I am not- Jade thought with a grunt, twisting around to get better leverage with her dagger in the tight confines of the creature's mouth. Getting swallowed by- She finally wrenched one arm free from being pinned behind her back. The toad's mouth had looked a lot bigger when she'd been outside of it. Now, she felt like she was being slowly squeezed to death. An overgrown frog!
Jade stabbed both daggers into the creature's flesh. She was completely blind, no light penetrated its thick skin, and the world around her kept shaking and wobbling as the beast hopped about, continuing to battle her companions. She had no idea where any of its vital points were and, in the moment, she couldn't care less. What mattered was that, from such a position, she couldn't possibly miss hitting something.
"Skrrrraaaaaagghhh!"
Both of her enchanted blades, Phantom and Fang, easily penetrated the monster's fleshy interior, piercing the membrane of gross, stinging mucus that coated its mouth, and biting deep into sinew and cartilage. The monster roared in pain, shuddering violently. One strike from within must have been enough to teach the creature the error of its ways because, before Jade could repeat the feat, it vomited her back out into the muddy bog.
Squelch.
Disoriented and blinded by the sudden light of day, Jade flopped unceremoniously into a large pool of thigh-deep muck, splashing down face first. The experience was better for her body than her dignity, as the soft surface cushioned her fall. She surfaced a moment later, coughing and sputtering, and was hauled back to dry land by Luis. Wiping a streak of mud from her eyes, Jade muttered a thanks to her friend and turned a fiery glare on the monster that had subjected her to such an embarassing ordeal.
"That's it." She growled, picking up one of the daggers she'd dropped and regaining her stance. "No more playing around."
"It was your idea to practice new moves on a boss, Jade!" Naomi reminded her, stepping beside her and humming a healing melody. A wave of soothing warmth swept over the succubus, her burns and scrapes beginning to reknit themselves.
"Not my best suggestion." She admitted, sighing in relief as the magic took hold.
Jade refocused on the creature before her, which was finally recovering from being sliced open from the inside. The 'Bog Toad Monarch', as the Labyrinth named it, was a creature fitting of the title. It stood, or rather squatted, nearly ten feet tall, and was nearly as wide. A bulbous head and pair of enormous eyes rested atop a muscular, coiled body, supported by powerful legs that could send the creature leaping a dozen feet into the air. It had brown, slimy skin, which melded perfectly into the swamp they were fighting it in. Which was, of course, how it had managed to get the drop on them even while they'd been searching for it.
"It's getting ready to jump!" Fenrin called from a short distance away. He'd been peppering the monster with arrow after arrow since the fight began, but only now was it finally starting to show signs of wearing down. "Tara, you still okay?"
An explosion of fire and smoke sent a geyser of mud spewing into the air a short distance away, accompanied by the smell of sulfur. The latest collection of mud elementals, which continued to coalesce from the swamp as the fight dragged on, were vaporized.
"This would be more satisfying if they stayed dead when I blew them up!"
"I don't think they'll stop coming until we defeat the big guy." Naomi observed, switching to her restorative aura and keeping a wary eye out. More elementals were already rising from the mud, taking on squat, featureless humanoid shapes.
"Then let's take it down."
A short time later Jade lay back on the soft, muddy ground, panting. The large, perforated corpse of the level 19 'Bog Toad Monarch' lay crumpled nearby, Luis's curved longsword protruding from the roof of its elongated mouth. Defeating the creature hadn't been difficult so much as it had been tedious and exhausting. Each time they dealt a serious wound to the monster it had disappeared into the swamp to recover while they fought off the unending tide of weak but regenerating mud elementals. It wasn't until Jade had finally caught the surprisingly agile monster in one of her rune traps that they managed to lock it down and finish it off for good.
Other than nearly getting swallowed by the toad, an experience Jade was all too eager to wipe from her mind, the battle had resolved without major incident. Naomi tended to some minor acid burns on Fenrin's arm while the rest of them took some time to recover their strength. None of them had levelled up, either from the boss battle or grinding their way through the more mundane creatures that inhabited the swamp quadrant one zone inward of Estelhelm. Jade was finally starting to understand what Damos had told them all those weeks ago, when they'd first entered the Labyrinth. After the first few levels, the experience gained by battling monsters fell to a trickle. Completing quests was the primary method of power advancement, and none of them would make much progress until they finished more of those.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
She checked her tracker, trying to figure out which of her quests would be the easiest to complete. Level twenty was drawing near, and if it was at all possible Jade wanted to reach it before her next confrontation with Malice. One quest did deal with defeating boss monsters, but she still had two more to go before that one could be marked off. Rereading the list reminded her that both reaching the third floor of the Labyrinth and entering a Labyrinth Core space would complete quests for her, however. She'd have to hope that would be enough to push her past the threshold.
A whooshing sound emanated from nearby, accompanied by a foul odor as Luis looted the boss monster. The usual pile of coins dropped to the mud, along with the key fragment. He brought them over, along with a pair of enchanted bracers the Labyrinth had generated with the rest of the loot.
"How does killing a giant frog give us armor?" Naomi asked, eyeing the bracers skeptically as Luis handed them to Fenrin.
"Does that make any less sense than a world that constantly generates monsters for us to fight?" Jade asked, pulling herself to her feet and inspecting the new item. They were 'bracers of alacrity', which reduced talent cooldowns by a minor amount each time you made an attack. Luis's intuition was right, they'd be best on Fenrin.
"I imagine our world must seem extraordinarily strange to outsiders." Fenrin nodded, thanking Luis and pulling them on. "But to us, it's just how the Labyrinth works."
"Labyrinth monsters are magical constructs animated by spirits." Tara explained. She was sitting on a nearby rock, keeping out of the worst of the muck. Somehow, the tek'kalla had avoided becoming covered in mud like the rest of them. "If they're powerful enough, the looting process transmutes that energy into equipment like that. The Labyrinth tends to create items that are useful to one of the people who defeated the monster, too. That's one reason my people send so many expeditions to the upper floors. If you survive the dangers, the rewards are worth it."
"It has to have a purpose though, right?" Naomi asked. "A place like this, so different than the rest of the universe, doesn't just appear on its own."
"People have been investigating that for centuries." Fenrin shrugged. He gave her a wry smile. "Let me know if you figure it out."
"Cosmic mysteries later." Jade said, taking the key fragment from Luis. She withdrew the one she'd looted from the bone titan, pulling up the interface and combining them. The two shards, which looked like two small keys, glowed with a radiant energy. They drifted together, hovering above Jade's hand, and fused. When the glow faded, an ornately engraved silver key dropped into Jade's waiting palm.
-
Labyrinth Level Key: 2nd Ring
-
This item can be used to open a stairway on 'level 2' of the Labyrinth for a period of one hour.
-
This item is consumed on use.
"Perfect." Jade said, placing the key into her dimensional pouch. "Ready to go?"
The others indicated their agreement. They set off, resuming their journey to the inward edge of the second ring of the Labyrinth. There, they would find stairway portals that would take them to the third floor and, Jade hoped, to find answers.
"If we're lucky, we'll come across a Labyrinth store before we reach the third floor." Fenrin said, still examining his new bracers. They were made of dark leather and matched his armor well. "We didn't get any equipment upgrades in the city, and we'll want them before we take on third floor monsters."
"We'll check the nodes as we go." Luis suggested. "If there's one nearby, that'll show us where it is."
"If you're okay waiting for a few minutes, I can gather some ingredients here." Siora piped up. The alchemist hadn't participated in the battle, as most of her talents lay outside of combat. She'd been continuing to supply their group with a helpful array of potions and elixirs as they travelled, however, which was possibly more useful than another combatant would've been. "I think I saw some witherroot growing back there!"
That didn't sound like the sort of plant Jade wanted used in creating potions she was drinking, but she'd learned to trust Siora's expertise. They gave their elven companion a few minutes to gather what she could before resuming their journey. Jade spent the time pondering on their newest companions. Tara was adapting to their group tactics quickly, bringing a wide collection of powerful and damaging spells to the table. Her destructive magic shored up one of their group’s last remaining major weaknesses. Once they trained together more and truly became a team, their group would become a force to be reckoned with.
Tara, despite her occasional bout of standoffish behavior, Jade understood. She was surprised to find a kinship with the alien woman, but her obvious desire to prove herself to her people, and herself, resonated with Jade's own experiences. It was Fenrin that she didn't understand, despite having spent more time with the half-elf. What would prompt a man like him, born into a noble family and given the means to get ahead in life, to leave it all behind and brave the dangers of the Labyrinth wilds? He didn't feel like what Jade expected from someone of noble heritage. Indeed, he was nothing like the pompous and cruel man lord Verres was.
She'd need to find time to talk with him. Jade had made the mistake of ignoring her teammates in the past, focusing only on herself. This time, she wasn't going to make the same mistake.
Siora returned with vials full of murky sap, humming a cheerful tune. That done, they set off once more, striking an inward course across the bog, guided by Fenrin's pathfinder spell and his familiar. With each step, they were drawing closer to the third floor. All that was left was to get some upgrades first.
The thought of going shopping brought to mind a recurring wish. One that had been surfacing more frequently ever since her encounter with Malice.
I wonder if there are any items that will let me fly with these wings…