Fido unfolded as he crawled out of the case and yawned. His maw glowed the same sickly crimson light as his eyes. He shook out his limbs and took stock of the room sniffing around. Unlike the puppetry magic for Shar'mander and the Helga limbs, Fido was essentially autonomous. A meat and bone robot if you will. With AI based on the original synapses formed in the brain with some not-so-subtle modifications to establish who the master was and some preset orders.
There were other modifications as you would expect from the mad scientist twins, but I wasn't going to all of that right now. I put all the libraries and stuff away then with a flick of my left arm the silver bone whips wrapped around it and settled into place. For the final touch Shar'mander settled in the pocket on my shoulder.
I held the jar of eyeballs to Talisa. "You want to feed him?" I nodded toward Fido who was sagging a little due to magic deficiency and having been asleep in storage for so long.
"Can I?" Talisa's eyes sparkled with eagerness and curiosity. As if to ask if it could eat and be fed as well as asking if she could have the privilege. The zombie dog construct wasn't exactly a cute thing. Heretical would be the closest summation of it. But Talisa was so intrigued by the new and fascinating she seemed like an eager puppy in her own right. When I handed her the jar with eyeballs her ears wiggled cutely and something about this makes me feel strange in a different way.
Even Liz wasn't super fond of me plucking eyeballs and keeping them in jars. And Lilith used special tongs when handling 'slippery' or 'slimy' materials, but Talisa just reached her fingers in as if it were a box of Scooby Snacks.
"Here boy, are you hungry?" She kneeled down, and then held out the eyeball. All the other girls in the room cringed. I whistled and Fido's ears perked up and her waddled over to us.
"Awwwww, he's so cute. Hi Fido." Talisa said as the monsterized dog fiend construct approached her. He ate the eyeball out of her hand, and she started petting him as if he were any other puppy. Fido seemed to like it though. His tail was wagging, and he nuzzled her for more treats.
I have to keep in mind that Talisa is a DRAGON. The top of the food chain. Everyone else is probably scared of him because he can and will do serious damage to them if he gets violent. But he probably wouldn't even be able to make a mark on Talisa even if he tried.
It wasn't her fault she was a mountain lion compared to a squirrel in relative danger levels. Everything here was probably weak and fragile compared to her. But that didn't mean that was the whole truth. If there is one thing that I've learned, it is that first impressions can hardly tell you anything about a person's character.
As a master of disguise this holds even more weight.
However, Talisa was one of the few dragons that had even been seen in dozens of years. They were extremely reclusive for a list of reasons, but Talisa was bright, intelligent, and curious. Let's glaze over the fact that she joined the sorcery class without any hiccups and examine how she went to an unknown place without even knowing the language or most of the customs.
And yet after a few months she was fluent in the language and didn't feel like an outsider at all. She adapted almost too well in some cases, like right now while she was in a festering dungeon feeding a demon dog eyeballs.
While Fido ate them, his muscles filled out and his posture straightened. The dry mummified skin took on an almost healthy color and the red magic circulating inside him strengthened.
"You're such a good boy, Fido. Yes, you are. A strong noble hound. Rawr." Talisa cooed and growled cutely. My heart, she's so freaking cute I'm going to die!
Fido barked.
When he did the shadows in the room shook in a way they shouldn't have and that brought me out of my trance of watching Talisa feed him.
I grabbed my axe and Fido instantly stood straight up and was ready for action. "Alright Fido time to hunt."
Fido pulsed with more red light and turned. He made eye contact with something in the shadow of a bookcase. He ran and leapt at it turning into black smoke while in the air and diving into the shadow.
He jumped out of the shadow with another grappler, one with eight arms.
With a flash of silver. I pounced. I pinned its mouth closed with my left hand and with the silver arms to subdue the flailing limbs. Using the bearded Axe, I chopped the limbs off with one swift.
Thud.
SQuaaaal!
It cried in pain. But it's screams didn't last long. Using Helga shortened the task of harvesting from minutes to seconds. Since this was what it was made for. And Fido...
... Crunch crunch crunch.
Fido was made for the scraps as witnessed by his devouring of the Grapplers arms after I drained them of blood.
Fido used blood magic as fuel, the more blood magic the stronger and fast he got. The dried cracks in his flesh repaired itself, the stitching's reinforced themselves by multiplying into elaborate designs that self-cast reinforcement runes on itself. The fiend's hide armor thickened and hardened itself with the biomass attained from the grapplers flesh. Anything that couldn't be used would be sucked dry and turned to raw carbon dust. Which would be stored or expelled later.
Nothing would go to waste.
Even the blood that should be covering Helga was absorbed to power it. The self-cleaning feature also made it extremely sanitary so that nothing harvested would be too contaminated.
Within ten minutes the three grapplers hidden in this room were no more.
The hunt had already begun.
*
Creeeeeeeak.
I opened the door where the monster and zombies had been a few moments ago. There were crisp lines hatched into the walls. It reminded me of the time I was almost kidnapped in my Parent's Castle. Only there was far more destruction due to the blood grenade. There was no biomatter left over either since it was cannibalized to charge the spell.
One zombie was left only because it had been at the back and was crawling towards us. It moaned and reached up at us. It no longer glowed with unholy magical light it's excess magic must have been drained by the blood grenade.
I aimed at it with Shar'mander.
"Take care of it." I said.
Shar'mander fired one of the teeth at it. It shot out like a bullet and when it struck the head the blood magic in the tooth exploded and with it so did the zombie's head. It was a small explosive fireball spell, but it was more than effective.
"And here I thought we were the escorts," Amanda chuckled.
"Let's just say that I'm specialized and not near as good with bandits, big beasties, and non-lethal strategies." I said.
"Yeah, I can see that." Amanda said looking around at the destruction.
"As far as my research has led me to believe, when a location becomes a festering dungeon all the amassed magic gravitates to the dungeon lord. It isn't sustainable to save it, or they might explode so they spend it crafting a dungeon of their design. Until it is complete the excess magic will run wild. This pocket dimension is a sign of the excess magic going out of control. Grapplers are drawn to pocket dimensions like this, probably due to the nature of their magic that allows them to reside in shadows. But they aren't the only creatures." I explained.
Fido ran over and started eating the body of the zombie and grew almost double the size from its remaining magic.
"In short that means we are going to have to wander around until the dungeon lord is crowned, and they exhaust enough resources to stabilize the dungeon." I explained.
"And how long is that going to take?" Kaina asked.
"If we wait it out, it could be days, maybe even weeks." I said. "Since I plan on repossessing it and causing havoc. Then hours, a day at most." I grinned. "I'm going to make a killing in here."