Rules of Biomancy: A LitRPG Healer Fantasy

Elijah felt their approach before he saw them. A sense of wrong, on the top of his skin, rolling through the top layer of nerves. His magical senses were not to blame entirely for this feeling, the flesh on its own rejecting the oncoming threat.

A new reaction, one that worried Elijah.

Maybe some part of his connection to the grass had revealed their appearance before his eyes were forced to experience that displeasure. Though, at the very least, he and Grace finally learned what monsters fit the description of 'kitty.'

Four legs with paws, a long body, some patches of black fur, and a pair of yellow eyes that had locked onto them since the moment they stepped into the open space. Those features were the only parts that fit the feline category. The areas of the body that should've had fur were instead matted with moss and mycelium, and around the joints, particularly were sproutings of lichen and the small caps it usually associated with.

Wait, no. Even the fur, the black patches Elijah had thought to be hairs, were fungi as well. He could see the thin strips of cordyceps, moving around in a wind he couldn't feel.

'Losing connection,' the mind inside his robe said, alerting Elijah to yet another problem. With each step the fungi-infested panther variants took, the grass beneath the paws was killed off. Death for the blades did not come seconds after exposure, but immediately.

"Don't let these things touch you," Elijah whispered, not daring to take his eyes off the trio of beasts that were still slowly approaching. At the moment, the two groups still had a distance of thirty meters between them, but Elijah knew it wouldn't last.

"Wasn't planning on it," Grace said. Even with the massive stress that had been put upon her body less than two hours ago, she demanded action from her Core once again. No respite could be had.

Elijah supposed he was doing the same.

'How is it looking, Dawn?' he asked the duck, who was busy fortifying every root beneath the grass with serrated edges and modifying them to allow for quick strikes.

'Almost ready.'

'Almost' didn't matter to the beast, however. As Elijah shifted his weight, putting part of his weight on his heels, a burst of energy released from the back of the frontmost panther. A small explosion of spores, shooting into the air while it simultaneously lunged at him and Grace.

Elijah stepped backwards, hand going into his inner pocket to grab a vial of liquid fire, while Grace showed her preparations. With a swipe of her hand, a blast of wind came in from the side, hitting the panther from the right and curving its spine the wrong way.

A whine could be heard as it flew above Elijah's head, but he couldn't grant it more thought as the other two beasts took advantage of his momentary distraction.

Two more bursts of spores alongside two charges. One lunged at Grace, copying the first beast's method of attack, while the other kept itself low on the ground. Though that did not mean it moved slowly. Its paws were powerful enough that grass and dirt flew into the air with every step, killing off any life within.

'Done,' Dawn informed him.

'Then kill it,' he ordered, continuing to step back to give himself just half a second more time.

As commanded, Dawn channelled her own Mana, taking control of the modified roots and shooting them out of the ground. With a whip-like crack, they wrapped around the front legs of the panther, using its momentum to make it fall onto its back. The next set of roots didn't bother with legs, however, their sharp ends flew straight into the stomach of the infested creature.

It howled, as the roots wriggled around and sent out acids specifically chosen to cause as massive amounts of damage in as little time as possible.

'I got it!' Dawn shouted with glee, not stopping her assault as more and more roots obeyed her call. Within just another second, Elijah could barely see the beast.

As for the other enemy, Elijah could see Grace handling herself well. The repeated move of lunging at her had caused her to repeat her way of defence. A sharp hit from the side made the spine of the panther break, but it didn't seem to care. Even when Grace's continued assaults caused more and more harm to the creature, flesh flying off with every attempted attack and bones audibly breaking inside the limbs, it still struggled to get at her.

Elijah tried to say something, but a small inhale beforehand caused some of the spores shot out by the beasts to enter his lungs. The result was instant pain, tears appeared in his eyes, but he couldn't be bothered by that now.

If the beast Grace was fighting could handle having its spine broken, that meant the first attacker wasn't out of commission either.

I sense you.

Channeling of [Plant Bond] has been activated! Current cost: 89MP/sec

A patch of broken grass four meters behind him made it obvious where the first panther had gone. Without wasting even half a second turning around, Elijah pinpointed the position of the lunging beast, ordering the roots below it to attack.

Working like a grouping of spears, the roots pierced the core of the beast, stopping the panther from closing the gap. Elijah still retreated, already feeling the death of the roots that had impaled the monster, but the damage they had likewise done was undeniable.

Nevertheless, the sound akin to branches cracking reached his ears, and the impaled beast broke free. Eyes still on him, it ran towards him.

Elijah didn't have a chance of summoning the same defence. Neither did he dream of it working. Instead, he threw the vial of liquid fire at the monster before jumping to the side.

His dodge didn't work on such a beast, one paw still reaching him and making a deep cut on his arm, but it had prioritized hurting him in favor of protecting itself.

The vial broke on its head, the first sign of a crack letting in air and making the liquid within burst into a flow of flames.

A screech mirrored by the two other beasts filled the area, making Elijah cover his ears. He watched the beast wriggle around on the ground, desperately scratching at its head but failing to remove the heat. He could hear the pops as flesh boiled, as bone became visible, and as all movements ceased when the brain was reached.

'It's acting weird now,' Dawn said, using a root to poke at the entrapped panther from before. It still moved, showing signs of life, but it lacked the strength and reasoning from before. A broken mind. 'What to do?'

'Cut into the skull and liquify the brain,' Elijah replied, before turning to Grace. He saw no cuts, but she looked pale. At least her opponent seemed worse, unable to even stand. "Cut off the head and I'll have Dawn take care of it."

She did as much, a moment of focus making a sharp blade of wind cut through the infested flesh. Dawn got on the case as soon as it touched the grass, a root digging straight through the bone and spraying some form of acid, which caused the body to cease all movement.

That decapitation hadn't caused that already made Elijah more than a little perturbed.

"Grace, how are—" he began to ask, before a harsh cough forced itself upon him. His lungs hurt through it, and his stomach began to cramp. "That's not good."

"Spores?" Grace wheezed out, looking even paler as the coughing started for her as well.

The spores.

With the help of Breathe Life, Elijah inspected his internal organs. Nothing had reached the blood, his heart was still beating with a normal rhythm, but the lungs… black and yellow spots at the top, with some growths beginning in the throat.

'Dawn, I need you to extract this mess from me, while I work on her,' Elijah said, ignoring his still-bleeding arm in favor of moving towards Grace. "It's a fast-working infestation. I have to get this out of your system before it gets any kind of grip."

"But what about— oh," Grace began to question, before Dawn flew onto Elijah's shoulder and a green tendril from her body dug into his throat to take care of the first group of growths. "How much will this hurt?"

"A series of sharp stings which should equal getting a strong slap on the face," Elijah lied, happy for the adrenaline in his system and his current distraction.

Dual-Channeling of [Breathe Life] and [Plant Bond] has been activated! Current cost: 32MP/sec

As the world began to show off its true colors, Elijah honed in on the first group of the infestation. Small tendrils had started to push through the flesh around it, clawing for sources of nutrients. Elijah had no patience for such a display, using pure force to cut off those. Such a method wouldn't work for the original mass, however. He needed to gain control over it if he wished to remove the infestation without manually cutting it out.

'Cease your attempts to destroy,' he ordered the moment he connected to the growths. And, if the infestation had been made from a plant or mere mutated flesh, there was no doubt in his mind that it would have obeyed, and yet… as if he had said nothing at all, it continued with its work.

His power had no effect.

Tendrils steadily spread out from the growths again.

'I can't stop them,' Dawn sent, clearly frustrated. 'Should I eat them?'

If she did that, Elijah was very aware he wouldn't be able to withstand the pain. Would that be worth it? If it worked, it meant she would need to repeat the process on Grace, which she would hate, but it hardly mattered right now. If it didn't work, however, it would mean him being unconscious and Dawn being tasked to figure it out on her lonesome.

… Yeah, no.

'Keep them at bay as best as you can,' Elijah ordered, doing the same while he tried to figure out how to make this work.

The Plant Bond spell wasn't working, which, in retrospect, should've been expected. Elijah wasn't dealing with a plant cell, which would follow his every word if he offered them the mana to do it. They were simple, not primitive, but very single-minded in their focus. Flesh was different from them in that each section had more complex roles, with different responses and more preprocessing when given commands. When manipulating flesh, Elijah had to fit in, so to speak, imitating their patterns and making it seem like a change was a decision that came from those in power.

Both flesh and plants worked in that manner, having a higher power that had the final say, who could give orders and have them be followed. A top-down approach that allowed for strict communication and efficiency.

The fungi festering inside Elijah's throat did not follow that same ruleset. Internal communications were easy to spot, small strings glowing like a spider's web, but there was likewise a clear disconnect between every small piece of every growth. They might've stayed together, but there was no cohesive mind pulling the strings; there was no overreaching decision maker that Elijah could communicate with. Each small dot was its own leader, possessing a small piece of logic that allowed it to work in tandem with every other part of the growth.

That lack of hierarchy made Elijah's need to make them stop very difficult. Standing above them in internal rankings meant nothing if he tried. The fungi wouldn't obey him. They wouldn't even understand that he was sending them an order.

But then… the only way to get a message through would be to put himself in that same position, to connect with the mycelial web and push them towards another purpose.

In theory alone, such a method sounded very similar to the other approaches, and even with very little modification needed, but in practice, it was a massive headache.

The first attempt, where Elijah kept true to the original idea, went well for a single breath. Imitating the spores, copying their signaling in how they were sent and received, he was able to connect and influence the growth somewhat. A slight nudge, though that came with a magnitude of resistance that he was completely unprepared for.

'Why?'

'I don't understand.'

'Food here.'

'Why change?'

A million small voices simultaneously striking down on his orders. Not out of malice, not with the intent to hurt Elijah, but because they didn't understand. Each was presented with the same situation, had come to the same conclusion based on the input, and now one of the others wanted something else? Elijah could see that they valued the new input, some very briefly altering their focus, but the decision of the collective came first.

His approach needed to change. A direct imitation, with him as the conduit, caused too much feedback for his mind to handle, and the singular point of attack didn't lend itself to swift response times. That meant he'd need to create an abstraction layer that could handle the workload, which would be split up between multiple smaller units to create an—

Elijah inhaled sharply as Dawn cut through one of the growth's attempts to enter his bloodstream. He felt an apology sent his way, but he didn't have the energy to reply. Grace needed his attention more.

Layer of protection. Multiple units, so the growths listen.

If the growths were influenced by each other, and if Elijah could keep his word constant, the average mandate of the growths would slowly move over to his own.

Sound in theory, but hellish to implement while under constant pain and stress.

"How much longer?" Grace got out, barely able to speak. Though he was hindering a rapid spread, the growths had started to put pressure on the blood vessels in the throat. "I'm getting dizzy."

"Not much longer," Elijah said. For once, his words were true. Either this would work, or they both had a likely chance of a very painful death. "Just keep still."

"I can't feel anything below my neck, so that won't be a problem."

Those words pushed him to push harder, not letting his Core think it had even a moment to recover from its previous work.

Through a mix of initial impressions, brief studies on the infestation and their internal structure, and whatever tidbits he could remember about the magical mastery of manipulating fungi that he had half-skimmed some weeks before, Elijah created the mental construct needed to make the second iteration work. Some physical manifestations were required as well, the left sleeve on his robe taking up that burden, but everything seemed to hold.

And, with everything put into place, there was only one thing left to do.

'Stop the spread,' Elijah ordered, hearing the faintest of echoes as the new layer of units repeated his message again and again. Some initial backlash was felt, but an increased flow-rate of Mana to the robe allowed the unit to stay intact.

Ten seconds passed, Dawn copied his design after the first five, and, amazingly, the agony of his flesh being torn apart inside out faded just a little.

The command had worked.

Spell learned! [Fungi Bond](Tier 4) has been added to your spell collection.

Newly energized by the confirmation from the system and secure in the fact that his implementation would continue to work, he sent out the second and final command.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

'Cease to be.'

It was a message that would never be sent by the fungi; the little growths always moved with the final goal of self-preservation through infestations, but that didn't matter anymore. Elijah spoke, and the small minds listened soon enough, repeating the message to their brethren while they self-destructed.

In mere seconds, an infestation that could've ended their lives became nothing more than dead waste, something that took very little time to maneuver through the body and expel out of the skin.

"Are you done?" Grace asked, to which Elijah nodded, prompting the wind mage to drop down onto the ground. "Tell me that we won't have to do this again, with each group we encounter."

"Hopefully not," Elijah said, taking out some pliers and delicately putting each of the expelled growths into a vial. "If it does happen again, however, I should be able to deal with them much faster."

"You better."

After some additional checks of their surroundings, which assured them that no more of the beasts had gathered to tear them apart, Grace fell asleep upon the flower bed. Elijah could feel the calling as well, but his tired body refused the idea. That spike in adrenaline, the rush of blood through his veins, it didn't dampen as quickly as it would've ten years ago. He couldn't adjust, leaving him feeling both restless and wide awake.

At the very least, it allowed him to continue his work on mapping out the floor of the Dungeon. As has been described to him previously, there was a certain distance where his Core couldn't influence his creations enough, making it impossible for them to passively gather energy from the air. This severely limited the reach of his vision, hampering the idea of being able to see across the entire floor without leaving the open area.

By this point, Elijah was relatively sure it couldn't be done, but that didn't mean he couldn't improve his range.

The first adjustment was simply to allow the transference of Mana between strands. The current networking capabilities made this possible already, since communication between the grass patches needed those persistent connections, and it was only a matter of modifying what messages the different sections could request of one another.

After adjusting the input rate, making the grass with more than enough Mana take in more than they would spend, he nearly doubled his range. Some tweaking around with how the energy was transferred tripled it.

'Has to be… Six hundred meters of range?' Elijah muttered inside his mind, floating above the map while he worked. It was hard to get a precise count of the distance trekked, since the winding paths didn't allow for clear calculation, but his estimations couldn't be too far off. 'Not bad.'

But it could be better.

With the newfound spell under his belt, Elijah was able to incorporate one of the abilities shown off during the fighting. Namely, those sudden bursts of Mana that came from the creatures. While he hadn't noticed it during the fighting itself, the beasts hadn't called upon the energy from deep within their body. Instead, the patches of fungi-infested flesh that had spat out the spores had carried those higher amounts of Mana by themselves.

Given how small those patches were, it revealed the fungi's capability to compress large amounts of Mana into a very small space. A specific type of fungi, to be clear. A yellowish type of cordyceps, which seemed to sway towards Elijah's hand each time he came near.

Very disgusting, but likewise with a lot of potential.

The current issue with his map design was the transfer of Mana to the areas further away. The grass within range of his Core could only harvest so much energy from the Dungeon, and the transfer to the brethren wasn't lossless.

If he wanted to increase the range, he would need to supply the energy to the grass without using the current network as the supplier.

In other words, he needed a new unit, one capable of independent movement.

'Am I being replaced?' Dawn asked as she listened in on his thoughts and watched schematics float around. 'I don't want to be replaced.'

'You're not being replaced,' Elijah assured the golden duck. 'Even with everything I've learned, I'm not sure I could make anything close to you.'

'Yay!'

For a moment, he debated clarifying the meaning of his words, but then thought better of it. He had his schematics to work on instead. If he wanted the ability for a unit to move energy from the center area to the outskirts, without using the grass network, it meant that it would need to move independently. That meant a body with legs and the ability to navigate.

Navigation was easy. Legs… not so much. Since Elijah made the units smaller, around the size of his hand, they didn't need bones and such, but he still needed to strengthen the limbs to hold itself up properly and efficiently.

The final product became something akin to a three-legged bug of sorts, with tendrils to move around, a thick carapace to protect the energy-filled cordyceps within, and a few dots on the sides that acted as sensors. And, after a few iterations of the internal wiring, they could walk slowly without stumbling, nor did they spend too much energy in their movements. From the rough estimations, Elijah doubted that even a tenth of the capacity of each unit would be spent when delivering further out than five kilometers.

But a single unit couldn't hold too much Mana, in the grand scheme of things. Over a thousand MP was being spent on the network each second, and the unit could barely hold two hundred.

Luckily, Elijah had no qualms about having more of those little bugs moving around. Having to create them themselves, however… that wasn't as grand an idea.

That meant another round of modifications, where, as a new section was created, a set of units would be created from others to fuel it. A duplication process, which required strict authorisation from the central command.

Even if he didn't fear the plant-fungi assimilated creatures, he also didn't want to unintentionally create an army of them.

'Dawn, stop eating them,' he asked when he opened his eyes and found the duck slurping up the units moving around in the grass nearby. 'I need them.'

'But tasty.'

'You think everything tastes good.'

'No, I don't. Rocks aren't tasty,' she denied, before imagining dwarves with stone skin. 'Maybe. Need to taste more rocks.'

Elijah noted the need to keep a close eye on the duck whenever they got out of this place.

As he ate another handful of the caffeine-filled apples, he observed the spread of the newly created units. As intended, they steadily moved over to their assigned sections, transferring their energy to the grass before moving back to the center to harvest more from the air.

It was slow at first, with only a few dozen of the units and their slow speeds, but as their numbers went into the hundreds and then the thousands, the benefits became obvious.

'Two kilometers of range,' Elijah noted, the map in his mind stretching further and further out. 'Not terrible.'

He also noted the red dot that appeared an hour after, two and a half kilometers west of their position. It wasn't constantly visible, showing up in one tunnel briefly before reappearing in another tunnel nearby.

Teleportation of some form, perhaps? Whatever creature it was, it was idly snacking on the units in those sections. Elijah wasn't a fan, and he knew that it would have to be dealt with. The Dungeon had required the deaths of all foes on this floor, and this creature was clearly hostile.

"Grace," he said aloud, poking the Wind Mage's sleeping form. "You've slept for nearly ten hours now. While I wouldn't want to ruin your beauty sleep, I think the time for action has come."

"Ten hours?" she half-groaned as she slowly sat up from the sunflower, wiping at her eyes groggily. "I just barely closed my eyes, and now you— Okay, no! What in the nine hells is that?"

Huh. The fearless Wind Mage, who had spat at a grandmaster of the Arcane Arts, was afraid of bugs. Elijah hadn't expected that.

"These are the secret to surveying more of the floor," Elijah said, detailing the fundamentals of how they allowed him to stretch the range of the map. "If I had a week, I might've made them more aesthetic, but these are functional regardless."

The three-legged unit in his hand wriggled, as it tried to free itself from his grasp. He didn't force it to stay, allowing the unit to drop back onto the grass and begin its trek into the far-away sector it had been assigned to. A thirty-minute journey that it would happily do without any other thoughts.

"The fact that you just held one of those things is just unbelievable," Grace said, still refusing to get off the giant sunflower. "If I'm going anywhere, you better make sure that they stay away from me. If any of them touch my feet, I'm going to freak out."

Elijah didn't voice his opinion about the timidity of the youth, just promising that the units would do their best to avoid any and all obstacles in their way. If she didn't go out of her way to step on them or directly in their path, they wouldn't go near her.

That promise allowed the duo to make their way away from the open area and into the maze. Dawn sat on his shoulder, keeping an eye on the nearby area through a direct connection with the roots. Elijah did the same on a larger scale, his third eye constantly observing any updates from the map, and Grace added an extra layer of protection by monitoring the wind currents. If anything larger than the units took as much as a deep breath within a hundred meters, she would know.

"Do you have any details on what creature we're facing?" Grace asked.

"It briefly appears on the map before disappearing and reappearing in a different nearby tunnel," Elijah explained. "Has a taste for eating my bugs as well."

"Being an omnivore is a standard for creatures within dungeons, so that doesn't tell us much, but the disappearing acts make me wonder," she commented. "If it were instantaneous movement, something able to teleport would be likely, but that there's a break between appearances… could it be that the grass is slow at detecting the beast?"

"A delay of a second wouldn't be a shock to me, but I'm seeing disappearances longer than ten seconds," he countered. "And some of the units are killed during those disappearances."

"That complicates matters."

Having to wait and see was becoming a trend that Elijah disliked, but there was little else that could be done. If needed, he had three more vials of liquid fire on him, two vials of acidic poison, and two vials of bright flashes. For anything else, he'd need to use Biomancy alongside Dawn.

"I'm not sensing it yet," Grace said, as they got closer to the designated spot on the map. According to the map, they were less than a hundred meters away from the red dot. "Which direction is it supposed to be?"

"The end of the tunnel coming up on our right," Elijah replied, clicking his tongue as the dot disappeared. "It vanished."

"Ain't that just dandy," Grace muttered. As they reached the tunnel where it was supposed to be, they saw nothing but the dark sky above, the smooth walls of stone to the side, and the green grass on the ground. "Nothing."

That couldn't be.

Looking at the map again, Elijah knew that this tunnel led to a dead end. The only way out was through where they stood, but no creature could be seen.

Wait.

A smell reached his nose. Breathing in a little heavier, he noted hints of rotting flesh and the acidic sting he'd smell when cutting open the stomach of recently killed animals. The wind hadn't changed, however, so why—

Grace shoved him to the side, in the same instant that he felt something sharp go right through his left cheek.

He bled heavily.

Where had the attack come from?

"It's invisible," Grace cursed, conjuring up strong winds that made the grass violently go around. Elijah could see cuts on her arms. Blood covered the skin already. "I can't sense it!"

Neither could he.

A sound akin to paper being ruffled reached his ears, and he saw a cut appear in the stone wall beside his face.

The attempt on their lives had only begun.

An enemy not visible to the naked eye.

Neither could he spot any magical signature. A near-perfect cloak. But how did it avoid being seen through the grass? The strands did not care for signatures or sight, only needing an abnormal pressure from above to locate the enemy.

"It's flying," he concluded. It didn't narrow down where it was hiding, but a plan still formed in his head. "Try to keep us safe."

"I promise nothing," Grace said, sending out blades of wind at random in an attempt to locate the monster.

'Dawn, we need to work fast,' Elijah ordered, grabbing one of the units from the ground and sending in enough Mana that it was on the brink of exploding. 'Help me.'

She obeyed, assisting with peeling away the protective layer on top, as Elijah did his to imitate the burst implementation he'd seen on the infested panthers. He didn't need a complete copy, but something… there.

'Spread out,' he ordered the unit, before throwing it into the air with all his might.

By the time it had flown a meter upwards, an invisible blade had already cut it in two. The unit did not care; however, already prepared to split into a million pieces.

"Get ready," Elijah ordered, not bothering to shield his eyes as five hundred MP worth of spores filled the air above them. The sky was gone, replaced by a thick blanket of spores.

Please work.

"What are you doing?" Grace shouted, as Elijah's eyes flew around, trying to spot the discrepancy.

"It's invisible, but that doesn't guarantee it can do more than empty air," he spoke fast, giving up on normal sight as he channeled Mana into his eyes. "Look for a pocket free of spores."

Her eyes widened as she understood, and the winds picked up as she increased her spending. Wherever the creature was, it was panicking. Elijah winced when he felt the cut on his right thigh. If he hadn't shifted his weight, it would've gone through the bone.

"Found you," came the declaration, Grace's voice echoing a dozen times over. The winds, which had matched the might of a storm, picked up even further, to a point where Elijah had to fall onto his knees to avoid being pulled away.

And yet, through the wind and the pain, he heard that satisfying crunch of a body hitting the stone wall.

The wind ceased in an instant, the spores gone as well, and a half-visible bird with a wingspan of nearly two meters could be seen trying and failing to fly.

Whatever powered its invisibility failed again and again, each time it hit the ground. It couldn't fly, the right wing broken, but the silver feathers were still dangerous. Once another attempt at flight failed, one of the eyes pointed their way, and the still-functioning wing flapped, releasing a half-dozen feathers flying at them at incredible speeds.

Elijah could do nothing, his ability to react nowhere near fast enough, but Grace didn't suffer from such weakness. A gust of wind countered the feathers, pushing them from above and into the ground.

Even with their speed halved, each feather could still plant itself deep into the earth. Elijah didn't doubt they could've gone straight through him.

'Kill,' Dawn ordered the grass close to the bird, without his input. Faster than he could blink, roots with jagged edges shot out and embedded themselves in the bird. It took less than a second for the poison to still the beating heart within. 'Can I eat it?'

'Not yet,' he said, putting a hand on his thigh. Even if the attack hadn't reached the bone, he knew for a fact that the quad muscle had suffered substantial damage.

Channeling of [Flesh Bond] has been activated! Current cost: 67MP/sec

He gritted his teeth when the muscle reconnected with an audible snap. At least the cut on his cheek was only skin-deep.

"That was a little more stressful than the first fight," Grace commented, as Elijah dealt with her wounds as well. Her forearms were covered in cuts, most superficial, luckily, and one wound dangerously close to taking out her right eye. "I couldn't sense it at all."

"With enough proficiency, invisibility-based illusions can fool most senses," Elijah said as a small form of consolation. "Did the book describing the monsters in the Dungeon mention this?"

"It failed to comment on the invisible bird," she replied with some hint of irritation. At least it wasn't pain she was focused on anymore. "Maybe it's one of the rarer variants found in the depths."

"Perhaps," he agreed, finally noticing how… silent it had been in his head. His sleep-addled mind hadn't thought it strange, but the extra energy from the pain made him realize the lack of comments from the Dungeon. 'Did you grow bored of this already?'

He sent the message into the void, letting the connection stay open until the familiar pressure reached his shoulders.

'Oh, no, I'm still keeping an eye on your progress,' the Dungeon assured him. Her voice didn't carry that immature enthusiasm at the moment, however. 'I'm just a little distracted by the dwarves being weird.'

'Weird in what way?' Elijah asked, briefly entertaining the idea that an attempt might have been made to recover him and Grace from the depths.

'Somebody is trying to break into the area that the royals cut out,' came the answer.

'I didn't think that was possible.'

'It is, but nobody has tried to do it for several centuries,' the Dungeon explained. 'There's technically a collapsed tunnel which leads into the area, but I haven't repaired it since the last time they broke it. I didn't think anybody would even know about it anymore.'

Huh.

Elijah found little pleasure in that piece of information. Somebody taking an alternative route meant trouble.

'I assume that the others from my group still spend their time in the monster-free section?'

'Almost the entire day, yes. The big one isn't happy, though. Very destructive.'

Aleksi.

'Do they think we're dead?'

'The big one is muttering about you getting a free vacation, so I don't think so,' the Dungeon recalled. 'I haven't been listening in on their conversations, honestly. The trio trying to break in is a lot more entertaining.'

Somehow, he wasn't surprised by that. Yet… the lack of ability to assure Aleksi that he and Grace still drew breath troubled him greatly. Especially when the Dungeon refused to help him alleviate that concern.

'Any message sent into the giant's head will make it pop, remember?' the Dungeon reminded him.

'Something indirect then,' Elijah countered. 'A carving on a tree, or that stump that Jack is using as a seat.'

'... Well, I guess that wouldn't be impossible,' the Dungeon admitted. 'How about a little depiction of your misadventures down here? A little side-project for me, while you go through the rest of the small fish?'

He would've preferred sending an actual message that included words, or a warning about the to-be intruders, but this would have to suffice. For now, they could only continue removing all forms of resistance in this maze.

'Dawn, stop eating the bird.'

If they were to have a chance at survival, they needed to figure out the secrets of the enemy and any possible weakness there might be.