After another indeterminate stretch of time, the scent trail grew stronger as it returned to the trail. She’d made the right call. Eden slowed, moving more cautiously now. The jungle opened slightly ahead, and she could hear sounds—grunting, chittering, the shuffle of many feet. She crept forward and peered around a massive tree trunk.
Three creatures stood in a small clearing. Two Raptor-Hounds and something new—a massive figure, maybe seven feet tall, powerfully built with shoulders as broad as a doorway. It stood upright on two feet, but had the head of a boar, complete with curved tusks and a flat snout that snuffled at the air. Matted fur covered its body, and it wore crude armor made of bone and scraps of leather. In its hands, it carried a thick wooden club studded with what looked like teeth. After just an instant, her Inspect ability kicked in, providing her with a little more detail.
Boar-Man
Health: 100%
The three creatures were examining something on the ground—Eden couldn't see what from her angle. She needed to get closer, but the clearing offered no cover. If she stepped out, they'd see her immediately.
Use the environment and your powers, she chided herself.
Eden reached out with her Fog power, thickening the moisture already in the air. The humidity here was so thick that the ability was nearly effortless for her. A thick cloud of mist filled the clearing, and the creatures—obscured silhouettes now in the cloud—looked up, confused. The Boar-Man grunted something, and the Raptor-Hounds chittered back. They seemed uncertain whether this was normal jungle weather or a threat.
Eden used the distraction. She moved through the mist, circling the clearing, using what trees and large rocks she could for cover. From her new position, a dozen feet closer and at a different angle, she could see what they'd been examining—a red nylon backpack covered in patches. She immediately recognized it as Sam’s. Any lingering doubts she might have harbored in her new Scent of Prey power evaporated. She could still smell fresh blood coming from the backpack.
They came through here. And recently!
One of the Raptor-Hounds raised its snout, sniffing the air. Its entire body language shifted into something anticipatory as it turned and unmistakably locked onto Eden's position. The creature shrieked an alarm. The other two spun toward her.
Damn!
Eden didn't wait for them to attack. She thrust Tidal forward and pulled every drop of moisture from the surrounding vegetation. The plants withered and dried as their water content ripped free, forming a massive sphere of water in the air above the clearing. Then she dropped it.
The sphere crashed down on the three creatures like a small tsunami. The Raptor-Hounds went down, swept off their feet. The Boar-Man staggered but stayed upright, its muscled bulk anchoring it against the flood. Eden charged through the receding water, Tidal's prongs aimed at the nearest Raptor-Hound. Without hesitation, she drove the prongs through its chest before it could recover.
The second Raptor-Hound had regained its feet and lunged at her from the side, claws extended. Eden spun, using the momentum to bring Tidal around in a sweeping arc. The trident's haft caught the creature across the snout. It staggered back drunkenly off-balance and shrieking.
The massive Boar-Man raised its club and brought it down in an overhead smash that would have pulverized Eden's skull. Driven by instinct as much as training, she dove into a roll, the club slamming into the ground where she'd been standing with enough force to crater the earth.
Fast. Too fast for something that size.
Eden’s roll brought her gracefully back to her feet, and she whirled to thrust Tidal at the Boar-Man's chest. The creature twisted impossibly quick, catching the trident's haft with one massive hand. It yanked, trying to pull the weapon—and Eden—toward itself.
Eden held on and pulled moisture from the air, and released it with a blast of Tidal’s Water Cannon power. The blast took the Boar-Man square in the chest. From simulations, she knew the attack was enough to cave in the chest of a human not already enhanced by the Nexus. The creature roared in pain and released Tidal, stumbling back as its Health bar dropped by half. Down to 48.71% her Scent of Prey power let her innately know.
Eden pressed her advantage. She doubted she could match this thing's strength, but she didn't have to. She formed another drowning sphere and launched it at the Boar-Man's head. The creature reacted with impressive reflexes and swatted the sphere with its club, bursting the cohesion and sending water spraying everywhere. Without missing a beat, it charged her.
Eden barely got Tidal up in time. The club came down on the trident's haft with a sound like a ringing bell. The impact jarred Eden's arms, nearly knocking her off her feet. She gave ground, deflecting another strike, then another. The surviving Raptor-Hound was back on its feet and circling her. That wasn’t good.
Can't win a slugging match. Can’t let them team up on me. Need to be smarter.
Eden feinted left, and when the Boar-Man's club came down, she wasn't there. She'd rolled right, coming up beside the creature's flank. Before it could react, she drove Tidal into the back of its knee. The Boar-Man howled and dropped, its leg buckling. Eden didn't give it time to recover. She ripped Tidal free and drove all three prongs into the creature's short, thick throat. The Boar-Man thrashed once, twice, then went still.
She sensed the desperate Raptor-Hound rushing at her back. Sensing that she didn’t have time to yank Tidal free of the Boar-Man’s throat, she released the weapon and dove into another roll. The Raptor-Hound pursued her, snapping its serrated teeth and lashing at her with its wickedly clawed hands.
For several painful moments, it was all Eden could do to keep the beast from tackling her to the ground. The flesh of her arms was ripped up as she blocked and deflected what she could while constantly giving ground. She would have summoned her armor, but she needed Tidal for that.
In retrospect, she’d probably always been aware of the shallow creek running through the trees at one end of the clearing. Consciously or not, her retreat under the Raptor-Hound’s assault had driven them closer and closer to the water source until its gurgling presence became undeniable to her water affinity.
Suffering a deep gash across her chest, Eden stepped in toward the Raptor-Hound for the first time. It’s yellow, pointed teeth snapped within a hair’s breadth of her nose. Ignoring the pain and flowing smoothly, she latched her hands onto the thick fur covering the monster’s chest, raised one foot, and planted it hard just below its muscled stomach. Then Eden dropped back to the ground, dragging the gnashing monster with her as her body became a fulcrum.
The Raptor-Hound gave a startled hiss as her coiled leg snapped straight, and she heaved with her arms to send the creature flying. Before Eden had even rolled back to her feet, she heard the monster splashing into the stream. Clenching her hands into a fist, she commanded the water to seize the thrashing monster.
It took surprisingly little depth for a roughly human adult-sized creature to drown. It took even less when someone with an atheric water affinity was ruthlessly driving the liquid down the creature’s throat. Still, even as the Raptor-Hound sagged and went limp, Eden didn’t release her hold on the water for several more moments. Not until she saw its Health bar empty entirely.
Limping back across the clearing, Eden stood over the corpse of the Boar-Man, breathing hard. With two hands gripping the weapon, she wrenched Tidal free of the Boar-Man’s muscle-corded throat. Three more dungeon monsters down. She was a mess. Her ripped-up arms were coated in blood. The cut on her thigh had reopened slightly, blood seeping through her pants, though her Accelerated Healing was already working on it again. The power, unfortunately, didn’t do anything for her clothes. As she continued to recover, the loot notification appeared:
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
RAPTOR-HOUND DEFEATED x2
BOAR-MAN DEFEATED x1
LOOT AVAILABLE
Eden quickly looted the corpses. More tonic vials, some crude items without properties she dismissed to her Inventory just in case, and one item made her pause:
Stitcher's Scalpel (Curio/Weapon) — A thin, wicked blade left behind by the Vivisectionist. Weak as a weapon, but well suited for dissecting corpses to extract high-grade crafting components.
The Vivisectionist. That name had an ominous ring to it. Delta had told them that dungeons often had an element of narrative structure to them. Important figures within the dungeon would have names or titles, motivations, and even personalities. Usually, the entities with unique names or titles within the dungeon were bosses, mini-bosses, or powerful elites. Her gut was leaning toward the Vivisectionist being a boss of some sort. Whatever the story was in this dungeon, Eden was only interested in learning as much of it as they needed to beat it and escape.
Eden stared at the scalpel, revulsion crawling up her spine. The idea of cutting up monster corpses, even virtual ones, made her stomach curdle. She shoved it into her Inventory without further thought. Maybe Pablo or Sasha would want it. She definitely didn’t.
Moving more easily now, Eden stepped over to examine Sam’s fallen backpack. The blood was still fresh enough to make her enhanced nose twinge. She was close. Maybe only minutes behind them. Biting her lower lip to suppress her concern, Eden sent the backpack away to her Inventory.
Heart hammering in her chest, Eden put the clearing behind her and pressed deeper into the jungle, following the scent trail. The trees grew even larger here, their trunks so massive she couldn't see around them. The bioluminescent leaves provided the only light, casting everything in a rainbow-hued glow. It might have been pretty under other circumstances.
Gradually, the sound of the jungle changed. She heard voices ahead—not the chittering of Raptor-Hounds or the grunting of Boar-Men, but something different. Bleating. Like goats, but wrong. Eden slowed, moving as silently as possible, cautious of the possibility of there being more monsters ahead. The jungle opened ahead into a much larger clearing, and what she saw made her blood run cold.
Crude structures made of wood and bone rose from the jungle floor, huts and cages. There were six of the cages, four smaller ones held individual prisoners, while two larger pens held groups. And the prisoners—at least at a distance—all appeared to be humans.
Eden's heart leaped. In one of the individual cages, she could see Rowan, his date night clothes familiar, hands bound, face bruised. In another cage nearby was Sam, unconscious or worse, slumped against the bars. They were alive. Both of them were alive!
Looking closer at the other cages, the people were wearing clothes that definitely didn’t seem to be from Earth. Strange fabrics, unfamiliar cuts, colors that looked slightly wrong. Dungeon-generated NPCs, maybe? Or people from other worlds? Eden didn't know, and right then it didn't matter. What mattered were the creatures moving through the camp.
At least a dozen Raptor-Hounds patrolled the perimeter. Five burly Boar-Men stood guard near the cages. Near the center of the encampment, beside what looked like a blood-covered table with iron restraints built in, stood three new creatures. They had the bodies of short humans—maybe five feet tall, thin and wiry—but their heads were those of goats. Complete with curved horns and straggly beards. They wore tattered robes and carried gnarled wooden staves that glowed with sickly green light. She was too far from them for her Inspect power to get a result. The seasoned gamer in Eden picked out the details and labeled the creatures Goat-Shamans for the time being.
One of the shamans bleated a command. Two Boar-Men dragged a prisoner—one of what she thought might be a dungeon-generated human—from a large cage and strapped them to the surgical table. The prisoner screamed and thrashed, begging in a language Eden didn't understand.
Eden's stomach turned. She wanted to look away. Wanted to close her eyes and pretend this wasn't happening. But she couldn't. She was a Paladin. This was what she'd signed up for, even if she'd never imagined it would look like this.
The shamans began their work. Green light flowed from their staves into the prisoner's body. The screaming intensified—raw and animal, the kind of sound that made Eden's chest tighten with sympathetic pain. She wanted to look away, but couldn't. Needed to understand what was happening.
The prisoner's flesh began to ripple and change. Their arms lengthened, joints popping and reforming with wet cracks, and Eden could hear even from her hiding spot. Fur—mottled brown and gray—erupted from their skin in patches that spread and merged. Their face elongated, jaw stretching and reshaping, teeth falling out to be replaced by serrated fangs.
The prisoner's screams took on a different quality; less human and more bestial by the second. Eden's stomach lurched as understanding hit her. They were turning the prisoner into one of those creatures, into a Raptor-Hound.
The transformation continued for several more agonizing minutes. The prisoner thrashed against their bonds, but the shamans were relentless, their bleating voices chanting in a language that made Eden's head ache. Humanity was stripped away layer by layer until finally, the prisoner went limp. The screaming stopped. For a moment, Eden hoped they'd died in the process. That would be mercy compared to—
The thing on the table stirred, and the Goat-Shamans began unbuckling the restraints. The newly made Raptor-Hound sat up. Its movements were jerky, uncertain, like a newborn learning to use its limbs. One of the shamans bleated a command. The new Raptor-Hound climbed off the table and joined the others patrolling the camp. Within a dozen strides, it moved with the same disturbing coordination as the rest, as if it had always been one of them.
Eden's hands shook. Rage and horror warred in her chest. These weren't just monsters guarding prisoners. They were using people as raw materials. Turning them into more soldiers for their ranks.
A new notification appeared in her vision:
DUNGEON QUEST RECEIVED
RESCUE THE EXPERIMENTAL SUBJECTS
Objective: Prevent the transformation of captured prisoners
Prisoners Remaining: 11/15
Reward: 2 Nexus Power Points
Eleven prisoners left. That meant four were already gone—transformed into those things or killed in the process. Eden's eyes tracked the cages again. One of the smaller cages held a prisoner strapped to a table, their body already partially transformed. Fur covered their arms, and their face was elongating into a bestial snout. By her math, the counter didn't include them. They were already lost.
Eden wanted to charge in. Wanted to summon her armor and tear through every monster in that camp. But she'd be overwhelmed in seconds. The Raptor-Hounds alone outnumbered her three to one, and that was before the Boar-Men, and the shamans joined the fight. She needed backup. Needed her team.
Eden pulled back from her vantage point, moving just far enough that a thick cluster of fleshy leaves partially obscured her view of the camp. Not a full retreat—she needed to keep eyes on Rowan and Sam—but enough to reduce her exposure if one of the patrolling creatures happened to look her way. She settled into position behind a massive root, her view now broken by vegetation but still functional. She could see the cages, could track the patrol patterns, could watch the shamans preparing another victim.
A notification flashed in her HUD, startling her so badly she nearly gasped aloud.
Pablo: Eden, if you can see this, we're inside. On the beach. What’s your status?
Eden's heart leaped. They were here. They'd made it through the portal.
She quickly pulled up her HUD messaging interface, body trembling slightly as she mentally composed her response.
Eden: Found Rowan and Sam alive but captured. Enemy encampment at base of volcano—you'll see it rising from center of island. At least 20 hostiles. They're TRANSFORMING prisoners into monsters. Received a rescue quest. Holding position but situation is bad.
The response came almost immediately.
Pablo: Transforming?
Eden: Shamans with magic staves. Turning people into the raptor-things. Watched it happen. it's horrible. Quest says 11 prisoners remaining out of 15.
Pablo: How much time has past for you? Delta said we were only 15 minutes behind you when we entered.
Eden paused to consider, chewing on her lower lip as she did.
Eden: Not sure. Haven’t been watching the clock, at least 90 minutes, maybe more?
Pablo: We knew that was a possibility from the briefing.
Zoe: On our way. Don't do anything stupid.
Pablo: It looks like we’ve all got the rescue quest too. Eden, give us everything you know about the encampment. Numbers, capabilities, layout.
Eden quickly relayed everything she'd observed in the dungeon so far. The shifting terrain, the three different monster types, the encampment’s layout, and the composition of the enemy force. She also detailed the loot she’d collected, and specifically the Stitcher's Scalpel she'd looted and the power tablet she'd integrated.
Sasha: You integrated a dungeon drop without asking Delta first?
Eden: It let me track them. I made a judgment call.
Pablo: No point in rehashing it. Just don’t expect Delta to be happy about it later.
Eden: Is he ever happy?
Pablo: Alright, we do this as a team. When we arrive, we assess, we plan, then we execute. Nobody goes in until we're ready. Agreed?
Eden: Agreed.
Sasha: Agreed.
Zoe: Yeah, yeah. No Leroy Jenkins got it.
Despite everything, Eden smiled slightly. For most of their acquaintance, Zoe would have never dug up a World of Warcraft reference. But in order to better understand the game-like mechanics of the Nexus, Zoe had really been diving into the Earth equivalents lately.
Pablo: ETA 20-30 minutes, depending on the jungle. Sit tight. Stay hidden. If the situation changes, update us immediately.
Eden: Will do. And guys? Thank you. For coming.
Sasha: That's what teams are for.
Eden dismissed her HUD and settled into a concealed position behind a massive tree root that gave her a clear view of the encampment. She could see Rowan in his cage, still conscious and struggling against his bonds. Sam remained slumped and unresponsive, which worried her.
Hold on, guys, she thought. Just hold on a little longer.