057 Meat Grinder

“Seal the door, Paz!” Nicola said, tossing empty potion bottles aside.

“It won’t budge,” he answered. “I think it’s busted!”

“You mean, you busted it?!”

“Those blame games of yours won't help beat chimeras!”

I opened my inventory and scoured with frantic eyes through the item slots.

The weapon I required was nowhere to be found. I was sure I had stored it close to the top. And, hadn’t I retrieved stuff from my inventory in the past without needing to look?

Combat chains, I screamed and thrust my hand into the pocket dimension.

The Chains of the Combat Ape fell into my grasp.

“Paz!” I said, attaching a knife to one end of the chain. “Catch!”

He snatched the weapon out of the air and blinked in confusion.

I slipped a second knife into the opposite end and revealed my intention by running to one side of the door. He did the same over on his side, and we pressed the Chain Nail into the walls, forming a tripwire that hovered near the ground.

The Sea Locust Chicken Chimeras tumbled over it.

“Nicola!”

A [Bloom of Crimson Desire] erupted just inside the doorway.

A few of the chimeras met instant demise at the hands of the spell. Others yet ran headlong into it, tripping over tentacles and the trap we had set.

I flared [Fear Aura] and set about beheading chimeras from out of [Stealth]. Paz did the same on his side of the room, dancing with his half-pike.

It seemed that for each one I killed, two more to replace it. What was this ambush? I had never seen so many chimeras at once.

They surged forward in an unending tide, spilling over the floor. The chimeras became their biggest enemies, as their hazardous rush through the partly obstructed doorway meant subsequent attackers couldn’t proceed safely into the room.

They toppled over each other, end over end, and offered easy pickings to our trio. The giant tentacles put in the work, battering all the monsters that stepped into its zone.

Were it not for the pain in my arms and the sweat in my eyes, I would have swollen with pride at what we had accomplished. We had created a perfect death corridor within seconds, using our wits and thinking on our feet.

Sadly, it was far from seamless. The chimeras were tenacious enough to score hits of their own. By the time my weapon arm finished its final stroke, I stood in bloodied clothes with multiple gashes littered across my form.

The floor of the item room looked even worse off. Corpses filled every nook and cranny, leaving blood, chitin, entrails, and the occasional discarded head strewn across the floor.

“Level 18 now,” Paz said with pride. “That was a lot of experience.”

It was. All of the chimeras had been between levels 14 and 17. Not enough to bring me to the next level, but after two days of fighting, I felt pretty close.

Nicola sniffed at the blood that painted her cuirass. “Ugh. This isn't acidic, but I think I’m going to gag. Someone help! I’m losing so much Eros!”

Paz mumbled under his breath. “At least, we know now that body fluids are definitely not your kink.” 

I stifled a smirk and tossed Nicola a towel, saving a spare for myself.

I cleaned The Blackreach Dagger when I was done and gathered my breath. “Say, you don't think we killed their Alpha during that slugfest, do you?”

As if in answer, the giant tentacles dissipated at that moment, revealing a large shape just outside the doorway. Bloodshot eyes peered into the room at us, set in a scarred rooster face.

Alpha Sea Lotus Chicken Chimera LVL 20.

I just had to jinx it.

Nicola yelled a few choice words in alarm, but I couldn’t hear it over the screaming in my head. The alpha chimera raised its large feet over the tripwire and stepped into the mess of corpses we had made. The carapace on its body grated noisily—a promise of death and worse to come.

A [Summon Tentacle] rose to engage it. The Chimera unfurled its limbs and bifurcated it with a single swing.

Paz charged at the monster.

I followed suit, flaring my aura to match his own. Without any communication, we hacked at its legs, approaching from different angles.

The alpha chimera shrieked and tried to clobber me with its arms. Another tentacle intercepted the blow. I retaliated even more viciously, sinking my dagger into the soft region between plates of carapace. It bounced off health armor.

A tremendous punch from the chimera distorted the air near my head. Spillover damage from the sonic boom battered me even though I succeeded in avoiding the blow.

My vision spun.

Oh no . . .

I raised my dagger in a blind parry and felt a heavy weight glance off my blade. The beak of the chimera. Paz struck it across the face before it could attack again, and ugh . . . had I suffered a concussion?

I slipped into the cover of the shadows, hoping the corresponding boost in [Fear Aura]’s potency would help it take root.

You have afflicted Alpha Sea Locust Chicken Chimera with [Dismay]!

Nice.

With [Dismay] active, the murder shrimp became a little less formidable. We attacked relentlessly until, with the loss of its health meter, Paz sawed four legs off its side with a single blow.

The large beast swayed drunkenly and fell onto the tip of my waiting dagger.

I angled my blade with a flourish and dug through its beak and into its head.

You have participated in the killing of Alpha Sea Locust Chicken Chimera.

You have leveled up! You are now level 19.

Visit your status screen to assign your free stat points.

“I did it,” Nicola huffed. “Level 20. Heralds, it feels so good.”

“Level 19,” I announced. “We’re getting closer to Silver.”

Long minutes passed as we recovered our breath.

“Loot these bastards,” I said. “Before they start to stink.”

Paz unfastened the chains and handed them to me. “Nice weapons. Why don’t you use them more often?”

“Yeah . . . I’m better with a knife. I can’t fight as well with these, and I haven’t figured out how to integrate them into my build.”

“What’s there to figure? Your knives go at the ends of the chain. And, they work well at short or medium range, depending on your foe. You just need to practice.”

The image of the Primal Dread Monkey using its chains as bludgeons flashed in my mind’s eye. I wasn’t getting to that level of expertise anytime soon, but I could also admit that I’d wrecked shit the few times the chains had come out to play.

Nicola looted the last of the enemies she had killed. The chimera's corpse vanished in a wave of dust, leaving a Common monster core and rooster teeth behind. “What a bummer. We didn't even get a single Greater item for all our effort.”

“We’d find another item room,” I said. “Plus, we got a ton of free XP out of this. That has to take the cake.”

“Free?” Nicola said, pointing at her stained cuirass. “You call this free?”

“Free enough.”

Paz crouched beside the alpha chimera.

“What’s wrong, big man?” I asked.

“A few things.” He nodded at the corpse. “See that? Those are fresh wounds on its back. Wounds we did not inflict.”

I peered at the corpse. A trio of long gashes decorated the carapace, about a full inch deep. Neither Paz nor I could hit hard enough to damage the armor, low-leveled as we were. “Maybe there was infighting among the horde?”

“Maybe,” Paz grunted. “But these didn’t come from a chimera’s claws. None that we have met, anyway. This seems almost humanlike.”

“You don’t mean—”

“I could have sworn that the monsters crossed paths with us by way of pure chance. But, what if they didn’t? What if they’d entered this corridor in the first place because they were being chased . . .”

“Or chasing after someone else.” The sounds of my heartbeat reached my ears. “They did seem very agitated, and it would explain why the alpha kept egging them on.” I looted the monster and received the regular items. “We should leave. This place’s starting to give me the creeps.”

“What?” Nicola said. “I just reached level 20! I need to meditate to unlock a new technique.”

“Come on,” Paz said, ushering her from behind. “You can do that elsewhere.”

“It won’t take long, damn you!”

“However long it takes is more than enough.”

We reentered the corridor. The Labyrinth had adopted an eerie silence now that it wasn’t saturated with the mad clucking of chimeras.

I consulted [Map] and selected a direction—the same one that the horde had come running in. If they had been chasing after an opponent, we would end up behind them. And, if they had not . . . well, we couldn’t leave the area soon enough.

Paz gripped my shoulder after we’d walked a few paces. “Trouble. Someone’s standing behind us.”

I turned around and felt my legs threaten to collapse.

A short figure stood off in the distance, shadowed by ambient lighting. Large horns protruded from the top of their head. The horns lent a malevolent aura to their physique—a perfect picture of a demon loosed straight from hell.

The figure took a few heavy steps toward our group. A special kind of dungeon boss, maybe?

Mist issued out of my nostrils.

That was no dungeon boss.

“Byron!” I hissed, right as the demonic figure broke out into a run.