Fight. Level. Survive.

Chapter 70 - Super clean

He hadn’t used his Random Summon ability since it had been upgraded and was very curious to see what would happen. The new description said, ‘Creature has a much higher chance of being useful for your particular need at the time of summoning.’ This gave him hope that whatever appeared wouldn’t have a sense of smell, but the ability had been very hit-and-miss in the past, like when it had summoned a perfectly normal pig to help him fight Dire Wolves

As usual, when Mason used his Random Summon ability, a crack in reality appeared mid-air. This time, however, instead of something immediately appearing, a loud hissing crackling sound emitted from the hole.

The sound grew louder and louder until liquid started pouring out from the crack. The pungent smell reminded him of hospitals and laundromats. It was a tad overpowering, but was a very welcome change from the horrible smell of the Flesh Monsters that had been left behind. The liquid continued to pour out but wasn’t behaving like regular liquid.

It moved as if it had a mind of its own. Slowly, it took shape, becoming a humanoid figure around 8 feet tall. It was translucent, with swirling patterns that looked almost like mist. The hissing crackling sound continued as the figure solidified, its features becoming more defined as more liquid poured into it. Mason watched on in amazement as the figure formed. Based on the smell, he had a hunch about what it might be, but he checked with his Identify anyway.

Monster - Bleach Elemental Level 25

What do you get when you expose a bottle of toilet cleaner to raw cosmic power? A bleach elemental, of course! Gaining sapience, this bottle of bleach had sworn an oath to cleanse the world of filth and grime! It sensed your need and answered your summons… This may be its hardest clean yet!

If his system truly was created by his personality, then some of the things it came out with really made him worry about his sanity. Its description made the summoned monster sound like a superhero!

Was the backstory it gave real, or had the system just made it up on the spot? Huh, the way the liquid had formed made it sort of look like it had a cape.

The bleach elemental turned its head as if to survey the area. It obviously didn’t like what it saw, so it started methodically making its way over the blood and guts-covered stone ground, leaving spotless, almost shiny stone behind it as it advanced. Mason watched in awe as the Bleach Elemental seemed to purify everything it touched; everything that had once covered the stone floated into the creature and then dissolved as if in acid.

The elemental moved deeper into the cave, following the trail of slime the Cronenbergian monstrosity had left. Mason walked after it cautiously, keeping a safe distance, allowing the fumes to dissipate a bit first before he followed. Mayry helped by using her air elemental powers to cycle in clean air while pushing out as much of the fumes as she could. The look on her face told Mason it was taking a fair bit of concentration, so he refrained from making a fart joke and turned his attention back to the elemental.

He couldn't help but gawk at the creature's utter dedication to cleaning. More than once, it whipped its head back and shot a spurt of bleach at a spot it had missed before continuing on.

At the rate the elemental was moving, finding the test subject was going to take ages. He wanted to hurry the elemental up but doubted he could convince the creature to rush its cleaning process, going by the dedication it had shown thus far.

As they got deep enough into the cave that the light from outside was blocked, Mason noticed a slight glow that seemed to emanated from the air itself was enough for him to see pretty clearly, especially with his enhanced senses.

It was a while before they ran into more of the flesh abominations. As they came into view, the bleach elemental started to twitch erratically as if the sight was too much for it to process. It opened its mouth and let out an odd hissing battle cry before charging at the monsters and viciously attacking them.

When it reached them, It exploded outwards, causing bleach to rain down from the cave’s ceiling. While the elemental’s bleach only made Mason’s and Mayry’s skin tingle, it immediately started eating away at the monster’s flesh, leaving them as nothing but puddles of goop on the ground.

As summoned creatures go, the bleach elemental was a perfect counter for the flesh monsters. They continued on, exploring the vast cave system. Each time they entered a new open space, they were set upon by more of the monster. While the elemental did the majority of the fighting, the sheer number of them meant that Mason and Mayry did their share of fighting.

Mason had just finished destroying one of the monsters when he turned around and watched as the elemental got too close to one of the creatures. As had happened with Mayry, one of its tentacle-like appendages shot out and pulled the elemental into its body. For a moment, nothing happened. The flesh monster managed to somehow look smug despite not having any one set of facial features. It made to advance towards Mason when the flesh all over its body started bubbling and melting away. A hole appeared, and the bleach elemental poured out, leaving the monster to melt away from the inside out.

The Ding of a notification broke his trance, staring at the gruesome sight he had brought on.

Quest updated! The smell of the Dungeon

Quest Objective - Kill all monsters in the dungeon and rescue the test subject before it is too late.

Update: In 5 minutes, the test subject will begin the irreversible transformation process. Rescue them before the transformation begins. Time remaining 04.58

Reward - Loot the dungeon for a unique potion.

“Crap.” He looked over at the elemental, who was still reforming into its humanoid form. “any chance we could hurry this up at all?”

He didn’t get a response from it but did get a questioning look from Mayry.

He relayed the quest update to her. He knew he should help whoever it was, but he also didn’t want to leave Mayry. Her expression turned grim as she processed the urgency of the situation. “You don't have time to waste. Take a deep breath and go! We’ll be fine here,” she said, her voice resolute. Before he had the chance to follow her directions, she pulled him into a kiss and added, “Be careful.”

Flashing her a grin, he turned and ran further into the cave. Just before he passed the elemental, who was still cleaning up, he took a deep breath and held it.

Even with his breath held, he could feel the air change around him, the stench almost a physical force trying to force its way into his nostrils.

He turned a corner and immediately came face to face with a hoard of abominations; with the timer running, he was feeling more and more stressed; usually, this would be a bad thing, but with his Emotion Outburst ability, it just made him stronger. He blasted through the first couple of monsters, but when a limb wrapped around his leg and yanked him towards being almost absorbed, he teleported and dodged past the rest of them, heading towards where he hoped this test subject was.

While the cave system was big, it wasn’t very complex. So far, it had been one cave connected to another by a short tunnel without any forks going off in other directions, meaning that if he kept going, he should find what he was looking for eventually. He dodged through cave after cave of monsters until he felt his vision start to blur, and his lungs burst. He stopped, took out his trunk and stuck his head in. The few breaths of fresh air he got were glorious before the stink started to creep in. With one last deep breath, he withdrew his head, slammed the lid shut, and continued on before the stink could ruin his beloved trunk.

He advanced through a long, narrow cave but didn’t see a single monster. Suspicious, he teleported to the end just in case there were traps and then paused. He got a strange feeling, the sort you get when you find a save point right before a boss fight. At the end of the long cave was the biggest cave he had seen so far; the ceiling was high up enough that he was unable to see it, even with the strange glow that filled the air.

He checked the timer and saw he only had about half the time remaining. Stepping forward, he was unsurprised when something huge fell from above. It was so cliche he half expected battle music to start playing.

The boss monster resembled the regular abominations in that it was a huge mass of flesh; beyond that, it was very a whole other, far more grotesque creature. It was magnitudes bigger, with a body that was an amalgamation of mismatched parts from various sources. Most looked to be human, but there was also the lower body that looked like it belonged to a horse, the head of several creatures Mason couldn’t identify, and several pairs of antlers as well as evidence of hundreds of its other poor unfortunate victims.

Dozens of eyes dotted the mass of its body, all with unsettling intelligence and all staring at him.

Mason felt his stomach lurch just by looking at the monster; he didn’t dare think of how it might smell.

Monster—Level 57 Cronenburgian Boss Abomination—This is the mummy of all the other monsters you’ve killed today, and she is not happy with you.

Once she has eaten enough live biomass, she internally squishes them together until they’re nice and horrifying and then craps out a whole new widdle abomination baby. The whole process is quite traumatising for everyone involved. Lucky for you her latest meal hasn’t yet been digested so you still have a little bit of time to save the poor bastard.

***

Mayry wondered how her life had come to this. She was in the middle of nowhere, in a cave that smelled worse than death, fighting creatures so disgusting that she lacked the words to adequately describe them.

No matter how she thought about it, the blame was easiest to direct toward Mason. Her life had been relatively normal until she had met him. No Others, no daily monster encounters and no caves that stunk to all chaos.

But even with all the bad, she still wouldn’t have changed a thing…. Okay, maybe that wasn’t entirely true. She most definitely would have chosen a different contract. She just knew that the smell would linger for days on end.

Maybe she could find a ritualist who knew some sort of deep cleaning rite. Once they were done here, she would need one. Usually, the brain eventually gets used to bad smells, but this one never seemed to fade from her awareness, not even a little bit. The smell of the elemental helped a lot, but every time one of the monsters died, the smell intensified; their insides smelled a whole lot worse than their outside.

Throughout her time in the cave, her fighting had caused her human form to slip away and her true demon self to take over. Every abomination she killed made her a little taller, a little stronger, and her fire burn a little hotter. For the first time, she felt like she might able to get used to the change.

After her experience outside, with the first of the monsters she had encountered, killing the things had gotten a lot easier. Her black demon fire burned the abominations’ flesh a lot better than her normal fire. But with the pros of her demon form came one irritating con. The further she let herself slip into her berserker form, the better her sense of smell got. Between each fight, she forced herself to relax and calm down just to get a break from the overwhelming bad smell.

In each fight, she took out a few at a time, but the elemental Mason had summoned was on a whole other level. The thing seemed to hate the freakish flesh monsters with a passion; it burned through the creatures like the abomination’s existence was a personal affront.

Mason had run off ahead a few minutes earlier to try to save whoever else was here, but she had stayed back, mostly because she hadn’t wanted to slow him down. Also, the smell wasn’t nearly as unbearable where she was.

After killing what felt like hundreds of the damn things, she and the elemental came to an empty, much narrower tunnel. Sounds of fighting echoed from the other side. She had been worried that she would struggle to find Mason, but as usual, all she needed to do was follow the sound of chaos.

She ran through the tunnel, the elemental right behind her. She emerged into a huge cave just in time to see Mason, unconscious, being roughly dragged along the cave floor towards the biggest monster she had ever seen.

In the space of a second, her body filled with power as she fully let herself succumb to her rage.