Chapter 67: When the Many Become More (Patreon)

Hi guys, before I get right into the chapter, I wanted to let you know I was going for something a little different than my usual style of writing, since this entire perspective is more than a little bit different than anything people are used to. I want to hear your opinions on it, whether this all works, the Flagship's unusual everything or the sudden shift to some divers to show off what actually happened, as well as whether I should show Aby's own reaction to events, because it most definitely noticed too. Anyways, I'll stop rambling, please, enjoy!

Edit: originally, I meant for Aby's perspective at the end to be it's own chapter, but I couldn't justify padding out it's length so much, nor could I think of a way to smoothly transition into a different subject. So hopefully you enjoy the now extra long chapter!

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In an underground cavern positively screaming with heat and red, a curious being stirred, once again. Finally seeing its rather unruly roommate finish dispatching the undesirables, and then return to his perch, it felt ready to return to its own hunting, in an entirely different way than the formerly green menace. In fact, it would be better to call it hitting a growth spurt than any sort of hunting, simply growing and maturing in a decidedly unique way. The many jellies-that-were-it spread out, a lazy mass of clear and blue expanding its own domain, claiming a portion of the Overmind for itself while the fish-that-were-also-it began to harry those that weren’t yet it to try and grow further, while avoiding the one who would not be it, past experience thoroughly ingrained in its nebulous mind.

As it propelled itself forward, the jagged landscape taking a sharp drop and a steep rise in temperature, it noticed something entering through a cave it could not enter, and its many eyes told it that it was not an invader, but rather the one claimed by the Overmind. In fact, that was the first of very few things its creator had ever taught it, and it had listened, as it should. It briefly wondered why the being had come by, using a few of its fish and eels to watch her while the rest returned to what they had been doing, but grew bored of that rather quickly.

She swam over to the green, now grey, which had itself been watching her, uncoiling its dangerous body and darting over to her, slower than normal, too, but still fast enough to make its main mass back away, not willing to risk catching its attention like some of the less lucky parts of it had in the past. Aside from a healthy caution, though, it merely went about its own business, slowly changing red to blue as it should be, and briefly wondering about the… thing, which had followed the strange one into the room, and subsequently proved it too was not to be claimed, a violent and startling affair that taught it well.

As it was, though, it did what it always did when claiming something didn’t work, and ignored it, and hoping that anything too frightening would ignore it, too. Another eel was added, bigger this time, and it felt the brief rush of suddenly becoming more. That feeling alone would be enough for the emergent intelligent to constantly seek expansion, the fact that doing so was a concrete piece of its own being meant that it had all the more reason to do so. 

There was a struggle, of course, each new addition always seemed opposed to becoming it, before that opposition was quashed. It was also one of the few times that it could feel its own connection to the Overmind, a fleeting feeling that left it feeling awed and proud to be part of something greater, just like each part of it felt about being it. And then, the expansion stopped as suddenly as it began, and it was alone and more, again. It released the tendril connecting to its newest piece, the connection solid enough to not need any physical contact any longer, before it started prowling towards another future addition that its more mobile parts had cornered and kept subdued.

Another rush, another connection to the comforting essence of the Overmind, another body becoming part of its own being, and the expansion continued. It reached the edge of its own blue, debating whether it should creep past that itself or wait for the color to spread further and then return. As it did so, it watched what the three untouchables were doing, or rather the strangely familiar one, which was no longer with the grey and the companion, instead going forth and claiming things that it hadn’t yet. And those that it had, too.

Loss, a part of itself that was stripped away with every body that disappeared into the maw, or sometimes maws, and it quickly realized that not only could it not make the fuzzy, slimy thing a new part, but that very thing could do exactly that to it, instead, and it didn’t like that, not at all, so it employed the strategy it had come up with for situations like this: running away.

Thankfully, the new menace didn’t seem intent on pursuing it, and while it was forced to flee the comfort of its blue haven, it was still unharmed, and had only received minor losses, ones it would recoup shortly, and had already begun working towards, while the fuzzy one and the claimed one had begun leaving, and the grey one started preparing for a fight. It was still curious how exactly its excessively sharp company was always ready to fight when it had no means of finding out, but it simply figured that this was just something that things that weren’t it could do, and it was partially correct about this fact.

This time, though, when the apparent foes entered its lair, one of them in particular stuck out to it. Unlike the rest of the strange looking wanderers that it despised as soon as it caught sight of them, this one member of the group was different. It still didn’t belong, just like the rest of them, but it looked, and felt, like it could belong, could become part of it.

And so that is exactly what it set off to do. Much like it had done for the white undesirable not long ago, the flagship began using what resources it could muster to aid the sharp one in dispatching them, but more successfully this time. It was also being risky, cautiously approaching that one-who-would-soon be-it and trying to separate it from the rest, relying on its arrogant partner’s propensity to play with his prey to only wound the thing, and hopefully separate it from the ones it detested.

Thankfully, its plans came to fruition, for once, and the strange lump that it was seeking to assimilate was finally pried off of the unusually large fish with an even stranger front half, blown free from their back by a glancing blow by the grey one’s wicked tail. There was a brutal crunch on that impact, and it seemed the creature had begun to fall apart, leaking a liquid it probably shouldn’t even as the newly exposed flesh sizzled and burned in the heat, but it was alone, and that was good enough.

Before the ones who weren’t it could go and finish the job the wyvern was ignoring, part of its own mass swarmed it, the vivid blue bodies already well known for being something not to approach, and the flagship itself wasn’t far behind, eagerly lowering a few of its many tentacles, not willing to risk the creature’s resistance being too much for just one connection. 

But, as its tentacles made contact with soft, gooey meat and burrowed their way into any open space on its body, it found that its preparations were entirely overkill, there was hardly more fighting involved than with the jellies before the alien will was subsumed, devoured, and its blue replaced the sickly yellow it once was. And while it was completely unaware of the chaos its simple desire to expand had caused, it wouldn’t have been able to care less, even if it was.

Because it was too busy enjoying a simple fact, it was more.

~~~~~

Sharah was very quickly coming to regret her decision to goad her sisters into pushing a floor deeper instead of making the wise choice and simply leaving. Even if they likely couldn’t fight their way back, the Guilds were starting to sell mass produced escape charms, so lucrative was this den of nightmares. It would have been so simple, but no, one more. After all, the Map said that the crystals here were qualitatively different, and they’d make a fortune, A rank teams like hers usually did.

Too bad the Map also said that it was a single moderately large floor, and to watch out for a wyvern. This, though, was an absolute colosseum, and apparently calling the wyvern “an unfortunately fatal obstacle to any groups without the means to put a halt to the creature’s stunning momentum or repel its monstrous assault” was an understatement. Now, she and her sisters could hardly risk fumbling for their charms lest they be made a few kilograms lighter and possibly a bit less alive, at the very least until her two sisters were finished with their own task.

These thoughts were tossed out a window, however, when she heard her sister Shaira scream in apparent agony, sparing a glance as she finally committed to going entirely on the defensive. At first, there was no apparent reason for the pained wail, but it only took a moment to see her sister’s familiar, a young Gigant’s Cone Snail already a meter long from tip to base, rocketing off with a rather severe injury. Sharah wanted to help, but was fully aware that the wyvern was not going to allow her that mercy, so she could only hope the familiar could hold out while the third and final sister, Shasa, finished channeling one of a few spells which earned her rank, and had saved them more times than she cared to count.

Unfortunately, the familiar didn’t look too well, with a shattered shell it would be monumentally more vulnerable to anything, even the searing heat it was fine in moments earlier. It was deeply concerning that something managed to shatter that in the first place, before it could even fire back a harpoon of its own no less. If it had, maybe they could actually be the group to claim the wyvern himself, but now was not the time for ‘ifs’.

She only hoped that Shaira could remain focused on amplifying Shasas formation, now was not the time to let it go wild or fizzle out, and she was doing her part to act as the bulwark keeping those two free from harm, even at the cost of her own body. That hope was soon stamped out though, because in a single moment a whole lot of something happened, and none of it in their favor.

There was an almost audible snap coming from between Shaira and the Gigant, the breaking of a sacred idea and for just an instant everything stopped as even Vol himself tried to parse what exactly happened. Then, the poor girl crumbled, her eyes rolled back into her head and her body went limp and she barely managed a shudder before even consciousness was stolen. Sharah cursed and rushed over to her, confused by the sudden retreat of the wyvern but unwilling to take this chance for granted. The last thing she saw before shattering the three escape charms and leaving this thrice cursed hole was her sister’s former companion being tinted a deep azure like ink that was dropped in water that she would likely never forget, and suddenly lacking any wounds beyond a slightly paler shell. 

And then they were no longer there, and she was rushing her otherwise unharmed sister to a healer, completely ignoring the wounds that littered her own body.

~~~~~

For a rather sizable chunk of its day, business had been as it always was for Aby. It spread out its awareness to keep track of the sprawling complex of caves and caverns it called both home, and its body, and it did its best in directing its creatures to ensure that as few as possible were lost in return for as many as casualties as it could achieve. Unfortunately, invaders had been getting steadily more difficult to take care of as of late, even ignoring the aberrant which called itself The Mapper. Thankfully, there were no others of that caliber looking to have their way with Aby, but some groups could even contend with its bosses, and even give the reptiles trouble, on occasion. More than once, it had to give the order to its dragonkin, starfish, even drake to retreat, lest they tire themselves out and get hit with something it couldn’t mend.

Thankfully, nobody had tried their hand at going all the way to it yet, usually hitting a wall in the form of the wyrm or the wyvern, but it was still not all that pleased to see its own progression being outpaced. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much it could do to tip the scales once more, the three royal reptiles stubbornly refused to evolve no matter how many prey they caught unaware, and the kobolds simply couldn’t match some groups, even losing two of their number, permanently. The drake-kin were threatening to hatch any moment now, and the tribe had basically dedicated themselves to holding down their land rather than arranging any more hunting parties, and the dragonkin and stars each were saved more than a few times by lurking rifle shrimp or riled up snowflake snapper, and when the core had its bigger threats working in tandem with the smaller nuisance creatures, things were a little more even.

Which is to say, more one-sidedly favoring the dungeon, which is what mattered anyway. It was having to exert a little more force to keep creatures organized, even if the collective mass would fight to the bitter end against invaders anyway, the added organization it was starting to impose made a big difference, in the long run. Still, it had to keep its creatures constantly fighting and healing and hiding to keep them alive, and it deeply disliked making the creatures go against their instincts in such a way. It felt entirely unnatural to the core, Aby would much rather give simple directions rather than explicitly direct. But, it would rather this, than watch its prized creations fall, and so it dealt with it.

Then, the course of its day changed entirely, one moment it was directing three different floors, fighting off just as many groups of divers, and then something happened on the fifteenth floor. It was aware that its flagship was taking an unusually active role in this battle, still a bit perplexed as to why it could only sometimes directly access the creatures’ mind, or minds since it was still unsure if it was plural, but it didn’t realize why until the enigmatic thing practically sauntered over to the nearly dead snail. Going directly against the core’s wishes at that moment, it didn’t even dispatch the interloper, instead personally subjecting the thing to the same mind rending care that it used on its fellow dungeon inhabitants. 

Only this time, rather than just feeling the flagship through their bond for a brief instant while it went about overriding the will of another of its creatures, something that Aby found surprisingly similar to any other method of ending the life of a creature, Aby instead felt something very different and very, very wrong. For a moment, while the battered, dying creature was being assimilated, not only could Aby peer into the mind of its Flagship, it also felt that same bond forcibly created with a creature that did not belong. Even worse, that link dragged with it yet another unwilling, unwanted passenger, one of the sapients that had made this snail her familiar, and it could not put into words how aggressively violating this experience felt for it, worse even than having its bare core seen, even touched, by an invader.

And then the moment passed, the latter bond didn’t just break, it shattered and brought with it an incredible relief, even if the other end quite probably wasn’t nearly as prepared, or experienced for the abrupt experience. The former was even more unusual, the core’s sheer disgust and hatred at the being’s audacity to sully its bonds with its presence melted away, replaced with a very tense acceptance of its presence, almost as if it were always a part.

And then even that was gone, subsumed into the flagship, now just another piece of the unusual creature, and it realized that it was injured, dying even, and needed help. It ordered the wyvern back, a hasty burst of intent which the reptile complied with, and ignored the group that it knew to be leaving, but before it could send a pulse of healing at it, the world seemed to grind to a halt. Something was deeply wrong about this situation, something it had chosen to ignore. 

The world itself, however, would not overlook this infraction, and it made certain that Aby was aware of this.

Error! Gigant’s Cone Snail has undergone an unknown variation! Cause has been determined to stem from interference of entity D-A/R2*.

Higher authority assigned due to second incident occurrence

Authority found!

Problem determined to be: unforeseen interaction between familiar, dungeon, and overwrite mind bonds.

Searching for a solution…

Solution Found!

Previously demonstrated interaction will be corrected, no other actions deemed necessary at this time.

And then everything was back to normal. Kind of, anyways. No longer did it have its mind tainted by a connection with something so alien and undeserving and viscerally disgusting as a mermaid, but it wasn’t likely to forget such an experience anytime even remotely soon. It felt like a tainted mockery of its own intimate bond that it shared with its denizens, and even though it lasted but a brief instant, it was an instant too long and one that it spent violently lashing out at the horrible interlopers in the most direct way it could. 

Which, in this case, was one now overwritten snail that was hardly aware even when it was its own individual. However, there was also one mermaid on the receiving end of the core’s psychic tantrum, and she was very awake and wholly unprepared to become part of Aby’s network, even for such a short moment. After all, there were few out there who could truthfully claim to use mind magic with even a fraction of the skill and mastery that a dungeon is innately capable of, and there were quite literally none who could hold so many bonds of this sort, much less put so much power into it. While a proper dungeon spawn, even a dungeon Fae would be able to handle being lashed out at like that, not well admittedly, Aby had no idea what it was like for an invader who was so used to being so alone in their head.

And really, it didn’t much care to, either. It ripped out a bit of her knowledge, and lashed out at the rest, and beyond an incredibly spiteful hope to never see her or her sisters again, it decided it had better things to do than dwell on an otherwise harmless, even potentially beneficial event. It quickly turned to the other notification it had received, now the ‘proud’ owner of the template for Gigant’s Cone Snails for a reason it didn’t understand, and then returned its attention to the two groups of guests it had let breathe for a second too long, and with luck it could drive one of them out before the next group of interlopers. If the fight with its wyrm was any indication, that wasn’t too unlikely either. 

But, either way, there was no time yet to ruminate on something, and so it very quickly got back to work.