The croca-beasts, stupid fire breathers that they are, bellow jets of flame, seeking to ignite anything they can. Smoke rises. Something, somewhere inside had already caught alight.
The moment the creatures come into sight, Morrelia is off. Bellowing like a raging hell beast, she Dashes with all her might. Her entire body flickers out of existence before she appears halfway to the enemy with both her swords drawn.
[Better get in there, Tiny, or there won’t be anything left for you, by the looks of things!] I shout at the big ape.
The words barely reach his half-eaten, peanut-sized mind before he rumbles forward, knuckles pounding into the road so hard he shatters the stones as he hurls himself on, lightning crackling around his upper body.
[There’s a lot of monsters here, Crinis. Going to have to put you to work, I’m afraid,] I inform my sightless companion as I strive to keep pace with Tiny.
[Not to worry, Master], she assures me. [For having placed themselves in your way, I will allow these filth to taste true despair!]
I bet she will.
Although I don’t spy anything too powerful in the mix, there are still a heap of monsters. Easily over a thousand. I’ll need to deploy Crinis’ tentacles of mass dismemberment in order to chew through these numbers. Not to mention a few of my own spells that should prove handy.
As we close in on the backs of the unsuspecting monsters, Morrelia is already there. Her face frozen in a rictus grin of pure hate, her blades flash faster than the eye can see, sending waves of pure swordlight into the pressed ranks of the enemy.
Even in her berserk state, she isn’t so foolish as to dive directly into the middle of the horde. Instead, she dances around the edge and her twin weapons never cease their brutal motion. With the monsters dying by the dozen, they tackle this new threat, claws grasping for a chance to rend flesh.
Then Tiny arrives.
BOOM!
With an impact like thunder, Tiny descends like a collapsing mountain. He leapt high into the air, gathered all of his strength, and delivered a titanic blow to an evolved dragon wolf hound. The beast is smashed directly in half and Tiny doesn’t pause to admire his handiwork. Lashing out with his meaty hands, pulped enemies are left behind every time he strikes.
[Let’s do it, Crinis! Try not to kill any humans!]
Crinis reaches out with two tentacles to grasp my antennae before pulling them back toward herself. Crinis slingshot has been loaded!
Fire!
It’s shameful to say, but I can’t throw her that far with my antennae alone, they aren’t built for that kind of lifting. I do manage to launch her far enough that she lands within range of the nearest monsters. No sooner does she touch the ground than tentacles explode out from her body to wrap around the unsuspecting creatures nearby.
Poor things. I almost pity them.
47. Bird is the Word
It’s a factor of the Dungeon I find has been curiously understudied. The fact that the denizens of that place, the monsters in all their various forms, change over time. One hundred years ago, the tower led a detailed study into the menace of the Scorpionem genus that had been terrorising the Dungeon under Enlightened Alliance lands. And now? That particular variety of monster is gone, almost never seen.
The question that needs answering is, why? Environmental pressures do not account for such a rapid extinction of a species from the Dungeon on their own. Monster populations are incredibly adaptable. Even the less intelligent species are known to adjust behaviours and select different mutations in order to adapt to the ever-changing conditions around them at lightning-quick speeds.
So why the dearth of Scorpionem monsters? Some of my peers have suggested they were hunted to extinction, a prospect I find laughable. These creatures were featured in a study detailing their detrimental takeover of a large swathe of Dungeon territory, and we are to believe they were exterminated by the surface races? Not a single documented case of a Dungeon species, let alone genus, being driven extinct by surface intervention exists.
And why? Because we cannot prevent or control Dungeon spawns. When a large population of one monster gathers together, it is known to cause a spawn point to form, though it isn’t required. Destroying all of one species at a point does not prevent them from being spawned elsewhere. It’s almost as if the Dungeon decided it didn’t need or want to spawn Scorpionem monsters anymore. So, it stopped.
Had they fulfilled their purpose? Were they deemed to be unsuccessful? We are on the edge of a very important question. One that touches on the very nature and purpose of the Dungeon.
Does the Dungeon choose which monsters are spawned and where? If so, the implications are terrifying.
Isaac Bird had seen some plops in his day. When his father walked out on his mother, Isaac little more than a wee toddler himself, that’d been some ripe, fresh bull plops right there. His poor Ma had worked herself to the bone, scrubbing pots and serving tables at the Skeevy Rat, a complete dive on the waterfront.
When Isaac got old enough, he’d managed to ’prentice himself out to a local guard company, finally able to bring home a bit o’ coin to support his ma. Only to have her take sick and pass away three months later.
That was plops with some serious heft. Real weight to ’em. Some men could be crushed under that kind of weight, but not Isaac Bird. No sir. He’d picked himself up and carried on. After three years of getting his head kicked in, training, Levelling and carrying the plops for jeering superiors, he’d become a full guardsman.
That’d been two years ago. Since then, Isaac had been knee-deep in it, ain’t no mistake. Guards on the take? Plops. Merchants stepping on the citizens, above the law due to their wealth? Big bag o’ plops right there. Poor people strugglin’, dyin’ with nobody to look after ’em, thrown on the garbage heap to rot with the off fish? That be a steaming mountain of brown right there.
But this latest one had to take the cake. Watching the merchants and nobles sailing out onto the sweet blue waters of Barka Lake, burning the fishing fleet behind them as savage Dungeon monsters swarmed over the walls… that’d been the largest, most potent serving of plops Isaac had ever clapped eyes on. Sacrificing the people of Midum so they’d have more time to escape. Those worthless sacks of trash had ground the poor under their heel all their lives, and now they sought to prevent their death the same way they lived: at the detriment of a whole heap of others.
Isaac shouldn’t have felt surprised. But the callousness of it rattled him.
“Anna! Find out what the hell is burnin’, would ya!” he hollered to his second in command as he struggled to clear the sting out of his eyes.
The damned smoke was everywhere. Even as he coughed, Isaac found an opening through a crack in the door and thrust his spear through with all his strength.
[Expert Spear Mastery has reached Level 31.]
Well ain’t that somethin’. If he survived, he might be able to reach Spear Supremacy before he turned thirty. Quite the honour for a town guard.
The fighting was thick and fierce. Had been for the whole damned week. The walls were lost so quick, the attack coming out of nowhere. Mainly because City Lord Cranten pulled all the scouts in and chucked them inside the wall when he found out what happened in Liria. Terrified of monsters erupting out of the ground, he’d let them walk right up the walls during the night. Flamin’ moron.