Rory took a deep breath, staring into the darkness. It was a sight he'd seen often enough. After all, he'd scavenged plenty of ore shards from the first cave of the Maw.
But that wasn't why he was here today, and he knew it.
"Worst case scenario, I dip out early," Rory reassured himself. "No need to die a hero."
It's not like I'm doing anything heroic anyway. Unless you count this as IP protection and IP protection as a heroic deed.
Rory chuckled nervously before grasping the goggles on his head and pulling them down over his eyes. They'd been a last-minute invention, made to help him see in the dark by using runes to gather what light there was. A moment later, he dropped into the dark hole.
"So far, so good," Rory muttered, the goggles lighting up some of the darkness of his surroundings.
Next up was his bracelet. It fit snuggly, which was entirely expected given that it was grafted into his flesh. Rory avoided touching it, not wanting to activate the runes upon it. He didn't bother to check with his skinsuit. Rory could feel it snug to his body beneath his clothes, a texture akin to wool and athletic spandex.
Good, that's everything.
Rory didn't bother to inspect his bow and arrows. He'd already spent enough time obsessively inspecting them that he knew them like the back of his hand.
I'm ready.
Giving himself a reassuring nod, Rory wandered through the underground tunnel as it gently sloped downward until he was met with the familiar ore cave. Typically, this was the extent of his journey into the Maw, but not today. Today, he had a bigger fish to fry. Continuing onward, Rory trekked on until he was finally met with the sight of his nightmares.
A cave that had nearly been his grave. Inside was a large subterranean pond, and Rory knew that inside that pond was the strongest monster he'd ever faced without the aid of his railguns.
You've got this.
Snagging a stone from the ground, Rory aimed for a moment before flicking it into the room. With a loud clack of stone on stone, it clattered on the ground only several feet from the pond. The moment the stone was out of his hand, Rory pulled free his bow, his opening arrow prepared.
Come on, you oversized calamari.
His wish was granted when, seconds later, a forest of oversized tentacles -each as thick as a small tree truck- slithered out from the depths, swiping through the air, looking for the source of the noise. When they found nothing, they twitched around, almost as if they were confused about what had intruded on their home.
A grimace crossed Rory's face as he was met with the monster of his nightmares. Giving his bracelet a tap with his elbow, the runes upon it glowed momentarily as a rush of vital energy coursed through him.
Transfusion is a go.
The blood-weave he wore responded all over his body, increasing his body temperature by several degrees.
With nothing left to do, Rory took one final deep breath, sighting the largest cluster of tentacles before releasing the arrow with a quiet twang.
Slicing through the air in a heartbeat, the arrow sank into the fleshy tentacle, which recoiled in surprise.
Before exploding, a wave of concussive energy rolled outward and tore into the rest of its tentacles.
I hope that felt great, you ugly fuck!
As much as Rory would have loved to have stayed outside the cave and fired from relative safety, he knew the monster would flee under the water should it find nothing to retaliate against.
So, against his better judgment, Rory charged.
"For Tolkien!" He shouted, wishing very badly that he was Aragorn about now. The flailing tentacles instantly turned toward Rory as he charged inside the cave. Still, Rory wouldn't just let them squash him into a meaty paste. A second arrow already knocked; Rory released the bowstring. Zipping through the air faster than any old universe bow could replicate, the arrow slammed into another tentacle. Unlike the first arrow, his second arrow didn't explode; he only had one unstable arrow prepared, which was empowered with a blood bead inside the arrow shaft and primed to detonate. However, that wasn't to say his other arrows were useless, far from it. As soon as the second arrow ripped through the creature's tentacle, black oozing blood began spurting free like a pressurized faucet.
Huh, it works better than I hoped.
The broadhead arrow was explicitly designed to maximize bleeding. It was even inscribed with runes meant to thin the blood and speed the rate of blood loss. As much as the tentacle bled, one badly bleeding tentacle wouldn't win him the battle, as dozens more exploded out from the depths.
"It's never easy!" Rory huffed loudly, the tentacles going wild as they crashed and swiped all around, making Rory feel like he was on some living parkour course. Had it not been for the energy transfusion enhancing his physical capabilities, he would have never survived, the writhing storm of tentacles too fast and too vast in quantity to have been avoided by a mere tier four. Even boosted as he was, at one point, he was still a split second too slow as a tentacle clipped him, sending him reeling through the air and crashing into the stone wall of the cave.
Dry heaving from the force of the impact, Rory could only thank his blood weave; it had redistributed the kinetic energy of the strike throughout his body. Sure, it meant his entire body ached like hell, but it was better than his ribs being turned into dust.
Giving him no reprieve, another tentacle swung toward Rory. Unable to knock an arrow in time, Rory stabbed forward with it instead, burying it into the tentacle as it retreated a moment later.
Fuck that was close.
At the very least, he was still alive. Drawing several arrows, Rory fired them into the unknown horror's tentacles. Blood was now positively pouring out of the sea monster like a burst oil well. The more the tentacles thrashed, the more they bled.
Bleeding wasn't the only issue they faced. If one looked closely, from each of the arrows embedded into the monster, wispy-looking vines had begun to extend outward, wrapping around the tentacles.
God, I'm glad that's not me.
Rory winced, seeing the horrific sight before him. Sure, the properties of the tree were helpful, but what was most interesting or perhaps distressing -depending on how one viewed it- was that the tree was explicitly parasitic, something he'd realized during his work with his blood-weave, infesting the hide and fur armor they had once been.
A few little bits and pieces of bloodwood inside a monster? No harm. But as the quantity of its biochemistry was allowed to invade a living host -especially one suffering profuse blood loss- the more it could overcome the natural defenses of whatever it was invading. Rory knew it wouldn't be enough to kill the monster; the Bloodwood tree he'd harvested was barely better than a sapling, and thus, the parasitic qualities were still relatively poor, but that didn't make life any better for the hell octopus.
Feeling a surge of confidence, Rory grinned.
I can do this.
Of course, that was when the real problem arose, and quite literally. From the pond, something huge began to emerge. The size of a small truck, it was the head of the monster, some evil-looking cross between a moray eel and the head of a leach.
"Fuck that," Rory said, his face blanching. Immediately changing targets, Rory began raining arrows upon the creature's head. As the arrows snapped through the air, rather than finding purchase in its ugly-looking head, they bounced off the slimy hide. Annoyed by being pelting in the head by what amounted to no more than gnats for all the good they did, the mouth upon the monster's revolting visage opened as a dozen eel-like tentacles shot forward like something out of Ridley Scott's Alien, each one ending with a jaw filled with needle-like protrusions that reminded Rory of the papillae you'd see inside a turtle's mouth.
Why is everything about this thing just the worst thing you could imagine?
The ravenous subheads were a maelstrom of savagery, tearing apart even its own tentacles should any get in the way. They simply did not care what they tore into as long as they tore into something. At one point, Rory saw one strike the wall, tearing through stone like soft cheese.
At that point, Rory began eyeing the exit; adding the extra heads into the melee was starting to look like too much to handle, especially if he couldn't get his arrows to stick. Unfortunately for Rory, that was when one of the oversized tentacles lashed out, smashing into the exit and collapsing it partially. With time, Rory could remove the debris, but it would take time that he didn't have.
"Fuck."
No longer able to flee, Rory retreated as far from the pond as he could, doing his best to remain quiet as the swarm of tentacles and abominable heads continued rampaging.
New plan.
Hit and run had worked well enough when it was just the tentacles, but things had gotten far hairier. Rory was beginning to doubt he could kill the monster by wounding its tentacles. Exhausted it and pissed it off? Sure. Enough to kill it outright? Probably not.
A railgun would have been nice about now, but Rory didn't precisely have time to set one up or lay out a bounded circle and channel pneuma into it.
It's cliché, but, well…
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If he couldn't kill it by destroying its tentacles, and the exterior of its head was too rigid and slimy to pierce, then there was only one vulnerability he could capitalize on.
Its mouth.
The issue was that it also meant placing himself directly in front of the lion's den, the source of all the subheads.
If I can send one powerful arrow straight through, just maybe I can kill the damned thing.
Rory wasn't sure about the biology of octopus-eel-leach chimeras; it wasn't as if Biology of the worst fucking thing you've ever seen-101 was a class offered when he'd gone to college, so there was a chance he could be wrong in his assumption. Still, unless his luck was really that bad, Rory figured assuming the head was a vital spot was generally a safe enough bet for basically any living thing with a head.
Suddenly curious about the monster, Rory focused on its head as his interface appeared with information displayed.
Watcher in the Depths-Juvenile
Level: 54
First discovered by a curious precursor, Watcher in the Depths are most often found guarding the entrances to dark places.
Aelia really did rip off Tolkien! Rory mentally shouted. His mental shout was quickly followed by a real shout as all the tentacles suddenly whipped toward where he was lurking. Yelping and dodging out of the way, Rory pumped his arms as he bobbed and weaved, dodging the writhing storm of ick.
Noted, using analyze on something strong from up close alerts them.
Continuing to dodge and sprint around the bowl of the pond, Rory felt something begin to shift. All over his body, Rory felt the blood-weave he wore begin to flake and crumble like ash from a bonfire.
Oh, shit.
He'd forgotten there was a time limit; the blood weave he wore was only so potent because it was brimming with the vital energies of countless sacrificed monsters. That energy was quickly depleting, drawn through the bracelet he'd grafted to his wrist. Once it was gone, his attributes would drop down to a level more fitting of a tier four, no longer capable of performing on the level of a tier five.
Right, end this in one shot, or I'm dead.
Weaving through the oncoming rush of tentacles and subheads, Rory was clipped twice more, sending him sprawling, but thankfully not straight into a wall like earlier. Regaining his footing, Rory dashed forward, placing himself directly before the monstrosity.
"Hey, fucker!" Rory shouted, wanting to draw the full attention of the monster toward him; it was the best way to get a clean shot.
Once more, Rory's wish was granted. Every single tentacle and subhead swarmed toward him from either direction, cutting off any chance of escape.
This had better work!
Dropping to one knee, Rory drew the string of his bow back as time seemed to slow. Reaching the legacy within the bow, Rory felt the magic there, just waiting to be activated. Doing as it obliged, Rory activated the Akashic Record. Like an IV in reverse, Rory felt his vitality ripped from him. The first to go was his blood-weave, what remained crumbling to shriveled fibers, his physical attributes plummeting as the blood-weave was fully drained. Less than a tenth of a second later, Rory felt as if he'd been wrung out like a towel, the Blood Legacy capable of drawing vital energy at a horrifying rate.
Right, no more!
Cutting off the Akashic Record within the bow before it could kill him, Rory's eye began to spasm just looking at it. It was chock full of destructive potential, even more than when he'd tested it upon creating the bow.
No more time to think or make rather unclever remarks, Rory fully released the bow as his entire body was launched backward, the sheer force of the arrowing ripping free, tossing him aside like refuse in the wind.
Whatever happened next, Rory wasn't sure. His entire world was a mass of agony, his head imploding and exploding simultaneously. He'd been drained of vital energy and pneuma in such quantity and with such suddenness that he was barely holding up under the worst case of Pneuma-wracked he'd ever suffered.
Time passed in a chaotic mass of colors, and his vision distorted like the aural disruption from a migraine. What felt like an eternity later, at last, the colors faded, leaving only blackness. Groggily reaching toward his head, Rory found his goggles still on, spiderweb fractures snaking through the visor-like material. Pulling them off his head—they were beyond repair—Rory slowly sat up from where he had collapsed.
Had he not been worn ragged, the monstrous tentacles only inches from his body on either side of him would have been at least a little unnerving. Instead, he only sighed.
I lived to see another day.
The encounter had not gone quite as planned. The Watcher had only been a low tier five, yet it had nearly overwhelmed him with the sudden advent of its subheads.
Speaking of which, they also were lying around him, lifeless and still horrifying to look at.
Fucking lovely.
The monster's main head was half sunken into the pond, resting partially on the outer bank. A rather large hole had been torn through the back of its head as if someone had fired a cannon straight through it.
"Hot damn." Rory groaned as he glanced toward the bow lying in his lap.
That Blood Legacy is intense.
Which was fair. Drawing upon Pneuma and vital energy had to make for a powerful shot.
But the sad thing? With all that said and done, Rory still doubted if the most powerful attack from his strongest bow was any more powerful than a single round from his railgun Big Momma.
I miss her.
Forcing himself to get over being stripped of his easy-mode weapon, Rory took in the rest of the cave now that an aquatic horror wasn't assaulting him.
As far as caves went, it wasn't exciting; it was just one large open cave with a pond that dominated the cave's center.
Wait a moment.
Barely visible, opposite the entrance he'd entered from, there was an opening like an arch or a doorway at the back of the cave.
Was that always there?
Rory couldn't remember seeing the opening for the life of him. Still, he had been rather preoccupied, and it was well hidden in the shadows.
More than happy with just surviving the encounter, with nothing else to take stock of, Rory noticed several notifications in the corner of his vision. Mentally clicking on them, his interface sprang forward.
The Maw-Level One
Status-Cleared
"Level one?" Rory voiced aloud. "So, it does go deeper."
That tidbit of information aside, what surprised Rory the most was that the first level apparently only had a single monster, the Watcher.
"Scratch that," Rory said, shaking his head after thinking about it more. Sure, there was only one monster on floor one, but it was also a tier-five monster. Had it not been for the boosting effect of his blood-weave, even equipped with his improved bow, he would have been forced to flee again.
God damn, trying to fight up even a single tier is fucking rough. I can understand why Eon seemed so against my usage of my railguns; I was a tier three fighting up five damn tiers.
For a moment, Rory fantasized about what a refined and improved railgun would be capable of but shook the thought off a moment later.
No point. That's begging Eon to send some crazy ass monster to eat me.
The floor clear notification wasn't his only notification, though. A smile erupted on his face as he glanced down at his ascension bar.
Boom. Tier Five.
Going into the battle, he had been tier four, level forty-six. By besting the Watcher, he'd made forty percent progress in one battle.
Which is probably more of a testament to how difficult fighting up tiers is supposed to be.
The Watcher hadn't even been some crazy high-tier tier-five monster; it had barely been nearing the first step of a mid-tier five, yet it had almost been an impossible fight.
As jubilant as Rory was about clearing tier four off the back of slaying a higher-tier monster, one more notification still awaited his attention. Curious, Rory opened it.
Challenge Area cleared: The Maw-Level One
Loot Table earned
Open: Y/N?
Now that's new. Rory mused. He'd never seen anything like this before, but in fairness, he hadn't done much exploring of the world. Even with the waves, he'd basically only tackled one wave at a time or a full ten-wave gauntlet that had also been altered by Eon as a test, with no real in-between. Perhaps 'loot tables' weren't all that uncommon; he just hadn't encountered one himself. Or, for all he knew, they were something new altogether.
Shrugging, Rory mentally selected the 'Yes' option, waiting for something to occur, perhaps a magical beam of light dropping an item on him or a chorus of music as a chest of items appeared.
He wasn't expecting black ooze -the monster's blood- to shoot upward in a rotating orb floating above the dead creature. Spinning faster and faster, it began to glow with heat and compress, inky smoke billowing out as the ball of black blood burnt away. Seconds passed like that until all that remained was a small metallic-looking chunk of red… something. Whatever it was, it was larger than a baseball but smaller than a football. Finished spinning, it floated toward Rory, hovering before him as another interface popped up.
Loot Table reward obtained: Refined crafting material.
Staring at the crimson-colored metal, as there was no doubt it was metal now that it was directly in front of him, Rory activated Eye for Potential as he analyzed it.
???
Quality: Uncommon.
A potent metal obtained from the refinement and processing of the trace metal elements within the blood of most living creatures.
Oh, looks like I'm the first to discover it. Naming time!
After thinking for only a moment, Rory nodded as his interface updated with the name he had decided upon.
Crimsonite
Quality: Uncommon.
A potent metal obtained from the refinement and processing of the trace metal elements within the blood of most living creatures.
Naming conventions aside, Rory thought about what the metal meant to him. Uncommon quality metal was precious, considering the Pneuma-Enriched Iron was only common quality, but oddly enough, that wasn't what Rory found himself fixating on.
No, what was important was that he'd been clued in on another potential uncommon grade material he could exploit. In their old universe, it was known that there were trace amounts of iron within human blood, which had seemingly carried over in some fashion; trace amounts of metal elements could apparently still be found in blood.
So, if I just sucked out the blood of a lot of living things…
Rory shook his head after a moment. First, he didn't know how the metal was extracted or refined. Eon could do it using whatever bullshit-ery it was that Eon used to do anything, but the same didn't extend to Rory. He'd have to extensively study and experiment to ascertain the process.
The second, perhaps more important issue, was the question of morals. Bloodwood already required a rather extensive amount of 'dark arts' if one were to judge it based on old universe principles. Adding Crimsonite to the list would only further direct him down the route of future Dark Lord.
I swear, I am not a Dark Lord in the making.
That wasn't to say he wouldn't explore the potential of the metal at all. It would just have to wait until he could kill larger and more powerful monsters that would have the blood volume needed to run his tests without committing further rabbit genocide.
Ethics aside, Rory turned the chunk of metal around. Eye for Potential was great for clueing him in on things he could utilize effectively, but it wasn't perfect. It didn't automatically grant him knowledge he didn't already have some degree of insight into.
As it was, Crimsonite was a complete unknown to Rory. At least Pneuma-Enriched Iron shared some similarities with its namesake. Rory had never seen a metal like Crimsonite before, which was the problem; there was nothing for Eye for Potential to grasp. Was it conductive, be it electricity or Pneuma? Brittle? Maybe it had a high flex point?
Too many questions and far too few researchers.
Sighing, Rory was still just happy that he had gained the sudden windfall for killing the Watcher, a tangible reward that wasn't just Ascension energy.
Speaking of which.
Now that all his notifications had been handled, there was the matter of his ascension to A5. An intelligent person would wait until they'd returned to camp to handle it. However, Rory's brain was still rather liquefied from the backlash of Blood Legacy. Thus, without thinking about the risks of pushing the ascension inside an unknown area, Rory breached the barrier as, in a heartbeat, he found himself in the familiar metaphysical void where all ascensions took place.
"Huh, no Eon today," Rory muttered within the darkness. He'd encountered Eon, or at least its avatar, so frequently recently that he'd half expected to find it seated at the same unadorned table it was always seated at.
"You know," Rory pondered out loud. "If this is my mind space, I should be able to control it, right? In theory, can't I just poof a table into existence?"
The moment he spoke, the same table he'd come to associate with Eon appeared, the only difference being that there was a single chair.
"Well, would you look at that? Guess it was that easy," Rory muttered before taking a seat. Floating aimlessly in an endless void always felt odd as he handled all his ascension stuff, so it was nice to sit for once.
Well, time to get on with it.