“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” She cried out over the alarm drilling into her ears as she wriggled and crawled to the wolf, its gargling breaths sending a fresh spear of ice into her chest with every passing second.

The horrific hunk of metal was still trying to crawl to them using its half-destroyed chin, as if it was intending to headbutt them to death, but she didn’t give a shit about the damned thing.

She had medical experience, the bare minimum, and her companion sounded like he - or she, was with both feet in the grave, ready to slide in. Her fingers scraped against blood-wet stone, and with the last dregs of her mana, she sent a weak pulse towards her companion’s head.

She felt more metal, nails and glass shards in its snout than flesh.

With a grunt and a heave, she grasped onto its shoulder, at rust-powdered, blood-slicked fur, and pulled. It barely moved the wolf. It wasn’t much bigger than a medium-sized dog, one of the less deformed ones, but it was much heavier, and much more limp, than she could deal with.

“Fuckfuckfuckfuck.” She hissed out in a rush through grit teeth, finding a less slick part of its fur, and pulled again, groaning in effort as her hand seemingly refused to hold onto the fur, her muscles refused to contract, weakness permuting her entire body. She could barely clench a fist.

She gave the wolf a mental apology, and nudged its head away with her own, putting her lips at the small puddle of blood that had dripped out of its snout, clumsily drinking and lapping at the stone, fully aware of the bubbles of air and spit mixed into the ichor.

Undignified or disgusting, she didn’t care, she needed Strength. The more time the wolf spent on its back, the harder it would be to breathe. She was amazed it hadn’t choked to death in the minute it took her to crawl towards it.

The boost of drinking blood was about half as mind-numbingly orgasmic as the other, odd version of blood it fed her, but it was enough. It felt enough.

She put her hand at the wolf’s shoulder, and pulled, using her right shoulder to dig into the stone for added friction, and after a few seconds of gritting her teeth and hissing out spit in effort, it finally rolled over, stomach first onto the stone.

And half on her shoulder. She quickly wriggled away from underneath it, and twisted to the left a little, reaching for its snout. She pulled it to the side, pressing the side of its snout against the stone instead of its jaw, and grasped onto its shredded jowls, pulling its jaws apart, letting the blood exiting its throat with every breath just trickle down onto the stone alongside that of its shredded mouth.

Then, she went to reach into its mouth, just to pull whatever bits she could pull out, and hesitated, a sudden nervousness filling her.

Part of her was mildly terrified. Her mental image of her companion was that of a hyper intelligent wolf that was rational and even kind enough to keep her around for some reason or another. A monster in nothing but categorization, in reality, a rational beast.

So feeling her companion suddenly snap into a frenzied monster shredding apart metal like a blender of claws and fur and gnashing teeth, an action much more intimate than even watching it happen, was a shock. It made her realize, once more, just how dangerous the creature she was helping was. It made her realize that maybe it was just keeping that legendary wolf-like aggression tampered down to use it on whatever bothered it.

And it once again made her come to the conclusion that she didn’t care, as long as its jaws weren’t snapping at her face.

With a steadying breath, she reached into its mouth, feeling with [Mana Touch] for the sharp bits that might be a pain for the wolf to remove, nails, glass shards, and the like.

Every time her fingers brushed against the wolf’s teeth, her heart leapt into her throat, but she continued still, carefully and steadily, ignoring the scrape of metal on stone as the golem slowly crawled towards them. It couldn’t do anything anyways, and her companion was more important.

Little tugs of telemancy and her deft, spidery fingers, and within a few minutes, she’d taken out most of the things that were embedded in its tongue and mouth, only some large pieces left within that she didn’t want to take out in fear of them causing more bleeding than the wolf could handle.

Her attention turned to the moss around them, tingling with mana. Her fingers reached for a tiny patch, barely perceptible but in her range, and her nails scraped it out of the stone, holding it in her bloodied hand for a moment.

She knew the basics of the sewers, a necessity to make money.

Where the air was clean and the moss was full of mana or just glowing for those without such senses, it was a good spot to harvest alchemy ingredients. She didn’t know how it worked, or why, as it wasn’t her field, but the rough explanation she was given was that some types of moss could take in mana and store it.

But she also knew that in emergencies, people used moss as a bandage. It sucked up liquid like nothing else, and despite its filthy surroundings, finding dirty moss was extremely rare. The thing was a natural at cleaning the filth of the dungeon.

At the very least, she knew that this moss was the cleanest thing for miles, and when it dried, it would soak up blood even better, so she gently stuck it into the shredded roof of the wolf’s mouth after taking out the last bits of metal and glass that she could find. If it helped, it helped, if it didn’t, no harm.

And she kept doing it. She lapped up fallen blood like a dog, scraped moss off the floor, and stuck it on top of the wolf’s injuries.

It was tedious, it took ages, but it was something to do as her mana slowly recovered. It was the only thing she really could do.

Thankfully, a combination of her Skills, the ‘Kindhearted’ trait, and the wolf’s blood made her mana recovery utterly ridiculous, so by the time she’d covered the holes on the wolf’s chest and mouth, both her mana and the wolf had seemingly recovered.

Its breaths stopped coming out with trickles of frothy blood, and its mutilated torso and hands closed up, the skin knitting back together, while her mana was already trickling back into her body from a full core.

She was still a bit concerned for the wolf, as it had bled almost half a bucket’s worth of blood. But she was not expecting it to get up anytime soon. And with her having drank a lot of said blood, she felt like she had more than enough ability and time to deal with the golem that caused all this.

At least she knew why this place was abandoned, whatever the facility’s purpose had been.

She hoped the poor saps who once worked here had gotten out before the golems fell under the Dungeon’s influence, and if not, that at least their untimely demise helped people understand why metal golems were illegal in the Dungeon.

The thing was still blaring the alarm, but she barely noticed anymore, her brain had gotten so used to it that it was basically just background noise at this point.

What she wanted was its core. It was powerful, and judging by how it was still active, its core was likely automatically charged by the ambient mana. It explained why it had been sitting here, dormant for however many years, just leeching off the moss’s mana to keep functioning.

If she could strip its core out of its metal bonds and just have the core crystal, she could probably sell it for a price that could restore… at least one of her eyes, with change left over for her to live off until she found somewhere to work.

Maybe she could even hold onto it and go to a golem maker to make her a personal one, which was an even more appealing idea. Expensive, but very appealing, especially considering her likely state once she got out of this place.

Even if the fact it had almost killed her companion made her blood boil and made her want to shove her hand on its head and cast [Sparkburst] until it melted to slag.

Actually… its core wasn’t in its head. Why not do both?

She took a steadying breath, and shuffled towards the accursed thing, which was slowly inching towards them by scraping its jaw against the rock, ignoring the crunching, dried up slime that was covering her from neck to thigh in favor of reaching the golem.

It wasn’t all that difficult. It had made surprising progress by slithering and scraping forward, at least from where it had been sitting on its back twenty feet away just an hour or so ago. She just had to reach forward and melt its head off before attempting to do the same to its chest to get the core out.

Then she realized just what kind of situation this was as she lifted her head to look straight at its own mutilated one with a small pulse of mana, and felt laughter bubble up in her chest, her limbs losing strength.

Two broken, forgotten slaves, staring at each other while wriggling on the ground like little worms just to kill each other, while a foot or two away, a wolf was just casually napping away life-threatening injuries. It was almost snoring due to all the blood in its throat, in fact.

It was like something out of a satirical theater play. It was utterly ridiculous.

She couldn’t help it. She let out an undignified ‘pffffffffft’, going limp as she burst out laughing.

“F-Fuck, this- this is- so fucking stu-hhhhhppppiiid…” She trailed off into a wheeze, a wide smile on her face as she laughed her heart out, grinding her forehead into the stone as her stomach convulsed, choking and coughing between bouts of hysterical laughter as she let the mirth of this utter nonsense wash over her.

She could feel her blood rushing to her face as the seconds passed, her weak lungs growing sore and she continued laughing and giggling between gasps and wheezes, her cheeks growing sore from the wide smile on her face.

By the time the tickling mirth in her lungs retreated, she could barely breathe, her lungs feeling as if they’d been scraped raw with sandpaper.

“Aaah, that- that was great.” She sighed out with a little cough, her heart and mood feeling a thousand tons lighter.

Laughing was a very cleansing experience.

But she still didn’t forget feeling the golem’s bladed fingers slam into her companion’s chest, the mana crawling over the metal almost feeling like she was holding its metal fist as it did so.

She barely did anything during that fight to help. Sure, if she stopped to think about it, she might have helped, but in reality, she didn’t feel like she’d done anything useful.

Her smile vanished, and she extended a hand, clamping down on the back of the golem’s neck.

She held the spell, compressed the burst to be as short and violent as possible.

“[Sparkburst].” She breathed out, her tone frigid, and felt the golem try to twist and crumple its neck into its shoulders with a hiss of superheated steam as the crackling of sparks momentarily drowned out the blaring alarm.

Patching up a lung was a lot harder than it had first assumed.

Mostly because it couldn’t for the life of it keep all five of the jagged holes within its left one truly closed. It just didn’t have the mental capacity, and the brain damage did not help whatsoever. It hadn’t been as close to death as it had thought, thanks to its Endurance, it assumed, but it was still closer to it than it felt comfortable with, unable to focus and dizzy even in its own Skill.

It took almost an entire hour to fix its lung. Fixing the other injuries was easy so it left those for later besides stopping the bleeding, and to fix the brain damage, it simply considered how its brain was during the last time it took a nap, and made the Skill return it to that state.

It was expecting some terrible side effects, like memory loss, or maybe something in its chemical receptors messing up, but nothing like that happened.

And now that it was sure it wasn’t about to die, it forced itself awake, hearing the human still shooting off sparks and talking to herself- or the golem, for whatever reason.

It can’t be that hard to fight a golem without limbs, right?

It wasn’t entirely healed, not even close. The only thing that had really healed was its mind and lung. Its arms were still unusable and its shoulder muscles were still torn.

But just for safety’s sake, it squeezed its adrenaline sack just a tiny bit, mildly wary of it now, and shook itself awake. It forced its eyes open and flared its antennae, using both its senses to drink in the bizarre scene of the human shooting sparks into a wriggling torso of metal, angrily hissing at it whenever a burst of steam would burn her hand.

It wanted to do nothing more than just lay there and drink in this entirely different world before its eyes, with orange and green, but it felt like it was put through a wringer, so it briefly flicked its eyes to their surroundings, getting ready to jump back to sleep.

All around the wolf and its human was an utter mess of black, smoking and deformed little bits of metal tubes, wires, plates-

And what was in its mouth?

It moved its tongue, and immediately curled its lips up in distaste, hurriedly trying to unstick the strange, hard but organic-feeling bits out of its aching wounds, prodding and pushing them off.

Then it paused.

It hadn’t experimented much with the [Devourer] Skill. It knew it accepted organic material as food. Things that came from living beings.

And this weird, wet, smooth… fur-like thing in its mouth, attached to some sort of… dirt-like base, felt organic, even if it wasn’t alive whatsoever. It felt like that little thing it had seen down next to the burning rivers. Those things moved, right? So this was... likely kind-of-alive?

With a bit of trepidation, it used its half-working, mangled tongue to shove the weird material into its throat, and swallow.

Worst case scenario, its Skill just didn’t acknowledge it, and it would have to force it out of its stomach by retching. Forcefully.

It turned its attention back to the human and the wriggling torso trying to resist being melted apart as the human aggressively tried to dig into the wound its own fingers had made, and after confirming that she indeed, did not need help, and that its body still hurt, despite the thin layer of skin covering its wounds, it squeezed its ‘sleep’ sack, and quickly returned to its rest.

You have progressed on your Path.

[Hound of The Keeper] Level 17 → Level 18

Attribute Point Available: 1

-Attributes:

Strength ( +1 )

Speed ( +1 )

Dexterity ( +0 )

Endurance ( +7 )

Perception ( +1 )

Resolve ( +1 )

Intelligence ( +5 )

Soul ( +1 )

It was mildly tempted to put the point in Dexterity just to get rid of that zero, but it refrained, and put it on the only Attribute that had consistently saved its life.

Endurance ( +8 )

-Acquired Skills:

You have gained the Skill [Maddened Frenzy - Level 1]

-[Restful Awareness] has Leveled Up. Level 16 → Level 18

-[Pain Resistance] has Leveled Up. Level 19 → Level 21

-[Tough Skin] has Leveled Up. Level 5 → Level 7

After another second of waiting, it realized that that was it.

Frankly, it had been expecting a little more considering it had been rather close to death, but it couldn’t really complain.

Focusing on its new Skill however, definitely made it want to complain. A massive Attribute boost to everything, in exchange for a complete loss of reason and thought. It didn’t even know if it would be dodging or blocking hits in that state, that’s all the symbols told it. It assumed it would be much like that adrenaline overdose episode it had with the golem, but worse.

Would it even be able to activate the Skill without shredding the human to pieces? Likely not.

It sounded like another ‘absolute last resort’ type of Skill. Better than nothing, but it would have much preferred something that it could use regularly. With a mental sigh, it dismissed the symbols.

When it moved past the symbols to start fixing itself however, it was very pleasantly surprised to see that the Skill had actually recognized the thing it’d eaten, and had broken it down. Even though it seemed like the dirt had just… vanished.

Unfortunately, the Skill had only given the wolf some rather... surface level knowledge. It knew what it was doing and the rough process, but not the specifics. Thankfully, the wolf didn’t need the specifics.

It was apparently a ‘plant’, called ‘Elfin-gold moss’.

And it was the single most efficient thing it had ever seen.

Its feeding cycle was incredible. It could somehow absorb mana through the air, then store mana into some complex, unique cells it had, and then those cells would use the mana as a power source, mix with some enzyme and create a chemical reaction that would produce light energy within its microscopic leaves, making them glow.

Then that light would in turn power its secondary feeding mechanism, where it would take something called ‘carbon dioxide’ out of the air, do… some process it couldn’t quite understand with that chemical and its own light, and produce food that way.

It was effectively absorbing water and mana from its surroundings to produce its own food and grow, an infinite energy and food source.

Of course, the wolf immediately considered how to put this on itself. It was a low maintenance way to supplement its essence storage by reducing how much essence it was spending on keeping itself well-fed, instead passively feeding itself by just… existing.

Additionally, if it became a part of its body… would that mean that it would have access to the mana this moss stored?

It hoped so, even if it didn’t have much to spend that mana on.

The easiest and least dangerous way to implement this was to graft the moss onto the bottom half of its body, as it didn’t have any of the important organs it needed to keep functioning, so getting rid of its furry armor for glowing moss would be a very acceptable change.

After delivering the human back to her pack, and starting to hunt humans and whatever else it could get its claws on, it could just cover the glow up with [Echoes of Oblivion].

Another interesting point was that this moss was practically invincible to a lot of chemicals. It had a sort of… immune system of its own. It was more compact, and simpler, more of a targeting system really, but more than effective enough in dealing with anything harmful.

It would simply identify things that were detrimental to itself, and slowly… somehow program any new mana storage cells it made to react to said chemicals by spending all their energy to obliterate the molecules. It was exchanging energy and food for immunity that way, so at the start, it could be overwhelmed, but after a certain point, it could be a practically invincible ‘plant’.

Then, this sort of… immune system library that the plant would make, would be passed down to its reproductive system and passed down to its ‘children’, slowly ending up with an entire colony of moss that was immune to a bunch of chemicals from the start.

Actually, that wasn’t just interesting.

It slowly realized the actual implication of this, its tail starting to hesitantly wag as it considered what it could actually do if it could learn how to recreate these mana-storage cells and that specialized immune system.

They could be programmed to attack specific molecules, which it assumed they did with frightening capability. They could just… passively collect mana, with equally incredible capability.

If it could add these cells to itself, its own flesh and blood and bones, or just… its bloodstream alone, how much more mana could it have, without doing anything? If the genetic information in the moss’ individual pieces would be passed down to the wolf, how many of those corrosive chemicals in the burning rivers could it just casually ignore?

It didn’t have enough information to just throw that moss onto itself, half the specifics just outright missing. If it added the moss to itself right now it, it would probably do little more than be a leech for its blood. But it was in a long, giant room full of moss. It had more than enough.

It quickly turned its attention back to fixing itself, wanting to hurry the process along as much as it could, despite its heavily diminished essence storage.

She went limp, body, mind and core all utterly exhausted, the golem’s smoking crystal clutched tight between her burnt fingers.

It had taken her almost two hours of nonstop [Sparkburst] casts, and a headache-inducing amount of effort in control, prying away molten bits of metal so she could dig deeper, push away the steam bursts, and make sure nothing exploded in her face, but she managed it.

Despite her rather shredded gambeson-like shirt, her so-far empty pockets had been left relatively untouched, so she quickly shoved the crystal into her left pocket, pressing the latch down until she heard a click.

And now, she could finally relax, without the constant screaming of an alarm digging into her ears.

She went to sleep to the sound of teeth scraping at stone, and smiled.

The moss thing didn’t taste very well.

And it also didn’t give much, if any, essence.

Still, this entire area was covered in it, so the wolf spent a healthy hour or two simply scraping bits off the walls and eating them. Partly because it just really wanted to keep looking at them, in all honesty. It could have simply stopped after a couple batches.

Curiosity stalled it even more when it trundled over to the human with its single functioning arm, its other one clutched to its chest, and bent down closely to stare at her, at all the million little wondrous shades of color in her… everything.

Though the light yellow-green glow that provided the light probably changed the way the colors looked, at least a little.

Her skin color, despite the muck and grime on her face, seemed to be something like… a light yellow-’pink’, like a very diluted version of red. Her hair was an odd brown mixed in with a little bit of… orange? Red maybe? Her coverings were a mixture of black-brown filth and light-brown cloth.

There was something in her pocket utterly exuding mana, and it was curious, but it simply didn’t care enough to investigate, too invested in noticing all the little colors.

And not just that.

Everything was so much sharper.

It felt like it had been looking through a foggy piece of colored glass its entire life, and was only now seeing the real world hiding just behind it.

It felt just about ready to swing the human on its back and run to the damn surface, now that it felt a likely way out. Instead, it nestled into the human’s side and fell asleep. Mostly because its injuries were still in the process of healing, but also to see what it had learned about the moss.

The moss it had consumed was split apart into a thousand different, tiny little layers.

It learned of photosynthesis, of how plant cell walls were constructed of layers of long, linear ‘polymer’ microfibers made of something called ‘cellulose’, although it couldn’t quite understand what that cellulose thing was.

What it knew was that these cell walls were very strong.

Cellulose and xylan, some sort of natural ‘polymers’, were the base.

‘Xylan’ was a long, winding polymer with so-called ‘decorations’ of other sugars and molecules attached, and the ‘cellulose’ induced ‘xylan’ to untwist itself and straighten out, allowing it to attach itself to the ‘cellulose’ molecule. It then acted as a kind of ‘glue’ that could protect ‘cellulose’ or bind the molecules together, making very strong structures, at least when looking at them at the absolute closest level the wolf could get.

Another important bit was something called 'lignin'. Lignin was... a bunch of complex organic 'polymers' that were key structural materials in the support tissues of 'plants'. Lignins seemed to be particularly important in the formation of strong cell walls, because they added rigidity and didn't rot easily.

These cell walls and their supportive structures were much stronger than animal cell membranes, a bit more rigid and far less stretchy, but they were also mildly incompatible.

It wasn’t sure what it could do with these, honestly, so it took a very long moment to think.

The first thing it came up with was to patch up the gaps in its ribcage by creating a plate of cellulose microfibrils right behind the rib bones, a fairly tightly woven one, but just enough so that it would expand with its ribcage and not impede its breathing while also being protective.

In short, a plate, but bendy.

Thinking of different scenarios and possible complications was always the most annoying part of the process, and it was no different this time. It considered various movements, how much space it had in its chest, and dozens other little possibilities, but found no reason not to add this, so it did.

Mentally crafting a thick but flexible wall of said microfibrils, was an absolute chore. It was like trying to make an anthill by picking up individual grains of dirt. Just making a tiny portion of it was annoying, but thankfully, as soon as it had made that little portion, it just told [Devourer] to upsize it, saving it a few hours of pointless frustration.

Keeping it ‘fueled’ was also a very easy thing to do, as the Skill just… automatically did that, because these things were growing out of its own body and were thus attached to it.

It really loved how simple its Skill made things. Well, almost simple. Because it still didn’t know why it refused to fuel the micro-tendons in its bones the same way. It was just a strange distinction and it didn’t know why it was happening. So it just let it go. What’s done is done.

Then, it considered other places to put this… almost plate-like construct.

Its neck wouldn’t work, because its neck was extremely mobile and what it had made was a little too rigid to not impede that.

So it thought about making something similar but more complex. It made thin, compact strips of these microfibrils, braided them around and between each other in a grid-like pattern with some points of fusion, and then mentally bent them around to see how this improvised, inner armor would work.

The answer was very well. It was very flexible, and sticking it over its neck muscles, below the skin, was not very difficult.

It grew a little excited as the actual possibilities of this were fully revealed. It was flexible armor, under its skin. A third layer of it. It would have its fur, then its skin, then the braided 'plant' armor it had made. Or, stolen, rather.

It wouldn’t even have to change anything significant because it could put the armor under or in the layer of fat around its body, meaning that its skin would still stick to its body properly.

It had gone through almost half of its essence storage since falling down here however, so it hesitated to just… put this little armor design it had made all over its body. It quickly checked how much every bit of this structure took out of its essence storage…

And it was actually way more expensive than it thought it would be. Maybe because it was so far distant from its own biology? It wasn’t sure, but every six-inch cubic strip of this armor design took about as much essence as it took to fix its left arm’s injuries and replace all the lost flesh.

In other words, way too much.

With a heavy heart, it put the armor only on its vitals. A slightly loose cylinder around its neck, double layered at the bottom of its neck to protect its jugular and the arteries there, and the plates it had already put inside its ribcage.

Then, it turned to the rest of the knowledge it had gained.

And the wolf instructed its body on how to make these mana-cells, how to deliver them to every bit of itself it could reach. In its skin, its bones, its marrow, its blood supply.

It looked into dozens of incomprehensible bonds of substances and poisons, and took the moss’s immune system, integrated it into its own and told it to use the mana cells to eradicate the poisons it had categorized as harmful, only if they exceeded the default levels of them it already had in its body.

It cannibalized the fur on its abdomen, hips, hind legs and tail, and replaced it with the moss, fiddling around with its roots to make them a little more organic, to make them be a part of its body a little better.

It knew that the moss would change color overtime because of what it was feeding on, but it didn’t care too much. It would be fun to see the moss change its glow from yellow-green to blood-red.

Making the moss turn off its natural inclination towards reproduction and growth was also surprisingly easy, and without those processes taking up energy, it would only help the wolf even more.

Most of the work, in truth, was done by its Skill. The wolf gave directions with as much specification as it could, thought about what it wanted, nudged it along, and [Devourer] did the rest.

With its changes finished, it looked into how much food the moss would be passively producing for it, and was just slightly disappointed to see that it was about the equivalent of... maybe one or maybe two rat's worth of food?

Considering its ‘daily’ essence intake for nutrition and growth was about six to seven rats, that wasn’t a whole lot, but it was a lot more than a plant like that would be creating for itself if not connected to the wolf. It had, realistically speaking, been expecting maybe half that amount. In fact, that amount could probably go up, assuming the moss was impacted by the environment.

The place it was currently in was probably sucked dry of this ‘carbon dioxide’ thing due to the giant moss colony peppered around the room, so when it went outside, it assumed the moss's output would increase as well.

And even if its caloric output didn't go up when the wolf left this place, it was still a good supplement to its essence storage for doing absolutely nothing. The fact that the moss was heavier was a slight negative, but it also helped its balance, considering all the extra material on its upper body.

And it would have pretty lights to stare at whenever it wanted.

As for the mana cells...

It was ridiculous. It didn't have any way to quantify, or be certain of the numbers except a very vague feeling, but the added mana storage was incredible. It felt like it would be gaining multiple times its original mana resources once the changes finalized. Quadruple? Maybe even quintuple? And if it needed even more mana, it could just make its body make more of these cells, just like that.

It was just... it was amazing.

So yes, all in all, it was extremely satisfied.

Its sleep was long, relaxing, and triumphant, but eventually, it shook itself awake. Its changes and regenerative processes were only just starting, really, but it wanted to move out, and quickly. It forced itself upright, put the human on its back again after a minute or two of grumbling at each other, and trotted with careful steps across the bridge, eager to get to the surface.

The slowly receding hair on the bottom half of its body made it feel quite a bit lighter, but it didn't let itself be fooled by it, moving carefully and steadily.

The drop was only about twenty feet, but it was still only half-healed, so it wasn’t in the mood for risks. Its fingers only barely bent, and the tickling sensation of muscles knitting together and new ones being grown made its nerves act up and not respond properly.

Thankfully, nothing of note happened, and the wolf stepped off the grated, rusty iron with a mental exhale of relief, and walked to the end of the stone hallway, which quickly opened into a gargantuan, cylindrical room, about a hundred and fifty feet wide. The sound of rushing water filled the air with a strange, calming atmosphere.

The walls went up and down far further than its vibrations could feel, and in the center was a circular staircase, its center pillar a hollow platform, surrounded by rusted stairs. Bridges extended out of the stairs, at seemingly random intervals, giving off the impression of a winding spiderweb as the wolf craned its head upwards to drink in the size of everything.

From somewhere up above, a steady stream of water fell, turning to mist as it continued its fall, breaking and dripping off bridges and support rods and wires, covering everything in filthy-smelling sewer water, the soft lights from below gradually painting the pale mist that descended down into a beautiful emerald-yellow.

It lowered its head after a couple moments to look at the flooded depths below, its eyes getting lost in the glowing waters, the mushrooms, the moss.

It was all so new and beautiful.

The wolf paused for a moment, a profound sense of peace filling its mind as it stared at the dark shapes, big and small, moving around underneath the glowing water, leaving behind trails of slowly dissipating green-yellow light. Its eyes roamed the walls, covered in moss and buzzing insects that seemed a little too big for comfort. Its ears twitched to follow the relaxing ambience of buzzing and falling water, its nostrils flared as it inhaled the air, an odd mix of sewer stench and the cleanest air it had ever smelled.

And it stood there, until it decided to sit, its shoulders slackening, and its eyes turning half-lidded, calmly roaming its environment.

There was no reason to rush towards the surface. It had plenty of essence left.

It could… it could take a break to enjoy itself, right?

It had earned one, it felt like.

-

(If you are reading this story on any website that isn’t RoyalRoad. com or Scribblehub. com, you are reading stolen content from free sites that run no intrusive or obnoxious advertisements. Just google the story name with one of those websites next to it and you'll get to my story on the sites it was meant to be hosted on.)