Chương 166: Chapter 242: Snake-spelunking

"What was that?" Will asked.

"What was…" Loth paused, glancing up at Will, who had previously been right beside her as they descended. For a brief instant she seemed to have sped up, flickering forward before returning to her normal speed.

"I see."

"There's a field around Steve." Will said as he landed. The gravity was very light, so they didn't bother unhooking their flying gear.

"Yeah," Loth said, pointing up at Steve's head, which seemed to have frozen mid-bite around the island he'd been eating.

"We're on Steve-time now. The field must stretch about fifty feet around Steven in every direction." Will frowned.

"Shit, he's gotta be on the snake with us." the worm could use the extra time to prepare… he might be way further along than we thought…

"Extra time to gather Influence?" Loth asked.

"Yeah, a week at this speed would have to be…a year or so?" Will thought aloud, remembering how quickly Steve had been moving. An island would have to hold still for a long time for Steve to eat it.

"Or so." Loth mused.

"I'm not sure he could actually afford to do that, though. If he gave his followers more time to stop and think about their situation, the glaring problems would make themselves known. It's more likely he is keeping his people outside the time-dilation field and in constant contention with Zodiac and Travis. Less time for them to think."

"I don't know, you might be giving humans too much credit. I thought the tooth fairy was real until I was eight." Will said.

"Until you were eight? You disgust me, William Oh." Loth said with a sneer, prompting Will to chuckle as they searched for a nearby constellation.

"…Wait, how old are you?" Will asked.

"Eight."

"…Seriously?"

"Kobolds only live to fifteen or so." Loth said. Will looked up at Steve frozen in time. It was a creature that measured time in Coils. How much of Loth's time am I wasting with this?

"I'm not gonna forget about getting you that dragon Sacrifice once this is over."

"I didn't think you would. Don't forget I have Resistance padding out my lifespan though." Not a lot of it, though.

"… Right." With a renewed sense of urgency, they snagged a few of the smaller constellations and used their bodies to create some simple camouflage, aiming for Steve's head. They didn't know enough about the prior state of the constellations that made their homes on Steve's back, but it seemed like someone or something had cut swaths through them. Some parts were empty, while other parts still had plenty of monsters. It didn't seem to be even or have any pattern behind it.

It was as if someone was randomly picking scales to clear, then going back once it was mostly clean. As they got closer to the head, the cleared spots became more and more common, so they slowed down and took more care not to catch the attention of whoever was hunting on the back of Steve, because they probably weren't friendly. Small party. Unorganized. They spotted them a couple days into the trip. It's Kyle and the others. Wow. I can't believe they're still alive… assuming they don't have worms in their heads.

Judging by Kyle and Roger's beards, they'd been doing this for quite some time in the two weeks since Will had seen them.

"…Pass." Loth whispered, waving a clawed hand.

"Yeah, pass." Will echoed. There was no sense getting embroiled with their shit. If they were still alive after all this was over, then they could get involved. They waited for them to leave and changed through route to travel along the underside of Steve's jaw. Kyle's party seemed to have a preference for Steve's back, possibly because the landmarks were easier to understand or perhaps a preconceived idea of what should be 'up' or 'down'.

Once they reached the corner of Steve's mouth, they were able to find a gap that led deeper.

"Hey, check this out." Will said when they were a few miles into the mouth.

"Hmm?" Loth asked, holding out a torchbug. Will manifested his Map and made it show the outside of Steve. The automatically updated portion of Will's map was far too small to show Steve in his entirety, but it was enough to show a strange conical depression in the small section of snake head it could make out above them, as if someone or something had carved out few miles of the snake's brain.

"From the look of it, the necromancer hunted large constellations, converted them to undead, then used them as explosives to drill a hole through to Steve's brain." Loth said.

"Poor thing." Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"That's like blowing up crickets against someone's forehead until they die."

"If you can get enough crickets," Loth said with a shrug an instant before she began tumbling downward. Will's hand snapped out and grabbed Loth's hood an instant before her backpack beetle began to hum, taking the stress off his hand as it began fighting the gravity. They peered down into the hole and spotted a piece of island embedded in the flesh of Steve's mouth, seemingly still radiating its unique gravity.

"You've got island stuck between your teeth, Steve." Will muttered.

"Shameful. Is this slovenly behavior how I raised you?" They camped out that night a few miles into Steve's mouth, locating a piece of island that could be used to cover the light of their fire in every direction. Halfway through the night, something happened to Steve, because the world was suddenly on fire.

"Ow, ow, ow." Will grunted, tucking his left hand in his armpit, as it burned like hell, while the rest of him…didn't actually hurt that bad.

"Loth, you okay?"

"Hmmm." Loth grunted, scanning the ground and flesh-sky above them, which were flickering with fire. She pointed up. The two of them flew up and caught their breath. The corrosive flame aura from the Burning Court set seemed to only cover a few dozen feet, and the bottom of the mouth and the ceiling were hundreds of feet apart, so there was a spot to get away from the flames in the middle.

"Ow." Will said, pulling out his scalded left hand and studying it before using a Supreme Healing Potion on it. It was a luxury not many could afford, but Sourdough could make it last indefinitely. Sourdough 313 Charges remaining. Why didn't the rest of my body get damaged? Will thought, pocketing the restored potion. … Same reason I can see Steve on the map. The flame damage was being considered an environmental effect by Aspect of the Immortal Serpent, and therefore being strongly resisted.

Strange I didn't consider that until now. Somehow, Steve was SO godsdamned big that either Will or The System were being tricked into believing Steve was terrain. It reminded him of Kincaid, actually. Perhaps because he was completely surrounded by Steve? Unusual circumstances, but… don't mind if I do. Will took out an empty slab of crystal bone and held his right hand into the flames, watching as the environmental resistance of his Class triggered, altering the shape of the miasmatic structures in his hand.

298 Charges remaining. Will sent a pulse of Charge through his hand and caught the pattern in the giant bone. He'd figured out how to clarify the stored Miasmatic structures, but he hadn't figured out how to erase and re-write it yet. He only needed a single use, though. Will scanned the impression.

There was a bunch of chaff miasmatic structures in there, from his stats, to a fragments few of his Abilities, and some of the lingering corrosive flames, but through practice, Will was able to parse through the mess of information and decipher what had been altered by Aspect. It was rough, but… Will took out one of his prepared gloves from his Dimensional Storage and inscribed a copy of the environmental resistance created by Aspect onto the glove, putting it onto his left hand.

Tentatively, he put his gloved left hand into the flames, and felt nothing. Successfully made a slapdash magic item. Not bad. The glove would only protect against this one thing, and probably not forever, but at least he wouldn't have to cut his hand off again.

"Not bad." Loth echoed Will's thoughts, finishing with her own preparations, which mostly involved sacrificing a bunch of her own bugs and forming a damage chain linking the most flame-resistant bugs together.

"You know, I'd love to trap this thing." Loth said as they floated in midair, resting for the night outside the reach of the flames.

"How so?"

"Well, I'm picturing a perfect end where the worm tries to blow Steve up once there's enough Lords on the Floor to make it worth his while. Three to five of them, I would guess."

"Mmm."

"And then instead of scouring all the life from the Floor it implodes on him instead…It would be beautiful…Ah, but the scale is just too huge. I literally do not have the time or the resources to trap a continent…yet." Loth said, raising a wistful hand towards the flesh-ceiling.

"If only Mark Wyrd could be a trap component." Will replied.

"Mark Wyrd would be an amazing trap component!" Loth exclaimed.

"That's not a bad idea. I just need to figure out how to breed more of him and store him in my barrel."

"Perhaps I could extract his central nervous system and keep it alive in a jar, or implant it into an insect life support system…" Loth continued muttered some truly horrifying ideas to herself as they floated along, until they finally fell asleep. Over the next three days, they avoided the floor and ceiling as best they could as they travelled deeper into the snake's mouth, but in some places, it just wasn't possible, and they were forced to dive into the flames where the floor and ceiling came close together.

At the end of the third day, the flames subsided right around the time they reached the throat, which was studded with bits and pieces of broken islands.

"I think it was a fight topside." Loth said as they flew down the throat, which had a bit more open space than the mouth, allowing them to fly at a leisurely pace. True, if Zodiac and Travis engaged with them topside, a few minutes there could turn into days in here. The only things they had to watch out for in the throat were monsters and random gravity wells that tried to yank them into the broken islands strewn across the sides of the throat.

At this point, they were no longer bothering to conceal their lights and campfires, because if someone was standing watch nearly a hundred miles inside Steve, then they deserved to catch them. Unlike the outside, there was no sign of thinning of the inner monster population. How are they not all roasted after three days of flames? Will wondered, dispatching yet another constellation striking out at them.

Perhaps a year of random flame bursts had weeded out the ones who couldn't handle it, so only the ones who were tolerant or knew how to escape remained. Who knows. Occasionally, Loth would tuck her torchbugs away to see if they could see the light of the Key Site. On the third day, they found it. Crystal Giants. A tribe of wild mutants have taken up residence in the key Site. Investigate, cull any showing aberrant behavior and drive the rest away from the Key Point. Will and Loth shared a glance.

The Key Site had a few dozen enormous humanoids clustered onto the Key Site, their sheer size causing them to be forced together, back to back, their legs tucked up to their chest, looking for all the world like a castaways forced to share a single life boat far too small to accommodate all of them. They didn't have the behavior of monsters lured to the concentrated miasma. They were all facing away from the beam of light.

The ones with the most severe burns were resting on the Key Site, while the ones with more energy seemed to be pacing around the edges of the territory, watching for enemies or monsters to eat. The same thing, most likely. Fire pits and scattered bones from constellations around the key site showed that they'd been camped out here for a while now. The way they moved and interacted with each other…

"I think these are civilians." Will said.

"By all means, make contact." Loth said, gesturing towards the Key Site.

"I'll stay here, outside of…crushing distance."