Becoming Monsters: Stay In Vegas 02

This is a story of the Becoming Monsters Universe by AiLoves, setting used with permission.

The idea for this story and these characters comes from Moonwing.

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Chapter 2: Dealer's Choice

The Catgirl and the Glass Slime stopped at a corner and listened carefully. No threat made itself obvious, and so they came around. Another empty hall. Sienna sighed. "I guess you didn't get a map, huh? How are we going to get out of here if we can't find the way? Just gonna be stuck wandering around until we either starve or meet one monster too many."

Heath wobbled a bit of a nod. "We just have to find a stairway up, right? Once we get back to the top floor, the monsters should be less nasty and we'll be easier to find. They're all past one of these doors?"

"I mean, that's what I've heard! Delvers who came through the Cafe used to complain about it all the time, unless you already know which door's which there's no way to tell which have stairways, which have hallways, which have rooms, and which have more monsters. Half the time it's stairs, they go the wrong way. No way we're gonna make it if we go down to the third floor." Sienna was called Hush by her friends for a reason.

"You said the only alternative is to starve or get eaten by a monster."

"Doorways it is, then." The problem, of course, was that they were five doorways in to this particular search already. The first had fortunately been an empty side room. Same with the third and fourth (though the fourth contained a small pile of debris that contained a few Silver coins and a swatch of chainmail). The fifth had led to the hallway they were now in. That second one? If Hush hadn't reacted as quickly as she had, the spider swarm within it might have gotten them. At least it wasn't snakes.

The stuff down here thankfully didn't travel in large packs all the time. The next corner had some kind of club-wielding skeleton, but it didn't last long under a focused assault of wand blasts, claws, and binding. Neither of them was really able to pick up the club, unfortunately, but the Coinage was nice. One other issue presented itself, though.

"Sienna? Every time we come across one of these things, I have to use mana to help kill it, which means health for me." Gooey was tired and obviously so, but was carrying on. "One too many of those and it won't matter how well we're doing. I'll drop unconscious and you'll be stuck alone. Pretty sure you don't have more reserves for me to siphon."

He's right, but I wish I did. And not just for his wand. Or... not THAT wand. "You're not wrong. Maybe we can find a potion or something down here? A chest in a side room, or on one of these critters? Chug one of those and you should be good to go, even if you gotta use that big blast again!"

Gooey shook his head again. "Might work once if we get lucky, but unless the darned thing is labeled we've got no way to know if it's even mana inside."

Sienna leaned against the next door, resting her ear against it. "No noise in this one, Gooey. Might be a stairway? Can't hurt to check, I guess..." Gooey winced at her words as she opened the door, but was rather relieved when nothing immediately tried to murder them. "Alright, it's a side room. Come in, I guess? We can at least take a breather. No monsters that I can see, and nowhere for them to hide."

They ducked inside. True to Sienna's word, the room was small and sparse. A chair to one side, a mostly-empty bookshelf on the back wall. Nothing else but stone floor and the wood door. Heath looked this way and that, but closed the door behind them. "Looks like a safe room. They're sprinkled here and there, according to the pamphlets, the tourists just usually don't get a chance to use them unless they're a powerful strike team going to Floor Four. Monsters don't come in unless you open the door for them."

"So we, what, sit and chill until someone comes to find us? How would they even know we're here? Nah, we gotta rest up a bit, but then we have to keep going. Dunno about you, but I didn't bring snacks. Other than you, anyway."

Glass Slimes can't blush. Gooey tried anyway. "Uh. I'm good for a while on that. You're right, though, once we're ready we have to move." He instinctively turned away from her, despite both the fact that he couldn't actually turn pink and the fact that she could still see right through him. Without much in the room to look at, this led him to the bookshelf. It was, as first impression indicated, mostly empty. Thing is? Only mostly.

He started poking around a bit at the loose scrolls and books scattered sparsely across the space as Hush flopped into the chair to rest. Granted, it was kind of hard to pay attention to dusty scrolls when Hush's version of "flop" was so... enticing. She was posed like she expected to pull a cord and be doused with water for viewers' eyes. Every curve was on display despite being technically covered. Despite having just rocked her world less than an hour ago, Gooey could feel the boner creeping in.

Well, metaphorically speaking. No bones.

He got his attention back where it needed to be after a couple of moments of he-hoped-surreptitious ogling. The book turned out to be full of nothing but gibberish, page after page of random letters from a dozen alphabets in random order occasionally interspersed with geometric diagrams that could have been either elaborate schematics or complicated games of tic-tac-toe for all he could distinguish. He tossed it into his bag for the moment, it didn't seem useful for now but it wasn't heavy, and turned towards the scrolls.

These were somewhat more coherent. All of them had the exact same sequence of shapes on them. Circle, circle, triangle, square, circle, square, triangle. Easy enough to remember, like tossing a yoyo. What that sequence might MEAN was anyone's guess, but at least it was there. Gooey tossed two into his pack next to the book, one for each of them, then did some constructive laying down himself.

One could say he flopped bonelessly onto the ground. One would be significantly more literal than usual. He basically puddled up there to recover from the recent exertions. This changed fairly quickly when his Nekomata companion gestured at him to come join her on the chair, cuddled together in that space in a way that pretty much required them both to be as malleable as they were.

Both rested a few minutes in comfortable silence, which was interrupted by something neither expected. A knock on the door. Specifically, a polite knock on the door.

Both of them were on their feet and ready to rock. Hush was the one to call out "who is it?"

A rough man's voice answered back. "Oh good! I found you! Can I come in?"

The Slime and the Catgirl looked at each other. Gooey nodded. Hush looked back at the door. "Yeah, but slowly! Can't be too careful underground."

"Of course! Just... don't react too quick, okay? The Change wasn't all that nice to me."

With those ominous words, the doorknob turned and the door opened slowly. It revealed a... something. Gooey spoke up. "Glad you warned us, but good to have you."

The man... ish?... stepped inside. He wasn't wearing any easily-discernible clothing, but Gooey couldn't fault him for that all things considered. He was the size of a tall Human, about six and a half feet, and shaped like he was quite athletic. Thing is, his form was covered in midnight scales from head to toe. No hair was visible, and really no face besides a single white icon that seemed to represent an eye, scrawled across the surface of the front of his head. Completing the picture was a slow drip of inky blackness from several scales, as though he were sweating smoke. "My name is Erik Onasis. The monsters around here are acting like there are people around, so I needed to make sure of it."

"Ah, hi. Yeah, you found us. I'm Hush, this is Gooey. We're locals, but took a paid delve and it didn't go so hot. Do you know how to get out of here? I'd rather not starve, nor help feed one of these critters."

Erik laughed. "Can't blame you, there. I'm a fan of keeping my scales where they belong. Well, the answer is definitely 'kinda' on that. When I'm Below, I usually just meander around. Got a general direction we can head in, but no idea on the specific routes from here."

Hush shrugged. "I'll take what I can get, I guess. Just gotta get up to the First Floor and we can probably make it out from there unless we get jumped by one of the big packs. Gooey and I are ready to go if you are, we were just taking a breather for a bit to make sure we were good to go."

With a nod, the man turned to leave the room. Hush followed closely, but Gooey was slower. Something doesn't add up. Who the heck is that guy to be casually 'meandering around' LEVEL TWO of a dungeon? I'd better keep an eye on him.

He did follow, though. Better to be together and nervous than alone and dead. As he left and closed the door behind him, though, he did notice one more thing. The doorknob was carved with a triangle. It felt important, but he couldn't quite put a pseudopod on how. Gooey turned and actually kept up.

Turned out the guy wasn't exactly kidding about meandering around, either. Their new route very strongly resembled their old one. This to say, not particularly directed. They wandered through halls and doors, and though their route may not have been particularly carefully chosen the were all quiet and observant. Taking only fights that looked to be over in a quick ambush, avoiding areas they might be spotted, conserving mana and stamina wherever possible. And health, in Gooey's case. All told, though? The three of them could do that a lot more often than the two of them could. It opened a lot more routes, and when he checked his Status screen Gooey could see something that he hadn't expected out of this ordeal.

Specifically, the fact that his Progress was at 95%. At the rate they were going, he'd be at Level 4 by the time they got out of here.

"Guys, can we find a spot to take a breather?" Hush was having a bit of a hard time after the last monster, a skeleton with a hunched posture and a head nearly scraping the ceiling nine feet up, took more slaying than anticipated. "If I don't take a few minutes to catch my breath and file my nails, I've only got a couple more ambushes in me."

A low rumble of a laugh came from Erik once more. "File your nails? Bit of an odd place for that."

"Okay, mister. First off, the break's important. Second off," she lifted her claws, which had lost some of their shine, "filing them for me is more like 'honing' than anything else. Can't claw stuff if they're blunt. What's up with yours? You never take care of your claws properly before?"

He looked a bit surprised, though it was hard to tell from his lack of facial expression. "I... never thought about it. Mine are metallic, best I can guess. I'd need a really good whetstone or a grinder, and that's a bit more than my budget allows nowadays. Looks like we got another door up ahead, if it's clear we can probably rest there."

The door had a different shape carved into its knob, this one a square. Inside, though, there was peace. A pile of rubble, sure, but no monsters. As soon as all three were in the room and the door closed, Hush flopped into a corner and pulled out an emery board. One that glittered a bit more dramatically than the ones Gooey could remember from his last trip to the local pharmacy. Their black-scaled companion might be talking about expenses, but her? Whatever she'd been doing before she got here, it must have paid fairly well to get a diamond-grit tool for her nails.

For his own part? Gooey wanted to do something he was uniquely suited for. Crawling through incredibly tight spaces to see if there was anything interesting there. Walking over to the rubble pile, he shed his clothes and let himself melt down into the goo he was made off. It always felt therapeutic, in its own way. Like listening to famous martial artists tell him to be like water. He sunk in, between the cracks of the rocky rubble, feeling himself flow through the space, feeling his body pick up spare detritus found there. Thankfully, none of it was moving independently, so he didn't need to worry too much about being unexpectedly bitten somewhere unfortunate.

A few minutes later, he emerged and started spitting out random bits and bobs that had been hidden in there. A lot was of no note. Dust, for example. There was quite a bit of dust. Some shells and scraps would need to be identified. There was no way for him to tell the difference between a dried-out dead bug and a rare alchemical component that just happened to look like one. Same went for a couple of pretty rocks. Actually, thinking about it, the dust might need to be identified as well. No sense being careless about it.

On the other hand, though, some things were easy to identify. There were a few Dungeon Coins, including three Gold ones. That immediately paid for all their trips down here, so the rest was pure profit. "Looks like I hit the jackpot, guys, check it out!" Erik and Hush came over, and each grabbed one of the coins. Every Dungeon had its own Coin, the pattern on the back unique and a way to identify where in the world a given one came from. These had the Vegas special, ornately carved with a triple-7 Jackpot on the back. Local coinage, which meant that this Dungeon made them. Gooey hadn't just looted a corpse.

It was again hard to tell, but Eric looked satisfied with it. "Thanks, man. This'll put me across the line paying for rent tomorrow even if the rest of the hunt goes badly."

Hush glanced over. "Rent? You seem a bit strong to be worrying about that."

"Oh, me? Nah, got lucky. Cursed Hexer is a good combo, lots of nasties ignore me until it's too late. See me as one of their own, or something. My apartment is just too close to the Strip, so my landlord keeps jacking the rent on me. Looking like this," he gestured at his rather intimidating form, "doesn't exactly make customer service jobs easy to come by."

"Understandable."

A thought struck Gooey. "Hey, did either of you notice the shapes on the doorknobs?"

Hush nodded. "This one had a square, last one was a triangle. The couple before that were circles, I think?"

Gooey reached into his pack. "Circle, circle, triangle, square. I think I know either the way out, or the way to something cool." Out came one of the scrolls he had so recently picked up. "According to this, we need to go through three more doors. Circle, square, triangle."

"Works for me. Eric, coming with?"

"You got me curious, so let's go."

The circle door led to a hallway. The square found another empty room. There was just one issue at the next door, marked with a triangle as predicted. Sienna's ears twitched. "Hush, you two."

"Isn't that what people usually say to you?" They fell quiet after the wisecrack. Her telling people to be quiet was far enough out of character to put them on alert.

"Sounds like something's in here. Just one, maybe two? Gooey, you got enough juice for that blast of yours?"

He shook a negative. "I mean, technically yes, but that would leave me at 1% Wrong thing sneezes at me at that point and I'm a jello mold."

"Okay. Gotta trust that we can do the same thing to these things that we have been, then. Erik, ready?"

The Cursed nodded, dripping more of that smoke. Gooey readied his wand as Hush reached out to grab the doorknob. She gestured at them. Three, two, one, GO! The red catgirl threw her shoulder into it, bursting the door open before calling on her power and leaping to the side to let her friends get through. Standing in the room were two creatures, but not like others they'd seen before down here. Pallid gray flesh was pulled tightly over their narrow frames and hideous, half-rotten faces, and they were clad in dark blue robes. One got pummeled by a pillar of stone and a wave of darkness. The other turned to face them and lashed out at Hush with a lance of frost.

Heath Martin, the Glass Slime Null, had been waiting most of the last three years for this. He called a shield of void power, which drank up most of the magic shooting towards his companion. What was left over was only slightly worse than standing in front of an air conditioner set to max for a couple of seconds. While the monster was trying to pull another spell together, Gooey shot it twice with his cheap, borrowed wand. It wasn't enough to put it down, no, but it was PLENTY to break its concentration for long enough to let Eric get in with his claws.

Sienna realized this was not the time to be holding back after the close call, and while the thing's buddy was still distracted trying to get out from under a pile of rock she turned and seized some of the rubble in her power and hurled it at the things face. Accurately.

It is very rare to find enemies that like being hit in the face by rocks. This one was not one of them. Between the focused assault of the three of them it went down fast. Just in time for Gooey to stop a second spell, this one from its buddy, which served to get their attention back onto it. Erik, in turn, blasted it with a spell of some kind that looked like that icon of an eye across his face.

It struck its target, making it pause briefly but having no other effect. Moments later, the combined claws of Hush and Erik took it down. "Still trying to figure out what that curse does..." Erik's voice sounded frustrated.

The frustration ended as a chime sounded. The back wall opened to reveal a small chest and a stairway up. It seemed Gooey had the right of things. "Awesome! Hush, Erik, shall we see the spoils of this fight?" Inside the chest was an odd assortment of bits. A wooden stick looking like a thick dowel, some more coins, and a small pile of gems. Not the greatest, sure, but it's not like it was level Four, was it.

"If you two don't mind, I'm gonna take some coins and gems then head back out. You should be good to go up on the top floor." Erik reached in at their nods, taking some of it. "Looks like I'll be eating better than beans and rice for a bit, too. Thanks for the team-up, going to check and see if anyone else is stuck." Without further commentary, he turned and left the room.

Gooey and Hush packed up the rest, neither knowing much of what they had in front of them but sure it had to be worth SOMETHING given where they found it. The stairs, too, led upwards to another safe room. This one was a bit larger than the last couple, at least, and the stairway sealed off as they got in. It was, apparently, a one-way trip. Both slumped a bit. "Heck of a trip, huh Hush? I know we're not done, but the last stretch shouldn't be bad. Lots of waypoints up here. Hush? You okay?" Gooey turned and looked at the uncharacteristically-quiet Nekomata.

She was looking at him with predatory intensity. "Gooey... Heath... I'm Hungry. Very, very Hungry."

He could hear her tone of voice change. She was not referring to the beef jerky he still had in the bottom of his pack. "Sienna? What's wrong?"

She stepped toward him. Sashayed, really, her hips swaying suggestively and drawing the eye. "I'm running low. Need to Feed. Pride, I need to be admired. Worshiped. We've all been putting that outward. Doing that for hours took it out of me faster than it should." She was close, practically pressed against him, eyes almost-unnervingly on him.

"What do you need me to do?" He had a feeling, just a hunch, he wouldn't mind what she was about to say.

"We are getting out of these clothes, Heath. Then you're going to envelop me again. You need to pay attention to me, and me alone. How I feel. How I look. How I taste. You are going to admire me, for as long as you can. This time it's not for you, so take your time and do me right."