That’s a bit harsh on them, isn’t it?
Releasing my Domain spell, I start weaving a few Gravity Bolts and fling them into the fight whenever they’re ready. Trying to do a little bit to ease the burden on my youngest pet, though it doesn’t seem like she needs it…
When it comes to cutting down weaker creatures like chaff, she is surely the most suitable between herself and Tiny. The big ape is more specialised as a big hitter. Though his new area lightning strike certainly helps him out in this department.
This is why I chose to make Crinis my second pet, she counterbalances Tiny extremely well!
Watching her shred through the endless waves of monsters is almost enough to bring a tear of pride to my eye. If she seems deadly now, just wait until she evolves!
Her main disadvantage of not being able to see is totally irrelevant to her at the moment. No matter what direction she extends a limb, there’s going to be an enemy there. Like a relentless machine, those tentacles snatch up a monster and crush it before snapping out to seize another victim.
It’s incessant!
In the end, I leave the casting of the Gravity Bolts to my sub-brains and chill out on the wall. It’s kind of nice to be so unneeded.
[Ah… Crinis, can you not eat so many, we could send some of that up to the queen.]
[Oh! Sorry, Master! I… I’ll control myself.]
[Thanks.]
She really is a hungry thing, isn’t she?
Tiny gets bored after a while and wades back into the fight, making sure to remain a minimum distance from his fellow pet. He throws and slams monsters to his heart’s content.
So peaceful here in the Dungeon…
After another twenty minutes of monster splatting, there finally seems to be none left, and we’re able to spend some time picking through the battlefield. Looking at the heaped piles of monster remains, I try and estimate just how many there were in this ravenous swarm. The Biomass is piled high even though Crinis probably ate almost a hundred monsters on her own. Just where is her stomach!
When I finally come up with a number, a chill rushes through my carapace. There must have been almost a thousand of them! If Tiny and I hadn’t evolved… if Crinis hadn’t suddenly been able to fight…
What would have happened to us if we tried to face down that many monsters?
It’s disturbing to think about. I have so many questions now as a result of this… Why has this happened? The queen certainly never mentioned this sort of phenomenon, though it does seem reminiscent of what Enid told me happened back in Liria.
Are these monsters being controlled or threatened? Are they being chased out of their territory and sent up the Dungeon?
I’ll have to answer these questions another time. First, we all eat until we’re full, not that Crinis had any more space… I manage to gain fourteen Biomass, then I pick over the battlefield to find any monster cores using my Mana Sense. Tiny piles up a load for the queen over at the hidden entrance to our shortcut.
I manage to find twenty cores amongst the wreckage. Those go to Crinis, who promptly sticks them into the multi-dimensional folds of her person, and then she shrinks back down to a tennis ball which I place on my back.
Oof! Heavy!
So damn heavy!
She might be able to hide all that Biomass, but she still carries the weight!
[Is everything alright, Master?] says the innocent little murder blob on my back.
My legs are shaking!
[I’m ok!] I wheeze.
“Crinis was so awesome!” cheers Vibrant, rushing over to her mini friend and rolling her about with her antennae.
[“Look. Let’s take this food up to the surface and do a check of the nearby tunnels. I want to make sure no monsters made it past us and up to the queen’s chamber.”]
[“Ok!”]
75. Playing with Water
After delivering the Biomass to the surface and marking it with pheromones so the colony will pick it up, we return to the entrance, making sure to conceal it. I feel good knowing all this Biomass is going to bring the queen closer to upgrading all of her egg production organs and laying the first generation of the new workers!
For that happy occasion to come to pass, we need to work hard. Get to it, Anthony! Protect the colony! Kill the invaders!
Once we get back down, we backtrack up the tunnel and check out the branching paths off the main tunnel. After two hours of meticulous searching, we come up with nothing… no tracks, no monsters, no nothing.
Seems like that deadly wave of monsters only came up the tunnel we were in. That’s far too much of a coincidence to write off as luck. There must be something about this tunnel in particular…
After resting briefly—I get Crinis to hop off so I can stretch my legs—I decide we’ll venture farther down and explore this tunnel a little deeper. We aren’t that far down here. If there’s any serious action happening, it’s surely going to be deeper than this.
The four of us gird ourselves and begin to venture deeper into the Dungeon.
As we descend, I can really feel the difference in the Mana. It’s certainly denser than it was when we fled the Dungeon at the start of the wave, no doubt about it. I think the wave has clearly moved into a new phase, as stronger monsters with longer gestation periods are forming in the walls now. On the one hand, it means they aren’t popping out every few minutes. On the other, it means a stronger fight when they’re finally formed.
This is slightly better than it was before, but not by much.
Still, this change leads me to conclude that something weird is going on in the Dungeon, and I don’t like it. The monsters become tougher as we descend, even if they aren’t necessarily a higher tier of creature. Something I’ve noticed is that even creatures of the same species are often found lower down if they’re a higher Level. Perhaps it’s a natural instinct of monsters to move lower the stronger they get?
Certainly, I have a good reason to be inside the Dungeon, with my core draining until I die if I don’t have access to the sweet, sweet Mana.
Along the way, I start practicing the formation of the Water Mana Transformation construct. It’s far simpler than the Mind Magic one, so it doesn’t take long for me to start making progress. I wonder if this is how human mages train, by repeatedly forming these constructs until they get good enough to form them at high speeds so they can cast spells.
It makes sense. I’m cheating in many ways, since rather than improve my mind through exercises and repeated practice I simply upgraded my brain during the evolution process…
Ha! This is the advantage of monster-kind! This is my consolation for having to eat guts and bones all the time without any seasoning!
I let Tiny resume his monster slapping role, filling in my Tunnel Map and tracing the side tunnels a ways when they appear. I wonder if there’s an Expanse down here somewhere. From what I’ve been told of the Dungeon, they appear fairly regularly at various depths. The Forest Expanse was only unusual for how close it was to the surface. The various Expanses are almost like the organs of the Dungeon, the vital ecosystems that keep it running. The connecting tunnels are like the veins, allowing monsters and Mana to flow between them. At least that’s how the human queen phrased it.
It isn’t really a question of if there’s an Expanse down here, but where it is. It may be straight down or off to one side of us. No matter what, all main tunnels will eventually connect to an Expanse, so as long as we trace them out, we’re going to find one.
About twenty minutes later, I finally succeed in forming my first Water Mana Transformation construct.