Mage Tank

Chapter 9: Dog Pile

Once we were done roleplaying a group of hobbits in a potato patch, we made our way through the field, once again following a wall. We walked past the tall harvester guy, but it didn’t pay us any attention, still appraising each crystal it went past and stopping to pick the ones it found to its liking. We traveled in the same direction as it did for a few minutes and I wasn’t able to discern how it was choosing between the essences. The thing took crystals of varying sizes and shapes, and each had little else to distinguish them. The stalks were of a fairly uniform height and each crystal had the same vibrant green color and radiance as the next. Maybe it was collecting a sampler, or a curated variety of sizes to decorate its house with. It could put them next to an incense burner shaped like a dragon and a copy of the Bhagavad Gita it had never read. I’m sure they looked very nice beside a labradorite orb and a book on astrology.

Unlike the chamber above, we quickly found a hallway branching off from this room. We continued around the perimeter without going down it to make sure we didn’t miss any other paths, and found three more, one on each wall. The room was so large that, moving at a careful pace, a trip around the perimeter took us nearly an hour. After coming back to the first hallway we’d discovered, which Varrin had marked with an ‘x’ using some chalk from his pack, we stopped to discuss a matter of increasing importance.

“We’ve been in this Delve for a little over eight hours,” said Varrin. I wondered how he was able to tell, since he didn’t have a watch or any other obvious timekeeping device. But, after studying my interface for a minute, I was able to bring up the system message that had given us our objective.

You have entered Delve 1156: The Toxic Grotto.

Difficulty: Platinum

Current accumulation level: 0.5

This Delve’s accumulation has been interrupted. Find and eliminate the cause of the disruption to clear the Delve.

Reward: Early harvest and distribution.

Time Remaining: 15 Hours, 43 minutes.

“I’m hoping that this area is the main body of the Delve,” said Varrin. “If so, then we’re doing well with our time. However, I think it’s best that we not spend more time than we need on sight-seeing.”

“Is that what we’re doin’?” asked Sayil.

“The essences were a good find. But, we spent a while gathering them. I don’t think we can afford any more delays like that one. I want to make sure we’re all on the same page.”

Sayil shrugged. Xim looked like she was about to start chewing on a nail, then caught sight of the state of her hand and decided against it.

“I don’t think time is going to be our problem,” she said. “And I’m fine with focusing on finishing the Delve, but we still don’t know what we’re looking for. We have to give the environment some level of attention.”

“Fair enough,” said Varrin. “For now, let’s keep a cautious pace. We’ll revisit this when the time drops below twelve hours.”

While the others discussed our temporal allowance for dilly-dallying, my eyes wandered over the environment. I looked out at the essence plants, absorbed by how strange they were, and by the scale of the underground farm. Regular drops of green liquid came down from above, and I glanced up toward the ceiling again, studying the dense fog above us. That’s when I noticed the first creature crawling down the wall toward us.

It froze when it saw me see it. It was about the size of a bulldog, with an oversized head that was two-thirds mouth, full of sharp, carnivore teeth. Two long arms grew from just behind its head, and it gripped the flat surface of the wall with wide fingertips, like those of a gecko. It had two stumpy legs ending in a pair of three-toed lizard-like feet, a pair of tiny black eyes, and dark, slimy-looking skin. Behind it, a pointed tail rose up and pointed down at me. At the end of it was a sharp stinger. There were at least a dozen more around and above it, with more creeping out from the mist. I was amazed that we hadn’t noticed them.

“No one ever looks up,” I whispered, then reached out a hand and placed it on Varrin’s shoulder. He looked over at me, then followed my gaze. Xim and Sayil followed suit, then slowly began backing into the hallway. The first creature cocked its head, and a thick stream of drool ran off its teeth down toward me. Its tail began to glow, then jerked and sent the sharp stinger shooting off of it. The barb pierced me right above the collarbone.

I swore at the burning pain and jumped into the hallway, the monsters clamoring down the wall now that the brief standoff had ended. A couple more stingers thumped into the soil behind me as I flew out of their sight and one of the creatures landed hard on the ground, dazed. I was initially confused by that, but remembered my I Don’t Attack You, You Attack Me skill, and assumed it had gotten stunned after launching the stinger that hit me and had lost its grip on the wall.

After sprinting a few meters, I spun to see the creatures crawling into the corridor along the walls and ceiling. Several let themselves fall to the ground, spinning in the air and landing on their short legs, their feet making a wet smack as they hit the stone. They raised their comically long arms and bared fangs, then started lumbering down the corridor. Some of them had fat tongues hanging out over the row of sharp teeth, and I wondered how they didn’t accidentally shred them.

We made it a hundred feet or so down the hall when Varrin turned back toward the creatures and drew his sword.

“Why are we stopping?” I asked, sliding to a stop and nearly slipping on the wet stone. There was some sort of moss growing on the floor here.

“We don’t know what’s down this tunnel,” he said. I raised my eyebrows and pointed back toward the encroaching monsters.

“Not those!” I said, then ripped the stinger out of the base of my neck. It had only done four damage, but stacked another five toxicity which took me to thirty-seven.

“Well,” said Xim, getting ready behind Varrin, “you can’t say that for sure. Might be a whole nest of them down there.”

“Yeah? Or there could be a fucking food truck selling tacos and cheap tequila shots! We don’t know.”

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Sayil was the farthest down the hall, looking between our group and then deeper into the corridor. All I could see was the hall disappearing into darkness and fog. I used to like fog, thought it was cool. Kind of spooky, but aesthetically pleasing. That opinion was changing rapidly.

“This is a good bottleneck,” said Varrin. “We force them to fight us head-on.”

“Brother,” I said, waving at the rapidly approaching wave of monsters, “they’re on the fucking ceiling. I don’t think that’ll work the way you want.”

Two more of the stingers landed in my back.

“Shit!” I turned to face the horde. “Fine!” I put up my dukes and got ready to throw down.

“Wait, you need to get behind me,” said Varrin.

“Nah,” I said, as three more needles plunged into my chest. “I got this.”

I wasn’t just full of bravado. I had a reason to stand out front in this fight. I wasn’t troubling myself too much with concerns about whether it was a good reason, I just acted on the first thing that came to mind.

The creatures were launching ranged attacks with the stinger on their tails. They did a little damage which wasn’t a big deal. I can soak the damage and Xim can heal up the others who got hit. The bigger problem was that the stingers caused more toxicity to build, which Xim wasn’t able to heal, and for which we only had two more antidotes. Even a couple of those stingers would give any of the others enough poison that they’d be losing health for the rest of the Delve, unless we wanted to spend an antidote on them. I, on the other hand, was at forty-seven toxicity and still had a lot of runway before it overcame my health regen.

I also had a suspicion that I wanted to confirm. In my first fight with the Stickmen, their regular attacks couldn’t hurt me. It was only when they used their big, glowing attack that I took damage. The atrocidile bite hurt, but its mouth was as big as a door and it probably had the jaw strength to match its size. These little assholes looked like they weighed about sixty pounds. Yeah, their stingers could do a drop of damage, but I was betting that was a special attack like the ones made by the stickmen. When the first pair of the dog-lizard-scorpion beasts got close enough to launch themselves at me teeth-first, I offered up my forearms.

They chomped down hard enough to break teeth, and I grinned wide when it didn’t do shit.

I held my arms out to either side, the monsters dangling off of them, and Varrin cut one in half while Xim clobbered the other with her scepter. Another pair of lizard hounds dropped from above and went after my neck and head. Hot, wet breath slammed into my face and I was reminded of how blessed I was for having my sense of smell obliterated by constantly inhaling the Delve’s toxic nasal-spray. A slimy tongue slapped me across the cheek and I considered catching it in my teeth to give the monster a taste of its own bitey medicine, but felt like french-kissing a venomous dog-lizard wasn’t something I wanted to add to my list of enriching life experiences.

The monsters piled on and a couple more stingers hit me, sending their owners to the ground, stunned. Before long the beasts started hitting each other with the needles more often than me. I was also able to confirm that once a monster fired its stinger, a new one didn’t immediately grow back, so it was a one-shot style of attack. I staggered backward as the weight and force of so many of the beasts pressed into me, leaving a mound of corpses behind from Varrin and Xim’s uninterrupted attacks. Xim even tossed a couple of heals into my back until I told her not to worry about it, which I knew would lead to some hard questions after the fight.

After a few minutes of relentless biting, stinging, clawing, grappling, licking, drooling, and dying, the last of the creatures was sliced in half by Varrin. I pried its jaw from around my bicep, letting the severed head drop to the floor where the rest of its body lay. Xim quickly pressed an antidote into my hands and looked me over. I was covered in blood, very little of it my own, and I casually tugged several stingers from my chest. I tried handing the antidote back to her.

“I’m uh, not actually losing health yet.”

Her jaw hung open. Varrin swung his sword, slinging monster blood and guts off the blade.

“Did you-” Varrin began, but was interrupted by the post-combat notification.

Your party has slain 14 Gekkogs: Minor Amalgam, Grade Zero. Your party receives the following reward(s):

1: 12 Ruby Chips

2: 14 Gekkog Stingers

Party Leader has set Chip and currency allocation to: Even Distribution.

You receive: 3 Ruby Chips.

Party Leader has set item allocation to: Master Looter.

Party Leader receives all other rewards.

Varrin swiped his notification away, then continued.

“Did you put all of your points into fortitude?”

“That can’t be,” said Xim. “You have a spell that can do ok damage, and you can cast it more than a couple of times. You have to have points in WIS and INT.”

“Ok, here’s the thing. I put all of my Creation points into fortitude.”

“What does that mean?” asked Xim.

“Did you- did you have other points?” Varrin stammered.

“I already had some points distributed, but I didn’t place them myself. At least, not intentionally. I mean, I made life choices that gave me the points, so in that sense I placed them where they ended up, but getting an extra point in Intelligence wasn’t really on my mind when I decided to pick up a double-major, ya’ know?”

Xim held up her hands, then shook them.

“How?!” she said.

“How many?” Varrin said at the same time.

I pointed at Varrin.

“First, not sure I want to tell you that.” I pointed at Xim. “Second, great question. Third,” I pointed down the hall, “the fuck did Sayil go?”

Xim and Varrin both turned to look down the corridor, but Sayil was gone. We soon got another notification. One that we’d already seen one too many times this Delve.

A party member has been slain: Sayil Starion.

All items in the party member’s inventory will be distributed to the survivors upon completion of the Delve.

“Did more of them come from behind?” Varrin asked as we marched down the corridor, looking for Sayil’s body.

“If so, why wouldn’t they flank us too?” said Xim.

“I was a little distracted, but did either of you hear anything?” I said. “If he were attacked, wouldn’t he call out or something?”

“Maybe they didn’t come after us because they were satisfied with Sayil,” said Varrin. “Or he fought them off while we were focused on the front, but fell later on.”

“If he fought them, then where are the corpses?” said Xim. “The blood?”

I looked at the ground as we went, but there weren’t any out-of-place bodily fluids.

“So, with Chilla,” I began, trying to word my thoughts delicately, “it seemed like she was affected by the atrocidile fear thing, and was driven away. Then she got ambushed by something. Do you think that Sayil may have run off as well?”

“From what fear effect?” Varrin said.

“Maybe a non-magical one? Like, he was just scared the normal way?”

Varrin shook his head.

“You think Sir Sayil ran from those petty beasts of his own volition? No. Something took him away. We must not have heard anything over the sounds of our own fight.”

Xim looked up at me.

“You were yelling a lot.”

“I was?”

“Yeah, you were saying that the gekkogs were bad boys and that you weren’t going to give them any canned food for a week. Then you said that the Delve had a ‘one bite rule’ so you were taking them to Dr. Varrin to be put down and that you were very sad about it.”

“Huh,” I grunted. I didn’t remember any of that.

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