The scent-taste of darkwood and glow-caps, intermingling with a variety of other scent-tastes that I had never encountered, only grew stronger as we grew closer to the Lesser Core. Yet, unlike the tantalizing scent-taste of the Core itself, which was more the flavor of its mana than anything actually physical, worming its way into my mind and constantly pushing at my thoughts, these new scent-tastes were quite real.

My Coreless seemed to notice it as well. Will, who had taken the lead somewhere along the way, rose one hand high. The others quickly stopped, coming to a quiet halt; only a light scuffing of heavy feet and clinking ore-flesh broke the silence.

They gathered closer, beginning to speak in hushed hisses that did little more than scrape at the edges of my hearing.

“Seems like the Nature Core might still be around; either that, or it managed to survive long enough that the scent of the overgrowth is still this strong. Either way, we’ll need to move even more carefully from here on out. With any luck, it’ll still be confined to the islands of Verdant Grove, but don’t rely on that. It’s possible that it might have managed to bridge the gap and begun to spread further. Keep an eye out and watch your step. Prune anything that looks like it might have grown enough for the Core to begin to mutate as we go. We’ll stop if anything looks particularly dangerous,” Will said.

The distracting scent-taste around us caught my attention again as he spoke; in a way, I was excited by it all. It had been a surprisingly long time since I had been able to gain any new Traits, as most of our recent battles had been against Tiamat’s disgusting creations.

Even more, the impression I had of this Core made me think that there wouldn’t be an extreme risk of mistaking one of Tiamat’s bad-things with its own. It tasted like growing things, like wall-roots, glow-caps, and more. Nothing that reminded me of Tiamat at all. I had a feeling that, even if she could make similar bad-things, they wouldn’t have the mobility to be able to travel this far from her. Not like the bad-things that had already found me, and even those seemed to be falling apart by the time they moved so far away from her. It had been an annoyance, the idea that I’d have to carefully watch what I chose to devour; the thought that I would be free of that for a short time was more than a little relieving.

The scuffing of ore-flesh against stone pulled me from my thoughts, and I noticed that my Coreless had taken up different positions. While Will stayed near the front, just as he had been before, he had pulled the hunk of ore-flesh from its resting place on his back. Its giant mass nearly scraped against the ground as he walked, held slightly before him as he walked.

Needle had taken up a position near the back after reattaching the threads of her needle-spitter, forcing it to bend into the shape that it took during battle, while The Unrepentant One followed directly behind her. Meanwhile, the-female-who-was-not-Needle and the newest member of our group moved with careful steps at Will’s heels.

The silence only grew as they moved, with only the sounds of their breaths and the occasional scuff against stone to break it. Every once in a while, the large-tunnel would be intersected by other, smaller tunnels. Even then, my Coreless didn’t speak. Instead, they just made signs and gestures at one another with their free hands before checking for possible bad-things that might otherwise come out of the paths behind them.

Despite the measured, slow pace, the scent-taste of the Lesser Core ahead of us was steadily growing stronger. It made me want to hiss in anticipation, but I pushed down the urge. Silence was good. I would keep it.

The lights in the large-tunnel gradually became brighter as we walked; glow-caps became more and more abundant, bursting with a degree of life that I had only ever seen around pools of mana-water.

It only became more pronounced as we came closer to the Lesser Core. Wall-roots began to snake from the walls, peeking out from their places within the wall-cracks in great numbers. My Coreless stared at them warily as we walked, simmering with [apprehension]. Occasionally, one of them would advance on a particularly large wall-root or glow-cap, mercilessly slicing through the overgrown flesh.

Most times, nothing happened. My Coreless’ chosen victims toppled to the ground with no resistance. Sometimes, though…sometimes it seemed like their victims tried to move - and I would have been almost willing to swear to the Great Core that other wall-roots further down the line would shift as well. They would twitch slightly, just as the ore-flesh sliced through plant-flesh. Only slightly, and I couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t a trick of the light. Either way, I made sure to keep an eye on them as well after that.

Just in case.

I wasn’t imagining a living wall-root pulling me away from my Coreless and suffocating me within a wall-crack or anything like that, but it wouldn’t be fair to have my Coreless do all the work. They’d been doing well recently; it was only right to reward that.

I pulled a little at my light reservoirs, matching myself to the ore-flesh that covered not-Needle’s shoulder. If the Lesser Core’s wall-root bad-things - that I was pretty sure existed - had any way of actually seeing, I’d see them first.

It did earn me a stare or two from the-female-who-was-not-Needle for a few moments, along with a brief spike of [concern] followed by [amusement]. I eventually let myself revert back when I realized even living wall-roots probably don’t have eyes.

A few brief scratches against my head-scales by not-Needle’s increasingly useful fingers later, and I began to feel a little better. She must have appreciated me keeping her safe from the wall-roots and wanted to show that appreciation. I chose not to check her [Little Guardian’s Totem] to confirm that. I was just too busy keeping my eyes on the wall-roots-that-might-be-bad-things.

Like that, we walked. I watched. Walk, walk, watch watch. Slice, twitch, walk, watch. Something jerked in the corner of my eye; I peered in its direction, trying to burrow my vision through the darkness of the wall-crack where the movement had come from. I caught a flash of movement. Probably.

Okay, maybe I was a bit worried.

I had always had the wall-cracks as a place of safety; somewhere that I could hide away in the times when the world became too dangerous for me. Now, with the possibly-living-wall-roots that slithered through those same cracks, that sense of safety had been stolen from me. I didn’t know that they were dangerous. Even now, with my Coreless slicing through the occasional larger growths, there was no real fight.

Still, I couldn’t help but imagine a bundle of wall-roots pulling me into the darkness and strangling the breath from my lungs, my Coreless unable to reach me. My vision would go dark despite the brightness of the glow-caps that surrounded us, and this life would be ripped away from me. It would become a false-life, something that never truly was.

I could do it all again, repeat the same actions and hope for the same result. Maybe. There were too many; I couldn’t possibly remember them all.

In the end, a death here might very well mean the death of the [Little Guardian].

That wasn’t a death that I could afford.

With that in mind, I was more nervous than usual as we moved closer to the Lesser Core, my worries mixing with my instinctual anticipation in a noxious slurry of emotion. I curled up slightly, bringing my tail around and clamping down.

My Coreless kept walking. With every step, it seemed like the World Dungeon was growing brighter, more vibrant. Wall-roots slithered out from the many wall-cracks, larger than ever before - and now, some of them were definitely twitching. A few occasionally reached out in blind grasps, as if unsure where we were. Then again, they didn’t have eyes. It was probably just the vibrations of our passage that brought them to life.

The questing roots were lopped off, my Coreless unwilling to leave them behind us.

Some of the larger glow-caps suffered a similar fate, after they began to flare their lights bright enough to sear at my eyes. Just as with the wall-roots, only a few were actually alive. They died before I would have even had the chance to reach them.

I let my Coreless keep walking without devouring any of them. I had a feeling that the wall-roots were closer to limbs than the full bodies of bad-things; eating just the pieces that my Coreless lopped off would be unlikely to give me a Trait. Meanwhile, the glow-caps probably could have. Still, I didn’t think that it would be an entirely useful one. I could already blind things with [Illusion Spark], and I didn’t want to risk that the Trait would just make me constantly glow.

It was already hard enough to conceal the glow of my ore-flesh when I needed to; I didn’t want a Trait that constantly tried to catch the attention of nearby bad-things. The risk just didn’t seem worth it.

Maybe if I got a new checkpoint, I could test it out.

The lights of the glow-caps grew further as we turned a final bend, and I caught a glimpse of the Lesser Core’s nest.

It was a giant many-nest. Massive towers soared high over the surrounding area, roots and vines draping themselves down their sides in a mixture of greens and browns. Many of the other nests, so much larger than what I was used to, lay broken; shattered by rubble and battle. Here, giant roots had broken past a moving-wall, taking part of the wall itself alongside it. There, rubble had fallen over a domed nest, shattering through the ceiling and leaving massive shards laying about.

Everywhere, glow-caps grew in great numbers, illuminating the many-nest that the Lesser Core had claimed. The light they gave off seemed to spark in my vision, catching and reflecting on the mist of verdant green that floated lazily through the air.

The sources of that mist grew in groups as large as a Coreless, pulsing in tandem as they released their spores into the air.

Despite that, there was something else that caught my eye - the beings that walked in the mist, dragging their feet awkwardly as if unable to completely control their own limbs. Veins of green, so dark that they were almost black, layered themselves across pale skin-flesh.

Some were worse than others, the pale of their flesh nearly lost entirely to the green-black veins. Those ones moved more easily than the others, as gracefully as something with legs could, and faint wisps of green mist spilled out with every breath - a match for the spores through which they walked.

Those ones were almost unrecognizable.

The others, the ones that weren’t so far along, though…

They were clearly Coreless.

Or, at least, they used to be.