Mordecai made his way back towards the start of the third level as he sent his awareness out to che something else. This talk of defending the dungeon made him think of the hidden path, and he wao see how everything there was going. He started sing through the dank path and decided that overall he was rather satisfied.
The mana he’d ied into the sludge had born fruit, so to speak. Ooze-type creatures and molds had grown and mutated rapidly as such species are very wont to do. The molds hadn’t done anything particurly unique in his experience, various patches had taken on some different elemental aspect to alter the enviro hem, and all of them were some sort of iious, but that was fairly on.
Some of the slimes oher hand had ied iingly with the crystal flowers and the buhat had started visiting them. In turn, those bunbees had evolved as well and started a separate hive from the rest. Mordecai mentally marked that hive’s honey as unusable. It might still be teically edible, but he found it probable that the honey had acquired a special fvor that no one wao taste.
As for the slimes, unlike molds, these more mobile creatures teo be someredatory in addition to their anic-sging diet, and the only creatures around to huhe bunbees. Several species of slimes had learo stretch their pseudopods into far-reag but thiendrils, which ushing the bunbees in this area to bee faster and mgressive. Both had also been influenced by the crystal flowers, with the bunbee's exoskeleton hardening along the biggest ptes to create better armor, and the slimes developing a teique of incorporating bits of crystal to embed iips of their pseudo pods, letting them potentially spear a bunbee.
While that aerial war raged, some smaller slimes had taken to being tricksters, f shapes mimig the flowers, and creating a shimmer on their surfaic their crystalliure, but in truth making their surface stickier than most slimes of their size.
Ooze-type creatures were generally not picky eaters, nor above eating oozes of other types, so some had begun specializing in hunting other slime species. In pursuit of this goal, they had incorporated shards of crystal into their form, sshing with the sharpest edge out to slice open other slimes aheir liquid forms spsh out for the predator to e. With this tactic, they didn’t eveo kill their prey, as slimes were able to lose a certain amount of mass and still live if they escaped the enter.
The tinuing arms race of ooze and crystal had theed armored slimes, a terrifying cept truly. When sitting still, all the exposed surfaces of such a slime seemed to be covered by a siranslut carapace, though closer examination would reveal tight-fitting seams. Of course, getting that close would get a person attacked, which would open up a question: Is it better to be hit with a harder surface, g any of the give that a slime’s pseudopod has, or better to cope with the acid ging to you while hopefully having fewer broken bohe hydraulic power behind the sm of an ooze was enormous, topping that with a crystal tact surface just made it worse.
Another iing variant had internalized the crystal material in a different way. A signifit portion of its life ford a trated version of its substance were encapsuted in a crystal sphere. It was an iing survival teique, so long as this crystal was not breached, the slime could actually sacrifice most of its body so long as the cot away to begin f a new o would be weaker at first of course, and it also was a ot in that crag open the crystal would probably kill the slime even if the rest of the body was fine.
Hmm, what happened here? Mordecai’s attention focused on an unusual body, and after examining the bunbee corpse and the surrounding area took back what he had thought about the molds not doing anything special. There seemed to be only a sich right now, but this one had been able to incorporate crystal too, and looked like a lumpy bit of broken flower. Breathing in its spores would be a bit like breathing in living gss that would then begin to grow inter crystal shards inside your lungs and body, transf most of the biomass it ed into more crystal. He was gd Kazue was already disined to send her focus this way, the results were rather gruesome.
None of this strange evolution could have happened so fast without the high density of magior could the ges that copied traits from other creatures have happe all. Until he had been able to ve into the world beyond his dungeon he had been fused why so many of the creatures and people that came in were so simir to each other, not knowing that he was the exceptional case here.
The other key thing that allowed this arms race was that the oozes and molds were not eves, let alone inhabitants, so he was keeping monsters in their duhat were capable of attag guests and inhabitants, but by their very nature they did not strive to explore, they simply moved where they could. So Mordecai felt there was not any true dao the dungeon, nor was this strange bunbee hive in danger as a whole, whatever happeo individual worker drones. He hadn’t been thinking of all the bunbees being such tight-knit hive minds given that they’d started with bumble bees for the form, but subscious associations probably influeheir development and each hive was closer to one anism than a colle of individuals.
The ges he’d seen here were giving him some iing thoughts about a possible boss, but he had no idea where it would fit. Possibly a roaming raid boss ter, but he had some other priorities first, so it was going to be a while.
He was able to plete his evaluation of his hell path iime it took his avatar to reach the pywrights and quickly switched his full attention there. Uhe troops, the actors had no reason to gather in petition, so whe to the first room he asked them to gather the rest who had been practig together, as they were spread across all the stages.
The ganthros took to the audience seating and Mordecai took to the stage, only to then sit down on the edge. The more military guys might need a speech to get them fired up, but with these guys, a more versational style fit the mood. In the end, his message was still much the same, he didn’t want them to devote their entire lives to just the oy that they had accepted when Kazue had called oo be plete people they o do more.
While not as anized as the troops, they had a defacto leader named Briant who mao corral them when they got too disanized, and he promised to spread the word amongst those who had missed this meeting.
When he was dohere, Mordecai headed off to the of the rge warren caves to begin socializing, and it was there that Moriko eventually joined him after she got back from her little ‘hunting trip’. He couldn’t help but be a bit distracted, however, as he was also keeping some of his attention on Kazue. She was close to do he could tell that her exhaustion was building, and the two of them didn’t stay too long, wanting to be ready to take care of her.
Mordecai’s proved well-founded, and wheime came he pulled the kitsune’s avatar to their suite so that he and Moriko could pamper her a little a her mental state recover. A dungeon core could not bee physically tired, but they could still tax their minds aal focus ao rest for a while.
Zagaroth