Chapter 54: Ch.50 : Contact

“ Fiendbeasts are seldom seen, almost as much as their less horrific sounding counterparts, the faerie beasts. Nonetheless, what they share in common is that most of them are magically toxic to human consumption, perhaps only being viable for alchemic ingredients, but the miasma from fiend beasts is hard to handle. Most monsters are edible. However, that loin of steak at the local tavern might be a grizzly boar's for example. The few monsters that are inedible are so because they are naturally expected to be poisonous and that also includes plant monsters as well.” -Foreword, Philiarz Oonswarner’s Bestiary for Adventurers.

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Nora’s last telecast lit a fire in his belly and started a metaphorical countdown timer in his head. There were people banking on him, and he was not going to spare any quarter to get to them.

The bog rats had, so far, been less of an encumbrance, and he was not getting anywhere near the resistance he should have gotten from the second level. Though Arthur lacked the wealth of experience to draw from, it reminded him of one other dungeon that was like that before; which meant that he had to expect something outside the norm. Like monsters massing on one level for example. A monster frenzy.

‘Nora, have you gotten anything else yet? I also need an update on the other monsters in this dungeon,’ Arthur sent over the telecry. The few kardions of waiting for a response felt like an eternity for him . It was wearing on his nerves; there seemed to be a delay the further in he went.

‘None so far Arthur―and I don’t think Elenaril is in any condition to be casting magic,’ Nora stated. ‘ I’ll look for the bestiary, give me a moment.’

‘Huh? That’s her name?’ Arthur asked, swerving to avoid a pluripede’s lunge from a crevice. ‘Frag! [Affinity Augmentation]; [Aer Shot]!’ he let loose.

The aer core shot down the length of its maw and burst from within, splitting the myriapod in half. Arthur grimaced as he swerved away from its spray of ichor and kept his eyes doubly primed for more of them.

‘ Yes, her name is Elenaril Amberkeep. I can’t get more out of her, but she allowed me free rein of her personal effects; her medallion says she is a clerk with Aldmoor’s Adventurers Guild.’ Nora said.

‘Ah, here we go, bog rats, pluripedes, swamp oozes, leech barnacles and potentially, trogs. What they were really after was the bone spriggan. It’s a tier 2 monster. I’ve found the records of their delve; it should fall between level 20 and 30. Silver rankers are supposed to be at least tier 25…the bone spriggan can be found in a swamp biome on the third level. Higher on the totem pole are the trogs,’

‘What in the blue is a trog?’ Arthur asked befuddled.

‘ Troll frog; peak Silver tier. Level wise, they would be level 30. Rumoured to have minor regeneration and venomous or acidic spit. Encounters are termed as rare because of its heavy aestivation habits.’ Nora said simply.

‘Frag,’ Arthur cursed, and snuffed out his mage lights. The list of monsters sounded like bad news so he willed another layer of perception over the dwarven goggle’s Dark Vision.

Arthur flinched as [Draconic Sight] recoloured the dungeon in aetheric wisps and motes of mana, overlaid on the monochrome of the goggle’s. He had rather not take chances if the monsters he heard about were not susceptible to disorientation by mage lights like the bog rats. Consequently, he banked on the directions [Eidetic Memory] was feeding him from the last telepathic hail.

Just as he approached a fork in the tunnel, he heard the sounds of fighting and guttural growls that sounded like a sand chipper struggling with a stubborn piece of lumber.

‘Found them!’ Arthur sent back, both relief and anxiety bleeding into the telepathic link. He slowed, jumping off and magicking the hoverboard away as he hit the ground running. Priming his magelock pistol and making sure his dagger was reachable, Arthur squeezed against the wall to get a good vantage point as he prepared to engage.

‘Be careful!’ Nora’s reply came a few kardions of delay later. Arthur exhaled, bleeding the mounting tension before he spun away from the wall and drew his magelock pistol.

His first reaction froze him in his tracks and almost resulted in friendly fire when he saw the barbed tail and the shadowy cowl of a [Rogue]. Memories of the Djy'veli who could potentially be after his life had almost made him panic.

In the eerie blue- green glow of wisp-fires the spriggan had for eyes, he caught the surprised countenance on Djy'veli' face that stayed his hand. It almost bordered on hope; Arthur cursed his prejudice and swivelled his weapon towards the bone spriggan as he jumped into the fray with a warning.

“ Friend!” Arthur yelled out as he burst from his hiding spot, advancing on the monster from the side.

‘What in the blue is that swamp thing?!' Arthur thought as he watched for points of weakness. Unfortunately [Detect Flaw] did not work on animated trees as it had on the pile of debris he’d worked his runecraft.

At 7 feet of height, the bone spriggan was an anthropomorphic tree shrouded in muddy weeds dredged from the bottom of a pond for hair. Its Blue green wisp fire burned balefully from misshapen hollows which formed the facsimile of eye sockets.

It had the face of a gaunt greybeard, half a foot in the grave, or, in its case, a lichen beard? Its countenance was so grim and gnarled, with wrinkles along its bark so deep they might as well have been furrows.

Its trunk and limbs were where it earned its appellation by assimilating the bones of dead things into its petrified wood. Upper limbs, long enough to drag along the ground, ended in clawed black points that dripped noxious rotting sap.

And after training his aura, he could even gauge how far above him in terms of strength it was—

“Duck! [Affinity Augmentation]; [Aer Shot]!” Arthur called out. The rogue back stepped from a wild swing of the swamp monster, bending impossibly as though gravity did not exist before twisting into a backflip that cockscrewed him out of range.

A blue tracer blurred and slammed into the bone spriggan's trunk, and it exploded into a starburst of frost that chilled the air. There was a sound like bark splitting from a flash freeze in winter as the spriggan's trunk-like main body iced over. The monster howled in fury and torment as it clawed on the quickly encroaching rime, tearing parts of itself. It was strange to hear a sound like that coming from a creature made of wood; it sounded like a faulty pipe organ

Regardless, Arthur did not let up. Two more shots went cracking against the centre mass, accreting more ice. One more shot burst the afflicted area into splinters and frozen sap. Weighed down, the bone spriggan keeled to the side —

The rogue saw his chance and blurred across the distance, long fang-like daggers trailing shadows as they blurred in his hands. The hunched over spriggan, presented a moment of weakness and was stabbed in the hollows that housed its wisping orbs. The magic winked out and, like a great tree, it fell as the rogue jumped back.

Breathing hard from exhilaration, Arthur turned to the rogue,” Someone call for a rescue?”

The rogue gave him a wordless nod of affirmation; the state of his person was heartrending as he stood by sheer force of will. Their garb was battered; leather armour was scuffed in more places than Arthur could count. Streaks of dry blood mixed in with other unmentionable from the monsters he’d no doubt killed.

“Hoy my good man,” Arthur asked worriedly. “ Are you okay to move? I brought potions.”

The rogue shook their head. Their change in posture was the all sign Arthur needed as they both pivoted towards the tunnel he’d come from. The sound of wood groaning and creaking from further in echoed through the passage as three pairs of will-o-wisps appeared in semi-darkness. Arthur reloaded his magelock pistol.

“So, how do you want to do this?!” Arthur called out to his acquaintance in arms as he took the weaver’s stance right beside the rogue. If the rogue was surprised by the strange weapon, he did not show it. Instead, he pointed to his eyes and then towards the parade of approaching spriggans.

“Not one to talk huh? Does that mean go for the eyes ―” Arthur muttered in befuddlement. He did not understand the adventurers' handspeak yet. As soon as the first spriggan entered the periphery of the magelock pistol’s range, the rogue burst into motion.

“ Hey what in the blazes man! Did you mean to watch your six?!” Arthur cursed as he sprinted after the rogue, letting loose shots ahead of the Djy’veli male.

‘ By the blue―where is all that endurance coming from? He looked ready to keel over!’ was Arthur’s thought as they engaged the monsters.

“ Frag! Watch the vines,” Arthur yelled in warning as writhing plant matter came trailing thorns from the dark. The rogue impossibly jerked to the side, leaving afterimages that Arthur recognised as Djy’veli movement art, pirouetting and bringing down his daggers to shear through the vines.

Arthur ducked as the limp things whipped past where his neck had been and unloaded two casts of affinity augmented [Aer Shots] that punched through their knee and eye wisps. They immediately froze over; the lumbering anthropomorphic trees staggered.

The Djy’veli rogue seemed to blur again as he sidestepped wide of a spriggan, losing its limb , and vaulted over its wild and unbalanced swing. A glint of metal flashed as he used a skill― his daggers punched through the side of their head of wood and bark.

Arthur switched to the spriggan’s other wood brethren as they came into view―he shook his head at the daredevilry of his acquaintance-in-arms as he screamed himself hoarse inside his head. Adventurers were an odd bunch―

---

Triston, for that was the [Rogue] name, had come scouting ahead for an escape route. However, his luck had run out when he met a parade of more bone spriggans that he could handle. Luckily the ones they had been fighting were green out of whatever magic birthed them. He managed to give some of them the slip, but the monsters had corralled him and forced him to fight running battles, and that's when Arthur found him.

He didn’t speak much and seemed to use handspeak, even in the middle of their fights. The hand signals he learnt from Uncle Brandy did not serve him much there―it was a wonder that they made it past the monsters on their way to the rest of the party. Even after the monsters, navigating the dungeon was still a task in and of itself.

There was more debris, and in places, they had to use meandering paths often running into packs of bog rats which they easily dispatched. They even crossed a colony of leech barnacles with their questing lamphrey like appendages. They were nothing like sea barnacles.

At the expense of his last aqer aspected munitions, Arthur had to flash freeze them in their puddles; they had a tendency to spring out from their deceivingly shallow habitats to snag at people’s legs with their lamprey like mouths. He did not want those encumbering him on his way back.

Finally, the duo arrived just in time to rear end into an errant swarm of bog rats looking for easy pickings from an exhausted party.

Arthur quickly dispatched them from their blindspots before he went rushing into the nook the adventurers had taken refuge in. There he found a [Warrior] cranky with fatigue who almost took his head off, a mage washed out with a bout of mana sickness and a despondent slyvmaiden archer tending to someone laid against the wall.

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“ We got your message; who needs attention?!” Arthur called out as he blitzed past the dazed warrior swordsman startling him; he had fallen asleep on his feet. Triston trailed in his wake and went straight to attend to his mage party member.

“ Thank the Selestrinity! We thought no one would come,” the sylvmaid said, shooting up at Arthur’s entrance, almost stumbling in her haste.

“ Hey, easy…easy,” Arthur said as he grabbed hold of the maiden and let her down. Like the rest of her party, she was running on fumes. There were bags under her eyes and her skin was flushed from exhaustion.

“ Help her,” the slyvmaid whimpered through gritted teeth, batting away Arthur’s help. Arthur whirled towards the focus of her attention and moved, extracting the potions he’d kept in [Inventory Chest]. He made sure his bank porting ring was visible, not that the adventurers were in any condition to notice.

‘Frag!’ Arthur cursed softly as he felt for a pulse. It was just barely there. He noticed the empty potions and called out, “ Talk to me people! What am I looking at?”

The fading Canis-kin lay against the wall almost as pale as a corpse, and only her whimpers were any clue she was hanging on by the skin of her teeth. Her furry lupine ears, almost sylvani in appearance and about the size of his cupped hand, had drooped against the sides of her head.

Despite the malodorous air of the dungeon and dead monsters, the metallic tang of blood cloyed at his nostrils the most. The source of all that was the rusty blood splotch around their midriff, where makeshift bandages had soaked in from theur haphazard attempt to stem the flow of blood.

‘The frag, didn’t these people even know about [Basic First Aid]? Oh damn, that’s a skill too?’ Arthur baulked as he fumbled with the potion. “ Can someone please, tell me what on Eryth I am looking at here?!”

“ Bloodbane,” The mage of the party rasped as they approached, hobbling along with Triston's assistance. They were in bad shape too as mana sickness took its tall in the form of blueshot eyes.

“ Unless we rid her of the poison, I would not recommend any more healing potions ,” his voice trailed off as he solemnly averted his gaze.

“ What? Why?” Arthur baulked pausing in the midst of uncorking a vial.

“Don’t be absurd Wynmenor! If there is a chance she’ll live we’ll take it!” The sylvmaid suddenly snapped as she went to loom over the mage.

“ It might be a mercy to alleviate her passing,” Ralf said.

‘Frag, Nora. Damn I should really have let her come! Of all the times,’ Arthur swore as he fumbled with the telecry earcuff. ‘How do you work this thing again? Ah…Hail [Nora Iseline Angustifolia]!’

“ Don’t you dare!” the sylvmaiden growled, grabbing a fistful of the mage’s front. The rogue caught in the midst of the altercation was at a loss.

‘C’mon c’mon c’mon,’ Arthur willed the sylvani artefact to connect as Ralf and unintroduced sylvmaiden bickered.

“ Whatever you are about to do stranger, do it fast!” the [Warrior] called from the hideout's entrance.

“ Or would you prolong her suffering by poisoning her with mana toxicity?” Ralf retorted, meeting her gaze unflinchingly, “ Thea knows only a [Healer] can save her now”

Arthur’s head whirled at the mention of the word [Healer].’ That’s it, we’re getting you to Nora, ‘Arthur thought.

“ Triston! …help me carry her. We are getting her to a healer!” Arthur yelled out to the rogue.The mage’s and sylvmaid’s head whipped around so fast he thought he heard their necks crack. The rogue vacillated as if indecisive.

“ What do you think you’re doing?” the mage said as he pushed off his compatriot. Don’t you realise we’re in the Shallows? The nearest town is two days away…and even if you could get her there, say if you had teleportation magic or just so happened to have an aersloop, I cannot guarantee you can find a [Healer] with Vitalis, and even if you did, they may not have the skills to exorcise poisons.”

“Ugh, frag this. I’ll do it myself!” Arthur said as he moved to heft the beastmaiden. His post awakening strength made the task a breeze. Despite her catatonic state, she let out a hiss of pain as Arthur probably aggravated her wounds with an awkward princess carry. But that was all the reaction Arthur got out of her. She barely had the will to grasp for purchase as her arms hang limp.

“ You fool! You’re needlessly prolonging her suffering,” Ralf the mage, sputtered in indignance. He moved to block Arthur.

“ Hey, watch it! What's your problem?!” Arthur yelled, easily swerving around the fatigue-worn Ralf. He hurriedly moved towards the exit, ignoring his protestations.

“ Quinten, stop that man or I will,” he seethed, raising his wand as if to cast. Arthur felt it through his aura and got ready to cast [Dispel Matrix]. With his eyes, he dared him to cast whatever it was he was about to; he was not above putting him down with [Spark] if it came to it. However, it was Triston’s intervention that broke the stalemate as he stepped in front of his friend; he mutely grasped Ralf’s wrist and he shook his head.

“ You too huh?” Ralf snorted derisively, flicking the rogue’s hand away. Arthur didn’t stay long enough to see the slap from the sylvmaiden that sent the mage reeling to the ground. He had already ducked out the nook, magicking the Azure Surfer beneath his feet as he banked off towards the tunnel that would convey him back.

“ Fools all of you―clinging to baseless hope. As he is, he won’t even make it out of the dungeon―volunteer to die with her or just dump her for the monsters to end her quickly. Why don’t you?!” Ralf’s voice bitterly echoed behind him.

“ That is where you are wrong,” Arthur muttered as he felt the telecry earcuff grow slightly warm with an incoming hail. ‘Faster,’ he willed the Azure Surfer to move―the hoverboard’s magier engine whined as it gorged on the copious dungeon mana.

‘I have incoming Nora!—She needs a detox and a blood transfusion!’ was Arthur's hail as he blazed through the tunnel in a whirlwind. The telepathic connection had been reestablished after the unknown hiccup that resulted in a delay.

Either the dungeon or its proximity was playing havoc with the magic. Arthur surmised as much from the delayed [Message] spells that had reached Elenaril while on his flight inside the dungeon.

‘What type of poison?’ Came Nora's response. ‘, Apologies, the sylvmaid's quite a handful—she refuses bedrest.’

‘Don't know—something like the wolfsbane, that causes wounds to keep bleeding.’ Arthur sent back as he watched the tunnel walls blitz by. Mage lights preceded him, lighting the way like fog lights; given the terrain inside the dungeon, he was already pushing dangerous speeds.

‘You mean bloodbane?’ Nora replied.

‘Yes, that—bloodbane,’ Arthur reiterated. The metallic tang of coagulated blood was none too gentle on his nose and now that was conscious if it, the beastmaiden's ripe and muddy gear as well. The rescue was not really as glorious as he imagined it to be―

‘[Gust Shield],’ Arthur cast just in time to rebuff another pluripede.

’Ah, we'll have company —how far are you?’ Nora said. There was a bit of nervousness over the telepathic connection; Arthur thought his own anxiety was bleeding into the telepathic hail too.

’Almost there—’ Arthur sent, as he adjusted his grip on the beastmaiden. She was not heavy as much as her tail kept slipping. Arthur could not begrudge her for that. It wasn't exactly a comfortable ride in his arms as he coasted around the forks and swerved to avoid the dead remains of monsters.

A gut-wrenching 10 pars later, he came upon the obstruction; it felt like the rescue had taken forever.—Nora was already there with a couple of strange people. More adventurers, they looked like they had enlarged the small hole somehow.

Arthur had to do a double take as he saw what he presumed to be a half goat, humanoid working alongside a jhordic half-giant. The giant who had a green tinge to his slightly orange skin looked up from the rocks he was hefting while their companion continued working. Somehow Arthur could tell that the other creature was not an actual person

“Arthur—” Nora approached at a jog, concern wrought on her face; behind her trailed two more people. A shorter woman and a man in armour underneath a mage’s half cape.

“ She’s at the end of her rope,” Arthur said, stepping down from the hoverboard. He laid the beastmaiden on the craft like a makeshift stretcher as he empowered it with his mana. It was enough that it coasted at waist level for Nora to attend to her as they pushed it along.

“ Blight! She doesn’t have much time,” Nora swore, as they jogged along to the tent.

With the barest of glances at the new entrants, he called out to them,”Hail adventurers, the rest of the party might need your help back there.”

And then they exited the dungeon into the night. By the campfire, Elenaril the sylvmaiden was there, covered in a cloak and waiting with bated breaths. She had been more stubborn than Nora gave her credit for.

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