Exuberant Feast Cult

A cult focused on the fantastical and wonderful feeling of eating.

Right, the fact that they seem to be on a watch list of demons seems to be totally unrelated.

Seriously, I am going to let Gorger stay here for a while. If I let him go back down he might call in the attention of the god of squires or something like that. The squire skeleton goes back down, with the new drone skull.

I change my view over and see that it’s getting darker, I did get pinged by my little undead that they saw some movement, there are now about fifteen of the camouflaged life forms, I assume all of them are the crabs, otherwise that would mean the stealth specialists can’t see the other stealth specialists. Which would be quite funny, for a few seconds. My skulls also see a few more in the distance, coming in my direction. I wonder if that’s an actual attack force or just some kind of forward camp.

The possibilities for me are that the cammo crabs are going inside my tunnel for recon. It might be for killing but unless these are ultra assassins I doubt that.

I have covered the entrance of the tunnel with a sheet of bone, so most things won’t be able to see it. I plan to wait a bit, then tell Kaiman and Bob to jump out and kill the recon.

I am slightly interested in them. I could just let them enter, for all I know they will just get inside and leave. The main problem besides the fact that I am trusting crabs not to kill my troops in their non-sleep is that I do not want to give them the information of what’s inside the cave: namely my troops and the spiral towards my base.

The tunnel is expanding, it’s already quite big and able to easily fit all my forces inside. I have also prepared some tunnels outside, eventually my undead may leave without someone just outside the base noticing, hopefully.

I can tell that the stealth enemies are just shy of five meters from my moat. I still can’t see them, I didn’t really have my skulls fly into them just to see them, in fact I did the opposite. I pretended even with normal troops to not see beings behind trees and leaves. I told my skulls to turn and face any being, whenever they had direct line of sight. I actually saw the difference, a lot of enemies would take care not to be “seen” by my skulls, taking detours or waiting for them to pass. Some crabs even buried themselves on the ground or mud.

The stealth crabs haven’t moved for a while, the bigger crabs though haven’t stopped. There are another good ten of them. Seven big crabs and two crabnoids. I have a rough plan. I tell Kaiman, Bob, Merlin and his ten disciples to get ready too.

But leaps and bursts through the bone panel, no point in preserving it. I will put a proper door there soon.

He runs on all fours to the life signs, as soon as he’s out I can see them and {Analyze} them.

Thin Blooded Vampire Crab

This crab has very thin and diluted vampire blood.

Giant Tick

Drinks and grows with blood.

I can see the crabnoids running faster towards my base now. I keep the rest of my team in the cave for now. Bob just shoves the entire crab into his mouth, cracking it apart with one bite and swallowing it, and moving to the next one. He runs and grabs crabs shoving them down his mouth before he can even swallow he already has a new one on his hand, the crabs try to run, but they are very slow compared to Bob and so small, actually the size of normal crabs, soon enough all of them are dead and in Bob’s gullet. Bob starts widely looking around to find more. Great, gluttony is apparently contagious. Bob rubs his belly, and I can tell it feels hot like there’s something bubbling in there.

I see the two crabnoids come from the tree line, I really should take some of that off.

I ask my drones if they are seeing any more vampire crabs, they tell me that there are no nearby ones, but there are more deeper in the forest, and there are quite a few in a straight line. The line that divides the lizard and crab domains. The vampire crabs have something that tells them apart from the other ones: They are the only crabs that walk alone. Well at least the ones I have seen.

Hmmmmm. Okay. I tell Bob the direction to go, I am pretty close to the middle line already, so I tell Bob to go further left, into the other direction further into the crabs domain and the furthest direction I can see one of the vampire crabs. The reason is pretty simple, if the dungeon catches on with the fact that I am hunting the vampire crabs, they will have less direction to really go. They won’t go into the lizard domain without support. I know now why, or at least I have a hypothesis. Some lizards probably have heat vision, or something else, maybe tremor sense, an accurate one, because the one on Asterion didn’t work on the crabs, too light I am sure.

The crabnoids are running towards Bob, I tell him to run and I tell the team to intercept.

Bob runs towards the direction I told him, meaning to the left, as he turns the crabs get into a battle position, only for him to whiz pass away from them.

The team jumps out of the tunnel and goes into their direction. Kaiman ahead, followed by the caster and lastly Merlin. One of the crab turns and… vomits out a ridiculous volume of water. that's… gotta be a skill right, I don’t think crabs can do that? The ground becomes muddy and then the crab uses a skill or spell just out of my reach.

From the muddy ground a wave of regular sized crabs come out, the group turns their back on my force as the crabs advance… are these guys stupid?

Kaiman simply jumps over the crabs, who ineffectively clack their claws. They won’t be doing that for much longer. Kaiman crashes into the other crab, the non summoner one. It’s another stabber crabber… The other crab though is a [Mud Summoner] at Level 15 no less.

From Bob’s vision I see the trees getting a bit thicker, with stronger branches. I tell him about monkeys, he seems eager to try and swing like one.

The giant crabs surround the stabber and Kaiman, while the summoner backs off. My casters simply do what they do best: They spew a black cloud of necrotic energy down at the ground, all ten of them create a very large cloud,

I see the summoner spew water out of its mouth again, though this time it’s a skill. {Water Barrel Carapace}, not a bad skill, it’s kind of like a fire user being able to summon flammable gas really. It summons even more crabs. Then Merlin spews out his own black cloud, pushing the others on in the enemy direction. While that was happening the stabber actually got away from Kaiman, it tore it’s arms when Kaiman got a hold of them, which seems at this point to be an actual evolutionary thing of these guys. It doesn’t matter really, the black cloud arrives and blocks out their sight and also putrefying their eyes, Kaiman attacks with his claws killing the stabber.

Merlin shoots his {Death Rays} and snipes the lesser crabs, while all ten casters do the same, well not the same, they just send a concentrated burst of necrotic black wind, they can’t quite make much more than that.

The crabs all die, I can see a bigger force coming, the force is late. Once Bob left they separated, some went to Bob while others to the conflict, only for them to realize that they would not catch Bob at all, then they went back and the other force just waited for them.

While no enemy is too close I take the two crabnoid bodies and throw them into the pit. The smaller crabs actually rise as little zombies, I simply tell them to go to the bottom of the pit too. Undead raised by my undead are under my control, just like a normal necromancer. A pit full of zombie crabs, it’s kinda scary actually. I would not want to be in a normal crab pit.

I tell my thrower skeletons to come out. They come out with their squires, the throwers squires are slightly different, they are carrying bundles of throwing spears, bone javelins and a few skulls. Their job is to pass ammunition to the throwers and then get in the way of the enemy if it gets too close. This is something I’ve noticed, I don’t think the crabs have shown me a way they can really defend themselves against long ranged attacks.

The army is taking some time to arrive, they have almost thirty of the large crabs, and three crabnoids. I tell my twenty fighters to go out too. One of the crabs has a single large pincer, kind like the fiddler crab. Hmm let’s see, the mages should be able to take out the crabs, the throwers will just attack anything, Kaiman should take of the crabnoids, I shall let another group join in. The soldier group without the squires. I tell my caster to start spewing their breaths onto the pit. Which now looks interesting from the inside, Asterion and his dwarfs have actually dug tunnels and the surrounding dirt around the pit in a way that it could collapse and create a small landslide into the pit.

I take a look back at Bob, not that I’ve taken my eyes off him, I had my drones all around him feeding me information and relaying it back to him. After five vampire crabs Bob started to feel his gut really boil, I told him about the general areas that the crabs liked: high areas with good vision all around, at the sixth crab he found and ate gained a new skill.

{Prey Tracking}

Helps sensing the tracks of prey.

Initially I thought this skill would be useless, since they are crabs, how big can their tracks really be? Well, turns out that this skill improves all senses and tracks, meaning smell mostly in this case. Bob actually understood that these are mostly scouts, he started to smell the place with the most crab smell, where they passed the most, and from them tried to find the places with better view point, after getting close enough I didn’t even need to tell them where his prey was, it’s like a separate sense. He is just done eating his ninth one. The heat on his stomach increases. Bob is a little too far into enemy territory for me, he is in fact close enough to see a swamp area. The area is filled with mud, from the corner of his eye Bob sees a life sign pop out of nowhere, it’s long and has ends in a larger circular shape, as he turns to see it better it’s nowhere. I’ve never gone too far in this place with my scouting because of… that guy.

From the distance I see a crabnoid, the large crab is mostly the same as every other one: About a meter tall, four legs, four arms. This one is not running though, but sliding through the mud, fast as a jet ski. I know he can’t keep that up for long though, neither can he do that outside of mud. That crab can actually shoot mud high enough to hit my drones, which is why I never went too far, he always intercepts. There are similar reasons on the lizard side.

The mud skier crab moves its hand, creating a large wave of mud that shakes and sways towards Bob, I just tell him to run and ignore it. Bob does so, the crab seeing weirdly please, it even crosses its arms and puffs out its chest it even nods its dome head, which means it moves its torso slightly too. Weponized mud and sass, impressive. Bob jumps up a tree branch and swings, the first few times were a little rough. Bob didn’t really understand his own weight and momentum, which caused quite a few branches to break. He didn’t let that get him down though, and now he is a champ at branch swinging. He swings and in between trees he actually flips over! Right as he completes the rotation he catches another branch and swings again, this time higher. He can be deceptively fast while doing this. I tell him to go to the borders.

I am somewhat sure that the borders are not the actual borders of the dungeon domains, not exactly at least. The mana in a few places just doesn’t feel strong enough. I imagine it’s the trees, well all the life around here. Those things consume mana, it’s pretty possible that the dungeon advances and has its weaker, less dense mana devoured by the trees and grass. The fact that the dungeons probably actually clash mana helps its destruction too. The territories also don’t seem to be the entire size of the greenhouse either, I have seen quite a few large signs of life towards the direct north of the place, so that’s probably also why. I didn’t really want to bother it yet, so I let sleeping lions lie, or whatever that signature was.

Anyway, the crab force finally arrived at my doorstep or well dirt hole step? Thirty crabs and three cradnoids. My troops and theirs have a small staredown. The crabs start advancing, my skeletons immediately start throwing their spears. The casters are throwing their billowing smoke at them too, trying to make it stay low.

The crabs again split up, the claw one going to the fighters, the stabber one went to the Soldiers both of them are nothing new at this point,one pincher and another a stabber, the last one, on the other hand is a crab never seen before! This one has two arms on one side, holding one shortsword and a long spike both made out of chitin, and another arm that is actually a single large claw!

[Fencing Crab] LV 15

[Miniscule Giant] LV 10

Kaiman is nearby, right by the casters. My original plan was for him to fight one of the crabnoids, but it seems they want easier prey, so I will let the fencing crab fight the group.

The crab runs towards the skeletons, the squires form a line, the fencer then jumps over them. The throwers lob their projectiles while the crab is mid air, some of them did not consider gravity, and the fact that the grab was going to fall, missing the attacks, some others did, but the falling movement and a large pincer bash meant no actual attacks landed.

Thirty projectiles, one crab, no hits, they only have four left each. As soon as the fencer lands on the ground it dashes again, it gets in range and I can see it using a skill: {Pierce Bone}. Spearing straight through two of my skeleton’s skulls, the rest of the group split apart right in the middle, backing off while throwing javelins. The squires behind also do so, the crab simply dashes to the left, it uses {Parry} and slaps the javelins away both with the shield and sword.

I see a single skeleton run towards the squires.

The fencer arrives at the group and again, quickly kills two skeletons. Its chitin spike claims two more undead unlives before the skeleton arrives and grabs a skull from the squire. I recognize it, it's one of the original thick skull ones. It throws the skull, the crab kills another skeleton, then it backhands, or back pincers, the skull, however, the head explodes into little shards, and for a second the fencer stops still, it’s eye stalks vibrate for a second and move out of the way from the skull fragments. It is like a pin drop on the battle, the undead gain a shine to their eye, the crab sees it too. Before it even moves the thick skull skeleton runs away, to another squire.

The crab jumps, the skeletons throw another volley, it deflects them, and as soon as it lands a single skull is hurled in its direction. The crab dodges, that one was a bluff the one who threw it didn’t have {Skull Cracker}. The squires use this time and opportunity and three of them get together and dash towards the crab. {Quick Thrust} The merciless fencer punches through the middle one and with his quick attacks kills the other two the thick skull skeleton is hiding behind two of the squires.

As it approaches he throws a skull again, the crab dodges, and right as it does the other skeletons throw their javelins now down to their last. The crab spins around and diverts all of them using all three of its weapons. and as soon as it finishes doing that it dashes sideways spike first into the squires who raised their shields up. Right before it hits them the thick skull skeleton throws another skull, right in its chest exploding and taking a bit of his momentum.

The fencer’s spike piercers right through the shields, and both of the squires head, and it stuck right on the last skull’s {Bonebark Brow}, before the crab can pull it of The thick skull slaps the squires dead cranium right into the one in front of it {Skull Cracker}. The two skulls collide and burst like a grenade right on the eyes of the crab. Right as it loses its vision the last javelin volley hits it in the back. The fencer falls.

The thick skull skeleton pulls the spike from the crab's dead hand. Before looking over the battlefield.

The fighters are down to eight members, most of them just too slow to dodge the crab, Stinger though, keeps dodging and striking back even getting a new skill out of it.

{Relentless Assault}

Each attack in quick succession increases the damage from the next attack

The crab is on its last legs though. Same for the knife crab against the soldiers.

The beginning of the fight was very boring, the crab would advance and try to circle around the soldiers, trying to attack the sides or back. The soldiers attacked with the spears and kept it off enough of a distance that when it dashed to try and attack an exposed side the skeletons would be able to defend themselves well enough.

It then got a lot worse for it when they started getting {Rapid Repositioning} that’s when the stabber actually retreated to some of the crabs that were able to run from the miasma of the casters. I told them to not interfere and sure enough the added challenge of both the crabs and stabber kept them on their toes. However, using a good {Rapid Repositioning} made ten of them hold the crab with their shields, ten more stab it and the last ten keep the crabs away.

They actually got {Flanking}.

{Flanking}

Gains {Line Fighting} benefits while flaking an enemy.

Pretty good overall.

You have successfully defeated the enemies probing strikes!

Choose three minions that were part of the battle to gain a {exoskeleton} skill.

The skill may mutate based on the choice.

I actually didn’t expect that. I already have my three decisions, the best choice would probably be to give it to Kaiman, but he doesn’t need it for now. Also although Asterion was below the battle the whole time he was not really a part of it, the thick skull skeleton would probably not be able to use it to its maximum potential. So I decided to give it to Merlin, the leader of the soldiers and the single squire that survived.

{Exoskeleton}

to

{Crystalline Exoskeleton}

Absorbs and stores mana inside the exoskeleton and in the exoskeleton, the type of mana on both can be different, the purer the mana the stronger the exoskeleton. The exoskeleton is stronger against the mana stored inside of it.

{Exoskeleton}

to

{Bone Thorn Exoskeleton}

Creates an exoskeleton full of thorns all over it.

{Exoskeleton}

to

{Layered Exoskeleton}

This Exoskeleton is layered with multiple bone plates focused on maximum defense.

Merlin’s one looks like a low polygon model, the armor is in a rough humanoid shape, but made out of triangles only, all over the body, the exoskeleton also doesn’t have a face, only a flat plane in its place you can see the lights of his eyes through it.

The soldier ones look normal enough, just like their armor in fact, just bigger and spikier.

The squire’s one though looks quite interesting, it doesn’t have eye holes, the gauntlets don't have individual fingers, instead looking like a bone mitten, a piece of armor for the thumb separating it from the hand while all the other fingers are not separated the only movement the fingers is close and open the hand really. It has the shields under the armpit, though even that is also covered, it has armor on the elbows and knees and shoulders, completely armored not a single piece of the skeleton underneath is seen, not even the eyes, the helmet being a fused frogmouth helmet without the normal opening.