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32. Bowels of the Earth
🕑 Added 2024-10-07 16:00:10 +0000 UTCThey continued down the path. More slimes leaped out at them. Some dropped from the ceiling or crawled out of tight crevasses, but Levi quickly smashed all of them. Once, they even faced a smaller foul feeder, but Levi handled it with his usual panache, and Colin healed his wounds afterward. Their first fight left the Spinal Cord badly damaged. After a few more encounters, it hung on by a thread. Levi put mana into it, forcibly regenerating the bone.
For all that, it wasn’t enough to level up. He frowned, dissatisfied. Idly, he spun a bracelet they’d found in a slime’s body around one finger. “Killing slimes is shit. Are you sure they give good EXP? I still haven’t leveled.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Isa replied patiently. “They give good EXP for easy-to-kill monsters.”
Levi threw his hands up. “Now you clarify.”
“They still give good EXP,” she said, unbothered.
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s keep moving. Gotta keep that kill counter rolling,” Levi muttered. He clapped and let his arms swing back, then shrugged. “It’s better than not killing monsters, I guess.”
“Oh, quit your whining. Slimes are good, safe EXP. Plenty of adventurers got their start killing slimes. Besides, weren’t you enjoying it?” Isa pointed out.
“I’d enjoy it more if I was also leveling up,” Levi muttered.
Isa sighed. “The further we go, the denser they will become. Before you know it, you’ll be wishing for a break like this.”
Levi pushed his hair back. He gazed on, into the depths of the dungeon. Pale green flames flickered in iron brackets set into the walls, presumably maintained by the Death Cultists. They marched into the depths of the tunnel, providing its sole form of light. The tunnel sloped gently up, then back down, hiding whatever stood beyond the bend. “What else is in this dungeon? Surely it’s not just slimes.”
Isa pinched her chin, thinking. “On the first level, it’s mostly bugs and slimes. You’re fighting the most dangerous, high-EXP monsters on this level, except for the bosses.”
Levi’s eyes lit up. “Bosses?”
“By now, I imagine the Death Cultists have already sought them out and slain them. Their parents would have told them where they were, and how to kill them. They aren’t great bosses, anyways. Two or three levels down… that’s when we start talking about serious bosses,” Isa said.
Levi twisted his lips, unsatisfied. “Ugh. Killing all my fun. Come on, let’s go kill some slimes before I find out anything else depressing about this dungeon.”
Colin put his hands up. “It sounded good to me. We can save our energy for the next boss.”
Perking up, Levi pointed at him. “Colin! Always putting things in a positive light. Yeah! That’s the way to see it. We don’t need to waste our time and energy on those lesser bosses. Let’s rush to the second floor!”
Isa frowned and stroked her chin, thinking. She opened her mouth, then shut it, then opened it again. At last, she spoke. “If that’s what you want to do, and kill lots of slimes on the way there, I know just the place. It’s a shortcut to the second floor, but it’s not easy.”
“Why didn’t you say so? Let’s do it,” Levi said. “Which way?”
“It’s just up ahead. There’s a crossroads, and if we take the leftmost road, we’ll encounter a pitfall trap. If we fall into the trap, we can climb out the pit’s far wall to reach the door to the second floor,” Isa said.
“Oh. So we have to avoid the spikes at the bottom of the pit, but then we’re home free?” Levi asked.
Isa opened her mouth. She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “No…”
“No spikes? Awesome. Let’s go.” Without waiting any longer, he rushed ahead. Up the hill, then down it. Slimes stood in the path ahead of him, but in his excitement, he barely registered what kind of slimes they were before he pummeled them to death.
Level up!
“Now we’re talking,” he muttered to himself.
“Hey, hold up!” Colin chased after him, holding out his staff in one hand and hoisting his robes in the other. He unleashed a stream of gold magic ahead of him, healing Levi’s wounds almost as fast as he could acquire them.
“I wasn’t done,” Isa informed an empty hallway. She sighed, then followed after the other two at a more stately pace.
As Isa had promised, they came to a crossroads in no time. Levi drew to a halt, looking at the passages. Five different routes opened up in the rocky earth. One burrowed into the earth, one continued straight ahead, and the other three took leftward and rightward paths. He looked back over his shoulder. “Leftmost, right?”
Isa strode down the path, stepping primly around puddles of slime so her pristine leather boots wouldn’t get eroded. She looked up. “Yes, leftmost. There is something in the pitfall trap, you know.”
“Yeah, yeah. I put two and two together. Where is it?”
She looked around. “Should be just up ahead. I can’t remember precisely where.”
“Hmm.” Levi twisted his lips, thinking. All at once, he snapped his fingers and threw out his hand. “Disposable minion, go!”
The Armalgam leapt off his shoulders and scurried into the hallway ahead of them.
Colin put a hand to his chest and breathed out. “For a second, I thought that was me.”
“What? Don’t be ridiculous. You’re, like, a blessing from a literal Goddess,” Levi said, waving his hand dismissively. He followed the Armalgam at a short distance, letting it try the floor ahead of them.
Shocked, Isa stopped dead and stared at Colin. “He’s a blessing? What? How?”
Colin nodded. He glanced back at Isa as he followed Levi. “Kind of, anyways.”
“Yeah, didn’t I tell you? The Goddess of Death gave me his soul, so I could bring him back intact. It was a signing bonus,” Levi said.
“Signing bonus?”
“You know, when you get a new job and they give you a little perk so you stay in it?” Levi explained.
Isa started to shake her head, but then her eyes lit up, and she nodded. “Ah. Like the advance they give to seamen in case the ship goes down at sea, so their widows have something to live on.”
“Not… quite, but sure!” Levi said, popping a thumbs-up.
Ahead of them, the floor creaked under the Armalgam, then gave out. Two metal doors dumped a coating of dirt and the Armalgam into the bowels of the earth. Levi sprinted forward and peered down before they could reset.
Down below, the Armalgam landed with a splash of mud. It padded around a few steps on its hands, then tilted to the side, turning its spines toward Levi in a kind of shrug.
“That’s about, what, twenty feet down? That’s not bad.” Levi gestured. The Spinal Cord unwound from his midsection. He pointed. It drove the end of one of its spines into the ground, then looped down into the hole. Grabbing the bone, he lowered himself hand-over-hand into the depths.
Colin stood at the edge, waiting for Levi to reach the depths. When Levi splashed down, he stuck his staff into the back of his belt and started climbing down as well.
Isa harrumphed and stepped off the edge. She landed next to Levi, splattering mud all over him.
“Hey! That was unnecessary,” Levi complained, brushing the mud off his clothes.
She laughed. “But it pleased me.”
He spread his hands. “Anything to please mistress.”
Her eyes narrowed. “The way you said that displeases me.”
Pretend-scared, Levi cowered. “No, mommy, mommy, no!”
Isa crossed her arms and raised a single brow.
“Gods, can you calm down for ten seconds?” Colin asked, halfway down the cord.
“Ten seconds? It’s been ten minutes, slowpoke. Hurry up, mommy needs her belt,” Levi told him.
Colin stopped climbing. “Now I don’t ever want to get off this rope.”
Isa offered him a hand. “Come down, my sweet. There are dangers down here. Levi will need his weapons.”
“Look at this discrimination,” Levi accused her.
“You chose to stop being a virgin,” she shot back.
He nodded. “I definitely did that.”
Colin took her hand and dropped off the Spinal Cord. She caught him and set him on the ground. Levi reached up. The cord yanked itself out of the ground and dropped toward him, landing in a heavy loop on his shoulders.
“Ow,” he muttered. The cord slithered over his body, fast as a striking snake, and settled around his hips again. He patted it happily, then whistled to the Armalgam.
The Armalgam hesitated. It lifted a hand, looking at its finger tips. Bare bone poked out of the end of its fingers, up to the depth of the mud underfoot.
“Uhoh,” Levi said.
The mud lurched. Like the ocean before a tsunami, it drew away from their feet. The brown, murky mud lunged up into a towering, twenty-foot tall, thirty-foot-wide slime. Lit only by flickering sconces above the pitfall, it appeared to tremble, shimmering with sickly green light. The massive foul feeder loomed over them, shuddering with anticipation.
Isa looked up at it. She whistled, low and appreciative. “It’s gotten larger.”
“Holy fuck,” Levi agreed, staring at it.
Colin backed away. “We aren’t fighting that thing, are we?”
The Armalgam scuttled to Levi’s side. Levi pushed a pulse of cold mana into it, healing its bony fingertips. He grinned, cracking his knuckles. “Oh… I think we are.”
