Reborn in a Dating Sim: Life as a Mob is hard in an Equestria Girl’s Dating Game!

Reborn in a Dating Sim:

Life as a Mob is hard in an Equestria Girl’s Dating Game!

Chapter Twenty-Six

The second floor of the labyrinth was more of a swamp than an actual floor. There had been a section where the floor itself attempted to swallow one of them. Copper had realized that this was a sinkhole, and likely it either led to another floor, or it was just the space between the floors. Either way there was a good chance that none of them would survive if they got trapped in it. The one exception would be Artemis, and that would be because she was able to have multiple bodies. The current body she was in likely would be destroyed.

That wasn’t even counting the monsters. There were still fishmen, but there was a creature that hid in the walls. Their only sign of being there was a small collection of bubbles forming on the mud walls of the floor. When those bubbles started gathering closer the two choices were to either stab a sword into the wall, which could break the sword, or wait for the monster to pop out and then kill it. The monster itself was almost like an eel. It was long, slender, and it had jagged broken teeth in its maw. It looked far more vicious than it actually was.

The monster couldn’t seem to leave the walls, and that meant that it was stationary. At least it was stationary where it was located. It could pop out, but it couldn’t seem to move down the wall. That meant it likely settled and rooted somewhere and then popped out occasionally to feed. It was certainly dangerous, and it was vicious in the sense that it would attack, but it wasn’t the most vicious thing in the labyrinth so far. The fishmen were actually more vicious in the sense of chasing them down and attempting to kill them than the wall eels were. Still, they made their way through the floor, looking out for the wall eels, killing or dodging the fishmen as they came, and they searched for the staircase.

Each step was something closer to what Copper was hoping was the entrance to the next floor. To him it seemed that this floor was taking far longer than it should. Then again his points of reference was based on the labyrinth in the capital and the labyrinth that had One Eye Mash. Both of those were labyrinths that he’d traversed before in the game itself. Without knowing the specifics of this one it meant taking time, and it meant ensuring that every step was accounted for. Going too fast would be far too dangerous, and that wasn’t something he wanted to do. He wanted to get through the labyrinth without any loss of life.

He watched his Dad, and he could see something. Gold Bit looked alive. He looked absolutely alive at this moment. He was an adventurer. The man that had taught him how to work the fields, and the same man that had done his utmost to ensure that they had plenty of food to eat, was acting every bit of the adventurer that he knew he was. He was proud for him, and he was proud of him. Watching him he couldn’t deny how amazing his father truly was.

He almost wished that the two of them could have explored the first labyrinth he found together. Sure, it would have been somewhat silly to do so. After all Gold Bit had a ton of work to do, and it would have taken him away from the fields for far too long. But seeing him in his element now made him realize how much his father must have enjoyed doing this in the past, and how much he obviously had wanted to get back into doing it again. He watched as Gold Bit stopped, raised his hand, and carefully stepped to a corner. After a moment he motioned for them to move forward.

“There’s the stairs,” he said as he pointed to them, “and they look like more of the same.”

That was almost a small blessing. Seeing the staircase there he watched as Gold Bit neared it. Suddenly he stopped and looked around them for a moment. It almost appeared as he was studying the staircase itself. He watched as his Dad looked at it, and then he shook his head. He took a single item from his pack, and Copper realized that it was an unlit lantern. He lit it, tossed it, and they watched as something moved. The staircase itself closed in on itself, and he saw the reaction.

Teeth had come up from the floor, down from the ceiling, and a strange light bobbed in place for a moment. It was like a giant angler fish that had taken up a place to look like the stairwell. It was a kind of mimic, and he could respect that his Dad had figured it out. For a moment the Angler Monster seemed to munch, and then it’s cheeks puffed, and without warning it began to turn into smoke. There where it had been was still the staircase, but there was also a large core sitting there. Gold Bit moved cautiously toward it and picked up the core.

“How did you know?” he asked as he neared his Dad, “I mean, how could you tell?”

Gold Bit smiled, “I’d seen one before, once,” he admitted as he looked at the stairwell, “I hadn’t seen one like this, but rather I’d seen one out in the wild. It looked like an abandoned airship. I watched a smaller ship get close to it, and the airship suddenly turned and gobbled it up. Two dozen lives gone in an instant.”

He shook his head, “We managed to kill it by throwing a grenade inside of it. That was enough to kill it. I didn’t want to risk the grenade in here, so I figured that a lantern would do the same thing.”

Copper stood in awe at his father’s comment. He’d seen one of those things. He’d seen one before, and they had dealt with it using a grenade. He’d hoped that using a lantern would do the same thing, and luckily it had. It was slower, the fire had to spread inside of it and burn it from the inside out, but it had worked. He’d battled crystal scorpions. Monsters that were considered difficult for B rank adventurers. Something like this would be harder to handle for someone that had never seen one before.

Just like a normal mimic it was super dangerous. The issue with a normal mimic was that it trapped people due either to their greed or their exceptionally good nature. He’d heard of mimics that posed as wounded people in labyrinths. It was something they went over in class. It was a special type of mimic that specifically got people close to them and then it would eat them. The entire wall would morph and take as much of a bit as it could.

And it would all be done because someone wanted to do the right thing and help someone else. There was no denying that it was a difficult lesson. The kind that taught people that jumping in wasn’t the best move. That sometimes it meant taking a moment to analyze the situation and try to apply some logic to it. Why would someone be stuck in a labyrinth? Sure, it happened, but most of the time the monsters there usually dealt with them.

The angler fish mimic was a new one, and he had a feeling that it was going to be one that he wasn’t going to want to run into much more. Still, they made their way down the stairwell, and he smelled the faint funk that rolled in the air. The smell of low tide at the beach. The sulfur smell of something dead or dying and the way it hung in the air. It was the smell of algae slowly eating its brethren. The smell of rot as it lingered. The smell of low tide was the smell of death pure and simple.

The floor they were walking toward smelled of death. It was strong, and he tried to understand why it would smell so heavily like death. Monsters didn’t decompose. They didn’t rot, but instead they turned into a puff of smoke and left behind a core. The core itself could create another monster if left alone, but at the same time it could be used to power things. It was one of the things that he filed away as information that he was uncertain of. There was no reason to try and understand it. Not at the moment anyway. The best option was to just continue with what was going on.

Still, the smell of rot bothered him. It bothered him because of what it meant. There shouldn’t be a reason for there to be rot. There shouldn’t be anything dead. This was a new labyrinth. More than likely there wasn’t that many floors to it yet. For their to be rot would mean that there was death. Death would mean adventurers, and he couldn’t believe that there would be other adventurers already here. This was pretty far out in the boarders.

He breathed out, maybe it was just the floor. It could be possible that it was simply doing this to mess with them. He remembered in his previous life reading about how some animals would make themselves smell terrible in order to keep predators away from them. That could be the same here. The labyrinth could be making them hesitate to go any further. Either so that they would have to back track and leave, or to give whatever was on the third floor a chance to prepare for them.

His father seemed to feel the same hesitation, but after a moment he motioned for them to follow him. They stepped closer, and he could see the flora that lined the walls and the floor. It was algae, and most of it was a deep green that seemed to be clumped together. He could see how it seemed to almost act like an ivy, and instead of simply walking forward his Dad took what looked like a stick from his pack. He moved it toward a clump and he touched it.

The algae itself began to wrap around the stick holding it in place, and imbedding itself into it. Evidence of its roots digging in was there. He could see what was going to happen at any moment. The algae itself was a monster. A vicious plant that would feed off of those entering its domain. Without a thought his Dad lifted his magi-gun and cocked it. He watched as he fired it, and what left it was a fireball. The flame bullet hit a clump and he heard what sounded like thousands of tiny voices screaming all at once. For a moment there was nothing, and then multiple clumps disappeared in a puff of smoke. What remained was a core in their place. They were absolutely a monster. A monster that sat and waited for lunch to come to it.

It was something like the angler fish that they’d faced earlier, but at least they had a way to deal with them. The algae monster didn’t like fire. And that was something they had plenty of. His dad stepped into the room, aimed, and fired at another clump. Once again it screamed, and again multiple clumps turned into puffs of smoke before simply disappearing. Copper took his lead, and looked at the clumps ahead of them. He didn’t pick one out randomly. He saw what his Dad had been doing. He’d been picking a center one. One that was in the middle of the clumps. When he did he could see what it truly meant.

The middle clump was shaped differently, it almost looked like a person laying there. The algae itself spread from that location, and it grew in other clumps around it. He fired, hitting it, and he watched as the algae writhed in pain, the small buds of the algae opened and a multitude of miniature voices cried out in agony once again. It was something that he could see would work, but at the same time it felt odd.

It was odd because there was a part of him that questioned if what he was doing was the right thing. Not that destroying monsters was wrong. Every monster in this labyrinth wanted to kill them. They all existed to ensure that every single adventurer here would perish. That simply was what they were. Killing them first was justified. Instead what felt odd was that the fact that the algae itself seemed to scream. Hearing those cries of pain and anguish bothered Copper a bit. It was far too similar to hearing the cries of people.

In that way he didn’t like it, but then again he reminded himself that they were in a labyrinth, and that everything here wanted to kill them. There was no getting around that. Instead he worked with his dad. Every few feet they shot another clump of algae and listened to the screams. They continued to do this until they got further into the floor. There he noticed that the algae was giving way. It didn’t seem to be as prevalent. Looking around he studied the area.

The floor was still muddy, and it was thicker than the other floors. Each step caused their feet to sink in a little. He knew that standing still would be a mistake. Doing so would cause them to possibly sink in even further, and that could cause them to be stuck on the floor. The labyrinth itself didn’t want other people here. Its entire purpose was to create monsters, kill adventurers, and keep going.

“The floor sure don’t feel right,” Applebloom said, “Ah mean, every step feels like we’re walking outside after a long rain. It feels like we’re being dragged down.”

He nodded as he walked, “I think that it’s part of the labyrinth’s defenses. That it’s sort of a trap. The moment you have to stand still is the moment that you’re going to be trapped. I’m not sure if it is just this floor, or if it’s going to be on more of them,” he said as they continued to walk, “Part of me questions if the other floors are going be more or less of the same. I mean I know that in labyrinths the deeper you go the worse the labyrinth is. Although, with this being a newer labyrinth I doubt that it’s exceptionally deep.”

“You’ve got a point,” Diamond Tiara said from beside Applebloom, “New Labyrinths usually only have about four or five floors. At least that’s what the adventuring class teaches us. Mostly because the labyrinths haven’t had the time to absorb the life energy of adventurers that have fallen to them.”

He nodded, “Which, if that means this labyrinth has only about four or five floors then we’re either halfway through, or more than halfway through it.”

His Dad stopped ahead of them, “Eels,” he said from ahead of them, “Different from the last ones.”

Copper looked and saw what he was talking about. The eels weren’t popping out of the ground like the others had been. Instead they seemed to sliding on the top of the ground. Every few moments there was a jolt of electricity that filled the air near them. Copper understood exactly what this meant. Those things were going to be incredibly difficult to deal with. He certainly didn’t want to have to deal with that, but then again there was no denying that it would be something that had to happen.

He loaded a normal bullet into his magi-rifle, aimed, and fired. The bullet struck an eel, and when it did the eel writhed for a moment before a massive jolt of electricity shot out. It went everywhere, and he watched as eel then turned to smoke. So, killing one was possible with a normal bullet, but it also meant setting off a massive electrical attack. He looked at his Dad who seemed to take a moment to aim his own magi-gun. He waited, fired, and a fire bullet struck one. The death was quicker, but in no way did it diminish the jolt of electricity that came out. Instead it was just as bad.

“We’re going to have to pick them off from here,” Gold Bit said as he loaded another bullet, “Son, take as many as you can, and I’ll attempt to thin their numbers as well. Maybe we’ll be able to clear the floor of these things before they attempt to swarm us.”

He nodded, and he quickly loaded another bullet. Taking aim he fired, killing one of the closest ones. The jolt was just far enough away that it missed them, but it didn’t cause him to feel any safer. He ejected the shell, loaded another one, and soon fired again. Each time he did he watched as another eel writhed and then disappeared. They were leaving cores behind, which he knew they would gather. Just as he worried before they were still sinking, so he was moving, stepping a little further back, a little closer, all to keep him sinking too far. He saw everyone else taking his example to heart, and the entire time he was firing.

The eels had long since abandoned the idea of merely swimming in place, and instead were either trying to swim away, or swim toward them. He took the ones coming toward them, firing at them, ensuring that they were dealt with, and slowly the numbers of them dropped low enough that they could walk without hindrance. Together they moved toward where the cores were, and he began to gather them with his father.

The cores for the eels themselves were a seafoam green, and they glowed lightly. In total there were at least twenty-five of them. He had very little doubt that this would be a decent paycheck for his family. They moved further in, and he heard a dripping sound coming from ahead of them. They turned the corner, and he saw the stairwell ahead. There were cores on the first couple of steps, and his eyes widened. This was another angler fish. He reached into his own pack, fumbled around for a moment, and realized that he didn’t have a lantern. Instead he watched as Artemis walked forward.

She had something in her hands, and he knew that it was a magic grenade. One that used fire. She tossed, it, the angler fish closed its mouth, and then like before its cheeks puffed, and soon it disappeared. She stepped to the first step, stepped up, and then looked at them, “I believe it is safe now.”

He smiled, glad that she had finished it off. Either the next floor was the last, or the next to the last. Either way, he had no doubt that it would be a much harder floor, and he did wonder exactly if that was something they would tackle today, or if they would make notes and simply return later.

“Let’s gather the cores,” his father said as he looked at them, “And then we’ll head back. We’ve mapped to the third floor, and that’s a good start.”