Chapter 71 - Damn bugs

It was very, very dark down in the third level of the dungeon. While Max’s eyes had acclimated to darkness right now, he felt uneasy. This was the first time he was without his buddy. It only now became clear to him how much he had relied on Maverick. Not that it had been a bad thing to do so, but now he needed to engage with reality in different terms.

With much more care and precision. I can’t just be happy-go-lucky and shoot everything.

Max gripped a sharp rock in his hand. The rest of the rocks were slinging from his makeshift pouch. One of the items he had looted from the lizards had been a [Woolen Shirt of Brawn]. It had had a nominal amount of Strength and Constitution. While certainly useful for the guys at the camp, Max had needed to repurpose it to ever make it back to the surface.

So he had made a small pouch that hung from his other shoulder, draping over his chest. The pouch bulging with rocks bounced softly against his hip as he stalked along the corridors.

Throwing rocks with magic was all well and good, but if this floor contained a boss, Max sure had to hope it was something he could escape from. What he needed was a proper weapon.

As Max stopped to listen for voices in the dark corridors of gray stone, he thought about going back upstairs. He could hunt down one of the lizards and grab a simple weapon he could manipulate with [Tether].

That would be risky for a number of reasons. First of all was that [Trapper]. There would probably be two dozen traps around the camp. The whole enemy group would also just be overall more alert for him. So picking a single straggler out would be hard.

Another issue would be that it would take time. It was impossible for Max to guess whether the lizards wanted to stay and hunt him down and possibly delve deeper into the ruins themselves, or whether they were preparing to leave the place.

I need to be decisive. If I waffle back and forth, I just lose. I’m down here now, and I’m going to find something useful to get Maverick back.

Max delved forward, the sharp rock in his hand becoming clammy from sweat. He was beginning to feel some degree of tiredness, but if he acted fast and could attack the enemy within two or three hours, they should be beyond fatigued.

One thing that worried Max was that he heard constant scuttling from each and every direction. Whenever he tried to look around for the source of the skitters, he saw nothing.

Those sound like bugs. Please don’t let it be bugs. I really, really hate bugs.

There were also these gusts of wind or some such that blew through the corridors intermittently. Like heavy sighs of some giant creature. Max didn’t like that thought.

To his great misfortune he found more troubling news after some further exploration. It was a corpse of those twisted husks of the obsidian dwarves. The monstrous things with lamp-like eyes. It was being eaten.

By some scuttling, skittering, chattering creatures, the size of a cola-can. They had a bulbous body covered by a shell and a maw of four large wedges that clamped on the flesh of a [Twisted Wretch] the bugs were feasting on. Max could only see the outlines of these horrible creatures, but he could hear the rip and squish of flesh as the swarm of bugs burrowed into the corpse and had their way with it.

“Disgusting,” Max whispered to himself. That was a mistake. Immediately all the bugs in the vicinity of the corpse froze. Then they turned to Max as if in unison. And charged at him, their wedged maws snapping.

Max yelped, but acted on instinct.

“[Gravity Well].”

All of the bugs got sucked up into the air to swirl around helplessly. All but one. It skittered at Max and attacked his leg. A vicious pain ran through him, and he kicked the creature away. It flew against a wall, ripping a piece of flesh from Max’s leg as it did. Max limped over to it bristling with anger and pain. As the bug tried to get off its armored back Max came up to it and squashed it under boot.

Defeated level 8 [Toxicarion]

You gained 95 experience points.

Toxi-what?

Before Max could finish the thought, an angry red pain started radiating from his shin upwards. He checked his bars in the upper right corner of his vision. He had a new status effect, like a green water droplet.

Don’t need to be a genius to know what that means…

Max was feeling a bit dizzy and he noticed his Health wasn’t regenerating and his Stamina ticked down by a point. The green droplet icon seemed to be ticking down slowly. It would take twenty or thirty minutes in Max’s estimation to get it flushed out of his system.

Max got up and looked at the swirling bugs in his spell.

“Okay, doesn’t look like one bite is lethal. But if you buggers can make this poison stack, you’re a real bunch of assholes.”

The swirling mass of bugs screeched and hissed incoherently at Max.

“I really wish I had Maverick with me,” Max said. “How the hell am I going to kill you buggers.”

Max was acutely aware that he needed to have the bugs dead or he needed to be the hell away, before he released the [Gravity Well]. Using the stones in his pouch to shoot at the well seemed like the most obvious idea, but that could have unintended and risky consequences. What if the tethered rocks would blast a bunch of these things free.

Well since Max had realized he could be the resident Spider-man with his [Tether] combining with his high Intelligence stat and both the power and the Mana pool that provided, he’d have a relatively easy escape.

These things don’t look like they can climb walls, but I’m just a dumb cowboy with a gun, not an insectologist or whatever.

But if they couldn’t walk on walls…

Max grinned to himself. Suddenly the bugs didn’t look so ugly and horrendous. Suddenly they looked like an opportunity. They looked like that makeshift weapon he had been looking for.

“Let me just see if there’s more of you buggers around here,” Max said to the bugs. The bugs collectively decided that the proper answer to such a remark was more screeching and hissing. Max smiled at them. “I think you guys and I could be allies.”