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?"
