The green glow from the tube barely reached more than a few meters ahead, but it was just enough to catch the glint again… it was metallic with the way light reflected off of it, that or it was something laminated.
Deacon slowly moved closer to what the glowstick's light was glinting off from, he attempted to keep his steps quiet, but each one squelched slightly as his boots kissed the damp, grimy stone floor – answering his unanswered question earlier on where the water dripping was coming from.
The further he went down the damp and mossy corridor, the thicker and more putrid the stench became, and as he drew nearer to the object that caught his eye, the clearer the shape of the object became. However, once it fully came into view, it was something he didn't expect.
A helmet.
Its was dulled, battered, and rusted around the edges, but it was unmistakably an old, rusted bucket helmet with two eye slits and tiny holes in front of where the mouth should have been.
Deacon crouched, holding the glowstick low. Next to the helmet, half-sunken in a puddle of brownish fluid, was what remained of the owner's upper torso. Or rather, part of it. A snapped shoulder plate, a dislocated arm, and a ribcage that looked like it had been crushed from the inside out.
"Shit," Deacon whispered, and quickly stood back up, eyes scanning the corridor he was in and the various bends at their edge as his instinct screamed at him that he needed to be wary.
Of what? He wasn't sure.
His hand tightened on the hilt of his right short sword and the neon green glowing glowstick in his left.
Crack.
A dry, splintering noise… sounding like a log cracking in a campfire, echoed faintly from deeper down the hall.
Deacon dropped low again, pressing his back to the clammy wall, and dimmed the glowstick's light with a thin overlay of mana, muting its glow to a dull pulse.
Another sound echoed down the hall.
Skriiiiitch... skritch skritch skritch.
It sounded like claws, but… There was just something off-key about the noise that was being made. It sounded wet, but not water wet.
The right hallway curved ahead, swallowed in the shadow cast by his glowstick.
Splash.
A moment later, another.
Something was moving just beyond the bend.
Deacon crept forward, cautious, stopping just short of the corner, still holding the dusty, rusted bucket helmet. With a quick swipe of his left palm, he cleared enough grime from its warped surface, then, he dipped it briefly in a shallow puddle at the foot of the bend to wet it and polish the metal once more, afterwards he angled it around the bend, using its dull sheen as a makeshift mirror.
For a few tense seconds, all he saw was haze, murky air clinging to a mess of vines strangling the walls covered in grime. Then something shifted in the dark.
Pale, yet patchy skin stretched too tight over a frame that looked as though it were grafted on it. Its head was bulbous on the rest of its bloated body and shaped almost like a caterpillar's cocoon. It had no eyes, no nose, just a single vertical slit running down the center of its face that was shrouded in darkness.
It was feeding; its body was hunched low over a mangled corpse half-hidden in the gloom, peeling off chunks of rotten and decayed flesh and swallowing them whole.
[Blighted Crawler Host – Elite Lv 8]
Ah fuck, Deacon groaned. I don't have any sanctified water to weaken it.
Its stomach twitched in slow, awful pulses, like something inside was trying to get out – Eggs, maybe.
He pulled back from the corner, slow and quiet, forcing his mind to be calm.
A normal host, he could handle in tight quarters with a couple of quick firebombs with Ignis, but this? Not a chance, not unless he had some sanctified water… Or a trap.
His eyes snapped to the corridor behind him. No side paths. Just a slick stretch of mossy stone leading back toward that half-collapsed chamber. Rubble. Cover.
Maybe… maybe if I…bait it away and… No, that wouldn't work.
Think. Think, dammit.
Another splash.
The creature dropped the corpse it held and tilted its head to the roof, where it slowly turned to where his head poked out from.
As though a lightbulb lit in Deacon's head, a thought came to him. Flame Mines! I've been going over the theory behind how to make one ever since I saw Sam cast Earth Mine months ago, but I never really got to well casting it right… But it's the only option I got, if I want to explore here…
Deacon cursed under his breath, tightening the grip on his glowstick and slowly shifting one foot back, setting the other like a sprinter on the line.
"Alright, you blighted fuck," he whispered, neurons firing in his heads as began to calculate and formulate the necessary magical equations needed to create a Flame Mine. "You want a meal? Come and earn it."
And with a sudden, sharp whistle, he threw the glowstick deeper into the tunnel, going around the bend. The green glowstick arced high, before smacking the Blighted Host Crawler in the face and clattering loudly as it landed and spun across the floor.
The creature hissed, an awful sound like steam escaping its blighted lungs, and lunged toward the noise.
Deacon turned and ran.
Boots slamming over stone, he bolted back toward the chamber, counting each breath, each step. His eyes flickered wildly as he went through the necessary mental calculations needed to create a Flame Mine spell.
It was right behind him now. He could hear it: the wet slaps of limbs, the shrill scrape of claws on stone, and the unholy chittering of something very much not meant to live underground.
"Fuck me," he growled to himself, seeing the threshold into the messy room that led to the stairs that would take him topside. However, just as he passed through the doorframe, he pivoted, gripped the side of the wall, and slammed himself against it.
His heart thundered as the Blighted Host Crawler shot out of the threshold a second after he had. He let out a steamy breath as he clawed at the wall and slipped back into the room, slamming the metal door behind him shut. He quickly activated Undying Flame with barely a thought as he went through the final calculations necessary for his Flame Mine spell.
Deacon felt the air around him turn dry as his left hand was currently being flooded with almost 50% of his total mana capacity and his palm turned counter clockwise seconds before he slammed it against the backside of the door, a massive bright red, almost molten colored magic circle engraved itself on the side of the opposite to him.
The Blighted Crawler Host slammed into the door with a sickening crunch, a heartbeat after the spell had been engraved into the metal of the door. Deacon's heart dropped for what felt like an eternity as he struggled to keep the door shut, as he believed that his hastily created spell had failed and that he was dealing with an enraged Elite blighted brood mother.
But not a second later, the Flame Mine triggered.
BOOM!
An explosion ripped through the corridor opposite to Deacon – a vacuum-pop followed by a concussive surge of heat and pressure that slammed into everything around it like a wrecking ball made of fire. The magic circle, created by Flame Mine, on the door went from molten red to blinding white, lines of light spidering across its face like cracking glass just before it ruptured.
The air ignited, enhanced by Deacon's Undying Flame, transforming the initial explosion into a torrent of flame that was hot enough to melt the surrounding stone, spewing from the center of the Flame Mine's magic circle. The shockwave created from the blast folded the metal door and its rusted hinges, snapping them under the force. A blinding flash of light turned the world a searing gold and raw orange, shadows shrieking away from the impact.
The door whipped forward faster than what he could react to as he put all his weight into pushing against the door to hold the Blighted Crawler Host back from tearing him apart and letting its babies feast on his innards, which caused the door to smash into his face with the weight of a warhammer.
"–Ghrrkk!"
He was flung backward like a ragdoll, his body hitting the floor hard before bouncing briefly upwards before tumbling through a pool of filthy water and rolling rubble, coming to rest in a haze of choking smoke and stinging ash.
His hearing was shot as he could hear nothing but a shrill, high-pitched ringing filled his head. His vision blurred as he struggled to keep them open. In doing so, he turned his head upwards and saw that the walls beside the door had become slag and had gained a shimmer of steam atop them.
The entire chamber was lit red-gold from the fire now devouring everything flammable: the knocked-over crates, tables, bamboo parchment, and shelves.
And through it all, in the heart of the blaze, the Blighted Crawler Host was writhing.
Flames clung to it like living things, eating through the pallid, blistering skin. Its hunched form was smoking, muscles twitching under blackened tissue as it flailed in pain. Its front had split, partially ruptured from the blast, and now sagged with exposed, scorched sacs that twitched with life.
Deacon spat blood, half blind, face slick with soot and sweat, and pushed himself up.
The air was thick with smoke. But he could still see the thing writhing around.
That thought alone made something snap in him.
He grabbed his right short sword that rested centimeters away from where he did and grabbed the other short sword behind his back, hands trembling, and charged, straight through the hell-lit room, past the curling flames, through the crackle and collapse of burning wood, straight toward the thrashing, screaming body of the creature that should've already been dead.
Deacon's boots pounded across the stone flooring, each step splashing through steaming puddles and crunching over molten debris that had blasted into the corridor that he was in front the backlash of the Flame Mine. Embers clung to his leather armor, the heat so intense it peeled the outer layer of leather in ragged curls. His eyes watered, but he didn't blink, well, couldn't, else he'd risk losing sight of his target's writhing form in the smoke.
The Blighted Crawler Host, now a mass of burnt sinew and popped pustules, thrashed against the stone floor. It howled a wet screech from deep inside its ruined torso, echoing off the walls like someone tearing through raw meat with a rake. Its vertical mouth-slit gaped open, and from within, something came into view.
Sacs, dozens of them, and alive.
He didn't hesitate a second longer.
Deacon brought both short swords down like a pair of guillotines.
The first blade cleaved deep into its shoulder, slicing through cracked carapace and roasted flesh with a satisfying schlunk. The second drove downward at an angle, straight through the chest, pinning it to the floor with a sound like meat on a spit.
The creature shrieked again.
Deacon pulled one blade free and raised it again, only for the Host's belly to rupture.
A high-pressure spray of blood and blacked blood erupted from its front, and from the torn-open cavity spilled larvae, at least half a dozen, some already the size of rats, others still encased in twitching sacs of translucent flesh.
"Agk–!"
One of them latched onto his leg, mandibles digging through the charred leather. Another wriggled toward his chest, its head a stunted mimicry of the Host's own. He slammed the pommel of his sword into it, crushing the soft thing into the floor with a wet squelch.
The Host spasmed again, its arms shooting out in a final death-throe spasm, clawing blindly. One raked across Deacon's back, tearing a shallow gouge through cloth and skin.
He roared and ripped both blades upward in a brutal, X-shaped arc, cleaving through neck, skull, and chin, finally splitting the creature's bulbous head in three. Steam hissed from its sundered flesh as black blood bubbled out in thick gouts.
The body finally went still.
*[Blighted Crawler Host – Elite Lv 8] has been slain – XP has been given.*
Deacon stumbled back, breathing ragged, coated in blackened and non-blackened blood, feeling the sting of heat, cuts, and smoke pressing down on every nerve. The remaining eggs still writhed on the floor around the corpse's decapitated head and neck, some having escaped their eggs and struggling to drag themselves toward him.
Releasing a rough cough, he raised his outstretched hand toward the infant Blighted Crawlers that sought to infect him and turn him into their brood mother.
Snapping his fingers, he cast Ignis.
A sliver of flame surged forth from atop his fingertips before erupting forward and washing over the twitching spawn and turning them into charcoal.
When it was over, only ash and blackened bone remained.
Deacon dropped to one knee, panting, but he couldn't just rest; he needed to expunge the blighted blood from his system.
Reaching into his pouch where he kept his water tin, Deacon took it out and began to mutter a few words before taking out a whitened seed and swallowing both it and a few gulps of water.