Chapter 132 - Error From The Deep

Eira and I pulled our goggles back on, deciding to rely on their enchantments to do the work of lighting our way for us. No reason to use light spells if one wants to keep hidden, after all.

From a cursory glance down the tunnel, it seemed to go straight as far down as we could see. I didn't see any signs of trap mechanisms, or even side passages. That would make things simple, but also make us a clear target for anything approaching from either end, in case the dungeon somehow decided to spontaneously generate some kind of protection. Which was unlikely, but so was everything else going on here.

We decided to take it slow, as this was unknown territory, though admittedly more so for me. I felt under-equipped, and it was making me incredibly nervous. A long dagger was no bastard sword, and I wasn't completely confident that this enchanted swimsuit would do what it claimed. Supposedly it would account for the uncovered areas in the enchantment, but I had my doubts.

I trusted Eira, and she seemed confident, but the worry was still going to be teasing the back of my mind this whole time. I really hoped this was just a weird anomaly of the dungeon core growth, and nothing sinister.

As we proceeded, I noticed something odd about the walls. What I thought had been water, or something like it on the walls, felt wrong when I touched it. It was warm and sticky. I could also feel the subtle tingle of dungeon mana coming off it. Like a gear aligning perfectly, it occurred to me what I was feeling.

"Eira. Eira!" I hissed at her to get her attention.

"What?" She hissed back as she looked in my direction.

"The walls are covered in dungeon fluid. Completely covered in it, in fact." I held up the fluid sticking to my fingers.

"Wait, what? That's not right." She touched the wall and gave it a tentative sniff. "Yeah, that is definitely dungeon fluid. What in all the hells?"

"I ran into something like this when I fought that dryad. Took a chunk out of the wall and it began leaking this fluid when it was trying to fix itself. But the dungeon mana in this is thin. Scarily thin. It's not got enough energy to do what it needs to do." I looked around for something to wipe my hand on, but I didn't have much luck. I was just going to have to put up with having gross hands, I guess.

"This tunnel isn't part of the dungeon then. This was cut out of the regular walls. And something is keeping the dungeon from healing itself. I didn't think that was possible." She squatted down and touched the floor, seeming to consider options.

"As far as I know, it shouldn't be. I really do not like the implications of what that could mean." I said. Eira didn't seem to notice what I said. Her face was intense as she looked at the stone. I knew that look. That was her thinking face.

I kept a lookout while she did her thinking. I didn't want us getting snuck up on when dealing with whatever this weirdness was.

Eira was muttering to herself, looking at the tunnel floor and walls, and looking back at the map, and as for what she was trying to figure out, I was clueless. She had a bit more experience than I did in dungeoneering, and specialized experience too, as part of the dungeon extractor course. She maybe had some insight that I didn't have.

My attention snapped away from her as I saw the glint of light down the tunnel. It had disappeared almost as quickly as it appeared, but I was sure I had seen it. I saw the light again. Closer this time. Something was coming.

"Eira, shush," I said quietly, but firmly as I touched her shoulder.

Eira didn't argue and quit her muttering instantly, getting her dagger ready. Eira was far more professional than most of my party, and I appreciated that. Cori or Mariana would have argued with me; Myth would have started panicking. Smitty would have listened without a second thought, but I imagined having pups instilled a sort of discipline that I couldn't fathom.

The thought gave me a little twinge of, I guess, one could call it homesickness. I missed my crew right now. Two people were not enough for me to feel properly prepared for this situation.

We waited in the darkness in silence, my ears listening for the slightest sound to give me a hint of what we were dealing with.

Movement. Quick, light steps. Low to the ground. Goblin height. Didn't sound quite like goblins, though. Soon enough, I could see them with the goggles' assistance.

They were indeed goblin-like in their body shape and size, but their hands and feet were webbed and clawed, and their heads reminded me of some kind of sea predator.

There were three of them in total, carrying wicked-looking tridents with barbed tips. They were chattering in some language I couldn't place at all. I wondered if they were something like the false goblins of surface dungeons, just with some kind of aquatic twist. The mechanism by which dungeons chose their monsters was a mystery, and this could just be part of it.

One of the goblin fish things stopped and sniffed the air for a moment, before its head turned directly towards us. It shouted something at the other two, and lunged directly at us.

The thing was quicker than I expected, and I barely got out of the way in time. I followed up with another quick jab towards my midsection, and I was delighted to see it bounce off. Swimsuits worked as advertised!

I did the first thing I could think, grabbed the haft of the trident, and with a quick slash of my dagger, I cut the creature's throat. It let out a squeal and fell into a heap on the floor.

Eira had dispatched one of them as well, punching it hard into a well, its spine making a sickening crunch. The third one turned to flee, and thinking quickly, I hurled my dagger, which hit its mark in the back of its skull. I moved quickly to retrieve my weapon in case there were more.

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We waited for a moment to see if they dropped at crypt-stones for us to claim. But the bodies didn't disappear. Monsters were supposed to liquefy and return to the dungeon. Was what was hampering the healing of the dungeon walls affecting the ability to reabsorb its monsters?

I knelt and noticed a strange metallic smell. I reached down and touched where my dagger had pierced it. It was wet and sticky, but unlike the dungeon fluid I was used to. I gave it a tentative sniff and felt immediately sick.

"Eira, I don't think these were dungeon monsters. This is blood." I turned to her, fighting to keep my stomach together.

"Blood? Like... blood, blood? From a living thing?" She joined me and sniffed my fingers. "Oh shit. That's definitely blood."

"Do you know what these are? Are they one of those protected races in Hastera that I had no idea about? Am I going to prison?" I felt a wave of panic rising in my gut. I had killed monsters in dungeons, but my experience in the wilds was undead and creatures barely above animal intellect. These were things with a language and tactics, and could run away.

"I honestly have no idea what these are, Alta. I've never seen them before in my life. They're like the bastard children of goblins and sharks. Gonna call them Shark Goblins. Something is going on, and I have a bad feeling about what it could be." She looked me right in the eyes as she spoke. At least as well as one could do through goggles.

I took a few breaths, trying to calm myself. It was fine. It was self-defense. They attacked us first. This is a dungeon. We had no reason to believe anyone else was here. I probably wasn't going to prison for this. It was fine.

It wasn't fine. But we had big enough problems that I had to get my shit together. This was not the time to freak out. Freaking out could happen later.

We needed to find out what was going on. There were a lot of strange things happening, and chances were they were all connected. They were always connected.

"We keep going?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

"Aye. The island needs to know that something is going on just offshore. This could be bad. It probably is bad, knowing our luck." Eira sighed.

"I'm going to need a vacation from this vacation." I groaned.

"Oh, quit your whining, my love. Deep down you enjoy this stuff." She patted my shoulder.

She was right, and I hated that she was right. Some sick part of me was enjoying this, and I hated that part of me too.

"Let's just get going. I want to figure out what is at the end here, and then get back." I rolled my eyes with irritation. I really wanted to get out of here, all excitement aside.

We continued down the tunnel for a few tense minutes, moving as quickly as we could while maintaining as much stealth as we could muster. I really wished I'd thought to pack some kind of shoes. The floor was really uncomfortable on my feet. Cold too.

Soon enough, I spotted another bright light at the end. We both stopped and waited for a moment, just in case it was more of those shark goblin things. I didn't much like that term for them, but it worked well enough. My apologies to both sharks and goblins.

The light wasn't moving, so I suspected it was a chamber of some sort. Finally, something to break up the untold number of feet of cut rock. As we approached, I noticed that the dungeon fluid disappeared from the walls and floor suddenly. It was there, and then it wasn't. The gentle pressure of the dungeon mana was gone, like someone had extinguished a candle.

We must have hit the edge of the dungeon. Why the dungeon's body, which was as good enough a term for it, included rock that wasn't directly part of its tunnels, I would never know. Gods below, dungeons were weird sometimes.

I half expected a flood of water, but instead we found ourselves looking into a vast cavern. Apparently we were up on a ledge of some kind, with a path spiraling around the edge of the expanse. It was cleanly carved, and clearly well used, which raised a lot of concerns for me. It told me those little creatures we slew were likely not alone.

We lay prone and crept towards the edge, and my suspicions were confirmed. In the worst way I could have imagined.

It was full of more of the little shark goblins. And by full I didn't mean a few groups, a dozen or so. Hundreds of them teeming around, digging in the walls opposite, working on some kind of construction, and in the middle, they were working on something I thought was some kind of statue of one of those Kraken monstrosities I had seen the night Rhys took us over the Deep Grave. It was grey and mottled, looking like wet sea stone. That was, until it breathed.

On its forehead, a vast third eye opened, larger than me by thrice. It glowed a bloody red, and I felt a wave of sickness hit my stomach. I realized in the center of that aperture was a disgustingly familiar red sphere. And it was leaking the same dungeon mana that the false cores produced from the Dryad Queen in the Revenstahd sewers.

Someone had put a false core inside a Kraken. Those gods-cursed bastards didn't know when to quit.

I looked around for more clues, and saw that mixed in with the shark goblins were the Sahagin that had been with Caru, or the Magister, I suppose, at that cult meeting. And with them were some of the cultists. I recognized the symbols painted on them. They were building something that looked like one of Cori's contraptions scaled up.

Almost exactly like them. I mentally judged the size, and looked at the holes the goblin shark things were cutting into the stone. I mentally ran some math based on how far we had swum, and then how far and in what direction the corridor had taken us.

We should be right under the island. And those round things, I was pretty sure, were explosives. And given their size, they were bad ones. I really wished Cori was here so I could be sure, but I decided to trust my gut. I decided to make a judgment call.

"Eira, we have to get out of here, right now," I whispered.

"Do we have enough info? Should we look around a bit more? There is so much going on, I'm not sure at all where to begin explaining this back at the island." Eira answered while still looking down.

"Eira, I think I have an idea of what's going on, but we do not have time to go into it. If we stick around, I'm sure we're going to get caught. We need to go!" I hissed at her, and she nodded, thankfully asking me no further questions.

We crawled back to the tunnel till we were concealed by the darkness once again. I had planned on us making our way back slowly, to avoid being caught, but something in my chest seemed to thrum, causing that little sliver of my old dungeon core to pulse. I didn't know what it meant, but it was never good. I threw caution to the wind, grabbed Eira's hand, and we ran like a demon was on our arses.

We hurriedly shoved our gear into the bag and left the dungeon, treasure be damned. We needed to swim for our lives, and let people know what hell was coming for them.

The cold rush of the ocean as we exited would have taken the breath from me if the charm hadn't kicked in quickly. I was grateful for that, but the chill was almost painful. I pushed it out of my mind, and we quickly got out of the temple, into the open water of the ruins.

We quickly made for the cliff top, pushing as hard as we could, and just as I felt the relative safety of the edge of the abyss, I felt something wrap around my leg and pull me back sharply.

I looked to see what would dare, and at first I didn't see anything but something shimmering strangely in the water. Whatever means hid the monster, then disappeared, and I saw some kind of huge-eyed, red-fleshed, tentacled horror reaching out for me, threatening to drag me back into the depths of a snapping, bird-like maw, nested between all the violently writhing snake-like nightmares it called limbs.

I had no idea what manner of sea-born demon this was, but I was not keen on it having its way with me, and having me as some sort of snack.

I was not having any of this. I was not putting up with any sea monsters, and I was definitely not putting up with tentacles all over me.

Nope. Absolutely not.