatomy and see how else we can kill it.”

But even before El started to carve inside its body, he noticed the leather exterior extricate some kind of nasty greenish liquid that started to smoke all around. No fire. Just smoke.

“That’s strange. Not supposed to do that,” El said. “We did not burn it.”

“Stop!” Alice said. “It is some kind of acid. It’s actually dissolving the body.”

El sniffed it. “You’re right. It is very acid-like.”

“Don’t touch it!” Alice warned Trim who was reaching out to grab some and see it better. “It’s very toxic. It seems able to burn through leather and bones and everything.”

“So, if I touch it, it would poison me?” Trim asked, instantly taking a step back.

“No. It would burn you, worse than fire. It would dissolve your skin, your muscle, everything,” Alice tried to explain. "Would not kill you unless you bled out or unless you lost some of your body organs."

“But how it is being released now? Now that the beast is dead??” El asked.

“Maybe… the heart stops functioning and then…” Alice started to offer an explanation.

“It does not make sense,” El said.

Alice sighed and scratched her head, then said out loud what she was thinking. “Maybe the acid was not present in the body. It got made inside the body only after the beast was killed. Because we slashed the beast and no acid came out of its skin. So, it was not there while it lived.”

“That is true,” El confirmed, frowning.

“So, if the acid was not there while the beast lived… Maybe the acid started to be made when it died.”

“Maybe.”

“The heart has the function to pump the blood around,” Alice said.

“That is true. I’ve studied that in Medicine.”

“So you know the heart pumps the blood and the blood transfers nutrients throughout the body as well as the skin. It takes oxygen around and cleans the blood of toxins through the kidney and liver,” Alice said, trying to make sense of it.

El nodded his head. Did not know all of what Alice was saying, but then, the way she said it, he knew it must be true. “So, if the heart stops working…?”

“Maybe the toxins can’t be cleaned up and neutralized, and then these toxins trigger some kind of chemical reaction and create this kind of weird acid.”

El thought about it for a moment. “That could explain it. To be sure that is the case…”

“We would need to duplicate it all in the experiment. But that would be hard right now.”

El nodded his head and then admitted, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I’ve seen acid before. The kind that melts through bones and things, but not grinish like this. And not smelling so much like ammoniac.”

“YOU know your chemistry well,” El said. “So… Let’s open the beast up and see if it has all those organs before they are all dissolved.”

“You see, there is more and more acid coming out. It seems that the process is accelerating,” Alice said.

“Yes, I better hurry.”

“But, stop! You know if it gets just a bit on your skin…”

“Yes. I will be careful,” El said looking at the knife. “YOu think it will eat through metal?”

“Our swords are fine,” Trim said.

“Yes, they are fine before when you cut the beasts, the acid was not present in the body. It only started to be created afterward. I think strong acids react a lot with iron if I remember my chemistry right. So, don’t expect your knife to be of any use after we finish with it.”

“That is fine,” Trim said. “If the price of knowing more about these beasts is my knife, so be it.”

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“You are right,” El nodded his head. “These are strange beasts. We need to know more. The power of knowledge cannot be understated.”

“Take my leather gloves. They may protect you a bit,” Trim said, taking the thick gloves off his hands and handing them to El.

“Thank you,” El said. “Don’t mind if I do.”

“We can always hunt a deer and make more gloves of their skin,” Trim said, happy that he could help them, not knowing half of the things they were saying, but understanding just enough to accept that it was all so very important.

“Okay,” El said and started to slice the beast wide open, going slowly over its belly where the greenish liquid had not penetrated yet.

“That is smart,” Alice said as she grabbed two shafts that lay on the ground and helped push the beast's skin fat, and muscles off while they got to the beast's organs.

“That looks like kidneys. Five of them. That is unusual,” El said. “Never saw a creature that needs five kidneys.”

Alice nodded her head, “Me neither.”

“And a huge liver,” he said. “It’s almost too big to be a liver.”

“Yes.”

“So, up to now, we have to say that your hypothesis was right, Alice. Incredible how you knew it, how you know so much.”

“Well, I loved studying and just knowing about things. Even more so when I got sick and was bedbound.”

“But, this is even more incredible,” El said, suddenly cutting faster, and looking with disbelief at the beast's stomach.

“What?” Alice asked. “What do you mean?

“I see a stomach sack here, but where are its guts? Any creature I ever dissected, had meters and meters of long guts.”

“How can that be?” Trim asked, surprised as well.

El sighed, took the knife, and swiftly cleaned it off the snow. “It has a stomach, but no guts.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Alice said.

“Maybe it just absorbs everything inside its stomach sack. It is kind of big,” El said.

“The guts, the intestines, are part of the digestive system. They are there to absorb the nutrients. Everyone needs them. They are essential,” Alice insisted.

“Maybe. But then, maybe this creature does not bite and swallows to feed itself.”

“It’s not possible. How does it survive then?” Alice said.

“Maybe it's not meant to survive. Let me see something else,” El said, moving to the beast's head.

“What do you mean?” Alice asked.

“I want to look into its head,” El said mysteriously.

“Let’s scrape the acid off with wood,” Alice said, noticing the leather covering the top of the beast's head starting to smoke more as it was eating into the beast’s skull. “Before it can eat everything.”

“You’re right,” El said and then lifted his head up, looking at the slimy salesman who with bewildered eyes was standing a few yards away, holding a mug full of beer with both hands.

El grabbed the mug from him and said, “Run to the kitchen, and get me wooden spoons! Now fast!!” he ordered him, and then straightened his back, taking a big pull out of the mug before he placed it in the snow.

While they waited for the wooden spoons to arrive, Alice picked a dirty cloth with the help of the arrow, dropped it over the smoldering skin, and pressed it against it, kept pressing against it with the arrow even when it started to smoke itself.

“It’s eating through the cloth as well,” El said. “Do you think it would eat through the wood as well?”

“Yes. Just probably not so fast,” Alice answered. “I think there are a very few things that the acids can’t react to, but then this kind of acid is so weird, we would need to test all the materials and see which one it does not react with. Maybe the glass. I think the glass would be the safest.”

The slimy salesman brought the wooden spoons running, and they instantly started to scrap the sizzling acid off the top head, then El opened its brain, cutting through the remaining of the skull with his Mana-enhanced blade.

While he was doing that, Alice looked over its body.

“It’s not possible. Nature can’t create these things,” she was saying as she examined its body better. “There are no creatures that consume everything. The nature could not do this.”

“You’re right, Alice, nature can’t create these things, but… still they are here. We have to trust our eyes. Besides, I think I know who could create such creatures,” El said, working on his brain.

“Who?” Alice said.

“Do you know what this is?” El answered her instead as he held a small black dot on the tip of the knife, showing it to her.

“What is that?” she asked. It was a fraction of the grain of rice, almost too small to be noticeable.

As an answer, El took the glove off and slowly reached inside his neck to show the necklace that was hanging there. In the middle of it, it had a dark diamond-like stone.

“What is it?”

“It’s an Elvish Dark Stone.”

“What?” Alice asked, not understanding. “I’m sorry. I know very little of Elvish things. If not for reading Tolkien’s LOR, would know even less.”

El nodded his head. The reading was not familiar to him, but he still accepted that Alice's knowledge spanned different realms as his, some way superior while others not so complete. “This stone lets the creator of the creature communicate with them. That’s why I was picking its… messages. Just very amplified.”

“Your headaches? The drumming?”

El nodded his head. “Yes. This necklace belonged to my grandmother. She gave it to me when I came of age. They said its value was superior to all the land my family owned. And that it had the power to transfer energies across waste distances.”

“That’s interesting,” Alice said.

“So… I need a cup to preserve it, need to cut other beasts' heads off and gather all we can before acid eats them all. It’s very valuable, and should not be wasted. So,” El said and looked at the salesman. “Fetch me one glass cup. And yes, from now on, I’ll call you Fetcher. Now run!”

“What does all of that mean?” Alice said.

El waited for Fetcher to be out of site and then said. “How much do you know about dungeons?”

“No, not my thing,” Alice admitted.

“It was not my thing either. But, during my early education, I was introduced to one very interesting book. ‘Thoms Rolls’ it is called, and it’s part of ‘Elvish Ancient Scroll of Dungeons Inquiries,”

“I don’t think we have such books where I came from.”

“Well, anyway, the writing explained some things, things like how dungeons can create creatures.”

“What?”

“They can create creatures.”

“Like bio-engineer them?”

El thought about those words and found he liked them. “Yes, you could call it that. Bio-engineered. It sounds just right.”

“And you think someplace in a basement, some dark hole in the ground could do that?”

“A dungeon, a dungeon is so much more.”

“So, it’s a dungeon then after all,” Trim muttered as he walked to stand by them.

“You suspected it?” El asked him.

“Yes. But… We do not have dungeons here. Not for the last hundreds of years. Before we went to take part in another war, Holgar and I went to fight to destroy a dungeon in the neighboring land. And I saw personally how that dungeon burned to the ground. And there was no other one for a hundred leagues around here. I know places far East that still have them, but it would take weeks and months of travel to get there. And… I don’t think these beasts came from there, do you?”

“No. This is local. This means that there is a dungeon in the mountain in the north. And, it will continue to spawn the monsters, kill and consume everything around. So, for the sake of all that is living here, we have to fight it. And slain it.”