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(DHF)Chapter 179: Getting wet
🕑 Added 2025-04-08 14:58:47 +0000 UTCThese fish monsters were nearly helpless as I killed them one after the other with my beams of erasure but eventually they got past me to destroy the tool. Not that it mattered much as I had several more. The things weren't built to last to begin with and were only designed to let out a short but extremely bright light for about five minutes or so. The several dozen dead monsters that went poof under my attacks gave me a great deal of smoke but the drops were unfortunately lost as the current carried them off.-
Still I was sitting pretty with a few gallons of that dark liquid that the smoke turned into after being absorbed by my tattoos. Not nearly enough to move my stats all that far but a good start if nothing else. Satisfied with my haul at the end of this fishing trip I headed down the tunnel follow my compasses signal. The metal ore I found was a mere deep iron deposit that was roughly the size of a Pallum. The extraction was nice and smooth as I simply used my technique to cause the metal to snake out of the stone around it without any fuss at all.-
I found it a little funny how I'd get an impression of being watched every time I used my technique on the dungeon directly like this but once my goal was figured out it would vanish. Obviously the dungeon had learned to keep an eye on me since I had a bad habit of fucking around and needing to be taught what happens to those that do. I ignored the brief glances the dungeon threw my way when I did anything with something directly connected to it though as otherwise I'd never get anywhere.-
That aside my trip down this tunnel was fairly peaceful as I only got attacked by monsters twice. The first time by a group of Harpies that I bitch-slapped to death, it was a fun time. The second attack was by a Drag octopus that very quickly found out that it fucked up when it grabbed me. My mask/helm let me breath underwater so I was in no hurry at all to surface after being rudely pulled into the water. From under the water I got a good look at the offending cephalopod and had to admit it really was a master of disguise as even now it's color and shape was subtly shifting constantly.-
The only real thing that stayed the same was that pair of red sideways rounded slit pupil eyes that the thing had and was looking at me with. Ice rapidly formed on the tentacles holding me under and even after the monster tried to ditch it's arms the ice didn't stop spreading though this time through the water itself. Pretty soon I had dammed up the entire waterway with just a single solid wall of ice. Naturally the Drag octopus was encased within this wall but I ignored that to observe the opposite side of the wall that with no water incoming was emptying itself out.-
The monsters there weren't the brightest bunch as even with the water rapidly lowering and turning shallow they didn't seem to notice. I couldn't hold the wall up for long though as the sheer pressure of trying to stop a river of fast moving water alone was causing stress cracks in the ice. I patched the wall one last time before dashing along the waterways floor killing every monster I found with erasure as I did.-
The smoke never stopped flowing through the air as I sprinted and I heard the ice wall cracking and starting to break as the water pushed against it. I saw the opening leading to the great fall when the wall of ice broke and the water rushed forward like an avalanche seeking to drown everything. I leapt out of the waterway without hesitation and clung to a crystal formation near the wall of the tunnel as the water hit. I grunted as the water tried to rip me off the crystals with it's flow but I refused.-
While I fully intended to get the lake I didn't want to take the expressway down, aka the great fall. Even with how durable I was that sort of drop was highly likely to break most of the bones in my body and ruin a lot of the rest of it. Knowing my luck that exact moment would be when Amphisbaena would spawn. Thankfully the water was only a little backed up so once the initial surge was over the water returned to it's normal flow and depth. I shook myself off like a dog at this point before walking over to the opening the water was flowing out of and took a look.-
Contrary to what most would think the Great fall wasn't from some other water body like a massive lake or river but was in fact the product of many smaller streams coming out of the tunnels and down the cliff face because of gravity. As this tunnel was one of the topmost ones the view was quite breathtaking as the sheer scale of the wall of water you could see was enough to make even me nervous. From my vantage point I couldn't even see to other side of the waterfall but what I could see was at least a dozen other tunnels dumping out water at the top of the waterfall.-
'Perhaps I could climb over to them if I was careful.' I thought for a moment before shaking my head to dismiss the idea.
While it was tempting to be the first person to likely see the inside of those tunnels there was a serious risk with being the first to do anything with the dungeon as you couldn't predict what might be found or rather might find you. Unexplored areas were notorious for holding new monster species that had special abilities that could be quite unfun to deal with. An example of that is the pond of life that was discovered by the Loki familia in their expeditions and supposedly has a fierce dragon type guardian almost as strong as Amphisbaena but much smaller and nimbler.
