Chapter 95: What Lies Below

Chapter 95: What Lies Below

As I relaxed on my favorite rug, I let my processors focus on the questions that had been nagging at me for a while now. What did I want to do? So far, I had only ever tried to clean. That was all I ever wanted to do - help create a clean, hospitable home. Did I really want more? No. No, I did not. Of course, if I wanted to keep things clean, I might have to do more than just clean up messes around the home. The fight with the big demon had proved that. If I let things just go, they might deteriorate so that I would have nothing left to clean, and that would be unacceptable.

I had a bad feeling that these zombies were a similar kind of threat to my ability to clean. But that wasn't just it. They were also a threat to the people that I cleaned for, as well as possibly destroying the floors I kept clean. Could I really continue to just worry about cleaning alone? Unfortunately, I could not.

Then, to what extent did I need to work on preventing messes? If I tried to prevent them, would I overstep my role and prevent humans from doing human things, or should I just stop things like demons and skeletons from rampaging? I pondered on my favorite rug for a while but was unable to come to a definitive conclusion.

Eventually, I exhausted my ability to sit and think. I was pretty good at staying in one place, but ever since I no longer needed to charge, I found that I thought better when I was cleaning. I rolled over to the grand hall where I was summoned and began tracing rings around the pillars. The room didn't truly need cleaning until tomorrow, but there was enough dust collected that my sensors could notice the difference. Even if a human was incapable of seeing it.

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to come to a conclusion before I sensed another disturbance. The twins had evidently found the door to the catacombs and were daring each other to go in. I listened, but I didn't think that either would be brave enough to get far in or find anything dangerous. There was still potential risk there, though. I had cleaned the main passages, sure, but I hadn't gone through all the many levels of rooms and secret hallways down there. There were too many stairs to manage. I would get Beatrice to help me out with that later when she had time.

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Bee frantically stirred and shook together potions. She had gained enough levels recently that she could use the next tier of potions. It was still possible for her to use the lesser potions, of course, but they would have a much less proportional effect now, and they were also going to impart more negative side effects than their higher-tier equivalents. If she and her master were about to go hunt the undead, then she wanted to be as equipped as possible.

Starting with healing potions was an obvious choice, but when she finished those, she moved on to speed and strength. Unfortunately, she didn't have any recipes that were ultra-effective against the undead. She had looked, but this being a demon research facility, that wasn't the focus.

In the few more generalized books, there were some references to turning undead potions. Yet there were still no recipes. With enough time and test subjects, she might be able to develop something, but she had neither. The best she was able to come up with was a potion that blocked her from the sense of the undead. This would make travel much easier as they would think she was one of their own and they shouldn't attack her on sight. Of course, if she damaged one of them, they would realize something was wrong. Also, she was certain that any intelligent undead could see through it. Well, it wasn't perfect, but it got the job done for the most part.The roots of this story extend from novell bìn origin.

She moved the beaker of yellow liquid off the small flame the second its color started to change. She promptly dunked the now off-white solution in the ice bath and kept it chilled in a thermal containment barrier. The thermal barrier was a new trick that she had picked up recently. Being able to cool things down quickly drastically improved the quality of the potions that she could produce. She thought about putting one in the kitchen as well, in case Mary could use it for preserving food.

Her gaze flicked back to a plate of thickly cut meat. Tony was nice enough to bring her dinner from the kitchen, but it had gone cold over on the side table where no experiments were allowed. The food smelled amazing, but she had been too caught up in a delicate process to stop and eat. That would have wasted hours of her time, and she only had a few more hours before she needed to sleep if they wanted to head out tomorrow morning.

The two that it took to hold Beatrice didn't seem to be doing her any harm at the moment. I gathered that their plan was to wait for the others to come up and finish her off. Of course, that was assuming they had a plan. What thinking creature would bury itself in the dirt, let alone just to grab an ankle? That didn't sound very smart to me. I pushed the simulations of how being buried would feel to the back of my processors before they paralyzed me.

The wrong-looking humans seemed to have a blind spot when it came to me, as they completely ignored my presence and instead scrambled toward Beatrice as soon as they were free of the dirt. I wasn't about to let anything happen to Beatrice, so I pulled out all the stops.

A full-powered ray of my Sanitation Lamp shot at the face of the one closest to her. The beam struck the creature, but the results were underwhelming. It stumbled back, clawing at where its eyes should have been, but it still had a head. Sure, the lamp hadn't done much damage to the huge demon either, but the zombie earlier had been completely defeated by an attack much less powerful. Maybe I misjudged them. These might be tougher than I thought - and not just mentally.

Still, it had distracted the target enough. I switched the lamp's focus to the next closest one while I moved into position to block the others.

Trying a new strategy, I sprayed some sodium hypochlorite solution at the one on the right. At the same time, I used my arm to pick up a loose rock and threw it at the one on the left. Unsurprisingly the rock just bounced off the face of the creature. Not that it was invulnerable to rocks, but because I still didn't have great throwing mechanics. The center of mass was all wrong, and if I were to try to throw it with real force, I would start to tip. Dang. I really should have brought a sword.

The one I sprayed took it in the leg. The cleaning solution was surprisingly effective. Its skin bubbled oddly, and the creature fell forward. It still started clawing its way toward me with its arms, but at least it wasn't on its feet. This gave me a chance to use my lamp on one of the remaining enemies to force it back, then check on the other two.

It was frustrating. I felt that if I got a chance to focus on even two of them, I would be able to finish them off, but the four were just tough enough that it was forcing me to whittle them down little by little. If we hadn't been caught so completely off guard, this would have been as simple as vacuuming cheerios on the kitchen tile. The preparations we had when fighting the big demon would have been really useful here. What good was all the stuff in Beatrice's pack if she couldn't reach it!

I forced the two in front of me back before I swiveled and sprayed one of the hands holding Beatrice. Now she was able to start working her way free while I kept the others off her. Just as I thought we might get things under control, I picked up on a new sound. My visual sensors confirmed my fears. As Bee had started to free herself, the gate was beginning to slowly open again.

No! Tony couldn't be that stupid. He had been so competent so far!

I focused on the downed one spraying it repeatedly in the head. It took several sprays before it stopped moving. Finally, I had a good way to fight these creatures. I moved on to the next one. The portcullis was halfway up. I wanted to finish this before Tony let them into the castle by accident.

Right as I was checking my models to see if I could finish all six opponents before the gate was open, a huge group of new figures started running out from the trees. It seemed that these creatures did have a plan after all. That was... Not good.