Chapter 7: 7 – Spelunking

"Hahahaha!"

(Hehehehe!)

Navi and I can't stop laughing at how much easier things have become. The armor and everything took so many fucking days to complete, but damn was it all worth it.

(Let's do it again! Let's do it again!) Navi, being the Goddess of Chaos influenced fun lover she is, seems to just want me to kill more goblins.

(Maybe another time,) I said. (For now, let's try out the third floor.) Stepping into the safe room, I was still smiling from how this run went.

From the beginning of the run, things were smooth. Even with my new armor, I could still move near silently thanks to all of the fur.

Distracting and sneaking up on the goblins was simple. I finally made a halfway decent wind blade with my air magic after practicing this past week. Even if the distance wasn't far and the power was still low.

Thanks to using them constantly in and out of combat, my magic has become much stronger than what it was the last time here. Still not to the level of 'fantasy mage,' but progress!

The next goblin I killed with that same wind blade, slashing my goblin sword at it while sending my magic through the blade. It came out in an arc directed at the back of the goblin's neck. It would've been just as easy to stab it, but this is good practice.

When I got to the first razer wolf, I sat my bag down and grabbed my sword and spear. A neat trick I learned this week was using fire and water magic to remove the heat from the water needle, dropping the temperature and making an ice needle. It doesn't do much damage, but makes an enemy flinch from getting stabbed with a needle. 

Firing that at the wolf, making it yelp from the sudden pain, I stab it with the spear in its flank. Having a weapon to keep some distance makes this fight so much simpler.

With it pinned momentarily with the spear I'm able to stay out of its reach, even while trying to twist and bite or claw at me. Slashing out with the sword and that's the end of the fight. 

These one sided fights even continued in the boss room. Facing the same three spear goblins and the boss goblin, I was much better prepared.

When the spears charged, I shot a wind blade at one, injuring it. I stabbed a second with my spear. Dropping my spear, I parry the third goblin's thrust, grab my dagger and cut its throat. Walking to the boss, I stabbed the injured goblin on the ground, ending it mid stride.

Against the boss, I shot a fireball like I did last time. The more powerful blast destroyed its crappy shield, pushing the boss backwards. Without a break, I hit it with a rock bullet, injuring it more and keeping it from recovering any momentum. 

Running up to the defenseless goblin on the ground, I stab into its eye with my sword. Finishing everything quickly.

With those easy fights done, I step out of the safe room to my stair room and drop off what I received, then I go back through the iron door to the new third level.

The first thing I noticed about the third floor was that it was completely dark. This didn't bother me one bit of course.

In front of me was what looked like your standard cave with stalactites and stalagmites. Towards the back was a tunnel leading farther in, rhythmic sounds of dripping water all around.

Walking down the tunnel, I come to another open room. I can hear some slight rustling and high pitched chips above me. With a rough idea what I will fight, I look up and am not surprised to see bats. A dozen big fucking bats.

Deciding to just get the inevitable over with, I crept into the room and sidestepped so that my back was still close to a wall. 

Choosing to go with two daggers, I pointed my hand up at the nearest bat and fired a rock bullet, knocking it off of the ceiling.

Then all hell broke loose.

All of the remaining bats sent constant loud chips and started flying around erratically. With no possible chance to hit them with magic again, I readied my daggers for their assault.

One after another, the bats dove down to attack. They tried to bite at my legs, claw at my arms, and do anything else to injure me.

As I swung out and stabbed with my daggers, I became very thankful that I spent so much time making this armor. Even with as quick as I was, there would be no way I could have dodged every one of the continuous assaults from multiple angles.

Half of my attacks missed, and half that hit were just minor wing injuries, but eventually the last one in the air had been brought down. I went around the room with my spear and finished off the grounded bats that couldn't fly.

Now that the fight was over I used the chance to get a better look at these things while I bit into their necks. Compared to bats on Earth, that could look pretty cute sometimes, these things were creepy.

They were as large as beagles with dark grey, sharp fur. Their faces were the main turnoff though. They had no eyes or even a spot for eyes. The entire upper portion of their head was just one flattened nose. Their mouth had dozens of flat sharp teeth and a pair of needle-like teeth. The entire head was flanked by ears as large as the rest of the head, with claws on their feet and a claw at the tip of each wing bone.

The system simply called them 'giant cave bats' and I guess that is an apt description.

As I went around the room, I also grabbed their drops. They left either two of those sharp teeth, or two of the longer needle-like teeth. Grabbing those and placing them in a goblin cloth, I went around picking everything up and popping their cores in my mouth like PEZ. 

Knotting up the cloth filled with teeth and placing it in my leather rucksack, I had the option of two tunnels to take.

"Fun. Another maze." I mutter to myself. Sarcasm thick in my voice.

(I thought you weren't a fan of mazes? Did you change your mind? Are we go~wing on aan advent-cha?)

I ignore the ridiculous attempt at a hobbit impression from my happy-go-lucky, god-given auditory hallucination. I went down the left path.

The next enemy I saw was the back end of a giant ass worm dangling out of a hole in the wall. Almost a meter in diameter. The skin looked dry and tough.

Rock worm - level 7

I can't help but to ask the parasite in my head. (Let me guess. This thing will have a lamprey-like mouth with skin tough enough to block most attacks.)

As if it heard me, the worm backed out and I was greeted with a wide circular mouth and multiple rows of teeth.

Fucking stereotypical monsters.

(Wow! You guessed it perfectly!) Navi said. Still as happy-go-lucky as ever.

Keeping some distance from the mouth of the nope-rope, I began shooting off quick fireballs at its mouth. At this point, I can shoot a softball sized one in just under two seconds. Not to the level of Magna Swing, but getting better. 

At the very least, the fucker still moved like a worm, contracting and expanding its body to inch along. This let me backpedal down the tunnel, firing into its mouth along the way.

After continuing this song and dance for almost a minute, the worm finally stopped and collapsed. Just to check, I walked up to its body and stabbed one of my few horn daggers into it.

(Yup. Even that just left a shallow cut in the bastard,) I say to Navi.

(Wouldn't you like the hard ones now that you're a girl, Lia?)

(Don't start with the sexual jokes, Navi.)

(But it's so long, hard, and thick!)

I just groan at the terrible joke. As much as I hate to admit it, and oh do I hate it, Navi has been growing on me over the past week or so that I've been here.

At first, she annoyed the ever living crap out of me. I'd just died after months in a hospital, met with two gods, and was told either have your whole being wiped or go on a crazy impossible regicide quest. Then, I found out I was changed into a woman. I just wanted some peace and quiet even if that involved killing monsters.

But what do you know? My quiet solitude was shattered within minutes by the little mind worm AI. I fucking hated it. Even if she provided good information, she was too bubbly, cheery, and used way too many puns and pop culture references.

But after a while I was actually glad she was there in a corner of my mind. While crafting, I would find myself bouncing ideas off her. Since she has all of my memories, it was like talking to another me, but because Chaos influenced her personality so much, she was her own existence. When I asked her about having my memories, she said, (It's like I watched a really long POV movie. The memories are all there, but they aren't 'my' memories.) Her jokes are all over the place, but like most bad dad jokes, as cringy as they were, you couldn't help but to sometimes grin while groaning at them. And eventually, I became used to pseudo-schizophrenia.

After the rock worm dissolved, a fist sized chunk of lumpy, misshapen iron was left behind along with the monster core. Putting the iron in my bag, I went back to traversing through the cave tunnels.

After another split, I ran into something that made me pause. I wasn't close enough to appraise them yet, but they hadn't noticed me from this distance either.

Three skeletons walking around. One with a halfway rotted leather chest piece, one with a rusty iron dagger, and the third missing an arm.

(Navi, are the undead a thing in this world? Like, will dead things just come alive after a while?)

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(Nuh uh! Necromancy and the undead don't exist here.)

(Then what the fuck are those skeletons I'm looking at?)

(Those are skeletons, Lia. Obviously.)

(But they're moving.)

(Yup!)

(But they aren't undead.)

(Nope!)

(Then what the fuck are they?!) My frustration finally leaked out at this getting dragged along.

Navi giggles before answering. (They're just skeletons! But there's a corpse stealer inside!)

(That sounds fucking scarier than a damn zombie or something.)

(Nah, they are pretty weak,) Navi explains. (But that's why they find corpses to control. Like hermit crabs, they look for someplace to make a home. Usually in the head.

(Then they watch the world and use their good compatibility with dark magic to infuse the bones of their new home. This let's them walk and fight to protect themselves even though physically they are weak and squishy. Controlling isn't easy, so the combat abilities of the skellies are still pretty low.)

Honestly I'm not sure which is worse. A creepy monster like that or if undead were actually a thing.

Dagger and sword in hand, I shoot a rock bullet at the far wall as a distraction. Once the skeletons had all turned, I shot another rock bullet at the head of one. Stabbing another in the skull with a dagger. The final skeleton turned around and I used a wind blade to sever its neck.

As the head wobbled on the ground, a pink wiggling mass started to slide out of its mouth. The giant slug looking thing was the fucking corpse stealer.

While looking at the nasty slug looking thing, I stab it with my sword and watch as it silently writhes while liquid poured out. It reminded me a bit of the slimes from the first floor.

After the slugs and skeletons melted away, I was left with three cores and an iron dagger. It was dull, rusty, and nearly useless.

Tossing it in my bag, this was how I spent my next couple of hours. Fight groups of bats, skeletons, and worms.

Eventually, I finally found the wooden boss door. Opening it and stepping inside, there was a cavern full of dozens of plain skeletons with one enemy standing out noticeably from the others. All of the other skeletons were humanoid, varying in size from just over four feet up to six feet. Some had shabby weapons, but one enemy towered over the rest.

At least seven feet tall and wearing a suit of full plate armor. This looked to be the floor boss. Presumably a skeleton as well, but it was hard to tell. Falchion style sword in hand with a tower shield, it also had a full plate helm with an eye slit.

Fucking hell.

Dropping my bag and spear while taking a sword and dagger in hand, I started off by shooting a fireball then an earth bullet at the skeletons. Heading to the side of the room to hopefully not become surrounded, I was able to get a couple more shots off when the horde finally caught up to me.

Slash, stab, block, parry. One after another the skeletons came. After a while, I was forced to make a path along the wall to avoid being tripped up by the bones on the ground.

Taking some hits and stabs, my armor was holding up well. Around my elbows, where there wasn't anything, was getting cut up, along with a shallow slice on the inside of my bicep. Overall, I was mostly uninjured and continued to kill the monsters.

After breaking more skeletons that I thought were in the room originally and stomping on the heads of the corpse stealers I missed, I looked to see if I could find where the end of the horde was. What I saw though, only made me shout out in frustration.

"Fuck! Shit! Dammit! It's a fucking infinite spawn, isn't it!"

I didn't know if it was a possible function of dungeons here, and I didn't have the brainpower to ask Navi right now, but that's what it fucking looked like. From multiple spots behind the armored bastard, who hasn't moved the entire time, were patches of soft dirt that just had skeleton after skeleton crawling out of them.

No idea how that worked. I just knew as fast as I was killing them, they just replaced them one after another. If this was a game, then killing the boss would at least turn off the spawn or even have the remaining drop like puppets.

With no other ideas and not getting anywhere making piles of bones, I thought it was worth a try. Instead of pushing straight through to the boss and just getting surrounded while dragging the horde with me, I wanted to attempt to somewhat kite the fuckers.

I doubled my efforts to push along the wall, clearing a way as fast as I could and halfway ignoring the skeletons on my side. After what felt a lot longer than it probably was, I finally broke free from the skeletons. With more still spawning behind the boss, I wouldn't be able to kite everything. If I can at least keep the majority of the horde off me by the time I get to the boss, then I might have more of a chance.

Doing just that and running as fast as I could to gain ground, I went in an arc around the room, killing a few of the new spawns.

Finally I ended up in front of the boss. Shooting off a fireball while running, it exploded against the tower shield doing no noticeable damage.

Not having any time to waste, I lash out at the armor while trying to take any chance I could to get around the shield.

Ducking under a horizontal swing of its sword, I was able to get around to the side of it and hopped a bit to be able to reach its neck. Stabbing with my sword between its helmet and plate, I wanted to try to take its head off. Unfortunately, my sword just hit a metal chainmail.

"Fuck!"

Dodging back and racking my brain, I tried to come up with a new plan. With the horde coming up behind faster than I would like, and swiping at some of the new spawns, I didn't have much time. The only weak point I could see is the slit in the helmet, but this thing is so big that getting a blade through there would be incredibly difficult for me.

Dodging a couple more blows, I duck down under its sword arm once again. Reaching up, I grab the collar of its plate behind the neck, and with a hop, I pull myself up.

Wasting no time, I wrap my legs around its torso and an arm around its neck to help me hold onto its back. Taking my dagger, I begin plunging it inside the eye slits over and over while the fucker tries to grab me.

After only a couple seconds of this, the top of the tower shield smacks me across the head and I fall off, hitting the back of my head on the ground.

Laying there dazed, the armored boss then falls backwards onto me, slamming into my legs and making me holler out. At the very least it seems like the boss is dead, but the horde of skeletons is now right on me.

Still not able to think straight, I try to slide out and scramble up to my feet as the edge of a dull iron sword thudded against my chest piece.

Grabbing my sword off the ground and standing on shaky legs, I begin to lash out at the remaining skeletons with no technique. Just swinging. Heads, arms, ribs, it didn't matter. Not able to think after having my bells rung, I just swing back and forth while slowly turning in a circle.

As this went on, more and more skeletons got fingers or weapons in the gaps of my armor. My hands and upper arms were torn up at this point, along with some scratches on my face. Nearly closing my eyes at one point, I just wanted this fucking fight to be over with.

Finally, the horde seemed to thin, and eventually, the last skeleton fell. I spent a couple minutes walking around, taking out my frustrations with this room by stomping on the skulls with slugs inside.

Slowly channeling mana throughout my body, my wounds began to heal and my thoughts became clear again.

"Ahhh!" Looking up and yelling out at the top of my lungs, I let out my remaining energy. Still breathing hard but beginning to catch my breath, I sit on the ground.

"That was fucking nuts, Navi! What type of bullshit was that supposed to be."

(You guessed it. That there was an infinite spawn! Until the boss goes down, they will just keep on coming. You did really great though! Without that armor you spent so long making, you may have died a second time!)

(That doesn't make me feel much better.)

Taking a second to look at my armor, I am very thankful for it. It's covered in scratches with a few small cuts from stabs. Overall, it really held up well. Even when that sword hit my chest, it mostly just scratched the leather and repelled the sword.

With the skeletons now replaced with monster cores and some random rusty weapons, I begin gathering everything to take back with me. When I came to where I killed the boss, I was pleasantly surprised with my drop. Picking it up, I had to admire it for a second.

It was a hefty steel falchion. Complete with a scabbard, it was a good quality weapon. No extra ornamentation on the blade or hilt, just a good, solid, steel sword with a sharp edge on one side curving to a flared tip.

Tossing my drops in my bag and heading through the iron door, I tossed my bag to the side of my stair room and used a solid chunk of my MP to clean myself and my armor.

Taking the armor off, I just needed some time to relax for a moment. Laying down on my fur bed, I close my eyes and decide to just take a short nap. I'm tired after the fight, but content with how the level overall went.

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