Seventh stared at the grey slug. It was the size of a dog— a proper working dog, not a salon one— and carrying a huge shell on its back. He reckoned that if he curled into a ball, Seventh would be a smidge smaller than the shell.

  “So, we killing this? Feels a little low blow.”

  There was only one ration bar left after eating one a day. According to Fang-Knife, their journey to the stairs would take another day, but the ratkin had no information how long it would take to reach the topside. Could take hours, days or even a week.

  Food was quickly becoming a problem, so the duo had stopped to inspect the local fauna and flora in a huge cave covered in glowing blue moss, grey slugs, and violently red mushrooms, giving some foraging options— although judging from the colors, eating moss and the mushrooms would be a bad idea. Seventh also needed a portable vessel to carry water around, so the slugs were selected to the menu.

  After scouting the cave with Wandering Eye and placing the three ratkin minions at the exits, Seventh and Fang had stopped at the nearest slug. It sensed the danger and sprinted to safety. Seventh looked at the slow, jiggly crawl it made. “Well, no need to Raise this one up so... Shadowbolt.”

  The snail's sprint of a lifetime came up short as its head exploded from a magical bolt. Seventh lifted the lifeless snail up, and chucked it into his inventory. From there he could select the shell and pull it out, neatly separating it from the corpse, functionally making himself a weirdly shaped water jug.

  While inspecting the quick dungeon craft, Seventh made an approving nod and showed it to Fang. “Hey, look. Not a speck of flesh, sinew or anything else inside. Not even a master Leatherworker could do a better job.”

  Fang shrugged.

  “Be a good sport and fill this up for me. I saw couple of those deep puddles over there.” Seventh pointed at the innocent-looking water holes. He had already fallen twice up to his neck to the treacherously deep water.

  While Fang was getting their water situation sorted out, Seventh found and killed three more of the snails. Before storing the last one, he remembered to use his Identify.

  He quickly dropped the body to furiously clean his hands on the moss close by. “FANG! These are toxic for gods' sake! A little warning next time!”

  An echoing retch was Seventh's answer as he cleaned his hands. A tingly sensation in his palms interrupted him from answering, and Seventh turned his hands around to look for the reason. Had the Graveslug's toxins worked even when rubbed off?

  His hands were blue from the moss. He blinked at them, and with sudden trepidation, he placed his right hand on the moss. “Identify?”

  “For fucks sake,” Seventh cursed while the numbness spread past his elbows. “FANG! Even the moss is toxic! What kind of a place have you brought me in?”

  There was a note of amusement in Fang's answering grunt. Seventh was going to make Fang collect some damn moss... if he survived.

  Icons appeared in the upper-right corner of his vision, a blue skull with an adjoining icon of shivering lungs.

  Seventh gulped loudly as he perused the icon descriptions.

  Seventh had a skill he hadn't used much. He had gained it after the battle at the gate, but he had just used it once on him and Fang. It was absolutely disgusting and horrifying, but it did deal with poisons and venoms. Seventh just hoped he could move his completely numb arms to block his airways.

  Sucking a lungful of air in and steeling his nerves, he chanted, “Mantle of Decay.”

  A “friendly” swarm of insects sprouted from Seventh's arms, covering his whole body in a flash. He couldn't see anything but flashes of green, yellow, and black while the beetles, flies, and caterpillars feasted on the poison spreading in his body.

  When the icons disappeared— to Seventh's surprise— the swarm moved down from his body to attack the surrounding moss. A blue shimmer started to slowly disappear as the bugs slowly spread out and ate the toxins around.

  Seventh stood very still among the spreading mat of hungry insects. He shivered and patted himself down to make sure there wasn't any more of the bugs on him before collecting himself back together. At least mentally.

  The bugs' actions were interesting. Seventh had thought that Mantle of Decay would only work on himself or friendly targets, not on the surrounding terrain. He knelt closer to the bugs to observe their... eating. It didn't seem like they were actually eating the moss itself, just the poison— toxin within.

  The process left the moss non-luminescent and greyish-green in color— and hopefully non-lethal. Confident in his survival thanks to a purifying skill, Seventh picked up the moss for further examination.

  Fang arrived with a slug shell full of water while Seventh was picking up moss into his voidspace. The swarm of purifying insects had spread out thin in a circle centering Seventh. Their pale coloring of green, yellow, and black had changed to blue— a clear reaction to the moss' toxins.

  “Is there going to be more surprises?” Seventh had walked to the shell and was storing it. He looked wearily at the bright red mushrooms. “Are the mushrooms going to explode? Squirt acid at us? Strangle us while we sleep?”

  Slowly cocking his head, twitching his ear once, and pointing at his open mouth, Fang told Seventh they were edible. He was told to go and harvest one.

  Just in case it would explode, Seventh raised a bone wall to hide behind. He flowed his Wandering Eye next to the ratkin as he worked. The mushroom's stem was thick enough that Fang had to cut it down in two parts.

  Nothing happened. No clouds of spores, explosions, ambushes or surprise acid. Fang carried the shroom to Seventh, raising a questioning eyebrow at the wall and offering the mushroom to Seventh.

  “I needed safety measurement for scientific observation,” Seventh said while accepting the mushroom. It was surprisingly light, and smelled almost like something out of the sea. Maybe even a little bit salty?

  “Thank the gods, this is actually useful.” Seventh nodded after reading the Identify text. “It says cooked in the description. You boil this, fry or what?”

  Fang nodded.

  “That's real helpful Fang, thanks.”

  The ratkin nodded while making a beaming smile. It was full of yellow fangs.

  Seventh looked around in the cave. He could see a handful of mushroom clusters. Including the one mushroom they now had, there would be food for days— after he cleared the cavern out of the moss and slugs.

  He scratched his slowly growing stubble as he thought. They had an excellent chance to grind some skills while foraging the moss and mushrooms. Also small slug genocide via undead ratkin.

  “Fang, spread out with the ratkin and find every single slug inside this cavern. Kill them and bring them here.” Seventh pointed at the ground in front of him. “If you or others get poisoned by the moss or slugs, run to me, and I cleanse you. Questions?”

  Fang looked around the cave, the pointed ground, and the other ratkin. He raised a finger for a question and started making digging motion, and pointed at himself and the other minions.

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  Seventh furrowed his brow. “There's something you want to dig? Roots or something?”

  Fang nodded eagerly and raised his palm fingers up. He wiggled the fingers, and looked at Seventh expectantly.

  “Something wiggling? Worms, maggots?”

  Fang continued the motion while pointing at his mouth with his free hand. Seventh finally got it.

  “Oh! Something to burn for a cook fire. Really? Ratkin do that?” Seventh looked at Fang in mild amazement. He hadn't even thought to look for roots, not to mention to burn them for cooking.

  With a smug smile, Fang nodded and skittered to convey their orders to the others.

  The cleaning operation went smoothly. For extra security Seventh raised bone walls to all three exits before walking around getting himself poisoned on purpose. Holding his breath and covering his eyes and mouth Seventh cast the Mantle of Decay, feeling the crawl around him. He walked around the cave, casting the spell a dozen or so times on himself and five times on a poisoned ratkin before getting the System Notification.

  Seventh could see the System box even when holding his eyelids tightly shut. He let out a pleased grunt as he felt the bugs still crawling all around him.

  Opening his eyes and taking a deep breath in, Seventh looked around. Maybe a half of the cave was now dark, devoid of the blue glow from the moss. He would need to use the Eye again to see in the dark since it had basic Darkvision.

  He could hop into Shank-Tooth's body too to see in the dark, but that felt... no, he wouldn't do that.

  Returning to the designated area, Seventh found a dozen dead Graveslugs neatly in a row, ready to be stored. There were also six smaller ones— Identify named them as Adolescent Graveslugs— with shells neatly fitting to Seventh's hand.

  Ratkin were now digging around for roots, and piled their findings on a neat piles, which they carried around for next digging spot before hauling them where the slugs had been.

  Seventh contributed by separating the shells from the slugs, and filling them with water. The smaller ones were almost like fancy cups and Seventh took a long sip of the cool water. It was absolutely delicious and refreshing after multiple castings.

  After a small break of watching the ratkin, Seventh walked to the nearest mushrooms and with his axe he made quick work of harvesting the first cluster. Into the inventory they went, and Seventh took notice of the mana cost of his skill.

  It had slowly risen up by every slug, handful of moss, and mushroom he had stored and now it was starting to take a noticeable chunk of twenty percent or so with even a tiny bit of new mass stored. The void wasn't infinite for him, but he could store a lot of stuff inside.

  Oddly enough, the skill hadn't ranked up at all. Seventh half expected that his paranoid hoarding of food would have triggered the rank-up already. Just with the amount of mana he had used, there should have been some progress.

  While he was thinking, the last blue light of moss blinked out, leaving the cave lit by a carpet of magical insects crawling around, searching for new meal of mana. Seventh looked up and saw a familiar cavern ceiling full of softly twinkling embedded stones.

  The ratkin stood motionless surrounded by bundles of roots and clusters of moss so Seventh Identified their findings

  Like the box said, the roots were weirdly twisted in spiraling patterns, hardly making any straight lines. They were small and thin, maybe half of a good-sized carrot? Seventh patted the loose dirt off of one and took a test bite.

  He chewed. And chewed some more. The taste was awfully bitter, moldy, and somehow familiar in its earthiness. “Do you guys make Lesser Healing Potions out of these?”

  Four heads nodded in unison. Seventh was surprised with Fang that the other minions answered too.

  “Huh. It doesn't say it's an alchemy ingredient. You know how to make potions?”

  Four heads shaking in unison.

  “Eh, worth of an ask. Where to next?” Seventh asked while he filled his inventory with the roots.

  Sniffing the air near the exits, Fang chose one and pointed his finger for further confirmation.

  The caves they were traveling weren't nice and smooth caves like the dwarves had in their keeps, but jagged, wet, and occasionally slimy from moss and other growing subterranean plants. Sometimes floors steepened over time, forcing Seventh and Fang climb more than walk, and once they had to scale up a cliff using bone walls as steps.

  Now, they were scaling up a massive cavern wall, hundreds of feet wide and twice as high. While waiting for his mana to replenish and sitting on a summoned bone wall far above cavern floor, Seventh had a thought. “How in the hells did ratkin climb this up?”

  Fang shrugged, and mimed climbing up. He smugly showed his sharp nails on his fingers and toes.

  “Damn. You guys really wanted to get up there. Why did you stop? Didn't you want to get to the topside?” Seventh asked while looking down to the darkness. If he didn't know better, he could swear they were climbing above bottomless pit.

  With a grunt and wave of his hand Fang dismissed the question. Seventh lifted his eyebrow and stared at the ratkin until he caved in and made a ratkinesque shrug with his ears flattening down. He didn't know. Maybe a fault in his reanimation or Fang of the old didn't have the information.

  Seventh sighed and looked up before the vertigo hit him. His Wandering Eye was dutifully hovering at the cave mouth where they were heading. If they had been at the topside— where 'open air' had some meaning— the cave would have an exquisite view of the surrounding area, a vista worthy of visiting. Now it was just another part of the dungeon's cave system and dangers.

  Without Fang, Seventh would have wandered down here aimlessly, disappearing to the darkness without a way out. Absently, Seventh stroked his ink-soaked parchments in his satchel.

  I could have ranked the shit out of my Cartography by mapping our way out. Maybe the next time then.

  He sighed, and signaled Fang that he had full mana, and they could continue the climb.

  After the final cast of Bone Wall— and when they were safe and sound dozens of feet inside the stalagmite cave, the floor was sloped towards the drop— a pop-up appeared. It was expected after such expenditure of mana and slightly unconventional use.

  Smiling, Seventh mentally clicked the message away. He was two “walls” short of making a house for himself every night he slept.

  Being a safe distance away from the drop behind some sturdy stalagmites, Seventh pulled the other ratkin out of storage. He had tried to put Fang in there too, but he had made some pointy arguments with a knife, and Seventh had agreed to keep him outside.

  Now Fang was sniffing again the air, like always. The ratkin twitched and dropped on all fours. Seeing Fang, the other minions also fell down on start-up position for running.

  It was a signal Seventh didn't mimic, but understood well: there was something inside the cave with them. Dangerous enough for Fang to consider a threat.

  Seventh carefully readied his axe while slowly gliding the Wandering Eye through the cave. In the glimmering gloom it shone as a miniature sun spreading dim green light around. Not enough to see well, but extremely noticeable in the dark.

  The cave was silent and the silence was broken by constant pitter-patter of water droplets falling from the roof, lengthening the stalagmites one drop at a time.

  Fang drew his knife, and carefully moved forward. His ears slowly moved left and right, trying to hear something. The ratkin's eyes were narrowed and scanned every shadow.

  No slugs. Some grey moss. Puddles and sand on the floor.

  In his wandering vision, something moved in the corner of Seventh's eye, and he made a minuscule movement towards the darkness. It was enough and a shadow moved, lunged away from him.

  Fang was already charging in. Other undead let out rasping breaths of air, and followed the oldest undead in the charge. The shadow seemed to glide over the stone, making a hasty escape keeping the ratkin away, and rows of stalagmites between them.

  Seventh spun after everyone, being outpaced by all. Ratkin were born in the dungeon's halls, and had adapted to the confined fighting and running on uneven ground. But the shadow was even faster, and heading with confidence towards...

  A tunnel mouth.

  A white wall rose quickly to block the escape route, but the chase didn't halt even for half a step. Hands spread open from the shadow and metal flashed as knives buried themselves to the wall in a circular pattern.

  Without hesitation, the dark shape leapt straight into the knife circle, cracking and breaking through the bone wall with ease.

  "Ratkin stop," Seventh yelled the order.

  All of his minions giving chase froze. Fang gave Seventh a dirty look out of annoyance. First real excitement in days and it was cruelly taken away.

  “Shitshitshitshit.” A long string of profanity was uttered by Seventh as he slipped and stumbled towards the wall. "That was not a dungeon monster. That was an adventurer."

  Well, he wasn't 100% sure that the darkly clothed shape was an adventurer, but it made sense.

  "Somebody walking ahead of group making sure they're safe and not walking into an ambush," he continued.

  Fang spread his arms— still holding his knife— and made a questioning head roll.

  Seventh didn't answer. He was busy inspecting the ragged hole in his wall. Apparently it had still some structural integrity left— he needed to test how much after the rank-up— and hadn't collapsed even with a man-sized hole.

  He couldn't do nothing but to admire the action. Fast analysis of the situation, and finding a solution in an instant. Seventh picked up one of the throwing knives. It was made from iron and was slightly bent from the tip. Simple design, basically just a short dagger blade with just enough leather-wrapped tang to act as a handle.

  Fang also took a look at the knife out of professional curiosity. He nodded approvingly, and made poking motions with his own knife.

  "No! We don't attack adventurers! Not unless they attack first," Seventh said. Annoyed, he scratched his neck. This could go south. Fast.

  If the Scout ran to his party and informed about a deranged necromancer running around in the cave, Seventh and his minions would be in danger of an attack.

  He dispelled the walls and stared at the dark tunnel in front of him. He didn't see any movement or hear anything.

  Sucking in a lungful of air, he yelled at the Scout, "SORRY ABOUT THAT! DIDN'T EXPECT OTHERS! I PROMISE I'M NOT A DARK WIZARD!"

  .

  "SORRY AGAIN! WILL WAIT FOR A WHILE BEFORE CONTINUING! NOT PURSUING YOU!"

  Next to him, Fang repeated the stabbing motion with questioning ear raised, and a jiggling eyebrows.

  "No, I am not bluffing! We really don't want to chase anybody! Especially someone who just runs through magical walls!" Seventh shout-whispered to Fang. "Now put that knife away!"

  Blowing a raspberry Fang sheathed his knives.

  Seventh stared at the innocent-looking ratkin. He had no idea that ratkin could do that, or that Fang knew what it meant. Was there raspberries in the dungeon? Doubtful.

  He raised new wall to block the tunnel. No harm in being careful.

  Burning his remaining mana on crystallized magic, Seventh waited his mana bar to fill up. It took a tad more than 20 minutes so it was Seventh's clock.

  His mind wandered while he waited, sitting down on a moist rock. He wondered if the man— he was fairly sure the adventurer was a man— had heard him. Would he wait for him behind the wall? Continue running? Alert others? Set traps?

  Seventh buried his face in his hands and groaned. Not like he wanted to introduce himself to the larger society. How did he wanted to do it?

  "Godsdamnit," he muttered to his hand.

  He hadn't thought about anything. He just wanted to run to safety, whatever the safety might be. What if he was still undead? Well, technically he still , but he was different to the undead ratkin next to him. He had a pulse and everything.

  But not a beard. Yet.

  His mana bar was full, time for action. "Alright guys, wall going down. Take cover just in case."

  With a gesture the pristine-white wall fell down. Wandering Eye flew in and another wall rose. No harm in double-checking.

  Carefully checking every shadow, Seventh glided the Eye slowly through the tunnel. Dripstones and stalagmites slowly diminished, and he saw clear marks of mining activity, smoothing of a stone there, a clear pickaxe mark here. The small stones on the walls slowly disappeared while the tunnel smoothed out.

  And he saw a light in the end of the tunnel. The eye couldn't blink or raise an eyebrow, but Seventh could. And he did.

  For a trap, using light seemed like an odd idea.

  Seventh stroked his chin in thought while edging closer in his vision. The light made shadows longer, deeper, and his vision blurred into a grainy greyscale.

  Nothing happened, and Seventh saw it was a torch in the middle of the tunnel, and next to it, markings made in chalk. Contact with the outside world.