Chapter 252: Chapter 252

Come the hour, come the day, the moment that I breach the surface and tear my way through the guts of the world, come the instant that I rip my claws through the wet, bloody muck of the surface, tearing my way out, come then, I will be able to die satisfied. I kind of don’t even want to live a real life anymore, I kind of just want to make it out now for the sake of making it out. The escape is my goal. Leaving the dungeon is my goal. The journey? It’s becoming kind of a pain in my ass, actually.

 

The ground wibbles behind me, as the encroacher encroaches and I leap, escaping the threat that looms like a heavy dread. It’s kind of a pain in my ass too, actually.

 

As I fly, breaching into the place that I do not belong, floor forty-five, I look around me and gaze at the new plane of existence. I land, falling down onto a heap of bones. They crunch beneath my boots, fragments flying in all directions and clattering around.

 

Lifting myself up off of the ground, I run. Bones fly in all directions as I climb over the many heaps, the literal mountains of bones that are stacked ceiling high in the place that I do not belong. It’s such a pain in my ass.

 

The encroacher continues to encroach behind me, the thing that reaches, reaching, as I kick my way up the steep hill made up entirely out of the dead. Bones fly back down behind me, falling against its slapping tendrils as it worms its way up the steep incline in hungry pursuit of me, you and I.

 

The bone-lord’s lair. This place, this place I remember. This place where I do not belong.

 

The air is dry and carries with it a lingering sensation, an old feeling. As if a final breath had left a grandfather’s lungs and instead of departing into the cosmos, it simply lingered. As if that breath simply stayed where it was and filled the space around it with the last miasma released by a worldly, mortal shell. There is something about it that is wrong, something about it that is haunting. A smell. A strange humidity. A vapor. There is a feeling, a presence in it.

 

Imagine if you went into that room. Would you breathe? Or would you hold your breath and hurry through as fast as you could?

 

My hand presses up, pulling myself upwards as I grab onto a skull that is firmly lodged into place and rise over the top of the first mountain of bones.

 

Looking up, I see that just ahead of me is a giant tunnel. A bridge that spans from this pile of bones to the next. A giant femur, having once belonged to some monstrous entity with god-like size. The ends are cracked off on both sides, the marrow roughly scraped out as if with a rusted knife, leaving only a hollow tube lined with deep scratches and a few splatters of a rotting, brown guck that sticks to the walls like ear-wax.

 

Ugh. What a pain in my ass.

 

There is a wet slurping and slopping and slapping and glopping behind me, as the maggot that reaches for my eyes continues to pursue me.

 

I run, pressing into the bone, old marrow splashing beneath my boots as I run through the hollow bridge, down towards the other side.

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The bone-lord is the sub-boss who is ‘responsible’ for making all of the undead in the dungeon, at least the skeletons. In reality, it’s the dungeon-master who does all of that stuff. But in the dungeon plotline, it’s the bone-lord. He’s sort of the skeleton sub-boss. But I guess he’s dead now. Or uh… well, undead. Double dead? He’s double-dead now, which is fine with me. I recall that he was a little creepy, honestly.

 

Honestly, it’s good that I’m speeding through the dungeon like this.

 

What floor was I on, when I got this body? I don’t remember. But it was a lot deeper down. It was way, way down there. Imagine if I had to crawl and slurp and worm and slap and reach my way around to escape the entire dungeon, feeling for a subtle vibration, just like the encroacher who encroaches after me. It would have been hell. It would have been a real pain in my ass.

 

I would have had to respawn a dozen times, a hundred to get to where I am now. I would have had to suffer all sorts of ridiculous tragedies. I don’t have time for that. I don’t have the patience for that any more. There isn’t enough of me left to sustain that.

 

My lance scrapes along the insides of the femur as I run through it. Turning around, I look as the encroacher reaches the entrance behind me. I look as the fatty, wriggly maggot presses itself into the rotting bone, it’s wet body compressing and squishing as it slips into the tube together with me. The goopy bone-marrow on the insides of the femur that it presses itself against, pressing forward ahead of it as its meat scrapes along the insides of the tube, as if pushing a giant ball of earwax out in front of it. All the while, its slapping tendrils whip and reach and squirm, pressing through the muck. I hate it so much, it’s so gross.

 

Looking back forward, my neck snapping back into place, I reach the end of the giant femur and slide down the heap of bones. White, dusty bones tumble down the hill as I move down it. Dozens of empty skulls stare up towards me as I move past them, entirely indifferent to the plight of their eyelessness. They all watch me, they all look at me and I hate them for it.

 

My boots come to a stop, my cape swishing to the side as I lose my momentum, having reached the bottom of the mountain of bones in an instant. Bending down, I pick up a single skull that sits there, staring at me with its jawless face. I feel like we’ve met before?

 

Hmm.

 

Oh well.

 

Tossing the skull to the side, I keep running, heading towards the staircase just ahead that is made entirely out of hip bones. Why is the dungeon like this?

 

It’s such a pain in the ass.

 

 

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