Vraxious- Whispering Grotto Dungeon
The flickering speckles of green luminescence drifted aimlessly above and around Vrax for just a moment longer. Creating an eerie contrast to the slavering horde rushing towards him. Then, just as the goblins entered the light cast by the acidic lurkers, the dandelion seeds dove lazily at first and then with increasing intensity as their newfound wings propelled them into the unsuspecting goblins. A fantastical cascade of firefly-like visuals disappeared into the first ranks of the horde. Utter chaos broke out around Vrax, the daisy ripping and tearing into the confused swarm around itself. The lurker mushrooms snapping out and savagely tearing limbs free in a shower of acid before getting a grip on a torso and flinging sizzling, screaming goblins past him.
The first goblin to reach him was hardly in fighting shape; dozens of pulsing green dots swam through its veins, and it simply screamed towards him before falling to its hands and knees, clawing at the unreachable invaders. Vrax sidestepped another goblin barely cognisant enough to fight back and pushed it past him with his spear towards an unoccupied lurker. It ripped the creature away just as he turned to the next threat. A sinewy goblin wielding a dull machete flailed at him. Vrax blocked the first blow, locking the machete up with his spear. The cape shot out into the creature's face, sinking in deep and instantly dropping it as it drank its fill. The cape caught another two nearby goblins, grabbing one by the ankles and dragging it in; another it simply wrapped around, searching for sources of moisture.
Vrax looked around the battlefield. Fully two-thirds of the horde was being ravaged by the dandelion seeds in various states of agony, panic, or, in a few severe cases, death, as the seeds tore open important veins inside the host during their passage or dove through the walls of the heart a few too many times, being carried along with the monster’s pulse.
He had a moment of relative safety; the nearest goblin that could still fight was struggling against his cape as it tried to climb into its mouth. Vrax ended that with a swift lunge and deactivated his cape to make it drop the multiple goblins it was currently drinking. Ahead he could see a small cluster of goblins that was taking shelter inside a small, flickering yellow bubble held aloft by a normal-looking goblin focusing desperately to ward off the seeds. In front of him were two shield bearers and two archers; it looked like Vrax would have to see to them personally.
He took off in a light jog, dancing around the flailing figures around him, veins alight and minds almost broken. Vrax touched one of his lurker mushrooms, re-adding it to his garden, and made a slight detour to snatch the daisy off of the chest of a mostly dead goblin. He stuck it under his arm and made straight for the bastion of pale-amber light warring against his hungering green glow.
Vrax couldn’t help but think about the fascinating progression of sentient monsters as he rushed towards the figure holding off almost certain death with sheer willpower. The goblin hadn’t had any special class designation, meaning he had probably managed to cobble together a mana-shaping talent and was adept enough at using it to cast basic free-form spells like his shield. Vrax would have bet money if he and Torvald hadn’t decided to ruin these poor bastards night; the mage-to-be in front of him might well have become a shaman soon, or some other kind of magically adept goblin.
He snapped back to the present as he reached spear range, making a long, one-handed stab punctuated by a smite blossoming from the tip of his spear. It shattered part of the magical shield like a stone thrown through a window. The two armed with sword and shield rushed through the shield to stop him. Damn, that's a good spell, it selectively allows his allies through. He mused as he threw the daisy over the heads of the advancing guards and through the shattered hole in the spell's barrier. The daisy went wild; the goblins inside, armed with bows and magic, didn’t stand a chance, the yellow bubble shattering almost immediately as the daisy latched onto the spell-casting hands of the mage-to-be.
Vrax danced slightly farther back from the advancing warriors and summoned his stigmata, the acidic lurker appearing behind the rearmost shield bearer. He noted with interest that corpses worked as fuel for his stigmata, several nearby goblin bodies rotting away as if they had been ravaged by the elements for months. The lurker wrapped around the shield bearer, shield and all, crunching him against its stem, thorny barbs searing through shield and bone alike.
Vrax looked at the last threat immediately before him and feinted high, then low, leaping over and past a clumsy slash towards his legs. He didn’t even have to turn; he just activated his cape, and it lashed out with such force he had to brace his spear into the dirt to avoid falling. The cape lifted the struggling goblin above him, each root finding its way into an orifice or unarmored vein. The goblin shrank in on itself visibly above Vrax as his cape practically gulped down goblin blood.
Vrax had to wait a moment, the weight above him hindering his mobility, but between his enhanced strength and the moisture the cape drank, not weighing as much as it should, he could move again as soon as it finished wringing out its victim. He went to dash to the shelter of his lurker mushrooms, but when he looked around the hissing or glowing remains, some already starting to have dandelions sprout from broken bodies, he didn’t see anything left. He had done it; he and his new creatures had just taken on over thirty enemies and won. Most of that was thanks to the dandelions being like a tailor-made counter to the low-level goblins, but still.
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Torvald was still engaged in a heated battle ahead; the dull thump of hammer blows striking soil reverberated even where Vrax was. He spent a moment to gather his garden to himself, except the daisy; it had already run off full tilt towards the chaos in the northern end of the camp.
Torvald was squared off against the shaman. A growling feline form made of what appeared to be red bone and shadow protectively prowled between Torvald and the shaman, its gait seemingly lagging behind the shadows around it and then suddenly snapping back into sync. The ground around them was torn apart as if great earthquakes had shifted the land itself.
Torvald looked towards Vrax. “Didn't you say this was level fifteen?! Some help, please!” Torvald shouted, diving to the side as the ground below him erupted, splitting open violently, trying to catch him in its maw as it shifted closed again with a rumble.
“It is level fifteen!” Vrax yelled in response, having to leap over a chasm that ripped into existence in his path. The shaman had ascended back onto its throne, waving its hands in the air like a deranged conductor, mana pulsing with the beat of an unseen ballad as the ground around both of them began to split seemingly randomly. Okay, that can't be fucking level fifteen. He used identify again; this time it showed something else, something far more concerning. They had attracted the attention of the dungeon itself by boldly ambushing the entire camp as two low-level adventurers.[Goblin Shaman Dungeon Avatar Tier-?](Lvl?).
Vrax blanched. He knew dungeons could possess creatures they made or that had lived in their influence for long enough; they just usually didn’t because it almost always killed them after a brief period of empowerment and cost the dungeon essence better spent elsewhere.
“The fucking dungeon is puppeting it!” Vrax shouted in alarm, just barely dodging a pounce from the shadowed feline and halfway stumbling into a chasm before using his spear to shove himself back to safety.
“Smite it!” Torvald shouted while gathering an impressive amount of mana as he rapid-fired off his skills. He charged to Vrax and grabbed him, then charged upwards for a good angle, mooring himself in space above the morass of writhing ground.
“Wait, hold the fuck on this...aghhh.” Vrax attempted to protest as Torvald threw him in a rough arc over the writhing ground towards the throne the possessed shaman sat upon. Torvald charged again, hitting the beast of shadow and bone with a gut-wrenching tearing sound. They both tumbled clear of the heaving ground in a swirl of dirt and shadows.
Vrax managed to roll relatively gracefully out of being thrown, only going ass over teakettle once before regaining his footing and springing up the throne steps. He didn’t slow as he pushed out a fully powered smite, the miasma so strong the throne around him began to slough away as he lunged for the possessed shaman’s throat. It caught the smite with both hands, a sickly green wave of energy coursing between its fingers as its magic warred with the smite. The energy began slowly clamping down, restraining the necrotic energy on the tip of Vrax's spear, smothering the deadly blow before it did more than peel back the flesh of the shaman's fingertips. The dungeon smiled at Vrax from within the shaman, an unfathomably old entity peering at him through eyes that were not its own.
Vrax summoned his Stigmata garden, all of it. The shaman was caught off guard as hungering thorns latched onto its body from three directions and began pulling. Slowly its arms were forced apart as the thorns dug into bone and acid peeled away at skin. With a heave of its left arm, a spire of stone flung from the ground beside them, catching Vrax fully in his shoulder and side. Vrax felt bones crunch and his breathing become labored as his viewpoint spun for several moments, and then he landed with a dull thud and a wheeze as his body fought to draw air into it. He scrambled in the dirt, nearly crawling into a chasm before he regained his senses. Struggling to his feet with his spear acting as a cane, he took stock of the situation.
Torvald was almost a hundred strides away now; blades of shadow were clawing at him from his feline opponent. He met them with thundering counterblows, scattering the magic across the ground in billowing clouds, but he was not winning. A large, neat cut across his chest and abdomen wept blood, and his body was so scraped the beast must have dragged him across the stony ground at some point. The shaman was blessedly still fighting against two of the lurker mushrooms; the third was simply gone. In its place, a gouge the size of a cart was torn from the hard-packed earth near the throne. The dandelion seeds swirled harmlessly through the air around it, an unseen vortex of wind keeping them at bay.
Vrax began struggling back towards the shaman to try and end this. Where the fuck is Red? You can have the fucking coin, man. This has way crossed the we might need saving line. Slightly ahead of Vrax, a tiny figure bathed in the green blood of its enemies hurled its filthy form from a crevasse, deadly tendrils waving in irritation as its single eye searched for prey. It locked onto the shaman and began an uneven shuffle around crevasses towards it. Holy shit, the daisy survived all that? It's pretty rough, though, missing a tendril, a leg, and a big chunk of its “face.” As if to prove Vrax's doubts wrong The daisy made it all the way to the throne under the tendril of a lurker and set to tearing into the unsuspecting shaman's leg with fevered abandon.
The shaman tried to heave its arm to cast another spell and banish the attacking plants, but the motion was the final straw; the acid seeped deep and amputated the limb. It looked almost confused as the arm spiraled away. A moment later the lurker struck again, wrapping around its head and finally ending the madness with a savage tug that beheaded the shaman in a spatter of acid. The fighting nearby stopped as Torvalds foe scattered across the ground with a clatter. They looked at each other across the battlefield for a moment. Then the sheer influx of essence dropped them both to their knees, their bodies flooded with pure potential and a little something extra from the dungeon as a thank you for the fun.