Stray Soul

After a couple of hellish hours of slowly moving through floor -2, and then a few more hours of just trying to move through floors -3 and -4, I had finally reached the adventurers.

Not all of them though as for some unholy reason they had decided to split their group in 2.

I somewhat understood their reasons but didn’t really see the reason as to why they’d go down to a floor that was dangerous for even them.

Wouldn’t the safer option be to just... don’t? And continue to the lower floors after Heinrich came back with the rank B he was talking about?

Though I could also see why he’d want to push a bit deeper after hearing his story but... oh well.

“So, the plan is just to wait for them to come back in... what? Half an hour or less?” I asked the group of three, and they just nodded.

And I just moved to the corner of the stairways and sat down, turning my attention onto my body.

Due to the last day or so being such a slog through the dungeon, I had grinded quite a bit of levels and body parts to improve my body.

I had reached level 54 in the last day after defeating around... what? 15-16 G ranks and 2-3 F ranks.

My current mana pool sat around a cool 2.700 max mana capacity with me having 170 intelligence of my own, and another 100 from the brains I had.

I also had increased my wisdom to 154, and had 85 more from the brains I had captured.

In addition to those stats that I’ve been paying a very close attention to, as they are the only 2 stats I can increase—they are the only 2 stats that I can increase that I understand the usage of as, while I could always spend points on charisma... what’s the point?

With the incorporation of new body parts to my body, I had a total of 150 strength, and 100 agility too!

I also had 200 vitality but... my hp is at a consistent 0 as I am kind of an undead, not really, and we work off of mana, not hp. So, that’s a pretty useless stat that I have a lot of.

Other than my stats, I had incorporated quite a few body parts onto myself from the monsters I encountered—as I simply had to as, if I did not, my body would simply stop functioning.

But, using this opportunity to change my body’s layout, and the fact that quite a few monsters had metallic parts attached to them, I managed to cook up something... half-decent... I guess?

I may be the most experienced body builder in the forest, but the fact that I’ve only had 2 months to practice my craft is not helping me.

Anyways, I had returned to using a quadrupedal design on my body instead of 6-legged one I had been using for the past few days.

Then, I covered as much of my body in metal plates as I could, without hindering my mobility. I also wanted to cover entirety of the top part of my body in metal plates, but doing so made it nearly impossible for me to navigate through the stairways, so, being the boss monster I am, I left my top part as a weak point...

But quite a few monsters also had swords and spear like appendages, so I had the option to become a hedgehog with metallic quills, which I instantly took—and promptly regretted taking.

As you probably remember—I cannot control metal like I plants, muscles, and organic material in general. They are just inaccessible to me.

So, I had to painstakingly craft an elaborate muscle structure for each and every spear and sword I added to my body which took... a lot, and I mean it, a lot of effort, and time.

I currently had like 25-30 quills in total, made from sword, spears, and reshaped metal plates. And after painstakingly attaching them to the various parts of my body, mostly the sides and the top, and leaving the muscles that connected quills and my body unprotected as, any attempts that I made to protect them would just cause a huge loss in efficiency that simply was not worth it—I realised something that was wrong with the design I settled for the muscles.

They could only move up, down, and slightly to the sides.

And I had put all of them facing backwards instead of forwards, so I couldn’t use them for anything other than... nothing actually.

They were simply useless right now, and re-positioning the muscles would take a few hours, so I simply did not have the time to fix my mistake right now.

But hey! My weak spot on the top of my body was covered by like... 10 metallic quills that... you had to disconnect from my body to get a juicy hit...

Did I just turn myself into a shitty boss for a platforming game? I feel like mario will just appear out of nowhere, jump on my head 10 times, dislodge all of my quills, and then break my fucking spine.

Which would be really, really inconvenient to say the least.

This problem could also easily be solved with me just replacing the shafts of the quills with spines instead of leaving them as metal like the rest of the body of the weapons but... I feel like that’d be too... eldritch if you get what I mean.

I planned on going up north a few weeks after I was done here, and I’d rather like it if I left my body in a shape that could be comprehended by mere men—lest I be brutally murdered by a fucking plumber.

Or by a dude with a comically large hammer.

That’d probably do the job as well as the plumber who has zero fighting experience.

Is there anything left... oh, yes there is. 4 of my skills, Bind, Soul Manipulation, Mana Control, and Mana Strengthening all increased in rank and reached G rank.

Which is only fair as I’ve been in a dungeon for more than a day, and I’ve been fighting quite a few monsters and doing field repairs on my body.

So, the increase in my skill ranks? Expected.

“...How long has it been since I’ve come here?” I muttered to myself as I took control of my body from my lesser souls once again, and saw that Caroline and Xylene were a bit jumpy, while Lazarus seemed calm.

“What are you two worried about?” I asked them.

“Don’t pay attention to them—they are just worried that something has happened to the others.”

“Oh? Have they been gone for too long?”

“If you considered 20 minutes a long time, then yes. They’ve been gone for a long time.” Lazarus said, which prompted Caroline to quickly correct him.

“They’ve been gone for 40 minutes! Not 20!”

“So? They said it’d take around half an hour or so to check the threat level of the floor. They should be back in another 10 or 20 minutes at most.”

“And what if they don’t?!”

“Easy, we leave the dungeon and forget they ever existed and return to our normal lives!

“Maybe some bard will even sing a eulogy for them? Who knows!” Lazarus said, probably he was just joking but I could see Caroline giving him a nasty look, and Xylene reaching for her swords.

Though I wondered if she’d kill him for real, I didn’t intent to find out as the other three returning to see the corpse of one of their teammates would probably end not so well for me.

“...Let’s go then.” I said, got up, and started moving towards the door, which captured everyone’s attention.

“Go... where?” Caroline asked.

“To where the other 3 are? They are only a floor down, right? We should be able to meet up with them easily then.

“Who knows, we may even encounter them on the way there, or save them from their doom or whatever.

“And no, I am not saving them without you three following right behind me. As you can probably tell, I am not running a charity here and easing your worries is not that good of a reason to get me moving by myself.

“So, we can either sit here and wait them to come back like you’ve been doing so far, or we can start going towards them.” I said, and as I finished, I realised the others were looking at me in a... weird way.

“With all due respect Lord Eternal but... how do you exactly plan for us to save them from a possible doom like you said?

“You may not be aware of this, but floor -5, the floor they are on, should be the first floor where E ranks start appearing, and while there will only be a few throughout the entire floor, even a single E rank can kill one of us, that’s why Elise, Xavier and Heinrich went there by themselves.

“Elise and Xavier are E ranks, and with only a single F rank with them, they should be able to manage. But without them we’d just be throwing ourselves into danger for no reason.

“And like what you said—if we set off now, we may just encounter them on the way here, which will just put us in unnecessary danger by exposing us to the monsters in this floor.” Lazarus said, and for once since I’ve met him, he actually made a sound argument instead of trying to annoy the person he was talking to.

But that might’ve been because he was talking to me and not one of his friends, which... makes a lot of sense actually.

“Then are you all fine with waiting here, without doing anything to check on them?” I asked them once again, thinking that I miss read the room.

“Of course we are fine—” Lazarus started, but before he could finish his sentence, Xylene started walking towards my side of the room.

“...Xylene, you can’t be serious...”

“What? I’d rather meet them on the way down, or save them if possible! You are the one that’s being stupid this time!”

“...So, accept that you’ve been—”

“NO!” Xylene screamed, stopping Lazarus from talking.

“...Well, there is no point in arguing with you. Afterall, I’d doubt that the deity would be willing to go to the lower floor, and bother himself just because a shorty wanted him to.” Lazarus said.

“How do you know I am not joining them?” Caroline asked, and then Lazarus slowly turned his head towards her.

“...You can’t be serious.”

“What if I am? You know that they’d have returned by now if they could! And even if they are fine, what’s the problem with checking in on them?”

“Caroline, did a rock fall on your head? You know that I was joking about their deaths, right? I can understand the Xylene being dumb, but you seemed like a person with at least something in that skull of yours.

“They’ll return soon. I know it, you know it, and Xylene knows—perhaps knows it too! Just because they are a few minutes late doesn’t mean that they are in mortal peril!” Lazarus argued.

“...Why are you so against the idea of heading down for a few minutes? You know the stairway leading down isn’t that far from here, and if you sense any E ranks nearby the stairway’s door, we can just wait for it to pass and go somewhere else, or just return up.” Caroline asked Lazarus.

And then he stood silent for a few moments, thinking about what to say.

While Lazarus seemed lazy from the outside, I had seen that he was anything but such—or at least his acting was well enough to fool me that he was actually a hard worker and a person that actually cared for his comrades.

And if he was unwilling to tell them what he was worried about... that must mean he must be worried about me pulling some tricks, right?

Afterall, you can’t say that I’ve been the friendliest face around ever since they’ve come here, and me suddenly offering help in something that won’t aid me probably seems too suspicious to be true...

“Lazarus.” I said and took his attention from Caroline.

“I’d just like you to know that I have easier and faster ways to kill you than luring you into a trap.” I said, which immediately surprised the others, and perhaps even put them a little on the edge.

But a little bit of threatening would show him that I had no need for tricks, rights? Or at least I hoped so.

“...That wasn’t what I was worried about but... thanks for the information I guess?” He said after a few awkward seconds passed in the room.

“Can we go finally then?” Xylene said, seemingly unaffected by what I said earlier, or the weird air in the room.

“Sure.” Caroline said, and I opened the door and squeezed outside, and heard Lazarus loudly facepalming and muttering “You idiots...”.