Skill-Eater: Prison World Saga-Chapter 51: Poison Jar

As the crew began the second half of their day, they speculated on the theme of the Savage Garden while battling their way through the maze.

Lilly thought it was an homage to the primal law of the jungle—survival of the fittest in its purest, most brutal distillation of every creature for itself. Snake held a slightly different view. He believed that the dungeon was a gigantic kodoku jar. “It’s a term from ancient Japanese mythology,” he explained.

“A kodoku jar is a clay pot filled with venomous creatures. They fight to the death until only the meanest, most toxic critter among them emerges from atop a pile of corpses. The twist is that in here, the winner isn’t determined by which contender is strongest at the start. As they kill and consume, the monsters mutate and grow more deadly along the way.”

If he was right, the inhabitants of the dungeon weren’t just engaged in a brutal war for survival. They were undergoing a twisted version of the natural evolutionary process. With each spawning, the newly birthed monsters would return to the maze to feed, becoming more powerful with every kill. They would continue facing off against the other surviving species as they migrated deeper into the dungeon, ensuring that only the most ferocious horrors among them lived to reach higher stages.

It meant that the monsters sitting at the apex of each zone, including the boss itself, must have devoured hundreds of other contenders. They were the worst of the worst, and if they managed to escape the confines of the Savage Garden, they would wreak untold carnage upon the surrounding biome.

It was another reason why clearing the dungeon before it hit critical mass and released a wave into the wild was vital to Puppet Town’s survival, in addition to claiming the core manufactory. Dealing with the high-stage beasts migrating onto the Ivory Plains was bad enough. The last thing they needed was being invaded by a swarm of kodoku champions on top of everything else.

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It wasn’t all bad news. Given the nature of the maze, the shadowkillers didn’t expect to run into any complex puzzles or traps. However, there were likely to be environmental hazards in one form or another, so they had to keep an eye out for non-monstrous threats as they journeyed deeper into the heart of darkness. At least the clearings offered adequate visibility, making them ideal spots to rest once the hunters had slaughtered their guardians and disposed of the remains.

As it happened, not every glade held corrupted pools and the monsters fighting to claim them. The next time that the trail widened into a clearing, Edge saw something that he wasn’t expecting. In the middle of the open area was a patch of white flowers the size of his fist, growing from long stalks that topped off around his waist. They were beautiful and smelled amazing, especially when contrasted against the stench of the filth.

“It looks like we’ve found our first resource node,” Melenia said. “Although I suppose that it could be some manner of hazard.” Everyone stood near the entrance until Tessa used her powers and came to the same conclusion.

“It’s normal for dungeons to have valuable resources and sealed chests,” Fox explained. “The chests are usually guarded by some manner of threat, but the resources are generally spread across the zones. It makes exploration rewarding, even when you don’t have a quest to complete, which helps incentivize people to enter the dungeon. Just another way for the System to boost Prison World’s ratings, or at least it was.”

“At any rate.” Snake drew his knife and approached the plants. “Let’s gather them quickly and then keep on going. We will split the profit from finds like this evenly, so anyone with a working preservation unit is welcome to carry them.”

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With that, everyone began harvesting the flowers. The plants had shallow roots, and Jumo recommended that the crew dig them out instead of picking the blossoms, as they didn’t know which parts were most valuable. Lilly offered to carry them since she had a magitech device that was fully functional, unlike Edge’s defective model.

The team was done harvesting the flowers ten minutes later, then they picked a new path, put up a marker, and started walking. The next two glades contained relatively weak monsters, at least compared to the crew’s combined strength. Working together, they quickly dispatched the foul fiends.

The final clearing along their route, was another matter entirely. This glade was located on the border of the maze, and the overgrowth began to thin past that point. It was the biggest clearing they had seen yet—at least one hundred and fifty feet wide in the middle. The corrupted pool was twice as deep as the others, and its guardian was scaled to match.

If the hunters wanted to cross into the next zone of the dungeon, they were going to have to deal with one last monster first. Edge wasn’t sure what to make of it. The creature in question didn’t look like any beast he’d ever seen, or any animal from Earth for that matter. If anything, it looked like one of the demons from the fantasy games he had played back in his old life, albeit a particularly disgusting variant.

The demon was seven feet tall at the shoulders and covered in rippling muscles. It had cloven hindlegs and hips that were designed let it walk on two legs and run on four. It can probably jump quite a ways too. Its powerful arms were long, with broad hands featuring swordlike claws the color of freshly-spilled blood.

Most unsettling of all, the creature didn’t have any skin—just glistening pink tissue that oozed beneath the diffuse lighting. Its face featured a pointed chin, glowing red eyes, and sweeping crimson horns that wrapped around the back of its skull before rising into spikes the length of Edge’s forearms.

Its hulking jaws were filled with row after row of needlelike teeth—perfect for shredding flesh and tearing chunks out of a living body. Nothing that its jaws closed around was likely to live for long. It had a spiky crest running down the length of its spine and a barbed, prehensile tail that looked remarkably agile. It clearly knew they were there, despite the hunters’ efforts to remain hidden. Only its desire to remain near the pool kept the demon from charging them in a flash.

After learning everything that they could, the crew returned the previous glade discuss the situation. “Shit,” Lilly swore. “This one is going to be trouble. We need to go all out for this fight and even then, we might wind up walking away with a lot less blood than we started with.”

“We could try to find a way around it,” Snake added. “But this corrupted pool is more concentrated than the others. All the glades bordering the next zone are probably claimed by powerful monsters. We’re supposed to be clearing the area anyway, so there’s no point in skipping a fight that we’ll have to tackle sooner or later. What’s your take on that brute, Tessa?”

“Peak stage two. Even balance of attributes and dangerous across the board. From what I can deduce by observing its energetic signature, most of its skills are direct attacks and passives that enhance its combat prowess. Although it might have a few powers that are geared toward dealing with specific problems too.”

Since they were going to fight it after all, each hunter took turns adding their own observations, then they began crafting a strategy to take the creature down. The shadowkillers devoted considerably more time into planning out this fight than any of the others, emphasizing that this opponent was significantly more deadly than the other monsters they had encountered.

Twenty minutes later, they were as ready as they could be. Before they began the fight, Fox reached into her preservation unit and pulled out the mana seed that Gram had given the team before heading into the dungeon. She divided it based on the extent to which each crewmember had depleted their magicyte reserves, then put the rest back in storage.

“Eat fast.” She handed Edge a slice of what looked like a peach. “We don’t want the smell to give our position away.”

It was a sensible precaution, and he shoved the seed into his mouth as fast as he could. It was, of course, delicious, with a flavor a bit like blueberry and banana. When it reached his stomach, the concentrated magicytes dissolved and entered his reservoir, filling the brass tank to the brim. When everyone was done eating, the crew was ready to engage the monster.

Edge approached the clearing with the sound of his heartbeat thundering in his ears, eager to take on his toughest monster yet.