Ch 201 – First Contact
"Focus on guarding Bonehead and Val," Deacon said to Leon as he stepped forward and created a bit of distance between himself and the rest of the Party, his Portable Mana Lantern hanging lit on the left side of his hip while Esmerelda's Soul Bottle with its faint gold and green illumination hung on the right side.
Getting a grunt in return from Leon, who just like everyone else in the group other than Deacon had a floating Mana Lantern hovering beside them providing additional light, Deacon didn't bother acknowledging the response as his focus was already locked entirely onto the very first creatures that would be coming forth to greet them as they began their journey deeper into the tunnels to find water.
Halting his active casting of Blood Sense just as the creatures made the turn around a corner roughly ten meters away from where he currently stood, Deacon got a good look at what he'd been tracking through the spell as they sprinted toward the Party's location, somehow having been drawn to them from deeper within the tunnel system.
Though judging by what he knew of subterranean creatures and cave-dwelling monsters from his studies back at the Academy, they were probably drawn in by the sounds the Party had been making through their speaking and footsteps echoing through the stone corridors, which meant these creatures likely had an acute sense of hearing, or it could be that they'd picked up their scent and possessed exceptional olfactory senses instead.
Or perhaps they had some kind of ability to detect living beings similar to his own Blood Sense, maybe an Earth-affinity version like the ability Jass had developed to detect movement and vibrations traveling through the ground around her.
It definitely wasn't coincidence in his mind, because from what he'd observed while tracking them with Blood Sense they'd been moving at a relatively slow and leisurely pace through the tunnels until the Party had apparently crossed into some kind of detection range, at which point the creatures had immediately broken into a full sprint directly toward their location without any hesitation in their step that he could see.
Deacon did not even blink at the sight of what looked like spindly, chitinous stalkers, each one built more disgustingly than the last, with stick-thin limbs that were far too long for the swollen, tumorous heads they hauled forward with every lurching stride. Their skulls were bloated with knotted folds of glistening flesh that sat grotesquely atop skeletal frames like boulders balanced precariously on twigs.
Yet despite their unbalanced proportions, they moved very quickly, their clawed tips raking against the stone floor with each step as they made a beeline straight toward the Party with their jaws snapped wide open, the upper and lower mandibles barely connected by thin sinews of flesh and stretched wide enough to fit two bowling balls side by side.
[Bloatcrawler Lv 25]
Finally, maybe this Floor or the next will let me get a level up if these are the kinds of levels we're seeing on the first creatures we encounter, Deacon thought to himself as he kicked off the ground with Echoform Reliquary already shifted into its dual short sword form.
Both blades erupted into flames a split second after his boots left the stone as he cast Flame Armament across them, and he crossed the distance between the charging Bloatcrawlers and himself faster than the creatures could react to his sudden forward aggression.
Deacon's right short sword came around in a wide flaming arc as he passed along the right side of the leading Bloatcrawler, the blade slicing cleanly through the five or six long sinew-like tendons that connected both halves of its jaw together with ease before continuing upward to cut into the knotted inner folds of its bloated skull and decapitating the creature entirely before it could even register that Deacon had somehow moved from being in front of it.
In that same fluid motion without breaking his forward momentum, Deacon's left short sword swept horizontally and sliced off both of the spindly arms belonging to the Bloatcrawler that was now directly beside him, removing the limbs at what passed for shoulders to ensure the creature wouldn't be able to grab at him as he moved past it.
Taking in a deep inhale through his nose while simultaneously cringing back from the absolutely horrendous stench emanating from the Bloatcrawlers, despite still wearing his filtration mask over the lower half of his face, Deacon twisted his entire body to bring his right short sword, slicing through the top third of the now armless Bloatcrawler’s skull.
At the same time, his left short sword buried itself deep between the many folded and knotted layers of flesh covering its torso, the blade piercing diagonally from just a few inches below its neck down through its ribcage. The moment the blade was fully embedded, Deacon cast Ignis through the flames of Echoform Reliquary, creating a controlled explosion of crimson fire within the creature’s body that tore it apart from the inside.
Twisting sharply on his heel to face the remaining Bloatcrawlers closing in on his position, Deacon’s left short sword vanished from his hand as Echoform Reliquary seamlessly shifted back into its single-bladed Ulfberht form.
Doing so, he cast a brief and somewhat concerned glance at the few droplets of the creature’s blood running across the back of his forearm, and he sharply flicked them away as he heard a faint sizzling sound where the liquid had made contact with his armor.
In the brief moment it took for Deacon’s left hand to wrap around Ulfberht’s hilt and join his right in gripping the weapon properly, he ducked his head and shifted into a lower stance, digging his feet firmly into the stone ground in a semi-crouch.
Then, with a heavy two-handed horizontal swing that put his enhanced strength behind it, Deacon sliced cleanly through the bloated heads and upper torsos of the five Bloatcrawlers that had come close enough to fall within his blade’s reach.
As he raised his head from the crouch and began straightening his posture, an arrow suddenly launched from Valorie’s compound bow and shot past Deacon’s head with barely an inch of clearance.
The arrow flew across the tunnel before abruptly splitting into two separate arrows midflight, and both pieces pierced through the eye sockets of a Bloatcrawler at the very back of the charging group, the only one still alive and just beyond the maximum reach of Deacon’s Ulfberht.
*[Bloatcrawler Lv 25] has been slain – XP has been given.*
***
*[Bloatcrawler Lv 24] has been slain – XP has been given.*
As it fell to the ground, Deacon held up a hand with his palm facing the rest of the Party in a clear signal for them to wait where they were. He then activated Blood Sense once more and quickly but thoroughly scanned the surrounding area to check if anything else was charging toward their location or had been drawn in by the noise their small skirmish had just created.
Finding nothing rushing toward them or even moving nearby within his detection range, Deacon took several steps backward to extract himself from the piles of bisected Bloatcrawler bodies and the pools of sludgy acidic blood he'd been standing in and around, and only once he'd cleared the immediate area of contamination did he motion with his hand for the rest of the Party to approach.
"What's up?" Bonehead asked as he, Leon, and Valorie stopped walking just short of where Deacon was now standing.
Stabbing Echoform Reliquary's blade into the stone ground beside him so the weapon would stand upright on its own, Deacon reached into his Spatial Sling Bag and pulled out a crumpled sheet of aluminum foil that had previously been wrapped around a delicious club sandwich he'd eaten several days ago, the metal still carrying the faint scent of the food it had contained along with a blade of lettuce.
Deacon then crouched down and dipped the aluminum foil into the sludgy blood of one of the dead Bloatcrawlers once he was certain he had the attention of everyone in his group focused on what he was doing.
"Their blood is acidic," Deacon stated plainly, as not even a handful of seconds after dipping the aluminum foil into the blood and pulling it back out, colorless steam began rising from the metal's surface with an audible sizzling sound as the acid started eating through the thin material.
Deacon tilted his head up to look at the rest of the Party while still crouched beside the corpse.
"Not by much, based on how slowly it's working, and the acid looks relatively weak compared to what we've encountered before," Deacon said before shrugging his shoulders. "But it's just enough that we should be cautious about other creatures on this Floor potentially having similar properties, if not significantly worse."
"Which means we need to assume everything down here might have some kind of acidic defensive trait until proven otherwise," Valorie put together. “Or even active abilities that spew out acid.”
"Bingo," Deacon nodded in confirmation before turning his attention specifically to Bonehead. "You got anything in your satchel that can counter something worse than this if we run into it?"
Bonehead was silent for a few seconds as he mentally catalogued his current inventory before reaching into his Spatial Satchel and producing three yellow metal tins roughly the size of his palm.
"I don't have any proper anti-acid resistance potions as those are pretty shit both in use and in shelf life, but I do have these salves that should neutralize acidic effects if they make contact with your skin," Bonehead offered.
"Sweet," Valorie said as she accepted the tin being offered to her, giving it a brief Identify to confirm what it did before tucking it into one of the pouches on her belt for easy access.
Deacon simply took the tin and tucked it away into his Spatial Sling Bag without bothering to open it or apply any of the salve.
Against his Skin of Jötunheim racial trait, the few drops of Bloatcrawler blood that had managed to seep through the joints in his armor and reach his skin could not penetrate his flesh due to his Physical and Magical Resistance, and whatever minor damage the acid had caused to the surface of his armor was quickly repaired within a few seconds once he channeled a small amount of mana through it.
"I'll clean the path so we can move forward," Leon said gruffly as Deacon was getting up from his crouch beside the corpses.
Nodding in acknowledgment, Deacon took several steps backward along with Bonehead and Valorie to give Leon the space he needed to work, and they watched as Leon slapped both of his large hands together before kneeling down to the ground and placing both palms flat against the stone floor roughly a foot away from where the pool of sludgy acidic blood and dismembered Bloatcrawler bodies created a roadblock in their path.
After holding that position for several seconds while channeling his mana, the ground in front of Leon began to rumble and shake slightly, and then a deep ditch suddenly formed, swallowing the corpses and blood completely, before fresh stone rose up from below to create a new, clean pathway that covered over the ditch entirely and sealed it away.
Getting up from the stone, Leon stepped onto the newly laid stone pathway to demonstrate its sturdiness and stability to the rest of the Party.
"Thanks," Deacon said as he moved back to take his position at the front of the group, and the four of them continued making their way deeper down the tunnel system.
While taking point at the front and recasting Blood Sense to monitor the area ahead of them, Deacon couldn't help but think to himself with a pang of guilt, Jass could have done that faster, and without needing to stop or break her stride while walking.