57 The Approaching Swarm

Neita walked out of the Mystroff shop late that evening with defeat written across her face. When she first arrived; she found a very short and angry man that seemed to be on the verge of tears, she didn't know what to do except ask him if he knew about Galahad while he never stopped hammering away at misshapen piece of metal.

Only after getting through to him, did Neita realize it was actually Galahad's father, who only resembled him in the eyes and nothing else. She couldn't keep herself from being shocked and just quietly followed him. Derock had brought her upstairs to the third of the four floors and sat her at the kitchen table patiently waiting.

She didn't specify her reason for visiting, but she had made it clear it didn't involve anything about Derrock's son being at risk for anything, at least she hoped. She talked about him for a while and soon a older, female version of Galahad's appearance came up from the shop wearing a clerk apron and carrying a Karmic tablet, it obviously Sora his mother.

Neita talked about what very little Galahad's parents knew and it provided nothing more than what the Count already told her. They were clearly upset about their son's decision to leave without warning and hoped Neita could do something about him returning.

They told her that Galahad had left early enough that his new karmic plate was out of reach of the cdystak resonance towers. Neita noted he had his crystal replaced and she could find a little bit of information in the crystal tower closest to the shop building; no matter how small or vague, a few pieces of information can always change the perspective of the situation.

The longer she talked to them, the more she grew concerned about the possiblity of his involvement with the camp and where he currently was. If he was rash enough to just disappear from home on a trip to Bluewalk and then She didn't mention her findings to Galahad's parents and instead asked if their was anything else she might need to know.

She was now left with checking the nearby crystal resonance tower, the market's job history the next day when it was open, and finally circling around back at the hospital for Symora and Galahad's medical file on the last day.

Neita's conversation seemed to come to close when their family dinner began and she turned down the food. The smell of fried fish made almost as nauseous as cigar smoke, so she exited with nothing else to ask. The late night air of winter made here clench her breath when she stepped out.

She was so focused on breathing in the chilly air and her schedule for the rest of her stay, that she didn't even realize that she stepped on a frozen sheet of ice on the cobblestone road. She tumbled backwards and felt her rear slam against the stone, making her spill her papers and tablet to the side.

She groaned to herself in pain and watched some paper notes ventured into the alley gap between the buildings. She quickly stood up and was forced to chase after them in the dark. Half her papers spilled into the space and the winter wind was only making the papers fly farther.

Neita chased all the sheets of paper she could and eventually found the last one on top of a bag of garbage. She made a sour face and tried not to touch the bag while obtaining her last piece of notes.

After grabbing the last paper and adding it to her stack, she began walking away. As she inspected the sheet containing a copy of Galahad's travel plans, she noticed a dark substance caking the corner.

Neita made another sour face at the paper before pulling out a tiny light crystal to gaze more closely at it.

When the artificial white light hit the paper, Neita was shocked to see the stain was bits of dried blood.

She turned back and opened the garbage bag to discover a jumble of shredded clothes and a very bloody mess of cloth inside. She spoke the command phrases to the crystal to hover and began carefully pulling out the items.

The first thing she pulled out was the light blue jacket Galahad had worn into the rift in the forest and had to throw away shortly after.

Galahad forgot to clear out the destroyed clothes from his battle with the warden Succubus from the back alley. Now it seemed Neita had found another piece to a puzzle she had yet to understand.

*****

The Diagon's dungeon tunnels were only getting stranger for Galahad. The flecks of gold were increasing to the point that he needed to shield his eyes when looking ahead, the glimmer shone brightly against the light crystals in the walls and was blinding him. The surroundings only added the stress of his time limit by checking over his shoulder to see he was still being followed.

Whenever Galahad stood completely still, he could hear boots gritting against the gold flakes and growing closer each time.

'Who the fuck goes around here following one guy in the tunnels so close to the shift.' Galahad was debating to stop and confront the stalkers, but any attention they could draw will only bring out problems, be it monster or more adventurers.

'Are they following me because they think I know where a cavern or some loot is? I'm only going this way in hopes to find some place to wait out the reset, so just piss off.' He thought.

He kept moving until he saw a Y-shaped split into the left and right tunnels, one was increasing in golden flakes and the other had drastically less shining. Galahad hid in the latter and listened for the sounds of his followers.

*****

"Are they on their way?" Elldry asked Tern. She kept staring at the footsteps that just barely disturbed the dirt with residual monster sludge. She didn't want to look away and lose the trail to another tunnel, so she had Tern communicate with everyone and tell them to follow back to their tunnel.

"I told them we found an entrance to a cavern of a Vesplug's nest and the source of the weird noises was going inside. It looks like they got the scry but no response." Tern said as he put away his Karmic plate and unslung the bow from his shoulder.

After living above and below Diagon for so long; the adventure team of Simla street knew about a few abnormalities that came with the dungeon.

One of the big ones was the frequent growth of insect like monsters; including giant scorpions, large ants imbued with various elements, and a lot of things with buzzing wings.

The effects of having so many poisonous insect demons around the city dungeon resulted in items that promoted healing and antidotes to poison being some of the biggest sellers around. Stuff like venom ale or shields made of ant armor were somewhat of byproducts created by that large need for anti poison products.

Galahad had only just arrived to Diagon and had no idea he was heading straight for a nest. Him and his friends used to deal with a lot rodent based demons and the occasional goblin horde, so he wasn't familiar with the impending swarm ahead of him.

Tern and Elldry kept following until Tern finally got a scry back from the team. They had grouped back up and were now on their way towards them. Tern wanted to stop and wait, but Elldry kept going.

"If someone got lost down here or is alone, they are walking straight towards death regardless of their reason. I'm not stopping till we stop them." Elldry said while looking for more footprints. She noticed the distancing between steps became sperradic as whoever it was starting to rush further away. Meaning they were in a hurry or wanted to run from something.

"But wouldn't that mean walking straight to our deaths then?" Tern asked rhetorically. "Besides we came to see what's causing the weird noises, not become rescuing heroes of some amateur that got lost." Tern wanted to head back, refusing Elldry's idea of getting them both killed.

Elldry wasn't backing down though.

"We've dealt with Vesplug's before, you just got to avoid drawing the whole caverns attention and we'll be fine. If you wanna go back than by all means, just let the others know what's happening."

She continued on and let Tern stand there contemplating her decision. Soon she was out of his view and he could only sit there quietly swearing at her for being so reckless.

*****

Galahad stood up from his crouch and knocked the flashy flakes of gold from his armor. He was hiding against a dark corner of the tunnel split off, when he heard the conversation between Elldry and Tern, starting with the reinforcements of five more adventurers and the swarm in the cavern ahead.

He knew that Elldry was fast approaching and if she was tracking him, she would eventually end up following him to the cavern herself.

'Well at least I found a cavern, I just wished it didn't involve the company of unnecessary heroics as well.' Galahad thought as he waited to intercept the female coming towards him.

*****

Elldry was no longer following the footprints and was just observing her surroundings with spear out in front. She knew the closer she got to the cavern, the more and more residual Vesplug sheddings she'd find.

The sparkly refractors of light were nothing more than dead skin cells from the monsters wait further ahead. She watched carefully until she found herself at a crossroads, the Y-shaped split in the tunnels that Galahad was about to emerge from.

Galahad started to show himself in the light of the crystals embedded in the wall, but stopped when Elldry quick spun her spear out in front of her.

Galahad took a step back and realized the darkness of his armor made too decent of camouflage to immediately be spotted. He then confirmed that as Elldry was actually facing her spear at monster making clacking noises in the other tunnel.

Galahad stayed back as she began stabbing and slicing her spear at something out of view. He watched her fight quietly with footsteps that seemed so random and more like dancing that Galahad just couldn't understand.

All he could really comprehend was each placement was like a windup to a knew stance that involved a dodge, a twist, a turn, or a stab. Her body wasn't flailing or awkwardly twisting, it was just constantly moving every part it could to make a motion for fighting.

Galahad peered further around the corner and saw two things. The monster was in fact another Vesplug, only it was twice the size of the last one he faced. It was crawling on its thin black legs and wildly swinging the sharp black hooks at the end of its legs at the spearman, and he was close enough to identify the spearman's Karmic plate.

[ Elldry Bontivaro ] lvl. 24

Battle Class: Spearman

'Just a little above what I used to be, can't believe a battle class can handle such things one-on-one.' Galahad thought as he saw so many wounds started opening up along the Vesplug's head and front exterior.

Droplets of the dark blue insect blood were hitting the floor and the monster seemed to only grow more agitated at adventurer. The wings on its back were tucked in since the beginning of the fight, but started buzzing in a burst of small rhythms shortly before Elldry made a lunging stab through one of its eyes.

The wasp monster screamed in pain and rolled its black tongue out in the air before falling limp and leaking more blue and green fluids onto the dirt.

Elldry was breathing heavily at all the effort she had put into killing the monster on her own, but she did not seem too distressed during her battle and pulle her spear out from its eye.

The smell was quickly spreading throughout the tunnel and matched what Galahad had been smelling for the last half hour. He was growing tired of the smell already and was waiting for the moment to talk about turning Elldry and her team around.

He activated the black mask to conceal his face and started stepping out to reveal himself. Elldry was startled to see Galahad appear from the shadows in his black gear and mask, but didn't instigate a fight.

She knew that the man in front of her was the person she came to warn and stop from entering the cavern that kill him. Elldry was fully aware of the situation in front of her, the only thing she wasn't aware of was the twitching body of the Vesplug whipped its lower half at her and made a small slice her thigh with its poisonous stinger.

Galahad attempted to react with his lightning strike, but it was still in its great sword form and the slow swing was too late to stop the damage that had already been done.

Elldry stepped back away from the body and retreated to the other wall of the tunnel. She was no longer calm as she realized there wasn't much time before the poison would start filling her body and slowly pull her towards death.

Elldry broke out in heavy sweat and leaned against the wall as Galahad decapitated the Vesplug to make sure it melted to nothing but a mana orb. When he turned back around to see Elldry, she was pale from shock and looking frightened.

Galahad was about to grab her and bring her back to Tern who was probably still waiting back the other direction, but froze on the spot.

Elldry noticed Galahad's green eyes beneath the mask were staring past her and whipped around to see what was coming for her. She wanted to screaming as three more enormous Vesplugs were quietly crawling on the tunnel walls and floor to approach her. Too bad the poison was beginning to weaken her limbs and voice.

Galahad realized that him and Elldry hadn't noticed the first supersized Vesplug because it crawled instead of flying due to their much larger sizes being cramped in the tunnels. They didn't hear the massive buzzing that came with the wings or see the gold furs flashing with all the flakes in the walls. The monsters had created their own cover and stealth within their own territory.

What neither of the adventurers had realized during the confrontation, was the Vesplugs arrived at the smell of Galahad's drenched armor, then associated the smell of the new carcass to be the only one and they became fixated to Elldry. All three clacked their pincers before closing in on the poisoned spearman.

Galahad watched as she was dragged away by the two large Vesplugs, further into the tunnels that led to the cavern.

Galahad was now left alone in the silent tunnel, feeling he just put an innocent life to death. He only stood there quietly with the oversized sword in hand, until he started to hear the murmuring of Arkiu and the Simla gang aproaching.