Chapter 44: Chapter 41: Maze

"All I did was laugh hysterically at you for half an hour! This is cruel and unusual punishment!"

"One more word out of you, and I'll do your face too."

"Aww, is the little spider girl embarresmffp."

I left my evil twin webbed to the wall as I explored my body more carefully. I could no longer cut my skin with a spider claw without invoking the damage increasing feature of my dagger skill. The sword of paralysis could manage it easily enough, though, so my skin wasn't that tough. It was a decent and welcome extra layer of protection, but was more on the level of the smaller centipedes than the big one. That made sense; I'd murdered him, so it must be the little ones that I was considered to have a friendly relationship with by my class. Useful, but I wouldn't be obsoleting my usual armour set anytime soon.

The spinneret on my bum seemed to be there mostly for embarrassment purposes. The actually useful ones were on my fingertips, and were remarkably easy to use. Apparently, I had an unlimited supply of silk now. I could make threads with individual fingers or use my whole hand at once for wider bands. In terms of strength, it wasn't anywhere close to the level of what the spider queen produced, but even so, it would be useful. Then maybe the toughness of my skin wasn't because I'd murdered the big centipede, but just because the perks I got were weaker than the monsters they came from? In that case, where were my mind-fuckery powers?

As for my bodily fluids, my saliva, blood and even urine smelt every bit as tempting as the murder tree's nectar. Presumably they didn't have the hypnotic effect that the real stuff had, but without anything here that was vulnerable to it, I couldn't check for certain. Nevertheless, next time my zombie twin launched a kissing attack, I had a means of counterattack. And any vampires who happened to bite me were in for a nasty shock. As for pissing on enemies... No thanks. I'd rather stab them.

Other bodily fluids? What other bodily fluids? I wasn't going to experiment with that, even if they did feature improved taste. Or at least, not right now.

My dark-vision was weird. It didn't let me see in the absence of light, but rather let me see in the presence of magical darkness, such as that given off by the blighted moss on my shield, or the black torches that adorned every room. I no longer needed to carry my fox-kin torch, which I returned to my item box. It was a legitimately useful perk. It was just a shame about the effect it had on my eye colour.

"And to think I was worried about my personality changes when I went home to Earth," I muttered. "Guess I now have a potential new career option as a superhero? Or in a circus?"

A muffled sniggering came from an evil twin shaped cocoon glued to the wall. To be fair, all the perks were useful. Very useful, in fact, apart from the poisonous fluids. Maybe my dark sight wouldn't be useful outside of the catacombs, but here it was awesome. I could live with a few side effects. Gaining a third orifice on my lower back had just come as a bit of a shock. Thankfully, with a small adjustment to my armour so that it didn't rub against my new protrusion, I could almost pretend I hadn't suddenly turned into some sort of mutant freak.

"Right, let's see what my new skill options are."

Stronger poison: Slightly increase the potency of your body's poisons.
Hypnotic aroma: Your bodily fluids gain a weak version of the hypnotic abilities of the angelica vorax.
Exoskeleton: Develop a thin chitin exoskeleton to provide additional protection.
Luminance: Your body glows with a soft white light.
Improved silk: Slightly increases the strength of your silk.
Festering wounds: Wounds you inflict with your own nails, claws and teeth become diseased with mild blight-like symptoms.

I stared at the options. That was... not what I was expecting. I was expecting skills that aided communication, or that otherwise helped me to forge friendly relations with monsters, but they were just things that made me more monstrous! At least it implied I could bring my perks up to the levels of the monsters they came from, if I spent skill slots on them. And it confirmed I didn't have the hypnotic power of the real nectar.

I took improved silk, because that was the least offensive option, and the most likely to actually be useful. Muffled questioning grunts came from the cocoon, so I filled my duplicate in with the details, resulting in more muffled laughter.

"Glad to see you're having fun," I muttered, but to be fair, I meant it. She deserved that much. "Shall we pair of monstrous twins get to exploring, then?" I asked, slicing her free and removing her collar.

"Being cocooned like that really is pleasant," she commented. "You should try it again sometime."

I just snorted. Having two of me was really going to cause trouble; we were in danger of spending more time messing around than trying to find the missing sword. I did have more fluids that needed careful testing, after all, and they wouldn't be dangerous to a zombie; her heart had stopped long ago.

"Any other interesting locations you've found?"

"Nope. Without mapping or an immortality cheat, I haven't ventured too far. There's the dead-end room I stashed all the zombie corpses in, but aside from that, it's just a bunch of empty rooms."

"Not empty," I pointed out, poking at one of the coffins that sat in the alcoves in the wall.

"Nah, I opened a bunch of the non-smashed ones, and there's nothing in any of them. Not even any decorative skulls hanging around. I suppose the zombies had to come from somewhere, so maybe they climbed out of the coffins?"

"If the place had been here for long enough to fill up that many coffins, wouldn't we be dealing with skeletons rather than zombies?"

"Maybe the blight regenerates them?"

"Bah. Nothing about this place makes sense. I swear the Goddess is just making it all up as she goes along. Or as we go along."

"Hah. You think she'll just keep adding floors until we've been stuck here for some pre-determined amount of time?"

I paused in my step to consider that. "I really hope not..."

"We did make that comment about real quests taking years."

"Urk... Don't remind me."

As we continued to wander, slowly filling in my auto-map, it became increasingly obvious that this place was decorative. The layout made no sense, not as an actual burial ground or even as a defensive maze. The use of space was also impossible to justify; the largish rooms had at most six alcoves per wall, arranged in two rows of three, and only four on walls with exits. With only twenty-ish coffins per room, the place was far bigger than it needed to be. This place was built to offer epic zombie fights, not for any sort of functional use.

"If we ever meet this goddess, I'm going to have a few complaints," said my zombie, as we entered yet another identical room, with the same set of alcoves, torches and broken coffins.

"Me too," I agreed. "This place was blatantly built to be blighted."

"Or else the blight changed the whole structure."

"Possible, I suppose."

Thanks to my evil twin's zombie genocide, we didn't encounter anything as we searched the area around the shrine, but as we moved further away, we started hitting occasional groups. Noises seemed to attract more, which, given their tendency to screech loudly at us on sight, meant that a lone zombie could quickly turn into a dozen. Thankfully, they were weak, tending to fall apart the moment I poked at them. Unfortunately...

Disease nullification advanced to level 27

Any wound I inflicted sprayed their black, corrupted blood everywhere, dosing me repeatedly with more blight.

Sword proficiency advanced to level 16

"We need to get back to the shrine," I said, when the latest group caused me to start coughing up dark, stinking blood. "I can't take much more of this, or you're going to end up with another sister."

"That's nice and all, but you still haven't found food or water."

I winced. Would I even be able to purge my blight infection before dying of dehydration? I might need to ask my zombie twin to kill me with extreme prejudice. She'd need to destroy my brain, at the least.

"Want me to keep looking while you rest?" asked my twin.

"No, it's best we stick together. If it comes down to it, I just have to make sure I die by decapitation or smashing my brain in, and not of the blight or anything that would leave my body intact."

I followed my map back to the shrine. Or at least, I tried to.

"That's a brick wall," pointed out my twin, knocking on it by way of evidence. It even contained the set of six alcoves and coffins in their usual places.

"It wasn't when we came this way the first time."

"Sure you're not just reading the map wrong?"

"Don't you dare start on my map reading skills!"

"Hah. You know our brother was right. You just never wanted to admit it."

"Not to him, and not to myself, either. But in this case, yes, I'm sure. This room should have had another exit in the right-hand wall. In fact, my map shows it as still being there, but there's a shaded line over it."

"So, this place rearranges itself when we aren't looking?"

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"Apparently."

Our frustration was interrupted by a groaning from the room's single exit, as a group of three zombies entered.

"I'll take care of them," offered my zombie twin. "You hang back and concentrate on keeping your lungs on the inside."

Gah... I was doing okay at ignoring the horrible bubbling sensation in my chest, but now she'd drawn my attention to it again and made me want to cough.

Zombie Katie quickly dispatched the three intruders, while I leant against a wall and tried not to die. I'd underestimated the damn blight. Just because my disease nullification was enough to walk around with impunity now, I hadn't considered that blighted monsters would be giving me bigger doses. It wasn't as if they kept kissing me, but spilling their blood was enough to cause problems. Even from the other side of the room, I could feel the effect of the three that had just been killed.

"You still okay?" asked my twin. "Your breathing sounds rough."

"Good. It's when you can't hear it at all you need to start worrying."

I used my new spinnerets to make myself a silk mask, wrapping up my mouth and nose, and hoping it would do something to protect me, before leaving the room and trying to find my way back to the shrine. Fast travel would be far more useful if I could jump to a shrine from anywhere, although I guess that would require me to leave behind my twin.

"See? Doesn't that feel just divine against your skin?" asked my aforementioned twin, who didn't seem to be taking things at all seriously.

"For now. Less so when I cough or vomit blighted blood into it. And you realise I'm already wearing a whole silk armour set, right?"

"That's too thick and inflexible to be comfy, and has rigid plates all over the place. At least you can make more on demand now."

"True, but presumably the silk needs to come from somewhere, and I don't have food or water."

"Magic?"

I checked my bars as I made a bit more. "Oh, stamina, actually. My first stamina using skill." I hadn't noticed when I'd cocooned the annoying zombie, because I was so used to my yellow bar never changing that I'd managed to unconsciously ignore it.

We continued walking, and I had to take back what I said about this place being a poor defensive maze. I neither saw nor heard any walls sliding around, nor did a careful search of a new wall, or even a new opening, reveal any sort of mechanism or hint that anything had moved. If I didn't have my mapping skill, I'd no doubt be completely lost. Even if I'd been making paper notes, a zombie encounter could easily have caused me to lose my position, and with the identical rooms and shifting walls, I'd never have found myself again.

Thankfully, trying to work our way backwards had greatly cut down on zombie encounters, and my makeshift mask did seem to offer some protection. But no matter how hard I tried, we weren't getting any closer to the shrine.

"This isn't a maze," I stated as we hit yet another dead end.

"Could have fooled me. What is it then?"

"A trap. We're being led by our noses."

"What? You think something is controlling the floor layout in order to force us somewhere?"

"That's exactly what I think. No way in hell is this random."

"If we rest here instead, will you be able to purge your blight infection?"

"Not at my current level. Maybe if I max out disease nullification I'll be able to start fighting it off, but it still wouldn't be quick."

"Then either you suicide and leave me behind, or we spring the trap."

"Or we break down the bloody walls."

"Yeah... I'll get right on that. I think I've got some blasting charges in my pocket here."

"I still have that pickaxe in my item box," I pointed out.

"It's worth a try," she admitted with a shrug. "I'm the strongest between us, so hand it over and I'll see what I can do."

I slouched against a wall, removing my mask for a few seconds to cough up more festering blood and pus, while my zombie twin attacked a wall.

"No luck," she said, giving up and handing back the pickaxe. The wall wasn't even scratched. So that option was out then.

"If we spring the trap, I'm unlikely to survive, which will leave you on your own in hostile territory. That's... not really something I want to risk."

"You think? Haven't you noticed the way not a single one of these zombies have attacked me unless I strike first?"

"Well, yes, but if something is messing with the layout of this place to force us towards a specific location, then it's obviously intelligent."

"Then they can equally well ensure that the two of us don't meet up after your respawn."

"Fine. We'll spring the trap. Please try not to..."

I didn't get to finish my sentence due to the hand clamping over my face. "Don't you dare raise that flag!"

"Mmpphh," I promised, nodding.

"Good, now let's get going."

We carried on walking, while I hung back and left the zombie battles to my duplicate. Apparently, whatever was guiding us had decided to drop all pretences, because every room now had exactly two exits, leading us in very nearly a straight line.

It wasn't long before we came out in something other than the usual square rooms that were standard down here. A much larger, rectangular room with a high vaulted ceiling, and more ornate versions of the black torches lined up along the side walls. At the far end stood a throne on a raised platform, with a tarnished gold brazier on each side, again burning with black flames.

And on top of the throne sat a suit of plate armour, with a gigantic and completely impractical looking sword resting across its lap and a dull, silver crown sitting atop the helm. And it was just the armour, with no-one wearing it; with my new eyes and as intense as the magical darkness in this place was, I could see straight through the eye holes to the back of the helmet. Not that I was going to let that fool me at all.

Sense presence advanced to level 9

The thing lit up to sense presence like a Christmas tree. It was alive, and it was strong. Maybe not on the level of the centipede or the spider queen, but it was certainly a bigger signal than the starfish-wolf things. The room was so large, alas, that it was out of appraisal range.

The empty suit of armour stood up, moving slowly, and making sounds that suggested it was fighting against rusted, seized joints. It grasped at the sword, as long as the armour was tall, casually raising it and laying it across its pauldrons.

Things could have been worse. With no blood, hopefully this thing wasn't going to bleed all over me and pump me full of even more blight. Trying to fight what was basically a big clump of metal was going to make it hard to do damage, but it seemed big and slow, and there were two of us and only one of it.

I gripped my sword and took a fighting stance, letting my sword proficiency skill guide my actions. The suit of armour just stood there, silent and unmoving. Was it going to wait for us to make the first move?

No... It was kinda hard to tell, given its lack of eyes, but from the orientation of the helmet, it didn't seem to be me that it was looking at. My zombie twin, then?

I would have turned to look, but the red, glowing sword that had just stabbed straight through my heart, delivering its paralysing curse through my whole body at once, made movement rather difficult.

I crumpled to the floor, and the last thing I saw was my zombie twin, ripping her sword out of my side where she'd stabbed straight through one of the thinner centipede plates, a twisted smile of pure ecstasy on her face as she raised her sword for another swing. It was all I could do to stash my equipment before I fell.

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