46: Wading Through It

The first group of enemies went down with relative ease, once they showed themselves. Salablens, the dominant enemy within the dungeon, were a race of violent and ruthless lizard creatures based on salamanders, with scales as black as moss-slick rock.

They swarmed over the rocks around us like vermin, but they were so much smarter than that. Smarter, and crueller. Every one of them carried some weapon capable of delivering poison, and their natural venom-spitting made up for when those weapons couldn’t inflict damage on their enemies. The poison and venom combined together to create a hellish debuff that drained your health and stamina.

Once you had a healer that could purge debuffs from you, though, the Salablens were small, weak, and their weapons were made of bone and crude iron.

“Second pull, and don’t judge my roleplaying. Paladin spells are… very specific on the wording,” Draz said, and charged into the next open area smashing his mace against his shield. “Come, vile creatures! Face the wrath of Orisci!”

With a final boom of mace to shield, an aura of red light lit Draz from within. Salablen darts bounced off his armour and shield like angry, impotent hornets, while their melee fighters rushed our tank with enraged sibilant screeches.

When it was clear that he had all of their attention, I rushed forward, twirling in midair and trailing pink ribbons of light. My katana lashed out, hissing with radiant energy in my signature colours. Ascendant Slice clove through a salablen, ending its attempt to remove Draz’s head from his shoulders with a rusty axe.

My ability use had me wondering— When would the game start altering my abilities to reflect my evolution? It usually happened at some point along the way.

Something stuck into my thigh while I was distracted by my abilities, and I stumbled. A poison dart. Shit. My body slowed and the poison began to work its way through my veins and into my debuff bar. Not even two seconds later, purging light rushed through me and the dart was ejected from my leg, along with the poison. Ah, I missed Ethan’s heals.

I didn’t want to make him throw those cleansing spells on me constantly though, so it was time to become both small and much, much angrier.

By now, the transition between my two forms wasn’t particularly disorienting, and so I wove it into my attack pattern. I flicked a Psychosomatic Sunder up at one of the darters with a thought, and raced after the spell to deal with its friends.

To my surprise, the salablen that I hit with my sunder actually died from the attack. His chest just tore open of its own accord and he fell backwards from the illusory impact. Then I was impaling one of his friends on my sword like some sort of gross shish-kebab—no abilities needed.

I carved my way through the remaining ranged monsters like I was idly hacking at weeds. It was really that easy. I guess this was a dungeon based around poisoning you until you dropped, and this was only the second pull. It’d get tougher. Hopefully.

The next one was more of the same, but then we came to the first boss. He was a much taller and muscular salablen with armour made out of thick grey carapace. In his hand was a massive Aztec-style obsidian club.

Draz wasted no time in charging the boss, grabbing attention before it could randomly agro on another party member. The others didn't waste any time hammering it from range. Arrows quickly lodged themselves in the legs of the monster, where they oozed a black magic that slowed its movements.

The warlock dude began muttering an incantation in a deep, guttural language, and when he raised his hands, worming lines of magic snaked out to strike the boss in the chest. Ethan was joining in too, buffing our tank with all sorts of shiny spells.

As for me, I dashed into the fray with my tiny form and promptly latched myself to the boss’ back. You know, I hope that the eventual fairy form upgrades would give me claws like a dragon. I wanted claws.

We took the boss out in pretty short order, and it dropped a bunch of gear that our employers needed for their healer. It also dropped something that the party insisted I take. It wasn’t anything particularly special, but my gear was actually pretty awful, considering I’d spent a large portion of my time in the game learning smithing.

Draz was in charge of loot, so it was him who handed me the item. I took it from him gratefully and took a moment to inspect it visually. It was a long glove made of leather and plated with black carapace to protect the outer-facing areas. Honestly, it was pretty ugly, but I blinked open a tooltip window to see what it actually did that they thought would be a good fit for my build.

Salablen Warpriest’s Glove+1 Strength+1 Wisdom+1 Resolve

Huh. Okay. I guess I was the only person here with hybrid abilities, so it made sense. I cringed a little as I put it on, though. The leather felt like it came from something in the area, and let’s just say that the way it stuck to my skin slightly was not pleasant.

“Ew, it feels gross,” I grumbled, causing the four guys to chuckle. “What?” I pouted. “It does!”

“You’re a badass with that sword of yours, Keiko… but you’re still pretty girly,” Ethan commented dryly.

Conflicted warm and fuzzy feelings bubbled up in my stomach, and when I saw all the boys agreeing, I frowned. “Is that… a bad thing? Being girly?”

Like a herd of meerkats suddenly all sensing danger, they traded a host of funny looks with each other. I’d been a dude for most of my life, and yet the subtle nonverbal communication of their kind had always been a mystery to me.

“Nah, Kate-o,” Roy said, getting my name wrong. “It’s just that the contrast between how cute you are and how dangerous you are is like, interesting, you know? Being dangerous and girly isn’t that common, I guess, so it’s cool.”

“Damn, dude,” Roth the warlock snickered. “Write a thesis while you’re at it?”

Roy responded to his friend’s ribbing with a light shove. “Shut up, man. It’s true and you know it.”

“Doesn’t mean it isn’t weird to give a speech on the ten commandments of gap moe,” Roth said, taking the sting out of his words with a grin. “But yeah, you’re right dude.”

“Oh, so you’re gonna bitch me out and then agree with me anyway?” Roy grumbled, before Draz shushed him with a look.

“Next pull, guys,” the tank said with a roll of his eyes.

As we progressed through the dungeon, more and more poison spitting enemies assaulted us. They swarmed up over the rocks and from out of the tide pools, many of which connected to a vast underwater cave system. None of that was part of the dungeon, though, so we just treated them like spawn doors in any other game.

At some point, though, the creatures changed. Groups of Salablens became less and less, and in their place were what could only be described as crab people. Yeah, I know, I know, haha the funny meme.

These ones were immensely more terrifying, however. Like most of the locals, their carapaces were a slimy black colour, except for their heads where an orange crest protruded. Yup, heads with what looked like some sort of ancient greek helmet plume. That wasn’t all, though, not by a long shot. They also had hands and they were centaur-shaped, with two sets of legs attached to a wide disk-shaped lower body, while the upper torso supported the arms. To put a nice neat little disturbing cherry on top of it all, they wore armour and wielded weapons made out of the carapaces of their own kind.

In short, they were absolute nightmare fuel. Their double armoured approach to life was also a real pain in the ass.

“God damn it!” I growled when my katana skittered harmlessly off their hardened carapace. I swear I’d been aiming right for the joint. Somehow, though, the damn thing had dodged me!

“Hey, Keiko!” Called Ethan. “Have you tried stabbing them where they don’t have armour?”

“They only have armour!” I shouted back, stabbing once again for the slightly softer area between the two chunks of crab shell.

A club promptly found my tiny frame as I tried to reposition, and I was thrown halfway across the arena. I landed with a thump, and I cried out in pain. My wings, oh god, that hurt!

Healing magic flooded me, and I sighed with relief. Oh, I’d really missed Ethan’s healing. I could’ve done without his backseat advice, though.

Okay, time to get serious. These monsters were no push-over, and so I needed to match that energy. There were three of the crab things, and each was currently focused on attempting to beat a hole through Draz’s big metal shield. If it was too hard to get my blade between chunks of their armour while they were thrashing around like bucking stallions, I’d just need to go through the armour.

My eyes narrowed in concentration, and I allowed myself to return to normal size. I needed whatever weight I could get, even the minor amount my body could give me.

I burst into motion with a speed that few classes could match, and spun through the air like an angry tornado of ribbons and sakura petals. My sword stretched out in front of me, and I activated Pinprick Strike.

The armour-piercing thrust gained a trail of white and pink energy as my blade seared the humid air. As soon as the ability took hold, I mentally activated the next one—Twin Claw Duplicity. Overlaid within my attack, a second ghostly blade joined the first one, giving my arm a strange blurry effect.

I still had more than enough mana to spare, though, so I pulled another ability out of my repertoire. Psychosomatic Sunder joined the fray, creating a figment of the crab’s imagination that did real damage.

Each blade—real, ghostly, and imaginary—met at a single point on the large abdomen of the closest crab creature. There was a harsh snapping, cracking sound, and a high-pitched scream of pain from the creature. It fell to the ground, writhing as slime and damage numbers spilled out of the ruptured carapace. Gross. I guess the game determined that the crabs were far enough away from humans that it was okay to show that stuff. At least it wasn’t proper guts or anything, just gunk.

“Nice hit, Kate-o!” Roy yelled, sending a flaming arrow right past me and into the gaping hole in the enemy. The slime began to sizzle, making the mess ascend to a new realm of gross.

“Still two more!” Draz called, and I mentally shook off my fixation with the slime. Right, we had a ton more of these things to deal with. Here’s hoping I could pull the same combo off again! Ah, who am I kidding, I might be pretty garbage at a great many things in life, but stabbing shit was not one of them. Plus, I think layering those attacks had been overkill.