Chương 14: Elder Spawn of Decay

The old rat's muscles, which were previously a withered and wrinkly husk, began to throb, bulging in places as Nero felt his spear tip getting squeezed harder as it continued its howl of pain. Nero pushed on his spear, trying to unstick it and move a distance away from the thing. But to no avail, the spear was stuck too tightly. No choice, I guess. He decided internally and summoned every last bit of his strength, and instead of pulling the spear out, he plunged it deeper until he felt the blade strike bone.

The rat's screech intensified in turn, its muscles seizing. Nero then leaned back with his weight and lifted the creature up, skewered by the spear.

"Haah!" He roared with effort, flinging the creature down to the ground. The rat slid away from the spear, landing several feet from him. Nero immediately scrambled toward the far side of the chamber, near the wall that used to feature a crack.

"Phew, that was close." He said to himself, breathing hard. His labored breathing came to a halt when he inspected his spear. Cracks, large ones, had formed along its handle. Fuck, what cursed luck. He promptly detached the dagger from the staff. Held the dagger in his left hand and the staff in his right. Up ahead, the creature stood back up on its feet. Its roar had stopped for a while, but now Nero noticed the green flames surrounding its scythed limbs growing thinner.

And by that, he didn't mean it was lessening, though he wished that were the case.

"It's concentrating more closely along the lethal edge of the scythe." He noted, vowing internally not to get even nicked by that.

"I don't believe even my healing potions would do shit if that thing touched me." The ancient-looking bearded rat finally looked back at him, and with its now black-blood-covered fur and exposed jaw, it looked every bit the rat boss he'd previously seen. Well, minus that flaming scythe. The rat boss corpses he'd harvested before didn't have those. At best they'd featured slightly larger claws or a leaner build. Nero refocused on it, and the creature broke into a wild run straight at him.

He repeated the sequence, stepping aside, fully intending to plunge the dagger into its eye socket this time. Except the moment the old rat missed its mark, it didn't stay frozen—instead it crouched down, pivoted, and scrambled right for him. He felt his heart sink, and hair standing on end at the aggressive, unpredictable maneuver. He was still crouched by the time the rat's scythe swept over its face, cutting downward in one stroke as a clanging sound rang across the chamber. Shit… Nero cursed internally.

He'd blocked the strike with his dagger, but the mounting strength the creature pressed into him made it impossible to hold the position for long. Finding no other way, he swept his legs across the floor, kicking at the rat's legs with the momentum.

"???" His legs hit its legs with force, and yet it hurt him more than it hurt the rat. The creature didn't even flinch, much less lose its balance. Worse, the act of sweeping his legs threw off his own balance, and with the mounting pressure from above, Nero fell to the floor. The scythe's raging decay buzzed and hissed a few inches from his face. Nero avoided looking directly into its flames and focused his strength instead on keeping the weapon at arm's length.

It was getting worse by the minute; he felt like his arm would give out any moment. Nero searched for a way out, and after a second that felt like an eternity, his eyes landed on the monster's bloody, wounded side where he'd previously skewered it. Nero wriggled his feet out from between the rat's legs and slammed his foot into the wounded side, grinding the sole around its rawest edges. Almost instantly, he felt the pressure freeze in place as the old rat tried to withstand the pain.

Seizing the chance, Nero wrapped his legs around the thing's neck while plunging his arms into the wound, digging deep. A throaty, vile roar burst from the old rat as it tried to get away, flinging its scythe around chaotically. The end of its left scythe seared into Nero's shoulder just then, and he felt an unbearable stinging sensation overtake his entire being. His grip on the rat's wound loosened, and in turn the rat drove its scythe deeper into his muscle.

"You bastard!" Nero cursed. The rat struck his forehead in response. Blood began pouring downward, coloring his vision red. Nero felt waves of pain wash over him. Losing all tactics, he renewed his grip on its side.

"You!" he gritted out. His own dagger was now near his throat, the flames of decay hissing just inches from his jugular. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. He gritted his teeth harder and shoved the rat off him with his legs. The pressure lifted for a second as the rat gasped for air, its face turning blue.

Nero drove his dagger forward, knocking the scythe off balance, and simultaneously let go entirely, freeing himself as the giant rat slumped backward. He didn't put any distance between them this time and instead lunged at the still-gasping rat, and plunged the dagger straight through its eye. With a mix of a squelch and a crack, the blade pierced past the socket and into its brain. The rat swung its scythe toward his side, which he stomped down with his left foot.

He twisted the dagger, pulled it out, before inserting it back into the other eye socket—this time driving it up to the handle before yanking the whole thing out, brain matter and blood included.

"Take that, you freak." He said in a hoarse, raspy voice, and with a grunt, stabbed the blade straight through its heart. Then he slumped backward from the aftershock of the strike. After several minutes of gasping for air, he shakily sat back up, took off the bag, and set it aside alongside the lantern, which had developed several cracks. Then he shook his head and lay back down again. His chest heaved up and down from exhaustion. He knew it was a bad idea, but still, he closed his eyes.

The pain in his shoulder was only intensifying, so he raised his hands and pulled out all the remaining healing potions and antidotes he had left, poured some over the gash, and drank the rest at once. The potions hitting his wound directly spiked the pain sharply—he gritted his teeth so hard it felt like they'd crack. But after an agonizingly long while, the pain began to recede, though with it came a violent urge to sleep. And before he could resist, he'd already passed out. ….

Within the depths of the dungeon, a small core shone with a violent, blinding neon glow. It was the dungeon core of the cave dungeon Nero had invaded. From the spherical ball of the core spread thin, crystallized pathways that reached every inch of the cave. From the stalagmites and stalactites to the walls and water, even to the vegetation and spawns that walked the area—there wasn't a single thing within its expanded shell that it didn't reach.

The foreign creature who'd dared to walk into its shell seeking treasure—its kind wasn't something the core failed to understand. It had lured many into the bowels of its shell, fed them into the easy offerings of its lower spawns, the rats. They were small, their bones and tendons easily broken. They were little more than nuisances to the unskilled pests called "Adventurers."

The brains of these adventurers were little more than suboptimal, connecting one idea to another without much evidence, judging by appearances alone. They often entered the final chamber with minimal preparation, their instincts dulled and their reflexes too slow. They often burned through a good chunk of their supplies just fighting through the waves of rats outside, and by the time they entered the main chamber, they had next to no supplies left.

And its final spawn of the chamber—the one it had invested its superior genes into—tended to cleave and butcher these pests within minutes, sometimes seconds.

The scheme worked well: lure them through easy-to-kill prey that just happened to carry the right amount of toxin to inflict long-lasting, recurring injuries and drain their supplies, giving them false confidence in their mediocre skills, then let its final spawn finish them off in one strike, laced with enough poison and decay that they wouldn't get a single chance at a counterattack.

Though, it had to admit, the Elder Spawn of Decay—while able to seize a victim in one strike—didn't possess enough physical strength to butcher them in a few blows. Which meant victims writhed and struggled, and at times damaged the Elder Spawn in their final moments, turning what should have taken seconds into minutes and costing more of its superior genes in repairs than it would have liked. But that boy… the core hummed, the words of its speech visible through its shell.

"That boy is odd." The core looked at the sleeping body of the blonde-haired, fair-skinned boy, stained with the black ichor of its Elder Spawn. The creature alone had slain its elder spawn. Not because of overwhelming strength. Not because of some incredible item. Not because of superior technique compared to its predecessors, now displayed at the skull mound at the chamber's end. It took one of Nero's hair, and skin fragments, and analyzed it and reached a conclusion.

The creature possessed combination of the two specific abilities that it was weakn to, high baseline reflexes and reaction speed; the combination of the two meant its cognitive reactivity were abnormally high.

"It would be best not to waste more resources on this." The Core decided, ceasing all functions and preparing to enter hibernation.

"What a peculiar one," the dungeon spoke through nuclear vibration, its tendrils analyzing the creature's still-sleeping body, and before entering slumber, "its basic fear circuits are diminishing, just as I suspected." The core noted before shutting down completely. ….. On the cold stone floor of the chamber, Nero lay sprawled beside the now-dead dungeon boss. His eyes twitched, and with a sudden jolt, he woke to the chamber lit by his loyal lantern.

It took him a minute to reorient himself, but he eventually became aware of the still-fresh, lingering wound on his shoulder. He touched the line of the wound the scythe had cut into his right side.

"Ugh!" He yelped—the thing stung like nothing at even the slightest touch.

"How am I supposed to adventure around with a wound this touchy?" It would likely cost him multiple silver marks to buy potions good enough to heal it. The thought alone made him shake his head involuntarily.

"No way can I afford that," slipped out automatically, but to continue on his current path, he'd have to spend the coin and repair himself.

"Unless." His blue eyes drifted over to the corpse of the Old Rat. Its body had already begun breaking down into mana. Though, from the looks of it, not much time had passed since he'd killed it and fallen asleep.

"Good thing, otherwise I'd have lost it." He went over to it, hissing along the way from the pain in his shoulder.

"If I can get an expensive loot drop from it, that would really help me out!" He drew his blade and began butchering the corpse.

"Come on, old man, yield something valuable!" he said to the dead.