Chapter 209 - Tentacles and Ashes II

Having retrieved the broken-legged mantis and enlisted him to make lunch, Claire and co set out with their bellies full and their weapons thirsting for blood. But eager as they were, the adventurers found themselves devoid of any meaningful information. Their mountain top view offered them little in the way of merit. A thick layer of fog prevented them from seeing too far beneath the peaks, and looking towards the horizon provided a similarly negligible amount of information. Clouds and rocks consumed much if not all of the vista’s space. The only notable landmark was a massive craggy peak thrice the size of any other, its frosted tip almost tall enough to touch the sun.

Unlike most of the other stone spires, which were shaped like large cylinders, it was almost entirely triangular, closely resembling the image invoked when one considered a typical mountain. Claire was tempted to take on her true form and fly straight towards it—the looming sculpture almost seemed further away from the portal than the dungeon had been from the Vel’khanese capital—but she refrained. The local wildlife was worth far too much. The level 350 shoggoth that she had defeated during Matthais’ retrieval had given her an entire level, and the others she slew after her midday meal hardly gave any less.

Pulling Boris out from one such eldritch blob’s face, Claire flicked the discoloured blood off his frame and turned her eyes the other way. She was still unsure as to what about them she enjoyed, but she wanted nothing more than to turn into a qiligon and swallow them by the boatload.

When she scanned her surroundings, she found that the others were not as quick to finish their marks. Natalya and Arciel were working on a second shoggoth together while Matthais slowly whittled down a third. The mantis was not struggling, per se, so much as enjoying himself. He allowed his foe to show off its full repertoire, attacking only to encourage the eldritch blob to retaliate in kind.

Likewise, the other two were not so much lacking in firepower as they were staying vigilant. Having both fallen prey to the shoggoth on the fifth floor, they erred on the side of caution and carefully observed each of its attacks. And it was precisely to aid in this effort and further their understanding that Sylvia had changed heads. She was sitting between Lia’s ears, her body shifted to its fairy-like form and a miffed face resting atop her palms.

Her job, for the most part, was done. She had already explained the dream eaters’ various strengths and weaknesses, as well as elaborated on their ability to drowse their opponents and enter their minds. It worked primarily off of their polyps. If their detachments were able to make contact with their foes, then they could whisk them off to the land of nightmares and illusions. Mind-rending abilities aside, the shoggoths were effectively no different from any other high-leveled slimes. If anything, their extra organs made them more vulnerable. It was possible to interrupt the void magic they flung by attacking the eye that was its caster. Being the less magically inclined of the two, Natalya struggled to pinpoint the appropriate oculi, but Arciel had no problem seeing it done. She prodded at the creature with spears made of its own blood, stunning it every time it tried to build its spells.

Another two blobs wandered over and joined the fray right as they moved to end the first. Though they had taken their time, Sylvia’s fresh disciples had slain the shoggoths much more quickly than some of the other parties’ members. It was not their knowledge that made the difference, but the confidence with which they advanced. One would think that seafarers like the Vel’khanese would be well seasoned in battles against the creatures of the deep, but such a radical assumption could not have been further from the truth. The Ryllian’s most civilized inhabitants stayed only within its shallowest waters. Even those that made their livings from the slaying of monsters rarely strayed too far from the safety of their coastal homes, for venturing into the abyss was but a fool’s errand. Even the children knew that conflict with abyssal horrors was to be avoided at all costs.

As one such monster herself, Claire was unaffected by the aura of terror radiated by the shoggoths and their peers. She leapt through the forest and charged one of the newcomers with all her usual aggression. It sent a wave of polyps at her, but she shrugged them all off and brought Boris down on its largest eye before it could force her to drowse. The poison that coated his frame forced the beast to recoil, and the magic that flowed through his body fueled the damage he inflicted. With another four swings, the shoggoth was dead, half its corpse frozen and shattered.

“We were hoping to keep that one alive for a little longer,” said Lia, as she sheathed her blade, the second extra blob dead at her feet.

“There are more coming,” said Claire. “We don’t have time to waste. Just kill them and be done with it.”

She could hear two approaching from the front and another three from behind. The larger group had just come off of besting a different party of adventurers. Four of the seven defeated scyphs had been captured instead of killed, but such a fate was hardly better than death. They were kept alive only so their eldritch masters could force dreams down their throats whilst slowly sucking their brains dry.

“I suppose if we must.”

Arciel waved her staff and gathered the dead monsters’ blood. Forming the glob into a sharpened wedge, she launched it in Matthais’ direction and impaled the shoggoth that he was dueling. It was turned into a withered husk in the blink of an eye. The vital fluid it leaked was merged into the projectile that marred its body and used to tear it in half. The mantis did not exactly appear thrilled by the development, but nodded to his lady and reined in his scythes regardless.

Claire raised a finger and pointed in front of them. “There’s two somewhere over there. I’ll take the three behind us.”

“Arciel, Matthais and I should take the larger group,” said Natalya. “I think we’ve gotten a good enough handle on how we’re supposed to fight them now.”

“Does that mean I’m finally free?” Sylvia jumped to her feet, the spark returned to her lightless eyes.

Lia scratched the back of her head and twisted her lips into a forced smile. “You’re making it sound like watching us was painful. I know we weren’t doing great, but I don’t think we were doing that poorly.”

“That’s not the problem!” The fox lightly stamped the cat’s head. “It’s ‘cause the way that you guys fight is all safe and boring. Watching Claire is way more fun ‘cause she’s super reckless!”

“I’m not reckless,” said Claire.

“Uh huh…” Sylvia floated over to her mount and put her hands on her hips. “Then what about the time you jumped into Headhydra’s barrier while she was regenerating?”

“That was smart. Not reckless.” The half-snake ignored the two accusing stares as she turned towards the shoggoths crawling out from within the forest. Their bodies were spread thin, and their heights lowered during their advance so that they would be more difficult to spot. “Less pointing fingers. More fighting. They’re already here.”

“You know, sometimes I think she’s just doing it on purpose,” said Lia. “Maybe she just likes thrills.”

“You’re overthinking it.” Claire lightly flicked the cat’s forehead, eliciting a satisfying cry of pain. “And wrong. Mostly wrong.”

She moved her hands as she continued harassing the catgirl with her tail, setting the fairy on her shoulder and raising Boris overhead. Recognizing that he was to be thrown, the lizard minimized his size and turned himself into a ball no larger than her fist. He warped again when he was launched, sprouting large serrated blades in every which direction. The trees he touched were sawn in half and the shoggoth hardly fared any better. He ripped right through its eyes, devouring its tentacles and transforming its body into a mess of splintered flesh.

The half-dead blob tried to attack him, but he turned back into a lizard and returned to his owner before he was struck.

Claire swung him again as he entered her hands. She bashed his face into a second meat blob and sent a chilling pulse through his body. When the motion was repeated, he shifted forms again, first turning into a pickaxe to channel a freezing blast through the monster's flesh, and then back into himself to smash it to bits.

He had been fearful of his master’s icy magic at first, but with continued exposure, he found that it was harmless. The trick was to accept it. It would meld with his form and refill his own pool so long as he did not try to resist it, just like the poison that so often coated his frame. She was like a well, a great sea of raw mana that he could easily draw from and refine. It was also through that link that he had always understood her silent commands.

Following one such order, he turned into a massive meat hook and dove deep within another shoggoth’s flesh. With him as her fishing rod, she hoisted it overhead and fired a breath, obliterating its flesh and consigning it back to the void. He, on the other hand, was unharmed. Like his master, he was completely immune to the bombardment’s destructive properties.

They spent a long time cycling between lulls and periods of murder. He napped whenever his master engaged in travel or conversation, waking only when they engaged hostile forces. His face was bashed into all sorts of beasts and baddies, the particular details changing each time. Following one such occasion, he found himself privy to the strangest of sounds. It rang quietly at first, unable to pull him from his usual relaxed state, but it grew louder each time he inhaled. The world around him distorted, twisting, turning, and bending as the trees turned to delectable gargoyles and the monsters to massive giraffes.

The illusion lasted until his face met a wall. His master had broken the spell by bashing him against its caster. Blinking his eyes from beneath the veil that was his built-in helmet, he looked upon the creature with a curious gaze.

It was not a shoggoth like any of the others they had slain, but something much smaller and more durable. When Boris looked at it, he nearly found his mind stolen again, but another smack returned it to its rightful place.

Each time he turned his eyes towards it, he would find himself plagued by an illusion that grew weaker with every repetition. Eventually, it stopped affecting him altogether and allowed him to see its perpetrator’s true form. Like the projection’s focus, the monster was something that somewhat resembled a giraffe, albeit one with a number of deformities. Its multiple heads were attached directly to its body with no necks to serve as intermediaries. Its legs were positioned not beneath it but on top of it, so that it could walk along an invisible plane whose precise curvature it was free to dictate.

Claire was just as unbound by the earth. Her wings still retracted, she hovered in the air above the monster so that she could dart out of the way whenever it charged. Each of its attacks, she countered with a bludgeoning strike. Head screwed on straight or not, Boris was bashed right against its hardened exterior.

Unlike her weapon, the longmoose was unaffected by the beast’s psionic attacks. Its mind waves were noted, but otherwise dismissed. None of the parties involved understood her resistance, nor did any adapt their behaviours accordingly. Had the beast been more intelligent, it likely would have grown fearful and fled, but the simple neckless creature only pushed forward even as its life force was depleted.

“I have no idea what I just killed.”

Claire spoke under her breath as she kicked the seven-headed corpse into the undergrowth and removed herself from her temptations. Like the shoggoths, it was appealing in a way that she did not quite understand. Her rational mind knew that it was bound to be disgusting, but her body thirsted for its rainbow-coloured flesh, the very same way she had occasionally craved meat as a lyrkress.

“Huh? Doesn’t it show its name in your log?” asked Sylvia, with a tilt of the head.

“I know what it’s called,” said Claire, “but I don’t know what an eldritch muse is supposed to be.”

“Well uhmm… it’s uhhh…” The hat crossed her arms and furrowed her brows. “It’s a thing that’s good at working in groups and can combine to make an even bigger, stronger, and stupider thing.”

“That doesn’t explain anything,” said Claire. “And I still don’t get why it looks like that.”

“Oh uhm… yeah, I dunno either.” Sylvia fiddled with her tail. “But I’m starting to get really sick of all these silly monsters attacking us. They’re so annoying!”

“They are,” agreed the other halfbreed. “But I’ve gotten a lot of levels off of them.”

“Ughh…” Sylvia’s tail drooped. “Of course you’re stuck on the levels again. I was hoping you’d just let me kill them so we could get on with it. That big mountain we’re walking at looks like it could be a whole week away. Can’t you just like… rush us ahead a little bit? It’s not like you’re getting all that much experience from these guys anymore either.”

“It takes nine or ten of them for a level now,” said Claire “That’s still a lot, for how easy they are to kill.”

“Yeah, but there’s like a bajillion of them!” complained Sylvia. “We’re not gonna get anywhere unless we start killing them off a lot faster.”

“I know.” Claire accelerated towards the ground as she spoke. Her form changed in midair, shifting to that of a lyrkress just in time to plunge her hooves and talons into an unsuspecting shoggoth. She ripped another apart with her forces whilst manipulating Boris with her tail. The lizard-shaped whip-sword carved up all the monsters it touched, rending them as easily as the air. Arciel quickly seized control of the blood she drew, channeling it back inside their enemies and forcing them to explode.

The lyrkress glanced around the group after the last enemy fell, her eyes settling on the party’s berserker. Her mind was temporarily removed, and her armour had become a dress of viscera, covered from head to toe in bits of shoggoth. Lia growled when she first sensed the gaze, but calmed after determining its source. She took a deep breath, put a hand on her face, and gradually dispelled the enchantment that had stolen her capacity for reason.

“Feel like a break?” Claire spoke as soon as the madness faded, but kept her distance from the unsanitary stray.

“I would be, but I don’t think there’s anywhere for us to rest. These things are relentless.” The cat turned to the blood mage, who promptly cleaned her up with a snap of the fingers. “I can see why everyone was struggling to make progress.”

“Perhaps we could fend them off in shifts,” said Arciel. “It shall no doubt exhaust us, but it is better to rapidly drain our energies and recover through rest than to be slowly run into the ground.”

“We won’t need to. I have something in mind.” The lyrkress magically seized the party’s members, lifting them off the ground as she deployed her wings.

“Oh, no. Please don’t tell me we’re going up.”

“We’re going up.” Claire stuck out her tongue, prompting the critter on her head to break into a giggling fit.

“Don’t worry, Lia! There aren’t as many monsters up in the sky,” said Sylvia. “I dunno why, but most of them really like this weird purple mist. Oh, and plus! There’s something really weird up there. It’s worth a whole buttload of XP if you wanna go through all the trouble.”

“I thought you said we were going to take a break,” grumbled the cat. She had her hands pressed against her eyes, an extra protection against her curiosity.

“We are!” chirped the fox. “You’ll see in a second.”

They flew straight up the side of the nearest mountain, their pace easily exceeding that of the shoggoths that attempted to give pursuit. The blobs spiralled up the stone at first, but gave up as they trailed behind. The less intelligent giraffe balls moved as if to follow, but Sylvia deleted them with her jaws. Every spherical mammal was munched before it could so much as leave the tree line.

As Claire continued to rise, she realised that the rock face she ascended was quite different from the one that they had started on. Its crown was at a much lower elevation, still hidden in the mist, and its shape was not exactly cylindrical. At the very top sat a cap like that of a mushroom, many times wider than the stem from which it sprouted.

“Is that a temple?” Arciel opened her eyes wide as they slipped through a gap and found themselves greeted by a large stone building.

“Not just a temple,” grunted the mantis floating beside her. His compound eyes moved rapidly as he scanned the surrounding area. “It’s a whole damn town.”