Adam Smasher, Level 1 Adventurer, Hestia Familia
He didn't manage to find one of the War Shadows immediately, to his displeasure. Instead, the first new type of meat to butcher was the other ones, the supposed 'Frog Shooter'. That being a stupid name that he wasn't going to bother thinking of, instead he was simply going to call them what they were, Frogclops. Monofrogs?
…Frogs. He was going to stick with frogs. Call it what it was.
They were rather impressively large, with a single beady eye roughly the size of his head glaring at him from atop a squat amphibian form. Their skins came in a number of various ugly colors, their croaking echoed through the faint green tinge of this section of the dungeon, and they hopped around as normally frogs might.
Well, not quite as impressive as normal frogs, these fatasses could manage about a meter and not much more. What was slightly more impressive were their tongues.
His fingers closed around the end of the long pink tendril, a disgusting long-muscle covered in a somewhat adhesive mucus and capped with a bizarrely tough end. Reflexively, the frog attempted to pull its tongue back.
Adam hopped as it did, and angled his body, pulling the tongue even as it pulled him.
His shaking legs turned the frog's skull into a spray of gore, painting the wall behind it with a lovely mixture of reds and pinks. His boots landed on the floor, catching himself as he descended once more.
The tongues were strong, yes. They were covered in a sticky mucus, yes. But their method of attack did not involve pulling people in to bite them. The end of the tongue was capped in a cartilage-like structure that smashed into his raised gauntlets earlier like a meatbag giving his best haymaker.
It wasn't enough to shake his guard, Adam had been in too many brawls for that, but it did almost make him stumble. For that, he spent the next few minutes carefully observing the new monster, measuring how long it took to shoot its tongue out, how far the tongue could go, how fast the frog could turn and reposition.
A few other frogs came by, but he quickly annihilated them and returned to his observations of the first monster.
Then, observations finished and parameters measured to his satisfaction, he smashed it. They weren't terribly strong, but they might cause trouble if too many grouped up at once. By that same virtue though, he could easily use their attacks to quickly reposition, so ultimately they were probably more helpful than hindering when being surrounded.
That noted, he kicked over the corpse, putting it on its back, and raised his right hand. Knife-like, his shaking hand came down on the corpse, splitting a groove open in the sternum and letting him get to work ripping it apart.
Before he could rip the stones out with the faster method, he needed to find out where they actually were. Mildly entertaining drudgery, as his fingers dug into semi-interesting frog meat and tore it apart, looking for the pearl of future financial compensation inside.
It wasn't like human meat, not quite. There wasn't much more to note than that. Meat was meat, and it all died the same. Flesh and skin tore, the sound echoed through the otherwise silent section of the dungeon.
Eventually, he found the thing he was seeking, fingers closing around a small warm marble, twisting one way, then the other, then pulling it out. The corpse turned to ash as he inspected the rock in his hand. Nodding in satisfaction, he reached over his shoulder to slip into his bag and moved on to the next corpse, sinking his fingers in again and racing himself to reach the core faster.
Last time, he found he right about…
The sound of flesh tearing and gore spilling echoed through the halls.
Here it was. He tore it out, inspecting the pearl, and slipping it into the bag. Standing up, walking over to the next corpse, he knelt down and repeated the process. He was pretty sure the core was right here.
His fingers dug into the corpse.
He paused.
The sound didn't echo.
He threw himself to the side as a dark figure passed through the space where he just was, talons extended and moving through where his head just was. A small smile grew on his face as he rolled once through frog-gore and bounced up into a ready position, hands readied in front of him and eyes darting about.
Nice try meat. You almost snuck up on him.
A lanky entity silently pulled itself up from where it had crashed into the stone wall, turning a blank mask-like face in his direction and bending limbs into a burst-motion stance. Almost as tall as he was, with an utterly pitch-black body and legs that tapered off into points.
Poor design, those wouldn't aid it in any kind of balancing, no wonder it crashed into the wall. It would do better on softer terrain, but stone floors helped it none.
He began circling the Shadow, watching it as it stilt-like stepped in time to circle him as well. Trying to set him up for an ambush by friends? It was too brightly lit and his ears were sharpened right now, that wouldn't work meat.
It moved with deliberate pacing. Furrowing his brows. He stopped.
The Shadow stopped, claws still ready before it.
He stepped again, the Shadow followed his timing to the moment, even if its stance was off due to compensating for those lacking feet of its. The shademeat was mimicking him.
Was that their gimmick? He was almost disappointed. Sure the monkey-see, monkey-do shit would work on teenagers, but he was a little too older for this nonsense.
He pretended to drop his guard, letting his arms fall and looking to the side with a bored expression.
The shademeat, proving it was stupid, immediately leapt on the opportunity by attempting to leap at him, claws ready to strike and aimed at his throat. Credit where credit was due, it was faster than the kids and dogs. Not by much, but faster still.
Unfortunately for its hopes and dreams of splaying his throat open, he was wearing gauntlets.
He caught the knife-like hands in grips clad in steel, fingers interlocking and hands tightening in an attempt to crush each other. He measured its strength for a moment, and found a disappointing fact.
The thing was weaker than the lizards were.
He applied pressure. Its hands started to bend backwards, then its arms, then it was forced to its knees as he brought it down. Mr knife-hands was relying entirely on being fast and hitting teenagers who weren't wearing proper armor, it seemed, because something like this wasn't any more lethal than a drunk man with a kitchen knife.
Newbie killer his ass. Speaking of…
He stepped to the side and twisted around, throwing his arms up and bringing the pained shadow with it.
The second shadow, thinking it was being sneaky, found its claws sinking into the flesh of its friend. He dropped the first one, letting the second be dragged down with it, before raising his boot.
And stomping the shadows flat, shattering the white masks through the back of their skulls.
Annoyingly, they didn't bleed either. They just collapsed into bizarre dark goo, kinda like thickening coal tar. He stomped again.
…
He paused, then twisted into a backhand, smashing the claws of the next shadow away. He used the momentum to rocket his other fist forwards, shaking as it crashed through the skull of the shademeat.
In the distance, he heard croaking echoing through the halls and drowning out the smaller noises he was making. He wouldn't be able to tell if his sound was echoing properly or not. Adam understood the trick here now, and gave a small approving smile.
Not bad murderpit, you're still working with shit units, but this was actually somewhat clever. The Guild notes only mentioned the monster traits, not this synergistic strategy at play here. Error, ignorance, or sabotage?
The shademeats liked to ambush. They were silent as they did it. The only indication of their presence being their body muffling the noise around them. So to cover up the sound not reverberating properly, the dungeon put a real loud beastie alongside it so that the halls would be more noisy when everything was spawned.
Unable to tell when a shademeat attacks, and not wearing proper armor, greenmeats die en masse. It was a nasty little one-two punch that worked on those lacking experience. It was also something that took him all of one trip down here to figure out, so it still wasn't getting a passing grade.
Six out of ten, try harder next time.
Unfortunately, this still meant that he would need to make some purchases once he was done getting these cores out and back up to the surface. Good chance of Scrappy getting murdered if he didn't.
He raised his left arm and jerked his hand downwards.
A bolt shattered a white mask. A shademeat collapsed into a tar-like vaguely human corpse.
Goddamnit, you better be worth at least one-hundred and twenty-five valis or pray that the bolt wasn't broken in your face. Otherwise he was going to torture the next one of you he meets.
—
He stepped through the doorway, scratching at his scalp as he did so, closing the door behind him. The room was warm and the fireplace crackling, indicative of a long burning. It was too damn drafty to keep the place warm without it going all day. Might be a good idea to get those windows repaired, or at least covered up.
He shrugged off his bag, tossing it to the side. Then he began the process of removing the gauntlets and gambeson, as well as everything else on his outermost layer. It needed a wash and a drying.
Much to his expectation, the core did indeed get more valuable at a somewhat consistent rate heading lower. The frogs and shades both went for seven-hundred and fifty a pop, massively better than the lizards, who were in turn massively better than the kids and dogs. Just the batch he had slaughtered near the entrance was enough for his preparatory purchases and some change left over.
He glanced over, then slowed in his loosening of the gambeson ties at what he saw. He didn't stop though, he had been wearing this all day, he instead raised an eyebrow.
Tinytits stood in front of the fireplace, hands on her hips, tapping a foot at him. Her expression was flat and disapproving.
"...what?" He grunted.
"You forgot to tell me about that woman's offer, then walked away while we were in the middle of our womanly staredown." Tinytits glowered at him, raising her hands to point at him in parallel. "Then you spend lots of time at the guild, probably playing hooky again, and now you come back really late at night. I should be in bed right now, yanno?"
"Then go to bed." Adam replied, moving on to take off his boots.
"Gah!" Tinytits rubbed her forehead with both fists. "My child is a delinquent-type!" She muttered to herself, before speaking up and pointing a dramatic finger at him. "I need to greet you after you come back so I can update your status and go like-"
She moved into one of those cutesy-stances that women sometimes did. "You did really well today! Your goddess is proud of you! Come lay your head on my lap as a reward!" She patted her thighs as an emphasis, speaking with a soft and warm tone and smiling gently.
She then changed her stance to be significantly more goblin-like, with hunched back and grasping fingers. "I can't do that if you're out late at night sleeping with strange women and picking fights with alleycats or something!" She growled at him.
"I'm a grown-ass man, woman. Heap your affections onto the kid, I don't need em." Adam rumbled dismissively, picking up his clothing and moving to the back to wash them off. Opening the door to the stone backyard of the church, he could faintly see new things set up in one of the corners, smithing equipment he was presuming. So Shortstack and Tinytits came to an agreement after all?
Tinytits followed him, and moved ahead to start drawing water from the well before he reached the rope. "You could be a million years old and you'd still be my precious familia member." She spoke quite seriously, eyes shining in the dim flickers of the distant fire-light. "I'd be a failure of a goddess if I don't pamper you every now and then. Now come on, I'll help you wash your clothes off. Then I'm updating you, okay?"
Adam grunted in reply, and started the process of cleaning his gear off from the day's bloodshed. His employer moved in unison, the gear being cleaned off at a steady pace, the two of them quiet as the work went by.
Soon enough, it was hung up near the fireplace alongside brat's own coat, and his shirt was on the floor. "Copy it down this time, I've figured out how to read while at the guild." He demanded.
She paused, before throwing her arms around his neck and making him lurch forwards with the sudden weight. He growled and resisted the urge to destroy the thing touching him unexpectedly.
"You weren't playing hooky at all! You've been working hard!" She happily replied, rubbing her face against his back for a few moments, before pulling away and hopping over to grab a page and something to write with. Returning after a moment, she pointed the pen down. "Lay down all the way, I'll need to write on something after I update you."
"Use the floor." He replied.
"Nope! Lay down!" His employer commanded, with a bouncing shake of her head and a re-emphasized point down.
Unfortunately, she was indeed his employer. He grumbled the entire way down, laying on top of his shirt with a visibly displeased expression. She moved on top of him shortly after, sitting on the small of his back and starting the process of rubbing her fingers over his back to do what was apparently magic.
He had indeed noticed an increase in his capabilities the other day, doing suicides with the kid. A tiny, fractional increase so far, but it was a noticeable increase all the same. That proved that this 'falna' stuff wasn't just placebo and that he could indeed get some of his old specs back in this meatframe.
Tinytits gave him another one of those stupid hugs, laying her whole body against his back. He ignored it and went back to his internal monologue.
Of course. If he was capable of getting stronger, that meant others were too. In a city full of mass-monster-murderers? There was bound to be someone who was the strongest, with the best gear, training, and killer instinct. There was a King in the city, and it wasn't currently him.
After nearly fifty years as the undisputed best in the world? That was rankling him something fierce. There was an itch in his bones at the moment, and he needed to scratch out names to get rid of it.
But, carefully, of course. Rushing into regicide was a stupid move. He'd have to creep carefully until he found the top. Then, he'd have to carefully build up funds and power until he was good enough to be back on top once again. But that was perfectly fine by him.
Because here? He could get both just by killing.
This might be the best fucking city in the world, whatever world this was.
…
He had been down here for a while. He shifted slightly. Tinytits was laying against his back.
She snored softly as he shifted.
She had fallen asleep.
Adam's fist clenched in rage as he silently smoldered on the floor of the church, his employer, legitimacy, and path to power currently napping on his back like he was a fucking meat-bed.
She had done this on purpose. She definitely had.
He was going to start sleeping in a chair. Just to stop this shit from ever happening again.
He glanced about the room again, and the fire that merrily crackled with broken furniture-wood.
They didn't have a chair.
He narrowed his eyes.
He was going to buy a chair, a good chair, and he was going to sleep on it.
No. A bench was better. He was going to get Shortstack to make something worth a damn, and order a bench from her. Like the one he used to have while he still used his warframe, nice and durable, with a handle or two on the bottom so he could use it as a shield and massive club too.
Then he was going to sleep on it, right in front of the fire, and he wouldn't be pinned against the fucking floor by Bitesized Babe.
"Hmm…" Tinytits grumbled and curled up further on his back. "Warm."
That's because he was currently furious, ms employer. Please get the fuck off his back so he can sleep in a more defensible position.
…Barricades. He was going to buy barricades and steel plates to line the interior with. Turn this church into a fortress to keep fuckers away. Add in a falling blade trap or three, then a few landmines outside. He was going to turn it into a fortress and sleep on a bench and not underneath his unfortunately critical-employer.
Quietly, Adam seethed his way to sleep.
Hestia snored on the well-heated bed.