My Dungeon Daddy System: Raising Monsters and Waifus Underground-Chapter 83 – Into the Deep (Part 2)

The sound was soft, like a cork popping from a bottle.

Something blurred through the air, moving faster than an arrow.

CLANG.

Seraphine didn’t flinch. She spun her spear, batting the projectile out of the air with casual, terrifying precision.

The projectile hit a nearby tree trunk. It wasn’t a seed. It was a thorn the length of a dagger, serrated and dripping with clear liquid.

HISS.

The wood where the thorn struck began to smoke and dissolve.

"Acid," Seraphine noted coolly. "High viscosity. It would melt skin in seconds."

"Sniper Lilies!" Reed yelled, bringing his gauntlets up. "Cover formation! Terra, keep the heat up! Seraphine, on me!"

The grove erupted.

THWIP-THWIP-THWIP-THWIP.

A volley of thorns filled the air.

"Behind me!" Seraphine roared.

She expanded her presence. She didn’t use a shield; she used her body. She uncoiled her massive tail, whipping it up to form a living wall of emerald and black scales in front of Reed and Grika.

The thorns slammed into her scales. Tink. Tink. Tink. Most bounced off her natural armor, but the acid sizzled angrily against the dragon-weave mesh.

"Push forward!" Reed commanded. "We can’t trade shots with them! Close the gap!"

"With pleasure," Seraphine snarled.

She launched herself forward. She moved like a striking cobra, slithering low to the ground, dodging the next volley.

Reed followed, the exo-suit whining as he engaged the servos. He felt heavy, like a tank made of meat and magic.

A Sniper Lily turned toward him, its petal-barrel adjusting.

THWIP.

Reed didn’t dodge. He swung his right arm.

VRRRRRRR!

The spinning chainsaw met the thorn in mid-air. The obsidian teeth shattered the projectile, spraying acid and wood chips.

"Eat entropy!" Reed shouted.

He reached the first flower. It tried to recoil, sensing the Void energy, but it was rooted.

Reed swung the left gauntlet in a brutal, horizontal arc.

SCREEEEE!

The blade bit into the fleshy stalk of the plant. There was a shriek, an actual, vocal scream from the flower, as the chainsaw tore through it. The wound cauterized instantly, turning black and glassy. The flower head toppled to the ground, twitching.

"One down!" Grika cheered from behind Terra. "Do the spin move, Boss!"

"I am not doing a spin move!" Reed grunted, revving the engine to clear the gore from the tracks.

Seraphine was a blur of violence. She vaulted over a root system, her Magma Lance glowing bright enough to illuminate the shadows. She thrust the spear into the center of a lily. The magma core detonated inside the plant, cooking it from the inside out.

Within thirty seconds, the grove was a smoking ruin of ash and wilted petals.

"Clear," Seraphine announced, flicking green slime off her spear. She checked her tail. Several scales were pitted and smoking from the acid.

"Sera," Reed walked over, disengaging the saws. "You took hits. Let me see."

"It is nothing, My Lord," Seraphine said, shifting her body to hide the burns. Her voice was dismissive, but her eyes were soft as she looked at him. "My scales shed. Your skin does not. You are the Core. I am the casing. That is the arrangement."

She reached out, touching his chest plate with a clawed hand.

"Besides," she purred, a hint of her usual heat returning. "Scars are attractive. Perhaps later you can... inspect the damage more closely." 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

"Later," Reed promised, though he felt a pang of guilt. No healer, he reminded himself. Damage sticks.

"Hey... Boss?"

Grika’s voice was small. Unusually small.

Reed turned. The goblin was standing near the base of a massive tree, pointing her flashlight at something tangled in the roots.

"What is it, Grika? Another flower?"

"No," Grika whispered. "People."

Reed walked over, the heavy footsteps of his suit crunching on the moss.

Terra was already there, illuminating the scene with her glowing body.

Embedded in the roots of the tree were three figures.

At first glance, they looked like statues carved from mossy stone. But as Reed got closer, he saw the glint of rusted steel. A breastplate. A helmet. A rotting leather satchel.

They weren’t statues. They were adventurers.

Or they had been, two hundred years ago.

The roots had grown through them. A vine entered the visor of the helmet and exited the mouth. Another wrapped around the ribcage, crushing the armor inward. They were preserved in a state of eternal, mossy agony.

Reed knelt, the servos of his suit whining. He brushed the moss away from the leader’s chest.

A badge. Old, tarnished silver.

[ITEM IDENTIFIED: PURITY SEAL (Expired)]

[Faction: The Silver Flame]

[Date: 200 Years Ago]

"Paladins," Reed realized. "These were the ones who killed the Lich. Or... tried to."

"The Garden didn’t let them leave," Seraphine hissed, looking at the bodies with a mix of disgust and warrior’s respect. "It ate them. It turned them into mulch."

"Look at the mana," Grika pointed her scanner. "Boss... they aren’t fully dead. The roots are keeping the nervous systems active. They’re... batteries."

A low moan echoed from the helmet of the central figure.

Kill... me...

It wasn’t a voice. It was a vibration in the wood.

Reed stood up. The "Tired Dad" was gone. The Dungeon Lord was back, and he was angry.

This wasn’t farming. This was torture. This was the difference between what Reed did and what monsters did.

"Grika," Reed said, his voice cold and metallic through the suit’s speakers. "Is the napalm protocol ready?"

"Ready and waiting, Boss," Grika said, her hand hovering over a dial on his backpack engine.

"Good," Reed said. He looked at the suffering statues. "We aren’t just harvesting ingredients. We’re performing a mercy killing."

He looked deeper into the jungle, where the path wound toward the center of the crater. Toward the Heart Tree.

"We find the Matriarch," Reed commanded, revving both chainsaws until they screamed in harmony. "And we teach her the difference between a garden and a graveyard."

[QUEST UPDATE: THE GARDEN OF SIN]

[Objective: Reach the Heart Tree.]

[Secondary Objective: Put the Old Guard to rest.]

"Move out," Reed ordered.

The team advanced into the dark, the violet light of the chainsaws carving a path through the nightmare.