Duskbound

It wasn't until the monster started moving that Velik truly appreciated how much bigger than him it was. It had to weigh a few thousand pounds, and its weird arm-leg hybrid things were each long enough that the trunk of its body was at eye level. Its movement was awkward to watch, like it couldn't quite figure out how to control its body, but that didn't stop it.

Velik didn't stand still and wait for it to run him over, of course. He couldn't have stood his ground even if he'd wanted to, not with the whole cave itself still growing arms and teeth. He was constantly on the move, trying to keep ahead of the monster. It was a losing game, though. No matter how fast he was, he was quickly running out of space. Eventually, there'd be nowhere left that was safe, and he couldn't cut the arms off from the ground fast enough to make more room.

Thankfully, one of his predictions was coming to pass. The monster had grown so many limbs that they were getting tangled up after all. It just wasn't as effective as he'd been hoping. While it slowed the pursuit down, it turned out the limbs were just as capable of merging with each other as they were of growing directly out of the mass of living flesh he was standing on.

The only good part of this latest development was that the arms were also hindering the mobile monster the cave had spawned. At least, Velik thought they were. Honestly, even with his mental stat over 50, it was hard to tell whether the monster was breaking the arms as it plowed through them or if it was just absorbing them into its body. It certainly seemed to be growing bigger, but Velik couldn't say for certain what exactly the root cause of that was.

I need to get out of this cave. It's too crowded in here to properly fight, but there are more monsters to contend with out in the tunnels, and there's no guarantee arms and teeth won't start growing through there as well.

Looking back on it, he should have expected something like this. It was a cave entirely lined in a continuous living organism. Of course the whole thing was a monster. It had him surrounded on all sides, and that wasn't even taking into consideration the regular monsters living inside it.

Is that brain in this thing in front of me? Why would it do that? The smart move would be to hide the brain somewhere else and distract me with this.

The only way to find out was to destroy the monster and see what happened. That was easier said than done, and not just because he was going to need some time before he was ready to unleash another [Dread Lance]. The monster was aggressively pursuing him, and after a few seconds, he was absolutely certain that it was getting bigger.

His spear lashed out, whistling through the air as it plunged into the monster's head. Flesh parted easily against his strength, mostly because it turned out there was no skull beneath the skin. In fact, there was nothing at all, nothing except more meat. It was like some sort of filler material, there just to hold the head into shape.

Velik had a sudden suspicion that the whole monster was that way. The intelligence of whatever it was that designed this thing seemed to understand how to shape flesh to make monsters look real, but there was probably a reason it was growing everything from sacs adhered to its flesh. It could make something, even keep it alive, but its monsters were extensions of itself, not true independent creations.

That wasn't right. He wasn't sure how he knew, but he did. Maybe this monster had just been put together too quickly to exist on its own, or maybe the cave had done it on purpose. Either way, it was obviously a decoy meant to make him think the brain was inside it.

For all he knew, the brain was a decoy, too. This whole thing could be a waste of time. Even if its vulnerable points were here, it could have shifted them far away by now. How do I fight this thing?

Getting rid of the monster chasing him around was a start. Velik was keeping ahead of it, but just barely. Its 'wings' were unexpectedly adroit, too, easily able to reach all the way around its body. Every time he tried to stab anything other than that decoy ball of meat pretending to be its head, they got in the way.

If he couldn't go around them, he'd just have to attack them directly. The next time Velik jabbed at the monster, he was ready for the fingers to whip down and try to grab the spear. Instead of pulling it back, he ripped it straight up and hacked into the finger. There was a moment's resistance, then the digit was flopping free. It still clung to the other ones by the stringy lengths of flesh, but now it hung loose instead of moving around.

One down, too many to go.

The next twenty seconds were more of the same, with the monster struggling to adapt to his new strategy and Velik steadily cutting more pieces off it. It wasn't an easy strategy to execute, though being able to use [Shape Shifting] to reform the head into something closer to a sword blade helped. The arm-legs were harder to cut through, but he managed to sever two of them on the same side after he finished demolishing one of the wings.

Suddenly, something clamped down on his knee. Cursing, he looked down and saw a squat, three-fingered hand clutching him tight enough that the enchanted fabric of his pants had torn from its nails. Velik swept his spear down, shortening the shaft as he moved to get the blade lined up properly. He severed the hand at the wrist in a single stroke, which did nothing to remove the fingers digging into his skin, but freed him to move again.

He just wasn't fast enough. The big monster slammed into him, its meatball skull striking his chest in a headbutt that picked him up off his feet and threw him forty feet to slam into the far wall. Immediately, new hands grabbed hold of him, wrapping around his arms and legs. Arms looped over his chest, effectively pinning him hanging three feet off the floor.

The monster approached, its great, lumbering gait no longer seeming awkward. Over the last minute, it had begun to master how to move its new body with frightening speed. Velik couldn't help but consider how badly he'd misjudged the situation, thinking the monster was something slapped together, some fake puppet creature. No, it was just a newborn. Like anything else, it had to learn how to control its own body. Would have been nice if it could have taken it a few more minutes, though.

The skin on its flesh roiled and bubbled, rippling outward and tearing as something emerged. In seconds, there was a face peering at him. It rose up to be level with his, and he found himself staring at the still-seven-years-old Chalin. "Why did you leave me?" the boy asked, his voice distorted but still recognizable.

"I didn't leave you," Velik found himself saying, though he hadn't had any intention of engaging the monster. "I woke up and you were gone."

"I was right next to you. You ran." Continue your journey on empire

"No. There was a monster there. I didn't recognize it. How was I supposed to know it was you? Why do you look like this now?"

"The dungeon core…" Chalin trailed off. "You were supposed to be the guardian, but the bond didn't form. You rejected it and you ran."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Velik said. He still held his spear in his hand, and he might even be able to stab Chalin with it, but he wasn't sure there was a point. It was obvious that nothing he'd done had actually hurt the cave monster.

"I am the dungeon. You are the guardian. I had to make a new one." Chalin paused, and his face twisted in anger. "And then you killed that!"

"You shall take its place!" a dozen or more voices howled in unison, their faces emerging all over the cave now that Velik was restrained. "We shall make you into the ultimate weapon to defend ourselves with."

His mind raced as he tried to put things together. Chalin had turned into a dungeon core, but one that could somehow move. He was making monsters, and somehow growing bigger and bigger. The situation seemed hopeless, but if there was a core, there was a weakness. He just needed to break free from this fight and find it.

The brain looked nothing like the pillar core from the old dungeon, but then again, such an unusual dungeon could have a unique core. It didn't matter, though. The brain was gone. Even if it was the core, it wasn't here in this room. But where? Come on, think. What's different? What's a clue?

He was starting to think [Dread Lance] was causing a problem using so much of his magic. Maybe he was underestimating how much [Apex Hunter] relied on mystic to feed him the information he'd been taking for granted. This whole fight, he'd been flailing around blindly, reacting to threats right in front of him and failing to find a way to win. He'd thought it was just because everything was so far outside his experiences, but maybe it was that he wasn't giving his skills the resources they needed.

On the other hand, he had a giant monster a foot from his face and he was being restrained by probably twenty or more hands growing out of a wall of flesh. That was a pretty good argument to use his most destructive skill while he still had the chance. If only [Mana Drinker] would feed into him instead of his spear, the whole thing would be a nonissue.

Flexing his arm, he ripped free of the hands gripping him and drove the spear into the monster. [Dread Lance] sparked, and it blew up in a shower of gore. The backlash washed over him, searing his skin, but also charring the hands holding him. He broke free with a grunt of effort and dropped to the floor, a healing potion already coming free from his hip pouch to counter the damage.

"Alright," he told the faces as he stood back up. "I think it's time to finish this."n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om