“I think that should do it,” Zarian said, shutting the grimoire with an echoing thunk, the spectral chains rattling.
“I’m hungry,” Para said, this ti speaking from Zarian’s stomach. She had ford a wide, sharp-tooth mouth there.
Zarian blinked down at the mouth on his stomach. “Huh, that’s honestly one of the freakiest flesh transmutations I’ve seen from you. I guess we should feed the beast.”
“I thought you would find this impressive,” Para said through the mouth-stomach.
Looking over himself, Zarian noticed he’d lost so muscle mass. This usually happened when they’d gone days without eating. He wasn’t exactly sure if it was because of his own ravenous hunger or if a small portion of Para was eating him alive to maintain herself.
Unlike most people who would find that horrifying, Zarian took it all in stride. In fact, they should show this trick off to the others, especially Gilbert.
Para stitched his stomach back to normal and dropped piles of food for them both from the pocket dinsion. Zarian tore apart his boxed als, especially the aty ones. They were hot, steamy, and decently tasty. The cooks from the top gourt kitchen were quite excellent as a temporary asure.
Para used tentacles and clawing arms covered in mouths to ravage corpse after corpse of beasts, spies, and monsters. She enjoyed the spies the most, taking her ti with the human flesh and bones.
Zarian should find more high-quality humans to feed her. He sensed Para was still a little sad that she hadn’t gotten to gorge on the terrorist paladins as much as she wanted.
Once they finished eating, Zarian noticed he’d regained his peak muscular form. He shouldn’t let himself forget to eat and feed Para. But even his High Rune Mindfra couldn’t stop him from being hyper focused on fun magic stuff.
“There may co a ti when you should turn off, Zarian,” Para said, speaking from the hand of a parasite limb made from the battle kilt. She had half a dozen of them encircling Zarian’s waist. “I’m an obvious weakness for you if we’re ever trapped sowhere without food.”
“I’ll gladly bear that weakness,” Zarian said.
“But, Zarian–”
“Para, we’re in this together.” Zarian rolled his shoulders and his neck around. “What’s a man who can’t bear the burdens he’s willing to carry? Is true power to be impervious to all things? Or is it to stand at the top even with your weaknesses?”
Para chuckled through multiple parasite hands, all of them turned toward Zarian. The mouths in her many palms smiled.
He smiled in return as he checked with everyone on Spider Team 6. They were ready to go. He turned and examined all the arcane web formations that spelled out over a hundred runes from his gravity studies.
“One last thing, you’re not a weakness,” Zarian said. “You’re a part of . And I’m not weak. So you aren’t weak either.”
“Hm, I see why Bianca likes to cry. To hear such words brings wonderful joy that is also painful. You are the best host,” Para said with a strangled voice.
“I know I am, so don’t you forget it.”
“I won’t. Shall we proceed?”
“Hell yeah.”
Zarian nodded as he pushed his Basic Aura Manipulation harder, harder, and harder so more. He shoved the dungeon’s aura suppression away with so much force, he might’ve caught the dungeon off guard.
The air cracked like miniature thunder claps. Thick strands of aura lightning shot across the space. Aura winds blew hard like hurricane gales, the glowing aura motes in the air caught in a flurry. Zarian roared as he threw back the dungeon’s aura suppression like a giant of magic.
The spider on his side of the ti loop triggered the nearest gravity runes, activating one half of the webbed spell array.
A bright purple flash appeared a dozen feet in front of Zarian. The purple flash expanded into a nearly blinding white-purple light. Then it suddenly collapsed inward and created a vacuum that nearly pulled Zarian forward.
Para grew claws from her extra hands and latched onto the floor to keep Zarian rooted.
The collapsing light contracted further and further into itself until it beca the size of a molecule.
The nearest roots, mushrooms, dirt, and stone ripped away from the hallway’s surfaces and swirled around the contracting molecule. The air followed the sa pattern and seed to swirl around like going down a toilet. The sa happened to the aura motes in the air, especially that from the dungeon.
Finally, Zarian noticed a break in dinsional integrity. Space and ti shifted out of place. His side of the ti loop trap snapped apart. Then he instantly appeared in the other ti loop that held the rest of Spider Team 6.
Before the Faerie Guardian could enact a counter asure, Zarian shoved his aura manipulation outward even further. He wasn’t alone. He’d been unraveling himself gradually and lending more control to Para to where she could use his Basic Aura Manipulation, too.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringent.
Together, they suppressed the dungeon’s aura in return.
The little gravity molecule was about to wink out, having spent its energy to crush one ti loop. But then the spiders triggered the other half of the gravity web spell array, which was focused on the opposite end of gravity – entropy.
The molecule expanded rapidly and burst apart with a roar.
The eruption was more than Zarian had expected. He flew off his feet. Para’s arms ripped apart, unable to hold her host down. Zarian tumbled as ti and space tore up from around him.
The entire dungeon shuddered. The Faerie Guardian made a bestial roar that resounded from every crack, corner, junction. The dungeon rumbled like it was about to break apart from having the reality of its pocket dinsion challenged.
Zarian tumbled and crashed and plowed through wall after wall as the chaotic gravity magic expanded outward and affected more than just the ti loop trap. It was making him and other flying pieces of rubble denser and weightier while moving at inhuman speeds that would’ve splattered a lesser person.
Para covered him in bone armor to ease the pumling as they crashed through many obstacles. Zarian clenched his jaw hard the whole ti, his body rattling as he beca an object of abuse, until finally it all ca to a sudden end when soone caught him in a vice of magic.
“You are one of the most ridiculous and foolhardy young n I’ve ever laid eyes on,” Empress Ruvaria said, floating in the air beside him, arms crossed.
The bone armor peeled away from his face. Zarian gave her a bloody grin.
“But you have laid eyes on , and kept them there, so that all counts for sothing,” he said, spitting aside so blood.
He was a little dizzy. His entire sense of gravity was on the fritz. But he was recovering fast.
Once he could see better, he glanced at his surroundings. He was in a hidden grove inside of a colossal cove. There was a tree-like entity with white leaves and green, wrinkled fruits standing on a grassy hill that was surrounded by a shining moat of water.
Various mushrooms, so the size of children, covered the surrounding ground beyond the moat. The field of mushrooms extended well beneath him and the empress and toward the imnse walls of the cove.
The air was covered in aura motes that shone in different colors and bumbled around. It slled sweet here. There was a peaceful feeling in the atmosphere.
Zarian blinked as he noticed he was still being restrained by an invisible magical force from the Sorceress Queen. There was a shining purple layer of gravity magic that still clung to his armored body.
When he reached over toward Ruvaria, the movent felt hard and weighty. He didn’t let that stop him from booping the seemingly annoyed empress on the nose.
“Found you,” Zarian said.
“Young Hannah had described you as insufferable. She is right.” Ruvaria kept looking annoyed.
But that soon faded, replaced by the hint of amusent that sparkled in her shining erald eyes. “But you continue to fascinate , so I suppose that is part of your nature, to be insufferable and fascinating.”
Zarian nodded before glancing at so new notifications.
Nice gains, Zarian thought. I’m fifteen levels away from Level 100 and reaching the Master Rank, if the system deems worthy of being a Master.
There was also the question of the First Ascension Star Trial, but that was sothing Zarian would get to later, after accomplishing so more imdiate goals.
The gravity magic finally faded off his body. To his surprise, the empress gently placed him down on the soles of his boots, squishing a few shin-high mushrooms. She continued to hover in front of him, which made him tilt his wizard hat back and look past the brim and up into her eyes.
“I lost Spider Team 6,” Zarian said. “And the other teams. We have to honor their sacrifice sohow.”
The empress snorted softly at him. “There is no need. I saved them all.”
She waved her hand, and all of his spectral spiders appeared, including the brave Spider Team 6.
Strangely overjoyed, Zarian turned away and joined the spiders for a quick celebratory dance. Para joined in, waving about so newly ford parasite arms made from the battle kilt. Once they finished their celebration, Zarian left the dance party and returned to the empress.
“I know what bingo is, by the way,” the empress said. “I’ve learned a lot from my interactions with Outsiders.”
“Do you know how many people want to reach over and rub your ears like a cat?” Zarian asked.
The empress looked at him flatly. She turned away, feet still hovering over the mushroom heavy ground.
She was wearing a different outfit. One that was leafy and a little more revealing, almost like lingerie, but for soone who wanted to look like a wild forest nymph.
She looked at the strange tree in the center.
Zarian used Identify.
“Hm, no boss fight, huh?” Zarian said.
“Depending on how you set a dungeon, having a boss doesn’t always lead to a boss fight at the end of a crawl,” Ruvaria explained. “This one does his best work by trying to teleport dungeon crawlers into an inescapable prison and drain them of all of their energies. He’s always been good at that, which I found vexing when I was much younger and more absolute in my beliefs.”
Zarian thought of the lore surrounding Corma’s Chosen One and connected a few dots. “He was a forr enemy of yours. Maybe a really solid one. As part of your revenge, you turned him into a dungeon boss with a dungeon, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Was it a fair punishnt? Or was it for your pleasure?”
“I suppose it was a mix of both. To punish absolutely was to be absolute good, and to be absolute good was the highest pleasure. But all Edulis wanted to do was protect those I would hunt for not being good enough, and for his heroism, I made him into a monster and owned him.”
“That’s fucked up, Ruvaria.”
Para spoke from one of her extra parasite hands. “I understand the pleasure of tornting an enemy while consuming him, but even I find your actions troubling, empress.”
“Now, now, Para, let’s be fair,” Zarian said. “We can do so cruel stuff, too. Let’s not go too far into being the ones who are the kettle calling the pot black.”
And there might be a day I want to turn soone into a dungeon boss, Zarian thought, with Para hearing it in his head. But we’ll make sure it’s soone who is truly, truly despicable.
“Hm, yes, you are wise as always, my host,” Para replied aloud.
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