Merlin manipulated ice mana and activated the Water Sphere Conch, creating a sphere of extremely cold water right on top of one of the fleshlings. The conch was gained a while ago, but I just left it under the Grimm brothers to study. It seemed it would be pretty useful now so I gave it to Merlin.

The conch is pretty useful, especially against these enemies, not only are they pretty slow moving but their exposed flesh seems particularly weak to the cold temperature of the waters. One fleshling tries to stab Stinger, who simply slap-parries the spike out of the way and with a quick series of punches and chops tears of its arm, which has three joints and is much longer than a normal arm, then proceeds to bludgeon it with its own arm.

That’s really how this is going in a nutshell. The skulldwavers are using their axes, which have a long singular spike at its butt, they are also doing fine, the creatures are strong, but not strong enough to easily crack their {Rock Skin} without interference. Merlin, the demon skeleton and the other skeleton mages are killing their fair share too, the monsters have a resistance to necrotic mana but it only goes so far, plus they have no resistance to the demonic flames of the demon skeleton.

Asterion is probably the one doing the most right now, it’s been a while since he last fought, he seems to much prefer digging or sculpting, but looking at him now you could be mistaken and think he’s always lived on the battlefield. He moves and attacks in a very straightforward manner, he closes the distance and then uses his very large claws and his very heavy weight to dice the enemy to little pieces.

Overall the scene is quite messy, the fleshlings are also all slightly different from one another, it might be simple things like having more or less bones, but some of them have clear structural differences. One of the fleshlings had a ‘spine’ made from three humerus bones. Another had a primitive armor made from ribs, fused to its chest. One of them could squirt blood from an opening in its body. The weirdest part? We haven’t even gone too far into the dungeon, but more and more of these weird guys keep showing up in separate waves instead of just drowning us in bodies.

We keep going forwards, and the monsters change, they are still the same fleshlings, skinless, legless and bleeding all over. This time though they have two long arms each with 3 joints used for locomotion, and two smaller arms with the HF mithril spikes stuck on them. And behind them there is a completely different thing, it is also considered a ‘fleshling’ but the being is completely different from the rest. The monster looks like a giant red meat millipede, it has a large number of little nubs of flesh that carry it forwards, it has an exposed ‘spine’ made of humerus and its sides have rib bones acting as armor, oh and right in front of the beast it has a large humanoid skull shedding two rivers of blood from its empty eye sockets.

Without the need of my input the battle starts, the plan is pretty simple: they separate the millipede from its allies while Asterion deals with it, Merlin using magic and the conch and the rest just by physically standing in the way. Asterion crashes into the millipede and destroys its front part in a shower of flesh and blood, the skull being pulverized to chalky dust in a single swipe. The thing is fairly large, almost a meter tall, wide as a human torso and about three meters long. Not nearly large enough to give problems to Asterion though.

Step after step, swiper after swipe and soon the weird hot dog looking nightmare millipede is nothing but blood stains. We keep going forwards and I notice Asterion is starting to look quite nightmarish with all the blood drying in his body.

My minions stop and stare as the cave starts to change, literally, we can see that just ahead the bare rock walls and floor change to… an actual muscle carpet. The entire tunnel is covered in a thin film of blood sweating flesh. For my undead this looks quite weird, since they can see ‘life’ they can see that the entire film is very much ‘living’, it also shows that some parts have lumps of flesh changing the shape of the tunnel. Merlin throws a bit of rot fire and it works just fine so we advance, slowly.

As we advance something happens, the entire flesh tunnel pulses in a very concerning way, blood oozes out and starts to form shapes between veins and red lightning scars. For a single second nothing else happens, then a white flash runs along the wall, breaking through the red lines and connecting to them, changing its color from a transparent white to pink before becoming red. Again it pulses and I see the vitality run through the thin film of flesh causing it suddenly become thicker.

Merlin lifts his hands, but before he can attack a single transparent tentacle sprouts from the wall.

Fulminating Nerve

Green rot flame leaps from Merlin, but before it can touch the wall the tentacle shines a bright white light, time seems to slow as I see tendrils of lightning spread from the never, almost shyly, before exploding out with thunderous fury into my undead. The tunnel is flooded with lightning and all my undead are hit directly. I hear the thunder from my dungeon, all of them except Asterion and the dwarves have fallen on their asses… And it seems they took it pretty well all things considered?

I can feel Stinger grumbling about not being able to even see the lightning coming, I pass them the vision of it as I myself think about it. Looking back at my memories I see that most of the lightning went to Asterion, though some of it went to the others too.

This is pretty normal for a few reasons, first I imagine that lightning was created by a caster, so it doesn’t follow simple lightning rules, second, if the lightning is positively charged it will actually contain positive aligned energy and attack the negative energy undead, when Merlin starts using lightning magic his lightning will be negative charged too, and seek out ‘positive’ charged beings. The fact that not all lightning went to them tells me the caster is not that proficient at it too. This is pretty much Lightning magic 101, one of the first things you learn is how to make the lightning hit exactly what you want and ignore anything else, specially things like metal.

I take a closer look at Merlin, the lightning clearly focused mostly on him and Asterion, the other mages behind Merlin were barely touched, Merlin actually acting like a lightning rod just as much as Asterion. Unlike Asterion this did leave a few scars on him, literally, his dark purple skin has lightning scars now, making trees and branches of lighter purple tones all over his body, all concentrating in his belly, where the necrotic core sits. His core was hit too, though it’s still functioning without problems. We keep advancing, now faster. I imagine that whoever did that can’t do it too easily, considering they didn’t just drown us in a sea of lightning.

We don’t need to go far before we come to a large spherical chamber, right in the middle there is a large pool of blood, red veins coming out of it. All around the back of the room there are pitch black apparatus with shining letters on their surfaces. In the middle of the room, stuck in the ceiling right above the pool there is a large spiky crystal, made from a milky red color and transforming into shades of angry red and bright pink, lightning white scars running all over it, almost looking like beef marbling. The dungeon core.

A large mass of flesh rises from the middle of the pool flanked by two smaller ones. Both of the ‘smaller’ ones have large frames, this time they are almost perfect humanoid bodies, having two arms, two legs, a torso and a head, their bodies being covered in bones, this time the bones are mostly correct, even having an actual spine. Each one has a long whip arm, with small spikes of HF mithril threaded through them. The middle one is much larger, almost the size of an elephant, this one has no recognizable shape at all just being a lump of flesh with many tendrils coming out of it like hairs.

The two whip fleshlings jump out of the pool and I notice they both have a small cord connecting them to the larger lump. My undead immediately share a battle plan and put it in motion. Merlin and his clattering of skeletons falls back, throwing magic to cover their retreat. Stinger dashes towards one of the whip monsters, dodging the surprisingly fast hulking swipes, the dwarves all go to the other one, and Asterion… bull rushes towards the bigger one.

The mages decide on a support role, mostly throwing spells at whoever seems to need it the most.

The dwarves all have teamwork skills, as the monster whips towards them it is repelled, blocked or parried each time, with every single exchange the monster gets a little more hurt, they take their time, slowly advancing.

Stinger is wildly dodging and deflecting, keeping low to the ground. The monster tries to ignore her and charge to the mages, yet as soon as he gives an opening she storms forwards and unleashes a brutal combo on its knee, causing it to lose pretty much all of it and fall to the ground.

Asterion, the rock muscled, steel skinned bull finds himself faster and more agile than his enemy, the mass of flesh has only two methods of attack: trying to crush Asterion with its bulk, or creating small lightning bolts. Both are uneffective Asterion can just dodge out of the way before the monster body slams him, and the lightning does absolutely nothing.

The fights go on for a few minutes, and then the final nail of the coffin is hammered down, the demon skeleton gains a skill, {Blood Burning Cursed Flame}, in a bit of a gung-ho move the demon skeleton throws it in the blood pit, the flame starts spreading towards the two fleshlings connected to it, and to the large lump monster. Everyone seizes the moment and methodically destroys their opponents.

Stinger watches as the fire spreads and lights the legless body of her enemy, ‘pummeling’ doesn’t really do justice to what she did is closer to ‘tenderizing’, the bones in its body are fragments and its flesh is torn and broken, the fleshling can’t even move or try to dodge incoming fire from its connection to the pool.

The other one is also in a tight stop, the dwarves were able to hold down its whip, very carefully, using the spikes of their axes, the mages took it from there and drowned the monster in rot fire.

If Stinger was tenderizing meat then Asterion is brutalizing it, the pool of blood now looks like some kind of meat-only noodle soup, with chunks of meat floating all over it. Asterion is completely red now, it’s only a matter of time now. That’s what I think, right before the flesh mound monster cracks open, revealing a deep pristine transparent white spine inside its flesh. The spine, taller than a human, floats out of the body and reveals itself.

Mutated Fulminating Nerveling

A mutated monster made from magical nerves capable of creating and controlling lightning.

The nerveling looks like a central nervous system, it is made of a long spine with many transparent white nerves floating out of it giving it a ghostly visage. The weirdest part is the head, the being has a single skull with no jaw, the back of the head however transforms into a brain, which pulses like a heart, bundles of nerves come out from its eyes sockets, floating upwards and constantly moving like lightning. The being starts to shine, the nerves elongate and starts spasming out and then it explodes. I watch, again, as the world slows down and I see in detail the lightning coming out of its body. It keeps spreading and then… I see something approaching it. A large spherical object, made of dark purple crystal, with a single bright purple lightning scar in its middle, is flying towards the nerveling.

The lightning arcs towards the core. As they touch each other the reaction is explosive. For a second the vision of my minions is a mix of purple and white as the necrotic energy from the core explodes out in a wave of deadly power, it briefly overwhelms the lightning and hits the nerveling, which falls down on the flaming pool of blood. The rest of the lightning hits Asterion, who ignores it.

…

Everyone looks around, but that seems to be it. Dungeon conquered I guess?

Compatible Core Detected.

Would you like to claim and attach the core as a Subcore?

A what?