A Bright and Wholesome Tentacle Dungeon Exploration (2)
At the very same hour Icarus was cheerfully overseeing the fleet recovery work, Griyanaar, Oxianor, and Smeragi—who had received his orders—were making their way through the interior of the research base nestled on the asteroid.
A three-woman party, following those instructions to the letter.
“It’s all squishy-nya.”
“You can say that again.”
The glimpses of unidentifiable monsters, tentacles, and raw flesh visible through craters and ruptured sections had been no joke. The asteroid research base’s interior was a nightmare of grotesquely twisted meat and pulsing veins, every surface smothered in unidentifiable slime and writhing things that gave off an atmosphere of pure, nauseating wrongness.
Pustule masses nestled among the flesh heaps swelled as if about to burst, then subsided, only to swell again. Here and there lay what might once have been researchers’ corpses—every scrap of organic matter long since broken down by the surrounding biomass, leaving only the ghostly outlines of clothing. Walls that had once been clean, utilitarian research-station architecture now sagged and collapsed under the weight of meat that had erupted through them from both sides. Randomly sprouted teeth, bone shards, and flesh clumps had half-fused with the structure itself, while writhing blood vessels clung everywhere until it became impossible to tell where the building ended and the living tissue began.
And that was not even the worst of it.
“Kyaaaaaaaak!!”
“Kieeeeeeek!”
Pustules or sealed doors would suddenly yawn open and something that had once been a test subject or a researcher would come screaming out for a surprise party. Or a spiny tentacle tipped with blade-sharp bone or metal would spring from a wall like a coiled trap and lash out. These little delights were happening literally from every direction, turning the whole place into a full-spectrum hardcore 19+ slasher sci-fi horror experience.
Except…
“Nyaa, this is way too bothersome-nya.”
“Kipegiat!”
—Whirrr! Crack!
“Hmm. Looks like it’s been sealed off for a long time without any fresh DNA intake or nutrient top-ups. The tentacles are in pretty poor shape.”
“That so?”
The three women currently touring the place were not the “ordinary engineers” one might find in some game’s lore. They were superhumans capable of conquering an entire heavy cruiser single-handedly in a matter of minutes—thirty at the absolute outside. Most of the alien-zombie trash mobs that came charging with split-open heads simply detonated the moment Smeragi’s nya-nya punch connected, painting the walls with tomato sauce. Traps that spat tentacles or spike rounds never even reached them; Griyanaar’s pet tentacles or the living extensions of Oxianor’s bio-suit swatted them out of the air. Even when those defenses weren’t needed, a bare-handed superhuman simply snatching a flying tentacle mid-strike rendered the whole gimmick rather pointless.
And when the entire floor collapsed into a giant monster’s maw…
“The slippery feel is nice-nya.”
“Reminds me of my childhood days floating in the evolution fluid pools.”
The creature that had so eagerly swallowed all three of them was beaten senseless from stomach to throat until it resembled tenderized tonkatsu meat. Every last tooth was yanked out by the root.
“Oxianor, could you sever every adhesion point this thing is using to hold on?”
“Why do that, Griyanaar?”
“A bio-organism this size is always a precious experimental specimen. We’ll haul it back to base, dissect it, and turn it into a brand-new chimera.”
“Aha. An excellent idea.”
They sliced away every root, limb, and sensory tendril that had been anchored into the base floor, hauled the whole mass upward, and left it dangling. Armed with personal invincibility cheats, the three of them strolled through an ongoing massacre with the leisurely air of tourists on a casual outing.
The one small problem was that, massacre or no massacre, their actual objective—“explore the research labs”—was progressing at a glacial pace. First, the base interior was vastly larger than any ordinary ship, and there were only three of them. Second…
“Hmm. According to the map of the boarding lounge we just came through, taking the right fork here should bring us to the rest lounge near the research sector.”
“A fork? Looks like a three-way split to me.”
“The middle one looks weird-nya—just like the Nest of Life entrance-nya.”
“Great. The layout changed again.”
Years of infection, mutation, further mutation, fusion, and general biological free-for-all had twisted most of the corridors on the internal map Griyanaar had grabbed the moment they arrived. Even when they managed to force their way through a passage and locate something that seemed correct…
“Is this the research wing?”
“No… this looks like the cafeteria.”
“It is a cafeteria, yes—except the only thing on the menu is any guest foolish enough to walk in.”
Not only the corridors had rearranged themselves; entire rooms had been shuffled into random new locations. Their exploration, far from following any plan, simply stretched on and on without end. Mild irritation began to build, and the three of them worked it off by escalating the slaughter as they advanced. What should have been a classic sci-fi horror scenario—a handful of survivors desperately holding out against hordes of alien horrors—had instead become a three-girl tentacle-slayer slasher flick starring a trio of overpowered superhumans casually butchering every poor alien zombie in sight.
After an indeterminate stretch of that particular brand of carnage…
“Hey, pipe down-nya.”
“Kieek, kieeeeek!!!”
—“NO! (I don’t like it!), STOP! (Don’t do that!)”
“Hmm. Translator performance seems a little off.”
“…Isn’t that accurate enough?”
“No, no. Moments like this need to come out like this.”
—“NO! (Sounds good!), STOP! (Thank you!)”
“…Right.”
Research data was a lost cause; years of corrosion from the surrounding biomass had reduced most file cabinets and computers to rusted scrap. With nothing left to do but pathfind, Griyanaar had built a wireless translator out of sheer boredom and was now using it to play “alien language translation” games with whatever zombie Smeragi happened to be holding. That was the state of things when the next obstacle appeared.
“More passage-blockers popping up.”
“They never get tired of this, do they? Smeragi, I’m lazy—you slice them.”
“Eung? Got it-nya!”
They had finally found a corridor that still looked mostly intact and started down it, only for the inevitable bio-structure to seal the way. In any proper sci-fi horror that thing would have been an indestructible set piece. Under the nya-nya swings of an SSS-grade top-tier superhuman, it simply parted like soft blood sausage.
“Alright, keep pushing forward.”
“Icarus will be waiting soon enough.”
“What Oxianor said-nya. Though if it were up to me I’d bury myself in that pile for a while longer-nya…♡”
They stepped over the freshly demolished remains of the bio-structure and moved quickly into the next sector. Even so, the research lab Icarus had mentioned still felt a long way off. All three of them entered the lightless abyss beyond with zero expectations, merely shaking their heads at the prospect of more aimless wandering.
Then they crossed the threshold.
“…Oh my!”
“Oooong, we found it-nya!”
“Bingo, just like Smeragi said.”
The next chamber was still smothered in an extravagant amount of flesh, and the overall aesthetic strongly recalled the Nest of Life that Griyanaar and Oxianor had once heavily modified together. But near the ceiling, flickering letters that the translator rendered as “Research Facility Wing” made the truth unmistakable. They had finally arrived at the very threshold of what they had been hunting for. The three superhumans exchanged a light high-five.
A Bright and Wholesome Tentacle Dungeon Exploration. (2)
Perhaps because they had just discovered a new area, if Icarus had been present one would almost certainly have seen him pull up a bold system message and start reading it aloud.
The personnel dispatched into the dungeon have finally located the research facility within the asteroid base!
A little more digging here should yield the event reward.
Of course, even if Icarus had been standing right there, the message would have been invisible to anyone but Jessica. The three of them simply took in the scenery.
“This place feels awfully familiar.”
“A nostalgic spot-nya.”