Perhaps this is the source of the wave of monsters we battled in the tunnels? Perhaps the monsters are being gathered here and then sent out in huge packs to brutalise the surface and other creatures. For what purpose? For what design? Purely for destruction’s sake or for something more?
I mean, if I were a giant crocodile monster, centuries old and filled with an endless hunger to produce tiny crocs… what would I do?
I mean… eat?
Come on, Anthony! You can do better than this! Think. Think like a Croc!
Grrrr… GRAAAH!
How am I supposed to know what a stupid croc thinks like? I never had pet reptiles, dammit! Let’s just go with the mindless massacre scenario. They’re sending out waves of murderous monsters in order to kill stuff because Garralosh is mad at the world or something.
There.
The real question is what are we going to do about it? We’ve found a huge, juicy Expanse here, placed relatively nicely for the colony to exploit. If I can connect the shortcut to this area, it’ll be a relatively short trip for the workers to take advantage of the resources. Only problem being that some huge murderous beast is sitting in there somewhere, creating this aura of death. I really don’t want to charge headlong into this place.
How about we compromise! We still have a day before we’re expected back on the surface. There’s plenty we can do in the meantime without rushing headlong to our deaths. If there’s something Tiny is reluctant to fight, then I’m all about avoiding that thing.
I’d like to get a visual of it so that I know what I’m dealing with, but I feel like getting that close is going to take some effort.
Let the work begin!
We happily back out of the Expanse and busily get to work constructing a new shortcut that will connect to our already existing sneaky tunnel. What better way to relax a tense mind under formless pressure than by indulging in the fantastic world of ant-zen? Digging is truth, truth is digging!
We make incredibly fast progress, even though we need to make the tunnel larger due to Tiny’s massive size. The reason is all thanks to Crinis! Now that she’s fully grown, she’s more than capable of helping. Where she excels isn’t really in the digging of the dirt, but in shoving the loose soil down the tunnel and out the entrance. By unleashing the power of her tentacles, she can shift huge amounts of dirt at a time, and since the tunnel is so easy to navigate she can’t get lost moving back and forth. This allows me so much more time to get my face hands into the dirt, enabling us to really fly through it!
It’s so nice when the team comes together.
Every now and again we take a break and try to lure creatures out of the Expanse and into the tunnels to fight. Every time a group of crocs walk past, I get Tiny to throw a rock at them. Trusty pebble! You worked hard for me in Yharnam, and you perform your function here as well!
When the croca-beasts notice they’re being pelted with stones, they predictably get mad and charge angrily into the tunnel. Whereupon we descend with furious vengeance and snuff them out before engaging in vigorous snacking. It only takes a few times doing this before the wandering groups of crocs aren’t crossing our tunnel anymore. We have to start creeping a little farther into the Expanse to find monsters to lure.
78. Tentative Exploration
I leave my pets and Vibrant working on the shortcut tunnel and slowly encroach on the marsh Expanse solo. It isn’t that I don’t think they could fight whatever it is we find in here, I just don’t want to attract unwanted attention. It’s time to execute something I haven’t had to do for a while.
Engage stealth-ant mode.
Luckily, I’m still relatively small for a monster. Remaining unseen is still fairly simple. The plant growth is thick here, reeds and hillocks blocking line of sight in every direction. Cautiously I creep about, all of my sensing apparatus tuned to their finest state, twitching at every shift of a tuft of grass.
I’m tense.
Super tense!
With this stupid pressure hanging over my head, and flying solo for the first time in a while, I’m really feeling the heat. It’s also unnerving to be moving through this swampy terrain where there could be monsters under the water, or indeed, every plant could be a monster! I have my heat detection for the latter. The plant monsters register much higher on that sense due to their peculiar biology than normal plant life, thus I manage to avoid most combat by navigating around the edges of the terrain.
Avoiding the tops of the mounds that poke out of the waters is key. Lest I present my silhouette to prying eyes. I don’t particularly want to have this magnificent form catching the attention of every croc and murder flower in the Expanse. I’ll have to get the best view I can whilst staying low.
This Expanse is freakin’ huge. Way bigger than the Forest Expanse, and that one already pushed my understanding of what an underground space could be. The roof is easily twice as high and through the low-lying mist and trees, I can’t quite see the walls as they widen and curve away from our entrance. From what I have seen though, this place could easily be at least double the size of the forest.
I recall Formo told me that the radius of Pangera was around 10,000 kilometres. Certainly significantly bigger than Earth. The radius of Earth was six-ish thousand… so that would mean the volume of Pangera would be, like… way larger. By a lot…
There’s tons of space in here, is what I’m trying to say. And the Expanses apparently get even larger the lower you go. Some are truly ridiculous from what I’ve heard. Perhaps they would even be a similar size to some countries on Earth if we were to compare the floor area, which is crazy to think about. Still, this marsh is easily larger an Expanse than I expected to find in the first layer of the Dungeon.
This is either hitting the jackpot or a noose around my neck.
Expanses are the juicy goldmines of the Dungeon from what the human queen told me. Stronger monsters, more cores, Mana infused natural resources like wood and stone, all of these can be found in the Expanses. Great opportunity also brings with it great danger. Expanses are great points of conflict, not only between nations of the surface, but between monsters who reside there. The big dogs all want the best territory, and from what I’m feeling, the crocs have moved in and an extremely big dog has set up shop here.
Perhaps the crocs want to monopolise the Biomass being generated in this area? Maybe they aren’t only sending out waves of monsters to terrorise the nearby surface… Maybe they’re also herding the weaker monsters straight into the belly of their parent to fuel the egg laying process…
Bizarre scenes of monsters willingly marching into the open mouth of a gigantic crocodile flit through my head. Surely not… The monsters seem unusually quiet and obedient, but there’s no chance they would just walk to their deaths.
More investigation is needed, and before more investigation can happen, we need to learn all we can about the terrain in this Expanse.
The wide pools of water are really frustrating my senses. There’s enough hillocks of ground that I can hop from one to the next to move around without getting my feet wet. Except I can’t sense any heat sources under the water, nor can I see squat through the murky surface. The result? I’m constantly on edge, my compound eyes giving me superb vision of my surroundings while my mind is also focused on those deceptively placid waters.
The plant-type monsters seem to be right at home here. The trees are dense, standing tall on splayed roots that plunge with their thousand-divided fingers into the waters. Mixed between them are more tree-like monsters, their bark exteriors concealing the hungering creatures within. The Branchies were a heck of a lot more friendly than these punks. I’ll need to hunt down a few to sample the Biomass and try to get a clearer picture of what we’re dealing with.