Prepper's Dungeon

POV: Casper.

I let loose a flurry of magic and felt the bodies of the monsters coming apart. Their flesh and bone teleporting to different places as they became disassembled.

I jumped, or at least I tried to, but I ended up stumbling instead. My feet feeling as if they'd been transformed into jelly. I slipped, but managed to summon my strength to pound down on the earth with both fists. Creating craters and launching shockwaves of force that sent debris flying in every direction.

I tried to stand then, but I had barely taken another breath before another volley caught me from every direction. The pellets bursting like overripe fruit upon making contact. The aftermath felt wrong too. Each impact leaving me feeling dirtier. As if I were being slathered in some kind of thick oil.

'The Sky Shrooms!' I thought with alarm as my mind swam. 'He's filled the pellets with their juices!'

Such a thing was definitely possible, given the other things Cecil's monsters were known to fire. Compared to living roaches or parasitic worms, a hollow seed filled with the intoxicating chemicals was pretty tame.

'Tame and effective.'

I cursed myself for the shortsightedness.

Being shot at wasn't actually going to hurt me, but enough of those juices might very well knock me out sooner or later.

'Wait, no. That's wrong. I'm level 5. Level 5. I've taken so much more poison and venom before in the Dungeon. This much shouldn't… this much shouldn't…'

I tried to concentrate again, but my thoughts wandered away from me as I threw up again.

I blinked and saw that the air was pink in color. The very atmosphere being dyed in garish hues.

"Aerosolized…" I coughed out. "It's in the air…"

"It is, traitor." Hundreds of voices called out with smug satisfaction.

"A far more effective mixture than anything you're used to. Fortified several times over until it was so thick it turned into a porridge. Putting it out into the air does weaken it, but I figured I could make up for that by dousing the whole second floor in the stuff. Every single mushroom is releasing the gas right now from every pore on each of their surfaces and each of my ranged monsters down here have a gland that fills their bullets with the stuff."

All the monsters and indeed the very chamber itself seemed to rumble with each of Cecil's chuckles.

"It doesn't matter if it gets in through your skin or through your lungs. I'll have you soon enough. Oh but don't worry. I took Kobe and Pravda away already. They are safe down here, with me."

"The men…" I coughed. Trying to stand once more and failing this time as well. So that I ended up throwing my body to the side in order to escape the ongoing barrage.

"Dead, of course." Cecil spoke. In a tone that suggested he was talking about the weather or about some sporting event he'd seen on TV.

"Oh don't you worry. I wasn't angry at them. They died quickly and without much in the way of pain. Raymond though… well…"

The laugh seemed to echo and bounce off the high ceiling and each one of the walls. Reverberating throughout the whole pink arena.

"I suppose he is still feeling rather… uncomfortable. Poor man. Don't you worry Casper. You'll be there to keep him company in a matter of minutes."

The monsters corrected their aim and found me again, so I started teleporting once more. This time not caring where I ended up, so long as I could keep dodging the assault and buying some more time.

It worked, to a point. I started crashing into monsters, whereby I struck them down or grabbed them with both hands before tearing their bodies apart. I kicked out whenever I was close to one and even my clumsy attacks were enough to turn them inside out. I lashed out with tackles and grapples before teleporting out again. Dismantling the bodies of all the monsters around whenever I released a blast of space Magic.

"Oh but you are a spectacle to behold Casper. Really. You are. If I didn't have my current Core, I think I might have loved to have yours. So much potential there. So much utility."

Two Rippers made from vines and thorns instead of meat and bone and sinew found my arms.

Yanking me down with their teeth and their jaws and trying to hold me in place.

I sent out another blast of teleporting energy and their bodies ended up all over the place.

They were then replaced by four more who did the same thing. While foxes with tails that ended in a collection of hissing, biting serpents joined them. While a number of badgers that spat out streams of noxious fumes jumped into the fray. Standing just out of reach of my hands while vomiting more jelly-like chemicals on me.

I roared, trying to marshal my strength again, but the feedback on my arms felt off. As if my head and the rest of my body were in different continents. In different worlds altogether.

"Why, even just the idea of arriving anywhere on time and without having to travel is enough to make me salivate. Perhaps I will work on getting that as my second Core. Something to think about."

I opened my eyes wide. Screaming off the top of my lungs and sending out another blast of Magic. Increasing the range of the attack by forcefully feeding more Magic into my Core.

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It worked, but a hundred more bullets found me before I could teleport away. Destroying more and more of my clothes while drenching me in more of the thick jelly.

The smell made my mind sway and swivel and I stumbled forwards and backwards again. Like a drunk trying to move out of a closing bar. I tried to focus my vision on some landmark. To try and find the exit and run there the usual way, but I was distracted by a flock of birds. Sparrows that emitted deafening shrieks. So loud that they became a weapon all their own.

I yelped and held my hands to my ears. The noise piercing me like nails on chalkboard. It would have been bad enough on its own, but the jelly, the pink mist… It made everything more and less real. My nerves more and less sensitive. The noise made my mind go blank again and I felt myself throwing up once more. While goosebumps broke out all over my skin.

Barbed, thorny bushes that lashed out with lacerating tentacles came to me then. Entangling themselves on me once more. Their vines and leaves coiling through the jelly that covered me as if applying a massage. With roots that rose up from the ground to tangle up my feet even further.

I hardly felt them and unleashed another blast without thinking too much about it.

But then more Rippers and more foxes and badgers and sparrows rushed me from all directions. Even as I felt a new kind of attack. The kind of psychic bolts that James and Charles could release with their Cores.

"Elsie…" I coughed out. Unleashing another blast to keep the monsters away.

"She's here too… please… listen…"

"Or perhaps all it would take is me ripping out your current Core and bringing it over to Patience. I'm sure she'd love to help me out. Don't you think so?"

I sent out three more blasts in quick succession and tried as hard as I could to run or at least to throw myself over and over in a single direction.

Then I opened my eyes and saw giant ants. A whole swarm of them. Each one as big as regular dog. They rushed out at me, pincers biting the air even as I saw gorillas and bears with bodies made of vines and leaves and hardened bark trying to flank me from either side.

I released another blast and unmade all the monsters at once. Determining to keep flinging myself in that direction in hopes of finding something. Either the entrance, or at least a wall I could use to block off some of the shots. Perhaps I could even follow it in either direction to find the entrance or to find Cecil's body.

I heard buzzing then and I felt rather than saw a swarm. Groups of buzzing bees that flew out of hives stuck up high on the crowns of the sky-shrooms. With stingers full of the fungal concoction, they carried.

At least, that was what it felt like when they tried to inject me and ended up exploding against my skin instead when something else struck in that same spot.

I kept up my charge, stumbling all the way, when I saw something familiar. Gargoyles, like the ones I was used to fighting in the old Dungeon. Along with the same giant toads found on the fourth floor back home.

I blinked and saw a scene from a lifetime ago. Me and Charles and Homer. Fighting as a group. Laughing as the latter barreled through a group so hard that their entrails exploded all over him.

That very same thing happened to me now and all their insides congealed on top of my skin like even more jelly. Hardening remarkably quickly and feeling as though they were pushing the chemicals further into my skin. Pressing them tightly against me.

Then the ghouls came and I knew better than to repeat my mistake, instead stopping to grab them before flinging them in other directions. But then they began to surround me and I ended up releasing another blast of Magic.

And of course, these ghouls were different, in that they exploded into clouds of thicker pink mist instead of simply tumbling down in pieces.

"Naughty naughty Casper." Cecil's voice mocked from all sides. "Really not being much of a sport about all this. How many times have you used that little trick by now?"

The chuckle echoed in my throat and my stomach.

"I wonder how many you have left in you?"

I heard the sounds of hooves of the grass and turned to see the outlines of centaurs flinging spears at me. Before then running away.

The wooden sticks did not pierce my skin, but the force they had added to the constant barrage of the pellets and I was swept off my feet at once.

Coughing and vomiting once more as I tried desperately to get up while more bees swarmed around me and more pellets exploded against my filthy form.

"How many indeed. A dozen? A hundred? Hard to say with how strong you are and how little I know about Magic, all things considered."

Rippers, foxes, badgers, toads, gargoyles, ghouls and sparrows all ran in together to attack me from all sides. All while the bears and the gorillas jumped on me and tried to hold me down and the ants tried to bite their way into my eyelids. To try and blind me.

I sent out the biggest blast of teleporting energy I had used up until that point, but the horde came at me again and again and again.

Never stopping.

Never relenting.

'He's trying to drain me!' I realized with alarm. 'It doesn't matter how high my level is, he can just keep me in a vat or a pool of the jelly for a long as he wants if I pass out once! He might just seal me inside a stone slab and suffocate me!'

I tried teleporting again, feeding far too much magic into the Skill for it to be safe.

'I might end up on the moon for all I know, but the moon is better than here, I can hold my breath long enough to regain my focus and I'm at least strong enough that re-entry won't kill me right away.'

I tried to do so, yelling with agony as the strain burned the inside of my chest.

But then something came up to my throat. Something sharp.

"Oh yeaaah." The whimsical voice hummed. "I love injecting traitors. Ye sir I do."

I tried to scream, but before I could, something wet and slimy slithered into my stomach through my throat. Forcing it open.

I sent all that magic towards a blast instead and felt half the floor disintegrating as a massive pocket of air became displaced and the vacuum sucked up what little oxygen was left.

I coughed. Trying to make myself throw up, but I couldn't.

I recalled some of the people I'd saved from Cecil days earlier and realized what that had been.

"You fucking sick fuck!" I yelled. "How could you do this to me!?"

Cecil laughed out loud once more.

"Takes one to know one I guess! How could I do this to you!? You have the nerve to ask that!? How about asking yourself how you could try and kill your old friends!? How about asking yourself how you found the sheer fucking nerve to take my family hostage you piece of shit!?"

The monsters did not come back at once and I realized my blast had upturned much and more of the soil on the ground and the stone in the walls. Leaving the massive, colossal chamber halfway empty.

I also realized that my reserves were almost empty too and I forced myself to stand.

"You're wrong." I told him truthfully. "I didn't take anyone hostage Cecil. It was your uncle. This whole thing was his idea. His plan. I just…"

I coughed and tried to throw up again, but only recoiled as I felt something slithering in my belly.

"I just had to take him up on it. I couldn't keep helping Carlyle. Not with the things he's done. He's evil. Cecil. He's gone too far and never had to face the consequences. He was turning himself into a tyrant. An emperor of the new world. The worst kind. The kind who thinks he can do anything and have it be justified, because he does it in the name of the greater good. You have no idea the thing's he's done. The things he'd be willing to do. I do and I had to act."

Cecil said nothing and I took that as my chance.

"Come with me Cecil. Your uncle is waiting for you. So is your aunt and your sister and all the copies you made."

There was an even longer pause.

"So you know where they are?"

"Yes." I sputtered. "I'll take you to them if you'll just…"

Then I stumbled and I looked down. Just long enough to see that the floor had opened up beneath me, to show a deep, black chasm.

And then I fell.