<~> Chapter 130
"Helena, let's start with the snake monster. From what I'm told, you were the primary one to fight it, so you should have the best insight on how to defeat it in the future," Celeste said.
I nearly jumped when I was suddenly singled out. I hadn't really expected to do much talking at this strategy meeting, but that may have been a bit naive.
"I, uh. What do you want to know?" I asked sheepishly.
Celeste raised her eyebrows as if she hadn't expected my response. "Are there any weaknesses you noticed, any particular things that would aid in killing it in the future? You did most of the fighting against it. What did you observe?"
"Uh, right..." I turned my head and thought about the fight again. "Well... probably the largest danger it poses is its venom. Even with constant healing, the venom made me struggle, and its effects only got worse over time. The venom caused me to be sluggish and dizzy."
Rell'kor, the black and white drakken that had helped me, raised his hand, and Celeste nodded to him. "I was able to retrieve a sample of the venom, and I have already used it to produce an anti-venom that I gave to Helena after she killed the beast. I agree that the anti-venom will be useful, and I already plan to make more, but I actually disagree with her. The venom is the least of our worries. When the monster is as strong as it is, I do not think many would be able to grapple with it and fend off its strength the way that she had. Not without a coordinated front."
Celeste nodded. "During my meeting with my soldiers, they suggested some strategies they could employ to contain it. But it is as you say, it would usually take a large group of soldiers to fight it. Is there anything else, Helena?"
Now that I felt less caught off guard, I had been able to think about what I was going to say. "One of the things that makes the monster so dangerous is its manipulation of salt. I hadn't realized it when I was first fighting the monster, but it's able to pull the nearby salt from the water or environment and cover itself with it like a hard shell."
"Salt?" Celeste asked curiously.
I nodded. "At first, I thought it was using sand, but toward the end, I realized that the hard shell was made from salt." I didn't add that I found that out by eating the monster. I know that many of the people nearby had seen me do it, but since they haven't said anything about it, I think they just assumed that was part of how I fought. No one outside of my group needed to know that eating monsters made me stronger.
"What difference does it make if it's salt or sand?" an orange-scaled draco I hadn't heard speak before asked.
"The salt it uses to protect itself interacts differently with magic. Fire magic didn't seem to do anything to it, but ice magic melted the salt away," I replied.
Milana nodded. "It worked both ways. The salt melted my ice, but my ice melted its shell too. At first, I thought my magic was ineffective against it, but it just traded some of my ice magic's damaging strength for utility. Once through the shell, my ice worked just as well against its flesh as you would expect from anything else."
The alchemist from earlier, Bellor, looked excited. "Alchemically, it is challenging to melt salt. Only intense fire magic can do it. You would be better off using a blacksmith's forge to melt it using fire. Ice magic, on the other hand, must be disrupting the monster's ability to hold it together! Fascinating!"
I shrugged. "The salt shell was very difficult to break through with brute force. Nothing short of a direct blow with my axe or repeated strikes in the same place was able to break through it, and not even for very long. Fire magic didn't seem to phase it much either. The best that fire magic did was throw it off of me while we were grappling. Ice magic was able to get through its shell better, but I'm not sure if that's enough to deal with it. Even without its shell, you would still need to hurt it in some way, and the monster is fast. I could barely keep up."
"I was only able to hit it with my ice magic because Helena was holding it still. I'm sorry about hitting you, by the way... After seeing you heal, I thought that it would be better to catch you in the crossfire to help take the monster down," Milana said.
I sighed. "While I wasn't exactly happy to be impaled like that, it did allow me to defeat it. I should probably be thankful no one was actually trying to attack me too during all of that."
"Not for lack of trying," Norrik sneered while looking at Tor'jek.
The blue draco narrowed his eyes at Norrik. "I still do not trust that shapeshifter. If she truly were a changeling, I would have been doing everyone a favor. Since she appears not to be... I will withhold my complaints to myself."
Celeste raised an arm. "Enough. This is a strategy meeting, and we've already discussed your suspicions of Helena. I understand your caution, believe me, but she is not a threat to you nor your party. Are there any more insights to be gleaned about this snake monster?"
"It's hard to wrestle with something that has four arms," I said glibly. To my surprise, my comment got a few laughs from the assembled group.
"Don't snakes not like the cold? Doesn't it put them to sleep?" Aria asked out of nowhere.
The alchemist nodded. "Regular snakes heat themselves with the sun. However, this is a magical dungeon monster. Comparisons to their unempowered counterparts should be treated with care. Their resemblance could be misleading."
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Aria nodded. "Okay, but ice magic was strong against its salt shield anyway. It's possible the thing Luna and Iris used against the crabs would be effective on the snake monster as well."
I turned my head toward Luna in confusion. I hadn't noticed the two working together. Was it while I was fighting or after I was asleep?
Milana smiled. "Their combined spells did a good job of suppressing the crab monsters. It would be good news if it did just as well against the snake monster. For everyone who hadn't seen it, Luna and Iris used their magic together to create moving blizzards to kill and slow the crabs. It seemed especially effective against them. The crabs that weren't killed outright became sluggish or even fell unconscious."
Celeste nodded. "Ice magic, especially utility spells designed for disabling enemies, may be useful against both of the enemies. Since we're talking about it, what have we learned about these 'crab' monsters."
Valkin sat forward. "They appear in small numbers at first, but as the water level rises, so does their number. It wouldn't be an understatement to say that their combined threat may be a bigger problem to deal with than the snake monster. One strong enemy near the beginning of the dungeon is annoying, but with powerful empowered people, it's an obstacle that can be dealt with before letting others pass. An ever-increasing horde of monsters means that the only people that could regularly clear the floor are an army."
"Both problems at once make this dungeon impossible to clear in small teams," Norrik added.
Celeste sighed. "That is indeed bad news, but if the rewards of this dungeon are worth it, soldiers can be regularly employed to deal with the threat."
Milana shook her head. "I don't think that clearing it in small groups would be impossible as long as you had enough ice magic to deal with the crabs. Especially if something similar to Luna's and Iris's magic is also effective against the floor boss. This wouldn't be the first time a dungeon almost required a specific party composition to be completable in small groups."
"Lady Celeste, there is also the issue of killing the floor boss in the first place. While the salt removed from the water through desalination is useful in alchemy, is it wise to kill the boss monster and allow the local drinking water to be tainted with saltwater?" Bellor asked.
"That is a concern, but if the magically-infused salt turns out to be as useful in alchemy as your preliminary work with it suggests, it would not be difficult to have Ironcastle regularly allocate water mages here to desalinate the water. Depending on the situation, it may be possible to build filtering infrastructure as well. I've already sent letters to Dragon Prince Callisto on the matter, and I expect that he's already looking into solutions," Celeste replied.
"Of course, my lady," Bellor said with a nod.
Celeste looked over the remaining crowd. "Tomorrow morning, we plan on going into the dungeon again. One of our goals is to see how quickly structures inside are taken by the dungeon. If they last long enough, we may be able to construct simple structures to herd the crabs into kill boxes. If it's possible, the soldiers will take care of this task. The delvers will focus on collecting more samples and scouting out the area. Hopefully, we can find the stairs to the next floor soon. Once the crabs begin to increase in number, you will all fall back to the stairs and allow the soldiers to kill the crabs. The floor boss shouldn't respawn for another few days, so holding the stairs shouldn't be as difficult as it was the first time."
"Is it smart to go down to the next floor already?" I asked. "We can barely deal with this floor."
Celeste chuckled. "We won't be exploring the second floor until we have a proper plan to deal with the first floor, but if we can get a sense of what the second floor might entail, it will give us the ability to plan for that too. Many dungeons follow familiar patterns, and it would be nice to see if this one fits any of those patterns. The second floor will tell us if the first cluster of floors are similar, such as in the Fallow dungeon, or if they change every floor, as in the Ironcastle dungeon."
"Ah, I see," I said with a nod. I was a bit embarrassed for asking a seemingly dumb question.
("Bring up the snake monster blocking off the exit with salt,") Luna told me.
I cleared my throat and relayed Luna's message.
Celeste leaned back and scratched the base of one of her horns. "Yes, I had heard that. If it's in the snake monster's routine to block off the exit from the crab monsters, it may be drawn to the stairs when it respawns. That would make it difficult to deal with every time, but if structures can persist in the dungeon, we may be able to build an arena to hold it in."
"You would also need a way to allow it near the stairs in the event that you want the floor boss to filter the drinking water for you," Bellor noted.
Celeste nodded. "That is true as well. These are valuable insights. I will have to talk them over with my soldiers and my br- Dragon Prince Callisto. That is all I want to discuss for now. Unless there is anything else?" There was some chatter as the different teams spoke with each other, but nothing else seemed pressing enough to warrant discussion. "Then all of you are dismissed. Thank you for your attendance."
Everyone began to get up and file away from the meeting spot. Tor'jek gave my group a dirty look before leaving with the rest of his team. I was a bit surprised by how much that draco seemed to want to maintain the animosity between our groups, despite being assured that I wasn't a 'changeling,' whatever that was. Jol'ket, the red draco and leader of their team, seems to have dropped any issue with me for the moment, but I could tell that none of them trusted me as much as they had initially. Except for Rell'kor, the black and white drakken who seemed to like me more after everything for whatever reason. I was pretty thankful that he had given me that anti-venom though, so he was cool in my book.
I had some mixed feelings about Valkin and Norrik. I had heard from Luna how the two of them protected me while I was unconscious. It was a pretty big change from how Valkin had been treating me initially, so it was making me rethink how I felt about him. The two of them could have easily ignored the situation, but I heard that Valkin had helped Luna stop me from drowning while Norrik stopped Tor'jek from attacking me while I was vulnerable. I already liked Milana and Talia. Maybe those two aren't that bad either.
I reached out and took Luna's hand before pulling her close to me. Luna blushed and looked up at me with a smile on her face. ("What's up, Helena?") she asked.
Leaning forward, I gave her a quick kiss. ("It just feels like I haven't heard enough of your voice today. Let's go find a spot to sit and relax.")
("Okay,") Luna replied as her tail lightly swayed behind her.
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