Blood Shaper

Like every “door” he’d seen so far in the dungeon, there wasn’t a door, just an open archway leading into a darkened tunnel that spanned the short distance between rooms. The walls and the ceilings are cramped, not tight enough to prevent entry to anyone but the largest of visitors but small enough that was impossible to see into each room until they were right at the entrance.

“What’s next?” Kay asked Eleniah, since after the first room she was happy to let him be forewarned.

“Big charging type enemies. Last time I was here, they were rhinoceroses, but that might have changed. One second,” She stopped and leaned against the wall so she could maneuver her arm into pulling out a sheaf of papers she’d tucked under her clothes.

Kay glanced away. Miri and the Blood Guard all caught the byplay but all of them kept their mouths shut.

Eleniah didn’t notice Kay’s mild embarrassment and quickly read through the papers before tucking them away again. “Okay, the dungeon hasn’t changed the general type of each room based on the info I got from the Adventurer’s Guild but the monsters are water buffalo golems now.”

“Those are nasty,” Kay remarked with a grimace, “They kill loads of people back on Earth, and those are just animals not monster golems.”

“You should have seen the rhinos. But yeah, keep your head on a swivel and don’t let them back you into a corner.”

The cramped hallway, which could have been called a tunnel if it weren’t for the stonework, traveled slightly upward for a few hundred feet before leveling out. The archway into the next room was almost blinding for an instant as everyone’s eyes had to adapt to the light streaming into the hall. With Kay in the lead, since technically their party was only him and Eleniah even if the others were tagging along, they pushed out into the room, ready for a sudden attack. It wasn’t anything like Kay expected. Hearing that the next set of enemies would be large charging attackers he’d expected open lines of unobscured space for the golems to stampede through and crush any adventurers underfoot. Instead there were massive pillars every few feet that stretched seventy feet up to the roof of the elongated room. Each of the pillars had Thick poles of stone, about a foot in diameter, jutting out from them with smaller poles coming out of those and so on, until there were fist thick ones as the smallest size. The last twenty feet of air was filled with the faux branches, creating a leafless canopy thick enough to make the ceiling barely visible.

“… I think your information is out of date.” Kay muttered as he stared upward.

“Can dungeons make changes that fast?”

“No.”

“Then how- Wait.” He turned to her with a scrunched up look on his face. “You got those papers from the guild’s stand this morning. When was the information on them gathered?”

Eleniah looked like she’d bitten into multiple lemons, “No time to shimmy the papers out, but yeah, that could do it. This dungeon makes changes so infrequently I didn’t even think to check.” She squinted up into the branches. “Are those monkey golems?”

They were in fact monkey golems. They swarmed out from somewhere out of sight, hidden among the branches. A veritable wave of golems danced through the fake branches until they stopped above the groups head, blocking out every inch of the air above them as they stared down at the adventurer’s who’d invaded their domain. They were slightly larger than a full sized human with intricately shaped stone outer shells that were carved to make it look like they had fur. They were the same dull brown color that every golem before had been, but to Kay their carved snouts made them look like baboons or mandrills.

“I don’t want to fight them up there.” Kay remarked cautiously. “This dungeon lets us sneak away from fights or run forward past them, right? I mean, the archways just sit open.”

Eleniah laughed humorlessly. “Ha, no. The archway into the next hallway is open, but the one into the next room at the end of the hallway doesn’t appear until this room is cleared. If you run past you just have to turn around and head into a room where the golem’s know you have to go to, and they know exactly where you’re going to be coming from.”

The golems decided then that they were done inspecting. There was a coordinated flurry of movement from above, and Kay’s eyes widened as he realized that the dungeon also knew the second core truth of autonomous robotic weapon design: integrated weapons beat giving your robots, or golems in this case, hands and making them carry the weapon. Hundreds of tails swung to point at Kay and company, over shoulders, around sides, and even between legs, all of them equipped with a built in crossbow. There was an incredibly short moment for the golems to all aim, then they fired one massive volley at once. Kay had an equally brief moment to realize that while he doubted the historical accuracy of whether or not a volley of arrows during a certain film famous battle of Spartans versus Persians actually blocked out the sun, he could see where the turn of phrase came from.

A storm of stone crossbow bolts rained down on them and it took every bit of Kay’s quick reflexes to get a single layer of hardened blood up between his people and the rain of sharp objects. His impromptu shield didn’t stop the bolts, the majority of them pierced through and scored hits on everyone, but it did turn the assuredly fatal pin-cushioning into a painful but livable pin-cushioning. Kay pushed the bolts out of himself from the inside and began absolutely pumping mana into his self-healing Skills. His the punctures where rocky bolts had punched through his flesh began to patch themselves over as his guards charged to the fore. They were acting perfectly in line with the agreement they’d made with Kay about when they would intervene during the run, so he said nothing. Getting attacked by hundreds of enemies who were each powerful enough to do real damage to him that had a significant height and range advantage definitely counted as a serious threat to his life.

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A thickly armored Blood Guard generated a thick tower shield that quickly expanded to completely engulf the group and the second volley of bolts bounced off, save for a few that managed to partially penetrate without getting far enough to hurt anyone. A healer began sending bolts of rejuvenating magic into everyone and Kay nodded to the wiry man.

“Thanks, Aodjen.”

He nodded back and switched over to patching up Eleniah’s injuries.

“This is a difficulty jump,” Kay commented to Eleniah with false cheer, “You think the dungeon has it out for us?”

“Not… exactly? I think it got annoyed that only two of us were doing any real fighting and decided to reroute us to a room that forced everyone else to get involved.” She glanced behind for a moment, “Except maybe Miri.”

“I’ll happily assist, but this isn’t my type of battlefield.” Miri replied, “I’m afraid I wouldn’t be much help?”

“What is your type of battlefield?” Kay asked.

“A dirty room in need of a good dusting!”

“… Right.”

Just then Lauren stepped forward holding a greatbow almost as tall as she was made of blood, complete with a three foot long arrow. “Excuse me, your majesty, if you could step to one side…”

Kay pushed himself against the wall and angled his head so he could get a good view.

“Firing in three, two, one.”

The shield parted for an instant in between incoming volleys and Lauren released her own shot. The massive arrow almost seemed to teleport it shot off so fast and the last thing Kay saw before the shield closed up again was it piercing completely through one of the monkeys and hitting at least one more behind that one.

“With the enemy being what it is and our own capabilities, this is going to be a battle of attrition.” Lauren said, turning to Kay while she slowly formed another arrow. “As long as nothing changes we should be able to hold out against this level of attack indefinitely, so it’s just a matter of taking out as many golems as we can in each shot.”

Kay stared at the arrow while it formed. “… Lauren can I see that before you fire it?”

“Of course, your majesty.”

“Thanks.” He took it in both hands and got a good feel of the size and weight of it with both his regular physical sense and his magical senses that were tuned to blood. “Could you fire an arrow like this if it were a lot heavier?”

“To an extent, yes, but these are right at the best balance I’ve found between range, damage, and physical characteristics. A heavier arrow wouldn’t go as far or pierce as much.”

“If I gave you an arrow, could you see about getting it up to them? It doesn’t need to kill any of them, just get it close.”

“It will be as you will, your majesty.”

Ignoring the slight teasing in Lauren’s “yes” he started concentrating a significant amount of blood from both his Inventory and the multiple spatially expanded storage items he had, mist of which only had blood in them. Through a combination of his willpower and a lot of mana, he compressed an insane number of gallons of blood into a single arrow. He held it out to Lauren after she took her third shot since he started making it for her and let her test the heft. It visibly dipped her hands down as she took its weight before she firmed up her arm muscles. She hefted it a few more times then grunted.

“Heavy. The angles going to be a bitch and it won’t do any damage as an arrow, but I can get it in range.”

“It’s all yours, then.”

Lauren notched the arrow and aimed much higher than she had on the last few shots. “Let’s let them have two more volleys then we’ll drop it on my count.”

“Of course I mean this with no offense, your majesty.” Miri whispered into Kay’s ear as they all watched Lauren’s imposing figure holding her impressively large bow at full draw. “But couldn’t you just throw that up there yourself?”

“It’s taking all of my concentration to keep that bomb contained in the shape of an arrow. Getting it up there among those monkeys at a high enough speed that they don’t intercept it would be a giant pain in the ass and probably drain my mana for the rest of this run. This way is much easier.”

“Ah, thank you for that information.”

“And, three, two, one, down.” Lauren counted, then let the arrow go. It flew up at a much slower speed than the ones before it, although it was still going fast enough that it would have bowled over anyone that didn’t have superhuman reflexes. The golems did though, and those of them in way of the flight path nimbly hopped their way through the branches until they were out of danger. Or what they thought was out of danger at least. The arrow reached the peak of its trajectory among the largest mass of the monkeys, exactly where Kay wanted it, which proved once again that Kay had made a fantastic choice recruiting Lauren into his personal forces.

At the apex of its flight, Kay let go of his hold on the compressed blood, and the arrow-shaped bomb exploded. The shield toting member of the Blood Guard had already resealed their protective field, but Kay took a brief second to reinforce it with several more layers as a highly pressurized wave erupted out with enough power to take out modern buildings. It was a quirk of magic or the System that Kay had given up ever understanding that kept his pressurized blood from turning into plasma, but he like the that it existed. Without it, his pressurized blades and explosives would be impossible. Since they weren’t impossible, this one wrecked pure hell through the monkey golems’ ranks.

The golems that weren’t turned to dust or shattered into pottery scraps were sent careening into the ground and the walls of the spacious room at high speed, breaking limbs or destroying golems outright. The stone facsimiles of branches were also destroyed in the blast, leaving nothing for the survivors to stand on, so even those at the very edges of the crowd who survived thanks to others taking most of the blow were sent tumbling down.

“You didn’t save any for me!” Eleniah complained as the shield came down and they all took in the carnage.

“There’s some still moving,” Kay pointed out, physically pointing at the remaining golems who were pushing their way out of their dead brethren’s bodies. “You can break them.”

Mollified that she’d get to do something, Eleniah went and did just that.

“Do you think that this counts as the rest of you getting involved in the fighting?” Kay asked.

“I have no idea what the dungeon is going to think about that, your majesty.” Miri replied cheerfully, “But I’ve been quite entertained on this trip so far!”

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