Chapter 68: The Breathing Walls of the Final Floor

The air on the other side of the portal was wet.

Not warm or touristic beach wet. It was really wet with insanely high humidity.

“Iykk..What the hell is this place?” Mel was the first one to complain among them and there were two juvenile wolves in the group.

She was showing her true colors to them with more time passed. It was probably a good thing.

Eren had to accept her disgust to some degree. This place made him felt like he was walking into a greenhouse that hadn’t been opened in years. The example was relevant because he had to do that while he was working on Earth. It was one of the most disgusting work he had to deal on the top of his bitchy boss.

Similar to that experience, Eren’s lungs pulled in something thick and sweet that made him cough on the first breath.

The stone walls were gone too.

Instead the tunnel was lined with dark soil packed tight between roots as thick as his forearm. The ceiling was held up by interlocking branches that looked like they’d grown into position over centuries. Instead of bioluminescent fungi there were clusters of pale flowers growing directly from the root walls, each one pulsing with a soft amber light that made the tunnel feel alive.

This place was definitely different than other two floors with its lightning, style or purpose. Like this was added much earlier and wasn’t suppose to be part of the dungeon experience.

“Lets move!” He muttered mostly to Mel.

Fury stepped through in front of him and went completely still for a second. His ears flattened and his nose worked in quick sharp bursts. His face looked like a big dog making weird funny faces.

[This isn’t right.] His voice was low. [The smell is from above. From the forest.]

“What do you mean from the forest? We are in the forest.”

[No. Other two floors were separate spaces. But here all the the roots, flowers and even the soil is taken from the forest. This is like you call….Verdant Hollow. The forest we walk through every day.]

Eren was impressed that he could remember a complicated name but maybe it happened because it was the name of the forest and they were interested in it.

Fury looked up at the root ceiling with something close to distrust while Eren didn’t say anything. [This is wrong but I don’t know how]

Rury came through next and immediately sneezed three times in a row. Mel stumbled in last and grabbed Eren’s arm like a drowning person. She was having troubles adapting this wet and smelly area.

Okay. Plant dungeon. Wolves hate it. Mel can’t breath well and we can’t leave until we kill the boss.

“Stay close. Same formation as the upper floors.”

They moved forward through the rootly dirt tunnel. The ground was soft under his feet and every few steps something crunched beneath his feet that he tried not to think about. The amber flowers were everywhere as they passed. But there wasn’t anything dramatic or dangerous yet.

But Eren noticed the ones behind them were dimmer than the ones ahead. It was getting much brigther.

The first chamber opened up after maybe hundred meters and it was nothing like what they had seen before.

The room was enormous. The ceiling was so high the light from the flowers couldn’t reach it and the upper half disappeared into complete darkness. Thick vines hung from above like ropes and the floor was covered in a carpet of moss so deep that Mel sank ankle-high into it immediately!

But the things growing in the center of the room made everyone stop.

Three creatures stood between the vine curtains. They looked like the bushes outside the village if someone had ripped them from the ground, given them legs and told them to act like oval humans.

Roughly humanoid shapes made of packed wood and vine, each one about chest height with long arms that ended in clusters of thorns instead of fingers.

“These are literally walking bushes.” Eren said it mostly for himself but everyone heard.

[They smell like the thornberry plants near the river deep inside the forest.] Rury’s nose was twitching. [But meaner.]

“Meaner how?” He grinned with the way she said it. She was getting better at talking for fun.

[The normal ones don’t move.]

Oh. Fair point.

The Thornwalkers hadn’t noticed them yet. Two of them were standing motionless near the center and the third was doing something weird. It had pressed its arm-branches against the far wall and its thorns were slowly pushing into the soil like it was feeding or communicating with the dungeon itself which Eren wished that it wasn’t true at all.

Eren pulled an arrow and turned to the wolves. “Same plan. We hit the one touching the wall first. If it’s doing something to the room, we don’t want to find out what.”

Rury moved without a word. He did learn from Floor 2 that Eren’s target priority made sense even if the reasoning wasn’t always obvious to them. Normally they would attack the closest target and kill order would go on in that way.

Rury launched first because she always did. And her Beast Claw caught the feeding Thornwalker across its midsection to shoulder area.

Claw shaped skill tore through the packed woody arm with a crunch and sounded like stepping on dry branches. Green saps and some juice sprayed across the mossy floor.

How the hell they managed to make these so disgusting!

The creature pulled away from the wall and swung one full and other half arm in a wide arc that scattered thorns like projectiles. It was rushed probably because even the creature itself didn’t finish the move and stopped it.

Three of the sudden thorns hit the wall behind Mel. She yelped and pressed herself flat against the root tunnel entrance with her daggers put in front of her face.

Eren didn’t know but she was having some delusions about hitting the next projectile thorns in air like a ninja. It was way above her or even Eren’s capabilities. But girl had a dream.

While Rury was fighting and Eren using his arrows to help, Fury hit the second creature before it could help the wounded one. His jaws closed on what passed for its neck and he pulled sideways until the thing’s upper body twisted at a wrong angle. It fell and immediately started crawling toward him on its remaining arms and some parts of it’s body.

“They don’t stop when you break them?” Mel said the obvious and made Eren sigh.

The third and biggest bushy creature moved toward Eren. It was faster than its size suggested and the vine carpet on the floor seemed to pull apart to clear a path for it.

“Oh. The floor helps them.” He was getting the same disease from Mel. Saying the most obvious things at dangerous moments. He bet it looked or sounded stupid.

He fired his next arrow with a pink hue on the metal part and it hit into the creature’s chest. The shaft sank deep into the packed wood but the creature didn’t slow down. No charm effect either. The thing probably didn’t have enough of a brain to confused by Charm based skills on the top of everything.

This time he just muttered to himself. “Lovely Eyes doesn’t work on plants. Wonderful.” He hated when weak enemies made trouble for some unnecessary reason.

Eren sidestepped the first arm swing and the cluster of thorns raked the air where his head had been. He pulled his kobold scimitar from the bagpack behind Mel and made her yelp again.

She looked cute with her messy short and confused face but it became past memory when he jumped like a blur.

Eren half jumped and half sprinted on the mossy dirt ground with Mel’s stupid expression inside his mind.

Sometimes he had trouble concentrating to important things. New half elf senses were too much and he didn’t find a way to control the new “him”.

He slashed across the bushy thing’s extended arm after a troublesom run. The blade cut through vine and woody parts easier than expected. Its arm dropped to the moss floor.

Then it grew back.

Huh?

Eren looked other two wolves and their targets and saw their bushy enemies also grew new parts or in the middle of regeneration.

Even the trolls didn’t regenerate this fast. If it was Eren and all the villagers would be dead days ago.

Bushy things didn’t grow their parts instantly. But within two seconds new vines started threading out from the stumps, weaving together into a rough copy of what he had just cut off.

“They regenerate! Everyone, don’t waste time on the limbs. Go for the center where the roots connect!”

Fury changed his approach immediately. He stopped biting at the crawling creatures arms and drove straight through its chest. His claws punched into a dense knot of roots at the center of the thing and ripped it free.

The creature went limp.

Center damage to kill had the same logic as pulling or destroying the core of slimes.

Rury was having problems. The first one which was touching the wall when they came, wrapped two vine arms around her back leg and she was snarling and thrashing. More vines were creeping from the moss toward her other limbs. The floor itself was trying to hold her down.

“Mel! Cut her free!”

Mel hesitated for a second, then ran across the moss with her dagger and slashed at the vines holding Rury. The enhanced edge from her skill cut through them cleanly and Rury ripped herself loose with a growl that echoed off the walls.

[I hate plants!] She sounded personally offended.

Eren drove his scimitar through the biggest Thornwalker’s center mass while it was still trying to regrow its arm. The blade hit the root knot and the creature shuddered once before collapsing into a pile of dead wood and loose vines.

[You gained 5% energy of Verdant Hollow Thornwalker Level 22]

Thornwalker was proper name for these things. But he didn’t expect to get any exp from that kill. Maybe giving supporting help with words also counted for something. Teamwork exp sharing was also a possibility.

“Verdant Hollow Thornwalker.” Like Verdant Hollow’s onw creation of Thornwalker. It sounded a little bit ominous.

This was the first time Eren realized that creatures from the dungeon had some naming issues.

First floor had no named creatures. Second floor’s bosses had verdant word in the front. But this floor, everything from the get go had the full name of the dungeon. He found that strange but didn’t know what to do with this yet.

..

The room went quiet except for everyone’s heavy breathing after they killed or “ended” other two in a similar way.

One of them died with Eren’s scimitar attack and messing it’s insides. It was more fun than he imagined it would be. And also easier.

Mel was staring at the green sap on her dagger like she couldn’t decide if she was proud or disgusted. She actually helped in combat for the first time after they went down to floor two. She was doing nothing for hours in this damn dungeon!

“F*ck yeah!!!” She screamed and cursed for a few more times as making finger flips to walls.

Eren wondered if that village meeting day taught these new generation a new list of curses. He didn’t hear cursing from her before that day. And doing that many flips to a dungeon would make it angry if it was sentient.

“Good job Mel.” Eren meant it.

She tried to look casual about it after she heard his voice but her hands were shaking and her cheeks were crimson.

[The floor tried to eat me.] Rury was inspecting her back leg where the vines had gripped. No wounds but the fur was matted with sap. [Floors aren’t supposed to eat you.]

“On this floor they do. Watch your feet and what they try to do behind you from now on.” Eren walked toward the wall where the first bushy thing aka Thornwalker had been feeding and pressed his palm against the soil wall.

It was warm but not from the wet air. Something deeper inside was pushing heat through the soil like the inside parts itself had a pulse.

Like they were inside a capsule or a cage of dirt and something was pushing heat, water and some other things to force feed and create a livable inner space. Like some animal lovers made for their ants or bugs.

He tried to remember the name and didn’t have any hope. Ah, they were called Terrarium. Closed environments for small creatures.

Remembering a weird name he heard who knows how many years ago was also weird. Maybe he was getting smarter with intelligence stat.”

He inspected the wall more and found there were markings underneath the soil where the Thornwalker’s arms had been pressed.

He scraped some dirt away with his fingers and found smooth stone beneath it with tiny follow channels and lines.

Lines were carved into the stone beneath it. Not random scratches but geometric shapes that connected to each other in a pattern he couldn’t follow. They weren’t goblin work either because goblins carved crude or crooked things. These looked precise and deliberate, almost mathematical and need high construction skills.

“Mel. Come look at this.”

She crouched next to him and studied the markings for a few seconds. Then she looked confused. “These aren’t elven. I’ve seen old elven carvings in the village. This is different and also looks like used more than to be just carvings or murals. This lines inside the carvings goes too deep, maybe even behind the wall.”

“Is there old carvings in the village. I heard everything was almost destroyed a long time ago.”

“I don’t know but there are a couple of them. And this is just…different.

Like whoever made these wasn’t trying to write or decorate. It looks more like a side effect while they are making the walls. Maybe they used a instructions manual or something and couldn’t help but make this carvings. There are a lot of possibilities. Granny Mulan should come here.”

“That cursing old granny is one of the most knowledgeable one, obviously.” Eren wasn’t against the idea of bringing that funny woman here if this floor wasn’t too dangerous.

Eren scraped away more soil but the pattern kept going with the same hollow lines and some channels around them. It extended further than his arm could reach in both directions before disappearing into the root walls and much more.

What the hell is under and around this floor?

He stood up and wiped the dirt on his pants. They had four more chambers at minimum to go before finishing this weirdness.

“Let’s keep moving. And nobody touch the walls unless I say so.”

They walked toward the second chamber tunnel and Fury pressed against Eren’s leg as they entered.

[The pulse from the walls is getting stronger the deeper we go.]

Eren didn’t translate this ominous info to curious Mel.

Actually Eren was feeling it too. A low vibration running through the ground that matched the rhythm of those warm walls, like the whole dungeon was breathing around them.

Maybe I shouldn’t come here without Emily…

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