Rise of a monster a mons.., p.9
Rise of a Monster: A Monster Evolution LitRPG Adventure, page 9
Still, it was best to keep the conversation – and their pace – moving, so he began heading back toward the hallway where the rats had come from. Sean rolled his shoulder to adjust the femur’s position as he moved, but he quickly noticed there was no actual change in sensation. Even the motion of it had felt odd – like he was adjusting for discomforts his body no longer had.
Just something else to get used to, Sean thought, putting the concern out of his mind. He had other things to worry about right now.
“How about Cognition?” Sean asked Gel, getting back on topic. “It says it affects ‘ability capacity’? Does that mean there’s a limit on how many I can have?”
“Yeah, and not a high one, either. But the ones you do have will get stronger as you do, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Just make sure you don’t pick any bad ones as we go and it’ll be fine.”
Sean absorbed that revelation for a moment, suddenly feeling less enthused that his only real ability was a basic-sounding attack like Slash. He wondered if this world handled abilities much like a game he’d once played as a kid about capturing pocket-sized monsters.
It’d suck if I capped out at four. How is anyone supposed to believe that a creature capable of shooting hyperbeams can only learn four moves? Some of them are literal gods, and we’re supposed to believe they can’t count to five?
Sean shook his head, letting that particular childhood sore spot go. He returned to the node map, reviewing some of the non-attribute-related ones he had skimmed past earlier. There had been relatively few, but some had offered new abilities.
Bone Fangs
Description: Extend several of your teeth into large fangs capable of sinking deeply into a target. Jaw flexibility is also increased in order to facilitate a wider range.
Effect: Grants the physical ability: Chomp.
Mana Aspect: Death
Not… bad, Sean mused. Bit too far on the whole ‘rabid skeleton’ vibe, though. Not really feeling going around snapping at everything just yet.
Sean pulled up the next option.
Lifeblood Sense
Description: Allows you to hear the sound of life’s blood flowing through nearby creatures. Recently spilled blood also becomes easier to detect.
Effect: Upgrades your Pulse Sense ability to Lifeblood Sense.
Mana Aspect: Death
Alright, now that sounds pretty badass, Sean thought, eyeballing the multiple obscured nodes that appeared to be connected to this one option. This one’ll make hunting a breeze.
Given that his future currently hung on the balance of whether or not he could track down more prey for Gel to consume before the clock ran out, this option would almost certainly be a necessity later on. As it was, however, they still hadn’t gotten out of Bancroft’s basement. Being able to track their enemies wasn’t a concern – being able to fight them was.
Which begged a particular sort of question.
“Hey, Gel?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I ditch an old ability if I find a node with a better one later on? In order to get around that Cognition limit you mentioned.”
The slime was silent for a moment before responding. “Hmm… not really sure on that one, actually. I don’t have any memories of someone trying to forget one of their abilities. So, I want to say… maybe?”
“Hmm,” Sean hmm’d.
If he was going to run into a hard limit on how many abilities he could have – and there was a chance he wouldn’t even be able to replace one, only upgrade it – then it didn’t make sense to choose another right now. There were still too many things he didn’t know. Things he wasn’t likely to learn just from fighting giant rats.
Ah well. Sean gave a mental shrug. Guess I’ll just drop some points in Cognition later if I need more ability slots. Even if that’s not ‘optimal’ or whatever the equivalent would be here, it’s not like it matters that much.
“Any recommendations on what I should choose?” Sean asked his friend when they were almost back in the hallway.
“If you really want my advice on this, I say choose something that makes you harder to kill. We can share mana, but I can’t heal any damage you take like I can for myself, so even if you’re only taking 1 damage every other fight, you’ll eventually get run down unless you have some sort of defense.”
Sean considered the point. It was a surprisingly strong argument for its simplicity. Though, again, thinking about it prompted yet another question.
“How am I supposed to get health back, then?” he asked, really hoping this wasn’t a stupid question. “Are you saying my injuries won’t heal?”
It wasn’t like he had some naive hope for ‘video game logic’-style healing, but even back on Earth, one could expect their wounds to heal on their own eventually.
Well, most wounds.
Broken bones aren’t off the table, either. And since I’m basically all bones now—
“No… they won’t,” Gel said slowly after a moment of stunned silence, as if the slime were stating the most obvious thing in the world to the world’s slowest student. “The undead don’t just heal themselves, my friend. Not without magic or some kind of regeneration ability, at least. Neither of which I imagine you have right now since, as a skeleton, you are basically the lowest tier of undead there is.”
Something in Sean’s silence seemed to convey his sudden onset curiosity about Gel’s potential aerodynamics, and the slime quickly added, “Not that I’m trying to make you feel bad about it or anything. You might get an ability like that eventually, it just won’t be for a while. A long while. Years, maybe.”
Sean stopped walking. He did some quick mental math on just how many ‘meals’ he would have to feed Gel in order to survive for years here. How many monsters he would have to fight, and kill, all without taking more damage than he had health.
The numbers were not friendly. Sean stared down at the slime in his rib cage.
“Are you telling me that any damage I take now might be with me forever? That there is seriously no way for me to get lost health back?” Sean asked, trying to keep the incredulity in his tone from turning into heat at something that was in no way the slime’s fault.
Gel just stared back up at him, sincere confusion evident. “Did you think you would? You see a lot of undead pulling themselves back together down here?”
The slime’s eyes whirled around the room from his new vantage point, as if he had just considered they might need to check for that very thing.
Sean sighed and rubbed what would have been the bridge of his nose but was now just a section of bone over the hole where his nose had been with two hard, white fingers. The act made a faint grinding noise that was somehow calming.
“No… I don’t,” he admitted before another thought struck him cold. “Wait. Not only is any and all damage I take from now on permanent – you also just ate my only set of armor!”
“If it’s any consolation, you were delicious,” Gel consoled him with utter sincerity and not a hint of remorse.
Sean sighed again, then navigated back to Thick Bones on his node map. If he had to choose an external modification and needed some level of defense right away, he might as well choose the one that might come with some comedic value later.
Doubt many people are going to crack fat jokes at a walking skeleton, Sean admitted mentally, accepting the choice. But hey, at least I’ll have a decent comeback if anyone tries.
For a long moment afterward, nothing happened. Silence stretched out before the pair, thick enough that you could almost touch it.
Glancing down at Gel, Sean said, “I don’t get it. Isn’t something supposed to—”
EIGHT
Mumbles
Sean’s voice trailed off, marveling as, all at once, a fresh layer of pure-white bone began wrapping itself around every inch of his skeletal frame.
Grime, dirt, and blood fell off of his body in small curtains. A smooth layer of fresh alabaster emerged underneath, solidifying itself over the existing bone in a matter of seconds. Gaps and small chinks he hadn’t even noticed were covered and smoothed out as if by magic. Which, Sean supposed, it probably was.
The sensation was… odd. There was no pain, no tingling, no discernible change in feeling at all, only a barely noticeable impression that his body was steadily growing heavier.
‘Thick bones’ indeed, Sean thought with a grin, twisting around and inspecting himself. There was a visible difference, but not overly so. Comparing his thigh to the femur he held in his hand, Sean guessed he was now about a half-inch thicker everywhere it counted, not to mention a good deal cleaner.
Right on. Looks like I don’t have to worry about becoming a chonky boi just yet.
Tapping his radius and ulna, now the only actual parts left of his forearm, Sean had to admit he didn’t really feel any more durable than before. Not that he’d felt very durable to begin with. He rapped a slightly thicker knuckle experimentally against the stone wall, hoping to dent the rock inward with his new power. To his disappointment, all he heard was a dull thud.
So, tougher… but not necessarily any harder, Sean noted, wondering with building excitement whether he would eventually be able to crack rocks open with his bare hands or punch through walls.
Pulling up his status and tabling his stonebreaker dreams for the moment, Sean confirmed the node had added an extra point of Toughness.
That’ll have to be enough for now.
“Hey, can you punch through walls now?” Gel asked, unintentionally mirroring Sean’s own thoughts. “That would make it much easier for us to get out of here. We could bring his entire house crashing down on our way out!”
“Nah,” Sean responded with poorly concealed disappointment. “Can’t do any of that. Should be a bit tougher, though.”
Nodding to himself, Sean began heading down the hallway where he had found the rats earlier.
“Tougher than whatever delicious meal is around the corner?” Gel asked as they approached said corner. “Because that’s the real question here.”
“We’re about to find out,” Sean said, flexing his fingers and coming to a stop.
It was a surreal sight, watching his now-clean bones moving in concert with one another. A bit disconcerting really, considering none of his bones were actually connected to one another. At least, not by any means he could see. He still felt a connection between them, though what exactly that entailed, he wasn’t entirely sure.
Questions for later, Sean thought, extending the now-thicker fingers of his free hand to their fullest extent in order to form the basic shape of his Slash ability. For now, these are damn good backup weapons.
Peering around the corner once more now that he was ‘armed’, Sean didn’t see any more rats.
Neither, apparently, did Gel.
“Tougher than whatever delicious meal is around the next corner?” the slime amended. “You should probably start running – our food could be getting away!”
“Just how many things are you expecting us to come across down here?” Sean asked as they made their way down the corridor. “I thought this was a pit for discarded bodies; how many things could even live in all this green goop and rot? At least the rats being down here make some sort of sense.”
“You’re half right,” Gel commented as they walked around another pile of corpses. “It’s a flesh pit. Necromancers use them to increase the ambient death mana in an area. Makes death abilities stronger. As for the rats… maybe they’re just hungry? Maybe he’s hungry? Do humans eat rats? My only memories of Bancroft have him eating off of plates.”
“Not… usually. Not where I come from, anyway,” Sean said, pausing right before the next corner again. “Wait, so you’re saying having all of this”—he gestured back down the hall, piles of chewed bones strewn liberally around it—“nearby gives all Death-aspected stuff in the area a boost? I don’t remember seeing one on my status. That’s where it would be, right?”
“It would,” Gel agreed. “If the pit were large enough to work yet.”
“It’s not large enough?!”
“Nope. It also hasn’t been around for long enough to make a difference in this area’s ambient mana. Bancroft only moved in fairly recently, you see, and the pit itself is enclosed by stone. Which is fortunate for us since he won’t have any kind of buff reinforcing his magic when we break down his door and melt his smarmy little face off.”
Sean was about to ask just how big one of these ‘death pits’ needed to be to work properly, but Gel beat him to the punch.
“Forget about all that, though – what are we waiting for?” The slime rattled Sean’s rib cage around as if straining to urge him forward. “Come on! There could be food around that corner! We could be eating right now!”
The feeling of the slime’s body wrapped around his ribs tickled, and Sean’s jaw bounced as he chuckled. The sound that came from him didn’t sound like a laugh, more like the clattering of a bag of dominos dropped down a flight of stairs. It echoed for only a short distance off the walls, but that was enough. In the eerie stillness that was the pit, it was the only noise around.
Sean paused, waiting to see if the sound had drawn the attention of any more rats up ahead. He readied himself to strike if something approached, but after a tense moment, nothing appeared. Drawing his attention inward, Sean focused on his Pulse Sense, and sure enough, he found what he was looking for almost immediately.
A faint vibration in the air. One that felt like it was coming from somewhere off in the distance and to his right. After a moment, Sean realized there were actually two. Both so quiet that he could barely distinguish between them, two beating hearts moving around somewhere within his sense’s range.
If only my ability could tell me what sort of creature those hearts belong to, this fight would be much easier to plan for.
Still, he would take what he could get. A built-in early warning system was still infinitely better than nothing, given how no matter what was over there, chances were they weren’t going to be friendly.
“There’s at least two creatures up ahead,” Sean told Gel, getting his head back in the game. “If I can toss you onto one, can you take it out by yourself?”
“I will do my absolute best to consume it,” Gel responded in his typical cheery tone. “Just don’t expect it to stick around for long once I start. Most things tend to run away when I start eating them. Can’t imagine why.”
Sean inclined his head, but Gel wasn’t finished.
“Not you, though. You just stood right there and took it. Like a champ.”
Sean decided against dignifying that with a response, choosing instead to drop the subject and peer around the corner.
What he found was a series of grime-covered stone stairs leading at least twenty feet up. The ever-present ichor dripped down the left side of the staircase, which led up to a set of bent iron bars shoved into the wall in a way that indicated the setup might once have been a functioning door, but no longer.
There were no rats in sight, but as Sean ascended, his Pulse Sense began to pick up wild excitement. There was an abundance of tiny vibrations coming from the next room. Far more than just two. Sean redoubled his efforts at stealth, which Gel took as an invitation to continue their silent, mental conversation.
“How was it being eaten, by the way? I’ve always wondered.”
“Like taking a really intense hot bath. Or stepping into a sauna. The kind you walk out of with steam coming off you afterward,” Sean answered distractedly as he tried to count the number of distinct vibrations.
Two… no, three?… Maybe four?
It was like trying to count the number of strings on a violin by listening to someone playing it in another room. Each sound was distinct, yet they all overlapped one another as if they were beating in harmonious concert – save for one of them. A louder, deeper heart whose every pump beat with a greater finality than any Sean had heard before.
That last one arrested his attention in a way that Sean couldn’t explain. Its tantalizing, rhythmic thumping was enough of a distraction, moving around as it was, that Sean almost didn’t realize the slime was still talking.
“Really?” Gel asked with intense interest. “How interesting… I rather like the idea of being my food’s ‘final cleanse’…”
As the slime continued to ponder his words, Sean ascended the stairs high enough to see into the next room. Crouching down before his head poked over the top, he decided to scope out the place before going in. Just in case.
Looking past the bent gate, he could see a lumbering hulk of a man hunched over one of the many tables laid out in orderly rows across the room, human corpses sprawled out unflatteringly over each. Sean watched, caught between horror and bemusement, as the man deposited something onto the corpse on the table before him, cooing over it affectionately. He patted whatever it was before moving to another table out of view.
Giving Sean a first look at what he had left behind.
Resting atop the corpse were a trio of bright pink, foot-long worms bearing inch-long hooks instead of teeth on either side of their wide, circular mouths. They slammed face-first into the corpse all at once, their bodies beginning to undulate as they either attempted to burrow deeper or tried to swallow the mortifying flesh.
Are those… maggots?! Why are they so big?! Sean wondered while the creatures continued to enthusiastically chow down on the dead body like it was a fresh Thanksgiving bird.
Wait… wasn’t that guy just cooing at them? Who would coo over something like th– Seriously, those things are his pets?!
The man came into view once more, this time carrying another wriggling bundle’s worth of the foot-long maggots in his arms. He was clearly physically impaired, with some sort of large growth protruding from his right shoulder visible beneath his long and thoroughly unkempt black hair. One brown eye – easily twice the size of the other – was shut tight as he brushed his face against one of the maggots, murmuring sweet nothings to it.
