Bad baby! I need that to kill you!

Milo frantically activated Fetch Book and hauled the book out of the baby’s maw at max power. The rope tied around the book caught on a tooth on its way out, but the skill won out, ripping the tooth sideways. The tooth still clung to the baby’s gums, but it bled and dangled loosely. Predictably, the baby screamed. There was no cavern-shaking this time, however. Perhaps the ability was on cooldown or something. It immediately picked up another dingo and began chomping on it, which struck Milo as a strange impulse for a creature that had just experienced dental trauma.

The book returned to Milo. He looked it over anxiously while the baby was occupied once more with eating. He did his best to ignore the disgusting mix of baby slobber and dingo blood that his book had picked up in its brief sojourn inside the baby’s mouth.

His book had definitely seen better days. The baby was capable of chomping a dog in half; his book was tough, but not tough enough to shrug off that kind of power. There were holes straight through the wool blanket and deep gouges into the book itself. One of the rubber exercise bands had ripped apart. Fluid was now able to seep through the cover and would eventually saturate the pages, though Milo was unable to open up the book and see the extent of the damage since it was still wrapped up. The rope had held.

Not good, all in all, but also not as bad as it could have been. It was still functioning as a book as far as Fetch Book was concerned, but some of the information it held had certainly been destroyed. Milo wondered briefly if the skill that copied books, Bane of the Bookstore, would create a copy with all of the information intact, or if there would be gaps that matched the damage the original had sustained.

“How bad is it?” asked Backlebutt.

Milo looked up. He’d almost forgotten the man was standing next to him. “Not terrible,” he said. “I can still use it as a weapon.”

Backlebutt nodded. “Good. Do you have a plan for what to try next? I don’t think hitting it hard will work. Too big. Need to make it bleed, maybe. Cut it.”

“I think you’re right. I’m not sure how, though. And did you see its eyes? I thought I blinded it.”

“Look,” Backlebutt said, pointing at the baby.

Milo looked. The baby had finished its latest dingo and was grinning at them toothily. Milo squinted at it, realizing that all of its teeth looked perfect now.

“It’s healing,” he realized.

“I believe it happens when it eats,” Backlebutt said.

“I think you’re right.”

The question was what to do about it. There were a lot of dead dingos. Milo didn’t have enough firepower to kill it before it had a chance to heal.

“It might work in our favor. It doesn’t give chase. See?” Backlebutt observed. “It’s happy to stay by the food, where it can heal...hm.”

The baby had chosen that moment to finally start crawling toward them, making an immediate liar out of Backlebutt. It was eating up the distance distressingly fast.

The baby didn’t look particularly quick, but it was able to cover a lot of ground simply because of how big it was. It would be upon them in less than ten seconds. Milo stood frozen in indecision for a split second before deciding on a course of action.

He activated Fetch Book again, levitating his textbook in front of himself.

“You should probably start getting away in case this doesn’t work,” he told Backlebutt.

“What are you going to do?”

Instead of answering, Milo blasted the book toward the baby, focusing on his aim. He was trying to hit its eyes again. It had worked before, he reasoned, and now it was away from its ready supply of healing potions. The baby was moving now, so it was significantly harder to hit than last time. Plus, it was paying a lot more attention than when he had attacked it initially.

The baby saw the book coming at its face. Having learned from the previous encounters, it stopped, closing its eyes and lowering its head just in time. The book bounced off its nearly-bald cranium.

That was fine, though. It was no longer barreling toward them, which was most of what he was trying to accomplish.

Milo began harassing it. He jammed the book into its ear, quickly yanking it back out again when the baby jerked a hand up to swat at the annoyance. He brought it around to the other ear, giving it the same treatment, then jabbed it into the baby’s side as hard as he could. It flinched away, rolling onto the opposite side from the one he’d hit. There was a slight tremor as it hit the ground.

The baby’s new position gave him the opportunity he was looking for. It was a slightly awkward angle, but with its face no longer tucked against the floor he could start targeting the eyes again. He had to take several tries at it while also making sure to dodge the baby’s hands, which were swatting the air in front of its face to ward off the book, but he was able to poke both of its eyes out again before Fetch Book expired.

The baby wailed, climbing to its knees and heading back to the dingos. It bumped into the wall on its right, turned, overcorrected, hit a stalagmite, and turned again before stumbling upon its first dingo. It greedily crammed it into its mouth.

“Nine mana now,” Milo said, turning to Backlebutt. The man had stayed to watch rather than taking Milo’s suggestion.

Whatever, his life.

Backlebutt absorbed that information before saying, “You need to kill it.”

Milo nodded. It sounded obvious, but he knew there was a deeper meaning behind Backlebutt’s simple words. At the rate he was going through mana, he was going to run out of it before the baby ran out of dingos.

“Any ideas?” Milo asked. “I’ve thought of sending my book down its...past its mouth, inside its body, but I’m worried the...stuff inside its stomach will...make the book not be. Eat away at it.” He was missing the words for ‘throat’, ‘acid’, and ‘dissolve’, but the message came across.

Backlebutt nodded. “What about the (brain)?”

“The what?”

“Inside its head,” he explained.

“Oh. My book won’t fit through the eye hole.”

Backlebutt frowned contemplatively. “Hm. So if it were smaller, you think you could (penetrate) inside?”

“...Yes. But I don’t think I want to cut my book apart. I don’t think I can, even.”

“Not that one. That one,” he said, pointing at Milo’s binder on the ground.

Oh. That could totally work. Milo hadn’t even considered it. The idea of mutilating his weapons to make them more effective hadn’t remotely been in his idea space. But it should have been.

Come on Milo, you can munchkin better than that.

There was only one issue with the plan that he could think of. He briefly considered the single page jammed through the rings, giving the binder its status as a book. Would it hold long enough to scramble the baby’s brains?

...Probably.

“You’re a…” genius “...very smart man. You have a knife—can you cut it down to size while I keep the baby away?”

Backlebutt nodded, already drawing his knife.

“Two things, before you start. All those other...white things in there need to go through the...metal things, like the one white thing. It will make the book stronger. And don’t cut in in half. Cut it so that one piece is...one in three, the other two in three. Understand?”

It was a three ring binder, so it didn’t make a lot of sense to do even halves.

Backlebutt opened the binder, examining it.

“Yes,” he said simply. “And these are called (papers).”

“Good.” Milo left him to it, turning his attention to the baby.

It had finished another dingo, and its eyes had recovered for the second time in the battle. Now it was sitting facing Milo and Backlebutt. Milo wondered what was going through its head. If anything was going through its head. It was smart enough to know that dingos would heal it. Either that, or it just did it instinctually. Could it think? Plan?

What is it even doing right now?

It was just sitting there, facing them. It was making an odd face, as if it was exerting effort. It grunted, and its heels lifted off the ground just a little bit.

What is it...oh god.

-

You are overcome with noxious fumes.

-

All those dingos it was eating had to go somewhere. Apparently the baby had been filling its diaper. Milo staggered, reeling at the incomprehensibly awful smell. His mind blanked for a second. Behind him, he heard a clattering sound. Backlebutt’s knife, falling to the ground.

Milo vomited. Backlebutt vomited. Milo had the presence of mind to hope that Backlebutt had missed the binder with his puke before he was retching again. After his third heave, he felt the floor rumble beneath him and looked up.

The baby was on the move, once again heading their way.

Futhermucker.

Holding his sleeve over his face and doing his best to breathe as little as possible, Milo spent another mana on Fetch Book, blasting his textbook at the baby again. Its eyes widened when it saw the book coming and it ducked down again, pressing its face into the floor. This time, it wouldn’t budge no matter what Milo did to it. It tolerated Milo jabbing it in the ribs with only some squirming and it flailed blindly when Milo went for its ears again, but it refused to lift its head.

“It’s learning,” he called over his shoulder. He regretted it, as opening his mouth gave the terrific stench another avenue of attack. It filled his mouth the nauseating taste of...he couldn’t even…

It’s like licking cat shit.

He fought the urge to vomit again.

“How’s...hyup...the book?”

“Almost done,” Backlebutt said in an admirably even tone.

“Good,” Milo said. He drew his book back to himself before Fetch Book’s time ran out. The baby stayed in its face-down position for quite a while before finally peeking up, looking around warily. When it didn’t see the book anywhere, it cautiously started heading toward Milo and Backlebutt once more.

“Here,” Backlebutt said.

Milo glanced back to see Backlebutt offering him both pieces of binder, each of them sporting a jagged edge where he’d made his cut. The man’s face was paler than usual—undoubtedly a result of the smell.

Not bothering to grab them physically, Milo activated his Skill again and grasped them with his mind, turning back to face the giant baby. It was still moving slowly, apparently suspicious that the book could make a reappearance any moment.

Smart baby.

Rather than try with the binder just yet, Milo lifted the textbook back into the air, waving it threateningly in front of the baby. It hunkered down immediately. Milo then sent the book straight into its right ear, pressing in hard and wiggling it around, pulling out just a little, then jamming it in hard again. The baby darted up with its hand, trapping the book with its hand. Milo pressed hard against its palm, and the baby immediately closed its fingers around the book in an unyielding fist. It sat up, shaking the fist around and grinning in triumph.

Peek-a-boo.

Milo slammed in with both of the binder pieces that he’d held in wait for just this moment, one headed for each eye. They had a much slimmer profile edge-on than the textbook did, and the baby didn’t see them coming in time to react. The bigger of the two caught on the edge of the eye socket, failing to go in, but the smaller one cleaved in like the head of an axe through a rotten watermelon, disappearing deep inside its eye. Milo held onto the form of the binder in his mind like he did when he sat on it, maintaining its sharp wedge shape. The baby cried out in panic and pain. Milo kept pushing until its screaming abruptly cut off.

It toppled, slumping onto its side with a resounding thud. And just like that, it was dead.

-

Congratulations! You have slain The Baby Who Eats Dingos, level 6. By slaying a Boss, you have earned 3x experience for a total of 90 experience.

Congratulations! You have completed the first level of the Descent. Please choose a reward:

-1 Status Enhancement

-1 Modifier Point

-Mystery Prize

-Exit Descent

-

...a freaking mystery prize?!