then reached up to the shelves above him, snatching one of the carrots and crawling back to his hiding spot.

'i'll have to make use of these things for now... if i start a fire to cook, it'll probably find me faster.'

finn nibbles on the raw carrot, trying to think of a new strategy to use to escape from the monster.

'it seems like it uses thermal vision to detect its prey. but....'

he sweatdropped, scratching the back of his head.

'doesn't seem like it's very good at it...'

after a few minutes of sitting on the corner of the room, finn soon fell asleep out of exhaustion, completely dropping his guard down.

can you hear me?

i know you can.

you have to help me.

please, help me.

finn gasped as he woke up in a cold sweat, panting as he sat up and looked around, disoriented.

the nightmare he had was strange, he couldn't even see anything. he just heard a voice, a voice so beautiful that it would put sirens to shame.

it's just so mesmerising, so alluring. no man can resist it.

he exhaled heavily, rubbing his face in exasperation. he doesn't even wanna go back to sleep anymore. not with that thing roaming around.

finn flinched when he heard a loud slam just outside the room he's in, and he pushed himself further against the corner.

'shoot! my staff is too far!'

he mentally groaned, spotting his staff on the floor near the treasure chest.

he cursed himself, covering his mouth when slithering sounds echoed through the halls.

he held his breath as he hears it pass by, and when the noise completely disappears, he lets out a sigh of relief.

he shouldn't have done that.

finn screams as a webbed hand wrapped around his body, dragging him out of the room as he desperately tried to hold onto something.

he closed his eyes out of fear, refusing to even look at the monster who had caught him. if he's gonna die, he doesn't want the monster to be the last thing he sees.

he braced himself, covering his face with his arms as his breath quickens, the young elf becoming lightheaded from the adrenaline and panic pumping in his veins.

a few seconds passed by, and he opened his eyes in pure confusion. nothing happened.

he did however, released an unflattering shriek when he was lifted higher, and he was now face to face with the same monster that had been hunting him down for a while now.

he stopped moving, mostly out of fear but also from disbelief.

how come she's so beautiful?

finn gulps nervously, his face flushed and is physically unable to look away from the monster who was staring directly at him. she looks so... human. her hair was a bit tangled and messy, her little pearly scales pretty visible on the side of her face up close, and slits on the corners of her mouth, similar to a real snake.

she tilts her head curiously at him before tightening her grip, causing the boy to groan in pain.

she stopped, her eyes going wide and now holding him gently. well, as gently as a giant serpent humanoid could.

to finn's relief and horror, she began slithering her way to the darkness of the corridor with him still in hand.

after a few seconds of just shaking in her grasp, they finally stopped somewhere completely dark, and he was dropped on what seemed to be a nest of sorts.

finn resisted the urge to scream as he landed on his arm and heard a faint crack, and he scrambled up and leaned his back against the wall behind him, watching as the monster stares at him for a moment before her tail curled around itself, and she lays on the ground and closed her eyes, completely blocking the exit.

'there goes my chance of escaping... at least she didn't try to kill me.'

he gulped, holding his broken arm against his chest.

it wasn't until he bumped against something soft when he realised something.

"wait... these are..."

his eyes widened, looking at the things surrounding him.

'no way...'

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"ughhh, i'm so tired. these stairs go on and on and it's exhausting."

"good tastes better after a little exercise."

marcille groans from senshi's words, too tired to even say anything else as they climb down the stairs of the dungeon.

chilchuck steps forward as they encountered a dead end, holding his hand out to laios.

"sword, please."

"oh, here."

chilchuck then hits the sword against the wall with a grunt.

"there should be a switch here somewhere..."

after another hit, chilchuck finally pushed a brick in and the walls opened, revealing the door that led to the room before them.

"i don't think i've ever seen this  chamber before."

marcille says, looking around.

"and we saved a lot of time getting here!"

laios says but then paused when he realised something, and began looking around.

"something wrong?"

chilchuck asked upon noticing his distraught, and laios shook his head dismissively.

"oh, no it's nothing. it's just that the decoration from my cross guard fell off."

marcille lights up the place with her magic, glancing at chilchuck.

"why'd you have to be so rough with it?"

"wha— i didn't mean to break it..."

"no, it's not his fault. it's been loose for a while now."

laios sits down on the ground, giving up.

"i've actually tried tying it on a string, and gluing it, but nothing worked. oh, well."

"did it have some special purpose?"

laios shrugged his shoulders and released a sigh at that.

"nope. not really."

"it was a memento, wasn't it?"

marcille asked, and laios tilts his head in thought.

"a memento? well, yeah, i guess in a way it was..."

he cleared his throat, turning to the other two.

"three years ago, my sister and i were new adventurers. to learn the ropes of the dungeon, we joined a group of gold strippers."

"gold strippers?"

"this castle was covered in gold way back when, parties would get rich scraping off the gold."

chilchuck answered marcille.

laios tells the rest of the story, how he and falin ended up following their group inside the castle despite his sister's warning about monsters, and how the armors inside came to life and slaughtered one of their members, and cornered both him and falin.

it also ended up being his first death.

"well, that's what happened. and i ended up getting the sword from it."

"but you died for it."

"it was my first death, and for a while afterwards, the sight of armour would freak me out. you know, i've read books on living armors, but not one of them mentions anything about their flavour. i wonder what they taste like..."

laios swivels around to face senshi with a goofy grin.

"what do you think, senshi? how do you cook it?"

"what? you can't eat armour."

the dwarf responds, and marcille gives him a look of concern.

"living armor is a suit that is controlled by magic, it's not some creature you can eat..."

"y-yeah, i know! but what about the leather on the straps??"

"ever try and eat leather? it's damn bear impossible. go catch a monster, less of a pain."

senshi says, and marcille seems to agree with him full-time. well, maybe not full-time. she's still not fully onboard with the whole monster eating thing.

"if you're so hell-bent on eating armour, you can always eat your own."

chilchuck taps on laios' armour, and the young man sighed in disappointment.

"that's a shame... i guess eating living armor is out of the question."

"c'mon, let's go already..."

the door leading to the next room slowly opens, and much to everyone's surprise, it seems to be a main hall with armors lined up all the way to the door leading to the next room.

they shared a knowing glance at each other, already knowing what's about to go down.

"let's avoid them as much as possible."

laios whispered.

"we can just run past them. they're not that fast, so we'd pretty much be safe if we just do that."

with that agreement in mind, the group prepared to make a run for it, opening the door completely before sprinting past the armors like there's no tomorrow.

"just keep running! don't turn back!"

in cue, an armour just a few steps ahead of them started moving, stepping forward to block their path with its sword in hand.

"damn! one of them is already up..."

laios moves to strike it down, but stops completely once more started waking up, completely surrounding the group.

he swung his sword, knocking the head off of one of them.

"get going!"

marcille, chilchuck and senshi ran ahead to make their way to the other door but the elf girl screamed when the armors blocked their path completely.

"ahh! we're completely surrounded, they're blocking our path!"

"retreat, people! run back to safety!"

chilchuck and marcille didn't have to be told twice, already sprinting back to the way they came from like olympic sprinters while senshi followed closely.

laios runs back, his gaze locked onto one of the living armors who picked up its head and placed it back in place, watching him run away.

the door closed behind them as they made it back safely, and they all tried to catch their breath.

"they're unusually aggressive... i wonder if we did something to tick them off?"

laios voiced out, looking up in thought.

"that's silly! i told you, they're no I'mt living creatures! they're armours that are being controlled by magic! the perpetrator is probably behind that door, being protected by them..."

marcille counters, shaking her head in disagreement.

"if there is one, then yeah... surely they're behind that door."

chilchuck agrees, glancing up at the two.

laios brightens up in realisation.

"you're right... usually, what happens is if you get too close to them, they attack. but this time, they just moved to block us from getting to that door. then what marcille said makes complete sense, there's something or someone behind that door they're trying to protect."

and so the party discussed amongst themselves while senshi just wipes his pans clean while smiling like the happy dwarf that he is before finally deciding on what to do- and that is sending laios out to sneak to the room while everyone else distracts the armours.

"actually, i thought you'd be doing the sneaking since that's kinda your thing..."

laios sighed, looking down at chilchuck who only crossed his arms nonchalantly.

"fighting is definitely not my thing, so you'll have to handle this one. they're not living beings, they don't have eyes or ears so stealth isn't gonna work on them."

laios scratched the back of his head and accepted his fate as the three gathered by the door.

"alright, on the count of three... one, two..."

the door slams open and marcille runs out, waving her arms around wildly.

"c'mon you rusty buckets! come get me!"

she then shrieked when all of them eerily turns to her, and senshi runs uo from behind her to slam his axe against one.

"don't fear, missy! keep going!"

chilchuck runs around, jumping out in time before he could be sliced by their swords which marcille then takes advantage of their distraction, blowing them away with her magic.

meanwhile, laios sneaks around in the background. sliding against the wall behind him as he takes big side steps.

finally reaching the door, he briefly opens it before sneaking inside, closing it behind him.

he looks around for a moment before his eyes landed on an armour in the middle of the room. this one had more defined features, such as the lion helmet and carved designs on the armour itself. it looks like the final boss, actually.

and it definitely is, to laios.

he hears the muffled shouts from his party on the other room, and he glanced back at the armour who seems to be looking at him directly now.

'i can't call for backup... looks like i'll have to fight this one alone and look for the mastermind controlling all of them.'

laios quickly jumps away when the armour charged at him full speed, swinging its sword and destroying one of the pillars in the room.

he takes his own sword out, preparing for battle.

the armour made another move, raising its sword up once again and laios countered it just in time, parrying its attack successfully but was unfortunately caught off guard by the sudden kick it did, sending him flying against the wall.

laios let out a choked gasp, sitting up quickly as his brows furrowed in concentration. he looked down at his own sword, that was now broken in half upon clashing against the armour's own weapon.

'...it used its sword instead of its shield.
why is that?'

he thought to himself until his eyes landed on the inner part of the shield, and his eyes widened as he started to realise something.

'that is... an egg case! that's what it's protecting!'

laios pushed himself up and jumped away as the living armor swung it sword at him once again.

'but what kind of eggs are they? do they belong to whatever creature is controlling this armour?'

laios stood his ground, taking a stance as he got ready to face the armour once again.

'i knew it. these things are alive, and they're killable. that means...'

his gaze turns fierce, determination crossing his face.

'...we can eat them!'

•

explosions and the sound of combat from the upper floor echoes through the corridor, and the slumbering beast was slowly awoken from all the faint commotion.

she raised her head, looking up at the ceiling before she fully got up, slithering out the room.

she took one last glance at her nest, where the human-elf she caught is peacefully sleeping before she slithers away, determined to silence the chaos disturbing her from her well-deserved nap.

the only problem is... where the hell are the stairs for the upper floors?

she stood there for a moment, before hugging her tail in frustration. she's not quite good at directions, huh?

•

yeah, so.... laios still ended up eating the armour.

well, not literally. he found creatures inside the armour that apparently has been controlling those guys the whole time, and laios managed to defeat the strongest one.

so per his request, senshi cooked the oyster-like creatures inside the armour.

he enjoyed it, as expected.

'i've been so scared of living armours for so long... turns out they're just fragile, delicious monsters this whole time.'

laios hums in delight, picking up s discarded sword on the ground, presumably from the armour he defeated earlier.

"hey, i'm sorry that your old sword broke. that one looks pretty neat though, right?"

chilchuck tilts his head, trying to get a look at the new sword laios is holding.

the young man only hums in response as chilchuck walks away, and he stares at his new sword for a few seconds.

his heart almost jumped out of his chest when eyes suddenly protrudes out from the handle of the sword, a parasite-looking creature peeking at him curiously before it suddenly slids back in its hiding spot when marcille called after him.

"hey, laios! hurry up."

"ah- yeah! coming!"

he fumbles with the sword before sliding in its scabbard, running up to his party members to catch up to them.

"i can purify your new sword for you, if you want? just in case it has a curse on it—"

"no! no need! it's not cursed or anything!"

laios quickly shoots down marcille's offer, and the elf girl looks at him strangely before shrugging, brushing him off.

"you're awfully sure of that... well, whatever."

he took one last glance at the sword before walking down the stairs that led to the lower levels of the dungeon, unaware of what's waiting below them.

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—im gonna go on a little rant here but ngl im chilchuck irl. i snap so easily at people bcs i get stressed over their own well being and worried that i might cause something bad to happen to them. he's more likely viewed as a jerk bcs of the way he talks to ppl but i get it man, srsly i do.

i have a hard time controlling my emotions when ppl that are important to me are in a risky situation and i either raise my voice unknowingly at them even tho my anger is not directed to them or say something snarky even tho i didn't mean it. the situation just makes me feel like a trapped animal that needs to defend myself or something if that makes sense.

maybe this is why i love chilchuck. i kin that man way too much. anyone who doesn't understand his character, i dont trust y'all :c

speaking of him, i did a little sketch for him bcs i really do love chilchuck's character!

again, i'll probably won't finish this like the rest of my works but meh. it's still pretty good :3

and btw i'm keeping finn alive for a reason yall dw :D should i make an official character design for him? idk if i can •-•

anyways, here's the meme for today :p