Chapter 24: Fatal Funnel

Screams.

The echoes of fury bounced off my cavern walls, the sheer anger vibrating my rubber body as the tarantual Matriarch reacted poorly to my mind intrusion.

Oops.

The entire sewers rumbled, the brick and mortar that had stood the test of time for hundreds of years violently shaking with dust and crumbs of the structures falling all over my territory.

They were coming, an army. I couldn’t see them but I knew, instinctually I knew that before long, a thousand spiders would be upon me and flood my territory.

AHHHHH THIS IS THE WORST! WHATDOIDOWHATDOIDOWHATDOIDO?!!?!

Ok. Calm down. Let’s balance this out. Decide a plan of action. Staying entrenched is completely out of the question. The spiders can crawl on any surface. The water way is out of the question because of the fishes down there and I’ll be DAMNED IF I TOUCH THAT SEWER GUNK! 

Should I attack? Launch a counter offensive?

Twenty against hundreds, that would be suicide! 

Guess it's time for Operation Alamo…

SLIMEY!

“Yes Lord Hiro?”

Operation Alamo! Prepare to move out! We make for the catacombs! All Units! Prepare to march!

“Yes My Lord! YOU CRETINS! GET TO WORK! LORD HIRO HAS GIVEN US ORDERS!” 

A new plan. Well, a contingency plan that involved retreating to a fortified secondary location in case everything went bad.

Unlike my pylons that I could deconstruct at will, my dungeon heart couldn’t be destroyed on a whim. But! I could move it. The issue however is that when I did, it paused the timer for the quest, adding more time to the quest itself until I reconstructed my pylons.

Still, it didn’t matter too much, so long as I could move it.

I ordered Slimey to take hold of all my stockpiled weapons, the slime expanding her form back into a blob and absorbing the steel, comatosed skeletons, and various supplies scavenged from the sewers with strict instructions not to dissolve.

Dave carried with her my other slimes, the vast majority of the creatures sticking to her bed she strapped to her muscular back whilst her hands held my mana heart.

Moving quickly and with purpose, my menagerie of creatures made its way to the sewer pipes, the ones leading upwards to the catacombs where we quickly made our way back into the chamber sealed off.

Thankfully, there weren’t many skeletons or much resistance to be dealt with, and we had made it just in time as the Spider Matriach’s minions reached my now abandoned domain.

I quickly destroyed my pylons, disbanding my territory in the process before staking a new claim. 

Sadly, I wasn’t refunded the mana expenditure from my previous claim, leaving me manaless. But it didn’t matter, the battlefield had been shifted, one that now evened the odds a bit more in my favor.

The catacomb chamber was built with only two entrances, but with one of them blocked, there was only one way in. And that way was through a long tunnel, a fatal funnel as Hector would call it that was riddled with traps, pitfalls, and strings set up by my minions in between fortifying my previous location.

Fortunately the plan was simple albeit risky.

All it required was Slimey blocking the singular entrance with its body, creating an impassable wall of dissolving slime.

A coward's tactic? Perhaps.

But there was no way I was going to confront a hundred spiders head on with defeat guaranteed.

I ordered Dave to set the dungeon heart in the center of the chamber as I reestablished my domain. 

My senses immediately spread out, encompassing the nearby hallways and even into the blocked passage that lay at my flank.

I could see them, the six-legged arachnids, the monsters, a tidal wave composed of hundreds of spiders directed in my direction.

Slimey!

“At once my Lord!”

Slimey quickly moved, her gelatinous mass filling in the cavern entrance and solidifying. 

But that wasn't the end of my plan. To simply sit and wait.

No. 

Slimey, like many of my slimes, possessed slime bullet, a skill that allowed my minion to fire fluid from her body at high speed, turning her own mass into violent projectiles.

And with her body filling the entire circumference of the only entrance to my new domain…

Well.

Heh.

Slime go Brrrrrrrr.

The ravenous hordes of arachnids were turned into chunks, the only ones surviving being the vanguard red-eyed spiders that stood at the forefront.

Yet they too eventually fell. While resistant to physical damage, each bullet fired by Slimey was infused with its holy body, allowing the attacks to punch through the armored arachnids.

DIE BUGS! DIE! DIE! DIE!  AHAHAHAHHAA! HAVE A NICE CUP OF LIBER-TEA!

Ehem.

Weird, where did that come from?

Anyway, after CTRL ALT DELETing the first few hundred spiders, the tidal wave of arachnids suddenly halted their advance, turning around and fleeing through back into the pipes towards the sewers.

And it was a good thing too. 

Having Slimey use slime bullet actually cost her HP, each shot fired, another bit of herself lost.

Standing at a thousand and twenty-six HP, Slimey had fired well over a thousand rounds of slime from her body, leaving my champion at half health with her body a bit smaller than usual.

With the enemy beaten back, it was time to deploy the clean up crews, after all, a clean home is a happy home, and no one wants bug guts coating their hallways.

Sending out my minions, I had my spiders collect the chitin from their large cousins and the slimes mop up the green goo. Dave on the other hand was allowed freeroam to munch on the still twitching bug carcasses.

“dID I dO Gweed Lawd HirO?” Slimey sent, the words transmitted to me being slurred and discombobulated, as if she were drunk. But with the effort she had put in beating back our enemies, I knew this to just be a symptom of her diminished health pool.

Yes, you did very good Slimey, I’m proud of you.

At my words Slimey’s form suddenly unsolidified, turning into a large vibrating pink puddle that splashed onto the floor. 

“Huehuehuehue.” Slimey let out, wiggling happily. “I livF to surve mAsHter!”

Riiight.

Moving on, I turned my attention to the pile of hardened chiten at my side just as a new notification hit my mind, my interface lighting up.

[MINION: HECTOR HAS EVOLVED FROM MINOR SKELETON TO SKELETON ROGUE!]

Suddenly the pile of bones deposited beside me began to shift, rise, the skeletal remains rising to stand with twin daggers in its hands.

Oddly, the skeleton crossed the daggers over its chest before it bowed, a bit more personality than I was used to from undead.

Suspiciously, I reached out, probing its mind, yet unlike my other monsters there was still no consciousness to speak of. Instead there was a feeling, like something warm buried beneath the coldness of undeath.

Disappointing to say the least. And here I was hoping for another guy to talk to.

I opened my minion manager, sorting my minions by strongest first to better organize what I was looking at, hiding the others under my control so I could focus specifically on my heavy hitters, my A-Team.

MINION MENU

Slimey: Holy Super Slime LvL 13

Title: Hiro’s Champion

HP: 1026/2050

MP: 185/400

Skills: Dissolve LvL 6. Slime Shot LvL 5. Cleanse LvL 5. Foam LvL 2. Solidification LvL 5. Bounce LvL 3. Physical Resistance LvL 4. Cold Resistance LvL 2. Mimic LvL 2. Blend LvL 1. Duplicate LvL 1. Shape Change LvL 1. Slime Bullet LvL 1. Holy imbue LvL 1. Mend LvL 1. Bubble Blow LvL 1, Acid Immunity LvL EX, Striking Resistance LvL 3, Slashing Resistance LvL 3

Dave: (???) LvL: 2

HP: 550/550

MP: 40/40

Skills: Bite LvL 6, Iron Tail LvL 5, Blend LvL 5, Swim LvL 4, Endure LvL 2,  Pain Resilience LvL 3, Minor Regeneration LvL 3. Strong Body LvL 1. Heavy Constitution LvL 1. Human Potential, Darkvision LvL 2, Iron claw LvL 2.

Hector: Skeleton Rogue LvL: 1 

HP: 100/100

MP: 10/10

Skills: Undead. Swift Step LvL 1, Uncanny Dodge LvL 1, Play Dead LvL 1, Inconspicuous, Acrobatic, Trap Finding LvL 1, Dash LvL 1, Scarlet Kisses LvL 1, Detect Prized Possession LvL 1, Pilfer LvL 1, Critical Damage LvL 1.

[Name: Spooderman]

LVL: 6

Species: Lesser Taruntual.

HP: 90/90

MP: 150/150

Skills: Spin Silk LvL 3, Paralytic Bite LvL 2, Pouce LvL 1, Poisoner LvL 1, Blend LvL 2.

Chloe: Minor Skeleton LvL: 10 [Evolving]

HP: 100/100

MP: 0/0

Skills: Undead.

 

Oh! Reviewing Hector’s skills, the rogue wasn’t very tanky, but what he lacked in health and MP, he more than made up for it in skills.

Which was good, my roster now included a thief-type monster, something I could use to… procure useful goods.

And what more useful an item to me right now than one of those many gems kept in the cavern of the Spider Matriarch. 

A bold plan? Perhaps. But the key to augmenting my forces lay in procuring new resources and materials. If there wasn’t enough exp for my minions to grow, then I just needed to equip them with proper gear to augment their weaknesses.

I turned my attention back to the neatly stacked chitin plates ripped off the carcasses of the dead arachnids and to Slimey who was wiggling happily still while the muscular croc-girl munched loudly on bug meat.

An idea began to form in my mind.

One of an armored gator and armored Slimey. Imagine, Slimey and Dave! Draped in armor! The two monster girls impervious to enemy attacks! OR AN ENTIRE ARMY OF SLIMES! ARMORED SLIMES! ARMORED BUGS! ARMORED SKELETONS! A MASS OF HARDENED MONSTERS MARCHING THROUGH THE WORLD AND PURIFYING THE UNCLEAN!

Without realizing it I began to squeak loudly, my squeakerlocation sounding more like a twisted diabolical laugh. 

Wait. Am I a villain?

No, my thoughts of conquest are just to build a nice, clean, utopia. Nothing wrong with that. Right? Right. Right! I’m totally right.

Oh, speaking of conquest, here's more spiders offering their armor to me now! 

I quickly recalled my spiders and slimes, ordering Slimey to position for round two as I noticed a new type of spider on the field.

It was yellow-eyed, larger than the red-eyed ones with heavier plating, but more than that, what drew my ire more so, was the gems encrusted in its legs.

Hmmm.

An odd sense of foreboding began to take me, something that screamed danger. 

There were three of them, marching at the forefront of the pack as Slimey solidified, their heavy foot steps clacking against the catacomb floor.

Slimy opened fire, her slime bolts smashing against their hardened carapices but unlike the red-eyed spiders, their armor held up as they marched.

AH! CRAP!

Then, they stopped. The trio of spiders raising their forefront legs and digging them into the ground, the gems that encrusted their bodies starting to glow.

Wait… Alarm bells began to ring, all my senses screaming danger as the enemy spiders began gathering mana!

THEY WERE MAGICIANS! MAGIC SPIDERS?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!

Slimey! Disengage! Return! I ordered, but it was too late. Like field artillery, the trio of arachnids launched their salvo, a massive burst of mana that punched through my Champion, shattering her core. 

SLIMEY!!!!

A/N 

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