Catacombs Pt2

Before long I ended up drifting cross spaces where the walls had already been worked at as I began pulling ahead of the working humanoids.

The areas here had exposed the innermost layers of the side walls which had nowhere left to hide and were slowly petrifying. Some of the later… earlier… areas were already petrified and fragmenting to reveal the original granite underground. As a cynic when it came to movies and stories, I could already imagine that all this started from the manor basement..

At least I now knew that oxygen was the other weakness to the biomass. This slow death, apparently, was a true death while… adding water to create cake mix… was probably a… dehydrated… and preserved form of the biomass. Probably.

However, alongside the contraction and swelling of the walls and ceiling there was a slight brightening of light as the slimy fluids coagulated about the lower sides of the floor. The intermingling of seemingly glowing slime and petrifying wall did not seem to bother the dying walls at all, neither hindering nor helping the process.

Neither did they help me any as I did my best to keep my gaze focused dead ahead and away from the gelatinous pools of nastiness. This was the stuff players were allowed to mess with but there was no way on God's green Earth that I would willingly fuck with that to begin with.

The only reason that I was down here right now was to see where it all went and if at the end of these tunnels was the end of this damn nastiness. Even if I failed my quest I would be happy as could be if I could only get rid of this nastiness. Just breathing in the stale but watery air caused my stomach to clench at random now that I was not distracted with flight.

Only a minute or two after leaving my escorts behind, I started coming across the previous entrants to the catacombs as well as intersections of tunnels. However, these guys were no longer hard at work but recovering from combat while people further down the networks produced the echoes of combat and cries.

Knowing too little to be of assistance in their recovery, I simply speed further along in the middle of the tunnel to catch up with the combat itself. Only moments later I found myself overlooking a convergence of tunnels in which over a hundred humanoid creatures were at war with a few dozen new biomass creatures.

Only now did I finally take the time to think about inspecting the enemies only to see clearly questionable tags show up. The humanoids all brought up tags that read 'Name: ???(humanoid creature) LV???' while their enemies were reversely 'Name: ???(biomass creature) LV???'. The inspection was honestly of little use at all.

The enemies this time were all of uniform physique and made entirely of black biomass. They were built like elephant-sized mantids but with numerous extra arms. All of their arms sported what appeared to be empty tubes like mouths around which protruded half a dozen large tentacles.

Atop these slimy insect-like bodies were long and forward stretched heads like hammerhead sharks with necks broken ninety degrees around. Unlike the blunt ends of a hammerhead's head, though, the face and back of their heads were smooth and narrow while rising back toward the rear like a crescent faces ax. Facing the sky.

Each of their tentacles were outstretched and smashing about among the smaller humanoids, reaching and failing to grasp at the dry and smooth non-slimy bodies. This was one of the reasons I initially favored the humanoids over the blobs and urchins. The humanoids were not slimy.

However, without the stone additions the natural weapons of the humanoids likewise had trouble finding purchase to stab or cut into. Unlike with the walls, several humanoids had to attack a single spot to weaken it while begin swatted one by one before they could come back and open it up. However, there were six upper arms and they could reach further than their own body length in any direction.

Finding the opportunities to rush in while constantly taking damage was nearly impossible for these kinds of mobs. Everything was a basic attack and lacked skills or magic to give them a competitive edge. Likewise, the biomass creatures had no abilities beyond brute strength.

There were already a dozen-plus petrified biomass bodies lying about with no signs of humanoid casualties in sight, once again reaffirming my decision to follow these guys. The 'biomass creatures' could die while the humanoid could reconnect endlessly. Only something like us Travelers or the associated undead NPC of this dungeon might be able to do that.

Seeing that this situation was the same as the one I came across several times up above, I simply flap forward while hesitantly drawing both Hauntings. For once, I was not hesitating because of the slimy ugliness I was about to deal with but because of what that slimy ugliness might do to my swords. My swords eat about half as much crazy shit as I do, what will happen if they eat this crazy shit?

Picking out the closest biomass creature standing three feet taller than everything else as my target, I drain out All-Tox from my hands and down my swords to replace proper water. Then, as I approached the enemy from the side I twisting around to perform a 360 Edge with both blades held out together.

As I had hoped, the viscous toxins coating my weapon had the same dehydrating effect as water when it came into contact with the biomass. My swords did not even cut their way through but simply slid right along in the wake of my All-Tox. The biomass creature had an absurdly thick neck made up of dozens of twisted tentacles and turned out as big around as my body.

My swords swept cleanly through that neck and parted the head from its broad shoulders.

However, the body continued its attacks even as the head tumbled down and slowly petrified while dehydrating about its neck. The body obviously had no need of its obnoxiously big head which was of no comfort to me. My big entry had been completely ruined by the obnoxious vitality of these creatures.

Flapping back around, I slap my swords together and use Corruption to fuse them into a single sword before diving at the biomass creature's back with a Flying Guillotine. My unified sword clove cleanly through the biomass creature's entire upper body as I passed by, narrowly avoiding landing by using a basic Air Cannon to redirect my low-gravity Telekinesis.

The upper body soon petrified like the head and hung down to the ground on either side, weighing its lower body down with the loss of its overall contraction ability. The surrounding humanoids did not let the opportunity slip by, swiftly leaping in to hack and stab its body apart. Then, without even looking my way, they turned to run off toward their comrades.

Following their example, I also turn away to target the next closes opponent. "Melpomene, how much experience am I getting from these guys?" I ask curiously as I reapply All-Tox to my swords while splitting them apart. I got a slightly dissatisfying response as I used 360 Edge to dive down through an enemy's lower area of upper body and cut them in two.

[These opponents do not offer experience at death. There would normally be two sides, players now fighting with the enemy and players fighting with the humanoids like you. Depending on which side won would determine the rewards. However, all of your people are fighting on the humanoid's side. Such a landslide victory will present all of you with the best rewards even for those outside]

Even though both halves of the last enemy were slowly petrifying after this bisection, it did not mean I actually got any reward out of it. Where were the treasure chests and rain of loot that should normally accompany events such as this? Instead, we had to disassemble bodies ourselves and never got any money since entering. Everything we had we made or mined ourselves, but even then those rewards were still worth as much as a dozen normal dungeons with first-time rewards.

Moving on to the next enemy in mild disappointment, I take down only three biomass creatures in this area before moving on down my original path. I could have completely turned the tables with four or five more kills, but I did not want to be stuck in one place.

Instead, I freed up over a dozen humanoids for each biomass creature taken down. Those groups of an estimates thirteen units then dispersed to assist neighboring units. In seconds, the tide was already shifting as sets of attacks began doing more damage while biomass defenses were constantly being probed from new angles.

I stopped a few more times along the way, coming across new groups with varying numbers of bodies. In the second place I stopped there were at least twice as many biomass creatures as humanoids, forcing me to stick around and dispatch large numbers of them at once. I was now second guessing my initial desire to leave the other players outside.

The third clustering of downward tunnels somewhere roughly thirty yards underground where I stopped had even numbers of bodies. However, this was as good as having twice as many biomass creatures versus humanoids. The only way they could really chip away one biomass creature at a time at a relevant speed would be with ten-to-one odds.

Numbered as they were, I had no choice but to kill off at least a third of the enemy biomass units. This took a few minutes as well as a lot of mana and stamina sustaining just my toxins and my acrobatic skills. However, I only killed a third of them because there were still several hundred other humanoids who would eventually be gathering together and swarming down the tunnels.

Based on the possibility that that swarm would divide down other tunnels instead of staying in one bulky group, I was actually making these pit stops. Otherwise, I might have simply freed the first two groups before ditching all. However, I had to continuously play these small parts along the way after my failed big entry.

At the next crossing of tunnels there were less biomass creatures than humanoids, allowing me to simply fly on by. Not far along from there, though, the tunnel finally began leveling out and were only now covered in a thin membrane of slime in all areas. The biomass here was a dark pink like normal bloody tissues and it seemed that the entire flat bottom of the catacombs was where the light originated from.

Luckily, I never had to touch down and thus never disturbed the light which shone from all around the floor, walls, and ceiling. There was so much same-strength light radiating in every direction that I could not cast a shadow even if I tried. This was an eerie kind of light which made me prefer to be flying in relative darkness instead.

The rest of the confrontations in this mass open space were all large in scale and scatted over a thousand square yards of space. At the center of the open fleshy space was a broadh3exagonal prism shaped platform of 'tumors' which grew up from floor to ceiling and created mirroring platforms between them on the floor and ceiling.

If not for the sake of gravity- even if it was mitigated with a sustained psychic power- I might have forgotten which way was up and down in this space. Thankfully, not only my light but constant drift downward but the plethora of fighting bodies below reaffirmed my equilibrium.

On the floor platform was a series of smaller black biomass geometric shapes and points all bent inward from the top to form a combination of cage bars and organic shackles enshrouding what was undeniably an outstretched humanoid figure. From the positioning of the surrounding bodies, it became clear to my bird's eye view that the biomass entities were all defending against the invasive humanoid creatures and stopping them from reaching the platform.

Their numbers were roughly equal in most places, allowing the biomass creatures to perpetually swat the humanoids aside almost freely.

However, in a handful of battles, there were enough humanoids that a few dozen biomass bodies lay about. Within the next couple of minutes, the first couple of groups of humanoids I freed up would rush through the last couple of groups I passed by. Then, in about ten minutes, roughly a thousand humanoid would come rushing through the neighboring tunnels.

I had plenty of time to wait, so I leisurely drifted toward the nearest confrontation containing greater numbers of humanoids. Since the bottom of the catacombs was taller and more open than the tunnels, I balanced my extensive stamina against the use of full-size wings to achieve greater speeds.

Each flap of my wings were accompanied by the splash and parting of biomass bodies. This alone caused the number of petrified bodies in the heart of the catacombs to double in less than two minutes. By the end of that second minute, the humanoids from this fight had rushed off in different directions to support their fellows further afield.

Rushing off on my own after having wasted some time waiting on the humanoid reinforcements, I go ahead and fly through the catacombs toward the obvious destinations. There was nowhere else of import to actually go in this place and I had long since stopped receiving notifications since occupying an outpost and changing plans around.

Once I was beyond the encirclement of combat just outside the middle half of the catacombs, the catacombs finally seemed to take notice of my presence. The light and tissues in my surrounding area churned as new dark biomass tissues began forming and squirming outward all over the catacombs. Instead of taking form, though, these clusters of dozens of biomass growths simply formed into massive tentacles that could reach almost to either the floor or ceiling.

The tentacles within reach all did exactly that, whipping and reaching out in my directions to form a combinations of walls and attacks. I was immediately on the defensive, manipulating Air Cannon with fire element while flapping only one wing at a timed. I could have fought back in some cases rather than exploding myself through the air, but it would have been far too time consuming.

At first I was forced to dip and dive, relying on the exploding pockets of air to push me to the sides as different tentacles came into reach and play. After a few moments of flipping and corkscrewing through the tentacles, though, they seemed to adjust to my acrobatics and start predicting my movements.

Tentacles that were initially spearing down at me would instead drop down together like curtains ahead of me. Each curtain of tentacles cut off a different direction, slowly hemming in my flight path little by little as I went further out. Then, as more and more tentacles replaced the old ones the same tactic was applied with greater pressure.

Now that the tentacles above were forcing me to fly low while the tentacles below were all cracking upward like whip-thrown spears, I had no choice but to make sacrifices. I simply stopped my fancy acrobatics and began flapping my wings normally to fly straight ahead while timing small pockets of heated air to fill my wings with stronger propulsion.

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