NOVEL FROG Chapter 25: Garden monsters.
"Worms!" Lethe once again said. I felt happy at the lack of stutter in her somewhat firm voice.
"Look," I started, "Worms are really ugly, I don't want to put them in my dungeon; They'll bring down the value of it all!"
Lethe's eyes gave an almost imperceptible eye roll, "T-Then make the-them look g-good!"
I was feeling a bit irritated. How was I supposed to make those things look good? "Ugh, well, how about you try to draw one that looks good on one of those papers you have? If it ends up looking good I'll put it in." I knew I just set myself up to have to add in those worms by saying that, but I also knew it would make Lethe happy.
In fact, making Lethe happy was what I wanted to work on a bit more from now on. Having a tendency to lose track of time really isn't a good trait for finding some to spend with someone else.
I sighed and let Lethe go draw the monster; I also gave her a bit more paper, seeing as she had used up almost all of what I had given her before.
I needed to continue working on protecting myself, and that meant making some monsters for my second floor. Focusing on my test room, I prepared a ball of Mana to start making a new creature.
My first idea was 'insects'; Those small things would be perfect for the garden! All I had to do was change their instincts a bit so that they would try to hurt any human they found. I copied hundreds of different insects that appeared in the garden entrance of my dungeon and ended up with lots of new killers, Ants, beetles, butterflies, etc. I even made a few spiders too, those arachnids are pros at hunting creatures smaller than them.
And all that was without thinking about the sounds they produced; To a human being reduced to the the size of a grain of sand, all the noise those monsters made would be deafening, and that was without including the fact that they would've been without any sounds for days before arriving.
The overload of sounds might even cause a few to faint, due to having gotten used to the lack of sounds in the dungeon. The moment anyone reached 'Floor 2' I would make a picture of their face and hang it in an art gallery room I had made(I already got the first reactions to 'Floor 1' in there.)
I was just beginning to stall in my creation of monsters when a rather scaly creature made itself known to me inside my dungeon. A snake. This would be perfect, a grand predator for my garden! I quickly made a prototype of the monster and found it rather lackluster. I needed to make that snake more interesting, it wouldn't do to just have it be normal.
I took a moment to consider what I could do and what I couldn't; I could make the snake's teeth capable of cutting through steel as easily as a hot knife through butter, I could also make it be able to pass through wall... And I could also make portals.
A rather genius idea came to me right then and there, one so magnificent that it almost brought me to tears; If I did have eyes that is. I prepared another room right next to the garden and then used a rather flesh-like material I had made to carefully recreate the inside of the snake's body. I then connected the throat of the actual snake with a portal straight to the flesh room!
The experience that would await those who entered this sub-floor would be so disgusting and vomit-inducing that they'd be traumatized by everything related to flesh in no time at all. I didn't even have to make monsters to put in there, all I had to do was add some homemade acid and make the entire room move constantly in as faithful representation of the actual snake as possible.
At the end of that room would lay a portal to bring them back to the beginning of Floor 2. Hopefully, they'll get eaten by the snake again.
POV: Jerome
I stood in confusion at the thousands of mirrors around me, their reflections making it impossible for me to know where I was. The cat had left me as soon as I entered the room, but I had a feeling that it was still watching. I went and walked into the room, my right hand absently going to place itself against my neck, right where the rune was. The worst part is, that I knew that it worked; The rune, even as inefficient as it was, would often make me think things that obviously weren't my thoughts. I even caught myself calling that beast... 'master'. As if it would truly understand me, I already knew that any sort of empathy or caring was lost a long while ago for that 'cat'.
While in my thoughts, I took a moment to register a sharp pain that made itself known to me. Right there, cutting into my right leg was an invisible blade. I may not be able to see it but I could feel it. I then looked around myself and realized that I didn't know what path I had taken to get where I was right now. I was not stuck with only myself for company. A small voice in the back of his mind whispered that it would be better if the 'cat' was here.
