One thing that particularly stood out to Charlemagne as he and his passenger / party member neared the Dungeon was that the ambient mana flows had shifted. Instead of flowing lazily around in random directions, motes of environmental mana had aligned and were flowing purposefully towards a central location. The rooster flew a bit lower and slower as he scanned the currents, noting that, with a bit of effort, he could get a rough idea of how far away they were. He couldn’t wrap his head around the math needed to make a more precise calculation, but he definitely felt that they were close to their destination.
“It’s just up ahead, boss” Bridget confirmed as Charlemagne accelerated while keeping a close eye out for any attacks from below. Beneath them, hundreds of angry red eyes tracked their movement, but nothing beyond angry moos reached their elevation.
“The Dungeon both attracts local wildlife and makes them more aggressive,” the mosquito Champion explained, noting that Charlemagne was staring at the herd. “I don’t think they have any ranged attacks, or they would have already fired them. They are not very smart animals.”
“Bawk,” Charlemagne agreed, increasing his altitude just to be on the safe side.
They passed the last remnants of the herd before landing in the middle of a flat, featureless field that was bordered by forests on one side and a river on the other. The entryway was set recessed in the hollow of a rocky hill, which provided protection from the elements. The entrance to the Dungeon itself, a shimmering portal, appeared within a stone doorway that was flanked by two enormous golden braziers. Each brazier held a small bonfire, which burned without smoke, sparks, or heat.
The field around the entrance was devoid of both system-generated and living creatures. There was not a lizard in sight, which confirmed Charlemagne’s suspicions that something about the mana flows in the area was keeping living creatures away.
“Are you ready to go in?” Bridget asked, buzzing around the entrance in a way that highlighted her impatience. But Charlemagne shook his head and flapped a wing at the sun, which was already hanging low in the sky.
“Bawk,” he said simply.
“Why do we have to wait until tomorrow?” Bridget whined. “There’s still plenty of daylight left! Plus, we don’t even know what the inside of the Dungeon will look like. For all we know, it’s perpetually daytime in there, or the only lighting comes from fires, or whatever. Come on, please…we’ll probably be done in a few hours anyways, so we can just sleep in the Dungeon once we’ve finished it. Let’s go already!”
Charlemagne gave Bridget a stare that nearly caused her hemolymph to freeze.
“Bawk,” he repeated.
“Fine, fine, no need to get your feathers all ruffled, boss. I am just excited to be useful to you, is all. And there’s nothing to eat or drink around here, so I was thinking that we could just get the Dungeon over with because…”
Charlemagne tuned out the mosquito’s complaints and decided to stretch his legs a bit before settling down for the evening. He sauntered over to the stream that he had seen nearby, hoping to catch a small fish, some bugs, or even a snake, but there was nothing in the slow-flowing water. Still, the rooster took advantage of the clear, crisp water and drank his fill.
As he returned from his stroll, the rooster remembered that he was still wearing the Monocle of Refinement. He played around with it a bit, first using it on Bridget, who had taken it upon herself to accompany him to the river. Apparently, her wings and her proboscis were her most vulnerable parts, something that Charlemagne could appreciate. In the fight against Raul, losing his wings and having his beak damaged had seriously limited his combat potential.
After checking out the mosquito with his item, the rooster began to study the ambient flow of mana in the area, noting how small bits of energy from Bridget and his own body were being pulled toward the Dungeon’s entrance. Charlemagne didn’t like that…his mana was his to control and he wasn’t about to share it with the Dungeon. Determined to keep what was his, the rooster commanded his Ember Core to reach out and take charge of a small area around him, creating a small bubble immune to the Dungeon’s pull. It cost him quite a bit of effort to maintain at first, but there was little else to do, and the sun was now starting to turn the western sky orange off in the distance. It was almost time to sleep.
“Bawk,” Charlemagne told Bridget.
“You’re going to sleep? Right here and now?” the mosquito gasped. “Should I wake you later so that you can keep watch? Or...”
“Bawk,” the rooster broke in.
“If we’re both asleep, then who will...you know what, never mind. Where can I sleep? Can I…”
The mosquito broke off without finishing her request as Charlemagne gave her another glare. Then the rooster hopped over to one of the braziers and jumped up onto the lip. The heatless flames rose up behind him as he shut his eyes for the night.
“Well…that’s not creepy at all,” Bridget noted. Then she waited five or ten minutes for the rooster to fall asleep before sneaking off.
The sun was just rising when Charlemagne’s internal clock woke him. At first, the young rooster was a bit disoriented, but he quickly regained his bearings and flew up to the very top of the hill that overlooked the Dungeon.
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“COCORICO! COCORICCCO!” cried the rooster, letting the world know that he was awake so they probably should consider getting out of bed too, as well as advertising his prowess and availability as a rooster to any and all hens that may or may not be in the area.
After a few minutes, he heard the expected but nonetheless annoying whine of Bridget as she caught up to him.
“Okay, okay, I’m awake. You can stop now, boss. Man, what a night,” the mosquito stopped and made a yawning sound, despite having neither a diaphragm nor lungs.
“After you went to bed I was still feeling pretty peckish, so I made my way back toward the cows that we had passed earlier. It took me forever to find one far enough away from the others to feed on, but I’m all recharged and ready to go. Just tell me when!”
The idea of having a nice cow for breakfast sounded good to Charlemagne, and so he took off without a word. It didn’t take him long to find a few of the enraged cattle attempting to trample a lizard yet somehow failing. Ignoring the deranged reptile, Charlemagne made short work of the attacking bovines. But, just as he was about to chow down, the lizard opened its mouth wider than should have been possible and sprayed a green liquid at Charlemagne. The bird reflexively put up a mana shield to protect himself from the fluid, which slammed into the transparent barrier and slid down slowly, sizzling the whole time.
Undaunted, the lizard surged forward, growing in size until it was almost as large as Charlemagne himself. The rooster met the reptile’s charge with a Strike, pecking at the lizard’s flat, scaly face. Despite only scoring a glancing blow, the lizard immediately dropped to the ground, seemingly dead.
Charlemagne found himself suddenly floating in nothingness once again, staring at a blob that looked almost identical to the one that had helped him develop his Mana Core skill. There was one key difference in their appearance, however. This one was about ten times larger than the other one had been.
The rooster focused on using the Monocle of Refinement on his opponent, but the item had apparently vanished. Before the rooster could dwell on this annoying development, the plasmodium spoke.
“I was planning on taking over one of those cows and infiltrating the Dungeon that way, but this is even better. I can sense the enormous potential within you…and it’s all being squandered! Let me have your body, I will use it so much better than you ever could.”
Charlemagne narrowed his eyes at the parasite, wondering just how much stronger it was than the plasmodium Champion he had faced early on in his journey.
“No,” he rebutted, reaching out with his Ember Core to see if he could determine what the strange realm was made of. The mana was thick here, but there were traces of other energy types as well. There was heat, and whatever the opposite of heat was. Some other strange energy wafted straight through the rooster’s metaphysical body, fortifying and enhancing his mental processes. But the most interesting discovery was that the energy that Charlemagne associated with the God of the System was all around him. The rooster was so caught up in what he could sense from the strange, seemingly empty universe that he almost forgot that he was in the middle of a fight to the death.
“If you will not submit, I’ll destroy you right down the last scrap of DNA inside your body,” the plasmodium threatened. “I’ll erase your own identity and overwrite it with my own. I am the superior lifeform here!”
Power began to swell as Charlemagne detected an enormous buildup of fire and mana within the purple and blue bulk of the enemy. Just as it seemed to be levelling off, another surge of power erupted as the enormous single-celled organism let out a roar. An aura of pure energy surrounded the blob as the ambient mana and heat flowed to the plasmodium. A heaviness filled the atmosphere as Charlemagne found that even his own Ember Core was not immune to the enemy’s siren song.
“If you have any last words, keep them!” the blob yelled as it unleashed a veritable tidal wave of fiery mana at the rooster, its attack forming an enormous cone of death. The attack flashed across the distance between Charlemagne and his assailant in an instant, engulfing the young rooster in white-hot light that threatened to carry him off to another dimension.
As the light from the enormous energy attack faded, one lone black feather floated where Charlemagne had once been.
“Are you even a Champion?”
Charlemagne had been pushed back a few body-lengths by the attack but was otherwise completely unharmed. His own mana, which had formed a highly effective protective layer around his body, was withdrawn back into the rooster’s Ember Core. Eschewing the physical effort of flapping his wings, Charlemagne re-extruded his mana and used it to propel himself forward, violating the law of conservation of momentum in a particularly flagrant manner.
“No…no!” the enormous plasmodium shouted. “Stay away!”
The single-celled organism summoned its full might, trying to force Charlemagne back with a combination of attacks and raw energy control. The rooster contented himself with advancing at a steady pace, weathering each fresh assault with what would have been a cocky smirk had Charlemagne possessed the ability to smile.
“Are you even a Champion,” he repeated, stopping less than a body length away from the plasmodium’s outer membrane.
“The last time I was here, I killed a Champion that looked like you,” Charlemagne elaborated helpfully. “It was a good fight. I got a Mana Core out of it. You don’t have one…too bad for you.”
“That’s…that’s impossible! I am the perfect cell! I have no peers, no predators, and no deities. Every scrap of power that I possess I obtained with my own ligands! I refuse to lose to you!”
Charlemagne shook his head.
“You’ve already lost,” he said, pointing to where he had used one of his talons to slash open the plasmodium’s outer membrane.
“That’s not enough to finish me off,” the cell boasted, even as cytoplasm began to leak out from the cut. “I’ll just patch it with some…hey…what are you doing! Stop that!”
Charlemagne flexed his Ember Core, disrupting the plasmodium’s attempts to seal the leak with its mana. Once it understood what was happening the enemy began to panic.
“W….Wait! No, let it go! Stop! I can help you! Just stop! Stop! No, I’ll kill you! You won’t be able to keep me from using my mana forever…No, stop doing that! Get away! Stop! Go away! Stop cutting into my membrane!”
After creating another three ruptures in the cell’s outer wall, Charlemagne allowed the enormous organism to spend its mana freely as it made a desperate bid to escape. The plasmodium copied the rooster’s maneuver clumsily, only managing to propel itself at a snail’s pace even after using up most of its mana reserves. The rooster absorbed as much of the environmental mana as he could, preventing the plasmodium from recharging its own stores as it slowly drifted away, leaking cytoplasm as it went. Eventually, the cell’s babbling grew more incoherent and weaker as its strength began to wane.
After watching for a while, Charlemagne put the thing out of its misery with a few small, well-placed mana bullets that penetrated straight through the plasmodium’s outer wall before detonating inside its core. But that wasn’t because the rooster was merciful…it was because Charlemagne was in a hurry to get back to the real world, where fresh cow flesh was waiting for him.
