Starlight Necromancer

Chapter 55 - Monster Source

Foster walked deeper into the dungeon, as the path behind him became more lit up through the torches that Aster was lighting up. And soon, Foster reached a certain crossroad within this labyrinth. He knew that he could just go left to loop around to reach the entrance again, at least that's what the map was saying, but the thing was that there was something that Foster was rather curious about beyond this crossroad… Most of these slimes seemed to come from specifically this direction, from the right where he was currently standing, and there was quite a lot of noise a bit deeper in that direction.

On the map, it was marked that there were a lot of these guys there as well. It was marked as 'especially dangerous', but Foster wondered why exactly that spot was so special in why there were so many over there. So, he just so slightly abandoned the plan and instead took a step further to the right. It didn't take long until another flood of small slime-covered critter skeletons came rushing at him. There were some blobs of this slime that were trying to move without anything, even, but they were incredibly slow compared to the others.

But at least, Foster noticed something when he crushed them with his feet. There was something of a 'bubble' floating in the center of their bodies. It was still completely filled with slime, but there was some form of membrane around that bubble, and when it ripped, the slime actually died. He didn't know if that information was all that useful to anyone but him, but it did feel a little interesting at least.

Soon, however, the amount of these slime-creatures just increased by many more times, to the point where they even nearly overwhelmed Foster, not that they were able to injure him even in the slightest. They were just a lot more annoying, covering so many different parts of his body.

And then, Foster reached the end of this path, where the map was practically scratched out to stop anyone from going here. He took a deep breath as he tried to calm his nerves, that were for some reason still slightly acting up. Mostly because he had no idea what was here. The reason why there were so many of these monsters gathering here was marked as unknown anywhere, and even Kyla didn't know about it.

Despite the fact that she had done quite a bit of research on this place to try and get through here on her own, it made sense that there were things she didn't know, considering that no sane person would actually want to go in here and spend time researching this place.

"Wait... was it a good idea to go along with Kyla after all, then..?" Foster muttered quietly, while watching Aster just look back at him from the wall with his head tilted slightly to the side, "Right, you can't talk..."

Soon, Foster was able to see something at the end of the hallway. It was an opening to a larger room. Not sure what exactly was in there, even Foster tried to be careful. He took one of the lit torches off the wall, and chose to throw it into the center of that large open room. For a few moments, nothing happened, until something started dripping down from the ceiling. The liquid gathered in one place on the ground, and then soon came together to form one of those things that Foster had been fighting. And then... a faint light came from within the small slime. The light seemed to move throughout it for a few seconds, and when it stopped, the small slime-creature suddenly had a rat's skeleton floating within it.

"Excuse me..?" Foster muttered confused, "What just happened..?"

Slowly, Foster leaned into the room, and tried to see where that black liquid had dropped from before. And there, stuck to the ceiling, Foster was able to see a mummified corpse, black sludge making it stick to the ceiling. In its mouth was a lightly glowing orb with a deep crack in it. And out of that crack continuosly came that black liquid.

"Hm... if I destroyed that Orb... wouldn't that decrease the amount of these slimes that could come at us?" Foster muttered as he turned his head to the side, with a light grin on his face. Sadly, he didn't have anything that he could throw at it to even try and do that. However, excited that he found something that would actually help them out, Foster rushed back out of the dungeon, ready to tell his friends.

---

"Are you an absolute fucking idiot?" Octer asked with a wry smile on his face, "There's a reason that part of the map is scratched out..."

"Well, yeah, because anyone else would die the moment they go in there, but I wouldn't. I'd be fine." Foster pointed out, before Lynol rolled his eyes, figuring that there was no way his friend would see too much fault in what he did, "Fine, then what did you see in there?"

"Ah, right. The source of the slime." He explained with a smile on his face, and the three people in front of him stared back for a few moments.

"Excuse me?" Kyla asked, completely taken aback by what he said, "Did you just say you found the source of the slime? But the dungeon should just be creating it, right?"

"I don't think so, at least not directly!" Foster explained, before he continued to tell the others exactly about what he saw in there.

Kyla looked down at the ground, rather perplexed, "So, the dungeon creates the bones within the slime to make it easier for the creature to move, but it doesn't actually create the slime? That 'orb' thing you mentioned somewhat sounded like... some sort of trap-like system..."

"A trap? Doesn't really sound like it..." Orc pointed out, but Kyla quickly shook her head.

"Trap basically refers to anything stationary that causes some sort of reactionary effect, but since this one is constant, it's not really that, which is why I said 'trap-like'... There are things in dungeons that are made by the dungeon itself, like an 'infinite' source of water, but I never heard of something like that that makes monsters!" Kyla exclaimed, "This dungeon must be really intelligent!" She pointed out with a broad smile on her face, weirdly excited about this situation.

Thinking that something was clearly not quite right, Lynol finally stepped in front of her and simply said exactly what he wanted to say.

"Alright, spit it out. This whole time it felt like you've been hiding something, and now you act about dungeons like Foster does when he speaks about the stars.. So come on, tell us. Why are you really here?"