<~> Chapter 151

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" I asked.

"We can handle it," Piper replied cheerily.

I sighed. This whole scenario makes me feel like we're teenagers about to mess around with something dangerous in the forest. Aria was getting ready to shoot an arrow at the rock while everyone prepared their spells to deal with whatever came out. Iris helped Aria with some kind of wind magic, and now Aria was pulling back an arrow with a miniature vortex at the tip.

"Alright, about to fire," Aria said.

Everyone's weapons were drawn and we were ready to fight. If we were lucky, they wouldn't be much stronger than the crab monsters. Swarm monsters tend to be weaker by themselves, but can easily overwhelm you if you aren't prepared. I shifted to my umber hound form and gripped my axe tightly, preparing for the worst.

With a loud crack like the sound of a whip, the arrow sank deep into the marble colored rock and caused the entire mound to fracture along the surface. When the entire rock lifted up and shifted, I expected something to crawl out, but not this.

Small bugs began to pour out of tiny holes hidden under the surface by the dozen. Now that the entire mound had been lifted up, the monsters started to flood out of it like a wave. I had been likening the rock to something like a termite nest, but it hadn't actually occurred to me until now that the comparison might have been more accurate than I expected.

Fireballs and large spikes of ice crashed into the wave, but other than the ones that got directly hit by the attacks, the now hundreds of bugs weren't slowed down at all. They just flowed around the hot and cold patches of ground left behind and continued to come right at us. Knowing it wouldn't help, I stored my axe before they got close.

"Maxwell! I can't stick my sword into tiny bugs!" Piper said in panic.

Maxwell quickly sheathed his sword and pulled out his mace, not that I thought it would be that much better. "We'll just have to hold things off while Luna uses her magic," he gruffly replied.

"Hold them off? How?" Piper yelled back.

I was at a loss myself, but I would have to figure something out, because the monsters were on us. The swarm looked like beetles made from stone, with shiny crystals or gemstones adorning each one. Once they got closer, it looked like a prismatic rainbow of color was washing toward us. I dropped to all fours and swiped at the crowd just as they came into range.

Crackles of lightning exploded around us. Both Talia and Luna used lightning magic to clear the horde. Currents of electricity chained from tiny beetle to tiny beetle, killing them instantly, but that didn't do much to slow the swarm down. A huge gust of wind created a wall that kept the other casters safe. Rather than waste her mana on attacks, Iris had opted for defense, doing what she could to slow down the mass of insects around the other casters.

Every swipe of my claws sent the small beetles flying, but I wasn't even sure if I was killing anything. They were like little rocks that went flying back into the crowd behind them, only to be replaced by dozens more. Eventually, enough had made it past me that they started to crawl up my legs. I snapped at one and bit down, just about breaking my teeth. When I spat it out, it buzzed on tiny wings that did little to keep it from falling back into the crowd.

All of our melee fighters were completely useless against these and were shaking off the rocky bugs as much as they could while trying to smash them with their shields. Maxwell's mace was the only thing that did anything to these things, and just like the fireballs, didn't do much since they were just replaced a moment later. Sharp stabs of pain flared out across my body as the little fuckers began to bite. It hurt, but I didn't feel the telltale signs of poison I was immediately worried about.

"Shit! Retreat! This isn't working!" Valkin yelled.

"No fucking complaints here!" Norrik called back.

A wave of fire flared out of Luna and mixed with Iris's mana, killing and, for the first time yet, stalling the flooding insects. The combination attack had been the first thing that had even fazed the tide of monsters, but we were already pulling back. Inspired by their reaction, Iris and Luna began to send spiraling fire around our group, which kept the insects at bay while we made our way back to the stairs.

While the monsters were fast and had painful bites, they were easy enough to shake off now that others weren't immediately taking their place. Once we got far enough away, the small beetles began to return to their hive. I crushed a few of the beetles in my hand and kept them, rather than just shaking all of them off. Maybe if someone could identify them, we could devise a strategy to deal with the swarm, because trying to fight them with swords and bows wasn't going to cut it.

By the time we made it back to the stairs, none of the insects were chasing us anymore, but everyone in our party, including the mages somehow, had been bitten a dozen times over by the little bastards.

Aria examined a small bleeding bite wound with a frown. "Helena, you were right. That was a terrible fucking idea."

Norrik shrugged. "We know what's in there now, though. How would we ever figure out what was in those rocks if we didn't fucking test it?"

"We could have thrown Tor'jek at it," I joked.

Norrik laughed. "It would serve that bastard right."

Piper was already hard at work healing everyone's wounds. The small bites were painful and bleeding, but they wouldn't cause any lasting problems. If one of us had gotten stuck fighting them without being able to escape, or didn't have access to healing after, the little monsters might have bled us out. These were going to be a pain to deal with, they swept right past all of our close combatants.

I looked over Luna's wounds while Piper healed the melee fighters who had gotten bitten up the worst. "Are you alright? How did they get to you?" I asked.

Luna sighed. ("Iris did well protecting us, but there were still too many for her to throw all of them off. Once we started using the fire and wind magic together towards the end, there wasn't much left to stop the ones that were already close.")

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It thankfully didn't take long for everyone to be healed, and I didn't need any healing at all. The bites were all so individually small that it didn't take much of my own regeneration to deal with them. They might be able to eventually wear me down, but it would probably take an eternity for them to get me there. Most bites healed only moments after I got them, so I didn't experience much blood loss. Not that blood loss was too much of a threat to me as long as my wounds weren't held open.

"We're lucky they stopped chasing us..." Maxwell said while looking over at the rock that had sunken back into the ground. There were still signs of damage on the mound, but the beetles were clearly repairing it somehow.

"I hate bugs," Aria commented. She didn't seem squeamish about them like some girls were, but her dislike of them was apparent from the way her lip curled when talking about them.

"Me too. I still feel itchy," Iris said, shuddering.

"I was able to grab some," I said, placing them on the ground in front of me.

Everyone curiously looked at the dead beetles. They had all been crushed from below. The top part of the beetles was like a hard shell that could be lifted in one piece to reveal their wings. Each one had some kind of crystal or gem looking thing on top, making almost all of them too heavy to fly.

"Mundane looking gems, definitely worth something, but they don't seem like they have much mana infusion at all," Milana commented while poking one with a red gem on top.

("Tell her that I would expect the monsters to be stronger if they were mana-infused,") Luna said.

I relayed the message and Milana nodded in response. "Yes, they were already hard to deal with as they were. They would be even more difficult to fight if they were filled with mana."

"Even mundane gems can be valuable, though. Ironcastle doesn't have a mine that produces rubies, and this one looks like it could be one," Maxwell said while pointing to the one that Milana had poked.

I paused and glanced back up at the nest we had disturbed. "Hold on, didn't all of those monsters have some kind of gem attached to them? Wouldn't that make this floor basically a treasure mine?"

It took a moment for that to sink in for everyone. Piper was the first to come to her senses. "Oh... oh, this might get bad. Celeste is going to need a bigger army to protect this place. Even if the ones with gems are relatively rare, there were thousands of those beetles, and that was just one nest."

Talia picked up one of the dead beetles with a gem on it and held it up, trying to get a good look at it through the moonlight. "Still... killing those beetles is going to be a challenge. I think the only way we'll be able to do it is using magic. It's not like Norrik is going to punch them to death."

Norrik snorted but didn't comment.

I stood up and looked back toward the nest to see what had happened to the other ones we had killed. After a moment, it seemed clear. "The swarm carries their dead back to the nest, except for these ones that I managed to keep," I said.

Talia squinted at the one she was still holding. "I don't think the gems come from the bugs. I think the bugs attach them to themselves. I can see a kind of crust, like sediment gluing them to this bug's shell."

Milana looked down at the white marble floor. "Does that mean there are even more gems under our feet?"

Luna pursed her lips, and I spoke her comments aloud for the group. "Luna says, she doesn't think so. While that might be the case above ground, dungeons work differently. They're probably modeled after something from outside the dungeon, but in this case, they create all of the monsters with the gems already attached."

"What makes you so sure?" Valkin asked curiously.

"Luna says, it's not impossible that we could mine for things, but dungeons usually don't work that way. Dungeons usually regenerate the walls unless their creatures are the ones creating the paths, like the tunnelers in the Fallow dungeon. It's much more likely the beetles are just spawning that way. It would be a waste of energy for the dungeon otherwise," I relayed.

"This dungeon is strange though. The battlements on the first floor aren't disappearing very quickly either," Valkin noted.

Luna hesitated ("That is true. I agree this dungeon is strange, but we should probably still work under the impression that the general trends will be the same. Assuming every possible thing about the dungeon is different from the start will just make things more complicated.")

Valkin nodded after I relayed her words. "At the very least, we should check it out. I think even some of this stone would be valuable to take, if possible."

Luna nodded in agreement. That was a reasonable conclusion.

Maxwell picked up the beetles and stuffed them into his backpack for safekeeping. The circumstances of this dungeon were different, so splitting loot wasn't exactly a concern here. The handful of beetles I had managed to keep would be proof for Celeste. She might need the monster remains to convince the other dragon princes and princesses that this dungeon was worth much more than their previous uses of her. The thought of her treatment still sickened me every time I thought about it.

Norrik stood up and looked up at the moon that was crawling along the sky. "We'll have to come up with a plan for this floor and wait to see what this place is like when the moon is full. The first floor is most dangerous when the moon is up, and I expect this one to be no different. We found a hint at this dungeon's theme, I suspect."

Valkin nodded. "Finding a way to make ourselves useful on this floor will be a challenge. I don't like the idea of making Milana and Talia do all the work if we were going to try to clear this dungeon alone in the future."

Talia laughed and shrugged. "Well, maybe the crafters can help us out. Figuring out ways to make us effective at clearing this dungeon is the other half of their job. Once Celeste tells everyone what's available on this floor, I'm sure the crafters will be excited to help us out."

"Just be sure not to let it slip until Celeste has given the go ahead. I do not want to get on her bad side. She was scarier than Helena was when those assassins attacked," Valkin said.

Maxwell glanced up at the moon one last time before waving at the dungeon stairs. "Let's get going. We'll have a lot to talk about once we get back. Hopefully, we can make it before the next tide on the first floor without waiting."

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