A Jaded Life

With the guy’s body pinned to the floor, the fight should have been over. Sure, he was still able to wave his arms and attack with the device on his right arm but really, with the massive hole in his guts, he should have different things to consider. That was made doubly true when one of Luna’s vines came down and thoroughly mangled that arm, leaving him fairly harmless.

However, contrary to expectations, the fight wasn’t over. Just the fight with the guy. With Silva moving back and Alex helping her to get the goop she had gotten in her fur from the last attack out of said fur, I moved forward a little to assist Lia with the last few snakeheads. Curiously, those snakeheads had turned utterly berserk when their boss fell, leaving me curious why they would fight to die with their leader but given that the leader had claimed to be some sort of God in the beginning and repeated that claim multiple times throughout the fight, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. Who knew what their religion and mythology said about those who joined their God in death, it might be their ticket to paradise. So, obviously, we readily helped them to punch that ticket.

Suddenly, I noticed movement out of the corner of my eyes, coming from the broken body of our adversary. There, a worm similar to the ones we had seen crawl from the snakeheads’ guts came slithering out of the mouth of our downed foe, launching itself in my direction with incredible speed. It might have been a little larger than the others, maybe two feet in length and twice as thick as my thumb but other than that, the only distinguishable feature was the frilly head with its fairly massive jaws. At the same time, I felt a Mind Magic attack powerful enough to double as a sledgehammer trying to cave in my skull, or maybe just stun me until the worm could get to me and do whatever it was that these things did.

Given that I had no interest in getting a first-hand demonstration of the reason the worm came from the guy’s mouth, I had no interest in deep-throating anybody’s worm, I managed to twist away and slap the thing aside with a bit of Ice. Still, the attack left me staggered while the worm was now moving towards Luna, a little further back. Luckily, my companions had heard my distress and noticed the slithering worm. All of us started to move, trying to intercept the worm and pin it to the ground just like we had done with the original guy.

One of Alex’s grenades spread some sort of goop around, slowing the thing down and giving both Luna and myself more time to strike with our magic. Nobody wanted to get too close to the thing, given that it could stun somebody and given what we had seen, having one of these worms bite you might allow them to crawl into your body. Sure, I might be able to use Blood, Mind or Death Magic to force them out but I wasn’t about to test that until we had no other choice.

Finally, it was Lia who managed to pin the creature down, quite literally. She had kicked the last snakehead into the standing pool and sneakily launched her knife at the thing, hitting it with enough force to skewer it and even penetrate into the concrete a little. The worm continued to screech in a sharp voice, giving all of us a quickly growing headache but luckily, it didn’t last for long. The wound it had taken was a mortal one, obviously, and finally, the worm stopped moving and screeching. At the same time, the pool of standing energy disappeared with a soothingly soft sound, leaving us in complete and utter silence.

“That was something,” I muttered, letting a bit of tension drain from my body, a sensation that was doubled when I noticed the notification that we had completed the Foothold Dungeon. So, there shouldn’t be any more enemies waiting to attack us, unless they had managed to evade us on our way down. Unlikely but not impossible, though what they would do now, with the strange pool gone and their leader dead, I wasn’t sure. Likely fight to the death, as the others had but who knew?

Out of curiosity, I checked what the notification labelled the worm as and was briefly confused that we received EXP twice. Once for killing a host, once for killing what the system labelled as a Goa’uld, though why that was only true for the last guy, I had no idea. Maybe it didn’t really matter, though given their previous behaviour, I wondered if they had been some sort of partnership, similar to the one between Lenore and myself, only without the useful spatial domain into which the other could disappear. Or maybe the connection was less savoury, with the worm driving the body but if that had been the case, what about the numerous snakeheads we had killed on the way down? For them, we only received EXP once, so there might be a difference. Who knew?

“Any idea what that thing might have been?” Lia asked, looking at the worm, unwilling to get too close to it, partially out of caution partially because the slimy thing was utterly disgusting.

“A more mature version of the worms but why it came from the mouth, I don’t know. We might find some answers when checking the guy’s gut but given that I skewered him, I doubt we’ll be able to figure out the details. But we might want to see if we can use the things on his arms, those might be useful if they aren’t broken,” I suggested, moving over cautiously, using a bit of magic to try and see if I could spot any further life signs. Who knew, maybe the guy had multiple of these worms in his body, just waiting to burst out and try to burrow into our bodies. Just the thought made me shiver in disgust and I quickly decided to scan the area multiple times, so I was as certain as I could be that there were no more.

Then, I checked the fairly delicate devices on his arms. It was a pleasant surprise when they came off easily, allowing for a closer inspection, both visually and using the Inspect ability. Curiously, both items had the same name, Kara’Kesh, whatever that meant, but their usage was entirely different, as we had observed. The one the guy had on his left arm, the shield, could only do that, project a shield to absorb attacks to a certain point. Additionally, it bestowed a slight increase in Vitality to the user, making them just a little hardier. The other was used to attack by converting Astral Power into either the wave of kinetic force we had seen repeatedly, an attack described by the system as a ‘Plasma Lance’ and one called ‘Mental Shock’. There was no attribute increase on it, though given its versatility, that was okay with me. We would have to test things a little, see who could use it best and all that.

Other than those two devices, the guy had a little more bling on him but nothing we recognised as useful. Still, it was bagged before we focused on the now stripped body. Curiously, the guy didn’t have that pouch in his gut, making me wonder where he kept his worm.

Not that it truly mattered where the worm had been, not unless we came across these things again in the future. For now, we could focus on the area around us and the ring that previously held the pool of energy. But before I was willing to investigate that and start our way back to the surface, I checked my notifications and got a wide, wide grin. Level hundred had been reached and breached, meaning I could soon try to cross the second divide, leaving me quite ecstatic.

Furthermore, the level-up meant I received another chunk of attribute points but sadly not enough to gain a trait, disappointing me a little. I had hoped I’d get one for reaching forty agility at level ninety but apparently that wasn’t the case, maybe the difference in level and attribute was too big. Hopefully, once I gained the attribute points for crossing the divide, I would get another trait.

But first, we had things to explore, like that giant ring and the entire complex we were in. Who knew what the system had left for us to find and what had been here before the system changed the world? This was clearly designed after a military base and given that we still had electric lights, it wasn’t a stretch to hope that they had some decent food stores which we could loot. We only had to find the mess and maybe look around to see if they had some sort of supply depot, there could be countless treasures hidden down here in this wonderful dungeon. We just had to go and explore some more now that the worm infection was dealt with.