Chapter 159 |
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The Creator, Atlantis, The Kalenic Sea
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The crusaders took several days to settle on the island, starting with the occupation of the empty port to bring their supplies ashore. There wasn't enough space for everyone to stay within the walls of the town, though, and a tent city had been erected in the fallow fields to the west. Meanwhile, others were set to scour the island for any hint as to where the people living there had gone. They found nothing, of course. There was nothing to find. I'd made sure of that.
Only after they were sure of that did the delves start.
None of the elites dared venture in first, of course. No, that role was filled by guilders hired for the purpose, none of whom I recognised as having delved me before; the guilders I'd trained were smarter than that. Whether these new ones were zealots, blinded by greed, or unaware of my reputation, it didn't matter. So long as they fought for the crusade, they'd be tarred with the same brush. On the dawn of the first day, the first wave of three dozen guilders gathered to begin. Before they even had the chance to enter, though, these new guilders experienced the first change immediately and violently. It caught them entirely unaware, just as intended.
Crabs swarmed the beach, flooding out of the entrance and scuttling out of the ocean in the thousands. Immediately, the sands of Obsidian Beach were thrown into absolute chaos. The regular soldiers hanging around nearby died in scores as more and more men flooded out of their camp and the port to reinforce them. The guilders, caught in the densest part of the crush, put up a good fight. I'd say they were high golds, maybe verging on platinum.
The templar and heroes arrived as the tide sputtered out, about five minutes into combat, acting more as cleanup than the tidebreakers I had no doubt they saw themselves as.
By the time the crabs stopped flooding the beach, only five of the 36-something guilders remained. Some had been crushed to death. Others had their heads popped like grapes. A select few were flambe'd. You get the idea. Thousands of ordinary soldiers were dead. Their bodies were unreconisible, and so mixed with the corpses of the crabs that saturated the beach, it was hard to tell which limb belonged to which body.
And thus, I increased their paranoia tenfold, with only about a quarter of my adult crabs dead in the process. While that might seem like a lot of dead crabs, their numbers were already being replaced as the young crabs matured. In a couple of days, it'd be like nothing ever happened.
The next day, perhaps having learned their lesson, the Templar and heroes gathered on the beach. Gull watched with narrowed eyes as they arranged stakes in the sand outside the entrance and placed gemstones, manacores maybe, on the tops. It was only halfway through their setup that I realised this was some kind of ritual, and I had no idea what it'd do. Whatever they were doing, though, I knew it wouldn't be good for me. I had to disrupt it.
The seagulls swarmed, descending upon the group. They died in droves at the hands of the skilled templar and heroes, as well as the occasional lucky shot by soldiers with bows. Gull waited for the opportune moment, when all the heroes were properly distracted, before swooping in, enhancing his speed with air magic. He snatched one of the poles, ripping it and the gemstone atop it into the air. As he flapped away, he faltered, weakly flapping as he started to fall from the sky, and I scanned his body in panic, trying to figure out why.
He was riddled with cancer, incredibly violent, cancer. The cancers were growing and consuming his body faster than he could regenerate, and he was dying. Out in the sky, I had no chance of saving him, and no time. What I did have time for was to get some water sprites I had on standby to open a portal right where Gull was about to crash. He flew right through, then out of the portal into the Twelveth. The portal quickly closed behind him, and my Avatar caught him, the pole and gem dropping to the ground of the glade.
Gull was larger than the Avatar, though only just. I cradled his head and pumped him full of mana in an attempt to save his life, guiding it to destroy the cancer and replace it with healthy flesh.
I was too late.
Gull died in my arms. His body went limp, the light left his eyes, and his soul passed on.
My first monster, the first being I'd ever connected to. The one who showed me the freedom of flight was gone, somewhere far beyond my reach. Cadmus, Wave and Taura surrounded me, hugging me as my Avatar held Gull's body in its arms. Rage filled me—anger, and Hatred.
Okay.
I was pissed off. Before, the crusaders were a more distant threat, even after they'd invaded the island. I wasn't emotionally invested in the sea monsters or fish. The crabs were replaceable. The last monster who died, really died, that I cared about was... Sebastian. The first crab knight. My first Boss Monster was killed by Layla, Felin and two of their old party members. But even then, I knew Sebastian would probably die when I made him. It was inevitable. He died long before I'd set up respawn crystals.
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Now.... Now it was personal. He died of sudden malignant cancer... Life magic. I recalled what I'd learned of the publicly known Templar... Pan. Pan Theon, the Life Mage. Able to kill with a glance.
That bitch is dead. She just doesn't know it yet.
Always target the White Mage first.
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Obsidian Beach, Occupied Atlantis, The Kalenic Sea
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Haliet refused to allow the ritual to be delayed any further. "Get the spares," he ordered as seagull corpses were cleared from the beach, and a nearby soldier ran back into the port to do just that. If nothing else, the monster corpses would join the crabs as food for the crusaders. Haliet's gaze remained on the ocean, where the largest of the seagulls had fallen into the ocean.
"It's not in the water," Pan preempted his question. "The monster was dying, but it disappeared from my senses the moment it hit the ocean."
"And the core with it?" Haliet asked tightly. Pan didn't answer. She didn't need to; his question was rhetorical. "Damn them to the hells. Do you know how expensive it is to get and enchant all these dungeon cores?" Pan continued not to answer. It was, of course, another rhetorical question. Within half an hour, the beach was cleared. It went a lot faster than the thousands upon thousands of giant crabs they'd had to move the day before, since there weren't as many of them. There was also a lot more variation in the size of these seagulls than there had been in the crabs, which definitely helped.
The soldier returned with a new pole and core, and Haliet took great satisfaction in driving it into the ground, imagining he was stabbing the damn seagull that'd stolen the last one.
"Begin when you're ready, Gregg," Haliet ordered, standing back. The Champion of Energy nodded, stepping forward to place his hand upon the largest of the dungeon cores, the one in the centre spike. He channelled a truly astonishing amount of mana into it, and the hairs on Haliet's neck raised from the sheer density. Haliet looked up, not seeing, but feeling the manastream he knew was pouring into the dungeon's entrance.
He felt it like a warmth upon his face, like the light of the holy sun in summer. It was stronger than every other dungeon he'd ever been to, by far. Haliet could only wonder what the dungeon was doing with all that mana... Well. They were doing something about that. The ritual started pulsing, waves of mana emanating from the cores in a specific rhythm. Each core pulsed at just the right time so that their pulses added, amplifying the effect. Haliet couldn't see it, but he knew the manastream would be moving. Shifting.
Step One of combating a hostile dungeon: Remove its access to more mana.
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The Creator, Atlantis, The Kalenic Sea
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I could only watch as the ritual's purpose was revealed. Each pulse from the gemstones, which I now knew were subordinated dungeon cores, pushed and pulled at my manastream, disrupting it. It wobbled, shifted, and, with an overly dramatic twist as its momentum shifted too far, was turned back into the sky. My manastream was broken; the stream now returned the mana it had collected to the sky, further disrupting it. I did not doubt that within a week or so, it would have settled, remaining as no more than a higher-than-average level of mana in the local area.
Of course, it was only one of my manastreams. They had no way of knowing about the ocean current manastream or the core manastream. The knock-on effects were... devastating.
Throughout the upper floors, mana was siphoned from the stream to power enchantments and upkeep monsters. Without that...
Like a hardened spearhead, the Templar and heroes led the way into the dungeon, cutting through every crab that made even an attempt at assaulting the procession. As the column entered each new cavern, more and more of them stayed behind to deal with the crabs constantly boiling from the ponds within them, preventing them from reaching the column of soldiers.
This was more of a constant drain on my crab reserves, and without a manastream to speed up the growth of young... who knew how long it'd take them to mature normally.
Perhaps even worse was how having thousands of humans inside my dungeon was affecting my control. Normally, I could barely influence mana in the same room as a human protected by the life goddess's protection. With this many humans inside me? It was like I was paralysed. The crab breeding caverns were far enough away that I wasn't affected much over there, but it was a real problem. Sure, humans were still dying to falling stalagmites, the occasional assassin crab and from-beneath ambush, but as I used these traps, they didn't reset.
I could only watch as the tip of the column reached the Crab Knight's boss arena, my Crab reserves lowering faster than Super Earth's reinforcement count.
At the front, the remaining Templars and Heroes emerging from the tunnel with weapons raised and swinging, already pushing back the tide of crabs to establish a beachhead. The man with glowing eyes, who'd powered the ritual, and five or so others kept the crabs back as soldiers pushed in behind them.
I turned away from the battle, refocusing that thread of my attention on something I could affect.
The floor-shifting enchantment of the Second was a mana hog. Though the enchantments were capable of storing plenty of mana between bursts of activation, it wasn't a lot. I had to dig new tunnels and extend a tendril of mana from the ocean current manastream up to the Second. Another thread of attention did the same for the third floor as the manasteam's tail end wound its way down into Mushu's arena. All across the dungeon, I was in damage-control mode.
It was almost surprising how much I'd relied upon that manastream. Luckily, the ocean current manastream joined the atmospheric stream properly at the ninth, and every floor below that would be fine. The stream might be a bit strained with the sheer number of monsters and enchantments that needed upkeep, though. I decided I'd retask the core manastream erupting from the volcano on the Twelveth to upkeep that floor, just in case.
The last part of my attention was in mourning.
I buried Gull in the glade, under an enormous tree. The funeral was short and solemn, but the mood was broken. We'd been carefree, enjoying each other's company without regard for the existential threat posed by the crusaders. The only thing that started to lift my spirits even slightly, drawing me out of my introspection and brooding, was a shout.
Taura had laid her eggs
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