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Drip-Fed – Path of Responsibility 6 – Taking Advantage of Tools given
🕑 Added 2024-12-18 22:13:53 +0000 UTCThe tunnels within the hive had a disorienting uniformity to them. Cylindrical, they curved through the chitinous stone. They were three metres across. The walls had a ridged texture, forming circle after circle. Gazing down a corridor would have reminded them of the rings of a tree, had it not been for how rare a straight path was.
Sheltered from wind and weather, the party took full advantage of Apexus’ pheromones. It made initial encounters easy, allowing them to walk past even clusters of the enemies. Blue markings on their leathery skin differentiated them from the many insects found in the incursions.
The monsters hung from the corridor at various angles. A few simply stood at ground level, but most were sideways or upside down. They waited there patiently, unaware that the adventurers they were supposed to test were right there. A few of the Lanaan insects moved around, drawing nourishing sap from the ‘pantries’ of the dungeon and carrying it to the drones on guard duty. The liquid was regurgitated from one insect into the mouth of another, who drank it readily.
“Freaky,” Reysha muttered.
The unfamiliar sound caused several of the insects to turn towards the party. Alerted and confused, they skittered towards them. Mandibles clacked. The group raised their weapons. Ant-like monsters trotted forwards, picked up the scent of pheromones with their antennae, then returned to a relaxed stance.
Exchanging gazes, the party nodded to each other, then silently continued on. They wished to find a Healing Fountain before they engaged in combat. Most dungeons of this level had one situated near the entrance, commonly labelled the Gift Fountain by adventurers. Locating it only took them half an hour. One could get around the dungeon fast when not bogged down by combat.
The Healing Fountain was a regular one. Even with the insectoid aesthetic layered on top, the base design did not change. A circular pool of warm, rejuvenating water filled the middle of the circular chamber. Two long corridors led in and out of the room, putting some distance between them and where monsters patrolled.
“Alrighty,” Reysha raised her voice. “What’s the plan now?”
Aclysia got behind Korith and began to dry the kobold’s hair with her magic. The remnants of the rain still clung to them. “That is for our darling to decide,” she said.
“We have a unique opportunity to scale our difficulty,” the humanoid chimera voiced his thoughts. “The gauntlet of grinding against the great dangers of a dungeon 5 levels above us has been greatly lessened in its dangers. This brings its own issues.”
“If we’re not being challenged a lot, we won’t grow a lot,” Korith put words to what they all knew. “So… what do we do? Not take advantage of it?”
“No, we do… but we do so on our terms,” Apexus answered and beheld them all with a hard gaze. “As Maltos said: ‘learning is found at the edge of comfort’.”
The Inevitable party was about to find out what it meant to be led by a Monk.
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Reysha could barely make sense of what her eyes saw any more.
There was nothing wrong with them nor the view. It was just the chamber adjacent to the Healing Fountain. An open space, a node between various tunnels, and the perfect spot for the party to put Apexus’ training regimen into motion.
The humanoid chimera had drawn in a group of three Lanaan insects from a nearby corridor. Isolating three from a swarm of seven was easy enough through clever use of the pheromones. Three insects had been easy enough to dispatch as well. Each of them had taken on one in single combat. The five-level difference made them strong enemies, but their reliance on swarm tactics counteracted this.
Once they were dispatched, Apexus had drawn in the rest of the seven. Once those had been dispatched, he had pulled them from another corridor, repeating the cycle. Again and again, until there were no enemies left in the direct vicinity, and the chamber was filled with the corpses of a hundred human-sized insects.
Then, they had taken a five-minute break. Five measly minutes in the healing fountain to take care of the wounds and to let them catch their breath before they moved to the chamber that the other corridor led into and Apexus lured in new enemies.
The Rogue’s sight was dim and yet incredibly sharp. She was staring down another foe. The ant-like monster was still. Reysha was still. Exhaustion pushed her to another place beyond reality. Dagger and mace weighed heavily in her hands. Reysha barely felt it. She was about to submerge herself in instinct, to fully lose herself in a moment of absolute focus and dedication to only one goal. There was no ego, only the path ahead the-
A memory flooded Reysha’s mind with dread and her lost arm with pain. Death. Death brought to the Inquisitor. Death brought to an entire leaf. A gemstone seared her phantom limb. She recoiled from her state of mind.
Exhaustion hit her like a ton of bricks. Lungs burned. Shoulders barely managed to rise with each inhale. The weight of her weapons turned out to be too much. They fell clattering to the ground. The monster in front of her lunged.
Apexus’ enormous hand grabbed the creature mid-air, ripped it back and sent it flying to the floor. He wrestled with it for a few short moments. Korith and Reysha could only stare, incapable of doing more than dragging themselves forwards, while humanoid slime and guardian angel ended the last enemy in the room through violence and spellcraft.
“That’s enough for today,” Apexus stated.
Reysha passed out immediately.
She came back to consciousness in their bed. There was a vague awareness that she had been cleaned. Her eyes drifted lazily to where her bodysuit hung from a rack. Apexus and Aclysia sat by the fire of the Mobile Estate, overseeing the preparation of their next meal. Her eyes closed again.
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‘Oh Hoard, oh Hoard, oh Hoard!’ Korith had a steady, panicked prayer playing in her head.
Her body, meanwhile, went through expert motions. She ceded ground to the duo of monsters, avoiding the coordinated lunges until the rhythm was inevitably disrupted. In that small moment of time, she gripped the long shaft of her hammer tightly with one hand and went for an upward swing.
Skin dented. Underlying chitin cracked. The head of the monster was forced upwards a bit too far a bit too fast, snapping the thin neck. It went slack.
The second monster had no compassion for the loss whatsoever. Despite that, Korith had to wonder if it wasn’t more merciful than their party leader. Korith had gotten quite good at recognizing the subtle differences between the scent that kept reinforcements away from the one that encouraged them.
A horrified little squeak left her when Apexus pulled a Behegrub into the room. The enormous creature was white, covered in blue markings, and squishy all over. Crawling about as grubs tended to do, it nevertheless moved at threatening speed. Worst of all was the circular mouth, though.
Korith blocked a bite of the second insect with the shaft of her Hoard-blessed hammer. She pumped additional Ki into her arms for an explosion of strength, hurling the monster into the air. It was made to block a sticky projectile, launched by the Behegrub. The insect tumbled until the snotty sphere stuck it to the floor.
Ignoring the immobilized enemy, the Warrior leapt upwards. Her hammer crashed into the huge monster’s body. The force was translated into wobbles, dispersing without effect throughout the grub’s squishy form. ‘Ew, ew, ew!’ she thought.
Useless as the attack was, it kept the attention of the Behegrub on Korith for long enough that Apexus could circle around it. The Monk’s hands disappeared in various folds around the grub’s slime-coated body, pressing meridians.
Korith landed in front of the grub. Another projectile was getting vomited up its gullet. Korith thrust out her left arm. The heavy gauntlet she wore on it, a drop from Chimerion, shimmered with power. A block of energy appeared in front of her. It was only as big as a brick, but that was enough to block the attack.
Apexus pushed the last meridian he had looked for. Then, he brought his hand forwards. The Rippling Palm caused the tissue beneath the protective blubber to vibrate violently, until insides were turned outside in an explosion of gore.
Korith couldn’t even care about it when she got splattered by pale guts. She had been drenched in monster parts at various times in her life and the last seven days she had spent coated in such gore. The breaks in-between were short to the kobold. That was to say, she was given perfectly adequate resting hours, they just passed in an instant in her perception.
‘But man, the super-exhausted sex is soooooo gooooooooooood,’ her pervy side cried out.
Then she had to fight another two insects.
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Aclysia had initially calculated that the hardest part of the journey would be dealing with the Incursion cluster around the Impossible Strait.
That had proven to be poorly informed. In her defence, she could not have foreseen that her darling’s pheromones were this effective. ‘Even if I had known, I would not have anticipated he would drill us with such efficiency,’ she confessed to herself. ‘That is my naivety.’
The prism hovering over her shoulder vibrated in a crystal clear note, then launched a Ray spell at one of the enemies beneath. Aclysia channelled the same spell at a different spot in the same direction. Together, the two beams forced three insects to scale the wall to get to the battlefield.
Goal of delaying them achieved, Aclysia upended the spell to keep her mana reserves as best she could. She hovered above the battlefield. Instances of Apexus using the safety pheromones were getting rarer and rarer. The calling pheromones he used were getting stronger and stronger.
Lanaan insects poured out of three entrances that laid opposite of the one they used. They had slightly relocated today’s grinding efforts in response to the diminished spawning of enemies. Exploiting the behaviour of the enemies so intensely had exhausted part of the dungeon’s local energy reservoirs.
Aclysia watched Korith and Reysha with a great amount of admiration. They were in the thick of it, every swing adding to a growing fatigue that would be relieved at the end of the day – and no sooner. Aclysia did not suffer this directly. Her job was to scan the battlefield and control its flow through clever application of her spells. Most of the time, going for a kill was mana inefficient. It was better to channel enemies in such a manner that they were fed into the rest of the party at a manageable pace.
The exception to this was when an almost dead enemy was about to deliver a grievous wound to one of her allies.
One of the Lanaan insects had somehow survived having its abdomen and most of its limbs ripped off. Dragging itself forwards by the two that remained, it slowly made its way to Reysha. The combat awareness of the redhead was commendable, but even the greatest master would not have caught the crawling ant amidst all the chaos. Its mandibles parted, ready to snap at Reysha’s ankles.
A Sunlight Bolt incinerated the creature’s remaining lifeforce. Reysha jumped back, startled by the light. She saw the monster, gave Aclysia an acknowledging nod, then swung her mace at the head of another creature. There was always another creature.
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Adaptation could only occur under pressure.
In the constant threat of the dungeon, Apexus felt the call of his home. His true home, his place of origin, deeper even than memories of the pond or the forest or Gizmo’s house – no, the true home: nature.
The state of nature was war. Conflict was inherent in every breath. Inhaling drew spores and pollen into lungs, denying them the opportunity to ever find fertile soil. Conflict was inherent in every motion. A step taken brought change, however miniscule, to all of the world. Conflict was inherent in every intention. Everyone, everything, desired to shape the world to their preferences. The state of nature was war and war was the state that forced adaptation.
Apexus suppressed any revelry he felt at this.
He was no longer a being of nature. That was a state he had left behind, shed in a quest for wisdom – for control. Every step he took was his, taken in pursuit not of base instincts but in a greater goal.
Ki flared along the edge of Apexus’ hand as he brought it down. The chop cleaved halfway through the head of the Lanaan insect, before the momentum was exhausted. His hand stopped, the Edge disappeared, and the humanoid chimera rebuked himself. ‘Not good enough,’ he thought, objectively. To torture himself was unproductive as was to linger in his current state.
He needed to grow. For him, for his women, for all he desired to help.
The Edge returned as he whirled around. It was a marine blue colour and speared more like flowing water than a blade, yet it cut through the neck of another insect all the same. The Edge of the Ready Waters style reinforced the hands and feet of the Monk, giving Apexus the option to cut. The Slicing Stream was sharper than a regular Edge and more Ki intensive – if one stopped moving. The meridians engaged in its creation were stimulated by motion, keeping the Ki flowing naturally.
It was a dance that Apexus was getting closer and closer to mastering. Where the Rippling Palm encouraged aiming for centre mass, the Slicing Stream demanded that he go for thin areas or shallow attacks, lest he exhaust his mana through repeated re-forming of the blades.
Only practice made perfect.
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“Urgh,” Korith rolled out of bed. She hit the cushion she had tactically thrown on the floor with an audible thud. Refusing to get up, she continued to roll, wrapping herself up in the blanket on the way. By the time she arrived at the table, she was fully entangled. “Thanks,” she yawned when Apexus lifted her onto the couch.
Reysha was in a similarly drowsy state. The two regular mortals of the party were afforded the proper amount of rest for their bodies to take care of the aches of exhaustion. “We’re fragile, slow fleshbags,” she groaned, half-jokingly.
“We all have our limitations,” Apexus said and placed Lanaan stew in front of Reysha. He did not understand why she liked her meat cooked, but he still did this for her. Aclysia placed a regular breakfast in front of Korith. Her rations were the only truly limited resource they had to measure. “This training has been demanding.”
“Ya say that like it’s over,” Reysha remarked drily.
Apexus nodded, to the surprise of both Ragressian and Goldborn kobold. “Seriously?!” Korith asked, suddenly wide awake.
“Aclysia assured me we were taking on regular swarm sizes with little issue now.”
“I can present you the math, if you desire,” the angel said and opened her notebook. She had been keeping a diary of their engagements. It had been an effort to train her own mind and to have something that she could perhaps sell to the guild for future editions of the encyclopaedia. It had been of great aid so far and Aclysia wished it to be of even greater aid to future generations.
“No, I believe ya!” Reysha said and took her first bite of stew. The meat was all the richer for the fact that their three-week grinding had come to an end. “Power-levelling like that is exciting but I’m not looking forward to doing it again anytime soon.”
“The rest of the dungeon will be a breeze after this!” Korith declared.
She meant it metaphorically, a subtlety that Aclysia did not catch. “I must caution that my statistics say that we are now fighting adequately against averagely sized enemy groups. We are still prone to being overwhelmed.”
“A breeze!” Korith insisted, too happy to engage in any further discussion.
Comments
FluffyButt Sr.
I'm really enjoying the adventures of the alchemist slime monk.
