Dungeon Menagerie 19 (Patreon)

Commissioned by InfiniteChaosRei

Dungeon Menagerie

Chapter 19

-VB-

Keramon stared at the thing. 

The thing stared back.

Keramon turned around to look at his partner. 

“Ke?” he asked as he pointed at the thing. 

“Well, it should have some kind of computer inside of it, so it should have some spare storage for you to run around in if you want,” Vanessa said with a shrug. 

Keramon grinned happily before doing exactly that. He jumped up toward the closest electrical port and zapped in. 

-VB-

Vanessa stared at where Keramon disappeared into the Khopesh and shrugged. 

She had an ulterior motive for introducing the two digital/machine friends to each other. While the Khopesh was distinctly not smart, Keramon was. Khopesh, not being smart, carried out orders exactly as it was, including its previous orders. Like … as she learned from the Khopesh, it carried all previous instructions and retained them. It could not delete them. What kept it from killing all life was the fact that she gave it orders that took precedence over the old orders. 

So why did she introduce Keramon to Khopesh?

Well…

Khopesh was a friend, yes, but it wasn’t exactly “alive” like Keramon was. Keramon, on the other hand, was her friend who was definitely alive with his own likes and needs, and one of those needs happened to be a need to eat. Now, she also learned that he needed digital “mass” to eat, which could be substituted with magic stones; the latter was supposedly better for Keramon.

Khopesh, if left to its own device, would eventually get corrupted (because time), revert back to its old orders, and start shooting everything. 

Keramon could, uh, do something about that. 

Hopefully. 

At the very least, Keramon would lobotomize the poor thing that’s a danger to itself and other people and drive it around like a skin suit. 

…

Yeah, she didn’t feel good about this at all, but needs must and all that.

-VB-

Keramon ooh’ed and aah’ed as he floated among the wires and the computer systems of the big metal junk. 

This place was so different where Keramon came from! 

Keramon was okay with the physical world that his partner lived in. Grass was fun to roll around in, even if Vanessa groaned about grass stains. Trees were fun to fly around! And there were playmates he could shoot fireballs at whenever they went into the big round building. 

But this place felt more like home, even if it didn’t look like home. 

It was … eh.

Like …. 

The wires that data moved in wasn’t so straightforward? Like they were more like blood vessel thingys that his partner and the physical world people had. The wires that carried “blood” and “fluid.”

It was “organic,” if Keramon had to get sofistikated (that’s the right way to spell that word, right?).

The Khopesh was also rough. The wires had the bare minimum defense, the junctions had even less defense, and the only place that did looked less like a place to live and more like a place for unfortunate digi-souls to go and die a very gruesome death.

Good thing he was a virus! 

He dropped out of the wire and into the first actual computer server inside the Khopesh, and he giggled at all of the antivirus waking up like giant gorillas. 

He allowed himself to fall from where the wire and the server met. 

“Let’s play!” Keramon laughed before sending out bursts of fireballs from his mouth. 

Then he pushed himself off the walls and then flung himself toward the closest giant antivirus gorilla. 

It roared as it raised its four arms to smash him, but Keramon just swerved out of the way, spinning himself as he drew his arms in to give himself a speed boost, and then smashed into the antivirus. 

Then he bit. 

The gorilla screeched indignantly as it tried to claw him off, but instead, Keramon tore off a chunk of the gorilla’s flesh and then dug inside. In seconds, he was fully encased by the flesh of the antivirus and ate away to his heart’s content. 

-VB-

Vanessa gulped when she saw Khopesh sparking.

Athena, who had been by her side, sniffed. “Is that supposed to happen?” she asked. “The inner workings of these … contraptions are beyond me.”

“Um. I’m not sure?”

“Isn’t that yours?”

“It’s like asking if I know why I have a headache when I do. Do you know why you get headaches?”

“Yes. You.”

“Hey, I’m supposed to be saying that, you wastrel!”

-VB-

Keramon cackled as it roamed the bright neon green 3D space of the server, laying waste to anyone who played with him.

This was fun!

This was how fun was supposed to be! 

And then … And then it all came to an end. 

Keramon burst out of the eyeball of the last antivirus gorilla, covering in the bright neon blue glitter-gore of his latest victim. He quickly pushed himself out of the gorilla before it fell face first onto the floor before breaking away into null-dust. 

He licked his lips.

He could feel it. 

He was close to digivolution. Munching on so many magic stone while Vanessa hadn’t been looking was coming to help him.

He grinned. 

If he was close to digivolution, then he just needed to keep munching away at Khopesh’s data, right? 

He opened his mouth wide … and bit into the floor. 

“Hmm?” Keramon said as it pulled a file. “What’s this?”

The file read “Shokushuzeme, 18+.”

He opened it.

“... oooh.”

-VB-

“It’s shutting down,” Vanessa pouted as she looked up at the dimming receptors of the Khopesh.

“Hmm?” Athena looked up from where she’d been playi- educating the local children on the ground. Math was very important, especially when combined with food and treats. “Isn’t that the reason why you sent him in there?”

“No? I wanted him to take control over it.”

Athena snorted. “You think that child is capable of understanding control? Everything was playing for him.”

“Still…”

And then the receptors brightened back up.

Vanessa tensed as she stared at the Khopesh as it started trembling. Then it started to morph before her very eyes. 

The bulky top change into a more still rigid but a rounder, longer, and flatter bulb that still had all of the rocket pods. The bottom changed, the metallic claws that the Khopesh walked with became longer and flexible. There was almost no seam for her to look at. Then from behind the gun turret and along the grasper, five more such graspers shot out, appearing to look like very thin and longer versions of its legs. 

And finally, the gun turret double into twin rotary cannons. 

“Why does it look like a squid-octopus hybrid?” Vanessa muttered to herself. 

And then her friend popped back out of it with a metallic squeal.

Her eyes widened. “You evolved!” she shouted in alarm.

Because Keramon had digivolved to Chrysalimon.