"Dammit," cursed Tina as she fled her now beached ship, only a single satchel in her possession, dodging cannon fire as she and her crew dashed along the beach towards the treeline, "to think those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds would attack just as we reached the island!"She dodged a beam fired by one of the cannons, only for it to go straight through the head of one of the crew who had been running ahead of her.
Tina gritted her teeth as she dashed past the corpse.
"Follow the water so that you do not get separated from each other!" she commanded, indicating towards the river carved out by Crystal as she did so.
"Yes Captain!" All but one of her crew shouted back to her. The one who had not shouted, still obeyed the command, but only offered her a glare in response to her words.
He was not a beastkin like her, but rather a hybrid, his appearance being closer to that of a wolf than a human. As clothing, he wore only tan coloured pants, leather armbands, and a vest made from some sort of brown coloured fur.
"Something on your mind, Desmond?" She inquired as she dodged yet another beam. This one thankfully impacting a tree rather than a person.
"...Nothing at all, captain," her replied, though he said the word "captain" with no small amount of spite.
"I am simply admiring the wisdom of abandoning our ship on the beach rather than using it to follow the river," he said, sarcasm dripping from each word, "it seems, however, that your thinking is a bit too wise for me to understand it."
Desmond then increased his speed before he could receive a reply, keeping Tina between himself and the location of the enemy ship.
"Ha..." she sighed, looking towards the "river" that they both now followed, the river that did not flow in any particular direction, and was bordered with obsidian and gla.s.s in the spots where the beam had melted the ground around it.
"Only an idiot would follow such a suspicious looking river," she muttered under her breath...
"Follow the river!" Shouted the plump human n.o.ble as he observed the fleeing demihumans through an overly ornate looking spygla.s.s.
It was too heavy and too uncomfortable for the n.o.ble to hold for more than a few minutes at a time do to the added decorations.
"And prepare to fire the forward cannon," he added, licking his lips and grinning as he spotted Tina through said spygla.s.s...
Elsewhere...
"One, two, three, now! One two, three, now! One, two, three, now!" Crystal repeated, over and over to the army of monkeys who now gradually pulled her ship forwards using a mult.i.tude of ropes fastened to it.
They were accompanied, of course, by a few of her skeletal crew as well.
Slowly but surely it inched forwards, from the beach where it had remained stationary, rotting for the past few centuries, and into the water filled groove which had been carved out by Crystal"s battle with her ship"s previous inhabitants.
"Awesome!" Shouted Crystal as the ship began gently floating forwards using only what remained of its momentum from being pulled.
The ashen maiden"s sails had been taken down to allow the ship to do so without being greatly affected by the wind, an easy feat do to Daisy"s command over basic ship"s functions.
"I"m glad to see the hour of charades you performed to make the monkeys understand your intentions have not gone to waist," Daisy replied.
"However," she continued, "I still do not understand why they would choose do your bidding in exchange for mere fruit."
Crystal, who currently had the first monkey she had made contact with sitting atop her shoulder as some sort of mascot, tilted her head in response, the monkey mirroring the gesture.
"What"s not to get?" She questioned.
"Well," began the lesser lich, "If you had indeed destroyed their previous food source as you surmised earlier, giving them a few barrels of food shouldn"t be enough to erase that grudge, let alone make them your allies."
"And if we did not destroy said food source, why did they spend a month hara.s.sing our ship in the first place?" The lich asked, clearly not totally content with the way in which the situation had been resolved.
The dungeon core"s avatar spent a moment pondering her captains words. Eventually however, she just shrugged.
"Well..." she began, pointing in the direction in which the ship was now currently drifting, the only direction it could now travel, "I guess we"ll find out eventually won"t we?"
"...True," agreed the lich.
If such a food source did exist, they were indeed very likely to see some trace of it eventually, and the lich realized that to be the case.
"But I"ll still hate them all regardless of whatever we find," she added mentally.
To Daisy Jones, over the course of the past month, the monkeys had truly lost any right to exist in the world.
One hour later....
As the ship was gradually pulled along by the mixed group of skeletons and monkeys, Crystal was slowly alternating between staring off into the horizon and browsing through her trait menu.
It was then that she noticed something rather strange out of the corner of her eye.
"Huh?" She exclaimed at the sudden flash of blue light, steadily growing brighter in the distance.
Her perceptive ability however were far too low to be of any use without being enhanced with a tool of some sort.
"What is it?" questioned the nearby lich.
Daisy had been pa.s.sing her time by looking over a clipboard containing an inventory of all the ship"s supplies, a habit she had picked up back when she had been alive.
The lich raised her head, and seeing Crystal"s confused expression, she gave a glance in the same direction as Crystal.
She then, less than one second later, dove towards Crystal, tackling her to the ground.
However, not before a beam of blue light pa.s.sed through Crystal"s body.
"Ugh!" Groaned Crystal as she hit the ship"s deck, a large portion of her avatar"s torso having suddenly vanished, along with the ship"s helm which had been in front of her and the door to the map room which had existed behind her.
She rested a moment, simply staring at the sky as she processed what had just occurred.
The monkey, which had been on her shoulder up until that moment, quickly scurried off into the map room in that moment.
"What was that...?" She questioned as she looked up into the eyes of the lich who now lay atop her, having been tackled by said lich just a moment too late.
Seeing that her mistress, Crystal, was fatally wounded, had left Daisy momentarily dazed, but hearing her speak so calmly had reminded her that Crystal"s true body was still safe, stashed within a fort of blankets in the closet of the captain"s cabin"s cabin.
She breathed a sigh of relief before replying.
"...A very big enemy ship," she stated, recalling what she had seen.
Crystal"s body had now began vanishing, disintegrating, starting from around her injury, transforming into a swarm of pink light particles.
She looked towards the menu she had previously had open and quickly selected a trait from it.
She then gave a mischievous smile to the lich before disappearing completely...
Find authorized novels in Webnovel，faster updates, better experience，Please click for visiting.
A moment later the trait selected by Crystal then took hold of the ship, and daisy could feel it"s effect.
If Daisy could have smiled in that moment she would have, and it would have been a smile far more bloodthirsty than Crystal"s had been.
[Indestructible(5TP): Dungeon becomes literally indestructible, only able to be damaged by that which can either negate, subvert, or remove this trait"s existence.
This trait is automatically negated if no path to core exists, or if the path to the core is convoluted to an unreasonable degree.]
"Ram them!" Daisy hissed, her ship jolting forwards in response to her command, as if eager for the incoming collision.