Chapter 161 |
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The Second Floor, The Dungeon, Occupied Atlantis
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David took a deep breath as he looked down the long corridor. Once again, he thanked whoever was listening for the enchanted armour they'd been given that let him stay completely dry despite being totally immersed in water. The helmet, too, but in his opinion, the fact that his shoes didn't squish around his toes with every step was a godsend. He'd take all the small mercies he could get down in this dungeon.
Apparently, there were traps designed to split larger groups, so they preemptively split into groups with two to three heroes each and one Templar. His group was led by Gregg Zediker, the Energy Champion and the single most terrifying being David had met since arriving on this strange planet. His eyes glowed constantly; a white light so harsh that it seemed as if he'd start getting cracks on his body and explode like Tom Riddle, but more explosive and less dramatic.
The Templar was supremely confident in himself, and as far as David could tell, it was confidence well earned. Encounters with any of the fish monsters that infested this floor ended with searing laser beams and boiling water bubbling up through the ceiling vents. No matter how many kinds or how large the swarms were, it all ended the same way. His reserves seemed inexhaustible, and David had a feeling they might be.
Magic in this world worked differently than what he'd expected from all the stories and movies he'd seen. For all David knew, Gregg might have a portal to the Plane of Energy in his core, constantly supplying him with energy. He'd never ask the man, though. David knew he'd just get shut down or a non-answer. Turning back to the hallway ahead of them, David noted that it sloped down without any stairs and was covered in coral and algae.
Gregg stopped them just before the slope with a raised hand, then made several hand signs they'd been taught to recognise. "Guardian. Hold. Regroup." David nodded and looked to the side, checking on Karen and Bobby while Gregg pulled a strange bell from a pouch. The Guardian Arena was ahead. They'd wait here while the others converged on them.
Karen was distracted, examining the carved letters on the walls, which seemed to be the same language as in the letter. Bobby had obviously seen the hand signs, too, and nodded to David before turning to watch the corridor behind them. As David turned back toward him, Gregg had finished preparing his bell and flicked it once. The bell produced a single, pure note that David could hear as the shockwave travelled through the water.
"Cause?" David signed back.
"Time, Trap,"Haliet explained, then frowned and shook his head. "Explain, Later."
TimeTrap?! As far as David knew, Time and Space were among the rarest mana types. How did the dungeon make time traps?!
He shook his head as Haliet led the group down the ramp and into the section David assumed was normally underwater, before the entire maze had been flooded. It only took a few minutes for the group to pass through, with no monsters waiting on the other side. David did notice the Algae on the walls behaving strangely as they passed, though. It looked like it was... expanding, almost crawling across the walls. Strange.
When he reached the other side and entered the Guardian's arena, he turned his head slightly, cracking his neck and rolling his shoulders. Within the arena, three great-white-shark-sized grey-red fish charged into the group of humans at a ridiculous speed. Each was diverted or dodged, but the fight was on!
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The Creator, Occupied Atlantis, The Kalenic Sea
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Aaand the fight was over. Honestly, it went about as well as I'd expected it to go, given how they'd breezed their way through the rest of the Second. The crusaders were only marginally slowed down by being underwater, to the extent that their buoyancy wasn't even affected. They walked through water as if it were slightly thicker air! It was totally unfair! They just completely circumvented the entire challenge of the floor! Though I suppose I shouldn't have expected more from these people. They weren't here for the challenge; they were here to kill me, and judging by the quality of their equipment and the extent of their enchantments, they were well prepared.
The fight itself was pretty boring. Mr Laser Eyes and Fingers was, once again, MVP. I needed to make something able to defend itself against lasers. Reflective scales? Perhaps some shield enchantment with energy absorption that empowers the shield itself? Definitely something to experiment with, and practically a requirement if I were going to stop these guys. Honestly, I was lucky to catch that one group in the Decay trap. The leather straps of their armour rapidly rotted into mush, ruining the armour and its enchantments. The Templar with them was an Ice Mage, though, and was able to freeze a bubble around the group, somehow filtering air from the water to keep them breathing until they managed to make their way out of the Second.
What's worse is that they stopped openly planning. Now they communicated with those hand signs, none of which I actually knew the meaning of. I could try to infer, but I didn't want to risk misinterpreting them. Better to assume they'd follow the proper path, but plan for shenanigans.
Either way, the crusaders pushed into the Third, and the Green Hell made its displeasure known.
Hundreds of thousands of insects swarmed the humans the moment they set foot on the floor. Mr Laser suddenly found it much harder to target individual monsters when a carpet of chitin and aggression swarmed him. But here is where the diversity of their group became apparent. Other mages stepped in while Mr Laser changed tactics and raised an energy shield, pushing back the tide. Columns of fire roasted my monsters by the thousands. Ice froze sections of the giant bugs in place, creating another barrier they'd need to cross or avoid to reach the group.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Watching the tide of spiders, ants, beetles, millipedes, flies, wasps, bees and a dozen other incredibly large bug varieties I'd elevated assault the group was... horrifying. And I didn't even need an alien tumour to control them all!
Only once the guilders were fully focused on defending against the bugs did I mobilise the rest of my forces.
Chromatic Tigers, finally granted mana affinities appropriate to the colours of their pelts, approached from the brush. The first to attack were the Black Tigers, jumping into shadows and emerging within the energy shield, leaping out of the harsh shadows cast by elemental spells right at Mr Laser. The five tigers that committed to the attack were grabbed in mid-air by oily tentacles that emerged from the same shadows they jumped from. The man responsible was the tallest in the group, wearing what I could only describe as a trench coat and a cloth covering the lower half of his face. His pitch-black eyes were like merciless voids as, at the flick of his wrists, the shadows swallowed the tigers, who never reappeared.
So they did have a darkness templar, then.
The rest of the Chromatic Tigers took that as their cue to attack. While tigers assaulted the group with elemental powers, claws and fangs of every stripe, the three Purple Tigers coordinated their gravity magic. The tigers cast a wide-area reverse gravity spell, and the humans suddenly found themselves afloat. The Templars were quick to respond. Ice Lady created flexible chains of ice that anchored herself and most of the flailing heroes to the ground. Mr Laser seemed perfectly unaffected, like this was his everyday, though he did drop the energy shield now that he had single targets available to fire at again.
At that point, though, enough of the bugs had died off that it didn't really change the battle. What it did do was finally allow the Phoenix to add to the assault. Monsters at all three stages of their evolutionary line threw firebombs at the group; spells designed to explode on contact with the ground. This threw off their defence, and some of the tigers actually managed to land a few hits. Once the birds had made their presence known, however, Mr Laser started on them instead.
Once it became clear to me that the battle was lost, I had whatever monsters remained retreat. They returned to their burrows and breeding grounds, where they'd wait, regaining their numbers, and waiting for an opportunity to strike and disrupt the invader's plans.
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Hidden Dragon Valley, The Twelfth Floor, The Dungeon
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Wave sat on a protruding rock, observing the mountain valley in all its glory. Lush greenery, with a small lake at the centre surrounded by a flower-filled meadow. The crystal-blue waters were perfectly still and reflected the blue sky and the bright sun overhead with perfect clarity. The rock he sat on was wide and flat, the perfect place to watch the valley in its entirety. Above and around the valley were the ridgelines of the mountains that encased the valley, snow-tipped at their peaks, and a dozen or so trailing streams of meltwater met at the lake in the middle. At the far end of the valley, a small river led away, and down into a cave.
The water followed the cave for some time; the wave had walked along the now-underground river for its whole length. It ended in a large cavern, whose ceiling was covered with luminescent worms that fed on the bugs living and breeding in the lake below. The lake was deep, and there was enough pressure at its bottom to force water through cracks and splits in the rock. The flow through these cracks matched the amount of water entering the lake, keeping it perfectly balanced. Wave knew the water would seep through the rock, eventually widening into another cave, one that emerged from a rock face miles and miles away. That stream would add to the meltwater from other mountains, joining a river that poured down to the lake in the middle of the floor.
Wave breathed deeply, in and out. The air was sweet with the scent of pollen. Sharpening his vision, Wave could make out the individual giant bees dancing around the wildflowers and returning to their hive, built into the trunk and root system of a dead tree. Their honey was delicious, and they were all too happy to tribute some of their labour to the wyverns who protected them. The occasional blue slime rolled through the meadow, aimlessly. Wave could spot the shifting of branches as other monsters and mundane animals moved about their valley home.
"Whatcha' thinkin' 'bout Wave?" Cadmus asked, emerging from their cliffside cave home behind him. Wave turned to look at the juvenile, in their humanoid form today. The burnished-gold hue of the scales that ran along their cheekbones only highlighted the paleness of the skin around it, and the brightness of their golden eyes.
"How lucky I am," Wave answered as the comparatively smaller being approached, sat on the edge of the rock, and joined Wave in his observation. "When I was a young Kobold, I could never have imagined my life would lead me here."
"You were a Kobold? But they're so small!" Cadmus asked, holding his pointy-nailed fingers barely an inch apart. Wave chuckled, lowering his head down to Cadmus's level.
"I was," Wave acknowledged, shaping some water to show his old appearance. "My sister went down to the Seventh, to live with the Drake-kin. Eventually, I wound down to the Ninth, became a Snowbold and a Water Shaman, and I thought I'd found my place. Once, I even thought of getting a bonded companion. It probably would have been a Snow Fox, I remember thinking they were cute. Then, the Creator asked for my help. Through me, He summoned dozens upon dozens of Water Sprites, and I watched as the Eleventh started filling with water.
"You helped make the Eleventh?!" Cadmus shouted, eyes glimmering. Wave chuckled and nodded.
"As a reward, The Creator turned me into an Ice Drake-kin—the first, and probably only one, of my kind. I went back to the Eighth, but they treated me differently. Reverently. I didn't like it. A while later, the Creator disappeared, and when the Fire Court descended, I joined them to help them get to their promised Island."
"That volcano, right? Isla Fuego?" Cadmus asked. Wave nodded, throwing his mind back.
"Yes. After I'd finished with that, I was contacted and tasked by The Creator to get a monster core for him—a particular core, from the Seventh. With the help of a couple of friends, I made my way up, met my sister and got the core at the entrance to the Eighth. On the way back down, I fought a mad human on the Ninth, the furthest any human had reached at the time. We managed to kill him, and I eventually reached The Creator's Core. I was... overcome by mana, trying to reach him. To save my life, he turned me into what I am now. A Wyvern, and once again the only one of my Kind."
"But Taura is a Wyvern too!" Cadmus countered, looking confused.
"I wasn't always a Wyvern, little drake," Taura interrupted, making the little dragon turn his brightest smile on her. "I wasn't even a Drake-kin, or a Kobold. I was a Minotaur. The Creator didn't even know if turning me into a Wyvern would work. But it did. And soon... You'll be able to teach a whole bunch of little wyrmlings how to fly."
"How are they?" Wave asked as Taura lay next to him. He nuzzled her, and she returned the favour.
"Sleeping," Taura reassured. "Still full from eating their shells. I'll go hunt a few monsters for them to eat in a day or two, when they're done digesting."
Wave briefly closed his eyes, enjoying the breeze, his mate next to him, and the bundle of energy that was Cadmus, babbling about what he would teach the Wyrmlings. He opened his eyes and turned them northward, eyes finding a flat-topped peak. Up there stood The Creator's Avatar. Ever since they'd buried that giant seagull, He'd been entirely focused on the dungeon's defences.
"Hey Cadmus," Wave asked, throwing off the scaleborn's verbal stream of consciousness.
"Yeah?"
"Why don't you go say hi to your Mom. I think He needs some attention."
"Okay!"
Cadmus jumped from the rock, transforming mid-fall into their full dragon form. Wave watched as they flew up to the mountaintop and collided with the avatar, cuddling Him with all the energy Cadmus could give. Wave and Taura shared a chuckle, and Wave went back to basking in the sun.
Everything would be alright in time. Their future was bright.
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