Demonic Po*nstar System Chapter 805: Magma Eater
Previously on Demonic Po*nstar System...
Melty showed no signs of retreat.
Kaiden’s devoted Dreadwyrm had plunged into the magma hot on the heels of the runt, just as she pursued any quarry that managed to get airborne after a kill. She ascended vertically, a broken jaw trailing slick fluid behind her into the sky.
Her remaining upper jaw descended upon the runt’s exposed side at the peak of her ascent. Her foreclaws, the elongated, curved talons that evolved at Mid-Tier to grip basalt, raked across the runt’s hide along its dorsal ridge as gravity reclaimed her. Simultaneously, her tail, heavy and weighted for cracking basalt boulders during hunts, slammed against the runt’s back during the fall.
Yet, the runt’s hide absorbed the assault and continued its relentless consumption.
Melty plunged back into the magma, another of her sisters’ ascents arcing past her overhead.
Two more Dreadwyrms erupted from the molten sea from different trajectories within the same heartbeat. The Magmashaper positioned at the upper curve committed its power, attempting to drag the floating runt back down. The pod engaged the target ferociously, every possible angle covered.
The runt maintained its speed, undeterred.
The Magmashaper’s pull proved ineffective against the runt’s relentless draw. The Dreadwyrms’ strikes merely scored its hide and bounced off, as the creature’s skin had reached temperatures too high for their teeth to penetrate.
The assessment was correct, but the execution was too late.
The other quadrupeds within the column, which had maintained formation along the upper bend while the runt fed, dropped their camouflage. Each one was revealed to be the same creature in its pre-feeding form. Moving in a coordinated wedge, they advanced across the cooling crust where the river had receded. The magma in the upper sections had drained sufficiently to expose walkable basalt, and they moved down towards the floating runt, forming a perimeter around it.
They strategically positioned themselves between the bank and the airspace Melty’s pod was breaching into.
While Melty’s sisters had engaged in melee beneath the river’s surface and the runt had been airborne above it, the wall of column bodies now obstructed every Dreadwyrm breach mid-arc.
The pod found itself unable to reach the runt, which continued its insatiable feeding.
As the river receded beneath their feet, the column descended the spiral path, revealing more walkable basalt with each meter the central feeder consumed. Melty’s pod was forced backward along this receding line, as the medium in which they fought was being removed from beneath them faster than they could adapt.
The dungeon’s memory faded.
Kaiden found himself back in the chokehold a heartbeat later, the channel’s history imprinted in his mind as undeniable fact.
His mind raced to comprehend the situation.
It was a glutton-template. The Claimant had consumed at least one dungeon that featured a magma-eater among its inhabitants. It had replicated this species, filling an entire column with them, and directed this column along a path specifically designed to eliminate anything not resistant to magma.
The slime-coated approach had not been circumvented by the gluttons; it had been exploited. The slip-mechanic, intended to plunge invaders into the magma, had perfectly deposited one disguised glutton into Melty’s maw. This bite had triggered the feeding reflex the gluttons were poised to deploy, and the river had paid the ultimate price.
Magma was intended to serve as the primary defense. Now, that defense was being consumed.
However, he wasn’t foolish enough to rely on a single defensive layer. The magma represented Path B’s initial strategy, supported by the Salamawyrms, specialists native to that fiery medium, capable of devouring anything that dared enter it.
But the magma alone did not constitute the entirety of the defense. He had layered the kill route with the understanding that any single environmental hazard could, in theory, be overcome. This was the rationale behind placing the Virulent Mire beyond the burrow tunnel.
The Mire was intentionally designed as a contrasting environment. Where magma punished those without fire resistance, the Mire targeted the unsealed: a sunken bowl containing three distinct layers of toxic atmosphere, ground-level spores, knee-high clouds, and vapor pressing against the ceiling.
An invader that survived the magma would next face poison within a biome entirely devoid of shared mechanics. The fundamental principle was that a solution for one hazard would not apply to the other.
Nevertheless, he lacked specialized defenders for the Mire.
His Salamawyrms thrived in the magma, as it was their natural element, and the river coupled with the wyrms formed a cohesive offensive unit. The Mire lacked a comparable symbiosis. While his abyssal beasts could endure the Mire, they possessed no inherent advantage there, unlike the molten rivers which offered a distinct benefit to Melty’s pod.
Confronted by formidable gluttons that had just demonstrated the capacity to devour an entire magma channel, he harbored a grim certainty that the few available traps and the Venomflies would be perceived as mere background noise.
The calculated outcome was bleak.
If the gluttons had managed to clear out the burrow tunnel leading into the Mire, the Mire would have inevitably collapsed under its own weight. The Mire lacked a robust, Salamawyrm-grade foundational structure. Its design relied on the magma to weaken invaders considerably, allowing the Mire’s comparatively weaker defenses to finish them off. However, the magma was no longer performing its thinning function. This explains why the system indicated a forty-seven percent loss of his domain, even though the gluttons were still ostensibly within the magma channel. In reality, the magma was followed by a kilometer of potent poison, and beyond that, three kilometers of the Verdant Expanse. The metric, it turned out, measured functional defense rather than the number of troops present. The functional defenses along the primary assault route had crumbled instantaneously. The magma was being consumed. By design, the Mire's defenses were less formidable than the magma's, and thus, they were destined to fail more rapidly against the heavier element of the invading column. The Verdant Expanse beyond the Mire was the family's ancestral home and his last line of defense. The only obstacle separating the gluttons from his sacred cathedral was a seemingly innocuous stretch of land, guarded by eager but poorly equipped Dungeon Borns. Nevertheless, this was not the moment for introspection. "We're in serious trouble!" Kaiden's urgent cry drew the immediate attention of his companions.