[Hey, if we don’t push hard, you’ll never get there,] I try to encourage them. [It’s a mountain, and without climbing, you’ll never reach the top. If we keep fighting and accruing experience at the pace we have been, you’ll be Level 80 before you know it.]
I checked on the two of them before we set out, and it’s a bit unfortunate, but they’re lagging quite a bit. Both have managed to raise their Levels fairly well since reaching tier five, but both were still stuck pretty far behind. With hard work, they’ll be able to evolve by the time this wave is done.
[Oh, did either of you grab any cores?]
Crinis extends a limb from within her blobby mass and deposits a few cores in front of me which I quickly leap on and devour. The capacity of my core has doubled after all, need to pump it all the way up to max!
[What about you, Tiny?]
The ape just shrugs and shakes his head. I’m not surprised, the big guy usually isn’t bothered keeping track of any cores he comes across when eating, he spits them out like seeds and ignores them in favour of shovelling in more food.
[I need all the cores I can get my hands on right now,] I scold him. [After you and Crinis evolve, we’ll need hundreds more in order to max out your cores as soon as possible. Don’t slack off! You’re making trouble for everyone else!]
He has the decency to appear a little ashamed, which is a plus. His laziness is usually fine, but when he drags himself and others down, I can’t indulge him anymore.
[Masssster. They are clossssing in on ussss.]
A quick glance is enough to confirm that Invidia is correct. Despite his frequent detonations, the monsters are pressing in, even through my domain spell. With a weary mental sigh, I push my legs under me and flex my mandibles.
[Back at it, gang. We’ve got a long way to go.]
41. The Flaming Pillar
Why are the monsters of the third stratum called demons? This is a question frequently asked of me by those unfamiliar with that particular stratum, or less well read on monsters overall. It’s a general misconception that it was the civilised races of Pangera that designated the monsters of the third stratum as demons in a response to the particularly intelligent cruelty inherent in the more highly evolved monsters encountered there. This simply isn’t so. It was, in fact, the System itself that assigned the name of demon to those monsters. Probably long before any surface-being encountered and slew one.
As to why this may be the case? Ah, here we come to the crux of the matter. This question is the cause of much debate and speculation in the academic community even to this day, and despite what many of my colleagues believe, I don’t think it will be possible to arrive at a conclusive answer.
Some posit the theory that the System itself contains a sense of good and evil, and use the language associated with various Skills, Classes, and monsters to support this idea. The argument has some merit, I admit. Various healing Classes, or those with a predilection to endeavours that one can argue are for the immediate benefit of society, do in fact receive affirming and positive language in their descriptions as given by the System. Other Classes that are… less savoury in nature, such as torturer, executioner, or thief, are far less complimentary in the text. Though it must be noted that neither does the language of the System strictly condemn such Classes.
So it is by this argument that the evilest of all monsters have been denoted by the System as demons, as they are the most deserving of this title. Others argue that this concept is inherently flawed, since all monsters from the Dungeon are, in essence, highly motivated killers. The less intelligent monsters may pose less of a threat than their smarter… colleagues… but the motivations are similar: kill, eat, and grow stronger.
It’s only the natives of the third stratum, to my knowledge, that seem to enjoy what they do, and go out of their way to inflict pain, fear, or terror in their victims. There have been numerous witnesses to testify that the demons will act like this even when preying on each other. And each demon will attempt to indulge itself according to their nature as described by their species.
Wrath demons engage in horrific displays of anger and rage against those who they believe have wronged them. Greed demons will go to absurd lengths to collect and accumulate that which they desire whilst delighting in the pain inflicted. Envy demons are known to strip everything from their foes, reducing them to literally nothing before dealing the final blow.
Why do they act this way? Why have they been named and designed to be this way by the System? In my humble opinion, there are none who can say for certain.
I’m so damn tired. I need more ants nearby to fuel the Vestibule, and the twenty bodyguards who have shadowed us down this far simply aren’t enough to provide the kind of energy I need. It’s been two days, and we haven’t had much of a break in that entire time.
Constant fighting for this long is enough to take it out of anyone, even a tier six, as it turns out. We did try to bury ourselves into a wall and hide from the wave for a while, but it wasn’t too effective. I don’t know if the monsters here are smarter or if our cores are just too easy to detect through a few metres of collapsed tunnel wall, but no sooner did we seal ourselves into a pocket of air that we’d dug out than the monsters started digging their way through to us.
Stop being so persistent and leave us alone!
In the end, we managed to get a tiny rest by digging farther in and forcing the monsters to work harder to get to us, but it wasn’t nearly enough to recharge the batteries. In truth, we should have turned around a long time ago, but I can feel that we’re getting closer to the third stratum with every step, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t super interested in taking a peek.
This is the new frontier! The next leg of the Colony’s conquest of the Dungeon! What will the terrain be like? What sort of tunnels and Mana are we going to find? The sense of adventure is welling up within me, and I cannot bring myself to squash it, despite the danger that pressing forward entails.
“Eldest, I must recommend against this course of action,” I scent a killjoy from somewhere above me.
“Protectant? What do you mean? Aren’t you curious to catch a glimpse of the third stratum? Not to mention the benefit to the Colony if we can block an entrance to our territory for as little as an hour!”
If we stop the flow of demons into the second stratum beneath the Colony, the pressure on all of the checkpoints above will diminish dramatically. It would achieve the goal of this expedition in one fell swoop!
“My only goal is to make sure that you remain alive,” comes the reply. “Going farther into the teeth of the wave isn’t worth the risk.”
“Be a lot easier if you lot helped out more,” I grumble.
“We are helping more than you think. We’ve done as much as we can whilst also remaining hidden.”
“You must be getting a hell of a lot of Stealth Levels out of this.”
“…Yes.”
I don’t want to reveal to Protectant and her crew that I do, in fact, know exactly what they’ve been up to. Their thoughts and desires, their Will, has been flowing into the Vestibule, enhanced by the Nave, and giving me a window into their activities. What they want, what they do and how they do it, aren’t really mysteries to me anymore, especially when I’m actively paying attention. I’m sure the information I can glean from an individual ant when I focus on them would be overwhelming were I to try it back in the nest, but it’s fairly trivial to do so here, with only twenty of my siblings within range.