The Apprentice of Ouroboros [Monster Evo LitRPG Adventure]

“Syrona, keep an eye on them. See what they’re up to,” she whispered. “Stay hidden, okay?”

The coatyl chirped, and her feathers started to shift color and patterning. Within a few seconds, Neska now had a pet brick. Or, a snake trying to pass for a brick, and she forced back a laugh. “You’re getting better at that. Almost fooled me.”

Syrona let out a puff of air and shook her feathery mane. Apparently she knew when her actions were being embellished a little. She took off in a flutter of wings, and Neska kept the [Familiar Link] active this time, watching through Syrona’s eyes.

She took up a perch near an archway, a stony ledge that stuck out more than the others. She peered down at the clanking machines, each no more than a foot or so tall; each had a small head that pivoted a full arc of motion with little beady crystalline eyes. They moved exaggeratedly, almost like a toddler learning how to use its legs. One even wobbled and tumbled onto its torso, driving a series of squeaks and clanks from the others.

It righted itself and threw a pebble at one of the hecklers, denting the metal and leaving it squealing with a metallic whine. It pointed at the broken shells of the automatons the others had previously engaged with, and then they got to work…dismantling them?

The automatons were already in pieces, but the mini clankers seemed to have a better idea of dismantling them without destroying them outright by removing bolts and metal plating, unsnapping hinges and popping out rivets. They dragged automatons down the corridor, back where they came, letting out a cheery pitch that sounded like they were singing.

Kalloway stared at this spectacle, letting out a quiet breath once the sound faded. “You know, I’ve seen a lot of wild things in my time. This is still not the strangest one to date. What are they doing?”

“Cashing in on the factory warranty,” Trevor deadpanned. Syrona flitted from one vantage point to another, never letting the mini-workers out of her sight, down a flight of spiral stairs.

They may have demonstrated complicated designs, but they were far from careful. One dropped the dismantled arm of a clanker, and it bowled into others going down the stairs and sending everything below them into a tumble. They emitted metal squeaks like rusty hinges offered in anger, but little more.

If anything, these showed a mix of independent thought and automated behavior. “Trevor,” Neska whispered, keeping focused on her remote sight through Syrona. “Have you ever made or know others who made automatons this sophisticated?”

“Nope. Not even close. I want one. For uh, purely study purposes.”

“See? See?!” Juni said, gritting her teeth. “Now she's got you wanting dangerous pets, too! Why am I the only voice of reason?”

“Grubby will be the politest picnic raider that ever lived. She will only ruin monster picnics,” Neska proposed. Juni gripped her ears with her paws, looking exasperated.

"Your menagerie of future disasters scares me more than the actual raging demigod who has you, and the rest of us, marked for death. There, Neska. That is your point of comparison."

The workers left the main room and dragged the pieces down the stairwell, then stacked them atop one another to lift the components over a large metal bay set into one side of the wall. It appeared to be a rubbish chute, leading deeper into the building. One by one, they tossed the pieces in.

One miniature automaton got caught on tangled circuits and let out a high-pitched squeak as it tumbled down the chute with the debris. A few seconds later, the mini-clankers all dispersed and opened a pathway adjacent to the chute. Neska heard sliding metal, and then the disturbance was over.

She relayed the details to the others. “So, explore the basement? Or do we keep going?”

“Skip,” Brent grumbled. “My fur caught on fire once already. I got a thorough workout in stop-and-roll-over commands. We already have more pressing matters, as it were.”

Trevor looked disappointed. “We should flag the location for later. The complexity of these automatons is beyond anything I've ever seen before. They could prove useful.”

“Same. Damn good construction. Could be useful if we figured out how to pacify them,” Durim added, scribbling something in his journal. “C’mon. We still got at least a few more hours to get to the area of interest. I'm not keen on our elementa being vulnerable while she shifts up a tier.”

“‘Magical underground forest’ was never on my sightseeing list,” Neska admitted, taking in the wonders of this subterranean world. “What an incredible biome diversity down here.”

Sitting perched on the ledge of what was an entryway into the top layer of a cavern, Neska stared down at the juxtaposition of staggered buildings built into the cliff face of the massive stone slopes. Between them and growing all over were giant mushroom trees, towering over the landscape. Not only that, but glowing vines draped along with other pale, earth-colored vegetation, all lit by the mana spiderwebbed through the cavern.

Whatever had been built here before was partially overgrown by the jungle. On the ground level, brackish water lapped along the shore of a river running through the middle, small glowbugs illuminating the area in a pale green.

When one of the bugs got too close to a pocket of gas floating across the fetid water, it ignited with a small thump of expansion and a miniature fireball. The small creature was nothing but a charred corpse floating through the air.

“Welcome to the jungle, we've got shrooms and flames,” Juni eked out in response to this rather ominous sighting. “Guessing we don't want to be by the water. All that rotting fungi and vegetation is likely producing combustible gases.”

“It's pretty, though. Dangerous…but pretty.” Syra sighed contentedly. “I mean, how many people can say they witnessed an underground forest?"

“I think that rock is actually a tree,” Brent pointed out to a bark-like rock with crystalline shards embedded in the surface. The stone branched off into tiny shoots, each tipped with the crystals, and they draped down like willow trees. Occasionally, a shard would fall to the ground far below, or drop into the river with a soft plinking sound. “But how?”

“Good question. How, indeed?” Kalloway asked, sounding confident and wearing a wry smile. This was the most the man had appeared at ease since they arrived in the underground. “Miss Semou. In the absence of light, how does life prosper?”

“There are…hang on. There are the obvious answers: carnivorous plants that take dead biomatter and small insects to sustain themselves. There is also anaerobic plants that can sometimes sustain themselves from vents near hot spring areas, using sulfur and phosphorus. Or…”She snapped two tiny fingers on her paw, making the connection. “Mana. Mana is the substitute for sunlight. Without the need for chlorophyll, they don’t have to be green!”

She frowned when she looked at the rock tree. “Not so sure about that stone-like tree. Professor Durim, this is more your area of expertise, no?”

“Not all dwarves reside in the underside of the world. I spent my childhood in the hollows of the Baterian Mountains to the south, near the coast. We had trees like this, living rock that mimics the one on the topside. Like the others, it substitutes mana for sunlight…except they only grow where there are deeper pockets of the material, and their wood is like stone. Yet it does grow like any ordinary organic tree. This one’s in bloom. Rare.”

“Alchemical properties?” Trevor already had his sample bags ready.

“Oh yes. But we best be wary. Those gases down below could choke a man in seconds. Those are smoker mushrooms that are making that. They grow even as they halfway rot, and the gas builds up in them. It’s also heavy, so it sinks to the lowest point. Best to ignite it from a distance, or avoid it.”

Neska wanted to try her toxin resistance, yet again, but maybe she shouldn’t do so recklessly. There would be time for exploration here, later, after the threat was contained. “I think we should set up a contingency. When Syra is down to six hours, we need to take up a defensive position until she evolves. We have enough supplies for that, yes?”

“Aye, but I don’t like stretching them. Maybe we can forage down here, stretch our supplies. Hope you like mushrooms,” he jested.

“The witch did. Risha also had some odd ones that made her quite…uh, eccentric, for a short duration of time,” she admitted.

“Was she not taking the end of the world seriously?” Kalloway fumed.

“It lasted as long as the tears were kept at bay,” Neska finished. “Then, it was back to work. As we should, too.”

Neska let Syrona fly off, and after using the extra point of view, she was able to guide the team down a narrow path along the ledge rock that was safe and stable. Gnarled rock-roots provided ample handholds, and the stone was dry and rough, making it easy to grip.

She sprang down to a lower, level area that ran the length of the canyon above the river, widening to a few hundred feet across. Soon, they were navigating through the alien forest, with mushrooms glowing nearby, and crystalline insects skittered into their holes and burrows to hide from these new arrivals.

Trevor was beside himself, taking samples as fast as he could, as was Kalloway. “I can’t believe all these things are practically below our feet! Neska, half of this stuff could be used for some potent alchemical formulas! Think of what you could do with your venoms!” He sounded almost delighted.

“Only one problem: the stronger the potion is, the tougher it is on me,” she pointed out. “I’ll have to invest in more points of Endurance if I want to capitalize on that.”

Indeed, she was already planning her next round of potions. The last two encounters had given her problems she couldn’t crack with her venoms, not easily. Both the worm and the constructs had proved highly resistant to them. Her mana bolts had been equally weak against these foes, unless she put more points in Soul, which would increase the [Mana Bolt] material penetration aspect.

Occasionally their path took them across ruins of homes carved right into the face of the cliff, with stone doors that swung open with great resistance, and a grinding of sand and dust, accrued from hundreds of years. Neska found herself looking at a plain room with all the organic furniture rotted away. But the metal cabinets were still intact, and she went through one out of curiosity.

Nothing of interest, unfortunately. Like the other places, this ancient ruin was devoid of corpses or bones. After this long, it was possible subterranean predators disposed of them. She let her thermal sense kick in, and then activated her [Spectral Sense] to see if there was a hidden story.

Sadly, nothing in this particular hiding spot. She wondered what this place must have looked like, hundreds of years ago. Was this jungle a garden that grew out of hand, unattended after all the humanoids left? Or was this natural beauty here, all along?

Somewhere down here was Markus, conspiring against the Academy. She wondered if he’d come across these ruins, too. What did he think when he saw how many civilizations rose and fell, down in the dark?

Likely, he just laughed at their misfortune. She pressed onward, with Durim still peering at his map.

“I think we might be getting close to getting back on track. I have a stone sense that there’s a hollow a few hundred tenfeet through here that connects to an old rail system. The tracks have been cleared out before, likely by those who explored before us,” Durim explained. “That brings us back to the known area, and closer to where our lizard’s hidden lair is. We best be cautious, and keep an eye out for mousetraps.”

“Kinda awkward, considering the giant mouse in our company,” Hadley quipped. She’d been peering at the trees the entire time they’d been down here, and it had not gone unnoticed. Jurik, too, had his hand on the hilt of his sword, as though he expected an ambush.

“I saw a place like this. Once. A ruined city, farther north, on the outskirts of the Arivolian border, underneath some hills. Except there was a lot more water, and sunlight filtered through crystalline growths from the ground to the ceiling of the main chambers. They brought the sun down into the earth itself. A marvel of dwarven technology.” Even as weathered by war as he was? Jurik still smiled faintly at the recollection, and spoke of his resolve and ability to appreciate the strange wonders of the world.

“Did the Varadur destroy it?” Syra asked, eyes also gazing at the river nearby.

“No. The place had been abandoned for decades, centuries even. Likely a small mining operation for a few soft metals known in that region. Copper, tin, alarite, maybe even some myrtalium. The Varadur occupied it anyway, likely one of their hiding spots where they breed and come up with ever-more innovative ways to kill us.”

“We’ll get it back someday, Jurik,” Neska vowed. “We’ll take it back one ruin, one town, one field at a time, if we have to.”

Durim and Kalloway murmured to each other at the front of the formation. Brent kept putting his nose to the wind as if he sensed something she didn’t. “Trouble?” she whispered.

“Only a faint wind current, so it’s hard for scents to carry. Something’s been watching us ever since we came down into this cavern. I can’t sense it so much as sense a void in what’s around us.”

She activated her [Spectral Sense] again, squinting due to the brightness emanating from the stonewood trees. They pulsed with mana energy, and those veins of power tapped deep into the earth below them. Durim had been correct: there was literal power beneath their feet, though likely not to the level of being practical for mining.

She gazed at the large overhanging trunks of some of the mushroom stalks, and came to a dead stop when she saw something. It didn’t register what, exactly, she was looking at. Only a shimmer; then it was gone. She glanced around slowly. Something living had been there for just a split second.

She shrugged and pretended she hadn’t seen anything before slithering next to Brent and matching pace. Then, she whispered to him. “Brent, Hadley. Four O’clock position. Are you getting that feeling that something's there?”

“And at seven,” Hadley replied in a low tone, brushing the overgrowth of pale vines away from her face. “It’s not something big and dangerous; it’s too subtle. I think it’s something humanoid-sized or smaller. Maybe animals. Possible pack predators.”

“Or Markus has hunters of his own.” Brent’s muzzle curled into a frown, and teeth edged out. “I can hear them at the periphery of my hearing. They’re moving when we’re moving, trying to hide in the sounds.”

Without another word, Neska dove into her [Familiar Link], and gave Syrona a heads-up. Possible danger. Watch out for things hiding.

Syrona made a throaty sound, and Neska thought she was coughing up one of her contingencies–an alchemical munition. No, don't drop any boom-booms on anyone! Just observe, first!

The familiar let out a wailing hiss. Apparently she’d wanted to show off her new techniques they’d discussed. Neska saw the novelty of a familiar being able to rapidly respond to circumstances and offer fire support from above, or, as she'd given her a small vial of healing potion, to cure ‘ouchies’. The familiar had a smaller inventory space than Neska, but it might grow larger when she did.

Stranger still, when she'd tested it, she could view Syrona’s [Dimensional Stomach] inventory, currently limited to two items, stackable up to three maximum. She didn't have control over it, and she'd have been more concerned if she did.

Syrona banked around, flitting through the stonewood trees. Every so often, Neska spotted a shimmer or glimmer of something that always edged out of sight, just as her familiar focused on it.

Syrona. Big flash is coming up. Get clear. Drop ouchie potions on my friends if they get hurt. Neska knew that something was there, several somethings, but she could only guess at their intent.

Neska fired off a coded message to her team. “You know, I feel like singing. Do you come from a cavern down under, where elementa’s glow and snakes spelunker?”

That was her cue for ‘Big hex about to go off.’ This time, she was in a realm filled with targets for her [Woven Root Hex] to utilize to their maximum potential.

And she wouldn’t waste the opportunity as she drove mana down her hand and felt the shudder of power run through her core. Everyone else prepared their abilities, an audible hum echoing through the air. “Can't you hear, can't you hear the slithers? You better run, you better come hithers!"

“That’s not a word!” Hadley protested as Neska’s hex activated, and the forest came alive and writhing.

Then there were screams as everything devolved into chaos, and the interlopers fired off an offensive of their own, and a hail of arrows rained down.

“Sure it is. Also Juni? Rock on.”