World Seed_Expansion

by Justin Miller

  The worst part was when the gluttony demons came out in groups of over a hundred, and Yin couldn’t get them in time. Some of them would latch onto Yo’s body and began drinking her slime, while others tried to attach themselves to the rest of us. But, thankfully there weren’t any lesser devils on this floor, and the only thing we had to take care of were the fly demons.

  At least, until we hit the boss room. I was expecting many things from the boss of the gluttony floor, but a slime wasn’t one of them. Well… it was sort of a slime. It was giant, at least twenty meters tall, and very slime-like. However, along its edges were wide openings full of teeth, from which long tentacles came out to try and grab us.

  “Sharon… please tell me your divination can help us here…” I said after raising a stone wall, using every bit of energy to say nope to that fight. I was just fine standing outside that room, thank you.

  “Uhm… give me a bit, and I’ll let you know?” She said awkwardly, before sitting down beside the wall and focusing. I could feel the fluctuation of mana around her, so no doubt she was working some magic to try to get information about this boss.

  “Ugh.. well…” She started speaking again after being quiet for a few moments. “From what my spell said… it’s called a devourer… And… that’s pretty much it. It eats things… Everything.”

  Yin furrowed her brows as she listened. “Too big…”

  “Right, it’s too big for Yin to blast it with her telekinesis…. And it will probably eat our attacks faster than we can use them… So… Other options?” Celeste looked around to us as she asked.

  It was at this point that the answer came from the most unlikely source. “Why don’t we just avoid it..?” Yo asked, tilting her head slightly to the side. Her body was a bit shorter than it had been before, as she hadn’t been able to reproduce enough slime yet to finish rebuilding her body.

  Suddenly, everyone started looking at me, and I couldn’t help but sigh. Using my Earth Manipulation, I tapped into the stone around the boss room and began making a tunnel to circumvent the room altogether. “This feels like cheating…”

  It is cheating! Good job.

  When we got to the next floor… what kind of sin is this supposed to represent? For some reason, there were little snakes slithering around all over the place. However, shortly after we entered the room, the snakes let out a hiss, and we all prepared for a fight. All at once, the snakes in the room jumped into a pile, squirming together to form one mass, which slowly shaped itself until it looked like… Sharon. By the time it was done, its appearance was almost completely indistinguishable from my girlfriend.

  “Burn…” The real Sharon glared at her fake, causing a pillar of fire to rise up around it. Pained shrieks rose from within, but then the fake jumped out, sending a punch directly at Sharon. Although its skin was burnt, it was still able to pull out the same strength that Sharon used.

  “Ah… this must be the Envy floor, then…” I said, shaking my head as Sharon suddenly transformed, her skin sprouting white fur. In a flash, the fake Sharon was cut to pieces as soon as her transformation into a rabbit girl was completed.

  “This floor is going to be a problem…” Celeste spoke while furrowing her brows, looking at the spot where the fake Sharon was dissolving, various snake bodies falling from the corpse. “If groups of these snakes can become us, and we continue to encounter greater numbers… this will be an uphill battle soon.”

  I nodded, understanding that as well. If we were to fight a group of ten, with two of each of us, we’d be doomed. At least if it is a one on one battle, or us against only one or two of them, then we are okay. But… “Is there a chance that the copies can’t use magic?” I noticed that Sharon’s fake didn’t seem to use any magic before she was taken out, so there was a chance that they were only physical clones. If that was the case, then we could do this.

  “Maybe… we’ll have to keep going and see.” Celeste seemed to agree with my thinking. If they couldn’t use magic, then we could take out even twenty of them at once, though it’d be hard.

  In the next room, there were twice as many snakes, as well as one unusual one. While the normal snakes were blue, this one was red. But, once again they joined into two masses. This time, they copied myself and Yin. The red snake joined into the mass that had formed my clone, and gave me a rather bad feeling.

  No, to be more precise, what gave me a bad feeling was when my clone sent a fireball flying at me. I could tell that it was weaker than my own abilities, because I could stop the fire in midair with my Fire Manipulation, and send it right back, but then it changed to throwing water at me. Once again, that was easily countered, but while I was busy throwing the water back at it, it had begun charging at me. Rather than using more magic, it resorted to throwing a straight punch at me.

  Unfortunately for it, the punch was useless, because Celeste blasted it with her arm cannon. “Sorry, was helping Yin take care of hers.” She pointed towards the other side of the room, where Yin had been smashed against a wall, and there were several snakes falling off of another nearby body. “Useful information here, though.” She added a grin to that last part.

  “Well, seeing as how I was preoccupied, mind sharing?” I grumbled under my breath. Although it had been a quick fight, it was annoying trying to blast myself with magic.

  “Ah, right. Well, the blue snakes represent basic form. Speed, strength, and so on. Red snakes represent magic ability. Your clone seemed much weaker than you magically, likely because it only had one red snake in it. Also… the clones always seem to go right after the person they copy. Yin’s… used telekinesis on Yin as soon as it finished forming. So psychic powers are covered under physical transformations, since it is part of the brain.”

  I waited for her to finish the explanation, but did not really like any of it. What would happen if they copied Yo? Was she considered a magical entity or a physical one? I wasn’t entirely sure, but I knew I’d find out soon enough.

  In the next room, there were three clones. Myself, Sharon, and Celeste. Thankfully, the clone of Celeste did not include a red snake, so she was unable to use her pets, and the snakes weren’t able to copy equipment effects. This made the fight fairly easy, but they were gradually becoming more difficult as we went on.

  In the fifth room of the Envy floor, we saw our first item after defeating a full team of copies. This item was a large shield with a reflective surface. When Sharon identified it, it was listed as the Shield of Envy, and had a rather powerful effect. When the user activated the shield and aimed it at someone so that they saw their own reflection, the user would then be able to take on the appearance and physical abilities of the target. Of course, this only applied to targets with similar body types, so you couldn’t become a boss monster with it.

  This shield… I stored it in my grove, so that we could do something with it later. Although it is difficult to store magical items, with my increased stats I am more than capable of it. Plus, I still wasn’t sure that we wouldn’t encounter a greed demon again.

  I want to say that we kept going through the rooms, until we fought an epic battle against the Envy boss… But that would be a lie. We did make it to the boss room, after fighting a room with fifteen copies. Thankfully, there weren’t very many red snakes in the dungeon, so we were able to clear the floor pretty easily. No, the lie would be the epic battle.

  When we arrived at the entrance to the boss room, there were already sounds of battle within, a few screams being heard. I couldn’t help but turn to Celeste and ask. “Are you sure that nobody came down here right before us? We should be the first to even make it to this floor…”

  Celeste nodded her head. “Right… nobody else has ever been to the gluttony floor before us, let alone the envy one… Maybe there is an internal dispute?”

  We could only shrug, and walk into the room. Inside, we were surprised to find twenty of the red skinned lesser devils fighting a single lesser devil that was double their height. The giant d
evil let out an evil laugh as it swept a sword covered with black flames across its attackers.

  With every swing of the sword, at least one or two lesser devils fell, but more and more were slicing at it with their own weapons. This scene inevitably confused us, and I looked towards Celeste for answers.

  “I got nothing… could be that they turned on him for food?” Celeste shrugged her shoulders. “But, we can take advantage of this to use an attack that will wipe them all out together.”

  Sharon smirked slightly. “I might have something. Yin, can you help me with a bit of lightning when it’s ready?” When the other girl nodded, Sharon closed her eyes and began transforming again. This transformation was one I hadn’t seen yet, and was quite surprising. Thick shell-like pauldrons formed on her shoulders, followed by a wide shell covering her back. At the top of the shell, two plates opened up to reveal cannons made of bone.

  After completing her transformation, she took a deep breath and kneeled down on the ground, so that the two cannons were facing forward. Then, I could feel as she began building up a large quantity of water mana within the shell on her back. “Get ready…” Sharon spoke while focusing, before she apparently reached her limit.

  Sharon, use Hydro Pump!

  I was momentarily confused by the window, before two highly pressurized streams of water shot out of the cannons on Sharon’s back. Though, shortly after they left her back cannons, they began freezing over, and breaking off into a rain of dense ice shards. “Your turn, Yin!” She called out just as the rain of ice began stabbing into the demons.

  Yin nodded, surrounding herself in lightning as she returned to her stormbird form, and opened her mouth. Streaks of lightning shot out from her mouth and mixed in with the blasts that Sharon was launching, increasing the damage being dealt to the horde. One by one, the demons fell down from either the pressurized blast, the lightning, or the combination of the two. Even the boss, the giant lesser devil, fell down to one knee as it sustained a large amount of damage.

  “Well… that was…. Yeah…” I looked to Sharon, and then the one remaining enemy in the room. Well… since she already weakened it. Might as well finish the job, right? However, before I could even charge in to take out the boss, it exploded in a cloud of blue and red snakes. Yeah no, not letting them form back up.

  In order to take care of the snakes all at once before they could recover, I did one very simple thing. I breathed lasers on all of them. All hail the invisible laser breath of death!

  Not as good as Hydro Pump.

  Chapter 66 - The Deadliest Sin

  I glanced over to Sharon as she stood up, still in her previous form. “What… was that?”

  “Huh? Ah, I combined with a siege tortoise. They gather water in a special organ in their shell, and fire it off through natural cannons. Was a pretty neat evolution when I saw it. Though, an actual siege tortoise is a lot bigger.” She explained with a slight smile as we looked through the room to see if there was anything we could pick up before moving out.

  Turns out, there was. Though, I would not suggest anyone actually use this item. As a way to practice my skill, I was the one that identified the thin chain bracelet that was hiding in the corner of the room.

  Bracelet of Envy

  This charm bracelet is able to seal enemies within it in order to steal their identity and power. In order to seal someone within the bracelet, you have to be in physical contact with them, and spend more mana than their current health and mana combined.

  I… did not like that item. I mean yes, it is really powerful, but it’s dangerous. Using it to steal someone’s identity? I didn’t want to risk this item falling into the wrong hands, and really there were no right hands for it. As such, I immediately melted it down on the spot.

  “The next floor is Pride, right?” I asked, looking to Celeste. Please let the next floor be pride.

  “Aww, now that wouldn’t be any fun, would it? Why don’t you crank those ears up and answer your own question?” She had a wicked grin on her face as she looked back at me.

  I didn’t want to… I really didn’t want to. But my curiosity got the better of me. Turning the volume on my ears up, I was able to hear the sounds from down the tunnel to the next floor… And judging by the panting, screaming, and moaning noises coming from beyond.... The next floor wasn’t pride…

  Sharon looked at her hands, and seemed to be counting off the sins to figure out which the next one would be, if not pride. When she figured it out, her face reddened slightly, and she sent a glare at me. It’s not my fault, you know!?

  “What is it?” Yin asked us, completely unaware about the concept of the seven deadly sins. Naturally, she wouldn’t know that the only ones left were pride… and lust.

  Celeste, being the playful Deus Ex that she was, leaned in and whispered to Yin. The latter simply blinked in mild surprise, before nodding her head. “That could be dangerous… Is it safe to take Yo?” When she asked that, she turned to look at the slime girl, who had at last finished recovering to her normal state.

  “Hmm? What’s the matter, mom?” Yo tilted her head cutely as she asked. “Can’t I come too? I’ll be good and protect you!”

  “She’s got to learn sometime.” Celeste tilted her head back and laughed, walking towards the next floor. “I shouldn’t be affected by charms, I think. So, I’ll take the lead. Try not to get caught up in the effects when you head in.” And like that, Celeste summoned four of the mechanical cats and walked down the tunnel.

  The rest of us could simply look at each other and shrug helplessly. However, there was one thing I could do to increase our odds. Pulling on my knowledge of runes, I cast a spell by combining the ‘Reinforce’ and ‘Mind’ runes on the group. With this, we should be able to resist any mind altering effects for a while, though I wasn’t sure when I would have to recast it.

  “Well, let’s get going. Hopefully, she hasn’t gotten too far ahead yet.” I said to them, and we moved on to the dreaded lust floor. Thankfully, we still had plenty of the sensor spikes to place down, so that wasn’t an issue.

  ...What was an issue, was when we found Celeste. I don’t want to go into too much detail… but she wasn’t as immune as she expected. On the bright side, she really seemed to be enjoying herself with the impossibly endowed man and a swarm of black tentacles that were rising around her feet.

  Yo simply looked on in confusion, while I pulled out my plasma pistol and shot the incubus in the head while it was ‘distracted’. And then again… and again… until it stopped twitching. When the incubus died, the tentacles molesting the perverted Deus Ex vanished, dropping her to the floor in a squirming mess.

  “Immune, huh?” I asked helplessly, as I cast the same mental reinforcement on her that I did the rest of us.

  “Huh?” Celeste suddenly sat up, looking around in confusion. Then, she looked down to her own bare body, and seemed to remember what had happened. “This never happened…” She glared up at us, trying to look intimidating while covering her body with her arms.

  We continued through this floor in a relatively safe manner thanks to the early buff, though I ended up having to refresh it every five minutes. Even then, judging by the looks of Sharon and Yin, the spell was not entirely effective… I was starting to get concerned they might try to push me down in the middle of the dungeon.

  As for Yo… she was surprisingly calm about the whole thing, even when she had half a dozen tentacles swimming around in her body. It was like she couldn’t even feel them, and just fought as if they weren’t there. And she was the one we had been most worried about, originally..

  Now, the demons here all had varying body types. The males tended towards athletic builds of various heights, with red skin and forked tails. Meanwhile, the women had a much wider array of appearances, from tall and busty to a small, flat-chested girl with horns. However, none of them displayed the intelligence shown by the lesser devils, and were driven solely by instinct. If we found two or more of them together
in a room, they would already be going at each other just as hard as if they were going for us.

  While the sex demons did not display the intelligence of the lesser devils, the lesser devils themselves were there. Several of the female demons had black collars around their necks, with chains leading back towards a lesser devil that they were currently serving. Sometimes, there would be several succubi for a single lesser devil, and others there would be multiple lesser devils going at a single succubus.

  Regardless, we made our way through the dungeon floor carefully, making sure to keep our resistance spells up. This floor was fairly easy to break through, seeing as every encounter was more concerned with themselves than us. Though, as soon as we approached, they tried to ‘invite’ us to the party.

  We did not bother looking for loot on this floor… because there was too much of a mess to have noticed anything if it was there in the first place. When we got to the boss room… we were surprised to find it entirely empty.