The loud roar that shacked the whole tunnel was so powerful that Skitter Nail felt it in his very bones, a primal fear for a predator so much greater than one’s self stormed through his brain making him petrified for a few seconds. Then his body remembered that there was a massive monster making its way towards him to devour his everything, but he wasn’t the one to react first, no as the sludge dripper next to him began to run. In a panic believing he would be left behind to be eaten by the creeping mud slime Skitter Nail grabbed onto the lizard and climbed onto its back, the sludge dripper didn’t even notice that he was up there and just continued to run.
They ran through more than a dozen tunnels and more than a couple junctions and they only slowed down because the lizard had run out of mana to continue using the dash skill and it was also low on stamina too. They could both still hear the creeping mud slime as it continued its rampage throughout the tunnels but it seemed to have found different prey to hunt, hopeful if Skitter Nail is blessed with luck than that creature would run into a group of those towering things. The tunnel that they found themselves in was still littered with trash so maybe this was outside of the slimes territory but that might change now that it had evolved, it was at this time that the sludge dripper noticed that it had a hitchhiker on its back.
Whipping its body around Skitter Nail wasn’t able to hold onto the slick back scales and was thrown off the dripper’s back violently, he got up and looked at the large lizard that looked at him with a desperate glare, both of them were badly injured but he could still easily shoot a mana bolt. But he had a different idea, with some very simple charades he tried to say “we work together, get strong, kill stronger eye thing.” The lizard seemed to somewhat understand whatever the rat was doing. With some messing around with the system menu he was able to send a ‘create party’ request to the sludge dripper.
[Monster Skar has accepted to join party ‘Sewer Gang’]
Then both of them showed each other's statuses and it actually surprised Skitter Nail how much he had grown since he was just some simple rat. Also holy cheese if he was hit by that bite earlier he would have been decapitated because look at Skar’s Strength.
[Status]
[Stats & Class]
Name: Skitter Nail
Race: Rat
Race Level: 3
Class: Mage
Class Level: 1
Hp: 11/30
Sp: 25/25
Mp: 2/14
Strength: 3
Dexterity: 5
Vitality: 3
Fortitude: 4
Will: 3
Intelligence: 12
Wisdom: 7
Perception: 6
Unassigned Stats: 0
[Skills & Titles]
[Mana Bolt Lv 1]
[Mana Control Lv 1]
[Ember Lv 0]
[True Monster]
[Boss Around Town]
[Gene Tree]
[Cruel Cunning] (+1 Intelligence)
[Brains no Bronzes] (+2 Intelligence but -1 Strength)
Unassigned DNA: 0
[Status]
[Stats & Class]
Name: Skar
Race: Sludge Dripper
Race Level: 2
Class: Warrior
Class Level: 0
Hp: 13/60
Sp: 4/25
Mp: 0/8
Strength: 11
Dexterity: 5
Vitality: 6
Fortitude: 7
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Will: 3
Intelligence: 2
Wisdom: 4
Perception: 3
Unassigned Stats: 0
[Skills & Titles]
[Heavy Strike Lv 0]
[Dash Lv 0]
[Gene Tree]
[Dripping Rage] (+1 Strength)
Unassigned DNA: 0
They were both very close death it seems too, luckily none of the other monsters seem to want to attack them since they are also scared of the big bad eyeball slime or it could be they are to afraid to fight a pairing of monsters they have never seen before, after all the largest fear for monsters is a unknown facture. It was with this free time that both of them rested and looked over their systems, Skitter Nail noticed that his new friend Skar had no levels in her skill or her class so he thinks that she most have just spawned recently or just hadn’t been in a enough fights to get any levels other than the one given by the dungeon. The rat himself was doing just fine other than the low health and mana but other than that he was doing better than he has been, he has a friend who isn’t an annoying rat and with how low her intelligence is she probably won’t backstab him, so with some happy thoughts he fell asleep next to the lizard.
Outside right at the entrance of the dungeon a party of delvers were getting ready for a dive into the dungeon, their party was now 10 people strong which most of the time is only allowed for iron grade parties but due to the things going on in the dungeon the guild had temporarily changed the rules. “I can’t wait to finally get past the 1st floor! I have read about some of the monsters we will see but reading and seeing are two very different things.” The party’s mage was hugging the massive book that he carried with him all the time. “I'm still surprised to actually know someone that can read. How did you learn to do it?” one of the newer members was asking how the young mage how he had such an ability like reading.
At the mention of this fact the mage’s mood was drained from him and look off distant remembering thing of his not that long ago past “When I was born my Will stat was at a massive 17 and my village’s local church thought that I was going to get the priest class so they taught me everything the class would need to know. But when I got my first level Gemmi must have been playing one of their pranks because I got the mage class instead.” This made the whole party very uncomfortable and they were all silent even when they entered the dungeon, it was only when they started fighting monsters that they started talking again. They made it through the first floor quite fine and even the first floor boss was so much easier when you had a full 10 person party, they with high hopes continued onto the second floor for the first time. The second floor was surprisingly clean of trash, There were still monsters and a lot of them but the trash that would normally be seen everywhere seemed to be gone which shouldn’t be right.
They didn’t know what was happening until they started to hear the sounds of crushing, scraping, and sloshing down the tunnel in front of the, one of the party’s warriors turned up the light of his ember lamp and what they saw they could not even comprehend. That was until the mage that still had his book in his hands opened the large book and flipped through some pages until he stopped on a specific page “no that can’t be right? how would something like that be up this high in the dungeon.” he was mumbling as his eyes quickly skimmed the words on the book. “What is it?” asked the other mage in the party, this made the mage look up from his book and towards the large eye that was looking at them worriedly “the only thing it could be is a Creeping Mud Slime but that can’t spawn up here. They are a rare variant of the normal Large Mud Slime evolution that only happens when a Mud Slime reaches level 5, is more than 3 times its normal size, and has a 10 in both Vitality and Perception!” fear blossomed from those words as all 10 of them slowly backed up from the large watching eye.
Retreating from the tunnel when they got around the corner they began to run away until they made it back out of the dungeon. They had to find someone important to tell about what they saw in the dungeon because if information of what they saw did spread, many would die in the cruel depths of the dungeon's murky sewer. Luckily an old man was watching the dungeon’s entrance for the past couple hours and saw the team that had not even an hour before enter the dungeon run out in panic.
Deeper in the dungeon the effects of the massive build up of waste was starting to take effect as the twisting forests of the Lower Waste Jungles were becoming more and more restless as the Gatorfolk tribes began to war against the larger but weaker Rat Men clans. The Shrufae colonies danced and chanted around their Weeping Ent guardians as they normally did but the elders of their groves started to feel the weakness in the Great Voice that commanded them. The Large Mud Slimes that floated down the river did not seem to be affected at all by the madness so none of the creatures that relied on the food found in the rivers cared about the slime and left them alone.
Deep in the thicket of the rotting jungle of metal and trees where even the bravest of the gatorfolk’s warriors would never go and where even the greediest of delvers know to turn back a rotting skeleton rested against the rusting, rotting, and ancient bark of the twisted jungle’s largest tree. Both the tree and the skeleton had been defiled by trash and sludge but even with that the bond of the tree and the skeleton had not been broken, but the sickening mana that filled the air was killing the ancient tree as slowly as a maggot eating the dead flesh off a corpse. It was killing the tree until when a large goblet of sickly yellow sap was poured onto the head by a mysterious shadow, the sap began to boil and bubble into the sockets of skeleton’s eyes and the roots, vines, and branches of the ancient tree on the skeleton were sucked in with the false blood.
For hours the ancient giant of the forest slowly sank into the skull way beyond what it could hold inside, bones snapped, branches cracked, and leaves trembled with joy as the skeleton’s bond transformed into something more than just a skeleton and a tree dying together. Root cover skeletal feet stomped into the ground as the great abomination rose from a forsaken grave, the creature's large rusty bark chest raised as the not so dead undead took its first breath. The branches and leaves that shattered the back of the skull did not cover up the flower and thorn crown of sickly gold amber, nor did they cover the large thick stump like arms of the reborn skeleton.
[Status]
[Stats & Class]
Name: ErRor
Race: Swamp Forged Remnant
Race Level: 1
Class: Warrior
Secondary Class: Locked
Class Level: 0
Hp: 100/100
Sp: 50/50
Mp: 20/20
Strength: 10
Dexterity: 10
Vitality: 10
Fortitude: 10
Will: 10
Intelligence: 10
Wisdom: 10
Perception: 10
Unassigned Stats: 0
[Skills & Titles]
[Heavy Strike Lv 0]
[Dash Lv 0]
[Error Error Error Error]
[Gene Tree]
Unassigned DNA: 0
The two wooden clawed hands flew up to the creature’s head as from its hollow mouth came a scream as the rampant flow of swamp water and fetid blood flooded from its eyes as broken shards of fragmented memories of both the ancient dying tree and whoever was the skeleton before they died. The powerful howl of the monster that should not exist echo throughout the dungeon and even out into the streets of the city above, the pure pain and despair in the roar made even the bravest shiver when they even tried to think how something or someone could feel so much pain. The creature of bone and wood raised to its full height of 12 feet tall and let out a second roar but this time it was fueled with rage and hate for all that had let it be born into existence, blood will flow for the sins of the wicked and only something as evil as it could fulfill this purpose.
