Chapter 17: Chapter 17: Brood-mother

Poison resistance advanced to level 11

I struggled to get too excited about that. Levels seemed to come slower after level ten, and it wasn't as if one more level made much difference. I still couldn't move, and goodness knows how many more I would need to protect myself properly.

I spent my time as they dragged me back down the darkening corridor pondering this venom. My pet murder tree's nectar seemed to act directly on my muscles, leaving even my heart unable to beat. This one obviously didn't, because not only did my heart still work, but I could breathe and blink. I couldn't talk, though, and was probably leaving a trail of drool wherever we went. Did it block off a particular bundle of nerves? It seemed oddly specific.

We left the passage, and I was dragged down into the pitch black cavern. I found vague amusement in some of the squelchy noises from around me, suggesting that the centipedes were impaling themselves on the spikes I'd attached to my armour, but it was outweighed by the dread of finding out what a bunch of centipedes wanted me alive for, especially as the feeling of attention was getting stronger the closer we got. Whatever the source was, my new skill told me we were headed straight for it.

I was dragged down another steep slope that I recognised from last time as being close to the end of the journey, but then, much to my surprise, I saw light. I was in an open-topped room, the floor swarming with centipedes, but the walls free of them. Instead, I saw dead monsters spaced along it, mostly wolves, but also some horned beetles, a few I didn't recognise, and even a spider. Also a Katie; I could see my previous instance here too. Each corpse was partially entombed in a clear yellow substance that looked like amber.

And they were all very definitely corpses. With the sole exception of my own, which looked untouched, they all looked like they'd exploded, with chunks of the amber-like substance bent outwards, along with bits of the monsters. Whatever had happened to them had obviously been some time ago, because they were also showing significant signs of decay.

My paralysed body was manoeuvred next to my old one, in an area that had been surrounded by the glowing moss. Did they think I'd died from the lack of light, and had brought it here to try to keep me alive this time?

The sense of attention sharpened to the point it was almost painful, and I saw two jagged, orange pillars begin to rise over one of the walls. It wasn't until the head started to appear behind them that I realised they were mandibles, a part of a centipede so large that it made the two metre long members of the swarm look completely insignificant. In fact, the smaller members of the swarm were crawling all over it, just as they were each other, as if things weren't creepy enough already.

The tips of its front legs jabbed into the top of the wall, and it slowly lowered its head to look at me. And it did look; this one had eyes. And a brain too. The others presumably had some sort of nervous system of their own, but this one was very obvious about it, with pink, wrinkled brain matter protruding through the shell that should have been protecting its head. It stared for a minute, then flexed an appendage, spraying me with the rapidly hardening yellow liquid.

It lowered its head right in front of me, then shot out something like a tentacle, forcing its way down my throat and pumping in the same lumpy liquid as last time, the paralysis from the poison completely killing any gag reflex. Eww! It was coming straight from its body? What was it feeding me? Its own regurgitated meal?! The experience was over quickly enough, and it drew back, but thanks to the venom I couldn't even vomit. As if the sight of all the exploded monsters wasn't nausea inducing enough already.

...Wait. Shit!

That was slow of me. I should have worked it out the moment I first saw them, but really I'd have preferred it if I never worked it out and continued here in blissful ignorance. What would cause monsters to explode like that, as if something inside of them had burst out? Why would this thing pump a lump-filled liquid down my throat? Those lumps were fucking eggs! They needed live hosts to incubate their young! How long? Would I get trigger respawn back in time? Would disease resistance kill them? Please, please do... Friend of fear might prevent fear from being a distraction, but right now there was nothing to distract me from, leaving me free to dwell on the thought of a bunch of baby centipedes eating me from the inside out.

The giant head withdrew back behind the wall, but unlike last time the sense of presence stayed on me, the oversized monster presumably watching out for signs of sudden death. There were no other live hosts in this area, and I could only assume that they'd consumed everything they'd had access to some time ago. Something had obviously held them back from the rest of the cave system. The spiders? I couldn't see how; the swarm had made short work of their webs, and the spiders didn't have an unlimited acid supply. Maybe they remembered a time when the shrine's barrier was at full strength, and hadn't bothered to check since it declined.

Now the centipedes could spread through a much larger area. The only blessing was that even if they could pass through the shrine's barrier themselves, they didn't seem able to bring other monsters through it. Neither could the mother monster get out; it was too big to fit in the passage. They'd got their mandibles on me, but I was hardly going to make an impact on the size of the swarm on my own.

As long as they didn't realise I respawned, and decide to reuse me over and over... They'd have to keep me sedated somehow to avoid me activating trigger respawn, because even complete paralysis wouldn't be enough to stop me. It was a button inside my own mind. Hopefully, they wouldn't have that ability. Talk about a bad ending... It was worth remembering that immortality didn't guarantee victory. Even with trigger respawn, I could be vulnerable to brainwashing, or kept unconscious, or someone could camp my respawn cave and kill me immediately each time I woke up.

Actually, with two of me here, the leader should have spotted something was up already. Maybe they didn't know what a human was, and didn't know we weren't all supposed to look alike, and they were rushing down the passages looking for a whole population of me. That would explain why they were putting so much effort into keeping me alive; they thought the experience would translate into the production of a whole new brood.

Did this big monster have a range limit over which it could coordinate the swarm? I didn't want to think about them overrunning the whole dungeon... Then again, I knew there were other things here that could stand up to them, such as whatever had vaporised a whole passageway's worth of the swarm, twice.

I started to get some movement back after half an hour, but as expected I was glued firmly to the wall, entombed in a hardened block of centipede gunge, and would be going nowhere. I still wasn't feeling any effects from my parasitic payload, couldn't think of any move to make until I got trigger respawn back, and I didn't want to stay awake for twenty-four hours after the many hours of fighting I'd just done. So... Nap time it was, then.

Disease resistance advanced to level 11
Disease resistance advanced to level 12

I woke up feeling sick, but with a full health bar, and notifications that suggested my disease resistance skill was doing its best. Promising, but somewhat counteracted by the fact I already felt ill when I couldn't possibly have been sleeping for anywhere near twenty-four hours. It didn't bode well for surviving until I got my class skills back.

Also promising was that the feeling of attention had gone away. The centipede brood-mother was no longer watching over me, presumably having decided that the light was enough for me to survive.

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So began a long, boring wait for something interesting to happen. Nothing did. The centipede mass continued to wriggle around all over the floor, and while it was impossible to keep track of any individual, I was pretty sure they weren't eating or drinking. No wonder my old corpse had been left untouched.

I continued to feel sick, and it got gradually worse, but I remained blissfully free of baby centipedes doing an alien chestburster impression. The only highlight was a notification about gaining another level of disease resistance. Hopefully, any one event that gave me three levels in one go would also count as an achievement for its next evolution.

My class skills came back, and I immediately activated trigger respawn. Then I pondered what to do next. Focusing sense presence, I could tell that the mother centipede was the other side of the wall opposite me, and was paying me no attention. It didn't seem to be moving. It had a very exposed brain. I was trapped in a solidified block of centipede gunk, but I now had item box back. I couldn't store it directly, but I could store my armour, freeing up a bit of wriggle-room inside my prison.

Then I retrieved a spider claw dagger, carefully positioning the exit point of item box so that it appeared in my hand, and started cutting. With the tight space, I ended up cutting myself as much as my cage, but I was still making progress.

It took ten minutes to free up a hand, but once that was done, another five minutes was enough to cut myself free completely. The swarm below ignored me, but I bet that would change if I started trying to walk through it. Instead, using my recent prison as a stepping stone, I pulled myself to the top of the wall and made my way along it to the other side.

There were no light sources out here, and the mother centipede was in the shadow cast by the wall. Without sense presence, I wouldn't have been able to tell where it was, but staring in the direction indicated by my skill I could just barely make out a silhouette. It hadn't reacted to my presence, so maybe it was asleep? And its head was close enough to the wall for me to jump it.

You will regret inviting me into your home...

I pulled a spear from my item box and jumped, aiming the point downwards and standing on the base while in mid-flight, doing my best piledriver impression. The monster had pure volume on its side; what would a thin fifty centimetre spike do to a brain that was metres in every dimension? But I intended to make this blow count, and to drive it in as far as I possibly could.

I impacted with a sickening squelch, the spike driven in so far I could no longer feel it beneath my feet.

Pain. Confusion. Fear.

I was blasted with emotion, but it wasn't my own. That was... odd, but I was standing on a three metre wide monster brain, so probably best not to question it. The brood-mother reared upwards, very much still alive despite its new brain piercing. In an effort to rectify that, I drew my dagger back out and started slashing.

Comprehension. Anger.

I could feel the indignation radiating off the brood-mother. Its breeding stock had attacked it. It wanted to know how. And it could know how. It just needed to look. My rampage with the dagger was interrupted by a migraine, and my own memories flashed unwillingly in front of me. How I'd escaped from the breeding chamber.

Surprise. Interest.

It hadn't thought I was intelligent. How could anything with such a small head as me be capable of any sort of conscious thought? It hadn't looked through my memories because it thought me so far beneath it that they would have no value. Now it was interested, but I really didn't want this thing pulling the secret of... No! I stamped down on the thought hard. The monster was already in my head. If I thought about it, it would very likely know.

Condescension.

It found my attempts at protecting my secrets cute. Like I was a toddler scribbling with crayon, pretending to paint a masterpiece. I should have waited till the hour was almost up, dammit. Of course the monster with the massive exposed brain would turn out to be psychic. That explained how it was controlling its spawn. And dammit again; now it was trying to... No, I'm safe; it was just wondering what an hour was. That was a relief; it didn't speak my language, so even if it could pluck the words I was thinking out of my head, it wouldn't learn anything. At least, not yet. There was no reason for it to not be able to access my memories of language.

I needed out of this now, before it started asking the wrong questions. My body wouldn't move as I wanted, apparently yet another way this dungeon had found to restrain me. Some sort of mind control, but it was very obviously the mother centipede protecting itself; I couldn't attack it, but I could attack myself. I felt it invade my mind further as it tried to stop me, but it didn't make it in time. I slashed my throat and stored the dagger, the interference causing a rather less neat and more painful wound than I would have liked, but a fatal wound nonetheless.

I felt it desperately trying to pull out more memories, but its abilities appeared to require a functional brain on the other side, and mine had rather abruptly lost its oxygen supply.

Wrath.

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