<~> Chapter 150

I tore the wings off the changeling that had tried to wiggle out of my grasp by shifting to its true form. In the back of my mind, I realized how horrible that must have felt, but I didn't dwell on it as I quickly broke the monster's neck and put it out of my mind. Serves it right for humiliating me. A bolt of fire exploded onto one of the changelings that had been right behind me, trying to stab me in the back, but Luna had it in hand.

This was the third group of changelings we have fought on this run, and we confirmed that the changelings couldn't take our shape and hadn't posed as any of our other friends either. The small metal amulets have continued to be effective at disrupting their ability to impersonate any of us or glimpse our memories enough to try and trick us more thoroughly than their general schemes.

That didn't make them completely harmless though. Even while fighting them, they were annoyingly sneaky. While it hadn't seemed like the mirrored pillars had mattered much at first, once they realized we weren't falling for their initial ambushes anymore, they changed their strategy to using the environment to their advantage. In this most recent fight, one of them tricked me into running headfirst into one of the pillars.

A cry came from one of the changelings that had been buzzing above our heads after Aria sniped it out of the sky with one of her arrows. This had been the first group of changelings that had tried to use their true forms to attack us at all, but it hadn't changed anything for them. Now that they were unable to trick us, they were easy to kill. The only remaining danger I could see would be the possibility of them sneaking back to the surface somehow, like the first one had.

Iris caught one of the ones trying to ambush Luna and slapped it to the ground with a gust of wind, allowing Luna to spin around and finish it off with a blast of fire. At nearly the same time, Maxwell bashed the last one with his shield and knocked it off balance. Piper followed up by stabbing it through the chest, finishing it off. With that, the fight was over.

Maxwell indicated one of the bloodier, less intact corpses for me to eat, while he worked on pulling the wings from the others and stuffing the rest of them into his bag. I grimaced as I pictured the tangled up limbs of the small humanoid creatures in his bag, even as I ate one of them myself.

The unfortunate truth was that despite my misgivings about eating such humanoid looking creatures, or the grisly act of bringing back their bodies to see what kinds of potions and artifacts we could make from the corpses, they tasted far too good for me to pass up. I shivered as my body felt full of mana for the first time since I ate the floral king deer. Up until now, I had been living on scraps. Even the crab meat wasn't enough to fill me up. My actual stomach would fill up before my 'magic' one would. It was almost a relief that these monsters' thoughts were so alien and cruel that I could justify eating them.

I didn't love it, but I could live with that.

"Are you ready to keep going?" Maxwell asked.

I nodded and wiped the small amount of blood from my muzzle. "Yeah. I have a feeling we're getting close. This way."

We walked for a while longer, following the path my sensitive whiskers were leading me, before finding what we were looking for. The pillars opened up into a wide area with an arch made from the same reflective stone that housed a set of stairs leading upward.

Maxwell looked around the clearing. "There wasn't much to harvest from this floor other than maybe the pillars and the changelings."

"I'm just happy we found the stairs. After we started wearing the troll crosses, this floor became kind of boring," I said.

"Looks like you beat us here."

I turned around and found Valkin and his team behind us. They had just turned a corner after having come from a different path. It wasn't unheard of for maze floors to have multiple paths to the stairs, but the timing here seemed unlikely.

("Are they real?") I asked Luna.

At the same time, I could hear Norrik ask Milana the same thing in a hushed breath. "Are they real?"

Valkin held up his troll cross. "These seem to have worked at keeping the changelings from tricking us much."

I shook my head. "That doesn't prove anything. I happen to know that changelings can duplicate clothes and accessories as well. We won't know until Luna has checked you out."

He paused at the information, but nodded. The air felt a bit tense as our two mages checked out each member of the other team while the rest of us stood and prepared to fight. I wasn't overly worried, but if they weren't who they claimed to be, it would mean something had happened to our actual friends...

("All of them are real, none are changelings,") Luna said with relief.

I smiled. "Looks like you're all clear!"

There was a long pause while Milana finished up too. "Looks like you're safe as well!" she called back happily.

The tension eased, and the other group started to come over. They didn't look too worse for wear, but it was clear they had fought a few of the changelings to get here. Norrik smelled faintly of the changeling's dusty wings, so I could guess who handled most of the dismantling among their group.

"Was that thing about the troll crosses true? Can they mimic the appearance of them?" Valkin asked.

"Yeah." I then told them what I had learned from transforming into one of the changelings. Both their mental patterns and how the troll crosses seem to affect them. I explained that the only way the changelings could have taken their form was if they had been tricked into removing their troll crosses or had gotten killed and replaced somehow. All four members of their team listened to me intently as I explained.

Milana nodded. "You'll have to tell Celeste about the efficacy of these amulets. I wasn't sure what to expect from them, but it seems they're quite effective."

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I nodded. "That's the plan, yes."

"Have you gone to the next floor of the dungeon yet?" Talia asked while gesturing to the stairs.

"No, we found them right before you got here," Maxwell replied. "Should we go up together, or would you rather us go alone?"

Talia turned to her group and got a few nods in return before turning back. "Looks like we want to go up with you. Is that cool with everyone?"

I glanced at Maxwell, who shared a look with Piper. She nodded, and that settled it. We would go as a group.

"After this floor, it might be best if we stick together rather than splitting up now that we roughly know a few paths to the stairs. We'll have to be careful no one slips into our group during the return trip, but the troll crosses should help," Piper said.

I peeked up the stairs, but I couldn't see anything from here. The stairs always seemed long enough to not to give anything away until you were more than halfway up. I wouldn't be surprised if walking through the stairs actually led through a portal or something. The only thing that made the dungeon feel connected to the real world at all was the first floor spewing water out into the oasis on the surface.

Aria stretched lazily. "Who goes first then? We technically found them first, but I'm not sure we care about that."

Norrik and Valkin shared a few hushed words that I respectfully tried to ignore. After a moment, Valkin turned back to reply. "It's probably best if your team goes first. Helena is the most durable out of all of us, and we don't have a healer on our team."

Aria laughed and slapped me on the shoulder. "Looks like you've been volunteered."

I laughed. "What else is new?" I turned and looked at the rest of my team. "Should we stop and take a break first, or do you want to go up right away?"

Maxwell looked over everyone as he replied. "I think we should just go right away, unless anyone objects?"

When no one objected, he nodded and waved to me. "After you then, Helena."

"Yay, more stairs," I said with a laugh.

The ten of us walked up the stairs in twos, more or less. Not everyone walked side by side, but we made a point to stay relatively close together. It would be annoyingly necessary to check everyone again if any of us lost sight of each other right after coming from the changeling floor.

My eyes went wide when I crested the final steps of the third floor. Like the first floor, this was another open area night zone. Rather than dirt, polished white marble stretched out to the horizon with sparse white or black marble trees dotting the landscape. Above us was a beautiful night sky with the aurora borealis shining up in the starry night.

I just stood there transfixed as each of my friends gasped at the beauty. Off on one edge of the sky was a suspiciously familiar crescent moon that looked very similar to the one on the first floor of the dungeon. After I got my fill of the captivating sky, I started looking around at the other features of the floor. The ground was made of white marble that reflected the beautiful sky against it. Other than the trees, there were also blocky looking mounds of white or black rocks. The marble mounds were the only thing that disturbed the otherwise smooth dips and hills of the lightly reflective ground. The land wasn't particularly flat, and based on the slickness of the floor, fighting at the top of a hill might be dangerous.

Once everyone had made it to the top of the stairs, Maxwell cleared his throat. "Another night floor."

"The moon looks similar to the first floor. We should be cautious of something like the flooding," I said.

Iris sent a gust of wind off ahead of us in one direction. One of the ways she could use her wind magic was by using it to scout. It was mostly only good for getting an idea of the landscape, but it could occasionally root out hidden monsters as well.

The mousekin's eyes suddenly jerked toward the closest mound to us. "Guys, those rocks over there, monsters are hiding inside them! I can't tell how many, but there's a lot."

("Maybe more swarm monsters? Like the first floor?") Luna asked.

"That would go well with the moon theory," I said, looking at the small moon in the distance.

Maxwell sighed and scratched the back of his head. "In that case, we probably should go back and report things before exploring anything. If it's another swarm floor like the first one, we don't want to get caught up in it and potentially trapped here."

Talia frowned. "If it's like the first floor, we have some time before that happens, right? Maybe we should go look at one of those trees at least."

"We could also go kick one of those nests. We would get to see what we're dealing with before they start to actually swarm," Norrik suggested.

I glanced at Maxwell, who looked far more interested in entertaining the idea than I was. Glancing around though, it seems like he wasn't the only one who was interested.

"You guys can't be serious. You really want to pick a fight with that nest?" I asked.

Milana looked a bit sheepish. "It would be best to see what we're dealing with before we risk waiting for whatever the full moon signifies. Knowing what kind of monsters are on this floor would help us plan better. But you're the one who almost died to the snake monster last time. I wouldn't blame you if you want to take things more slowly."

I turned to Luna, who had a guilty smile on her face. ("I hate to say it, but if we weren't curious and a tiny bit reckless, we wouldn't be hunters or delvers in the first place. I think it'll be hard to talk everyone out of this one.")

After shaking my head, I took a moment to look around the pretty landscape. The lagoons of the first floor had been really pretty too, but now I kind of dreaded being on that floor. What kind of monstrosity would come out and ruin this floor for me? If the theory that the moon does something to the monsters is true, those rocky nests off in the distance would be the equivalent of the crabs coming out to harass us when the moon rose. It was hard not to wonder what else would change when the full moon was out.

I sighed. "Alright. What's the plan then? I guess I can agree to kicking the hornet's nest over there to see what comes out, but we should at least make a plan for what to do when whatever lives under that rock comes out pissed off at us."

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