NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 14: They Shoot Acid From Their What!?
The ants in the tunnel continued to be only Low-D-Rank, easily cut down as the party moved deeper into the aptly named Endless Tunnels. Though, they did have one difference: They shot acid out of their butts. The first barrage had caught Hiral off guard, bathing his whole left arm in the burning liquid and applying an unpleasant debuff.
You have been afflicted with the Repellent Formic Acid debuff.
Repellent Formic Acid: Acid restricts movement of affected areas, reducing relative Dex by 20% until debuff is removed or initial damage is completely healed.
Losing 20% Dex was somewhat horrifying, but luckily, his Regeneration+ made short work of the minor damage he actually suffered. Within a minute, he was back at full health and no longer under the debuff. On the plus side, he also had a new debuff he could copy with his Chord of the Primal Echo.
As long as he didn’t need to shoot the acid out of his ass to apply it.
“Looks like something is changing ahead,” Hiral said as they chopped down the latest group of Artillery Ants.
“Mid-Boss?” Seena asked.
“Could be,” Hiral said, jogging ahead with his swords floating beside him, his RHCs in his hands.
Slowing their push down to a walk, Hiral crept ahead while checking on his solar energy status—full. Killing Spree+ really showed its worth in battles against enemies like the ants. That done, he turned his attention back to the tunnel ahead. The shape—or maybe it was the construction—of the walls had changed. Whereas past stretches had been rough, like they’d been hewn with the ants’ mandibles, this upcoming section looked almost unrealistically smooth. So smooth, in fact, it had a mirror-like shine, and as Hiral got closer, he could see the party’s reflection looking back at him.
“Looks fun,” Yanily said, coming up to stand beside Hiral. “We had a slide like this between a couple of islands when I was a kid. Loved taking it. Until the island at the bottom fell.”
“Guessing that slide didn’t have a Mid-Boss at the other end of it,” Hiral said, trying to peer down the tunnel ahead of him. It was steep for the first seventy-five feet or so, then curved again, so he couldn’t actually see the exit.
“You think that’s what’s down there?” Seena asked, also joining them along with her sister. “Would make sense. But what’s up with the tunnel?”
“Acid would be my guess,” Hiral said. “Left, what do you think?”
The double ran his hand along the perfectly smooth surface just inside the slide, then nodded. “It looks similar to parts of the tunnel exposed to the Artillery Ants’ acid when they missed an attack. Much more effort was put into creating this, though. It wasn’t built by accident.”
“A trap?” Seeyela asked.
“I guess it could be,” Hiral said. “Though it seems odd for the ants to build traps in their own home.”
“Can we get back out if we go in?” Seeyela asked.
“I can probably get myself out with my Rune of Attraction,” Hiral said. “Seeyela, could you portal up?”
“Line of sight,” she reminded him.
“If we go in, we’re staying in, unless there’s a way out on the other side,” Seena said.
“Which there probably is,” Hiral pointed out. “This is a dungeon, after all.”
“Kind of wish we had Nivian to go first,” Yanily said.
“You know he’d love it,” Hiral said. “He’d give Seena that look he always did when she shoulder-tapped him to dive into yet another unknown situation.”
“And yet he’d still go, every time,” Seeyela said.
“Every time,” Seena agreed, her voice growing soft.
“Don’t worry, Seena,” Yanily said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “You’ll have another chance for him to give you that look. No way that stupid undead city is going to kill him. Again. Except for maybe one of those Shambling Graveyards; they looked pretty strong, and…” He trailed off when he noticed he was getting a very different look from Seena.
“I appreciate the first part of that,” Seena said.
“The second…?” the spearman meekly prompted.
“Makes me want to toss you into the hole and go back to farming the entry room,” Seena said.
“I’d still get the party experience,” he pointed out.
“And the Party Interface tells us Wule and Nivian are just fine, since they’re in there,” Hiral reminded Seena.
“Wish the chat could reach them.” Then she blew out a breath like she was pushing the worry away. “That’s not the problem for right now, though. We have a dungeon to clear. Thoughts?”
“We’re going to have to go down, unless we want to go back, but since this is different, I think it’s the way,” Hiral said. “I’ll go first.”
“And we’ll be right behind you,” Seena said.
“Really hope there’s something at the bottom of this,” Yanily said. “Something that isn’t empty air or a line of spears.”
“Dungeon isn’t trying to kill us,” Seeyela said. “Hrm. Let me rephrase. Dungeon is, PIMP isn’t. I doubt there’s anything quite so deadly waiting for us.”
“Says the person who can teleport,” Yanily said.
“Give me at least a second or two head-start so we don’t all pile up at the bottom,” Hiral said, before stepping over to the lip of the tunnel-slide.
Just to be safe, he pulled the swords back into his Ring of Amin Thett, then slipped over the side. As soon as his feet touched the slope, he was off like the whole tunnel was lined in butter, absolutely zero friction to slow his descent. Dozens of feet passed in the blink of an eye, and just like that, he was at the curve.
A small part of his brain told him he probably could’ve used the crystal skates they’d gotten a few dungeons back to control the slide more—the tunnel was almost big enough to stand in—but it was too late for that now.
He whipped around the turn at breakneck speeds, the smooth surface allowing him to climb up the wall almost all the way to the ceiling before gravity pulled back down. By that time, he was at the next curve in the other direction, and he swung up high again as the slide snaked back and forth. His hands and the soles of his feet instinctively tried to slow him down, but it made no difference—there was no stopping.
Hiral tried applying a brief and light touch of his Rune of Attraction—he didn’t want to risk ripping an arm off—but even that didn’t get any traction. Is there something else special about that acid? There wasn’t time to worry about that question, though, as he zipped around another corner and found himself faced with something very inconvenient: a fork in the slide.
“Shiiiii…” he shouted as he tried to control something—anything—about his plummet, but nothing he did made a difference, and he sped into the tunnel on the right side. Twisting onto his stomach to look back the way he’d come, he flipped over just in time to see a body speed past the entrance to his slide before he was around another corner.
Left and right, left and right, left and right, the tunnel curved back and forth so fast Hiral was spiraling around every inch of the slide, making it impossible to tell up from down. Closing his eyes didn’t help stop the spinning, but he opened them again to spot another fork right in front of him.
Inertia completely had its way with him as he went around, up, over, and back down the side of the tunnel, once again shooting through the new right-hand path. And yet, still, the tunnel continued down, again snaking back and forth around sharp turns that had Hiral spinning on himself even as his whole body luged onward.
You have been afflicted with the Disoriented debuff.
Disoriented: Your senses war against each other and the natural world. Suffer -10% on all attributes, damage, and critical hit chance. Abilities have a 10% chance to fail to activate, and a 50% chance to backfire.
Duration: 2 minutes after exposure to disorienting stimulus ends.
Didn’t need a debuff notification to tell me that! Though… that’s a nasty one…
The window vanished, almost like it’d been left behind by Hiral speeding down the tunnel, and he zoomed through a third split in the path. No sooner had he passed it than his body went hard to one side, the tunnel spiraling down on itself, left… left… left… left, around and around. Even though he wasn’t going back and forth anymore, the constant left turn was so severe, it kept his brain scrambled in his head.
And his brain wasn’t his only body part rebelling against the treatment. His stomach had had enough, churning his guts like Nivian stirring his stew pot. Ugh. The thought of food at that moment did not help matters, and Hiral forced a hand to his mouth to try to keep everything down. In that second’s distraction, he shot out of the end of the tunnel like he’d been ejected. Skidding across the perfectly smooth—though still slightly downward-slanted floor—he tried to catch his bearings. Tried to figure out where he was.
Shoooo! Suddenly even the super-slick surface under his back was gone, and Hiral found himself flying through the empty air.
Somehow, this is Yanily’s fault.