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37. Aftermath
🕑 Added 2024-10-12 16:00:07 +0000 UTCAt last, the last cultist fell. Levi crouched, checking their face to be sure, then stood. “Yep, that’s the last of them. Isa, you full?”
Isa gulped noisily. A petrified cultist stood bolt upright in her grasp, stiff as a board and pale as the moon. She discarded the woman, and the cultist collapsed to the floor, dead. “They made a fine snack.”
Across the room, the slombie got down on its hands and knees. It crawled from one body to another, hungrily absorbing their flesh.
Levi glanced over. “You think that’s a problem?”
Isa followed his gaze. She shrugged. “Worst case, we shove it back in the pitfall. You control the bones, right? So it’s not a problem.”
“Yeah, true.” Levi looked over the dead. “You know, I didn’t see that guy among these dudes. You know. The one who dropped the bodies in the trap.”
Isa squinted at him. “The… what?”
“Oh, right. You weren’t there. Yeah. Some prick named Sean was the one who dropped our dear friends into the hole. I reaaaaally wanted to kill him, but I don’t think he was here.” Levi took in the carnage again, then shrugged. “Ah, well. You heard those cultists. If Sean hadn’t done it, someone else would’ve come after us. Xenophobic bastards.”
“Well said,” Isa agreed.
A cough echoed down from above them. “Um, can someone help me?” Colin asked timidly.
“Just jump down. You should have the stats for that,” Levi suggested.
Colin gave the gap a hesitant look. “I’m a caster. My physical stats are…”
“I’m a caster, too,” Levi pointed out.
“Like fuck you are. Get the man a rope,” Isa demanded.
“You can’t fly up there?” Levi asked, gesturing.
She sighed and patted her belly, pushing it out to make it even more round. “Too full to fly.”
Levi shook his head at her, then shrugged. “I was thinking of making a new Spinal Cord, anyways. That thing was useful, and I barely got to use it in combat.”
Colin made a face. “Am I going to have to watch all that again?”
Lifting his sword, Levi approached the first corpse. A moment before he swung down, he hesitated and looked over his shoulder. “You can look away if you like.”
Colin groaned.
A half hour of corpse dismemberment later, a fresh Spinal Cord arced into the sky and burrowed itself into the tunnel overhead. Colin tested it, then climbed down slowly.
“How’d you know about that tunnel, Isa?” Levi asked, watching Colin climb down. He put his hands on his hips and leaned to the side, getting a better angle on it. They’d had to squeeze into a crack barely wide enough for a human to fit to get here. The crevasse had cut back on itself several times before finally widening out to a true route. If Isa hadn’t insisted they were going the right way, he would have given up long before he reached the cavern.
Isa snorted. She gestured at the blocked-off walls. “Those rocks have been there for centuries. The Death Cultists always use this as a base, every time they open the dungeon—it’s one of the reasons why Death Cultists are usually the only ones to come out the other side of the dungeon. Everyone else has to fight the bugs and slimes for a place to sleep, while they take the prime land. I was a young, hungry vampire back then, without any tolerance for my own hunger. My nose led me to the crevasse, and my body refused to back out until I found blood. I beat myself bloody dragging myself through those rocks, but ah, the sweet, sweet payoff…” She sighed at the memory.
“Gnarly,” Levi commented.
Coming back to reality, she waved her hand. “I widened the route after the first pass through, when I was well-fed, stronger, and less desperate. During the years I lived in the dungeon, I always came back up to have an easy bite whenever the Death Cultists opened the doors again. They almost abandoned the camping spot, so I had to back off for a few rounds… good times.”
“You lived down here?” Levi asked.
She spread her hands. “It’s dark, it’s close to where I was turned, and there’s plenty of prey and few consequences for killing. It’s a good place for a young vampire to be.”
“Wait, but then… how deep did you get?” Levi asked. He paused, then amended himself. “In the dungeon, I mean.”
Colin facepalmed.
She snorted. “Not very. I never ventured past the third floor. I wasn’t trying to clear the dungeon, and I wasn’t interested in the loot—I assumed I’d be on the run for the rest of my life, and so had little use for most of the unwieldier items in the depths. I had two goals: get stronger and stay alive. The first three floors were sufficient for both of those.”
“Fair enough. How many floors are there, do you reckon?”
Isa twisted her lips. She thought for a second. “Ten? Fifty? A hundred?”
Levi widened his eyes. “The range is between ten and a hundred? One of those is very clearable, and the other is not.”
“It’s a Great Dungeon,” she said, as though it made it obvious. She shook her head at him. “The other Great Dungeons have never been cleared, either. The Death Cult’s is the worst-delved, partially because it’s controlled by the Death Cult, partially because their adherents kill all the competent delvers who come here through any means possible. But of the other two Great Dungeons, one has over fifty confirmed floors, and the other has seven confirmed floors. Those seven are as large and as hard to pass as the fifty floors on the other Great Dungeon. Do you get the picture?”
Levi nodded slowly. “Sounds like a hell of an investment. Why bother at all?”
She gave him a look. “Why are you here?”
“Money and EXP?” Levi paused. He nodded. “Okay, fair.”
“Other delvers are driven by fame, as well,” she added.
“Fame is for fuckheads,” Levi replied.
Isa raised her brows. “I didn’t expect that from you.”
“Yeah, you’re, like, the biggest attention wh… grabber I’ve ever met,” Colin chimed in, stepping off the Spinal Cord.
Levi nodded. “I do love attention. But fame? Fame is different. Attention is great. I turn it on, everyone watches me, and it’s fantastic. And then I go home and I sleep, and that’s that. Fame? Fame is fucked. That’s when creepy people follow you home. When people beg for your farts in a jar and cry because you looked at them. Not only is it a pain in the ass for you, but it changes people. You and the people giving you fame, both. I once had a good friend who—”
Levi cut off abruptly. He gazed at the wall for a moment, his eyes cloudy. All at once, he grinned and finished, “—got famous and got a big head, and we couldn’t be friends any more, the end.”
Exasperated, Colin rolled his eyes. “Why won’t you tell us about your past? What, afraid we’re going to be mad because of things that happened in another world? What did you do, commit war crimes?”
“Yes, and… no! I wasn’t at war, so they were regular crimes. Speaking of, Colin, there’s lots of bodies around here. Eat up. I don’t want to get recruited into another cult when you hold back for too long and eat a friendly cultist in front of the big bad again.” He thumped Colin on the back and grinned, then walked off, picking over the bodies himself, but taking their valuables instead of their flesh.
Colin scratched his arm. He squirmed, scowling at the floor. “Why’s he bring that up every time?”
“You’re prodding his sore spots, so he’s poking at yours,” Isa informed him.
“I know, but still. It’s rude.”
“Ah yes, Levi. Notoriously polite,” Isa deadpanned.
Colin nodded. He tipped his head. “Yeah, fair.”
Turning serious, she looked him in the eyes. “I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. He’s right. You can’t deny what your new body needs. Eat. I know it’s disgusting. I know you hate it. I’ve been there. But you can’t deny this. The more you deny it, the worse it’ll get.”
Colin opened his mouth. He took a deep breath, then shut it. “I know, but—”
“We’ll all look away. You go off in that corner and do what needs to be done. Take all the time you need. All night, if need be. But get it done.” With that, Isa turned on her heel and followed Levi off toward the fallen cultists.
Running his hands down his face, Colin sighed again. He looked at all the bodies around him. Drool welled up in his mouth. Forcibly, he swallowed it down.
They’re right. They’re right, and I know it. But…
No buts. I can’t be a liability. He turned away, walking into the corner.
Levi glanced up as Isa drew alongside him. In a quiet, high-pitched voice, he whispered, “Gods, you’re so cool, Isa.”
“Shut it. If you’re trying vinegar, then I’ll try sugar,” she returned, bending to yank a pendant off a man’s neck.
“No, you’re right. By hook or by crook, we need that boy to eat.” He glanced ahead of them. “How long do you think it’ll take?”
“I gave him the whole night.”
Levi nodded ahead of them. A skeleton half-crawled, half-slurped across the floor, hoovering up all the flesh in its path. “That’s generous, but if he takes that long, the slombie’s gonna eat all of them.”
Isa snorted. “We’ll let that be a forcing factor.”
“Right, right.”
