[Shrubley, the Monster Adventurer] Chapter 106 – Dungeonley, the Dungeon III

“More than muchly fisting needed!” Slyrox cried, running from the giant beetle charging towards the group.

Gathering Shadow essence around herself, Miranda stepped into the layered cloak of mana, disappearing from the giant beetle’s senses entirely.

She didn’t feel good about it, but the young adventurers had to learn and grow through the rite of combat. They had to stand on their own if they were ever going to succeed. It would ultimately be selfish to deprive them of their chance.

Still, it hurt to see the looks of surprise as Miranda vanished from their senses as well as the giant beetle’s.

“Think that had an unintended effect,” Sose whispered to his mistress, covered in the Shadow essence too.

Slyrox turned about frantically at the Countess’ disappearance. Seeing the various bits and bobs she had out to repair her mask, Slyrox began to move her hands in a blur.

She quickly assembled a patchwork bomb. Raising it in one hand as the house-sized beetle barreled toward her, Slyrox used [Bomb Toss] to chuck the cobbled-together bomb straight down the horror’s gullet.

[Bomb Toss]: Cobble together a bomb, enhancing it with ingredients in your possession. There is a chance the bomb will self-destruct if you possess no enhancing ingredients.

Shrubley knocked Slyrox aside just in time to prevent his friend from getting eaten by the giant bug, but the little shrub wasn’t fast enough to save himself.

Cal, Slyrox, and Smudge cried out as they watched the giant beetle swallow first the bomb and then Shrubley.

Slyrox counted down, putting her mittens over her long floppy ears, but there was no explosion. She looked up. “Where is earth-shattering kaboom?”

The monstrous beetle hissed and chittered, whipping its massive head around to find new targets to eat.

Slyrox’s materials were too far away to use them for another bomb, and she was not sure if the first one had even gone off. Maybe the monster was too strong to be destroyed like that?

Instead, Slyrox summoned her Sky essence and used [Tornado Kick]. She flew through the air like a screaming, oversized maple seed twirling in an autumn gust.

Cal pointed out something of interest to Smudge, and the slime hurried to eat the poisonous remains of those sacks. The orange glow of Hunger essence enveloped Smudge as he worked through the toxin, using a combination of his essence and his new alchemy proficiency.

A mirror of icy silver appeared below the monster, and a bolt of lightning lashed out from it to strike at the beetle’s underside. Cal was hoping it would be less armored there, but this insect was better built than the others. It was nearly impervious to his magic.

The spells simply bounced off like its chitinous armor like it was one of his mirrors.

The beetle was so large that any of their hits were guaranteed to land, but that hardly mattered when the creature only needed to accidentally trample them once.

The oversized beetle lashed out with its legs, kicking and bucking as it tried to crush any of them near it. Thankfully, it wasn’t smart enough to drop its belly onto the ground, crushing them flat whenever they ran beneath it.

“I’m getting low!” Cal cried out. His bones felt hollow and brittle without much mana left. “I can use a mana potion if I need, but I don’t think we’re doing anything to it. We have to get Shrubley out of there!”

Smudge, now tinged deeply violet like the poison itself, bounced and rolled over to the oversized beetle. He spat a gobbet of concentrated poison at the creature’s leg, but it merely dribbled down the black carapace.

Once it touched the stone, however, the toxin bubbled and ate through it like acid.

“Smudge, get out of there!” Cal cried, casting an ice spell to try to slow down the beetle. The ice shattered harmlessly across its lifted leg as it crushed Smudge into a violet stain.

“Pyuu…” Smudge moaned, flattened like a pancake.

Inside the monster, another battle was taking place.

Shrubley feverishly struggled toward the bomb as both he and the explosive passed through the creature’s dark, lightless gullet. Shrubley could feel the caustic acid dripping all over him.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the same as the poison outside. He had no natural immunity. Conjuring a floating sphere of Light essence, Shrubley struggled forward past the strong muscles that pushed and slid him along into the creature’s middle.

Once he splashed into a foul pit of muck, Shrubley caught hold of the bomb and swam toward a pile of debris and rocks that the monster had stored up in a corner of its innards.

“You should eat more fiber,” he told the beetle, trying to ignore the burning sensation in his limbs and leaves. He still had Elemental essence from watching Cal earlier, so he tried multiple times to summon a tiny curl of flame.

The bomb had extinguished as soon as it hit the monster’s saliva, but now that both it and Shrubley were on a pile of rubble, Shrubley had an opening.

However, the wick was saturated and wouldn’t light, no matter how many times Shrubley summoned fire.

So Shrubley did what any well-meaning soul shrub would do. He yanked on the soggy wick until it came free, then reached deep inside of his leafy body to find a twig that was drier than the rest.

He snapped off the desiccated piece of wood with a wince of pain. Protecting the newly improvised wick with his bushy body from any dripping juices, Shrubley stabbed the piece of wood into the bomb.

Only once he lit the bomb did Shrubley realize that he would need to continue protecting it from the digestive juices inside the creature’s gullet. They dripped down in foul strings that soaked the ground and sizzled on his body painfully.

Finally, Shrubley got an idea as the piece of wood burned down. He grabbed his [Morph Shield] and reversed his grip on it so the concave side was facing the bomb.

Digging his rooty feet into the pile of rubble, Shrubley pushed the bomb as far as he dared against the inner lining of the creature’s stomach while making sure to keep the shield angled to protect it from above.

Shutting his eyes tight, Shrubley braced himself for the explosion, hoping that his shield would hold. And that it was strong enough to help free him from his prison.

“Smudge!” Cal cried from outside, rushing over to the flattened slime. “Are you okay? Speak to me, Smudge.”

From the puddle of goo that was now Smudge, a humanoid hand formed a thumbs up and then immediately fell back into the puddle.

“Your turn,” Miranda said, sitting at a small fold-out table with Sose seated opposite her. She glanced down into the room from the corridor. The battle had taken a bad turn, it seemed.

Sose put a paw to his muzzle, deep in thought.

Miranda slapped her hand down on top of his other paw as he moved to draw a card. “You did not think you could cheat me, did you, Sose?”

The little oppa looked shiftily at her. “I thought you had looked away long enough,” he admitted without shame.

“Disreputable,” Miranda chided. “More like poor cheater. Didn’t I teach you better than that? You don’t wait until the first glance to slip a card back into the deck, Sose!”

Sose grumbled to himself as Miranda took the card the oppa had put back into the deck out and set it aside. “Now you may draw,” she told him.

“Aren’t you going to help them?” he asked, one paw on the stack of cards as he looked at the battle below. The paw was there to make sure his mistress didn’t cheat him.

He wouldn’t have put it past her to do it anyway, right under his paw.

“I told them I would not be intervening, didn’t I? I did. They have to succeed or fail on their own merits. I will not hold their hands.” She shook her head. “That would be wrong, and it would set a bad precedent. I need to know that they’ll be okay to look after themselves.”

“There won’t be anybody to look after them if they are dead,” Sose pointed out.

“Dark as always,” Miranda chided. “Have a little faith.”

“It is hard to have faith when they face a High Copper foe that just took the only Copper Ranker off the board, Mistress.”

An explosion rocked the Dungeon, cascading drifts of stone dust onto the table and covering the battle below in a haze of smoke.

The Countess grinned. “You underestimate him. I think I am beginning to see what Mistress Ceasewane saw in him.” She set her cards down on the table and sighed. “I only wish it hadn’t taken me so long.”

“Still, they need more essences to rank up in power,” Sose said, the weight of his paw lessening upon the cards long enough to grant Miranda an opening to cheat. “But will this Dungeon have any?”

“If I stay my hand,” Miranda told him, “then the odds are very high that at least one more will join Shrubley as a Copper. Though, with the way the battle is going…” She winced as Shrubley’s Copper aura guttered weakly as he leapt out of the hole in the beetle’s side. “If he survives, Shrubley is likely to hit Bronze before long.”

“Question is, will the rest be able to keep up?” Sose asked. Without so much as a blink, his paw set on top of the card Miranda just tried to sneak in. “Or will he eclipse them, like you eclipsed that poor stand-in for a husband?”

Sose never did think too highly of Miranda’s spouse. He was raised on the tales of legends who could achieve soul bonded connections with their partners. However, not everyone could have perfect compatibility.

They watched as Shrubley tucked and rolled, reversing his grip on his shield. He flared his Copper aura to strengthen himself as he recovered from the explosion that singed his leaves and branches.

The beetle, however, got off far worse. Its innards weren’t nearly as tough as its outer shell and now that Shrubley had blown a hole in its defenses, Cal and Slyrox were filling it with all manner of attacks.

Miranda looked over, knowing that the battle was already over the moment Shrubley blew a hole in the creature’s side. He probably couldn’t tell how badly he had wounded the thing. It would have died on its own if they just left it to its own devices.

They were mad. Mad at the creature for stealing Shrubley, and so they did not relent, did not let it burrow to freedom to die alone somewhere. The monster group pelted the beast with everything they had, even poor Shrubley who was clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel.

With a final ragged cheer, the beetle fell to the ground and shattered into a million motes of dark, pulsing light. What should have taken them the bulk of the day and then some was over in less than an hour.

The Dungeon was cleared.

At the center of the room, a swirl of blue-white light appeared, followed by the heavy, resounding thunks from a series of banded chests.

Miranda smiled, looked at Sose’s cards on display, then laid hers down. “I believe I win.”

Sose stared at the cards, then at Miranda, then back at her cards. “Hey! That’s my card!”

Miranda scooped up the cards and put them into her satchel, followed by the auto-folding table. Her ruby eyes twinkled at him. “Ah, so they are. But you didn’t say anything when I took them, so you still lose, my dear.”

Sose grumped and scrabbled up her armor to her shoulder, still mumbling like a sore loser under his breath. “Always lose. Who ever heard of an oppa being out-sneaked? Shameful.”

“Oh, do hush,” Miranda told Sose with an affectionate pat. “Let’s go collect our treasure. That’ll cheer you up some.”

The greedy little oppa perked up at that, his beady black eyes glistening at the very word.