There were more of the snakeheads. A lot more.

The further we intruded into the massive mountain complex, the more snakeheads we encountered. Curiously, they were doing something fairly similar to us, clearing and searching the base. From the way we encountered them, I was fairly certain that they had started somewhere far below us, roughly in the direction I could still feel that weird sensation that had originally pointed me towards the mountain, and sent out groups to secure the primary passageways and the exit of the mountain before starting to check individual rooms.

So, at first, we only had to deal with teams of six, sometimes with a seventh who seemed to be in charge and was somewhat tougher and wearing a golden helmet, instead of the metallic grey helmets the rest of their buddies were wearing. Equipment-wise, they generally had the blasting staves, the Ma’Tok, and sometimes knives or a hand-held, pistol-sized device that sent out electric-blue projectiles, capable of shocking the target. It was painful, almost debilitatingly so, and I had no doubt that getting hit repeatedly would cause serious damage incredibly fast, but a singular hit was… survivable. Which was good, as the charge of these projectiles spread across the entire body, regardless of the location hit. The pain ebbed off somewhat, but even a hit in the foot or hand could be enough to send a person to the ground, at least for a few moments. Sadly, when we Inspect’ed these guns after encountering them for the first time, we only learned that they were called Zet’nik’tel, nothing else. Like the staves, we bagged samples to study later and continued on our merry way, heading deeper into the facility, killing snakeheads by the bushel.

Curiously, the snakeheads were all level ninety while the gold-headed snakes were all level ninety-five, so if there was one positive thing about this place, it was that we gained a load of experience, especially as we quickly got better at killing snakeheads. It was quite interesting, after those first six, when we discovered that the snakeheads had a major weak spot in their abdomen without any particularly special protection over it, killing them became an interesting exercise.

With the knowledge about these strange worms hidden in their gut, I started to experiment. Questions I wanted to have answers for were things like, could I use Mind or Death Magic to deal with the worm and if yes, what happened to the snakehead it was hidden within?

After a few tests, I soon learned that Mind Magic had only inconsistent results. I could use my usual stunning blasts to limited effect when focused on the snakeheads’ guts and in doing so, I shut down part of their impressive resilience but there was no actual damage. However, when I tried some other mental effects, the results greatly varied. Trying to make the worms go berserk generally caused the snakeheads to start screaming in pain and dying soon after but the worms came bursting out of their guts afterwards, trying to bite anything too close to them. Otherwise, if the snakeheads didn’t die, they suddenly became a lot more aggressive, making me think that the berserk-effect had somehow affected them instead of the worms. That, in turn, made the fights a lot harder and I generally had to work with Luna afterwards to heal the various wounds we suffered from them, making me think that the effect wasn’t the brightest idea.

Death Magic, on the other hand, had a fairly consistent effect when applied to the snakeheads’ guts. If I channelled enough of it, their regeneration shut down and their bodies did soon after, making me think that killing a worm inside of them was deadly to the snakehead, too. Which is exactly what we tried to do, kill as many of these worms as possible, especially as I had no desire to find out what would happen if the worms managed to bite one of us. It was creepy enough to watch them burst from the snakeheads’ guts and try to worm their way into a fellow snakehead, so having one try to bury into one of us was not an option.

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However, with the plentiful targets, it didn’t take long for me to hit level ninety-five, the level bringing with it some very welcome attribute points. Intuition was brought to fifty-six by the attribute points from Dragon-Touched and my class, granting me yet another trait, namely, Farsight. It improved what I had been doing a lot of, which is magical scrying, by ‘making it easier to use magical means to observe from a distance’. I wasn’t sure if I liked the description, it made me sound like some sort of voyeur, but I had a feeling it would be useless regardless of the name. Additionally, I decided to drop my points into Intelligence, bringing me to ninety and giving me the Magical Might trait. For once, that one was incredibly straightforward, it simply increased the damage I could deal with my magic greatly. A little boring and limited to combat applications but when fighting, it was incredibly useful.

Additionally, I got a couple of skill increases but nothing tremendously interesting, as I was mostly using tried and true tricks. Sure, two points in Mind Magic were nice, maybe because I was trying to influence something so completely alien like these strange parasitic worms and three points in Death Magic, as the skill was fairly low at now twenty-seven were awesome but I would much rather increase my understanding of Ice Magic or its Rune Mastery. Sadly, combat with powerful foes was a fairly bad time to experiment, as much as I wanted to. I tried a few things, mostly when it came to redirecting or blocking these staff-blasts with Darkness Magic, especially the Space-Aspect I had recently discovered and that netted me a point but that was it. Maybe I would have to get into the far north and the eternal Ice up there to further my understanding of that particular element.

Level after level, we continued down and the further we went, the more snakeheads we encountered. Additionally, I began to wonder just how large this base was or if the Change had somehow added additional levels in some way. I wasn’t sure but after we made it down fifteen levels, we encountered something different.

Well, somewhat different, it was another snakehead but where the usual grunts had armour completely metallic-grey, with their leads having golden helmets instead of grey ones, this guy was completely clad in sparkly gold. Additionally, he was set up in a fairly large chamber, maybe some sort of laboratory, and instead of the usual six friends, he had three times that, making the encounter a massive pain. Having to dodge blasts from six staves was difficult, having to try and get around three times that, with a guy who was a lot better trained than the rest and made his troops use cover and fight tactically?

A lot harder.

Maybe even impossible, unless one was willing to cheat.

Something I was ready to do and these guys really made it a little too easy. They were holed up in a singular, large space and the brief looks we had managed to get made it relatively obvious that there was only one entrance. Sure, that meant trying to charge in was about as suicidal as it could get but the choke point hurt them out just as much as it did us.

We only needed to motivate them to leave their happy little hideout, and what better way to do that than magical mayhem? I certainly didn’t know of a better way, though I was certain Alex would have some ideas, too, maybe some sort of alchemical grenade or something along those lines. They certainly tossed a few into the room, after I swiftly drew up a runic formation next to the door, allowing me to conjure as much deadly mist as I wanted and redirect it into the room with my Ice Magic.

It didn’t take long for the golden snake in charge to realise that their position was suddenly completely untenable. They could stick inside and wait until they all died in the mist I conjured or they could charge and try to overwhelm us.

With those options, it didn’t take long for them to charge, forcing Lia and Silva to fight in close quarters in a futile attempt to keep them boxed in and once that failed, things got really chaotic, really fast.

Despite all my training, despite all my attributes, I got lost in the chaos, barely able to keep myself safe, to say nothing of helping my friend. Once again, I received a stark reminder of Sigmir’s importance to me and how much the link between our minds had helped me. How two minds working together were so much more than one.

But before I could get her back, we had to keep fighting.