Chapter 208 - Tentacles and Ashes

“The god that designed this dungeon is an imbecile.”

Repeating the thought that had escaped her mouth a few days prior, Claire tore her eyes from the magical portal floating in front of her and looked towards the dead gargoyle at her feet. When she first engaged the stone-skinned creature, she had expected it to pose as much of a challenge as the shoggoth. But unlike the eldritch slime, which had nearly wiped out the party by its lonesome, the dark forest’s most powerful monster had proven to be anything but a worthy opponent.

Its capacity for combat simply did not exist. Any individual capable of surviving the amethyst rotdust was also capable of taking it down. The lack of difficulty stemmed almost entirely from the monster’s complete and utter lack of participation. Even while under attack, it sat with its legs crossed, its eyes closed, and its hands resting on its knees. Its single-track mind was too busy with the dispersal of its magical poison for it to even consider the foes that threatened to reap its life.

“Could you please stop saying that out loud? You’re going to get us smited,” said Natalya.

“No.”

“Don’t worry Lia! I think it’s probably gonna be okay,” said Sylvia. “Gods can’t smite people that haven’t sworn to them unless it’s like really really bad.”

“Insulting a god’s intellect after seeing their handiwork seems almost exactly like the sort of thing that would cross the line,” said the cat. “Tzaarkus, at least, would never allow it.”

“I believe that to be because the god of thunder is one of the less forgiving,” said Arciel. “Griselda would not even consider a mere insult or two to be a transgression.”

“Tzaarkus is very forgiving. He just happens to be a little stricter when it comes to certain mannerisms.”

“That just means he isn’t actually forgiving,” muttered Claire.

It had been a day and a half since she had sent a less-than-willing Nymphetel off to prison, and while the operation itself was a success, there existed not a world where the two groups would subsequently join as one. The couple had retrieved their things at dawn and left with only a few brief words of farewell. Natalya was somewhat disappointed by his departure, while Claire experienced little beyond pure elation. He may have been one of her father’s handpicked, but his personality was far too great a price to justify his skill with the blade. To her, his presence was far more stress-inducing and obnoxious than it was comforting and familiar.

While he was off doing whatever elves and skeletons did together in the great outdoors, Claire’s group continued to push through the dungeon at an accelerated pace. Still, they were unable to clear the eighth floor in just one day. The Evernight Sierra, as Sylvia had dubbed it, was a step up from its predecessors in terms of scale, spanning not just the usual two mountains or three mountains, but an entire range of tiny peaks. Had they been in a rush, they likely would have been able to make it all the way to the end in just a few hours on Claireback, but the moose had refused on grounds of butchering the local wildlife.

The eighth floor’s monsters were certainly more powerful than those they had encountered on the preceding levels, but the increase in their strength came with a proportional increase in their scarcity. They came across maybe one group every other hour, a far cry from the almost constant waves they had faced when exploring Headhydra’s home. Still, despite being far fewer in number, the amethyst gargoyles held not a candle to the shoggoth at the end of floor five. But for what they lacked in raw strength, magical or otherwise, they made up with speed, intelligence, and coordination. They were so smart in fact that they wore armour made of other monsters to protect themselves against Boris’ fangs. Some were durable enough to take dozens of hits and serve as a model for the Cadrian’s own defensive ventures.

And that was precisely why she was so disappointed in the miasmatic stonelord that was their progenitor. She had been hoping for a far greater challenge, a creature that was to the gargoyles what the corruptor had been to the borroks, something more difficult to kill, something that would further her mastery of her various forms. But all she received was a pacifist willing to present himself on a silver platter.

“Cheer up, Claire! At least he was worth a bunch of experience, right?” said Sylvia.

“Hardly. I barely gained a quarter of a level.”

“Oh, come on! That’s plenty for a big dumb rock that didn’t fight back. Especially since you guys are a party of four. All that means is that he was worth an entire level, all by himself.”

Shrugging, Claire gestured for the others to follow as she stepped over the gargoyle’s foot and approached the reality-warping door. Seeing through to the other side was not impossible, but the image lacked anything in the way of meaningful clarity. All the half-snake could really make out was that it was every bit as purple as the corrupted woodland in which they stood. There were a few scattered bits of brown, likely trees, but she was unable to determine their types or relative sizes.

“I’m ready to leave. Any objections?” she asked, as she placed a hoof through the portal.

“None,” said Arciel.

“I think we should be fine to proceed,” agreed Natalya.

“Good,” said Claire. “Boris?”

The lizard nodded when he heard his name, and after tearing off another gargoyle arm with his jaws, began to follow in her wake. He appeared rather fond of the stoned monsters’ flavour. While not quite capable of eating as much as Sylvia, he shoved their bodies into his gullet whenever he was given the chance, sometimes even devouring so much that he vomited, only to eat again right after.

When the party emerged from the other side of the gate, they found themselves greeted by yet another forested mountainscape. Conceptually, it was identical to the floor that preceded it, a bunch of rocks with long wooden things growing on top and a thick purple smog polluting the world. If there was one obvious difference to immediately call to question, it was that the night was a permanent fixture no longer. The sun was out, only mildly obscured by the overcast skies.

“Wow!” Sylvia stood up from her seat and cast her gaze over the horizon. “I thought this floor was gonna be just as bland and boring as all the others, but it’s not actually that bad!”

The time of day was not all that differed between the two realms. The style of their construction and precise methods of implementation varied as well. This was immediately reflected in the mountains’ shapes. Many peaks were taller, and their slopes were less gentle. There were still some that could easily be climbed, but for each surmountable summit, there were a dozen others that could not simply be conquered by a ground dweller. Each measured in at a completely different height, from just a few hundred meters off the ground to dozens if not hundreds of kilometers in the air. Their widths, however, were not as diverse. Most were a hundred meters across at most, often with small springs or reservoirs on top, flowing down into the foggy abyss below.

Naturally, such an environment was no longer conducive to the standard tree variants that had conquered the previous floor. The few boring old maples and oaks still present resided only atop the flattened summits. The rest of the trees were a lot hardier, pines and conifers that grew without any soil, sprouting directly from the crags themselves.

Even with the mist obscuring nearly everything below, Claire could tell that floor nine was far more populated than the one that came before it. Her ears caught all sorts of different animals strewn throughout the space. Many of them were winged, flying in formation and moving in unison as they claimed the skies as their own, but the mammals and lizards each held their own non-negligible domains. They were darting around through the undergrowth, or perhaps stomping it down, loudly, with no hint of stealth or restraint.

“It feels cluttered,” said Claire, with a twitch of the ears. “There are other parties here too. A lot of them.” Their competitors could be heard at almost every turn, locked in combat with the local wildlife.

“They don’t seem to be having a good time,” said Lia, as she stared down into the mist, “I’m not sure what exactly it is they’re fighting, but it looks like they’re having trouble taking it down.”

“All the more reason for us to jump in.” The party’s mantis advanced towards the plateau’s edge, but a tentacle made of blood grabbed him by the collar before he could leap over.

“Reign yourself, Matthias. This floor does not strike me as the sort we can easily conquer.” The witch pointed at the many-eyed tentacle monsters flying near the horizon. “We will only find ourselves wanting for a plan, should we blindly advance.”

“Yeah, there’s a lot of ground to cover, and it doesn’t look like any of the other groups have gotten too far in,” said Natalya, as she raised her eyes from the fog. “Some of them are pretty strong too, so I think we’ll really need to slow do—wait Claire!?” The cat nearly jumped out of her skin when she turned back towards the halfbreeds, neither of whom had remained to see the discussion through.

Sylvia and her chair had already moved to another earthen spire. They were investigating its spring, focused almost entirely on the discoloured fish swimming within. The arm-sized creatures stood out as a distinct species that the lyrkress had never seen before. Their scales were pitch black, and their spines and eyes were hardly any different, varying only in the intensity of their shades.

“Oooohhh! Fresh fish!” cheered the fox, as she walked to the water’s edge. “I haven’t had any of these in days!”

“We had monopus steak last night,” said the moose.

“I know! But that’s not the same as catching something live.” said Sylvia. “And besides, monopusses aren’t even real fish!” She caught a particularly plump-looking specimen as she spoke and swallowed it in one bite. “Wow! These are super tasty. You should try some. They’re even better than the ones back home!”

“They don’t look very good.”

Claire yoinked a pair out of the water. One was thrown to Boris, who casually opened his jaws to receive it, while the other was carefully examined. Its face was grotesque, filled with jagged fangs of varying lengths, and its eyes outright declassified it as food. They were pitch black, with no signs of movement in any which way. They almost appeared to have come straight from the depths of the abyss.

“That’s just ‘cause they’re ugly. Give it here a sec.”

Sylvia opened her mouth wide upon receiving the fish and bit the air with an exaggerated motion. Each time she closed her jaws, a piece of the swimmer changed. First, its head was removed. Next, its scales and fins, and finally its bones and innards. By the time Sylvia was done, all that was left of the once-disturbing abomination was a pure white fillet, or at least something that somewhat resembled one. The fish was somehow still in one impossible piece, despite everything but its flesh being eaten.

“Oh uhmmm… I guess you probably wanna cook it, but I dunno how.”

“Me either,” said Claire, as she poked at the fuzzy critter’s creation. She took a moment to glance at the group that they had abandoned before ripping a few more fish out of the water and pushing them in Sylvia’s direction. “Can you get these cleaned up too? We might as well have lunch.”

“Okay! Just gimme one second…”

While the forest critter munched away at the parts that only a particularly glutinous Llystletein fox would enjoy, Claire floated back over the first platform and greeted the two less-than-happy organisers with her usual blank stare. They were shouting at her about one thing or another, but she ignored their complaints, vectored them into the air, and threw them towards the other mountain. The mantis was nearly given the same treatment, but she cut his vector short upon recalling his previous desire.

“Matthias!?”

Arciel dashed over to the edge of the cliff and looked over, but he vanished beneath the clouds before she could offer anything in the way of meaningful assistance.

“Oops,” said Claire, nonchalantly.

“We must go after him!”

“He’ll be fine,” said Claire. “Rhiars can fly.”

“His wings are bound within his armour!” shouted the squid.

“And he was screaming,” added Natalya. “People that can fly don’t scream if they’re dropped in the middle of the sky.”

“Oh.” Claire looked down at the clouds, namely the knight-shaped hole featured within them, and shrugged. “Oh well. He’ll be fine,” she repeated. “Probably.”

The vampire opened her mouth to complain, but Claire paralyzed her before she could. “I’ll go get him later,” she said. “Let him have his fun for now.”

“I’m not sure there’s really any fun for him to be had if he dies from the fall,” said Natalya, with a grimace.

“Don’t worry,” said Claire. She waited for her ears to pick up a distant thunk before continuing. “He’s already hit the floor. Your log would have updated if he died.”

Natalya sighed. “I know you were trying to be nice to Matthias, but I really think you need to frame your intentions a little better. Arciel’s completely misunderstood.”

“I know,” said the lyrkress. “And I don’t care. She’d have figured it out eventually.” Claire prodded the still frozen vampire with her tail as she grabbed the cat by the shoulders and wheeled her towards the fox. Sylvia had already dug a hole for the firepit and lit up a few branches, but kept the processed fish in a bubble far away from the flame.

“I can walk by myself,” said Lia.

“I know.” Upon arrival, Claire crafted an icy spatula and handed it over to her feline companion.

“Wait, what’s this for?” She blinked in confusion as she looked between the fire and the already melting tool in her soon-to-be frostbitten hand.

“Maid duties. Do them.”

“Uhm…” The Paunsean meowed and tilted her head. “What maid duties?”

“Cooking.” Claire pointed at the fish. “Neither of us know how. So you have to do it instead.”

Natalya smiled awkwardly. “I don’t really think maids are supposed to be in charge of cooking. That’s more of a chef thing.” She shifted her hands behind her back and lowered her gaze. “And to be honest, I’m not really sure how to cook either. The most I could do is probably roast them, and you can do that just as easily.”

“It burned, last time I tried.” Claire looked to Arciel with a frown, but the squid only shook her head.

“The only one of us well versed in the art of cuisine,” she said, bitterly, “lies at the bottom of this mountain.”

“Fine,” Claire sighed. “I’ll go get him.” Groaning in annoyance, she spread her wings, leapt into the clouds, and sought the warrior she dropped out off the sky.