The lead female, shocked by the offering, hesitated before turning around and touching the forest lion’s nose with her own tail (hers being unable to stretch as his could). The forest lion, slightly touched, accidently forgot itself for a moment and licked the lead female’s tail. They both froze at the hugely intimate act. The forest lion felt itself become quite embarrassed and let out a mew of apology.
The lead female cocked her head around, a smirk dancing across her face as she playfully whipped the forest lion in the face with her tail. The other two female lions, who had largely been ignored during this incident, both snorted at the sight of the other two flirting. The lead female and forest lion, having returned to their senses, looked bashful.
After recovering, the forest lion walked over to its stash of slime cores and distributed them to the others, settling down for a good meal as the light began to fade. When their stomachs were full of the warm feeling of mana, the forest lion closed its eyes and lay down to rest. It raised a lazy eyebrow, however, when it felt something touch its body. The three females had dropped themselves around it, creating a warm huddle. The old lion, who had been lonely for so long, couldn’t help but let out a sigh. After all, it was still missing.
The following day, all four lions were still sleeping when the light vanished. The forest lion, recalling the odd slimes and their lines in the dirt, turned his gaze toward the light from the surface. It let out a growl, calling the females to its side. It leaped towards the light, prepared to defend its new home from the invaders.
*
The new kobold leader sat on his throne, a stump. It wasn’t even a nice stump, just part of a withered tree his men had found and brought back for him. Though he disliked sitting in it, he forced himself every day to do so. The pain in his rear was as much penance as he was allowed for leaving his father and the rest behind.
He sighed, fidgeting with the headdress on his head. It didn’t fit, as it was meant for him when he grew up and fought a valiant fight against his father for the right to inherit it. If the leading kobold failed to produce a strong heir, then the others would fight to become the new leader. Something else that would have to be settled later, the kobold realized, as he recalled the greedy looks in some of the eyes of his warriors.
As a matter of recent tradition, he was counting the tribe. Before his stump throne, every member of the kobold tribe had gathered, standing patiently while he counted each of them. The kobold leader paused, his finger pointing at one of the warriors on the right. There was one too many.
With a snap, the warrior was quickly pierced by multiple spears. Instead of bleeding red as one might expect, the warrior merely drooped and slowly dissolved into a gooey mess, the mimic slime revealed to the group. Two of the female kobolds gathered the goo, balling it up to be used later. While the tradition of counting had started so the leader could note how many had died, it had soon become an important ritual ever since two of the younglings had been picked off by an imposter. The mimic slimes, while unable to speak, were incredibly skilled at acting, even going so far as to join slime hunts and kill their own kind. Unlike other slimes, dead mimic slimes could be harvested for material to build homes and materials, a useful thing that made the morning ritual ever more important.
Dismissing the tribe, the kobold leader returned to his ruminations. The meeting with the forest lion had gone poorly, but at least no one had died. While it was disappointing not acquiring them for mounts, the leader felt that the encounter with the two terrifyingly strong slimes had been worth it. While their communication ability had been dismally low, even compared to a common beast like the forest lion, the slimes did manage to reveal they were aware of the threat outside the cavern forest. The kobold leader had agreed—at least, he tried to say so—to help the slimes.
A rumble shook the kobold cave, attracting the leader’s attention. A scout ran back in with urgent news: the light had vanished!
The kobold gripped his staff and pounded it, summoning his warriors to battle. The male and female warriors came to his side, prepared. The leader, seeing the younglings left behind, forced the females to stay back. Someone had to lead the next generation if none of them survived. With a heavy and vengeful heart, the kobold went off to war.
*
The battle, once it began, was unstoppable. From above, a horde of mutated beasts—dire wolves doubled in size with acidic saliva, spiders with two fused heads and extra legs, squirrels with scorpion tails and arms on their back, rabbits with teeth the size of daggers and two more sets of eyes, and other just as monstrous beasts. From below, a mass of every slime in the dungeon: grey, sharp, armor, bone, blood, mage, gelatinous, lesser mimic, bug, mimic, treasure, chest, herb, heal, plant, jungle, and poison slimes. At the helm of this mass, two worgs stood with the kobold tribe and forest lions nearby in the crowd. Already, the slaughtered corpses of the first dire wolves lined the ground at the base of the cliff, their blood pooling over the dungeon soil.
The slope continued to cause some of the beasts to stumble down, but the horde continued on, running over any fallen member. The worg twins raised their voices up in a blood-thirsty howl, and the slimes moved as one to meet the enemy. They clashed right at the base of the slope, and slime met flesh once more.
The lesser mimic bug slimes, the most numerous of the slime types, used their copied bug parts to latch onto individual beasts until they fell and were devoured. Under the twinkling notes of the bug tune, the masses moved swiftly from beast to beast, even as their bug slime leaders tore through those same monsters one on one. The mimic slimes and their lesser mimics, which had remained low-key in the dungeon, showed off their prowess by taking on the forms of the spiders and dire wolves, killing the enemy with their own abilities and confusing the intelligence behind the army. Even the treasure and chest slimes participated, their nigh-impenetrable outer chest appearance allowing them to create road-blocks in the monster’s path while seizing a beast and devouring it one at a time at their leisure.
The herb slimes covered the battlefield in their paralysis spores, downing many of the charging beasts before they could reach them and turning them into easy prey for the plant and jungle slimes, who launched projectile and plant-based attacks in a flurry of destruction. The heal slimes stayed to the back, focusing their magic on any slime they detected as being injured, while the poison slimes controlled the battlefield around them by creating poisonous surfaces and burning the eyes, noses, and ears of anything that got too close.
The grey slimes operated efficiently, moving as whole units and rotating in and out of battle. They followed up this moving assault with the ever-destructive power of the armor and sharp slimes, who slammed and pierced their way irregularly through the battlefield and were always followed by their massive gelatinous slime relatives. The blood and bone slimes used their powers to siphon both blood and bone from the mutated beasts, growing stronger with each batch collected. Finally, the mage slimes let loose their primitive but effective magic with volleys of fire, stone, and ice.
With this many slimes taking action, the battlefield remained in an unmoving stalemate. Then, mutated birds appeared and unleashed a bombardment of wind magic on the slimes, tilting the balance in an instant. The forest lions and kobolds finally had their chance to shine, with the lions whipping themselves into the air like juggling balls and massacring any bird that got close enough to the trees. The kobolds pulled out primitive bows and accurately shot the birds down with arrow after arrow.
Caught by surprise, the birds were unable to react fast enough to these new threats, and just when the enemy dungeon turned its attention towards the newcomers, the birds were instantly attacked by a combined attack of mage slime and thrown armor slime. The gelatinous slimes turned themselves into pseudo-catapults, launching slime after slime into the air like boulders. The armor slimes, tough by nature, easily survived the fall back to the ground and reentered the fight from new directions.
The enemy dungeon, witnessing
the massive losses in its army and feeling their deaths, then used a new tactic, one that clearly demonstrated its spite towards the slimes: suicide bombing. The mutated beasts, already mana poisoned to their limit, quickly exceeded their limits and exploded like miniature fireballs of destructive magic. The slimes, unprepared for such an attack, were quickly killed by the handful as the mana ripped through their bodies and breached their cores. The heal slimes were not numerous enough, or swift enough, to reach many of the survivors in time to save them. The suicide attacks then fell off, but in a sinister twist, every beast severely injured and not killed in a single hit immediately committed suicide by detonation, rendering the swarming tactic impossible.
“This bastard!” Doc’s voice roared in the heads of Ayla and Aisha. “It is severing its control over the animals right after making them explode, forcing the poor beats to regain their senses long enough to die without it experiencing it!”
“We’re taking heavy losses, Doc,” Ayla reported as another swarm of lesser mimic bugs died in an explosion. “Have you tracked the dungeon?”
“I can’t trace it underground,” Doc groaned in anguish as another group of grey slimes perished. “Why can’t I find it? The ground is leeching so much mana. Where is it? How can it be operating outside of my senses?”
Aisha, who was cutting the head off a spider, tilted its attention back the dark forest. “Take step back, Doc. See forest for trees. We retreat now, use darkness to advantage.”
With the two worgs howling, the slimes felt the pull to retreat into the forest to resume the fight. Doc watched helplessly as the retreating slimes were picked off by the pursing beasts. The ground was littered with blood, slime, and corpses. By grace of opportunity, however, the advantage returned to the slimes in the darkness of the forest, as the army of beast relied on sight to fight. The slimes had adapted to the suicide attacks as well, causing severe injury quickly before retreating from the blast. The darkness of the forest was quickly lit up by these explosions of mana, causing confusion in the beast army as light came and went so fast their eyes failed to adjust. Not even a hive mind like the dungeon could keep up with so many changing sense stimuli.
Doc, instead of praising his slimes, remained on task of ferreting out the enemy dungeon’s hiding spot. His senses surged through the ground, scanning each bit of corrupted dirt. But there was nothing to find except animal nest and roots.
“The dungeon is in the forest,” he murmured to himself. “I’ve stretched my powers and senses as far as they can go, and there is no trace of the crystal’s power coming from underground, which shouldn’t be possible since the ground is glowing in mana. So then, where is the mana coming from, the air?”
Doc watched as some plant slime used the root wave attack to destroy a group of mutated rabbits. The way they attacked... Doc took another look at the forest. Unlike the ground, the trees showed no sign of corrupting.
“What... if... it’s not the ground that’s the source of mana,” Doc slowly realized. “What if it’s something in the ground... like a root? A root system that stretched out in every direction, corrupting everything it sinks into. That’s why the trees aren’t corrupted like the ground; roots from a single a tree, a dungeon tree! Dungeon’s aren’t limited to the ground!”
With the answer smacking his face, Doc abandoned looking underground and instead focused on what was in the ground. The roots in the ground, which had been harmless before, quickly began to glow as the source of the mana was revealed. He traced it quickly, to a tree near the forest clearing. It was an ordinary tree, without any distinguishing properties, except for a shining core in its center.
“Anadine, Rowen, it’s that tree! Destroy it!”
*
“You heard him, Rowen. Let’s go!” Anadine said, bursting out of the covered pitfall near the entrance of the dungeon. Rowen quickly followed, and the two soared through the entering army. Anadine’s tentacles sliced through spines and skulls, killing everything in a single hit, while Rowen’s balls of darkness obliterated anything they touched. The army, taken aback by this surprise attack, continued to flow into the dungeon and largely ignored the two fleeing slimes.
“We aren’t being taken seriously, Anadine,” Rowen observed as they reached the clearing and zoomed towards the forest. “Their tactics aren’t very sophisticated.”
“Good for us, at least. There isn’t anything blocking our path to the tree,” Anadine shot back as they entered the forest. “Wish we could take advantage of this corrupted ground to explore this forest, though. Ah, no time, no time. Look, there it is!”
The tree looming in front of them was an oak, leafless and slumbering like the others around it. To their mana sight, however, the tree glowed in a red light just like the ground, standing out from the forest around it. At its center, a circular gem gleamed.
“Now, take this ball of darkness!” Rowen yelled as he unleashed his magic. The magical orb zoomed through the air and right before it struck the tree vanished. Rowen let out a grunt as the two of them continued moving toward the tree.
“Some kind of barrier, it seems,” Anadine observed. “I wonder how it does against physical attacks!” Twisting herself, the blue slime turned herself into a spinning tornado of hardened slime tentacles and slammed into the tree. A red barrier came into existence, invisible before to both physical sight and mana sight. Anadine’s attacks bounced off as she continued to slam into the tree.
“Back off, Anadine, you’re just wasting mana!” Rowen said as he arrived and examined the barrier. “This must be a dungeon power which Doc lacks. Seems stronger than what we can put out right now.”
“Maybe, but I bet if it runs out of mana—”
“It won’t,” Doc’s voice echoed in their heads. “Corrupted dungeons suck the mana of the world away. You’d need a sudden attack to overpower it in an instant, otherwise the forest itself would heal the damage done. Find some way around it or cut the connection.”
Rowen looked up. “Doesn’t look like the barrier is covering the top of the tree. I’m willing to assume that applies below the tree as well.” The grey-white slime let out a sly chuckle. “Hey Doc, think you have enough power to displace the ground?”
“Yes, but I won’t be able to revive either of you if you die for this fight,” Doc warned. “Are you sure about this?”
“I might be a slime now, but don’t underestimate my intelligence,” Rowen said. “Go ahead, Doc, unleash your fury here and throw this tree!”
“Alright, let’s do this!” Doc roared in agreement. The two slimes began to vibrate rapidly as an earthquake shook the ground. It started small but grew larger and larger until the ground felt like it was about to shatter. The entire enemy army fell down, unable to retain balance. In the dungeon, the kobolds and forest lions also fell, but the slime army continued to attack unaffected by the vibrations as their bodies jiggled.
Rowen and Anadine retreated as the forest floor cracked open around them, sending trees and stones and brush falling into to the cracks. The tree holding the dungeon core, being at the center of this attack, let out a groan as it cracked, its roots being torn asunder by the heaving movements of the continent. With a final, seismic shake, the tree was dislodged from the ground and launched forward, forcing the two slimes to leap to the side as it crashed where they had been standing.
“Hey Doc, careful!” Anadine called out.
“Lecture him later, kill now!” Rowen declared as he leaped at the fallen tree, balls of darkness forming at the ends of his tentacles.
Bam!
Rowen was slime-slapped into the ground, bounced back up, and then again into Anadine. The two tumbled back and caught themselves.
“Should have known it wasn’t going to be easy,” Rowen muttered.
The tree, which had been lying inert, slowly lowered the wooden arm that had sprouted from its trunk. With a burst of wood shards, three more arms came out. Together, they raised the tree back into an upright state. With a crack, t
he trunk opened up, revealing a maw that dripped with acidic saliva. Vines slithered down from above, forming an odd umbrella over the top of the tree. The tree thing roared at the two slimes.
“Treant, tier 2 monster,” Anadine declared. “I’m guessing this is the final boss protecting the dungeon, huh? Looks to be a challenge.” She readied her tentacle arms.
“Let’s cut some firewood, sister,” Rowen said, his magic pulsating.
The dungeon treant let out a scream and unleashed a terrible volley of wood darts.
*
Inside the dungeon, the war between mutant and slime raged on. Though the earthquake and darkness had allowed for the slimes to inflict devastating harm on the enemy, the mutated animals were just too many and pushed the army back further and further into the forest.
Ayla and Aisha were soaked in blood, both their own and others’. The worg twins let out muted gasps as they took a brief rest from the fighting.
“Sister, it doesn’t look good,” Ayla stammered out. “I saw some rabbits poking around the holes leading down to the third level. There isn’t anything between us and Doc to stop them if they find the main entrance.”
“Can’t, leave, yet,” Anadine wheezed. “Enemy, getting, slower. Distracted, by Rowen and Anadine, need to keep up, the assault.”
“I hadn’t noticed, but you’re right,” Ayla said, turning her head. “They are a bit more sluggish than before. Alright then, let’s get back in there!”
“Woof!”
Across the battlefield, the forest lions were tearing through a group of spiders, destroying their webs and freeing the trees of traps. The old forest lion paused and observed the exhausted females behind it. With a grunt, it tossed over three slime cores it had taken from the corpses below. The female lions accepted the offering gratefully and downed them, almost immediately becoming full of energy once more. Between the four of them, they’d been downing slime crystals for a while now. The forest lion noted the slight jiggle in their fur, nodding at the change. Once the three gained their new abilities, the fight would surely change in their favor.
Dungeon Wars Page 25
