Veraform commanded his diminished forces to take positions throughout the first floor. In their past expeditions Marissa and the pot bellied man had found where Veraform placed the loot. Both were in sigil rooms on opposite ends of the first floor. Veraform had been switching which rooms the loot was in but hadn’t gotten around to it after the last expedition because he was distracted with the formation of his third floor and the changes that accompanied it.

“Slowly, we can actually map this floor now,” the pot bellied man said. “Marissa on me, you two on the flank. If nothings changed then there should be more dead ends this way.” He pointed and Marissa led. He was correct. Veraform would observe for now. He wanted to guarantee a kill and so he would have to be patient and see how they moved.

Marissa and the pot belly would lead while Morello and the archer would stay one room back. When the pot bellied man was in the room he would reach into one of his four pouches and toss some shimmering powder before writing something on a piece of parchment.

This continued on for a long while. Veraform noticed they didn’t destroy the sigils in the sigil rooms. Peculiar.

Veraform positioned Mechamputax in one of the sets of rooms that looped back into themselves and also had a sigil room. It was a set of four rooms arranged in a relative circle. Both of Mechamputax’s bodies waited there. Once Marissa and the pot belly proceeded into the sigil room just before Mechamputax’s room, he activated his frozen hearts ability. The room’s temperature quickly descended. Mechamputax’s second body then trekked backwards through the loop, towards Morello and the archer.

Zelphy and Leo would follow.

“The Bonework demon is here.” Morello called as the archer fired off a quick volley of arrows. They missed and those that didn’t harmlessly ricocheted off Mechamputax’s bones. This was part of the reason Veraform targeted this half of the group. An archer was practically worthless in this fight.

“Hold him. Keep an eye out for the other one. We’ve got frost one room up.” Veraform was right. They knew the sigil rooms were how Mechamputax traveled and they thought they could get the jump on him by waiting instead of destroying it. This fact combined with needing to keep an eye on the unfamiliar frost, and wanting to keep the pot bellied man out of danger meant that Marissa was willing to keep the group separated for a while longer.

Mechamputax launched fingerbones towards the archer and Morello as Leo and Zelphy rounded the doorway behind him and fired their own blasts. Morello raised his shield and summoned the ethereal copy of it to block the magical attacks, but the bones went wide and missed him.

The Archer fired a single arrow, this one doused in flame. As it flew, Veraform realised the previous arrow heads had shattered into a powder. This powder was volatile and given the flame, it ignited violently. The resulting explosion shattered Leo, but Zelphy managed to teleport away. Away from the explosion, but towards the enemies.

Mechamputax accepted the momentum offered by the explosion and flew towards the archer with his ribcage open. Zelphy had appeared in front of Morello with the intent to distract him. He brought his hands together on the bright lizard and gripped it before igniting his hands. Zelphy was fried, having no time to bring up defenses after teleporting.

Mechamputax connected with his prey, the archer. He wrapped around him snuggly and burrowed tips of rib into the man. Blood sizzled against the man's armour and flesh. The others were now abandoning their position in the sigil room in favor of the safety of numbers. Mechamputax switched to his primary body and began opening the portal to the sigil room in hopes of stalling them for another moment.

It worked.

As Mechamputax emerged from the portal, Marissa used a powerful burst of mana to launch herself towards Mechamputax’s primary body. After slamming into him, she landed against a wall and immediately propelled herself again and went through him this time, shattering bones. Her momentum barely slowed as she expended more mana to launch herself again and again until Mechamputax was only shards of bone on the ground.

This gave the decoy version of him an opening. A portal opened where he had thrown his bones at the beginning of the engagement. He shifted his weight in an attempt to pull the archer off balance and fall into the forming portal. Morello slammed his foot on the ground, causing a magical fissure to appear, knocking the archer over in the opposite direction of the portal. The weight of the man on the bones only pushed them further into him as he slammed into the ground.

With that, Veraform’s metaphorical heart dropped. Plan A had failed. All that was left was to hope an influx of rats combined with Mechamputax’s corrosive blood would be enough to kill the archer before Morello killed Mechamputax. The giant rat and a poultry seven rats scampered in from the entryway the imp and fairy dragon came from. Morello covered his arms in flame and ran at the monster intertwined with the man.

With burning hands he ripped and tore bone from flesh, simultaneously cauterizing the wounds and stopping only to fry the occasional rat that looked to be close enough to something vital that it needed to be killed. Even the giant rat was of little concern when one had arms of fire.

Unceremoniously and not from any particular blow or injury, Mechamputax perished. He was too scattered to stay animate.

Veraform was out of options. He could only hope the wounds would be enough to kill.

Marissa and the pot belly entered the room. The pot belly moved with purpose towards the archer, reaching into a pouch at his hip to pull out a small red vial. When it pressed against the archers lips his eyes brightened and his face perked as if he’d been jolted awake, though he hadn’t quite been unconscious yet.

“That’ll remove the worst of it,” the man claimed confidently.

Veraform was being cheated. They had a healer.

“Looks like that’s both halves of the floor boss,” Marissa said as she looked at the bones strewn about the ground.

“As well as an imp and a fairy dragon,” Morello added. “Strange that they didn’t throw more at us.”

“Assume there’s another trick planned and let’s continue forward,” The pot belly said. Morello helped the archer off the ground as Marissa led the pot belly on to the next room so that he could continue whatever task he was performing.

Veraform could do nothing. He was out of minions and there was an entire party roaming through his halls. The anger bubbled inside of him and only escalated when they approached a loot room. He raged against the idea of allowing them to take whatever would be in the small wooden crate but he had nothing to do. He couldn’t so much as throw a stone without any minions left. As they removed a small ingot of some bizarre metal from the chest he felt the familiar pang of hunger.

Veraform simply screamed into the void.

Eventually they made it to the other loot room and retrieved a necklace. No words were exchanged.

It was a long slow process for the adventures to clear and dust every room of the first floor.

Once they were at the stairs they gathered together.

“We’ve already killed the bonework demon, should we go on to the next floor?” Marissa asked. The question was directed at the pot belly.

“Not much reason right now and I dont think it’s worth the risk. You say the dungeon should still have other minions, and we know adventurers have died here. It could very well be betting on the next floor's boss to wipe us and it was just hoping to pick one of us off on the first floor.”

The girl nodded. “Then let’s head out. We can divy up the loot out there.”

There were nods and grunts in agreement as they left. Veraform was relieved at least that they weren’t going to steal everything from within him, and further relieved they still considered him a threat, but those feelings were weak compared to the rage of being conquered by a group not even half the size of the raiding party.

He had lost so many resources and the enemy had managed to nullify some of his tricks, like Mechamputax’s paralysis.

In a rage, Veraform would rearrange the entire first floor once they left.

Except that he couldn’t. As he exerted his will on the rooms of the first floor he got a notification.

☹

☐☸☉ ✹✹ ⌛☼ …⋯⋯ ♢⍢ ≡⌖▲

☙⚉

It was nonsense. Symbols and meaningless gunk in his mind. It was a tipping point.

Veraform summoned rats from the rotten pantry. Free minions, but still living things. Creatures that could suffer. Creatures that could bear his burden for him.

As they ran from the pantries he channeled on them. He began pushing mana into them and feeling them writhe and suffer and die. He called forth more and more and kept pushing and pushing. A dozen, then a score, and then more before he lost count. With it he felt his rage crescendo before dropping off. He stopped. Painlessly and motionlessly he observed his first floor. It was coated in bile and blood that was already beginning to fade as the dungeon absorbed it.

It was a waste but Veraform wouldn’t allow himself to acknowledge that it even happened after this. He went to summon Mechamputax before realizing he didn’t have enough mana.

He let himself blame it on the fact that the adventurers had looted him, and not the 158 mana he spent killing rats.

He summoned Zelphy, Leo and the giant rat instead.

Veraform turned his attention to the sacrificial altar he now had on his third floor. He contemplated what it could do.

“Leo. To the altar.” Veraform projected. Similarly, but with less language and more base feeling, he sent the rats there as well. It was a moderate jaunt to the depths from the first floor. More time for Veraform to wonder what would be gained.

When they arrived Veraform made a decision. For five KP he purchased clawed imp. Leo’s hands jarred and the bones cracked and bent before extending outwards and coming to fine points. All in all they made the imp look more unbalanced. Four inch claws on an eight inch body tended to look wrong in some way.

“Sacrifice a rat.”

The imp gazed at it’s hand. Oddly enough the transformation seemed mostly painless for the little cretin. “Thank you master. Never have I felt so… feral. Truly you are a generous lord.”

Veraform wondered if the worship was sincere or overplayed as some kind of flattery. It didn’t matter. He didn’t interrupt the imp.

Leo grabbed a plump rat in its now oversized hands before fluttering up to the altar. With one hand he held the rat down with it’s belly facing up. The rat only started squirming when the needle-like claw began to draw near it. The fear was different somehow. More palpable. The rat seemed to actively hate Veraform in this moment. Its teeth bit into the imps hand as he dragged a claw through the gut of the rat.

After a moment, it was dead.

More than dead.

Veraform had lost a soul, and gained nothing for it. No notification. No reagent. No KP. Nothing.

Veraform began channeling again. On everything this time.