And (N)one Shall Remain

At first glance, Alissa thought that the monsters before her looked decidedly odd. They looked like sentient piles of rocks in vaguely animalistic shapes, with no two looking exactly alike, but for some reason when she tried to check them out with [Analysis] all the results she got was a stinging headache, and [A Critical Eye] did not show her any notable weakness other than obvious ones, namely the gaps between the rocks.

 

The beasts look rather ponderous, and neither a thrown javelin from Benedictus nor an arrow from Osmond seemed to bother them. Joshua also chose to be conservative and tried hurling some stone lances at them, but the beasts appeared to not only shrug off his attack, but even incorporated it into their form after a short pause.

 

“Hate it when the noobs don’t know the obvious shit like not attacking the clearly stony creatures with earth magic,” muttered Ethan as he hefted his shield in one hand and firmly held his pollax in the other. He stood at the front together with Bronwen and Glenn and formed a line, prepared to face off against the approaching creatures. 

 

When the creatures struck, their blows were rather slow and ponderous, easy enough for the three to deflect or block, creating openings for the others to strike through. Alissa and the others naturally struck as they made use of those openings, as their various weapons sliced and stabbed at the rocky creatures, many hitting between two rocks.

 

Despite their blows, however, the creatures made no obvious sign of pain, or any reaction for that matter, and kept attacking violently, if rather ponderously. From time to time, Alissa could see what looked like strands of orange-purple muscle fibers between the stones, which she assumed were part of the creature’s flesh. As such, she tried to strike at those sections more often.

 

Twelve of them working together was more than what four of the beasts could handle, as the party kept piling on more and more punishments on the rocky beasts. It was a rather eerie fight, however, where there was nary a sound to be heard. No bellows or screeches of pain from the beasts, even as the party slowly but surely dismembered them one bit at a time.

 

All that accompanied the noise of their weapons striking either stone or flesh was the grunts of the party itself, which made the atmosphere feel odd.

 

Joshua experimented with various types of magic as he shot weaker spells towards one of the beast one after another, only to find to his dismay that most of them were equally ineffective at best against them. Lightning seemed to work best, but it was also the most draining element for him to use, and he needed to land a blow precisely on the “muscle” for it to work well at all.

 

It took the twelve of them a good quarter hour until finally the last of the rocky beasts stopped moving and crumbled before them. Around that time, everyone in the party felt a sudden headache and had steady themselves, as what sounded like thousands of system notification sounds sounded in absurdly rapid succession in their minds.

 

“What the… Fuck!?” cursed Alissa after the headache subsided. She had taken a look at her system notifications and saw a line which was not what she had expected.

 

You have defeated Part of [Colony of Myriad Strands Lvl45]!

 

You have gained bonus experience for defeating an enemy of a higher level than yourself!

 

You gain less experience for defeating an enemy with the help of others!

 

Instead of the typical notification though, the message repeated itself thousands of times, and even as she rapidly scrolled down she saw the notification change every now and then in the level, as apparently each of the rocky beasts they took down were part of this [Colony of Myriad Strands], whatever it was. The experience each of them gave was miniscule, but there were so many that the party had gained probably more than if they had taken on four beasts around that level range instead.

 

“What is this?” Alissa asked once more as she tried to make sense of what she was reading in her notifications. The rest of the party seemed equally confused, with a couple of them turning over bits of the dead creatures with their weapons and trying to study it in their curiosity. It was not until Magus Drummond walked to one of the “corpses” that they received an answer, though.

 

“This,” said Magus Drummond, almost intentionally prolonging that one syllable as he prodded the dead beast with the narrower tip of his staff and pulled out what looked like a bunch of muscle fibers that almost looked far too fine to be that. “Is the true identity of the most hated dungeon creature known in the Kingdom as a whole.”

 

“These are what you have been fighting all along. Not the rocks. Those were probably just laying around until they were grabbed and incorporated into a large colony of these things,” elaborated the Magus further, slightly shaking his staff to show how the strands were actually a collection of very fine, separate thread-like things, each roughly a finger in length. “These are parts of the [Colony of Myriad Strands] you just fought against, and the actual monsters of this dungeon.”

 

“What are these things? Worms of some kind?” asked Ethan as he approached closer for a better look. Joshua had also wordlessly approached and corrected the position of his glasses with a finger as he peered closer at the dead creatures. They were so small and fine that it was difficult for either of them to notice any particular detail about them.

 

“Nobody has managed to confirm one way or another, Mister Greene,” replied the old Magus as he dropped the thread-like creatures from his staff to the ground. “All we know for certain is that there are probably countless of these things in this dungeon, they are practically everywhere, which is troublesome, as their presence prevents the Kingdom from extracting the precious ores this dungeon always contains.”

 

“On their own, these things are harmless and unable to do anything much at all. However, they gain some sort of animalistic instinct and intelligence when many of them are grouped together. The more of them were gathered together, the greater the intelligence. In such groups, they typically attach themselves to all sorts of objects, fallen branches, stones, even things like discarded weapons and armor, manipulating them by concerted effort with their bodies acting as the muscle for whatever they attached themselves to.”

 

“What about the headache and… deluge of notifications that came after we killed them? Was that supposed to happen?” asked Alissa.

 

“There were actually many theories about why that happened, but the most commonly accepted one was simply because there were too many of these things to the point that the system could not process them promptly and instead stacked everything up until the ‘creature’ they formed died for good before unloading everything at once.”

 

“My own personal theory is that while these… things were acting in unison, they were considered as one being, and as such, you only received the notification of their defeat after you killed the ‘being’ itself, not when you just killed some parts of it,” continued the old magus. “Part of both theories might be correct, as like right now, people have killed multiple of these in the past and yet only received the notifications after all of them were dead.”

 

“Why do you think that happens, Master?” asked Joshua respectfully to the old Magus.

 

“Hard to say, but my best guess is that some bits of one beast might not be dead yet and ran over to another of the creatures and merged with them, which eventually made all of them be considered one creature as a whole,” speculated Magus Drummond. “Either way, you all know what to expect now, so you should be prepared in the upcoming fights you will face later on.”

 

“Anything we have to watch out for in particular deeper in the dungeon, Sir?” asked Nadine from the side.

 

“The forms these things take get more… complex the more there are of them in a single gathering. Those you face on the early caverns will mostly be like the ones we faced just now, simple and animalistic mimicry of other animals,” replied the old Magus. “The ones deeper in tend to come in larger gatherings, higher levels, and have both more complex forms and thought processes. They are more clever, so do not expect the fighting to remain simple for too long.”

 

“Understood, Sir. We will keep that in mind.”

 

The party continued their trek towards the other end of the cavern. The cavern’s size meant that there was quite a bit of distance and terrain to overcome, notwithstanding the monster attacks that were more frequent than what any of them had expected. They had only walked for barely fifteen minutes before another group of six rocky monsters – though one was half-mixed with chunks of rotten wood and was thus much easier to dispatch – accosted them.

 

By the second fight, the party had a much better idea on how to handle their foes, and dispatched of the six creatures in barely ten minutes. They still held back their skills for the most part, as they had realized how the dungeon would likely be a longer-term slog compared to the ones they had been in previously. The lack of a single, large target to focus on also made many of their skills less useful in the fighting.

 

Although the party had prepared themselves for it, the onrush of notifications still gave them headaches that nearly toppled them over, though fortunately no creature was nearby to take advantage of that moment of disorientation. As such, they took a short rest after each fight to shake off the effects of the notification fleed each of them painfully experienced before they continued on.

 

Another group of seven beasts attacked them not twenty minutes after that, forcing the party into another fight which they won handily, but also forced them to take another break. The more beasts they faced, the worse the headache and disorientation they experienced got, and Alissa understood all too well why the Kingdom’s adventurers hated these creatures so much.

 

As a result of the delays from the constant fights and the rest periods they mandated to shake off the aftereffects of the notification floods, it took the party more than half a day of travel before they finally reached the end of the first cavern, where the narrow passage which led to the second cavern of the dungeon lay.

 

There was just one tiny – or rather, not so tiny – problem.

 

Namely that there was something Ethan would have gleefully called a floor boss right in the vicinity of said passage.

 

Compared to the beasts – or rather, colonies of creatures – they fought so far, the beast that awaited them by the passage was a true behemoth. It stood a good twenty feet at the “shoulder”, and was probably half again as long, its outer surface composed from things ranging from smaller branches and rocks to man-sized boulders and entire trees that had been uprooted and incorporated into its form.

 

At a glance from a distance, some people might mistake it for some sort of oddly lumpy pachyderm, or an overgrown, particularly hideous warthog, but up close, there was no mistaking the massive colony of thread-like creatures for what they are, as many of the pieces they attached themselves to were so large that visible gaps were present on its surface, allowing people to see the countless squirming threads underneath.

 

Of course, the beast noticed the party’s presence once they were close enough and turned to face them, making a threatening, almost lifelike gesture despite the facade of stone and wood it projected. Everyone in the party frowned as they knew they were in for a hard fight that would end rather painfully for them no matter how well they did.

 

With a somewhat exasperated sigh, Alissa unlimbered her spear and held it steady, raising her shield with the other hand. She knew that there was only one thing left to do at that point of time, and that was to fight.