It was my fault Shiana died.

Well, I felt it was my fault. Shiana didn’t say she blamed me, but she was not exactly known for her introspective conversation. The next room looked like a sort of satellite factory when the door opened. There were satellite dishes all over the place, and the room was nearly 50 yards across, and almost that tall.

I was moving at the head of the pack, with [observe] activated. I hadn’t noticed any monsters upon immediately entering the room, and the floors were made up of more of the metal grating. There must have been dozens of dishes dangling from incomprehensible machines hanging from the ceilings, pointed, mostly, at a ten-foot-wide circular hole in the middle of the room.

The grating was bent and warped in places, and around the hole in the middle, it was bent towards the hole. There was a half-wrenched metal railing of some sort falling apart around that hole, and the grating was warped into a slope towards it. I saw several places where the grating seemed to become translucent, sort of like Mae when she became invisible, and I pointed those out to the people following me with hand gestures.

“What is there?” asked Rik, who had stubbornly gone silent about what he had meant about compression. Mnemosyne told me he had gotten several flashes on his band, but couldn’t decode them, so I had to wonder what kind of messages he had gotten. Maybe some kind of warning about discussing compression in front of natives? I noticed that despite his dudebro gamer attitude, and willingness to separate this world from his own, there were certain things he didn’t say, such as referring to us as NPCs or calling Antowyn a ‘game’ directly. Maybe there were some kinds of rules against discussing the world’s unreality in front of locals?

He could certainly discuss things like his cooking mini-game, but perhaps these were things that even the locals understood as just being weird things that immortals talked about. At any rate, when I pointed out the weird sections of grating, Mae did her invisibility thing. Cassie stuck close behind me, but not too close, as I think she wanted to avoid making too much noise and drawing attention. Shiana was right behind Cassie, and a few steps back Rik stalked with his giant chunk of swordlike metal grasped in both hands.

I tried to touch the odd grating, but my hand passed right through it. I reassessed the room, realizing that all of those patches were probably some kind of traps, so, I decided to lean forward and carefully look through the illusion to find out ‘What is there’.

I found out all right. The moment I looked through the illusory grate, I saw what looked like a giant lump of something, flying right toward my face. Instantly popping into my zone, I noticed it looked like the stinger tip of a scorpion’s tail, only instead of a scorpion, the metallic-looking segments beneath the stinger just kept going downwards past my visual range. I dropped back out of my zone, barely leaning back far enough so that tip didn’t catch my head, and rolled backward away from the hole.

The Stinger flew over Cassie’s head, but Shiana wasn’t as lucky, catching the stinger directly through her chest. It was much longer than a scorpion stinger usually would be and penetrated all the way to come out through her spine. Before we could react, even with my zone, the barbed stinger had started dragging her body back into the hole.

Rik muttered [haste], and swung his oversized spatula at the tentacle, severing it before it could drag down Shiana, and then had to step to the side as yet another stinger tail popped out of a different hole and slammed into the grating where he had been standing.

I rolled over to Shiana, intending to use my emergency heal, and realized that it was far too late already, the barbed tip had gone right through the middle of her chest and her armor, right where her heart would be. She was not moving or breathing, and her eyes were already wide and blank. Well, blanker than usual, anyway. I tried to [push] some Quintessence into her anyway, but Mnemosyne sent me a message.

Target is already deceased. Would you like to push animation mana instead?

Oh hell no! I thought, as loudly as I could, I was not going to bring back Rik’s dead girlfriend as a zombie! I felt kinda bad. I mean, I knew she was a construct and not a living person, but in her own, stilted way she had been kinda sweet, and I expected Rik to be inconsolable.

There were now tentacles with giant stingers on them coming out of most of the illusion-covered holes. The stingers were reaching towards us, but most of them were, I guess, too far away, because they were banging loudly on the grating, while Cassie was fending off one that had gotten too close with her shield. It stabbed at her, and she tilted her shield slightly, deflecting the tip into the floor.

Rik swung at it, but his haste must have worn off already because it pulled backward, leaving him to chop into the grating before Cassie had to fend it off again, barely clipping it with her hammer before the tip slid screeching along the edge of her shield.

After the third strike, I managed to time its rush, diving forward as it struck Cassie’s shield and [pushing] as much frost mana into it as I could as I clawed at the segment just behind the stinger. I was much faster than Rik’s swing and had to leap over the hole that it came out of as it recoiled. With a whump, it slapped sideways into my chest, and the world spun as I flipped, end over end, before finally impacting one of the metal walls.

You have been impacted by Seeker for 15% of your health total. You have been impacted by a wall for 5% of your health total. You are suffering from a concussion.

I had gotten slapped by the side of the spike, not the tip, and the world spun crazily even after I stopped moving and crumpled to the floor at the base of the wall. I looked, [observe] still active, trying to come back to my senses after the impact.

Seeker (Boss)

Threat: Deadly

This creature is the boss of floor level 1. It was created too quickly by a dungeon core to confront a perceived threat, and it is unstable.

While still utterly deadly, it is blind and lashes out through concealed gaps in its lair at anything that makes enough noise for it to detect their location.

This boss cannot attempt to retreat. Due to being rushed, this boss is a last-ditch attempt by a dungeon core to defend itself. If you defeat it, you will receive double the usual rewards for a newbie zone dungeon first clear.

I felt pain all over, but when I damped it down I realized that none of my bones were broken. I was in a sorry state of bruised, and my head was reeling a bit, but I could survive.

None of the tentacles were very close to me, which was probably what saved me, and based on the ice shards scattered across the floor it looked like my push had been successful. My mana was sitting at 80% along with my health, and Rik and Cassie were both back at the door. Mae was lightly skipping among the tentacles, which didn’t seem to be targetting her, heading back towards the rest of us.

“No good!” Rik grunted, “The door sealed when we came in here!”

At Rik’s words, the tentacled piercing horrors redoubled their efforts, all reaching towards the doorway, but unable to quite make it since the closest ones had been eliminated. A loud screeching could be heard from the hole in the center of the floor, and all of the tentacles started to pull back into their holes.

Bran! This is important. Lily is terrified and shut out her sprite. We arrived too fast, and they didn’t have a chance to establish more than a cursory bond, so instead of building a balanced dungeon, Lily threw everything she had into the most powerful and terrifying creatures she could imagine. Her boss monster has a major weakness, her sprite cannot understand most of the concepts, but she is begging me not to let you destroy the core.

“Rik!” I hissed quietly, scooting along the wall towards the door, “This thing has an obvious weakness. It is also blind, so you have to be quiet!”

Both Cassie and Rik went still, their armor no longer clanging on the grating near the door as they nodded at me. Something was banging in the center hole and sounded like it was getting closer. Soon, both Mae and I had arrived, and Cassie, with the utmost care, adjusted her shield in front of her as quietly as possible.

Something reared out of the hole, tearing off several of the surrounding railings and some big chunks of the grating. It was huge and reared upwards out of the hole at least fifteen feet. It looked like little more than a gigantic mouth, with a glowing, milky white eye above a shredded gash filled with uneven, daggerlike teeth that were nearly the size of my entire body. The entire thing looked like it was covered with shredded strands of chitinous plates, like some kind of insect covered in veins of dripping armor, but its entirety resembled nothing so much as a giant heap of trash with armored tentacles, each as long as the entire room, ringed around the bottom, just below the horrendous mouth.

That thing could definitely reach us if it could find us, and its thorn-tipped appendages started slapping at the grating around it, clearly searching for us. Mnemosyne had said it had a weakness, but I had no idea what it could be, not even Rik’s giant sword was likely to be able to carve through that thing before it turned all of us into bloody swiss cheese imitations. It had twelve tentacles, one of which was missing a stinger, and another appeared to be half the length of the rest, probably the one that had gotten iced and smashed.

Our time was limited, and I was casting around desperately for whatever weakness Mnemosyne had mentioned. I didn’t know a lot about dungeons, but they were supposed to be vast, dangerous, and filled with monsters and traps. I imagine if the entirety of a dungeon’s dangers were all concentrated into a single creature, this would be it. The only thing I could see were all those dish shapes dangling from the ceiling.

It was blind and operated by sound. Which meant it probably had amazing hearing to make up for its blindness. Radio? No… sound.

I leaned toward Mae, and she looked a little startled at realizing I could see her. I whispered, “Mae, can you make sound illusions?”

She nodded and whispered back. “How loud do you want them? Do you want to try and distract it while we attack?”

I shook my head and pointed up at the dishes on the roof. “How many and how loud can you make them? I think that may be its weakness. Each of those dishes are parabolic, and if you can make enough loud noises, it might weaken it enough if the sounds are inside each one.”

Mae nodded, “I don’t know what Parabolic means, but loud noises are one of the easiest of illusions, I might be able to get a figment into most of them, especially if you don’t care about what they are saying.”

I shook my head, “I don’t want them to say anything. Just.. a noise, like a tone, start low-pitched, if you can, and then gradually increase the pitch until it has an effect of some sort. If it’s blind AND deaf we might have a chance.” I looked meaningfully at Rik and Cassie, and they both nodded, Rik, looking a little scared. At least that was one expression I was relatively familiar with, as it was not too different from the face lines Seaman Bradford had been sporting when I had been holding him against a bulkhead by his neck. Reminisce later.

Mae held out her hands and started humming under her breath. It was kind of fascinating to watch, as under [observe] I could actually see thin waves of some kind of shimmering gold start to trail from her lips to her hands, and then from her hands strands curled and wiggled their way out towards the roof. The strands almost lazily curled their way up, and then dozens of them collected just beneath the bulky machines, in front of each of the curved plates.

The noise started, a low humming that was a much louder version of the tone Mae was humming, the note a pure, deep ‘d’ that grew louder moment by moment.

The effect on the Seeker was immediate. It started thrashing wildly, banging its barbs against the deck with half of its tentacles, while the other half frantically strained upwards, as if reaching towards the noise desperately. It was thrashing and making its own whining screech, but even with the length of the tentacles and its straining to try and exit the hole, whatever was beneath the hole was apparently even larger, as the grating around the whole started heaving upwards as it strained, making the whole room’s floor seem to lead up towards the thing in it’s middle gradually.

We pressed ourselves back against the walls, trying to avoid the grating as it curved upwards, and Shiana’s body started rolling towards us down the sloping grates, the detached stinger flopping out of her chest until both were rolling towards us and fetching against the wall at our feet.

Rik looked down at Shiana, and instead of the grief and distress I expected, his eyes beneath his helmet lost their fearful, wide-open look and his brows furrowed in irritation? Concentration? His eyes look narrowed and squinty and his nose wrinkled, and a tightly-lipped mouth implied some sort of unpleasant emotion that very definitely wasn’t sadness.

The noise sounded even louder as the tone shifted upwards, Mae’s mouth switching from a hum to a whistle as she shifted the tone ever upwards. Despite her short muzzle she seemed to be very skilled. Talented mouth. I thought idly and then squashed the thought as she glanced up at me, almost as if she could read the thought or at least the intent behind it.

The Seeker was thrashing wildly now, almost frantically shivering as the noise went up in tone. Its eye kept opening and closing with the shred-covered sideways eyelids as if it were desperately trying to see something, anything. Its mouth opened in a shriek that almost drowned out Mae’s tones, and at the escalating tone even Cassie, Rik, and I were forced to cover our ears, it was getting painful!

Both Illusion and Sonic aspects have collected around your core and should be dealt with soon. However, with the strengthening of your skeletal system and blood, you should have marginally more quintessence capacity before risking damage.

I am unable to determine how much quintessence has been invested in this creature, however, its defeat may release a highly dangerous level of quintessence should you succeed. Would you like to set up a series of future enhancements to bleed off the excess in case it becomes dangerous?

“Yes.” I whispered, “set up…”

And then the Seeker exploded.

It was, to put it bluntly, absolutely disgusting. Our hands were still covering our ears, and the sounds abruptly stopped as the boss flew apart in a spray of disgusting blue goop and large chunks. A particularly fleshy bit caught me and plastered me against the wall, yet again, although I didn’t get a damage notice so it didn’t seem to cause any more harm.

I felt like one of those guys at the end of the Ghostbuster movie. We were all spattered with exploded goop. Rik was coughing and gagging, and I guess had his mouth open when the Seeker popped.

I noticed that there was a glowing spot on the floor, and I was covered with less goop than the rest, and the rest of the team looked okay, if disgusting. I took a few steps over and realized that it looked like another one of those glowing stones, and I dug it out from the fleshy morass that coated it. The thing was huge, the size of my fist, and came up as a large core.

I looked to the rest of my team, who were finally clearing out their eyes and mouths, and even Mae was on her knees, choking into the grate and heaving. Cassie and Rik looked okay, so I stepped over and kind of pushed her long black hair coated with goop out of her face as she heaved.

She finally stopped choking and looked at me with an odd expression, lifting her hands to hold her hair as she started to rise to her feet. “Thank you,” she said quietly, and then turned and spit onto the floor, more of that blue yuck.

I heard Rik say, “Did you get the core?”, and I nodded, “Yeah, but it doesn’t look like there’s much more of use. The armor plates were all cracked and shivered from the sonic attacks, even the stingers look like they all started breaking up from the noise.” I smiled a little at Mae. “That was brilliant. I honestly thought we were all dead with the door locked down.”

Rik walked towards the steaming pile of ex-boss and held out his hand, sweeping it across the mess. I thought that maybe it wasn’t time to loot quite yet but suddenly realized why as the goop, mess, and quintessence were absorbed by Rik. I had forgotten that such rewards occurred as he looted and barely caught the words in my mind as pain ripped through me.

Level 12 boss released Quintessence. You are currently at 686% of evolution, catastrophic damage imminent! I am sorry Bran, you said yes, I will try to put it wherever I can.

This is bad. The bracers? I finally managed to [observe] them through their masking illusions. Bran, the bands are NOT divine, they are only rare! That means they were not made by Librus, they were made by someone else!

Bran?

The wave of pain ripped through my body, taking my ability to see, stand, or even scream with it.