Chapter 98 - Moths... (Patreon)

My highly professional diagnosis of the vassal of horror before us fails to inspire the correct feelings of dread in the party.

I hardly see why.

Avelyn looks at the moth.

Then back at me.

She tilts her head.

“...I see that it is a moth?”

I nod solemnly, my gaze remaining firmly locked on the abomination.

“Exactly.”

She somehow looks even more confused.

“Lyn, that's just an insect.”

“A highly suspicious one.”

Avelyn hesitates.

I gesture toward the creature. The motion is perhaps slightly sharper than intended.

“It flies.”

She blinks.

“Yes.”

“It is covered in fur.”

“...Some insects are.”

“It has no business being that large.”

The moth is approximately the size of a horse.

Avelyn opens her mouth.

Pauses.

Then closes it again.

I continue before she can recover.

“It emerges primarily at night. It appears without warning. It moves erratically. Its entire evolutionary strategy appears to be making people uncomfortable.”

“That's not—”

“It is also a moth.”

Silence settles over the group.

The party stares.

I stare back.

Eventually Rin speaks.

“I'm not seeing the problem.”

Stars above.

I am surrounded by lunatics.

Sylrae chooses that moment to join the conversation, her voice carrying a dangerously amused edge.

“Wait. So you're scared of moths?”

Incorrect. The notion that I am legitimately afraid of anything is a direct attack on my dignity.

Obviously.

A beautiful prodigy such as myself would never suffer from something as inconvenient as fear.

Naturally, I explain this.

“Incorrect. You are mistaking survival instinct for fear.”

Sylrae glances at the moth.

Then back at me.

“It’s a moth.”

I nod solemnly. Now she is beginning to understand.

“Exactly.”

She stares at me for several seconds.

“So would this survival instinct activate against a small, harmless, completely ordinary moth?”

…

My ears angle outward.

“Define harmless.”

Sylrae's grin widens.

“A normal moth.”

I shift my gaze slightly to the side.

“...Potentially.”

Avelyn immediately covers her mouth. A deeply suspicious action.

Sylrae lets out a breath slightly too fast. Then a giggle escapes. Then another.

A few seconds later she's laughing outright.

Avelyn attempts to maintain her composure.

She fails spectacularly.

Rin joins in.

Zeke lasts roughly three seconds longer before losing the battle as well.

Even Marek's beard twitches.

My eyes narrow.

“My survival instincts are being mocked.”

That somehow makes the situation worse. The laughter intensifies.

My ears flatten against my head.

My tail gives a sharp flick of displeasure.

This entire party is deeply unprofessional.

“Ahaha, sorry, that was just so—OW. Lyn, don't squeeze my arm because you're annoyed.” Avelyn squirms slightly beneath my grip. “Ah, please let me go. I'm sorry for—pfft.”

Another laugh escapes.

I squeeze slightly harder.

Only slightly.

She immediately begins attempting to escape my entirely justified retaliation.

The rest of the party laughs harder.

…

With great dignity, I release her arm.

Avelyn rubs it briefly, though her smile remains bright and entirely too amused.

...I should have squeezed harder.

I turn away and begin walking.

“We are on a time limit. Let us depart.”

Rin immediately speaks up.

“Are you going to lead?”

…

I glance sideways at the dead moth.

Then calmly and deliberately reposition myself behind Avelyn.

“I believe the optimal placement for me is protecting the healer. Moths are capable of flight.”

A perfectly reasonable tactical assessment.

I have also made the extremely strategic decision to remain at ground level.

Entirely unrelated.

The party exchanges glances.

“Sure.”

My ears flatten.

Fortunately, they seem to recognize the importance of professionalism and allow the matter to drop.

Excellent.

Dignity preserved.

As expected of a conversational genius such as myself. Now that we are focusing on the truly important things, this tiny and completely irrelevant incident will surely fade from everyone's memory.

Obviously.

Sometimes my own intellect frightens me.

Avelyn speaks up.

“I mean, if you look at them closely, they're kind of cute.”

…

The stars have forsaken me.

“We have very different definitions of cute.”

She hums thoughtfully.

“They're very fluffy. Moth fur is actually really soft.”

I stare at her.

She smiles.

A suspicious smile.

“Would you like to touch one?”

My tail immediately poofs out again.

The reaction is so automatic that I don't even have time to be embarrassed by it.

Avelyn's smile somehow widens.

Several vines immediately slip from my shadow and begin smoothing my fur back down before the situation can deteriorate further.

“I will have to deny that particular suggestion.”

“Lyn, they're harmless.”

I look toward the crystalline canopy overhead. Several thousand horse-sized moths are allegedly occupying it.

Then I look back at her.

“Your definition of harmless concerns me.”

She blinks.

“...Right. Those ones aren't harmless. But normal ones are.”

I disagree completely.

Those creatures of the night are, at all times, plotting something.

There is absolutely no scenario in which I am incorrect about this.

“You will regret underestimating normal moths. They are planning something.”

“...”

The party exchanges another glance.

Suspicious.

We continue moving through the crystal forest, the chiming branches swaying overhead as rivers of colored light flow through the translucent trunks around us.

Everyone except Avelyn wisely allows the subject to die.

Avelyn, unfortunately, appears determined to educate me.

“Actually, some species navigate entirely by moonlight.”

“That is not comforting.”

She blinks.

“I think it's kind of beautiful.”

“Agree to disagree.”

A few seconds pass.

“Some can detect scents from kilometers away.”

I immediately look at her.

“That is somehow less comforting.”

“How?”

“They are expanding their surveillance capabilities.”

Avelyn pinches the bridge of her nose.

I continue walking.

Victorious.

Several moments later she tries again.

“Some don't even have mouths.”

…

I stop, slowly turning towards her.

My tail begins poofing again.

The vines immediately resume damage control.

“Why would you tell me that?”

Avelyn opens her mouth.

Pauses.

Then closes it.

“Actually, now that I say it out loud, that does sound a little unsettling.”

“A little?”

She sighs.

The sound carries the profound exhaustion of someone who has spent the last several minutes attempting to reason with an unreasonable person.

And failed.

“Fine.”

Excellent.

Intellectual superiority achieved.

I allow myself a small smile. Then my ears immediately swivel toward a distant flutter somewhere in the canopy.

The smile vanishes.

Avelyn notices. Her own widens.

This is a deeply unfair conversation.

We continue moving forward for a few minutes without any monster encounters.

However, just as I am beginning to conclude that this forest is entirely moth-dominated, I notice something ahead.

And it's—

...?

A highly suspicious blur sitting atop one of the lower branches along our path.

At first I mistake it for a trick of the light. Then I realize the light is flowing through the crystal trees normally everywhere else.

Just not there.

The best comparison I can come up with is television static. A patch of reality where the universe appears to have briefly forgotten how rendering works.

I slow slightly.

Whatever it is, my gravity sense isn't detecting anything.

Nobody else reacts. Not even Avelyn with her Hallowed Sense.

Which is highly concerning.

A vine immediately delivers me a rock.

I flick it.

The stone leaves my fingers with a sharp crack, crossing the distance almost instantly before slamming directly into the suspicious blur.

The effect is immediate.

The static vanishes.

And in its place—

A monster launches itself directly at Marek's throat.

Marek reacts instantly.

His shield swings upward.

Shield Crash activates.

The resulting impact launches the creature backwards through several crystal branches before it lands in a spray of glittering shards.

Only then do I get a proper look at it.

The creature is crystalline like everything else in the cavern, though its overall shape resembles a feline.

A deeply questionable feline.

It possesses six legs instead of four. Its body is lean and predatory. Its face is elongated slightly too far, while its mouth contains several rows of triangular teeth that suggest it lost an argument with both a shark and an insect at some point during its evolutionary history.

I inspect it.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Crystal Stalker (Level 69 | Tier 2)

Species: Crystal Beast

Aspect: Illusion

A feline predator composed of living crystal. Specializes in ambush tactics, concealing itself with illusions before striking from elevated positions. Its crystalline body refracts light and obscures movement, making it difficult to detect before it attacks.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Ah.

Illusion.

Makes sense.

Also, that inspect becomes significantly more concerning once you actually think about it.

Namely: living crystal.

...How does that even work? How does it move? How does it obtain nutrients? Does it grow? Can it reproduce?

So many questions.

Unfortunately, I do not believe I can count on the monster to answer any of them.

Tragic.

A soft silver flash ripples across its body as magic activates.

The creature vanishes.

Or, at least, I assume it does.

The static blur immediately reappears, revealing its position as it begins stalking toward our backline instead.

Specifically: Avelyn.

Four vines erupt from my shadow and wrap around it before it manages three steps, lifting the creature several meters into the air.

The illusion collapses instantly, revealing a very surprised Crystal Stalker thrashing violently in an attempt to escape.

Unfortunate.

Its Strength stat appears to have peaked somewhere around room temperature.

The escape attempt fails spectacularly.

…

The group is staring at me.

Again.

I tilt my head slightly.

Rin points at the struggling monster.

“Okay, you definitely have True Sight, don't you? First the darkness, now seeing straight through an illusion?”

Avelyn and Sylrae nod in agreement.

I blink.

One ear angles sideways.

“I don't?”

The resulting side-eyes suggest that nobody believes me.

Which is unfortunate, because I genuinely don't possess True Sight.

…

Conclusion: My Starborn eyes are significantly weirder than I originally thought.

Seeing through darkness, I can almost rationalize.

Barely.

Space is dark. Stars exist in space.

The connection is questionable, but at least it exists.

This?

This makes no sense whatsoever.

The Crystal Stalker continues struggling.

I continue ignoring it.

The only connection between myself and the creature is that we both technically create illusions.

Except not really.

"Illusions" is simply the easiest word available for describing what I do. In reality, I am manipulating the light entering a target's eyes to create false images.

The end result looks similar. The process isn't.

Which means there should be no connection whatsoever.

And yet I could see straight through its concealment.

Why? Would this work on every illusion? What about skills specifically designed for stealth? Could I see through those too?

More questions.

No answers.

Yet.

I make a mental note to interrogate the stars about my eyes the next time I am alone.

We continue moving swiftly through the crystal forest, encountering all manner of crystalline wildlife along the way.

I spend most of my time on Crystal Stalker duty.

The things are concerningly common.

Every few minutes, another suspicious patch of static appears somewhere in the surrounding trees, followed shortly thereafter by a very surprised ambush predator finding itself wrapped in vines and questioning its life choices.

The rest of the ecosystem is significantly more varied.

One of the more common species are Chime Serpents, roughly anaconda-sized snakes composed of translucent crystal that carry the Sound Aspect.

They are also deeply unpleasant to fight.

Their preferred strategy appears to be abusing the resonant properties of the forest to transform the entire environment into a weapon. Every crystal trunk, branch, and shard becomes part of a massive amplifier network, allowing them to bounce absurdly loud attacks through the surrounding terrain.

The result is less "combat" and more "being personally assaulted by acoustics."

Three out of ten.

Bonus points awarded for being aesthetically pleasing.

Thankfully, their attacks seem to be considered magical in nature, which means Bulwark can block them.

I am unsure as to how that functions.

I refuse to question it.

Glasswing Raptors are considerably better.

The six-winged predators resemble a vaguely questionable cross between a dragonfly and a pterosaur, gliding effortlessly through the crystalline canopy while wielding a Wind Aspect. Rather than attacking directly, they snap off nearby crystal branches and launch them at enemies before catching the resulting debris in miniature kaleidoscopic tornadoes.

It is surprisingly elegant.

And surprisingly dangerous.

Seven out of ten.

Points added for creativity.

Unfortunately, there are also squirrels.

Which normally would not be a problem.

Squirrels are generally harmless.

These squirrels are not.

The Prism Squirrels are, without question, the most dangerous thing we have encountered since entering the forest.

They are almost impossible to spot before an engagement begins, preferring to spend their time hoarding crystal formations and constructing sprawling networks of loose debris throughout their territory.

Their Aspect is Impact.

An advanced Aspect.

The evolved form of Force.

The moment someone crosses into their domain, everything immediately escalates from zero to one hundred.

Crystal formations detonate from every direction, showering the area with razor-sharp fragments while waves of compressed force magic ricochet through the forest.

The first encounter was particularly educational.

The only reason Zeke survived was because Marek reacted quickly enough to deploy Bulwark before the initial shockwave arrived.

For reasons known only to themselves, the squirrels have apparently concluded that Zeke is their mortal enemy.

Every engagement follows the same pattern.

Crystals explode. Force waves erupt. And approximately half of the total hostility generated by the local squirrel population is directed exclusively toward Zeke.

Tragic.

Eight out of ten.

Points deducted out of spite.

Thankfully, the only true zero-out-of-ten creatures in the cavern appear to remain confined to the upper canopy.

Their continued existence is therefore deposited directly into the mental garbage chute and immediately forgotten.

It takes about an hour for something interesting to happen.

My ears twitch as the sound of shattering crystal reaches me from somewhere deeper within the forest. Not a single impact, either. A lot of it. Enough that the noise echoes through the crystalline trunks around us, reverberating from branch to branch like a chain reaction.

Which means one of two things.

Either an entire cabal of Prism Squirrels has declared war on another faction, or there is about to be a new monster.

Either way, entertainment.

Avelyn notices it a few seconds later, her ears perking as she turns toward the disturbance. Sylrae follows shortly afterwards, which is honestly rather impressive. 

The fact that she can even remotely compete with a Foxkin's hearing says a great deal about just how absurd her Perception stat must be.

As we move toward the sound, I find myself glancing sideways at the Wingkin.

As much as it pains me to admit it, Sylrae is probably the most dangerous combatant in this particular environment.

A gun is simply a better weapon than a sword when everything around you is made of crystal.

Cutting crystal works. Shattering it works better.

The distinction has become increasingly obvious over the last hour.

There was a particularly educational moment where I removed the head of a Crystal Stalker in a single strike, only for the creature to continue attempting to murder me as though nothing had happened. 

Apparently decapitation loses some of its effectiveness when your body consists primarily of magically animated minerals.

Meanwhile, Sylrae shoots things once and large portions of them immediately cease to exist.

Which is always enjoyable to watch.

Marek is similarly well-suited to the biome. His lower Dexterity makes the faster monsters difficult for him to engage, but anything foolish enough to enter melee range generally experiences a brief and educational lesson regarding momentum.

I have personally witnessed three separate Chime Serpents explode into kaleidoscopic debris after being struck by his shield.

Not defeated.

Exploded.

There is a difference.

Rin performs similarly. Frostflame turns out to be remarkably effective against crystal, creating fractures and weak points that the rest of us can exploit. A Crystal Stalker that might survive several of my vine attacks tends to have a significantly shorter life expectancy once Rin gets involved.

Unfortunately, Zeke drew the shortest straw when the dungeon generated itself.

Fire remains useful.

The crystal forest simply refuses to care nearly as much about being on fire as most environments do.

His explosions are still effective, but overall he is weaker than Rin or Marek.

Naturally, Avelyn doesn't even belong in the ranking.

Trying to compare her to the rest of us would be like comparing a forge to a sword. She isn't the weapon. She is the reason the weapons work.

I can abuse my full Dexterity without worrying about long-term consequences. Rin can take risks to secure a kill. Marek somehow becomes even more impossible to move. Every single member of the party hits harder, survives longer, and recovers faster thanks to Blessing and Hallowed Ground.

Completely balanced, this fox is not.

As for myself, I remain the most versatile combatant in the group. I can scout, engage aerial targets, respond to ambushes, handle stealth threats, and, in emergencies, become the emergency. Still, versatility and raw effectiveness are not always the same thing, and this dungeon happens to favor some very specific skill sets.

Impressive.

Nine out of ten.

One point deducted for reducing my violence-per-monster metric.

My tail swishes thoughtfully as another distant crash echoes through the crystal forest ahead.

...I think I made the correct decision accepting Avelyn's offer.

The party is weaker than me, obviously. Yet they are not so weak that I am forced to solve every problem myself. Everyone has moments where they shine, everyone contributes, and most importantly, they are competent enough that I can focus on being dramatic instead of babysitting.

A satisfactory result.

I approve.

Sylrae speaks up as we approach the sound.

“I’m going up to see what that is before we engage. Watch down here, Lyn?”

I nod in assent, and she flexes her wings before shooting upward through the crystalline canopy.

It only takes a few dozen seconds for her to return.

Her expression is slightly more concerned than before.

Which is always a wonderful sign.

Marek notices it as well.

“What did you see?”

Sylrae folds her wings.

“A lot.”

A pause.

“A ton of monsters are fighting over there. Crystal Stalkers. Glasswing Raptors. Chime Serpents. I even saw several Prism Squirrels.”

The entire party collectively winces at the mention of the squirrels.

Understandable.

Marek subtly adjusts his shield.

“What are they fighting?”

Sylrae opens her mouth.

Pauses for a concerningly long time.

Then answers.

“The biggest moth I have ever seen.”

…

My tail immediately poofs out.

“How big?”

“Big enough that I noticed it before the war happening around it.”

…

I would like to leave this dungeon now.