Dimrat opened his eyes. The creature lazed upon the wall high above. He could not tell if it was flesh or bramble. It seemed to wisp with apparitions of roots and vines that slithered en masse, and had already covered two sides of the room with its rotten canopy. Where he expected to find an imposing figure, he saw the gangly shape of a woman entangled within and partially masked by its own foliage. Perhaps intentional.

Almost missable if not for those giant, glowing green gemstones that she studied him with; so bottomless and brimming with mana that they smoldered with a thick miasma and wept with the overflow of unknown power. An overflow that spilled down through the cracks of the wall, wilting weeds and moss to ash, and pooled where he lay moments ago.

[Carnivorous Rotwood Weeping Willowmare(XV)] lvl: ???

[Fallen][Impossible][Faction Champion (ranked 3rd)]

“Dregs aren’t usually tricky. Nor do they have much to say”

Her voice strummed like a horrific chord. Like a ghastly bagpipe carved from rotten wood. Every word a chorus and never a note in key. Not even his dark lady’s voice serenaded him so. The creature drew him closer.

“But their meat is splendid”

On that note, his eyes rolled to the side. He watched the other Dregs flee their would-be tomb through cracks in the wall and floor. Would his fellow Dregs abandon him in such a perilous situation? When he felt its breath on his face. It was the sweetest stench of death, like a fresh slaughterhouse. A delightful smell.

But, he had looked away from the creature while it spoke. That was his first mistake. Slowly his eyes turned to face it once again when it yanked him up the wall and face to face. The creature’s eyes were turbulent, abyssal, each as big as his whole body and twisted with anger.

“Cunning and fearless”

Dimrat did not respond. In his ignorance he had offended it. When something piqued its curiosity. It studied him. Something was off.

“Cursed Dreg? Not even tier one yet. Interesting” Her eyes narrowed further. “But you reek of his meddling”

Dimrat also felt the traces of change permeate everything. The Dungeon Master had restored the destruction Dimrat caused, which was an unfathomable feat of power, and it seemed this creature had been lured by the lingering energy in the air. It sensed the changes.

“That one has done something! There’s enough mana in the air to swim in. Speak.”

“Forgive me, fair gentlelady. I am Dimrat. With whom do I have the honour?”

A fan of foliage branched out to mask the creature’s mouth, but he still caught the edges of its lips curl. Something had pleased it. “You would dare ask my name?” it said, much less pointed.

Dimrat’s eyes did not miss it.

“...it would seem I have trespassed again. How shall this one address such a beauteous creature?”

Through the twisting and writhing bramble and vines, something resembling a smile ripped open its face and gushed with the same ominous murk that wept from its eyes to reveal a caked grin of thorny fangs.

“I’m weak to flattery. It’s been so long since last I ate a gentleman. Excuse me. My name is Vellom”

But now it was Dimrat who’d noticed something off. It was subtle. Not entirely missing, but not quite there. He had to confirm it.

“Lady Vellom. I must beg your forgiveness again. But are you Undead?”

“Does it matter?”

Dimrat’s eyes slit red. He was powerless before her, but in the absence of her overbearing aura, faced with the possibility of an enemy in his midst he could not overlook his duty, his instincts, his bloodlust.

Her face animated with bewilderment, her eyes as wide as moons, before she knotted herself with horrific laughter. Her canopy had formed a roof space, and now shivered and drizzled that dangerous fluid from above, a single speckle sizzled on Dimrat’s ear then melted a hole straight through, though his eyes burned just as fierce, his intentions just as clear. His question lingered tentatively in the air.

“How amusing! So you seek to slay me, little Dreg?”

Vellom’s branches extended down and wrapped him tightly, which squeezed the air from his lungs until he felt them burst in his chest like balloons, a pressure that forced his claws to rip through the ends of his fingers. Her thorny nature had cut deep into his slight frame and shaved off a decent amount of HP, then she released her death grip.

Dimrat endured the internal damage. He didn’t need air anyway.

“I seek only my Dark Lady and the heads of her enemies”

Vellom withdrew and narrowed her eyes. “..dark lady?”

“Indeed. My Dark Lady…” He cut himself short. Something had dawned on him. “I.. do not remember her name ..curious”

“I am not Undead.”

Her words thudded in his skull. It pulled him from his musings and sharpened his bloodlust. Vellom pulled him closer, then said “...and neither are you.”

The snail’s eyes peeped at him from hidden under its shell with a look of betrayal. Before he knew it, his head had been freed from the shell, and his body tossed into the only corner that hadn’t pooled with deadly acid. Vellom spoke while Dimrat regained himself.

“We’re different from Undead. Thought I hadn’t noticed?”

Dimrat crawled to his knees and gazed up at his captor. She had sat up straight and dangled her feet over the wall. She loomed above, her existence a prison that ensnared him, a rotten bird in a bramble cage from which he felt utterly at her mercy, while his claws dripped with acid behind his back.

“You’re older than I, senile little Dreg. I can tell. Have you forgotten our faction, too?

“Our...faction?”

This angered her again. That dreadful aura tightened around his throat.

“We’re not Undead. We’re Fallen.”

The word stiffened his body. His eyes fell intense and to the ground with unfamiliar memories. Terrible feelings that crept at the edges of his subconsciousness seeped into his brain.

“Fallen…” the word thinned his throat. He couldn’t explain the anxiety, the dread, the urgency that coursed through his veins. There was no time to waste yet he knew not why.

“Undead is a faction of mindless monsters that replaced us. You really don’t remember? Why do you think you’re still alive? I’m suppressing my desire to destroy you. Because you’re Fallen.”

Vellom observed the lost Dreg for a time, the silence only broken by the occasional drip, gloopy bubble of acid, and distant echo.

“Well. Do your best. I’m retreating. Something worse than me approaches”

Vellom pushed herself forward and dropped from the wall, her rotten canvas retracted into her back in an instant to resemble long, gnatty hair, when something odd happened.

The moment she landed on her feet, her legs buckled. She fell to her knees, then reached out with her hands to stave her fall. Her elbows shook with the strain.

[Curse of Fatigue successful]

[Cursed Claws leveled up!] (lvl2)

Dimrat's eyes burned. He stood, then revealed his hands at his sides. The ends of his fingers had melted away to the floor. His claws steamed with Vellom’s acid by his feet. A grotesque grin pushed up his cheeks. He smelled something now, something that pleased him.

Dimrat stepped forward. “Not Undead, you say?”

Vellom looked up at him with a more suitable expression. Fear.