Duskbound

Velik felt the exact moment the sun went down, even though he hadn't seen the sky in going on three days now. A measure of weariness sloughed off his limbs mid-fight, and the scorplings he was slowly cutting his way through all of a sudden felt slow and clumsy to him.

[You have advanced to level 34. +2 Physical, +1 Mental, +2 free points.]

He put the two free points into mystic, as he'd been doing for the last few levels, though he started to suspect burning further resources on [Phalanx] might be a mistake. At this point, he mostly wanted the skill to merge with [Spear Warden] to free up the slot. It wasn't even that it wasn't useful, because it was, but because it didn't give him what he'd needed when he'd selected it. That was his own fault. He'd known it was a defensive skill, but he'd been hoping to shape it into something else, and he'd failed at that.

With the onset of night and the surge of strength [Duskbound] granted him renewed, Velik decided it was time. The onslaught of monsters had slowed down considerably, so much so that Velik had to assume either their numbers were running out or they were deliberately lulling him into a false sense of security. He couldn't think of a good reason to do that when they were already winning the battle of attrition.

If he operated under the assumption that he'd culled a significant percentage of the population inside the caves, and with the entrances leading to the surface still sealed off by transparent membranes that let off clouds of noxious, flesh-dissolving gas when punctured, then there was only one way left to go. He took his new level gain as a sign that there wasn't much point left stalling, not unless he came across the trail of that last assassin scorpling again.

That particular monster had disappeared, never to be seen after their initial encounter. It was out there somewhere, but Velik was too wise to its tricks now for it to ever get an advantage like it had had in their initial confrontation. If it was lurking nearby, watching him and waiting for an opportunity, it had been a disappointing few days for the monster.

Now he was standing in front of the cave he'd discovered days ago, the one he suspected would be a champion's domain. If I'd just walked through here the first time I found it…

But no, that wouldn't have made all the monsters he'd killed magically disappear. He just would have had to fight them on the other side. At least this way, he'd done it on ground he'd grown intimately familiar with, even if something was keeping him from leaving. Velik didn't know for sure, but he was starting to suspect he was trapped in a dungeon.

If the room had a champion elite in it and he didn't get a seed from killing it, that'd be proof enough. The only reason champion seeds were so rare—according to Torwin, at least—was that champions were commonly only found in dungeons, and the dungeons didn't give up the seeds unless they were destroyed. So, at best, a team could get a crop of one seed per champion from a dungeon ever, and not all dungeons were marked to be destroyed when they were found.

That just made his current haul all the more valuable, and Velik was determined to hunt down the rest of the champions scattered across the deep wood once he fought his way free of these weird, disgusting caves. He wasn't a greedy man, but when Jensen had impressed upon him exactly how expensive it was to have a full kit for monster hunting, he'd realized that grinding decarmas out one kill at a time wasn't a real option.

One step at a time, he reminded himself. First I need to kill whatever the compass is pointing to in this cave.

He stood outside the large cavern and just listened for a few minutes. The scrabbling legs of the scorplings was a faint thing at the best of times, but all was silent now. If there were any monsters about, they were well and truly hidden. He wasn't going to get a better shot at an uninterrupted fight with the champion. Enjoy more content from empire

The cavern was a wide-open circular arena, two hundred feet from wall to wall, with a domed ceiling fifty feet tall in the center. Like the rest of the tunnel network, it was covered in the same fleshy material he'd been fighting on for days now. It appeared just as empty now as it had every other time he'd peered through the tunnel mouth to examine it.

Velik stepped into the open, his spear gripped firmly in one hand and his eyes scouring the darkness.

[You have entered the domain of a champion elite: Scalithex the Brood Mother.]

Thought so, but where is it?

Just as he was thinking that, a ripple passed through the floor covering the ground. It started to bulge in the middle of the room, swelling into a small hill three or four feet high before the elasticity gave and it started to tear. A scorpling claw longer than Velik was tall pushed into the open air, followed by a second one, and in seconds, a scorpling—if it could even be called that—fully forty feet long not including the tail was climbing out of a pit in the floor.

Oh. That's where it is. Why is it so damn big?

Scalithex looked a lot like the scorplings Velik had been fighting for days, only blown up to gargantuan proportions. It was the same shiny black color, with the same proportions and the same weird mouth with no apparent sensory organs. There was something to be said for the stinger, which Velik had always been wary of, but in this case, was so massive that if the champion managed to hit him with it, it'd be more like getting run through with a sword than anything.

It scuttled forward, its pincer already spread wide and reaching to clamp down on him. He ran forward, apparently surprising the huge scorpling so badly that it paused for a second to decide how it was supposed to react. By the time it figured out what it wanted to do, it was already too late. Velik was inside the reach of its pincers, his spear leveled and bursting with power from [Kinetic Charge].

He thrust the weapon deep into the scorpling's mouth, snapping several of its teeth-like appendages and unleashing the power of his active skill to tear open a raw, gaping wound before dragging the spearhead back out the monster. As it moved, he reshaped the weapon to have a jagged, saw blade edge that ripped through flesh.

The monster went berserk, jerking around wildly and slamming one of its pincer arms into Velik. He partially hopped over it, but got clipped across his legs hard enough to turn his controlled landing into a wild tumble. Fortunately, flesh was far softer than stone, and Velik rolled across it uninjured. Unfortunately, the scorpling's pincer came back around to smack him again before he could regain his feet.

The damn thing's not even attacking me! It's just flailing around wildly! Morgus, if you're watching, look away. I don't want you to see this thing embarrassing me like this.

So far, this fight hadn't gone the way Velik had been expecting. He wasn't sure if this particular monster just didn't scale up in size well, or if the mouths were a particular weak point he'd never discovered on its smaller kin simply because stabbing them there was as likely to kill them as not. Or maybe this thing was just that stupid.

Either way, getting near it and its frenzied thrashing was a nonstarter. Velik got out of range and let it blindly snap its giant pincers, slash the air with its barbed tail, and spill thick black ichor all over the ground. He kept alert, just in case the whole thing was some kind of trap, but the giant scorpling had done more damage to him accidentally than on purpose, so far.

Its legs dug deep furrows in the ground, leaving smears of blood everywhere as it danced around wildly. At first, Velik was distracted by the rancid smell of so many wounds being opened in the fleshy cavern, but then he caught a flicker of movement that sharpened his attention.

Something was trying to peel back the furrow the champion elite had dug in the floor. It was only after a thin, shiny black barb tore through the furrow that he realized what it was. A scorpling had been buried under the flesh, and, much like the champion, was fighting its way free.

It wasn't the only one either. Now that he knew to look for it, Velik could see twenty or so of the little monsters digging their way out. They were vulnerable for the moment, still caught up cutting through the six-inch layer of flesh. Velik could kill them all in moments, but he didn't know if he could get close enough to do it with the champion filling up the center of the cavern.

It was too much to ask that he'd get lucky and the monster would crush one of its smaller progeny as it stomped around. The fist scorpling broke free and immediately oriented itself on Velik, then rushed forward to attack. Four more of them were right behind it.

I guess now I know why it's called the brood mother.