Foxtails and Fairytales: Facades and Fables of the Phantom Prince

[Arc 15] Ch.6 Wicked Harvest

"Leave it to the Monster Hunter to become the scary big bad guy in a Dungeon." Becky shivered. "And what do the rest of us do?"

"Follow along and preserve your strength. Once the dungeon stabilizes, the Dungeon Lord will be well aware of us and what we can do, and he will send the full force of his forces against us." I held up a finger. "But if I'm the only one who does any fighting until then, he won't know what to throw at us."

"Isn't it dangerous to do this all by yourself?" Amanda said.

"Please allow us to assist you." Talisa pleaded.

"You are looking at this all wrong." I shook my head. "Of course, I will use your help where I can, but when an alchemist must harvest herbs there are some that he must harvest himself and others where many hands are necessary. Since I am an alchemist and this is an rogue garden it is both very lucrative and very dangerous."

"Can I ask why we shouldn't open the locked doors?" Talisa's curiosity was started to show, and she was getting bolder.

"Certainly." I say as I walk over to one of the doors that was locked before. Using the Hatchet as a wand I drew a rune over the doorknob then when I twisted the axe the rest of the magic circle appeared. It matched the rotation of the axe and the lock clicked. When I opened the door inward I revealed the vastness of the space we were trapped in.

On the other side of the door, it appeared as if hundreds of rooms were stacked on each other without any floor nor ceiling. The walls of the room were crumbling as if they were thrown together in a hurry and deteriorating from age at same time. A vast abyss was what awaited the hurried adventurer's first step. And the gut wrenching screams of monsters in the darkness stalked the shadows of nightmare hunting grounds.

I sent a flare spell down with the flick of my wrist. It was as if we were standing in a broken mirror or a skyscraper with no windows. The abyss was never ending and revealed more floors of broken nonsense that could hardly be comprehended on a scale that defied the two-story villa we had originally entered. Several monsters afraid of the light screamed as the light threatened their comfortable darkness. And one not so friendly existence lashed out at the flare spell consuming it in a single bite bring back the ominous black depths.

I closed the door and relocked it. Right after I relocked it there was a thud and scraping from the other side as if something was trying to break it open. It lasted only a few moments, but it was enough to get the point across.

"There you have it, don't go breaking down any locked doors. They aren't locked to keep us in as much as the rest of the subspace out. Who knows which dimension, rift, realm, Felscape, or even time is on the other side." A taloned claw breached the door. I caught it and hacked it off with the hatchet. "Oh, that's nice."

I said looking at the new thing I'd acquired as the monster I had stolen if from screeched in pain. I stuck the whole thing that was about the size of my own arm in my bag and lifted up my lantern. "Shall we go then?"

The girls just looked at me and nodded. A variety of emotions on their faces, but it looked like even Talisa wasn't a fan of the endless void.

It was a good thing Sevren wasn't here, he'd be having a field day with all the doorways, dimensions, and such to be explored. Half of him wouldn't have the sense to stay put and the other half wouldn't want to. That portal junkie fried his brain on the magics of one of the dimensions he touched by accident in his obsession, and it wasn't enough to put the fear of god in him to stop. Bloody lucky the bipolar dark elf sorcerer wasn't here with us. But if he was, he may be able to open a portal to get us out... maybe.

I don't know if I'm brave enough to let him try.

Safer just to harvest the magic and materials while I have the chance I suppose.

*

[Kaina]

Just Who... In the gates of Fels was this Jekyll Character?

What absolute nightmare world did this mad doctor walk out of with his sanity half intact with the gauntlet of the damned attached to his arm. When he mentioned the other festering dungeons, I knew he had experience, but this is too much. It is as if he knows everything about the dungeon. The hound is a nightmare beast who almost seems to have a sixth sense and the puppet lizard on his should is allows ready to fire a powerful explosive.

I'm quite confident in my own blood magic but this guy takes it to a level I've never even heard of. Are all Monster Hunters like this? No, if they were then the templar would never ally themselves with them. But still, he's a rank B? I'll admit that he doesn't compare to Becky or Amanda in strength, speed, or magic. But he is also dangerous in a whole different way that I wonder if he is on par with them anyway.

There is something sickeningly mechanical about how he is able to slice apart living monsters for their parts.

He was like a different person from the boy gathering flowers, but at the same time nothing had changed. As we walked down the hallway checking for more unlocked doors there were more creatures that would show up or pop out of the shadows. There were giant spiders the size of wolves that he sliced to bits with his whip with a flick of his wrist. Fido was no slacker and could rip through them with the same amount of ease.

Why, just why was he so good at ripping out eyes intact. With his knife he made such quick work of collecting eyes, venom sacks, and web sacks from the spiders that it wasn't even worth it to tell him we didn't have time. Just how many empty jars did he have?

I've almost gotten used to the odd firebolt from the lizard chasing away shadows I didn't realize were moving weirdly if at all.

He used the axe, hatchet, and knife with such skill it should be an art form.

What is even more crazy is that there is no hesitation, he seems to know exactly what he wants and just rips it out.

There was one creature he called a Malenrapture, it dangled a beautiful woman pleading for help. He walked past her, grabbed a tentacle on the back of her head and pulled a large creature from the shadows. The illusion was broken, and the woman looked more like a squid lady than anything humanoid anymore. The creature he pulled out of the wall had a huge mouth with rows of teeth. It had four stubby legs that were grotesque slimy mix of a reptile and a frog.

With a flick of his wrist, he used the hatchet as a wand and froze the beast's mouth open and then with the lizard he fired six or seven shots in his mouth until the beast stopped moving.

Then he got to work ripping out the teeth of the beast while fido consumed what was a woman but now a fleshy jelly woman-like mass. Some of the teeth Jekyll pulled out were thin some of them were as long as his forearm. He also got the claws, the eyes, the heart, and a crystal that was inside it... somewhere. I honestly do care to know exactly where he pulled it out from.

Something almost as horrifying happened as Fido's glowing red mouth seemed to unthread from the edge of his jaw halfway down his torso creating a large monstrous mouth. It then devoured and swallowed the monster before it.

By the Fels... nothing was left. No matter what we came across there was no evidence left except for the blood splattered around, the cuts on the walls, and the burns on the floor.

The line between predator and prey was folded over on itself. On the surface Doctor Jekyll was the prey, and the monsters played their lures and traps against him only to have his trap spring against them. He was unyielding and methodical. As if everything here existed for him to conquer and devour. He was a fiend in human skin, and they were lambs wearing the skin of fiends. I shudder to think what it may mean to become an enemy of such a man.

He is... dreadfully similar to my own master.