CHAPTER 29: Rot, Acid, and Sapphire

We stepped off the stone stairs. The floor ceased to be hard. It caved in under my boot with a disgusting squelch. Granite gave way to living tissue. The corridor of the eleventh floor resembled pulsating entrails. Purple mycelium covered the walls. Thick veins pumped fluid under the surface. Acid dripped from fleshy vines on the ceiling. The liquid hit the ground with a hiss, burning shallow holes.

Shnee stopped behind my shoulder. Her breath became short. She wheezed. Toxic mana choked her lungs. The white-haired girl tried to maintain her posture, but her organism could not cope with this biological minefield. The cold aura melted under the influence of corrosive fumes. I scratched my neck. I took a step towards her. I grabbed her firmly by the arm. I let a short impulse into her weaves. My sapphire aura surrounded her body, completely cutting her off from the toxic environment. The elf immediately took a breath. She sighed with relief. Her face regained its colors.

I turned to the corridor. My mind analyzed the surroundings on pure logic. Ordinary fencing made absolutely no sense here. Hard steel would simply get stuck in this elastic tissue upon the first thrust. Hacking meat would cost too much energy. I had to change the approach. I gave up on forming a sword. I opened the pores on my fingertips. Sapphire Slime flowed out with a hiss. I forced the raw matter into extreme compression. The blue mercury drastically reduced its volume.

After a fraction of a second, invisible threads tightened between my fingers. They hardened to the density of solid diamond. I constructed a monomolecular garrote. The sharp line vibrated in the air.

"We are changing the rules, Shnee," I threw coldly, testing the tension of the wire. "Ordinary blades will get stuck here. We are switching to structural cutting. Stay close and look up."

I stopped. I slowly raised my left hand. Shnee froze in a fraction of a second, even holding her breath. I looked up. Thirty feet above us, clinging to the soft mycelium of the ceiling, hung four massive beings. They resembled a cross between a starved centipede and an overgrown dog. Dark armor covered their bodies. Spikes protruded from their backs. They had no eyes. Instead of snouts, they possessed vertical slits.

The holes vibrated to the rhythm of our pulse. I scratched my neck. The air stank of rot. Pure logic quickly processed this data. Blind trash. They preyed solely on sound. They waited motionless until intruders made a mistake and generated noise, just to fall on their heads and crush them with their own mass. Pushing upward and hacking them with a sword in this tight corridor risked a shower of corrosive acid. I shooed away an intrusive fly with my hand. I yawned quietly. The situation had to be reversed. I had to force them into a brutal collision with our physics.

I straightened the fingers of my right hand. Sapphire Slime flowed from the pores with a hiss. I forced the mana into drastic compression. Invisible threads were formed. They were sharp like a razor. I used raw telekinesis. I pushed the blue smoke right under the ceiling. I stretched the wires exactly under the hanging abdomens of the monsters. I hooked the ends on thicker growths on the living walls. I built a murderous net in a dozen seconds. I created the ultimate crash zone. I checked the tension of the garrote. The wires vibrated slightly in the thick fume.

I slowly turned my head. I looked at the elf. Shnee asked no questions. Her learned instinct worked flawlessly. She understood the construction of the trap on the fly. Our synergy required no words. Her hand dropped to her new weapon. The rapier hissed, leaving the scabbard. The girl took a fluid step towards the wall. She located the thickest vein in the mycelium. She braced her boots against the soft ground. She took a short swing. She struck the mutated tissue with her hard crossguard. The sound of the impact was hollow. However, for those blind bastards it sounded like an alarm bell.

The sound of the impact echoed hollowly in the wet corridor. The reaction was immediate. The four blind beasts under the ceiling twitched. Their primitive nerve coils interpreted the noise as a free meal. Massive legs detached from the purple mycelium. The monsters simply let go of the vault. They began to fall. Two of them chose the shortest path. They plummeted down, gathering massive momentum. Gravity drastically accelerated their heavy bodies. I ignored them, keeping my hands deep in my pockets.

They fell straight into my garrote. There was no crash. The monomolecular wires were too sharp to put up any resistance. Hard armor met the tensioned barrier. The physics of the dungeon did all the dirty work for me. Their own mass pushed them through the invisible net. The threads cut into the limestone chitin like heated butter. The monsters were sliced into perfect slices. Bloody sections slid apart in flight. Entrails squirted to the sides. Acidic gore splattered the walls. The remains fell onto the soft floor with a wet smack. Only a steaming pile of meat remained of the two beasts.

The third hunter oriented itself in a fraction of a second. He changed his angle. He bypassed the sapphire slicer. He extended his front paws, aiming straight at the elf's head. I yawned. I did not draw my sword. I focused raw will in space. I struck with pure telekinesis. I caught the monster exactly mid-jump. Space around him hardened. I closed an invisible vise directly on his spine. I braced myself and jerked mentally down. Thick bones broke with a deafening snap. I broke the beast in half in the air. The limp body collapsed right under Shnee's boots. The elf did not even blink.

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The last one remained. The fourth predator landed smoothly on the floor. He ignored the death of his pack. He charged straight at me. He opened the vertical slit of his snout. He intended to bite off my arm. I opened the pores in my right hand. Sapphire Slime flowed out with a hiss. It hardened instantly. It created a blue glove with the density of solid diamond. When the monster was a step away from me, I shot my arm forward. I drove my hard hand straight into his open maw. I dived deep. My fingers clamped on the structure of the lower jaw. I braced my boots against the mycelium, blocking his charge.

"Bad choice," I murmured.

I jerked down with all my might. I brutally tore off his entire jaw. Black blood squirted like a geyser. It flooded my soles. The monster shuddered in death convulsions and collapsed into the mud. I threw the torn bone aside with Brazen chill. I lowered my hand. The slime retracted under my skin. It left behind clean fingers. I looked at the smoking remains. I dispersed the sapphire garrote under the ceiling. The wires evaporated. In the places where hard mana stones normally resided, strange bulbs now lay. They had a rubbery structure. I picked one up. It was warm. However, it emanated a gigantic concentration of toxic power.

"Disgusting, but dense," I assessed coldly. I threw the loot into the bottomless pouch. "Capital for Silas is growing. Gather the rest, Shnee. We are moving on."

We walked deeper, and the corridor became wider. The vault rose higher, and the hanging vines grew thicker. Some of them ended in closed calyxes, which looked like dormant bells. I ignored them. My mind scanned the surroundings, looking for anomalies in the ground. That was a mistake. I focused too much on the bottom, ignoring what hung right above our heads.

We were passing under a massive calyx. It seemed like a dead piece of trash. Suddenly, without any warning, the plant shrank violently. A wave of green fluid shot from its inside. It was not ordinary venom. It was a bucket of concentrated acid flying straight at us with a speed that broke my math. I had no time to form a sapphire shield. I had no time to dodge. My body reacted with pure instinct.

I strained my willpower, hitting with telekinesis vertically upwards. Space above us quivered. The mass of acid stopped in the air with an unnatural squelch. It froze. It literally hung in space, trapped in my kinetic grip, just inches from my face and Shnee's hair. I stood with my arm extended in front of me. I felt the heat radiating from this sludge. Drops that broke off from the main mass immediately burned through the floor, hissing and releasing toxic smoke. If this shit had fallen on us, it would have melted us to the bone in three seconds.

My pulse jumped to dangerous values. I lowered my gaze, still holding the acid in the air.

"Holy fuck," I threw out, shocked by my own lack of attention. "I shit myself.".

Shnee stood right next to me. Her hands clenched on the rapier hilt so tightly that her leather gloves creaked, and her knuckles turned white from the effort. She stared at the death hanging right above her head with wide eyes.

"Dave, throw this green shit out," she growled through clenched teeth. Her face twisted in a grimace of disgust. "It looks like it has a craving for me. Disgusting.".

A short gag reflex escaped her throat. She was usually a statue of ice, a cold murderer who didn't blink when decapitating ghouls. But this floor effectively tore the masks of control off us. We were a hair away from the stupidest death in the history of this dungeon. I looked at the green sludge suspended in the air. The corrosive fluid evaporated, irritating my eyes. My organism quickly cooled the momentary spike in my pulse.

"Return to sender," I muttered coldly.

I clenched my right hand into a fist. My telekinesis brutally compressed the spilled mass into a dense sphere. I made a short flick of my wrist upwards. I drove this corrosive payload back into the open calyx of the hanging plant with a massive momentum.

The acid hit the soft interior of the monster with a wet smack. The plant jerked wildly. Its structure was not immune to its own toxin in such a concentration. The substance immediately began to eat it from the inside. The fleshy vine withered and turned black in a fraction of a second. The dead carcass broke off from the ceiling with a disgusting crash, melting in its own juice on the purple floor. Only a smoking puddle remained.

I lowered my hand. I took a shallow breath. Shnee shook herself off. Her breath was still fast. She adjusted the collar of her armor. She looked at me, and genuine relief mixed with disgust flashed in her diamond eyes.

"I won't just look down anymore," she summarized shortly, spitting on the ground next to the smoking remains.

Pure logic suggested simple math. My leisurely Brazen chill was a mistake. The air was becoming thinner, and the thick mana slowly pressed against my protective aura. This biome will simply devour us alive if we stroll through it. The dungeon will boil us on a slow fire, devouring our oxygen reserves.

"Change of plan, Shnee," I threw firmly, turning to the corridor. "We ignore caution. We are switching to a murderous sprint. No stopping to fight. No picking up loot from the ground. If something stands in our way, we cut in full stride and fly further.".

She nodded. Her eyes burned with pure determination.

"We are looking for the Room of Breath," I added, compressing kinetic energy in my calves. "We need to catch clean oxygen before this rot burns out our lungs. Follow me!".

I shot forward, breaking the distance in a fraction of a second. The elf moved right behind me. I stopped strolling. We began a ruthless speedrun through the pulsating entrails of the eleventh floor.