Ch 204 – Lost Protections
Watching the Dredgers finally stop their growth as they reached heights hovering around five meters tall, Deacon didn't look particularly impressed by the transformation, and in fact, he actively held back a scoff at the display.
Uncle Bjorn can grow to eleven meters when using Gigantification, Deacon thought to himself with a smirk, pulling at the corner of his mouth. And when I unlock Gigantification, hopefully as my second Racial Trait, I'll be able to do just the same.
"Deacon," Leon began gruffly as he stared at the four now-enlarged Dredgers standing in front of them, his grip tightening slightly on both his tower shield and warhammer. "How do you want to go about handling them?"
Eyeing Leon out of the corner of his vision while keeping most of his attention focused on the transformed Dredgers, Deacon couldn't help but feel a bit surprised at how much Leon seemed to have mellowed out toward him over the past few hours.
He'd been expecting it to take considerably longer than just a couple of hours of climbing together through Floor Twelve for Leon to try to break the ice between them and start actually treating him like a Party member rather than a potential threat.
But apparently watching the Memory Vial recording of what had happened in Solomon's Fourth Temple, combined with observing how Deacon had been consistently throwing himself into the front lines against hordes of mutants while allowing Leon to stay positioned further back to better protect Bonehead and Valorie, along with whatever Valorie and Leon had been quietly discussing with one another during their brief calm trekking periods, had somehow led Leon to the conclusion that Deacon wasn't some backstabbing bastard who'd sold out his friends or performed some sick ritualistic sacrifice to gain power or killed them in an attempt to curry favor with certain Guilds.
"I’m thinking the Wall and Rogue?" Deacon suggested, tilting his head slightly, unbothered by the fact that the Dredgers had begun roaring and were now charging directly towards them.
Thinking to himself for a brief moment about the suggested plan and how it would play out, Leon then gave a single firm nod of agreement. "I'll keep them from getting past me to reach the others."
"I'll trust you on that," Deacon said as he rolled his right shoulder to loosen up the joint, as the thundering sound of the Dredgers' massive footsteps grew progressively nearer and louder with each passing second.
Just as Deacon kicked off the ground and took off in a sprint directly toward the charging Dredgers, he began shouting back over his shoulder at Leon. "Try condensing more stamina specifically into your elbow and shoulder joints when you block their strikes— it should help significantly with managing the recoil and preventing joint damage!"
Leon's eyes widened noticeably in surprise as he found himself staring at Deacon's rapidly retreating back as the warrior charged straight at the five-meter-tall mutants without any visible hesitation or fear.
"How did he know I was having trouble with that...?" Leon muttered to himself in genuine disbelief before quickly shaking his head to clear the distracting thoughts and breaking into his own sprint to follow after Deacon.
As the two charged forward to meet the Dredgers head-on, multiple arrows flew over their heads and sank partially into the thick skin covering the Dredgers' chests and left shoulders. The penetration was clearly less than Valorie had hoped for, as indicated by the annoyed click of her tongue.
She immediately knocked another arrow and began enveloping it with both stamina and mana.
Deacon launched himself into the air with a powerful leap to avoid a massive right-handed punch from the lead Dredger, causing the mutant's enormous fist to instead crash directly against the reinforced surface of Leon's tower shield with tremendous force.
The impact created five distinct loud popping sounds that echoed through the cavern just as Leon's legs were driven backward several inches into the solid stone floor from the sheer kinetic energy being transferred through his shield and into his body, but despite the visible effort required he remained stalwart in his position and didn't allow the Dredger's strike to push him back more than just a few inches.
Deacon landed on the Dredger’s extended arm in the split second after it collided with Leon’s tower shield. He immediately shifted Echoform Reliquary from its dual short sword form into its double-handed axe form and channeled stamina into the weapon, empowering its edge with Power Strike.
Bringing the massive blade down in a powerful descending arc, he sliced the Dredger’s arm clean off at the elbow joint with a single swipe.
Ignoring the slight trembling in his right arm from the recoil of cutting through such dense, mutated bone and muscle, Deacon kicked off the air itself using Air Step and darted toward the Dredger’s exposed neck. The mutant reared its head back and opened its mouth to roar in pain at the loss of its limb, waving the bloody stump wildly and spraying acidic blood everywhere.
Empowering his axe once more with another Power Strike to ensure he had enough cutting power, Deacon swung Echoform Reliquary horizontally to slice cleanly through the Dredger's thick neck and decapitate it in one swipe.
However, as the axe blade struck the Dredger's neck and began cutting through flesh and muscle, it only managed to reach approximately halfway through before becoming stuck on the creature's incredibly thick and dense neck vertebrae that were much more durable than he'd anticipated.
Feeling slightly disgruntled that the axe hadn’t cut all the way through on the first strike, Deacon planted his feet against the Dredger’s shoulder and braced his free hand against its face for leverage.
He yanked Echoform Reliquary free from where it had become wedged in the partially severed neck, then immediately struck the same spot again with another Power Strike, this time channeling significantly more stamina into the attack.
A loud cracking sound echoed across the cavern as the empowered axe blade struck true and finally hacked through the remaining neck bones, fully decapitating the Dredger. Its head tumbled down, giving Deacon a clear view of the two furthest Dredgers, both of whom looked visibly taken aback at seeing one of their own killed so quickly.
The closest remaining Dredger to Deacon’s position flinched backward, desperately trying to protect itself from the barrage of arrows sinking deep into its chest. It raised both massive palms in front of its face and vital organs, but even that defensive posture wasn’t enough to save it.
A wind-wreathed, Power Shot–enhanced arrow tore through the air with a high-pitched whistle, punching straight through the Dredger’s left palm and into its eye socket. Vitreous fluid sprayed outward as the mutant’s hands immediately lunged up to clutch its face.
"Hell yeah!" Valorie's voice cheered enthusiastically from somewhere far behind them, and both frontliners could hear the sound of her hopping excitedly with one clenched fist raised triumphantly into the air in celebration of the successful shot.
“Ignore her,” Leon said right after he could hear his twin celebrate. “She just figured out how to wrap her wind mana around her Power Shot.”
Turning his attention away from the arrow-riddled Dredger that was now stumbling around blindly and clutching at its destroyed eye, Deacon landed heavily on the ground just as the massive corpse of the Dredger he'd beheaded fell backward and crashed onto the stone floor with a ground-shaking thud, and Leon moved to stand beside him as they both watched the two remaining functional Dredgers suddenly extend their arms toward one another and begin what looked like some kind of fusion.
Like some kind of grotesque slime-flesh creature, their flesh and muscle tissue began to wrap around and meld together, the two separate bodies merging into a single, much larger entity.
"Shit," Deacon muttered under his breath as he watched the transformation taking place, however his unease and concern only grew exponentially worse as the entire massive cavern they'd entered began trembling violently, and small grains of stone and dust began falling from the ceiling high above their heads.
Snapping his gaze sharply upward toward the source of the falling debris, Deacon's eyes widened in genuine shock as they began glowing with a faint red tinge from Blood Sense, and he immediately reached out to grab hold of Leon's arm.
"Cave-in!" Deacon shouted loud enough to be heard over the increasingly violent rumbling.
"What?!" Leon shouted back in surprise and confusion, clearly caught off guard both by the sudden shaking of the cavern and by Deacon's urgent warning.
"We need to get to Bonehead and Valorie right now!" Deacon shouted as he used his significantly higher Strength stat to his advantage and began bodily pulling Leon along with him as he broke into a full sprint back toward where Bonehead and Valorie were standing and visibly stumbling as they tried to maintain their balance on the violently shaking ground.
Pushing Power Boost up to 10% and simultaneously casting Flame Art: Flame Steps to increase his speed, Deacon shot forward while dragging Leon behind him, zigzagging erratically between and leaping over the increasingly large chunks of stone and rock that were falling from the destabilizing ceiling above and crashing down into their path.
As the distance between Deacon, Leon, and the rest of their Party grew shorter with each passing second, the two merging Dredgers finally completed their fusion. They emerged as a single, massive Dredger standing roughly eight meters tall. Its body was far more muscular than before, and its skin had taken on a darker, deeply saturated red, almost crimson in color.
The newly fused Dredger immediately began charging toward the two retreating humanoids, crashing through massive boulders and ignoring the debris raining down around it as it closed the distance with relentless aggression.
As Deacon and Leon closed to within just a few meters of reaching Bonehead and Valorie's position, a horrifically loud groan that sounded like thousands of tortured souls screaming in unison suddenly echoed throughout the entire subterranean Floor that physically reverberated through the skulls of all within The Undergrave.
The overwhelming auditory assault on his mind caused Deacon to stumble mid-sprint along with Leon, both of them tumbling forward onto the stone floor and nearly colliding with Bonehead and Valorie, who had dropped to their knees and were clutching at their ears in pain.
As the groan grew even louder, the source burst violently through the ceiling in an explosion of shattered stone and falling debris, revealing itself to the group staring upward while clutching their ringing ears to be an absolutely massive Wyrm easily the size of a large building.
The creature was covered in thousands of rotating circular rows of serrated teeth set into mouths positioned across its dark brown hide, and as it descended its enormous primary maw opened impossibly wide and swallowed both the Elite-ranked fused Dredger and a massive section of ground directly in front of the Party in a single bite before stopping just barely a dozen meters away from where they were all lying or kneeling.
The Worm's body continued driving downward through the floor beneath them as it burrowed deeper into the subterranean depths.
Pushing himself up onto shaking legs with Echoform Reliquary held out defensively in front of him, Deacon positioned himself to stand protectively in front of the rest of his group, and he was joined several seconds later by Leon, who had similarly forced himself back to his feet despite the lingering effects of that horrific scream.
A Worm?!
Deacon gritted his teeth hard enough that his jaw ached as he cast Identify on the Worm as it continued to burrow itself deeper.
[Thousand-Mouth Stone Worm - ? Lv ??]
“How the hell did a Tier Two Stone Worm manage to breach down into a Floor this low?” passed through the minds of everyone in the group as they began slowly backing away from the massive hole.
They moved toward the relative safety of the cavern wall, where one of the many tunnel entrances was located, watching nervously as the ground around the Worm’s burrowing path developed spiderweb patterns of spreading cracks.
The creature’s massive form continued to drive deeper, destabilizing everything around it.
After clearing Floor Ten, we no longer have the protective instancing that kept our Generation’s Floors hidden and separate from the other Generations on the Floor World Map. That means our Floors have begun to appear onto the Floor’s World Map as soon as the first person in our Generation climbs onto it, Deacon realized with growing horror.
And if a Tier Two Worm managed to get onto a low-level Floor like Floor Twelve, then its handler must be here somewhere as well!
"Go! Go! Go!" Deacon shouted urgently as he began actively herding everyone toward the nearest tunnel entrance, and they all broke into a desperate sprint down into the passage as the cavern they'd been fighting in just moments before began collapsing in full.