The crabs are about 300 strong, most of them are the normal crabnoids, the arms and pincer variety, there are some shooting shrimp but what really gets my attention are the crabs sliding in the mud, I am pretty sure they are mud controllers and a new type of crab, this one has… vents? All over its body with water coming out of it in a quick moving stream and enveloping the chitin exterior.

The crabs are advancing, the shrimps start firing their water pistols hitting my shields. There are not enough to tag the whole army, and soon there will be even less. My mages start firing back, because of all my drone skulls, which are too fast now for the shrimps to easily hit, my mages have quite a good idea where the shrimps are, having multiple data points. Sadly they are being body blocked by the larger crabs.

The cast of crabs keeps advancing, the ones without the humanoid arms on the front, using their oversized pincers as shields and charging full force, my shields brace, part two starts, my drones do a quicky flyby and shoot down pieces of marrow trees into the soft ground, my mages push death mana into it and they start rapidly growing, their red roots piercing deep into the mud and their white branches rising up creating a barrier that the crabs smash into. This simple maneuver is actually quite an accomplishment for my skeletons.

Bone manipulation is an interesting skill, Kaiman and his shapers have {Shape Bone}, most of them either have {Enhance Bone} or {Strengthen Bone}, Kaiman has both and all of them use it on the trees, they seem to share enough similarities for the skill to take hold, just like chitin, which does make me wonder if a user of Chitin manipulation skills can also use it on bones and this tree. I have yet to see it.

{Strengthen Bone} makes bones stronger, more resistant to damage, {Enhance Bone} makes an aspect of the bone better. Kaiman and the Boneshapers used it to make the tree absorb nutrients, meaning water and necrotic mana mostly and then to make its roots stronger, together with the shields the crabs were unable to knock the trees down. Now they again use {Enhance Bone} to make the trees more flexible, then use their {Shape Bone} to make the trees wrap around the frontline crabs, all the while my spears are stabbing them to death.

The crabs die, they become zombies and Kaiman roars, his veil of miasma flickers like a candle in the wind and he sends a wave of his mana towards the crabs, their arms revert and then they start wildly attacking their previous comrades.

Kaiman is getting better at magic, though he is somewhat of a burst caster, if he can’t make it in one go he will probably take a little while to do it, still his boneshapers are there to help with any shortcomings. Now I have a wall of marrow trees and dead crabs protecting my spears, who keep stabbing through the unliving fence. And of course, as soon as the next crabs die they are joining the fence, which is a lot stronger than it looks when you remember that my skeleton can heal it.

The mud sorcerers congregate, before they can do anything I tell my Floating Ring of Skulls to kill them, the thing is much bigger than the other drones and is also floating just above the ground, they are not really that fast to be in open air sadly. They do make up for it in other areas though. The skull floats up and one of the skulls in the ring fires a death ray at the crabs, they hastily erect a barrier for protection, as they do the other floating skulls also throw their death rays at their backs, multiple rays of necrotic energy hit the crabs, even the first one, which just passes through the poorly erected mud wall.

The bone ring spins and a new skull is facing the mudmancers, it fires again, hitting one of them straight in the chest. The shrimp start counter firing but just as the attacks are going to hit a dark necrotic barrier appears in front the Ring of Skulls protecting them from much of the blow. Now both rings spin, the ring has charges in each skull, the outer ring shoots while the inner ring protects. The rings of skulls can fire ten shots and create five shields, each skull can recharge individually while the ring uses a new one, and with the high density of black mana around my army the recharge is very very fast.

I see the stream crab and the mudslider trying to pincer my troops.

The casters die and start attacking those around, and I take the opportunity to order my floating skulls to fire freely on the pistol shrimps, and after a few salvos all of them die.

The reason why I didn’t do so earlier is simple: The floating skulls speed depends on their mana, shooting their death ray more than once actually takes a noticeable toll on their speed until they recharge, with the Bone Wings around it’s not a death sentence, but there was no reason for me to risk it with the mud crabs and the shrimp, now though I can be a little more lenient.

Stinger and Gorger go to meet the crabs that are trying to pincer my forces, the mud crab throws fists of mud into Stinger, who counters with her bone palms, easily winning the exchange. The crab slides away from Stinger trying to create distance while throwing attacks, but it is completely ineffective, Stinger is a terrible opponent for this guy, her {Light Steps} allow her to easily maneuver on the muddy ground, her other skills make dodging or parrying the fists of mud a joke, and unlike the crab she is getting stronger the longer it cannot find an answer to winning this.

The crab thinks it has an answer, it is backing out back into the crab army, doing so in a roundabout way too, it probably thinks its smart but…

Stingers throws a {Flicker Jab} her arms growing just a bit longer, the crab dodges to the right, straight into a flying kick of another skeleton. The attack kills the crab’s momentum and Stinger immediately attacks with a vicious combo. Two jabs to the eyes, with her {Undead Fist} the eyes are completely destroyed, the only parts that are not pulp are rotten, completely unusable, I notice she is diversifying and trying new things. And by ‘new things‘ I mean new ways of murdering her opponents, she unleashes quick attacks on the crabs arms, a series of finger thrusts, almost using her hands as blades and chops to weaken the arms, the attacks are all aimed at the joints, she finishes the crab with two palm strikes, sending its arms flying away, and then two more strikes in its thorax, visibly making the chitin there weaker with her necrotic punches.

She then turns to the flying kick skeleton, I can feel the communication between them, I think I am getting a lot better at this. She seems to be teaching something.

She moves away and then the skeleton grabs the crab and knees into its abdomen, it's a pretty good knee attack really, a second knee strike and this time they release the crab and follow up with a powerful kick cracking the shell and piercing the insides.

I take a quick look and see that the other martial skeletons are doing well enough, they seem to have teamed up with others and are mostly offering support. I can see in specific a hammer skeleton who has lost their hammer and is punching crabs with some of the martial ones. They pair well, the skeletons make the crabs choose, they attack quick enough that the crustaceans have to choose who to let hit, the weaker but faster skeletons or the stronger one. I can also see one of the mage skeletons throwing punches too. That is pretty cool, having my skeletons diversify is pretty nice, fist mages rule.

Now let’s see Gorger’s battle.

…

Gorger is currently murdering random crabnoids. Gorger, where's the stream crab?

He sends me an image, a memory from a few seconds ago. Gorger and the crab face off, Gorger spews two of his tongues and the crab creates a water shield… which does the incredibly feat of wetting Gorger’s tongue a little, right before the tongues grab it by the arms and pull the crab into the toothy embrace of Gorger’s stomach. He does note that the water tasted magical. Huh, I really hope that this crab was not unique, that was just sad, did it seriously think the shield would work? Maybe it panicked? Whatever, this battle seems done.

“I do not understand the appeal of eating” I hear Merlin saying to Irax. Oh?

“Can you taste food?“

“Not by myself, but Gorger and Bob have shared their experiences with me, both meat and blood taste good through them. Still I do not understand the… desire to keep eating.” Merlin sounds a bit inquisitive, which makes sense I suppose, unlike Gorger or Bob he doesn’t really have any natural inclination to eat. I also see Merlin turning to look at Gorger, Irax turns to see too.

Gorger is currently using his palm mouths to make circular holes in the crabs chitin, then his groupie zombies stick their heads in and start eating. Gorger lifts the corpse overhead and cracks it, making blood fall over his mouth. Then he chucks the corpse away with the zombies still attached to it.

“I understand, I mostly eat fullberries. Though I also eat with my party.”

“What is a fullberry?” As Merlin asks a deep purple blueberry appears in his hand. I try to inspect it but the crab dungeon has been negating it since I entered its domain, which is why I didn’t even bother trying with the crabs.

“One is enough for a grown man to be satisfied a whole day. Well more than that, this is a special type of berry, this one in specific is made for adventurers, you can eat it and be well fed even when doing vigorous activities.” Irax and Merlin turn around, Gorger is looming over them, eyes set straight into the berry, he opens his mouth and…

“Uhgrhbleghtaah” …. Not even other zombies would understand that you dumb gluton. Is he actually trying to mimic speech? I am pretty sure he does not even understand the concept fully, because of Merlin’s skill the undead can understand his words, that doesn’t mean they can speak it though, they have yet to really learn it. I tell Merlin to ask for the berries.

“He wants one, can I also have one for the dungeon? We are willing to trade for it”

“What can you trade?” Irax says, staring specifically at Gorger. As soon as Merlin translates to him Gorger shoots his tongue and grabs one of the zombies… and shoves them into Irax’s direction. That’s not yours to trade! Gorger Immediately throws his tongues to a still living crab, he opens up a hole inside of it and… I see him sucking in necrotic mana and then spewing it inside the crab, turning it into a zombie. That’s… okay I guess that is yours, fine.

Irax does not seem impressed though, a tough client. Gorger throws the crab zombie away, then breaks one of his tusks and tries to hand it to Irax, who again does not seem moved. Merlin laughs, or rather tries multiple laughs to see which one is his favorite, but he seems genuinely amused by this.

Gorger eats his tusk, then his face lights up and he starts vomiting acid into the ground, Irax actually bends down to his knee and looks closer at it.

“Hmmmmm” I ask Merlin to explain the acid a bit to him.

“The acid is necrotic aligned, it is especially effective against organic things.”

“Sure. Fill this for Ten fullberries” A large barrel appears, it seems to be a wine barrel? Made from brown wood and with metal reinforcements. Gorger does his best impression of the world’s most cursed cow and vomits down his acid into the barrel.

“Do you have a use for this?” Merlin asks, tilting his head a bit to the side, his tone very curious, he is getting better at this, he is still playing around with his voice though.

“Not me, a companion of mine.” I prod Merlin a bit.

“From your party?” Gorger fills the barrel and Irax throws him the berries, which are eaten, it's almost funny seeing the gigantic maw closing down on the diminutive berries.

“Yes, he has an item that can create blades out of certain materials, this acid should add a lot to his capabilities.”

“He can create blades? Like this?” Merlin uses his {Reave} to create necrotic claws.

“Kind of.” He pauses for a bit, likely ruminating if he wants to continue talking about his companions?

“His class actually has a special skill, it increases the power of his attacks and his weapons, but also makes them more likely to break, as such he started to use self- replicating weapons, he mostly uses slime swords”

“An interesting ability” Merlin says, I can see some weaknesses though.

“Yes, very powerful, ‘weapons’ can mean anything he uses to hurt or damage something. This includes enemies he grabs and smashes into our foes.” Oh, that does seem pretty cool.

“For your Heart.” A fullberry appears in his hand. I tell one of the drones to take it and bring it back to me.

Fullberry

A magically created berry, packed full of nutrients and energy.

They are pretty interesting, I can recreate them now… I will probably do something with them later. They are actually neutral, not really having thick life or positive energy. I think I can feed them to the zombies? I create some and task some skeletons to plant a few of them around.

My army stops moving for a bit, Kaiman and whoever can heal skeletons go around and heal them, or add to their armor and weapons, some of the boneshapers are having fun too, creating their own little monsters. Many skeletons are changing their weapons, from axes to improving their fists.

“I can destroy crystals, does that mean I could also get a class like that?” Merlin asks.

“If you wish for it, yes, your evolutions should take in consideration what you want, and together with your skills and current evolution they find a middle ground. If you have no skills to explode crystals then it is unlikely that you would get a class about it. On the other hand, if you only have crystal skills it would mean your evolution would be heading that direction regardless of what you want, it should be a balance.” He grunts a bit.

“Apologies, I am not a scholar, I do not know the specifics of dungeon born evolutions too well.”

“It is alright. Can that happen to biologically born things too? Evolving a class into a direction you do not want?”

“It is possible, just very very rare. Generally they are called mutations. When you choose a class you can use skills or magical items to analyze it, or just ask around for it in many places. As such the only time a class goes in a direction you do not want is when it evolves because of a skill or other class. Maybe an unknown synergy, or some type of dissonance. It rarely happens though.”

“One of my party members, in a dungeon at Poslath, got a very powerful class. It mutated all of her classes. Initially she disliked the changes, but after a while she started enjoying them quite a bit.”

“What were the changes? You do not need to answer.” Merlins hastily added the end, I asked him to since I am not sure how he is going to take us asking about them, even though he seems quite chill I do not know if he is going to take this as us collecting information for future nefarious use.

“Lightning, her class mutated or evolved the other ones into lightning based classes. One of her classes, [Elementalist], became [Lightning Elementalist], which focuses on imbuing different elements into lightning. A lightning that freezes or that erupts into fire.”

Ah, that’s pretty cool, mana is very flexible so it is pretty possible for you to create certain elements with different mana types, Like creating frostfire or rimefire. Most research into mana mostly ended with something like “We don’t know exactly what mana is, but it’s mostly likely an exalted state of matter” or something like that. Actually I could probably create some necrotic fire now that I think about it, I should probably teach it to Merlin too, more classes for the future.

“She disliked most of the changes initially, but as time passed she realized that she went from a fairly standard mage to something more. She is somewhat like you actually, just stronger.”

“Like me?”

“She is a mage who can physically deal a lot of damage. One of her classes makes her faster and stronger the more lightning mana she has on her body.” I perk a bit hearing that, and tell Merlin something.

“Yes I also have something similar. I have a perk that makes my spells stronger too, as long as I have necrotic mana on my body. Did your friend dislike her classes because they focused her on lightning? And she wanted to try more types of spells? I can understand that, I wish to use more than just necromancy.” Irax shared some with us, so I think we should share some with him, plus he might know something.

“She talked about it once, it is possible to create a core on your body, you focus and put mana there, it is in you and you can control it but skills like yours do not affect it. She thought about creating a core of other elemental energies, but did not go through so I do not know the specifics on how to create it.”

“Thank you.”

A core huh, I think I can do that.