Our first evolved encounter was thankfully a smaller beast. It looked to be a dungeon-evolved rackenbit. It was larger, maybe the size of a small dog, and its antlers terminated with sharp, jagged, biometal points like I remembered on the monsters within the Rank D dungeon.
As with most dungeon-evolved beasts, the fur was darker and rougher looking. It was well-muscled, looking strong and mean. It was probably quick, too, given how fast the regular rackenbits were.
Before we got close enough to activate the beast, in the way that dungeon beasts seemed inactive from a distance, I could finally try to appraise these bizarre creatures. Now that I had 3-point magic, I could pour MP into an appraisal spell and see what I could learn.
I pushed, and pulled, in the way I had gotten used to while trying to extract information by magic from the world. It was a mental battle within the dungeon, where my magic always felt a bit off, but with enough MP I managed to find success, and examined the information that entered my brain.
It was called a “corrupted” rackenbit. That was interesting.
I could glean its HP and MP, like other beasts, but not its level and experience. That was annoying, but not devastating, although it could possibly suggest that strength in the dungeon, particularly once evolved, was not as one-to-one as evolved beasts out of the dungeon. I kind of suspected as much, having seen the difference between Buda and the corrupted ramhogs before, and most especially the difference between the evolved and corrupted griffator.
Lifting my baselard, I took a step forward, and the rackenbit lunged.
It was as fast as I expected, but small and not very bright. I erected a barrier, and it crashed into it, briefly stunned by the impact. I moved to slash at it with my sword, but stopped, remembering something I wanted to try.
Leaping back to make some room between us, I started focusing my mind and pushing my MP through my 6-point magic circle. Since it was stone instead of gold like my 4-point and 5-point circles, I had to push a lot harder to focus. It was a bit funny to think I had done all my magic this way before, and how quickly I got used to working with the smoother flow of MP from better focal points, but this was no time to be ruminating on that.
Concentrating on the inverse triangle within the 6-point magic circle, I honed my magic to a single point, and casted a smite spell at the rackenbit.
The rackenbit shrieked, flailing. I almost stopped my spell, I was so surprised by the violent response from the corrupted beast. Instead, I pushed even more magic into the poor screaming creature, until it collapsed.
It wasn’t dead. It was just down. As I stared, I saw some kind of energy burn off the creature, and soon I realized it was devolving back to a normal rackenbit.
Huh.
I stepped forward, skewering the unconscious beast and killing it. I tried to lift it up, skewered with my sword, but it was already stuck to the dungeon floor, the ground trying to absorb the corpse. My sword slid out of the body and it disappeared.
I didn’t actually believe that smiting was some kind of divine energy, in that it was holy or from a deity. Despite literally reincarnating, which was more or less proof of a soul, I still didn’t consider myself a theist. I did not presume there were gods above in any way that was meaningful to people, to biological lives going about their business.
Perhaps, then, a better name for smiting magic was actually purification. Whatever this dungeon was, it corrupted life. My magic had purified it.
Unfortunately, it had absolutely wrecked my MP. Maybe with a gold magic circle, I could have performed the spell better and used less MP, but at this stage it wasn’t really the most efficient way to clear the dungeon. Regular old violence would take me further, for the moment, but with enough training perhaps I could grow to be strong enough to purify a whole dungeon.
“Very interesting,” I said, turning to Treepo and Buda. “Let’s keep going.”
The dungeon was even more of a maze of tunnels than the Rank D had been. After spending hours navigating, I was rather hopelessly lost.
Generally, climbing an incline sent us backwards, but descending a decline didn’t seem to always be sending us deeper down. We kept rounding a corner only to find ourselves ascending again, coming back out of another fork in the tunnel.
“I’m pretty sure the tunnels aren’t shifting around on us,” I said to Treepo and Buda when we emerged back out of another failed route into the depths. It was labyrinthian, but not unsolvable. “Let’s see if we can find our way back out entirely.”
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Leaving was easy. There was largely only ever one way back up, and we quickly reemerged outside. It was already night.
“So weird,” I muttered, as we wandered away from the cave entrance looking for a place to make camp for the night. “My default thought would be that a dungeon would try to capture us and keep us inside, but it’s the opposite. It’s easy to get out, but hard to get in. It’s like it was constructed with self defense in mind.”
Treepo chittered at me, and I glanced at him, letting him finish.
“You’re right,” I said, filling in his side of the conversation with imaginary arguments. “Probably not ‘in mind,’ as it doesn’t appear to be conscious. It does seem to be living, in a way, with the heat and consumption, but I don’t really think it's alive or intelligent. Such a curiosity.”
Buda snorted, and I nodded.
“Yeah, we’ll go back tomorrow. We were hugging the leftmost forks today, so we’ll try the right forks tomorrow.”
I pulled some prepared meat from my inventory, doling it out to the two familiars who were with me, and eating some myself, ruminating on the mysteries of dungeons and their magic, before curling up next to Buda and falling asleep.
* * *
Hugging the right turns brought us to new enemies to fight, and different corrupted encounters. They were getting stronger, which was a good indication we were getting deeper, closer to the final cavern.
The corrupted direfox was a thing of dark beauty, its fur sleek and black, three dark fluffy tails, and massive, glinting teeth that looked like they could take my head off, given the chance. The wolf-sized version was big enough, but this corrupted version was the size of a cargo van.
I tried throwing some smiting–or rather, purification–magic at it, but could immediately tell that I would burn out my MP before succeeding at undoing the corruption. I succeeded in making it angry, though.
The direfox lunged at me, fast and dangerous, and I threw up a barrier and leapt away using my acrobatics skills, pelting it ineffectually with stone projectiles. It twisted and rushed me.
If small rocks wouldn’t work, I would try larger rocks.
Summoning my largest stone warhammer, I slammed it down on the face of the oncoming beast, shattering it and temporarily stunning the corrupted foe. I leapt aside, trying to get around it so I could approach and strike with a blade.
Keeping it occupied by whipping the broken pieces of stone warhammer at its eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, I attempted to approach quickly while focusing on my stealth skill, so I could get close before it reacted.
It turned its head towards me right before I could strike, and I lunged, jabbing my blade into its side. I felt the blade twist, clipping a rib, but it slid through. The beast yanked back, pulling my sword out of my hand.
I started dumping a cloud of rust into the air, swirling the abrasive iron oxides in a controlled current and then blasting the beast in the face with it, sending it into its nose and mouth, scouring away at flesh, and took the opportunity to close back in and rip my blade from the beast’s side. It was scratching at its face, and while it was distracted, I took a few steps forward and jumped, swinging hard at its neck.
My swing was minimally effective, drawing blood but hardly opening the beast’s throat to end it. I had to get above it somehow.
“Buda!” I shouted, and the wooly ramhog ran over. I mounted up, getting up onto his back in a crouch. “Ram it!”
I hope this works.
Buda rushed towards the corrupted direfox, racing to slam into one of its legs. Right before he collided with the beast, I leapt wildly, and just barely caught myself with handfuls of the beast’s fur.
“Retreat!” I shouted, and started hauling myself up the beast’s side.
The corrupted direfox shook wildly, trying to get me off, but I refocused my concentration on pelting its eyes and insides with rust, forcing it to try and defend its face once again. I climbed up to its back, then made my way up to its neck.
Lifting my sword high, I brought it down into the huge beast’s neck, hacking at its spine. It screamed and shook, but I stabbed again and again until I felt something give, and the beast pitched and fell. I leapt and landed in a roll, putting some distance between us in case of one last swipe, turning back to watch it absorb back into the dungeon.
I turned and checked on Buda. “You all good?”
Buda snorted happily, and Treepo ran over chittering.
“Perfect. All accounted for. Piece of cake,” I lied.
I was not looking forward to whatever was in the final cavern of this dungeon.
* * *
Sticking to the rightmost forks did not get us all the way through. Soon enough we were finding ourselves doubled back and frustrated.
“We’re going to have to map it out,” I complained. My map skill via 3-point magic gave me nothing inside the dungeon, which was more or less what I expected but was wildly frustrating. “This could take ages.”
Fortunately we weren’t in a particular rush, either. I did want to catch up with the convoy before it made it all the way to the capital, but there was no reason I absolutely had to, so I wasn’t going to hurry just for that.
Instead, we took our time. We spent some days hunting outside the dungeon, killing and documenting beasts and harvesting meat and loot. Some days we didn’t even hunt, we just foraged for new things to study and enjoyed ourselves. The other days, diving the dungeon, we tried out different combinations of ways into the depths to see what worked. When we met a new corrupted beast, I fought as hard as I could to beat it, and my experience climbed quickly. Between the dungeon and the hunting in the forest, I managed to hit level 21.
“Not bad,” I said to my familiars. “Should make the boss battle go a little more smoothly. Now, where to use these skill points…”
Using rust as a distraction and minor damage-over-time attack was working really well, so I dropped 10 SP into 4-point magic, and then dropped 10 SP into 6-point magic for purification. I put the last 1 SP into cooking, like I had with the bonus SP I got from the skillfruit when I first turned level 20.
We were getting closer to our goal. I could feel it.
When we did get there, I still wasn’t ready.