Backwoods Dungeon

Chapter Sixty-Two

Nature’s Brow

Theo

There was no conceivable way we could all dodge bullets. Not even Rio, with her ridiculous dexterity.

The only thing that saved us was the sheer number of targets. They also didn’t want us all dead. Not yet, anyway. Instead, they aimed for legs. A volley of shots echoed out just moments before I activated my Cyclone Armor.

I screamed as agony ripped through my paws. Cyclone Armor activated in time to block the next shot, but the damage was already done.

Rio took a shot in one leg, and three more missed her before she managed to use Phase. She was quick on her feet though, and immediately began to throw a Frostbite trap, even as she crumpled to the ground.

I reactivated my healing aura. I was the only one with potions after Cimigda’s sneak attack, so I’d have to be careful rationing them.

I knew that adrenaline in my bear form was powerful, but I’d already been wounded, and the bullet that had hit my back leg hurt even through the rage.

Cimigda was nothing like the knight or the worm. I couldn’t overpower him, merely break even at best. For every swipe of my paws, he had triple. Two hands, four vicious claws, and a tail that had probably poisoned me when it sliced open my shoulder. I was aching and my healing aura was the only thing keeping up.

I spared a glance back for the others and found all three of them on the ground, sitting ducks for more bullets. McCarthy surprisingly, hadn’t been hit and was charging the ghostly hands, slicing at the wall with his huge sword.

Bullets came in waves as the ghosts struggled to fire half of the weapons. Some of them could only fire single rounds, and the ghosts had no idea how to reload them. As it turns out, plenty of the guns had only clicked, empty of bullets entirely.

The ghosts weren’t much smarter than the imps, but they were still firing an army of guns while mostly hiding inside of fucking walls.

Cimigda must have used that manipulation ability of his to hide the guns in the walls. While the ghosts could go right through them, the guns themselves were physical and couldn’t. I was the only explanation I could come up with.

My mana was draining fast as each shot got closer to removing my Cyclone Armor. The Frostbite trap landed, but the floor suddenly warped and a yellow light appeared beneath it, smashing the trap into the ceiling when the spike erupted out of the floor.

We would all die if this kept up. Hell, half the team behind us might already be dead since they had no protective abilities.

I… had one final option, though. One that I hadn’t tried yet. It was another costly ability, and I’d just restored most of my mana, anticipating the need for healing, not this. I couldn’t think of anything else that might save us.

I reached for that place inside where all the abilities came from, grasping at the new skill in the vain hope that it could stop the relentless barrage of bullets.

Mana poured out of me, leaving me instantly thirsty beyond anything I’d ever felt. Bigger than even the cost of the bear, the skill drained everything I had.

The hallway erupted. A forest grew where once stone walls had rained. Trees burst forth from the floor, fully grown, pushing aside old stones like they were just dirt. Vines sprung from he ceiling and grappled the ghostly hands, yanking dozesn of the beings out of the walls. Spines of grass burst from the earth, living needles skewering the hands as guns of every different type fell to the floor.

Unhallowed screams pierced the dungeon as the wraiths were dragged into the light, only for the newly formed jungle to swallow them. Trees formed mouths in their giant trunks and ate the wraiths whole, like something out of a Halloween movie. Those that the trees didn’t get were skewered by grass needles or choked by vines as soon as their necks were fully removed from the walls.

McCarthy continued trying to swipe at the few that dodged the wrath of my “Living Woods,” but his sword couldn’t touch them. Irritated, he let out a huge warcry. The ghosts that had avoided my initial strike were paralyzed by the cry, allowing my forest to consume still more of them.

“H-holy shit, Hon. What did you do?” Rio asked as she watched the carnage unfold.

Nature’s Brow had given me the Living Woods ability, and after seeing what it could do, I was determined to get the other two pieces in the set. Who knew what I might accomplish with all three pieces?

A gong sounded in my head, and thankfully, blessedly, loot was dropping from the wraith corpses wherever they died.

Some of the wraiths fled back into the walls. We could do nothing about them. Hell, I was battered and broken. Rio was lying on the ground, phased out and watching the carnage with shock, but her leg was clearly wounded. I looked around and, unfortunately, only saw mana potions and arrows close by, so I threw a potion to her.

One left.

We… were winning. We were all hurt, but the guns hadn’t gotten us. Once again, one of the major abilities proved its might at the expense of a boatload of mana. But for a moment, I finally felt safe enough to check on our allies and the prisoners.

I turned to spare a glance towards the rest of the group. McCarthy was the only one of us who didn’t appear to have taken a bullet, but that seemed to be sheer luck.

Nico was…

I turned away from the healer, striving to pin down the revulsion that riled up in my gut. Nico had been shot in the head.

The prisoners had almost all been wounded, save one girl who was desperately trying to hold her hands over bullet wounds in Nick’s abdomen.

Nick, freshly healed from the spike that had impaled him, was now riddled with bullet holes and was once again standing on death’s door. Aaron didn’t look to be doing much better. Still, the Necromancer at least managed to use some sort of ability. The ghosts in a small radius around him had been cursed, their transparent white shade becoming a sickly red.

With each red ghost that died, the Necromancer seemed to heal his wounds, seeping their energy like a vampire or something.

He grew strong enough to stand after my woods killed a few more ghosts but didn’t move to help.

To my shock, I watched him pull out a portal stone from the bag he’d secured, throw it at the ground, and jump through without a backward glance. At least one other prisoner, a girl around nineteen, followed him through as well, but everyone else was too wounded to follow. Soon enough, the comforting blue light winked away, Cimigda wrenching it closed before anyone else could get to it.

That fucking coward! He could have helped!

Bullets were still firing. The range of my Living Woods wasn’t far enough to cover the whole hallway, but the trees were at least providing us some cover that we could use to recuperate.

What were we still here for? I had a portal stone. If I could get everyone close enough to jump through, I could at least get most of them out…

Or I could if most of them weren’t wounded, probably bleeding out, needing healing.

I grabbed a mana potion that had fallen from a wraith corpse and downed it, drinking in the blissful feeling of rehydration after my throat felt like a parched desert. If the glass that contained these potions was normal, I was almost certain I would’ve broken it with my gigantic paws. Something about the form was instinctual, though, helping me to do normal human things even when I shouldn’t be able to.

I turned my healing aura back on, even as some sort of invisible timer reached zero. My trees vanished all at once. The horde of vines choking out the ghosts, the bullets of grass, and everything I'd summoned disappeared like it had never been, leaving divots and holes in the ground where they’d been planted.

The damage had been done, though. All along the hall’s sides were fallen guns and dead transparent bodies. Those few remaining ghosts that still lived were frozen with paralysis from McCarthy’s shout. Unfortunately, the Barbarian didn’t seem to have any good way to damage them.

I was about to consider this a victory when I saw the yellow light appear on the stone floor.

“Grooioo!” I screamed, horrified, but once again, my wife’s Dexterity proved effective. The moment she heard my bellow of panic, she rolled to the side. She screamed as she jostled the bullet wound in her leg, but she dodged the spike.

Cimigda seemed to slide up through the stone floor, right in front of McCarthy without warning. A huge spray of putrid green gas blasted out the creature’s mouth, sweeping over McCarthy in an instant, enveloping him in a green mist, that was almost immediately dispelled as the barbarian shouted yet another warcry.

The green air was buffetted away to all corners of the room, but unfortunately, that pushed it right over everyone except McCarthy.

I doubled over as sickness overwhelmed me. I’d barely felt the knight’s debilitating nausea attack, but Cimigda was clearly much stronger than him. Poison, the likes of which I’d never imagined, roiled through my nostrils. My stomach suddenly burned while my eyes flooded over with snot and mucus like I’d just walked through tear gas. I coughed, desperately hacking for air that couldn't make it through.

Rio fell to the noxious fumes, too. She had run out of mana for Phase and was caught while trying to grab up one of the mana potions on the ground. She was choking, hacking the same as I was as we both inhaled the noxious gas.

I tried to get to my feet. Stumbled. Fell.

McCarthy, having realized what he’d just done, flew at Cimigda in a rage, only for the demon to bat the glowing blade right out of his hands. While he was shocked, Cimigda grasped the Barbarian around the throat and lifted him off his feet. Choking but still undeterred, the Barbarian pulled his gun off its holster and aimed it straight at the demon’s eye, only for a lightning-quick claw to bat the offending weapon out of his hands.

His scream was choked off, and a spray of blood showed that the claw had removed more than just the gun.

We were going to die. Nico couldn’t heal us. He was dead. Aaron was gone. The rest of the prisoners were all down, not that they had any abilities that might help anyway.

My mana potion hadn’t restored enough mana to use another Living Woods, and the totems weren’t strong enough. They'd actually been unsuccessfully trying to slice at the demon this whole time.

I had grown a level but I wasn’t sure if I’d seen any abilities in my list that sounded strong enough to help. I could hardly think through the gas and could barely make myself read the options in the skill tree.

Confusion Totem? Maybe Boulder Toss? Fuck, what could get us out of this?! I would even take the damn meteor at this point because at least it might have a chance of hurting him!

“Hey, you ugly fuck!” came a sudden, loud scream before an earthquake shook the entire floor. “You left the door open…”

Through teary eyes, I could just barely make out a glowing golden fist that had just smashed the demon cockroach into the ground.

“T-Tessa?” Rio exclaimed.