Catacombs

Moving calmly despite the potential destruction, I simply retreated up into the air while the humanoids swarmed about their enemies and started stabbing and hacking their bodies apart.

The already opened blobs gushed out liquid-like vines of biomass that lost shape and slowly dried away into statuesque molds. The urchins, on the other hand, became disorderly balls of broken parts crushed into their sensitive cores. Both enemies simple went still as their health bars faded out instead of disappeared.

In unison, each of the humanoid creatures looked up toward me in the air below the ceiling before turning toward an open area of wall and floor a few hundred feet away. This lead into a series of large collapsed tunnels where the biomass was all that maintained shape. Without looking anywhere else, they all maid several loud and order shrill 'hoots' as if to signal others before running forward.

This proved a few things, they were not necessarily enemies and they were not unintelligent. As well, their 'sense of direction' led them down deeper into the biomass. If not for the fact that more of them might be coming, I would join them in their endeavors since down seemed to be the way to go.

However, they might have have company coming over. If I managed to stay out of the way, I could just stay out of sight and follow them. Thus, I slowly alighted back in the first floor on the opposite side where the room had been entirely replicated in smooth granite.

From there I waited for only a minute or two before more shadows were displayed on the walls from above. A minute or two later, they were among the neighboring floors and entering my line of side. A few dozen scattered clusters of dozens of 'skirmishes' making up a giant battle spanning multiple floors.

The number on both sides of the unyielding battle had grown so large in so many places that they could no longer travel through and ignore each other. Those choke points were the sites of several large sieges from one side against the other. Three of them were taking place on the floor in front of me.

Roughly three hundred units to each side were threatening the already shaky foundations of the building. However, most of them were avoiding the large central area in which many of the entities I was considering calling biomass creatures who were petrified and partially buried.

Seeing an opportunity to 'level' the field after having seen how much more abuse the humanoid creatures could sustain while I could remain out of sight, I reach out my refreshed perception and mana pool out into the first and second floor spaces centered around the first humanoids' exit.

Once it was within my control, I generated pockets of 'potential' telekinetic energy in the faults surrounding the quaked area from the first confrontation. After placing a few thousand MP worth of layers ahead of those areas covering the rest of the floor and its surroundings.

At the snap of my fingers which triggered a large Sound Barrier ahead of me, those pockets of potential energy were converted one layer at a time into kinetic energy that exploded outward in every direction. The quaked graveyard in the gallery was soon the epicenter of the manor's collapse.

The second floor all around began falling inward some with of the third floor close behind. Even the first floor walls leading to the second floor gallery I hid in like a bunker was left fractured in several places on two sides. Everything outside collapsed down onto the biomass tunnel network that somehow held the weight to maintain its system.

The battling biomass and humanoid creatures were all displaced down among the rubble and onto the tunnel system, resulting in a decidedly one-sided loss of limbs and even life among the enemy. While the humanoid creatures were generally trapped among parts of the rubble, the much larger creatures were there to shoulder the burden when the ground became the sky and the sky fell on their heads.

Within moments the humanoid creatures were dragging themselves out from all over the rubble. Many of them were missing limbs containing bones from their seemingly previous selves. However, those limbs were reattached with changed proportions by the biomass integrated into and overwhelming their bodies.

This was probably what Melpomene had meant about how this material could only be allowed to work on NPC. Even though the humanoids all targeted the biomass creatures and the biomass itself, it was now just a controlled variation of biomass creature based around a consumed life form.

Like the urchins and blobs were based around the surroundings and the natural predators, the humanoids were based off of the entities they previously were. These were probably the soldiers working under Sir Pence who were resisting the invasion of biomass for the last couple centuries and were now essentially a part of it.

Most of what remained was their recognition of their surroundings and their life-spent goal of destroying the biomass. Even now they were mostly making their way down into the depths of hell with enlarged natural weapons. Nothing mattered anymore except whatever was down there now that they could get to it.

Those further out from the new crater within the building turned their attention elsewhere, seeking to support their comrades who were still fighting with the biomass creatures who were outside of the caving. Within moments all of the biomass creatures were crushed and crumbled into statues and misshapen wads.

While this was taking place, though, I turned around and fled back toward the entrance area where I had left my companions. When I arrived at the end of the first biomass corridor it was to find that my team, Mistress' party, and a couple dozen familiars were arrayed in three positions across the back of the entrance hall area. Near either wall where there were branching corridors were either party's normal sized familiars with a handful of smaller demons mixed in.

Dead ahead of the middle corridor where I came from was where both party's had taken up their positions, all facing the very dimly lit corridor I came from. At the very front just outside the building were the two outer clans all gathered together like a player blockade. Like the three inner defensive teams, the players outside were fronted by short half circle walls ahead of them to slow down incoming bodies more than stop them.

The scene actually looked a little reliable despite the fact that half of the actual alliance and our own greater number of players were missing. My team and their familiars alone were enough to handle any situation that might arise in this area, but it was good to have help. It was also good that nothing had the interest to come this way yet.

"Good news and bad news," I inform everyone in a calm but soft voice to maintain the air of stealth and discretion. "Good news, there are two types of enemies and the humanoid ones can be considered neutral or even friendlies as long as you don't get in the way. Bad news, the big ugly hostiles are big, ugly, numerous, and I am about to start traveling deeper into the ugly. Keep them at their positions and surround every available outside surface with a ranged combatant, you guys pull your defenses to the end of this corridor and keep and eye on the caves… catacombs. Yeah, the catacombs I'm about to start searching."

Several faces in either party only a couple dozen yards away looked uncertain because of my words but it was clear that only a few of them were willing to come forward. Go, Stonewall, and Lil all set the pace for the others, calmly stepping and climbing over the four-and-a-half-foot wall in front of them while their own familiars and some of the others followed suit.

Our few remaining trolls and other humanoid familiars all knew well enough by now that everybody followed my orders.

Our own last few ice birds were dispatched as messengers, sending orders to maintain and reinforce their position while we ventured inland. There was no room for explanations but I was sure everybody wanted to know what the tremors and deafening landslide sounds deeper in the building were. The could only continue the preparations that kept them busy.

Leaving my team about twenty yards down the hall from the catacombs' corridor with orders to be ready to flee at any moment, flap once through the granite hopper room to the second floor that had been caved down to the catacombs on the far side of the manor itself.

Living biomass above this area held the third and following floors up with an earthshaking level of tensile strength, but the second and first floor above the catacombs underneath that living biomass above had all been leveled onto the catacombs. Only a handful of entrances around the edges still existed.

The only way I even found those entrances after having been away was that there were still a few dozen scattered humanoids filtering through the layers of crippled biomass creatures and rubble. The area covering and covered by the catacombs were a rough several hundred square yards that took up at least a third of the manor's own area.

Much of it was still hidden under neighboring areas of manor that were still held together and choked off in most areas by contracted biomass that had run away from my own spiritual water attack despite remaining 'dry' outside its coverage. There were even a few areas of the first and second floors which had collapsed entirely on their own… mostly.

The closest Entrance to my position was marked by a group of humanoids gathering their own bodies and some comrades from among the rubble of a last minute skirmish. I had technically caused a great deal of damage to their numbers by leveling the field against the biomass creatures. However, I was pretty sure that nobody even knew it was me.

Bearing these thoughts in mind like praying for a shield, I flap slowly into a shallow glide out over the rubble and catacombs before turning up halfway and dropping into a hard landing that shaved about a hundred HP away. Little more than twenty yards away was a large mound of rubble and petrified biomass bodies that the humanoid creatures were picking themselves out of.

Hoping several thousand mana would be the cheap price to pay for creating this newly ruined battlefield, I throw out as much MP with my awareness to envelop and the one-story mound and begin spreading it out a few yards apart in every direction. The biomass creatures, somehow, felt like paperweights despite their remains being made mostly of stone so I could easily toss them aside with a few hundred mana per body.

Way more than half of my mana was gone by the time the humanoid creatures reassembled themselves together and off to the side in bulk. Thankfully, I could simply lean the previous mound away while releasing my control so that it all piles aside on top of the discarded biomass. Once the mound was no more, the humanoids barely spared me a glance before turning and running in the opposite direction.

Just another few dozen yards away was a dimly glowing reddish purple light which filtered up from the biomass catacombs entrance below. The spaces here were all large enough for the humanoids to fit through, so I had no trouble following along and elbow crawling my way forward even faster than they could squish and squirm.

Once we made our way through the rubble I soon found myself briefly free falling for about fifteen feet in which my wings spread out instinctively. My fall was slowed dramatically about halfway down, allowing me to watch the humanoid creatures rain down on the bloody purple illuminated black biomass.

Where the light was actually coming from was unknown to me but it seemed to be radiating outward from deeper into the broad and steeply angling tunnel. More than likely it was the colorless and scentless mucus reflecting it everywhere back and forth from its source, but that would still have to be one incredibly bright light. Thankfully, the tunnel was large enough that I could cheaply maintain flight with half-wings and Telekinesis to support more than half of my weight.

The cost of maintaining this level of Telekinesis was not even ten points per second, meaning I could hold myself aloft for extended periods of times using my wings mostly for propulsion and direction.

Getting used to such a means of transport was not as easy as getting used to my own wings, not only because of the concentration needed to stay above the humanoids while avoiding the ceiling but also because I was not in combat. The mental state alone from being in a fight made situational adaptation come almost naturally to me.

Simply meandering my low-gravity self along the top of the tunnel eventually became less of a chore and more of stroll. The tunnel was constantly angling downward so I only needed to find the balance between angling and propulsion while the humanoids were all hugging the sides in orderly to randomly stab one 'natural' weapon into the wall while its other twisted arm digs around.

Seconds later the area of wall around them would pale and petrify into a much more solid form of degraded mass. The stuff I collected was a little richer in color like dirt but had an almost chalky or clay powder texture. This stuff… was simply dead.

After killing a chunk of wall they would continue forward passed one another deeper into the tunnel by a few dozen yards before seeming to find an area of interest. During my leisurely glides between flaps, I would see large areas of once slimy wall close to the ground fall away in slabs while the newly exposed biomass contracted and tighten into the floors or ceiling.

Apparently, not all layers of biomass were the same and jumbled outer layers were oxygen resistant while the insides were sensitive. However, no matter how hard I tried I could not find any of the vital spots the humanoids located which caused the outer layer to die.

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