NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 250: In Dungeons, No One Can Hear You Scream
Raylin sighs as he settles into his chair at the Worthy Inn, taking a short break from the party's climb up the mountain. He wasn't exactly thrilled to be here again so soon, only five days after their previous delve, although perhaps it'd be more accurate to say that he wasn't thrilled to be here again so soon for business purposes. He had been intending to pay a personal visit to Deylia soon, perhaps even today, but events had conspired to occupy his schedule instead.
He looks over the other members of the group - Gilda, Sweet, Taylim and Barlond - and notes how Gilda and her cousin order drinks to quench their thirst, while the two bodyguards settle for simply resting their feet as they settle in. Deciding to follow their example, Raylin's about to order a mug of his own when he finds himself surprised by the rabbit-eared Priestess he'd just been thinking of. Smiling at him, Deylia easily makes her way across the mostly-empty tavern to reach their table. "Raylin! And Lady Highbranch, it's good to see you again."
Taking advantage of Raylin's surprise, Gilda responds first. "And you, Priestess Niyen. It's been a while - I've actually been intending to visit one of your services one of these days, but haven't quite found the time for it yet."
"You're certainly welcome any time." As she looks over the table's occupants, it's impossible to miss how they're all wearing their armor and weapons for today's visit. "You've come to do another intrusion? To be honest, after achieving the record of the first clear of Floor Eight, I thought perhaps you'd be taking a break from such things for a month or two."
Raylin chuckles. "Unfortunately, it seems as if your employer has managed to place more work at our feet. But tell me, Del, since you're here, perhaps you could confirm what we've heard? Please, take a seat and join us."
Deylia, being slightly more attentive of the norms for interacting with high nobility, looks first to Gilda for assent before claiming a seat for herself. "Thank you, I'd be happy to stop and chat for a bit. But what is it you've heard? Has, ah...has something happened in Grassbrook?"
Raylin's eyes narrow briefly at the hint of worry in the former Maid's voice, but he soon brushes it aside. "Have you been expecting the dungeon master to be causing trouble? But no, nothing's happened in town as far as I'm aware. I was speaking of a Challenger party known as the...Ebon Kiss? I wonder how they chose that name..."
"Oh!" Relief fills her voice as Deylia sits up a little straighter. "That party! Mostly Experts with one or two Masters, yes? They defeated Parker yesterday I heard, the second party to have done so. You still maintain your record as the first, of course."
Gilda leans forward, glad to have had confirmation. "Word of that has reached us, yes. Though we were more interested in what they did after that. We got a report saying that they didn't find the core chamber waiting for them afterwards - that your Floor Nine is now complete. Is that true?"
Deylia grins. "Indeed, as of a few days ago I believe, though this is the first time anyone's made it that far. Wait - are you here to challenge Floor Nine yourselves?" Her smile fades as quickly as it appeared.
The heiress nods. "Not necessarily to clear it - but to see it for ourselves, at the least. From what we've heard, the Kisses simply saw the new floor, turned around, and left. They didn't even share what it is they saw, or not as far as I've been informed. I don't suppose you have anything to share as far as that goes?"
"I - ah, sorry, Lady Highbranch, but I'm not at liberty to discuss such things."
Raylin quickly interjects with his support. "Indeed, we certainly don't want to give you any further trouble in that arena. But yes, in order to maintain our record to at least some extent, we'll be looking to scout the place out after we've had a short break. We may only be an hour or two, perhaps - would you be free if I were to call on you afterwards?"
Deylia's smile returns once again. "Certainly - although I hope you'll be doing so in order to catch up, and not because you need my healing."
Gilda speaks up before Raylin gets the chance. "Yes, I'm sure he'll have a glorious tale of having slain the latest giant rat the dungeon has deigned to throw at us. But for now, I think it would be best if Raylin were to keep his focus on the task ahead of us?"
The man nods, dutifully pushing thoughts of his next meeting with Deylia out of his mind. "Of course, Gilda. After all, there's no telling what we may face..."
"Well...I've certainly never seen anything quite like this." After having stepped through the shortcut portal to the entryway of Floor Nine, Raylin was immediately greeted with some of the oddest construction materials he had ever encountered. The walls are black and slightly shiny, like the shells of a beetle, but shaped in a way that feels...wrong, somehow. The surfaces are covered in ridges and outgrowths, some of which make him think that the room has some sort of ribcage to it. The smooth material reflects an odd white light, and as Raylin glances upward he sees that the room's illumination is provided by some sort of mana crystals, grown into flat lines that trace their way across the ceiling.
Not very effectively, though. Some of the smaller crystals flicker as he watches them, as if they were somehow damaged. Others are partially covered by the odd black material, giving it the appearance as if it had grown around them, or been packed over on top. The end result is that the chamber is lit well enough to see by, yet there's plenty of dark, shadowy corners to the room that manage to keep drawing his eye. Every time the crystals flicker, the Marksman is uncertain if there's movement he sees behind some of the ridged pillars dotting the wall, or if it was simply the shadows shifting with the light.
As he switches his attention to the room's floor he notices another oddity, although these are pointed out first by Barlond, the team's Paladin of Pain. "What are these? If they're flowers, they're the ugliest damn breed I've ever seen." As he speaks the man carefully approaches the nearest such object, a split bulb shape that does vaguely remind Raylin of a large flower, except the petals are far too...thick. Meaty, almost. Barlond seems drawn to them as well, and with a quick flick of his knife he's severed one of the 'petals' for a closer look. He gives it a sniff, before tossing it back away.
"A fungus of some sort I believe, actually. Not grown, though - no mushroom grows like...whatever this is. The dungeon shaped it specifically into this shape. But why?"
Peering into one of the bulbs herself, Gilda offers a theory. "I imagine this is some sort of...clue, or warning, however you'd like to think of it. Like with the coin in the first room of the mimic floor...somehow this is supposed to inform us of what we're about to face. I'm not sure exactly what it's trying to tell us, though."
While keeping an eye out for ambushes, Taylim presents his thoughts. "Some of those...bulbs do seem to be opened as if they're flowers, yes, but not all of them. Other seem rather violently torn apart, wouldn't you say? From the inside I mean, as if something had burst out of them." The Royal Sentinel narrows his eyes. "I suspect the clues indicate fungoid monsters ahead. Vulnerable to blades and fire, but known for producing clouds of toxic spores, I believe."
"I see. Give me a few minutes, and I can prepare something for that." Pulling out one of the brushes from her belt, Gilda dips it into one of her pots of enchanted ink and begins going from party member to party member, drawing a rune on their chest or armor. "A rune of clean air. It may not last for the entire floor, but I can re-apply it if we stay here that long." After marking one on her own armor, she stows the brush away and looks to Sweet.
"Shall we move on?"
"As you say, my lady." The large gnoll proceeds to the door at the other side of the shadowy chamber, and finds it to not quite match the rest of the decor. Rather than the black substance covering the rest of the room, the door is instead an oval metal plate, with a large wheeled handle in its center. It takes the Bloodletter a few tries to figure it out, involving both pushing and pulling, but she eventually determines that spinning the wheel to the right causes it to swing open on a pair of rusty hinges. The passageway it reveals is small enough that Sweet has to duck down to step on through, but she at least doesn't seem to need to immediately begin fighting as she does so.
"This room appears to be much the same, although I don't see another doorway. No monsters...so far."
Taylim and Barlond cross over next, followed by the two nobles, and here Raylin notices that instead of fungoid pods littering the floor, this room has some sort of slime dripping from the ceiling in several spots, puddling in pools dotting the floor. Rather than the bright reds and greens of the dungeon's slime monsters though, this substance seems thinner, and of a sickly white coloration. For his part Raylin feels no need to get anywhere near it, but Sweet does step forward to give the nearest pool a sniff.
"It's...honey. Mixed with some foul substance I cannot identify. I would not recommend it as being safe for ingestion, my lady."
"I certainly wasn't about to try. Is that the only risk this room offers, though? It's rare for the dungeon to provide two harmless chambers in a row..." Just as Gilda says that, a noise emerges that makes her regret her words. It resembles the loud clicking sound an insect might make on a summer day...except mixed in with a form of very heavy breathing that no insect could produce.
Gaaahh-CHk-CHk-CHk-CHk-rrrrr...
Raylin quickly sweeps his bow across the room, looking for the source. "What in the heavens was that? I've never heard a monster produce such a sound! Did it come through the walls?"
"There! Up above, near the ceiling!" Barlond points out his target, and Raylin quickly spots what he found. Like with the metal door, there's a grate near the ceiling that seems rather out of place, a rectangular shape with four bars covering a hole in the wall. Having spotted one, Raylin's soon able to find three more on the walls, and two on the ceiling itself.
"There's tiny tunnels or something, up above! The monster must be using those to get around!"
Gilda frowns. "Surely those aren't how we're supposed to exit this chamber ourselves? Even if we were to climb to them, they're far too small."
"No, my lady." Having kept her own attention closer to ground level, Sweet points out a runic circle on the far side of the room. "There's a portal ring there. I don't like it, though. Crossing through it means the party needs to split up as we go, and we don't know what we're going into. It'd be a fine time for an ambush." As she says that, the sound echoes out a second time, this time from the other side of the room.
Gaaahh-CHk-CHk-CHk-CHk-rrrrr...
Raylin attempts to swallow his nervousness. "Perhaps we should wait for it to make its move, then, rather than allow it to attack us one at a time. I for one am in no rush, after all, and we can certainly - "
His statement is cut off when the chamber's lighting suddenly turns off. Or, perhaps worse, almost all of it does - except for a single broken mana crystal which enters a flashing, strobing effect, making everyone appear frozen in time each time the light hits his eyes. Everyone, including the horror which suddenly crashes out of the ceiling, reaching for the party's Paladin. The noise it makes is no more pleasant from up close, but it's countered by immediate shouting from all sides.
"There it is! Get it!"
"Watch - watch the tail! It - agh!"
"Are there more?! Keep an eye on the ceiling!"
"It - it's blood is burning! Careful of its wounds!"
As the beast lashes out, clawed limbs and mandibles striking at the Paladin and a long, thin tail knocking Gilda aside, each movement is captured in an instant of time by a flash of the light. For his part Raylin misses his first shot, having misjudged its movements during a moment of darkness, but even when the second arrow hits home he's unable to tell if it did any damage. Eventually though Taylim does manage to bring his mystical shield spell online, and the blue light it generates - while far from enough to illuminate the entire room - is at least enough to somewhat counteract the flickering of the light above.
Yet somehow, Raylin's brain doesn't seem to want to focus too much on what it is he's actually fighting. Panic grips him in a way he can't recall having felt in years, and even among the Masters of this party he gets the feeling he's not the only one. Sweet at least does quickly get to work, only to find that her Bloodletter skills may actually be working against her here - the more the monster bleeds, the more Barlond suffers as the fluid marks his exposed skin and begins to steam.
Eventually though, through the combined efforts of the team, the monster is brought to a halt and a light enchantment from Gilda allows them to get a proper look at what it was they were fighting. The basic body structure seems to be similar perhaps to a dragonfly, with some of the larger, thicker anatomy of a beetle in some places such as the head, as well as the black coloring of one. It doesn't have wings, but it does have six legs ending in claws designed for ripping, and its long tail ends in what Raylin suspects might be some sort of stinger. As he turns his focus to his party members, it's clear to see that Barlond got the worst of the ambush. Aside from a number of bad scratches - the sort the Sadist would probably be used to suffering - what appears to be acid burns also cover several large patches of skin.
After a few deep breaths, Gilda asks the question first. "What in the hells is this thing!?"
No one speaks up immediately, but Sweet does eventually offer a guess. "Perhaps...some sort of Horror, my lady. But modified, most likely. I've never heard of one whose blood was a weapon...I am also confused as to how a creature of this size entered through such a small passageway." Raylin looks up above, and indeed, the torn-off grate in the ceiling only seems large enough to fit a monster half the size of what they just fought. "The...the fear you may have felt is certainly a known trait of Horrors, however. A mental effect caused by looking upon it."
Raylin nods. "Right, well...seems the dungeon is certainly...expanding its bestiary, wouldn't you say?"
Gilda spends a long moment looking at the insectoid monster, and then at Barlond, busy pouring potions on his wound, before answering. "You know...on second thought, perhaps we could leave such explorations up to the professional Challengers. Don't you agree, Raylin?"
"...I'm sure they would be happy if we shared some of the glory of conquering a new floor with the other parties indeed, Gilda."
"Right then."
As Xenia watches the nobles turn around and leave, she snorts and utters a single unheard word. "Pussies."
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------------------------ DISCOUNT XENOMORPH - B+ - CAVERN HORROR/ACID SLIME |
