Chapter 3: The Farming Village [3]

Two soldiers wearing steel plate armor sit beside a busted carriage. Their tunics are dyed with a coat of arms depicting a sun rising over two asymmetrical mountains. The older of the two men frowned as he glanced at the village not too far in the distance.

"Do you think we should have one of us go ask for help, and the other stay behind to protect the lady?" His graying hair is slicked back neatly in a rather handsome fashion.

The younger soldier sighs before nodding to his senior. The carriage the two of them are sitting beside is missing an entire wheel, and another of the wheels is splintered into pieces. The carriage's quality is pristine, and the windows to it are covered by thick embroidered red curtains. The only inhabitant of the carriage is frowning as she stares off at the forest opposite the town.

"Milady, Phillip plans to go get help from the nearby village. I'll be guarding you in the meantime. May we proceed?" The senior guard's voice is gentle and full of respect for the noble lady he serves. She stops staring through the glass and turns to the other side of the carriage to speak through the door to her escort.

"Yes... Go ahead." She sighs softly. Her voice is beautiful, yet carries a thick syrup of melancholy.

The senior guard gives Phillip the go-ahead before returning to sitting beside the front of the carriage. He rests his rather sharp poleaxe against the wagon's wall. His senses are on high alert as he waits for his fellow soldier to return.

~

The flesh monster's consciousness is dwelling within an unassuming small snake monster. The creature is slithering slowly towards a pair of humans wearing shining metal armor. It would not be so bold if it was in its real body, however this vessel eases its anxiety when handling armed humans.

'They seem similar to those humans who cut me up. I want to eat them, but... This little snake can't do such a thing.' The monster narrows its eyes as one of the armored humans walks in the direction of that village across the grassland.

The creature silently slithers up toward the carriage the two humans are guarding. This doesn't alert the veteran soldier, and the person inside the carriage is completely unaware such a monster is so close to her. The serpent moves upwards with a silent smile on its scaled face. The creature worms its way up by the window of the carriage.

There is the face of a rather small and oddly soft looking human in the carriage. She notices the monster's leering face almost immediately, however she does not panic or even seem all that alarmed at its presence. The monster finds this a bit strange after being attacked by everything bigger than it in the past. The woman inside is the first exception to this rule.

"...Hello?" The woman's soft voice sound unsure of her own words, however the meaning comes across just fine for the beast.

The beast attempts to communicate only to realize all it can do with this vessel is hiss. The meat ball may be able to understand languages quite easily, however its intelligence cannot miraculously change the shape of the vessel its inhabiting.

"Hsss." The snake creature moves its snake head up and down in a single nodding motion. This gives the girl a shock as she raises both eyebrows before looking with suspicion at the beast outside her carriage window.

"You know the soldiers will kill you if they see you, right?" Her warning carries a tone of pity as well as distain for the monster.

The creature simply nods again, its eyes blinking for a moment as it sits there on the carriage door. The thing seems alarmingly aware for an animal wandering the woods. The girl cannot help but wonder if it is some sort of mystical being or magic creature.

"Are you some kind of magic being?" She says this with a little bit of a hush in her voice.

The flesh beast controlling the serpent pauses for a moment to ponder what she asks. The though of what its own identity is never truly occurred to it. The thought of self was secondary to things like survival, security, and sating desires like hunger or wanderlust.

'What am I?' The flesh ball sits there thinking for a concerning amount of time before shaking the snake's head to say no to the young lady in the carriage. She breaths a breath of relief as she had thought the creature was falling asleep or something of the like.

"Can you talk? Do you have a name?" The girl innocently asks the strange snake thing outside her little window some basic questions. Her intention doesn't really come across as the mention of a name sets the flesh blob into another contemplative daze. The concept of a name is not entirely new to the monster, but its own name was swept aside along with its identity.

'My name? I need one of those, don't I...' The fleshy mass pulsed in thought. After some time it simply left the snake and ordered it to return to the burrow's first chamber. The heavy thoughts of a name and ones own identity as a species were heavy topics to think on.

'I have no idea what I am supposed to be, but a name is something I can come up with for myself.' The creature thinks for a while before deciding on a name it thinks is fitting. 'Core should be good. I do feel like the only true part of me is my rounded core of a body.' Core is satisfied by this name, and finds it to be a comfortable thing to call itself.

~

The young noble lady is dumbstruck as the snake that was just interacting with her suddenly slithers off into the woods. The slithering beast doesn't even look back at her after abruptly ending their one sided conversation. She pouts a bit as the strange occurrence had been helping lift her sullen mood.

Soon after she had been left alone she fell asleep within the comfortable confines of her carriage. She is likely to be sleeping for quite a while as the trek to the village takes at least a half hour, and then finding someone who is willing to aid them will take an unknown length of time. Thankfully the soldiers brought enough rations to last a couple weeks rather than a few days.

~

Core is relishing his newfound name, as well as the interesting addition of gendered pronouns to his identity. These fancy things are something he picked up after having learned the local human language. They use such pronouns to give clues about the referred to being, however Core is unsure what bearing these really have on anything other than said being's personal taste.

'I think a little trip out of our burrow is in order. What do you think, big guy?' Core communicates with the huge snake guarding his root chamber using their telepathic connection. The huge snake opens its eyes and blinks at Core apathetically.

Core noticed that the large snake acts very different from the other snakes. It is as if he has a more independent thought process than the others. The way it would ignore things he said on occasion and the attitude it has suggest the creature has some level of personality. Core is unsure if it's because the snake is a special large variety, or if it is something else entirely.

'All snakes in the front room group together. Follow the darkest snake. That snake is me.' Core orders his smaller snake monsters at the front of the burrow before diving into the body of his darkest snake at the front of the burrow. The creature is just as agile and freeing to move around in as he remembers it being the day before.

You are reading story The Heart of a Dungeon at novel35.com

Core and his little posse of snake subordinates slither up the dirt tunnel and into the grassland surrounding the burrow. The eyes of the lead snake squint at the village not too far in the distance. The sight of those houses makes Core a little irritated. The humans with weapons hurt him in a similar environment.

'Come! We're feasting tonight!' Core leads his slithering group toward the unsuspecting village with the intention to feed on whatever flesh he can get his fangs on.

~

Small green shoots are breaking through the soft dark earth of a field beside a small unnamed farming village. The man responsible for cultivating the plants wipes sweat off his brow with a heavy sigh. The harvest will be worth the effort as it always is, but the back breaking labor never gets any easier.

The man's bald head is covered by a large sun hat made from dried straw, however that is not enough to block the heat and light of the sun from baking him slowly.

The shifting of the dirt a few paces beside him causes the man to turn his head. The sight of three large green snake monsters slithering brazenly across his plot of farmland makes his jaw drop out of shock. The monsters are normally the type to hide from people and only strike when sure of a complete victory. These snakes look like thugs seeking coin rather than monsters seeking food.

"What kind of chicken shit is that?" The farmer stammers to himself as he watches the snakes pass him like he's air.

~

The trio of monster serpents sees the farmer, however Core knows a painless way to gather food. The humans need to eat as do everything else, however unlike monsters humans will store their food. Core infers this from the way the humans stores yummy drinks in barrels. That discovery came in handy, however at the time he didn't appreciate how hard it made it to fight those steel hefting humans.

'Split up. Look for things like lots of plants stored together. Human food. Got it?' The other two snakes seem to understand his intention well enough to fetch some grain.

The villagers who spot the bold snake monsters are in shock as they ignore the people while going about their serpentine business. One snake minion finds a small grain storage shed attached to a small house, and begins to eat the grain as per its creator's special orders.

"Is that snake gorging down our grain?!" A young mother carrying her baby shouts in angry confusion as the large scaled beast gulps down mouthful after mouthful of grain. The sight of the strange behavior is enough to send many villagers to their homes with barricades being prepared thereafter.

The other snake lackey reaches the only shop in town and is greeted by a variety of odd objects lining high wooden shelves. The snake gets no time to take in the scenery as a large steel hammer suddenly smashes the creature into a find red paste. The man responsible for its death grins as he puts the hammer away behind the counter before using a broom to clean up the mess.

'That bastard killed my minion! I'll get you and your stupid shop.' The serpent Core was controlling had witnessed the scene from afar just before turning to retreat with a belly full of harvested wheat.

Several villagers took up arms with pitchforks, hoes, shovels, and other various tools to attempt to kill the creatures stealing their hard earned food supplies. They shout and yell at the quickly retreating serpents while hurling the occasional stone at the agile creatures. Core is agitated as they yell at him, however he realizes the humans must feel starvation in the same way he feels it.

This realization doesn't slow him down as he makes a clean getaway into the tall grass of the fields beyond the village farmland.

~

"Chief we have to drive those crazy snakes out!" The dull witted man standing before the village chief is frustrated with the unnatural theft of the village's primary food supply. The other villagers shared the sentiment, however he and a punky young woman were the ones to volunteer to speak to the chief on everyone's behalf.

"He's right, chief. Those serpents will come back for more food if we let them be." The young woman has her arms crossed defiantly at the elderly man sitting across from the two village representatives.

The chief softly rubbed his hand along the semi lengthy hair of his white beard. His tired gaze fell on the slice of stale bread sitting on his desk. The situation would grow dire if they didn't drive out the grain eating monsters. He knew the villagers would be putting themselves in a poor financial situation if they tried to put up a quest at an adventurer's guild, and so the old man softly nodded his head in response to their pleas.

"We'll gather a few capable men and drive out the serpents from their burrow." The old man nodded solemnly before standing to join the rest of the village in their efforts to prepare a counterattack against the thieving snakes.

~

The sunlight was fading within the snake burrow. Core had both snakes which acquired grain come to his chamber. He grabbed them with his meaty tendrils and consumed their bodies along with the grain without hesitation. The snakes looked surprised, albeit not all that upset.

The large snake gives Core a displeased look as Core munches on the corpses of the loyal snake monsters. Their flesh and the grain they had filled themselves with nourishes Core immensely, and he feels his body and roots beginning to grow and strengthen rapidly. The size of his body grows to nearly a horse tall and a horse wide.

'Oh wow... I can really throw my weight around now!' Core moves his tendrils and finds that he can push and manipulate the compact soil of the chamber easily, however he stops before he can accidentally collapse the room with his fooling around.

Core's newfound strength and dexterity are a great boon, however Core feels his new mass can be spent on additional guards for the burrow. The anger of those villagers wasn't as scary as the steel armored humans, however their numbers could pose a threat.

To improve his security Core begins by using the node for spawning the large serpents. This feeling is somehow slightly different from before. The way the flesh forms is the same, but something in the mixture is missing from the first process. Core is surprised when the snake he produces is nothing but a lifeless corpse. The flesh and bone are all in the right places, and each organ is correctly made. The lack of movement confuses Core to no end.

'This makes no sense... Looks like I'll need to do some experiments to figure this out.' Core sighs metaphorically as he begins to reabsorb the corpse of the failed giant snake. The living giant snake watches this with disgust written on his serpentine features.

Core begins forming another large snake in an attempt to figure out the cause behind the failed spawn.

You can find story with these keywords: The Heart of a Dungeon, Read The Heart of a Dungeon, The Heart of a Dungeon novel, The Heart of a Dungeon book, The Heart of a Dungeon story, The Heart of a Dungeon full, The Heart of a Dungeon Latest Chapter