A Soldier's Life - 439 - Moo-tilated Minotaur

Chapter 439: Moo-tilated Minotaur

Bharok cleared the area of the earthenware settings and made a makeshift bed on the table, while Baelira took the thick carpet by herself and was already asleep. I decided not to remind the dwarf that the table had also been a mimic.

“I am going to harvest some more scales,” I announced softly. Before Bharok could grumble and follow, I stopped him. “I will be fine. A room needs a whole day to reset. I don’t need much sleep and will be back in two hours. Wait for me here and watch over our elf.”

The dwarf looked at the sleeping elf and was torn between his duty and exhaustion. I stepped back into the corridor and retraced our path to the swamp room. We hadn’t killed all the mosquitoes, but the few remaining that showed themselves felt my wrath and fed the fishes.

The center island was not visible from the corridor, so I took out the collector and the first sand spider. Most spiders provided coordination essences, which I expected from this type. I ended up with six minor coordination essences and cracked them open to extract four intact spinnerets. According to the books, the thread wasn’t as strong as most spiders’, but it was still valuable.

The spiders floated in the swamp water before eventually sinking as I discarded them as I processed each one. I dumped a bunch of monster parts into the water that I had accumulated over time, causing a little feeding frenzy. I was curious about the mimic part I had cut off to save Bharok. When the slab of the creature hit the mossy ground, it twitched and writhed briefly before stilling. I stabbed it with magebane to confirm it was dead before getting close and using the collector.

I anxiously watched the blue wisps of essence pull into the collector. They were stronger than the portion of this creature that only yielded a minor shaping essence. A major shaping essence eventually formed, and I was slightly upset. I was sure the entire creature could have yielded an apex shaping essence. Instead, I had siphoned a minor and major essence from parts of the beast, which were much less valuable. I rolled the mimic hide into the water after getting two pints of blood by wringing the thick muscles into an alchemy container.

I didn’t bother washing the blood off as I headed to the naga corpse. I had taken the largest and best scales already, but if an armorer were going to make scale mail from these emerald scales, they would need a variety of sizes. I had smaller scales on the heads, but I coiled the tail and moved the last six feet of it to my dimensional space. Satisfied, I washed up and returned to the safe room. Bharok looked up briefly before going back to sleep. I settled in the corner the furthest from the two rooms’ exit, to get the few hours of rest I needed.

“Are we headed back?” Bharok said as he ate some fried fish I gave him after we woke.

“Is this from the demon dungeon?” Baelira asked, also enjoying the fare.

“It is. And yes, we are headed back,” I said to the relieved dwarf. “I do want to explore some of the intersections we passed. We probably have eight or so hours before we need to leave with the others.” Bharok grimaced that we were not headed directly back, but nodded without argument.

We checked each side passage, finally seeing some of the creeping vines that the dungeon was named after. They writhed and slowly reached out for you from the walls, ceiling, and sand. They moved slowly and only occupied short stretches of the passages. You only needed to walk briskly to pass them to avoid them, but there was inevitably a simple trap nearby.

Spiked pit traps seemed to be the dungeon’s favorite, and they were marked slightly differently each time. Sometimes a pattern of vines on the wall, sometimes a swirl pattern in the black sand, and sometimes the faint acid stench of the black ooze waiting in the bottom was the only indication. My earth speak made it easy to avoid them, and the black oozes tended to reside in about half of them.

The other type of trap the dungeon favored was the collapsing ceiling. This was easy to detect with my earth speak ability as well, since it looked like loosely packed stones from the feedback. We triggered one such trap by tossing a sand spider corpse underneath it. The resulting dust cloud made us decide to avoid these traps in the future. I was hesitant not to cross after the ceiling collapsed because I was hoping to find the center of the maze, and not exploring this corridor would limit the territory searched. But I was able to eliminate the dust from my lungs, while my companions could not.

Bharok inevitably got a rash from the poison ivy as we wandered the maze’s passages. “I never touched the bloody leaves!” He said, scratching under his arm guards. The poison ivy was diabolical because it gave a slight euphoric effect when you scratched it, but burned and itched when you stopped.

“You backed into the ivy wall when we collapsed the ceiling an hour ago,” I noted. “It must have gotten on your armor, and you touched it and spread it.”

“Dragon’s piss!” Bharok replied, his eyes going wide. “I took a piss two minutes ago!” He started scratching his groin and looked miserable.

Baelira came to his rescue. “I brought a salve that will dry it out, but I don’t know how it will feel on…” She offered the dwarf a vial of milky-looking liquid. He snatched it and began applying it everywhere he itched, and we both turned away, amused. I didn’t think the dwarf would ever enter a dungeon again.

We made our way through the maze, often backtracking more than advancing toward the center. The dungeon only had five rooms: two mimic rooms, two naga rooms, and the minotaur room in the middle. The final monster was the minotaur, but you didn’t need to clear all the rooms to reach it. Unlike other final dungeon rooms, it didn’t trap you inside with the monster; instead, the reward chest was in the center of the room. You were free to open it and take the prize. The minotaur was released somewhere else in the maze to hunt you as soon as the chest was opened. We hadn’t told Bharok this small detail yet.

I was nearly ready to admit defeat and head back to join Lepidus when we finally found the center of the maze. The black sand of the corridor ended at a room with a floor that looked like black obsidian glass. The room was triangular and expansive. The walls and ceiling matched the floor, with sconces holding flickering glowstones. The reflections of the lights dancing across the glossy black surfaces gave it an ominous atmosphere of being trapped inside a black gemstone. There was a large black onyx chest in the center of the room as well. Reading about and seeing the splendor of the room were completely different.

We all crowded at the entrance. “Where is the minotaur brute you were so eager to find?” Bharok asked expectantly.

“It only comes out after you open the chest in the center,” Baelira replied.

“If we don’t open the chest, we don’t have to deal with it?” the dwarf asked.

“Correct,” I replied.

“Then what are we waiting for?” Bharok stepped into the room, and his boots clicked on the mirror-black floor as he approached the chest. Baelira and I looked at each other, surprised, but followed him. It was a large chest, big enough to hold a person, so the reward was likely a large item.

The flickering glowstones were unique, and I couldn’t recall another dungeon that had them. I thought of collecting some after this battle was over. There were two other entrances to the room from different parts of the maze, one on each wall. If there had only been one way to access this central room, we might not have found it. The black chest had the relief of a minotaur on it. Two massive horns sprouted from the head and pointed forward. The creature was naked in the relief but appeared to have dense fur covering its body except for its bull head and large hooves.

Bharok looked up to confirm we wanted to open the chest. “I get what’s in the chest?” He half-asked, half-told, half-joked.

“Sure, if you get the killing blow on the minotaur,” I said, but I planned to make it headless as soon as it appeared.

Bharok lifted the lid, and I could tell it had some weight to it. There were no hinges, and the lid slid off and shattered onto the floor in thousands of pieces. The crash echoed in the room, followed by a wailing roar of challenge. I glanced down into the chest to see a magnificent double-bladed war axe. The haft was pure white, maybe bone, while the double-head looked like polished silver. It was clearly a runic weapon, but Bharok grunted, not happy with the weapon.

No one picked up the axe as we each turned to face a door and waited for the minotaur. It kept giving its sickly roar, and it was hard to tell where it was coming from. “If we wait long enough, it will find us here.”

“Sounds like a plan. But what about the safe room? Lepidus and XXX?” Bharok asked as he flexed his grip on his hammer.

Baelira and I looked at each other and cursed together. Neither of us knew if the minotaur could enter a safe room or not. It was not in any of the books. The few instances we read about fighting it, had the delvers wait in the central room for it to come to them.

I reached down and grabbed the axe, and it disappeared into my space. We started racing back the way we came to backtrack to the entry room. Echoes of the minotaur as it stalked the maze reached us as we ran. The challenges were sometimes distant, sometimes loud. It was probably some magical effect and not the minotaur moving.

Fortunately, we left markers at the intersections and didn’t make any wrong turns or run into the minotaur. When we reached the entry safe room, we found a nervous Zynrae weaving a spell form and Lepidus standing at his side, a bone wand drawn. Lepidus stated in his flat voice. “You released the minotaur.”

Baelira didn’t hesitate to implicate Bharok. “Bharok did it!”

“Dragon shit,” I cursed. The exit of the dungeon was a solid wall. The oily black surface that would let us leave was gone. We either killed the minotaur or died in the dungeon.

Lepidus glanced back at the wall. “Yes, you trapped us in here with the beast. Set up your containment spells in the corridor to this room,” Lepidus ordered. The corridor leading out of the entry room was narrow and would be a perfect trap. Baelira thickened the air, and Bharok wove his aetheric threads into a layered net. The roars of challenge continued for minutes without the minotaur appearing.

It was Lepidus who sensed it first, but I didn’t know how. “It approaches. Kill it quickly with your void magic. Do not underestimate its speed,” he said.

At the end of the corridor, the sound of heavy hooves echoed until the shadow of the beast appeared, followed by its immense bulk filling the end of the corridor. It was monstrous, over ten feet tall, its gray skin covered in corded muscles and veins. “Where is the fur?” I asked, confused.

“It no longer lives. That is a revenant,” Lepidus said without emotion.

“Definitely a powerful undead,” Bharok confirmed, scratching the back of his skull quickly. Then it charged.

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