Veraform had managed to make it to 14 rats, 2 giant rats and 2 imps, before he got the familiar gut punch. INTRUDERS! The disturbance felt like it should be less severe by now but it was as uncomfortable as ever. This was close to perfect. Veraform’s minions were in position and he was only 2 rats short of his maximum. He saw the boy step down the stairs. His loadout was different, an axe and shield instead of two axes, not that he didn't have the second axe on his belt. This meant little, Veraform thought, for his plan had no escape.

“All right dungeon, let's do this” Marcus grinned. The fool wasn’t taking him seriously. “We will slaughter this boy” Veraform projected to his minions. Only the imps could understand but they were invigorated. “What's the plan?” Rhoam called out to Marcus.

“Follow the right hand rule and be ready for the rats and imps, consider the possibility of their relatives being here as well,” he had the answer prepared. He glanced around the room and spotted ground level holes that rats could come out of. None had come out so he approached the doorway on the right, defense up and senses at his peak. When he entered he immediately noticed that the layout had changed. This room had originally only had one other doorway but now there were an additional two. “No problem” he said under his breath to himself. He followed along the right hand wall and was sure to check for rat holes. There were no more than there had been when he originally came.

He made his way to the first path and went through. “It’s empty,” he called back to Rhoam. “Yeah, a lot of the rooms will be. Dungeons don't really get around to developing themselves room-wise until after they've gotten a few minions and maybe killed something. There should still be a loot room, a core room, and by the smell of it one other room.” Rhoam was in the entrance room, but even from there it was hard to ignore the smell of something vile within the dungeon.

Marcus backtracked out of the room and once again followed along the right hand wall. ‘This is where I got attacked last time’ the boy thought to himself. Almost immediately rats emerged from the walls but Marcus was ready this time. He charged, shield forward, towards the far doorway the imp had hidden by last time, keeping his footfalls hard and fast to keep rats from latching on. Sure enough it came around the corner to fire a blast. There was a thwoof and a thud as the imp hit Marcus's shield. ‘Perfect, now that he’s wasted his blast he’ll be open’ and Marcus swung low to hit the Imp.

Suddenly, Sett unfurled wings and launched himself towards the boy's face. He struggled to react but raised his shield and stumbled back to avoid the imp landing on him. Meanwhile when he had been charging at the imp, a giant rat had emerged from the room Marcus had not yet explored and chased the boy into battle. As he stumbled to avoid the imp the giant rat bit into the boy's belt and pulled him to the ground while the smaller rats climbed up him and began gnawing through his armour and flesh. “AHHHH!” the boy yelled, wondering why Rhoam hadn’t stepped in yet. He took a swing at the giant rat to try to buy him time to stand but he was blasted by the imp and his attack only injured the rat.

Meanwhile in the other room as Rhoam followed, the second giant rat and Leo suddenly launched an attack from behind at the same time that Marcus had started his charge towards Sett. Leo fired a blast at Rhoam but the man dodged to the side and spun back to see the pair of monsters. The imp was riding the rat. Rhoam dashed towards the rat, quicker than a man should be able to move. Veraform noticed that when the man dashed an aura left him. Veraform checked his menu and sure enough he had gained mana from the man's maneuver. In an instant Rhoam was at the rat and snapped its neck. Leo, taking that as his cue to leave, unfurled his wings and flapped away as the man tried to grab him. When he missed there was another burst of speed and he was launched towards the imp and caught him in his hand. As he traveled forward he heard the scream from Marcus. He crushed the imp and he could swear the things twisted mouth grinned. This was a trap, Rhoam finally realized.

When he’d entered the room, the boy was writhing on the ground and being dragged towards the doorway to the next room by the other giant rat and an imp stood between them. Knowing the imp would try to stay between him and the boy, Rhoam manifested a thin mana shield around himself and charged toward the boy expecting to simply go through the imp when it moved to intercept him. Instead, however, the imp flung itself back and spun to shoot another blast at the boy. Rhoam instinctively jumped to intercept the blast and was hit. The jump was awkward due to the shortness of the dungeon and he landed prone despite the blast doing very little to him personally. Once on the ground the giant rat released the boy and turned to attack the man. Marcus continued to scream as rats dug into him but suddenly the scream became a gurgle, rats had finally bitten into his neck and throat. Rhoam rolled over and grabbed the giant rat before it could manage to do anything and he threw it into the wall. Once again there was mana being released by the move.

The imp meanwhile flew towards the boy in an attempt to get another shot in, Rhoam however was too quick and leapt up to catch the imp. Sett was crushed before he could realize what had happened. The man got to the boy and ripped the rats off of him, unfortunately as he did so several had dug their teeth into the boy's carotid artery as well as other veins. If he wasn’t dead before, then this sealed his fate. Rhoam, realizing the boy was gone, slaughtered every rat. He threw and kicked and crushed every last one of them.

Veraform had won. It cost him every minion at his disposal, but he had won. As the boy's life drained from him Veraform could feel an immense feeling brewing, like a sneeze building in his abstract body and once it reached its peak the Dungeon core felt a great relief of ecstasy. The death of humans, he decided, felt incredible.

Once the minions were dealt with, Rhoam knelt at the boy's still warm corpse. His fists clenched and he bowed his head and brought his hands together in prayer. He didn't speak but he stayed like that for a long moment. Once that moment had passed he rose. Veraform was proud of himself.

The man started to walk, not out of the dungeon but deeper into it. Veraform began to panic. His core was exposed and a man with power enough to wipe his minions was approaching. When he entered the sigil room he knocked over the candles and ran his foot over the circle to break it’s runes.

In a panic veraform opened his menu to look for something. He had 60 mana, 16 lesser souls, 2 slighter Soul, and 2 minor souls. What was this? It also said he had 0 common souls. Had he gained a soul from the boy? Why didn't he have it? Veraform put the pieces together and realized the boy's corpse still held his soul, though now it was Veraform’s to command. Without wasting anymore time he began channel his mana infusion ability into the boy. This was his last hope.

Rhoam was about to enter the core room when he heard it, the cracking of bones and tearing of flesh. He stopped dead in his tracks. “No” Rhoam whispered. He turned and there it was. Boy turned corpse, turned monster. His flesh hung loosely off of him and there was a trail of mush where his muscles and organs seeped out. Bones were sticking out of his skin, though that wasn’t the best description since the bones were the only part of the monster that was really it. The flesh was just an accessory to hide where the bones were as they shifted around inside him. His right arm was still mostly coated in flesh but his left was missing it. The arm had its forearm split so that it was two separate pieces that were not touching but floated with each other, following the movements of where the creature's arm would be. They were lined up so that they would have made his arm longer if it still had flesh. The finger and hand bones were floating and spinning all around the length of its arm.

His face sagged off of his skull but when the mouth moved a pale approximation of Marcus’s voice came out.

“Rhoooooam”

Rhoam was paralyzed, both magically and mentally, and the creature swung its long arm and the hand bones flew towards Rhoam impaling him. The pain was enough to break him out of his daze and he realized he was now too injured to fight. He covered himself in mana and suddenly burst to the side, straight into the wall, he impacted with enough force to break through and now there was a hole between the sigil room and the long room. He fled, as quickly as he could and before Veraform could react, Rhoam had left.

That's when Veraform knew that this was a massive success .