As my arms were pulled in close to my sides. I flexed and ripped free of its grip, my combat tunic ripping apart at the tiny hooks, destroying the material and sliding across my mammal-flesh, leaving faint pink lines.
The thing was a Cuttleman, and I was once again clearing dungeon floors. The Bonkers were all bonked out for the time being, and my new business interests required that The Unnamed Dungeon should have more lowbie levels. Too many noob adventurers had been dying, and despite how profitable it was for me, it was bad PR. So here I was, doing the thing I’d sworn to never do again. This would be the third new floor, once I found and killed the boss, since my gentrification.
I staggered back and stopped being Mr Nice-Bob. Those clothes were expensive and designed to survive the kind of combat you’d normally expect in a dungeon expansion. A stream of acid fire blasted from my mouth, and the smell of fried calamari filled the air. Surveying my ruined clothing, I grimaced and shifted back into my draconic form, the remaining enchanted cloth exploding into floating shreds.
Cuttleman level 37 slain.
Gold earned!
Four hundred and seven gold added to the Hoard.
“Where’s the boss, Kat?” I growled for the fifth time in ten minutes.
“Hmm. Let me see… Where should the noble Baronet go next?” She fluttered to the ground in front of me and put a hand to her chin as she paced back and forth. The system had not been kind, and she was extremely salty about the French maid's outfit she was currently forced to wear. Her sword had been turned into a feather duster this time.
“Don’t piss about, Princess. Let’s just get this done.”
“Fine, it’s that way.” She pointed down the corridor to my left with her new weapon, and tiny hearts fell like sparks from the feathery tip. I stomped in the indicated direction. The dank tunnels and open spaces dominated by murky, stagnant pools were still better than the bloody Thimblewinks had been.
“In there!” she whispered, pointing to a narrow tunnel that led away from this chamber that contained yet another unchlorinated swimming pool. I sent out a blast of fire to intercept the half dozen Cuttlemen that erupted from the sewage masquerading as water and ignored the kill notifications. I did note with pleasure the steady increase to my hoard. Say what you like about the system and the process of expanding the dungeon, but it kept my greed-demon appeased.
The aforementioned demon was currently swimming around in an imaginary pool of gold coins, doing the backstroke. Taxation, the arrival of trainee adventurers to run the dungeon, and slaughtering monsters to clear new floors had left the wee devil extremely happy.
“Dammit. OK. Tackle out.” I’d not fit down the passage in my proper body, so I shifted into my human form and approached the tunnel confidently. These guys were tough, but I’d faced worse. Admittedly, I’d done so without my danglies dangling on full display, but mammalian modesty, at least around Kat, was no longer an issue for me.
“I see Esme got you to make some upgrades,” Kat snarked from ankle height. I chose to ignore her. The walls were slimy, almost as though they were infected and oozing pus. I sent a blast of orange-green fire ahead of me, a la Ripley in the hive, to clear out any minor nuisances, but didn’t get any notifications.
Boss Battle! Prepare to face the Cuttleking!
A leviathan of the deep lakes awaits you!
Good luck, Dungeoneer!
“Dry skins are not welcome here,” rumbled a shadow from the centre of the room I emerged in after threading my way through the slimy tunnel for a couple of minutes. The new space was vast in comparison to the previous pool rooms. Perhaps a kilometre across, a narrow beach of jagged stones lined the oval lake, and the voice had come from a shadowy lump floating in the middle of it. Bubbles popped around it as it spoke, catching the dim light from the glowing fungus that lined the ceiling.
“Hello to you too, dinner. Speculator Visus”
Many Tentacled Terror
Cuttleking level 47
STR 78 AGI 42 MAG 3 ARM 31
I shifted back into dragon form and leapt into the air. I had to pivot and sink my claws into the ceiling almost immediately, as the roof was so low.
“Columna Fumi!” I barked, and the sigil appeared in front of my nose. This spell was a nuisance in my true body; the blast of smoke and ash spread from the sigil, so it was like looking at the world from just behind a hose spewing grey at my enemy. The cloud coiled around and targeted the enemy's eyes and lungs, but the king submerged, and my attack spread out across the pond like an early morning mist.
The Dragon-Fu move Spider-Dodges-Newspaper sent me skittering sideways as a thick tentacle erupted and slammed into the roof where I’d been a moment before. My own tails lashed out and pierced it, tiny in comparison but tipped with sharp spikes that twisted and turned, causing green blood to leak out and a stream of angry bubbles to burst below me.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
With the scanning skill active, I could see the body outlined in the murk beneath me, so I pulled back my tails and released my grip on the rocky roof. I fell like a meteor, a single quick flap of my wings building momentum and sending me hurtling through the water. As a result of several lengthy excursions to secluded lakes with Esme, I’d learned that dragons were excellent swimmers. Swimming was a little like flying in a way, and using my wings as oversized fins was something I was accustomed to.
I cut through the water like a shark, dodging its tentacles left and right, and then slammed into the king's face. My teeth flashed, and the water turned green as claws, tails, and jaws came together into a biological threshing machine. The flesh was rubbery and tasted foul, but I was already inside the thing's head before the mass of tentacles could react. The brain tasted sweet once I cracked through the cartilage and began to feast.
Floor Boss slain!
Congratulations dungeoneer!
Rolling for loot…
Item: Squidward's House x1
Currency gained: 5731 gold
Autolooting remaining chests!
Item: Carrot of Taming x1
Item: Grimoire of the Third and a Half Circle x1
Item: Laser Pointer of Confusion x1
Item: Beret of Control x1
Item: Dagger of the Even Cut x1
Item: Breastplate of Nee x1
Item: Furglebumps Redactor x1
Item: Medium Pill of Villification x1
Item: Spatula of Justice x1
Currency gained: 17,345 gold
I emerged from the water, scales shedding the damp in rivulets, and dragged as much of my prize ashore as I could. The bastard was heavy, and as soon as what was left of his head was clear of the water, the weight of it stopped me from moving the thing any further.
“Cartilage is overrated when it comes to protecting brains,” I said with a mouthful.
“How can you be hungry? You haven’t evolved in ages!” Kat wondered as she fluttered down from where she’d been hiding in a corner of the room.
“TASTES GOOD!” I bellowed as my head snaked deep into the hole I’d made and pulled out a lump of brain matter that I slurped down noisily. “Holy shit, Kat, it’s like I don’t know. This shit is amazing!” I took another bite.
“And that, children, is how a dragon called Bob caught a prion disease and died a sad death as a giant lizard vegetable!” She kicked my leg.
“I’ve eaten cows whole, Kat! If that kind of thing were a problem for me, we’d have found out already.” I took another industrial-sized chunk of cuttledude brains into my mouth and gulped it down. “The loot was shit again.”
“Shows how much you know, Bob. Jenny will love the spatula, Salnia will make good use of the breastplate, and if you hadn’t cursed me with this fucking costume roulette, I’d have used the beret. We’ve got another two hundred kilos of the good stuff as well. Time for another trip to the city, scaly.”
I lay back and rolled around, hugging my belly. I was full—the fullest. No one had ever seen someone so full. I checked the dungeon status quickly and smiled happily.
Dungeon Status:
Unnamed Dungeon.
Level: 10
Floors: 17 (Residential) (Industrial) (Agricultural) (Mana Crystal Farm) (Alchemy lab) (Combat x6) (TBC x6)
Rooms: 24
Sprite level: 23
Minions: 38/70
Hoard: 862,247 gold
Three more combat levels were going to set the hoard back a chunk, but I’d made back everything I spent, vile word, and a good bit more on top. Fortunately, low-level monsters cost less, so my greed-demon continued swimming happily in the dream version of my shinies.
Biomass stored:
604.8 KG
Biomass required for evolution: 180 KG
Time for some upgrades! If I were going to go swanning back into the den of powerhouse terror that was Ankmapak, I needed to be in tip-top shape.
Rolling for evolution choices…
Please select from the following six options:
-
Angelic Wings
-
Tails of Acidic Vitriol
-
Tait Virility
-
Chef’s Special
-
Chameleonic Scales
-
Fucking Eye Beams, Dude, Just Pick This
“Erm, Kat?”
“What?”
I ran through the list.
“Oooh! You’re so lucky, master!” she said with false sincerity.
“Just break them down for me, please?” I asked lazily. I didn’t have the energy to bicker with the ancient being who acted like a moody teenager half the time. I made a note to try and figure that out sometime, but doubted I’d remember to bother.
“Angelic wings will give you fluffy wing feathers, and they have a bunch of uses in alchemy and demonology, very valuable. Great healing power. Moving into the divine might piss off Music and Light, your current patrons, though. If you want to spit acid from your tails, pick two. Tait virility will turn you into a fourteen-year-old's idea of manliness. I’d skip that one!”
“Fourteen-year-olds idea… Yeah. Skipped”
“Chef’s special is a weird one. Kinda rare. Let’s you produce more meat from kills than you should, not biomass, by the way, only works if you decide to butcher the meat and sell it. It also makes your slicing and dicing with the big, scary claws more effective in combat. Chameleonic Scales let you turn into a ninja dragon. It’s a form of invisibility. Would you like me to explain what ‘Fucking eye beams, dude’ does?” she finished sweetly.
“I think I got that one from the title.” I burped and settled into a brief period of rumination. “You know what, Kat?”
“I probably do, but why don’t you tell me anyway?”
“I was never a terribly religious person back home.”
I selected Angelic Wings and shivered as the leathery skin of my wings sprouted jet black feathers. I rolled over and stood to my feet, craning my neck back to examine the final result once the itching faded.
Motes of black and silver fell from them as I shook them out.
“Nice. Next one. Hopefully I get an Increase Mass this time!”
Biomass stored:
424.8 KG
Biomass required for evolution: 200KG
Congratulations! You’ve received a Divine roll! I’m sure this won’t piss any of the local pantheon off!
Rolling for evolution choices…
Please select from the following three options:
-
God Forged Scales
-
Herculean Physique
-
Sanctified by Music and Light
“Ah shit,” I grumbled. “Kat, this might be a problem.”