While Azotreh continued to practice mana manipulation, the dungeon had finally found a way to grow itself without hatchet mining, though Nicholas still kept trying to use and advance the skill whenever the orc could handle it.
A week after the five queens had laid their eggs, the small ants simply emerged from their eggs fully formed, skipping the pupae stage of life altogether.
Each ant was slightly larger than a carpenter ant from Earth, and each had a small purple mark between their mandibles. The mark looked like a pickaxe with its shaft pointed backwards, and each sharp end of the actual head pointed in the general direction of the mandibles.
Fuzem, who had latched onto the salamander champion and was helping the other salamanders make runs into the other cave to grab mana crystal and water essence crystal that was still just growing on the walls, told Nicholas that they were all workers instead of soldiers.
Nicholas and Fuzem didn't talk much right now, mostly just discussing dungeon affairs. She didn't quite seem to understand why Nicholas wanted her to go easy on Azotreh, so she was taking some time to apparently self-reflect.
Nicholas was fine with it. It wasn't like she was hurting anyone through it.
The other real oddity was Errazorrus. He'd taken the puma champion back out into the forest when it respawned about an hour ago. He didn't mention where he was going, and Nicholas hadn't gotten any experience notifications, so he had no idea what the chimeric dragon was doing.
Losing Azotreh's protection from the rabbits was also a blow, but Nicholas was fairly confident that Atu would protect them, even if the rest of the clan wouldn't. He wasn't afraid for Azotreh, especially with the dungeon as a safety net. Well, that wasn't entirely true. He did worry, just a bit.
But he had something else to focus on. The ants tattoos. The big purple mark on their carapaces, combined with the mark on Azotreh's newly transformed ears from the Nightshade Rabbit Bloodline and Atu's explanation, made Nicholas want to try something.
The ants didn't have the same direct mana bond to the nexus as their queens or the other direct spawns did. Instead, they created a web back to their queens, which were connected to the nexus. This made it far more difficult to directly pilot the ants in the way they did the champions or even the regular small monsters.
Of course, the obvious way was either to command a queen to command its kin or use the other method Nicholas had figured out from the moment he saw them. The ants, even though they weren't directly connected to the nexus, were still utterly loyal to the dungeon and its owning awareness. So Nicholas, in the body of the champion, spoke aloud.
He told them to push some of the mana they had into the tattoo and then try to cut into the stone with their mandables. The test was a success. The ants cut through the solid rock like a lukewarm knife through butter.
The problem was made clear a moment later, as each ant that had been used for the test had a small part of their body missing, whether that be a leg or a piece of their antenna. Using that mana had apparently required a bit of their body.
Nicholas simply watched curiously as the ants returned to the queen and went into whatever the equivalent of ant sleep was. The other monsters in the dungeon didn't sleep; even if they imitated it well, they couldn't actually rest like a human or beast. But these ants rested like most other life, watched over by their siblings. It was curious, but currently not worth deeply investigating.
Even if the mark wasn't the best option due to the physical sacrifice required, Nicholas still called on other ants to try to dig through the rock. The hatchet simply wasn't efficient in comparison to hundreds of tiny cutting implements.
The ants had a hard time cutting through the stone without using their marks, but hard was better than losing an arm and a leg to cut rock. Or two legs, he guessed.
Fuzem returned a little bit after he started to find a constant spinning cycle of ants. Some cut into the rock, others carried the cut rock away to the core, and still others had to return to the queen. Those that took minor injuries to the slight edges of the rock were sent back to their queens to care for the next generation. They were going to hatch tomorrow, after all.
Fuzem rolled two reptilian eyes at the strangeness. She appreciated the efficiency, but had no idea how Nicholas could tell her to go easy on Azotreh and then put the ants to work like this. Even as she realized more about who she was and who she wanted to be, she was still often confused by those she shared a soul with.
She soon found the towering orc sitting in the corner. A couple of its fingers were missing, but the slight purple marks on its arms and stomach were faintly glowing. She had no idea what it was doing, but decided not to interrupt whatever it was. Instead, she led the salamanders out again. She still hadn't been told that the dungeon had gotten a node for mana crystals or water essence crystals.
So she ventured back, and even as she used the bodies of the salamanders to yank the crystals from the wall, something else kept drawing her attention. The flowing water outside. Wouldn't that also be its own node? Would it require less effort for the same gain?
She had no idea, but had her task. She'd experiment with water once she finished with these crystals.
As she kept working on yanking growing crystals from the walls, a new system window flashed into her mind's eye. Even though she did have eyes in this body, it kept appearing in her head. Errazorrus said it read it aloud to him, and Azotreh had mentioned being distracted by visible ones in front of their face.
Her's were different. Just as she was different.
[New Ability: Channeling (1) has been acquired]
[New Skills: Mana Channeling (A-1), Brand Activation (A-1) have been acquired]
She heard a shout from the room with the nexus and assumed it was Nicholas who had gotten the skills and ability. Wasn't he always complaining about getting new skills and stuff? Why was he going out of his way to do it again?
She really had no clue how he managed to both complain about something new and then go for more. She'd ask, but their argument still rang in her mind. She wanted to figure out why he wanted her to go easy. Until then, she didn't want to ask him.
Errazorrus stalked through the forest in the body of a black puma. He'd used gelatinous body and a small amount of the instinct he'd kept from some memories to equip certain spots on the puma's body with black scales. The elbows and shoulders, hips, and knees first. Then around the eyes and nose, and finally the tail.
He knew he could do more, but this much was already draining small amounts of excess mana from the nexus, and even with what they all assumed to be a ludicrous amount of the resource, he didn't want to use too much just to make his body feel better.
Plus, he didn't want the puma to suddenly have red, blue, or white scales. It would stand out like a sore thumb in this shadowy environment under the eternal twilight. If he were part purple dragon, that would be a different story, but he wasn't.
He moved like a cat, letting the puma's spirit guide him through movement in silence. He moved close to the ground, crouched, and prepared to pounce.
His target? The rabbit. Azotreh had hunted them, but when he'd eaten them to see any effects, he'd clearly done it wrong somehow. They hadn't gained the rabbit blueprint for the dungeon, only the physical features of ears and tail. That, and the horn they had, like that of a unicorn.
The rabbits of this forest weren't jackalopes, but still horned rabbits. Jackalopes were to be feared in most environments, but regular horned rabbits were basically just slightly larger bunnies.
He was looking for one, and finally found his prey after nearly an hour of searching. He'd gotten the puma's consciousness to block any system notifications from him to not cause the fiasco that happened the last time Nicholas had failed to catch one of these pesky prey animals.
He approached from behind, his Eye of the Red Dragon showing him where it was as he approached cautiously.
Finally, he was behind it, and it continued to munch on some slightly blue berries. Now was his shot!
He leapt from the underbrush with his mouth wide and ready to snap around the innocent little morsel. He'd have his meal.
His jaws locked around the rabbit, and he shook it a few times to snap its neck before dropping the corpse into his inventory. The blood left behind went with it.
[You have slain Nightshade Horned Rabbit]
[Base EXP: 10]
[Grade Disparity Bonus: 0.5x]
[Rank Disparity Bonus: 1x]
[Boosts: Rabbit Slayer I: 5% increased EXP, Horned Rabbit Slayer I: 10% increased EXP]
[You have earned 5 EXP]
[You have earned 6 DX]
Something else caught his eye, though. The berries. Weren't Fuzem and Nicholas looking for nodes? And the only one they had was a plant. So that meant that this could likely become a node.
He didn't want to go home just yet. He was revelling in the power of this body. The efficiency of the kill and the freedom it gave him.
He didn't feel cramped in Azotreh's soul, but it was hard to be a dragon when living within someone else's body. He couldn't feel the air on his scales or the wind under his wings.
So, with the combined knowledge that he didn't want to go back and that dying out here only meant the loss of the champion for a bit again, he started to go on a much more active hunt.
Mason moved through the undying twilight with growing grace. His new Exploration and Parkour skills had already reached Apprentice-5 in the short time since the barrier had closed with them inside.
He wasn't too worried, since his father had the support of the holy father and even the saints themselves in shattering this barrier. He'd be out in no time.
Until then, however, he'd have to put up with the irritating forest. The uneven terrain, general chill, and utterly uncomfortable sleeping conditions.
Worse, the slime core he'd gotten had been downgraded by the system from unique-rarity to legendary-rarity. Jumping down three standard rarities in just a week was deeply unfortunate, and implied that its true rarity would be much lower.
That wizard had said that the rarity of the item was probably a combined factor of how common the looting powers able to acquire it were and how common the thing that dropped it was. Commonly dropped monster materials were usually of common-rarity, while dragon materials were considered mythic or epic at the lowest, just because true dragons were hard to find anywhere across the five continents. Of course, there were some dragons in the oceanic chasms, but they were absolutely not worth the effort compared to a midnight worm.
Mason knew all of that, of course. He was raised in a proper noble family. Even a scholar like the wizard probably knew less than he did about the raw value of monster materials or relics.
Speaking of relics, he was rather confused by the utter lack of their spawns. He hadn't seen an affinity once while exploring, even in the seemingly untouched undergrowth. He was hoping to pick up a couple. Maybe a life affinity to bring home and finally extend his life.
He was only 16, but he was also tin-rank. If he could extend his life now and then have it extended again by the rankup, that would fix most of his worries.
As they found a spot to make camp, he sat down among a bunch of roots for a short moment. The reason it was short was that he suddenly felt the talisman in his pocket activate and the barrier be shattered.
Before he could react, his vine cat leapt from around his neck and started to try and rip into the monster that had suddenly appeared behind him and bit its way towards his neck.
Alabast was the first to move, using psychic magic to launch a basic probing attack, only to have it utterly rebuffed. The pink energy lashed out and didn't even make the puma freeze.
Just as Mason was about to call the vine cat back to rush behind his allies, he watched in horror as Alabast followed up his attack with a fire wave.
It seared Errazorrus' flesh when the lanky human had blasted him with that fire spell, and he felt the entangling thorny roots char as well. As the creature holding his feline body died, he stored it with a thought and tried to leap at the boy again.
This time, he was rebuffed by a tower shield, his face slamming hard into the solid metal blockade between him and his target. He scratched at the metal, but his claws didn't even leave a mark.
He used the tower shield to jump back and, on instinct, tried to use his breath weapon, only to suddenly remember he didn't have it.
He cursed his own instincts as another blast of fire overcame him.
[You have obtained Arcane Fire Resistance (0.01%)]
[You have obtained Fire Resistance (0.01%)]
He took the fire, but still had to watch as the fire burned away far more of his health than he liked. He grimaced as he felt another presence enter the body through the channel.
A fist slammed into the puma's ribs and broke them with ferocity. He barely felt it as he opened his mouth again. This time, long tendrils of glowing blue slime reached outward and grasped onto the boy's bags, along with the bag of the woman still trying to shatter his spine with her fists.
[Title Gained: Thief III]
Errazorrus began to try to cut the woman, but she dodged most of his attacks. Most, but not all. The problem was that she barely took any damage from the flailing slime whips lashing out at her.
The boy took some claw-tipped whips to the back as he ran behind the others.
The man with the shield also got hit in the arm a couple of times. Errazorrus knew he couldn't win here. There was no possible way with his ribs broken. Even a monster couldn't outrun that kind of damage.
What he did do was try to deal as much damage as possible.
Each time he struck, there was a small spark of golden light as well. He didn't know what that meant, but it should be good.
Finally, the beating was ended as a woman with black hair and an oversized axe moved forward like a berserker and cut the puma's head off with a single swing.
The puma got a single moment to see it, and the other awareness gasped in Nicholas' voice. Errazorrus didn't know who the girl was, but growled at her as the head lost the last of its life.
Gelatinous Body was good, but the monsters weren't slimes. Having their heads chopped off still killed them within moments. Errazorrus used those moments to quickly try to drop the spatial bags into the inventory, only for a system window to appear in his vision.
[Dimensional Storage Items require an additional Inventory ability to be stored. Would you like to purchase: Spatial Inventory? Y/N]
[Spatial Storage Items require an additional Inventory ability to be stored. Would you like to purchase: Dimensional Inventory? Y/N]
[Pet Storage Items require an additional Inventory ability to be stored. Would you like to purchase: Pet Inventory? Y/N]
Errazorrus mentally assented to all three prompts. Even if the puma died, he wanted to get the most out of this he could. He felt more than heard Nicholas groan.
[Insufficient Funds. Spatial Inventory not purchased.]
[Insufficient Funds. Dimensional Inventory not purchased.]
[Pet Inventory has been purchased successfully. 10 SP used in purchase.]
[Pet Inventory forcefully levelled to 3 to store all pets. 3 SP used in purchase.]
[Items from stolen Dimensional and Spatial Storage items have been partially looted.]
[Your inventory is full! Items gained through title: Thief III have been relocated.]
[Remaining items from Dimensional and Spatial Storage items have been relocated.]
[Inventory has reached Level 4!]
13 SP down the drain for hopefully something pretty alright. Errazorrus hoped it was worth it as the life flickered out from the puma's body, and it rapidly dissolved into essence smoke.