Erick saw the monsters, and the monsters saw him.
Half disoriented from finally returning to the world, Erick wondered if this was the end, and then he tried not to make any mistakes. The first monster to come after him was a giant thing of stone and shale, nearly four meters tall, almost all of it buried under a meter of stone and broken rocks. Claws and legs stretched out revealing the beast as something similar to a decorator crab, but large and hungry and already directly above Erick, ready to drag him into a maw made of venomous fangs.
As one moment almost became two, Erick reorganized some of his thoughts, and realized the monster was more like a tunneling spider, and less like a decorator crab. He also flooded more power into his thankfully-running [Greater Lightwalk] and rolled away, avoiding the first monster’s chompers and almost running right into the grabbing tentacles of another.
With a directed slap to divert the tentacle away, Erick struck the tentacled beast, but he was moved instead of the monster. The monster’s tentacles kept coming. A spike of worry invaded Erick’s mind, but it was only one more bit of panic and he was already at full saturation. So he moved as he should have in the first place.
There was no light here to step upon, though, and he certainly wasn’t getting anywhere near that flowing river of gentle glows ever again, so he made his own light by flooding power into his [Greater Lightwalk]. The only reason he didn’t turn fully to light and actually float away was because he was worried about [Lightshape]; the only true counter to an Elemental Body.
The cavern glowed brilliantly as Erick made his escape from tentacle and maw. He saw even more monsters in the revealed shadows, but luckily, the monsters also saw each other.
Erick couldn’t fight for shit in melee, but his second Script Second had arrived, so he turned on [Lodestar], and solidified his defenses as best he could. Now he turned fully to his sunform, since [Lightshape] was not a concern like this. This stopped the bleeding, and also made much of his pain go away. He was just in time to avoid three wrapping tentacles that tried to curl around his legs. Erick carved up that monster with manually cast blades of Light.
And then some massive shale-covered crab whipped a ten-meter arm out of its hiding hole, aiming for Erick from behind, only for Erick to slip around the grabbing claws. The attack struck the bleeding tendrils that Erick had cut, grabbing at the anemone-like thing buried in the ground and ripping it out. The arm folded back, drawing the morsel into a deathtrap mouth full of chitinous, shearing plates.
Screaming, roaring. Clashing and cracking. Monsters ate each other as fast as they could.
Erick had a surreal moment of wondering how in the heck these things lived so close to each other while they were always at war. There had obviously been an equilibrium before now, but then Erick showed up, and broke that equilibrium. How had such a ‘peace’ been able to happen at all? Did some unnatural force collect these monsters together?
But then again, this was the Worldly Path, so maybe some unnatural force was exactly responsible for this gathering of beasts.
After thinking that thought, everything made a bit more sense, except that, as his wherewithal came to him, Erick realized he had more important things to consider than ‘how did this happen’. He was in the middle of a massive melee of monsters, and he was very glad that his initial instinct not to fully lightform up had held, for the monsters were now throwing around invisible magics. A shadow wolf of bright red darkness grabbed a worm with [Stoneshape] and ripped it apart. Crabs threw clouds of shadow at beasts that attempted to be shadow, killing them instantly. Other magics here and there were less obvious. Anemones radiated fields of thorns that stuck into whatever was stupid enough to approach, making wounds and drawing blood. Lions of stone hunted in a pack, walking upon the wall like it was a floor, to rip through false-walls to gorge upon a fleshy toad/bat/blob hiding inside. Something made of rocks struck something made of water, and the water won, turning the rocks to mud and then spitting that mud out the side.
And then a shift came into the tunnel. Something moved deeper inside the walls. Erick watched as the stone walls buckled up here and there like a wyrm moving under desert sands, knocking loose boulders and bodies into the air. The boulders hovered out, stopping before they got too far, but the bodies and the monsters eating those bodies continued onward, into the mana stream. The corpses didn’t care about their new trajectory, but the living still did.
Some of the suddenly-frantic monsters were able to stop themselves from touching the stream, but the bodies continued onward to strike the thick, glowing air, and turn into more thick air themselves. Erick was glad he instinctively knew not to seek shelter in the mana stream.
—Something tried to eat him; suddenly everything was darkness and fangs pressing inward against his light. Erick turned the light to razorblades and shredded the monster, whatever it was. The fresh corpse painted the cavern floor—
The frantic, floating monsters knocked into the air by the worm managed to make it back to the tunnel walls, but the worm-thing was right under that part of the cavern wall, waving thin tendrils through the stone, into the air. The smaller monsters struck the invisible tentacles and the cavern walls opened, revealing rows upon rows of meter-long teeth. The vulnerable monsters ripped apart under the tentacles long before they entered that dark maw.
Except for the eating part, the sight strangely reminded Erick of when Jane popped the heads and legs off of her dolls. At least the worm-thing cleaned up after itself.
—The nearby 40 meter crab tried to swipe at Erick again, but this time the attack came with an oily sheen to it; magic, of some sort. Erick let the attack strike, for two reasons. First, Erick was finally fully present in the moment, and second, he needed to know how strong these monsters were against his standard defense.
The clawing crab arm struck Erick’s sunform, center mass, hitting his stabilized sphere of light like a hammer hitting an anvil. Light splashed away; sparks from a forge. Iridescent magic splashed away, too, like so much denied promise. The sound that entered the cavern from that attack was that of a spreading gong, but it was but one massive noise among many.
And now, another second had passed, and Erick was able to cast his next spell.
Ophiel rejoined Erick, and as the little guy suddenly screamed for joy, Erick had him cast [Greater Lightwalk], to prepare himself against the rest of the fight. As another [Strike] from the massive crab bounced away again, sending a splash of brilliance into the cavern that lit up everything in deep shadows, Erick allowed himself to briefly return to physicality to hug his [Familiar]. Renewed pain assaulted him, but the warmth from Ophiel was more than enough to make that go away. The little guy puttered against Erick’s bloody chest with happy chirps and welcoming trills.
Erick’s third through twelfth Script Seconds were spent summoning the rest of Ophiel, while Ophiel’s Script Seconds were spent getting him up to power. Erick returned to sunform and endured 32 attacks of various nature in that time. [Strike]s from crabs. A series of [Stone Javelin]s from the lion pack. A [Field of Blood Drinking Thorns] spread out from a nearby anemone that lived upon the giant crab’s right claw; apparently the thing didn’t eat every single anemone it came across, and this one worked together with the crab for some reason. The massive worm continued to undulate through the cavern, moving right along, interrupting fights, deciding the winners and losers of the various conflicts in a way that many combatants did not see coming.
The worm was directly on its way toward Erick, though; everything else was a target of opportunity.
Many of the larger beasts eventually noticed the worm’s obvious movements. Even the ineffective giant stone crab had stopped attacking Erick, for it saw the massive worm poking up closer and closer. Suddenly, the giant crab lifted up from the side of the cavern, displacing an area the size of the statue of liberty, and buried itself deeper, moving down, down through the stone like it was water, vanishing from the cavern and leaving trash to stick out of the wall it had vacated. The crab escaped with bare seconds to spare before the worm got there.
Erick sent out Ophiels left and right, each under their own sunform, toward the worm. The largest threat in the cavern looked to be much larger than it originally appeared, for as moments passed, more and more of the cavern walls bulked out with cutting tendrils and maws. It had to be ten kilometers long, or more, for almost half the cavern was filled with the exposed worm.
It had only taken 15 seconds from waking in this place to this happening. Life happened fast down here in the Underworld.
Erick sent an experimental sunform Ophiel out at one of the maws of the worm—
The tendrils went right through the sunform cutting with what had to be a Domain-empowered slice, carving Ophiel into eight misshapen pieces, breaking the [Familiar] like a sword would break a particularly soft feather.
Ah.
So it was like that.
Erick thought he felt a Domain from the worm; now he was sure.
Erick rapidly floated away from the encroaching monster, pushing his mana sense wide open. He raced down the cavern, trying to lightstep but feeling some awful sort of tug in the middle of the step, so he stopped that right away and simply moved through the light like a floating ghost—
He dodged left, and moved faster. The worm’s tentacled maw opened up where he would have been. Erick wasn’t trying to escape though; who knew what the fuck laid in wait down the way, or in the next cavern. He wasn’t trying to escape. He just needed time to understand.
Much more carefully this time, a sunform Ophiel stepped out of Erick’s light, into a nearby maw that held less tendrils than the others. Dodging like a pro, Ophiel turned off [Greater Lightwalk] and turned on [Fulmination Aura] at the same moment. Lightning ringed Ophiel like a great mandala, catching upon every nearby tentacle and illuminating the cavern with a splash of white lightning—
The attack did nothing as lightning danced away from Ophiel.
Less than a fraction of a second after the lightning show started, it ended, as Domain-tendrils sunk into the Ophiel and broke him, scattering white light across the air. There was a reflection going on, or maybe Erick fucked up using his Domain. Maybe both. Good thing his next Ophiel had [Animadversion] active.
While Erick spent his next Script Second summoning another Ophiel, to bring him back up to ten, he had the [Animadversion]-protected Ophiel flicker into a different maw, and try again. This time lightning flashed and reflected and flashed again. Erick focused on pushing his Domain against the worm’s—
It was like pushing against the surface of a pond that was fully frozen through, but the very act of pushing began to boil the frozen lake on the other side of the surface. One second. Two. Erick evaded an opening maw and worm’s resolve weakened—
In a single instant, the battle swung the other way. The worm’s Domain fractured and broke altogether.
Lightning sunk into the worm. Tentacles flash fried. The worm bucked under the cavern wall, shaking and breaking, sending boulders and otherwise lifting into the air as the worm tried to crack the stone world apart to get away. It succeeded in breaking the lightning-riddled portion of itself in half, instead. Erick had effectively cut the thing into two pieces, one side kilometers long, and the other only a few hundred meters long. Both sides fled into the depths of the cavern, moving away from the surface as rapidly as they could. Erick thought that they might be moving in two directions, but he had no idea. The thing rapidly left his mana sense range.
The danger wasn’t over.
Erick took a moment to cast his own [Animadversion]. The silver shield hovered around the holographic representation of his body, inside his own sunform. It wasn’t much use right now, but it might be useful later and the thing didn’t go away as long as he ‘held’ it.
The cavern rumbled and broke as it settled back into its new position.
Monsters came back out, and some of them were dumb enough to go after Erick.
He let loose a [Withering] into the cavern, Shaping it to exclude the manastream in the center of the space, layering the power into the surrounding land. Monster notifications did not start appearing. Instead, most everything either turned to stone and flowed through the ground to get away the very second they realized they were in danger, or they ignored the [Withering], because they were not made of water in the first place. The stone lions were in this second category.
The stone lions rushed toward Erick, aiming to eat the bright enemy who was good enough to mark himself as a target. The lions would have been cute if they weren’t each ten meters tall at the shoulder, with three meter wide heads and mouths to match.
Fuck this.
[Luminous Beam].
Solid light carved through stone lions and crabs and everything that couldn’t get away fast enough. Almost every monster here was over level 75, but a few of the larger ones, like the lions, were level 86. The worm that got away was likely very high level, but Erick had no hope of killing that thing unless he chased after it, and that wasn’t going to happen; he had very few spells that would work well underground, and he had no [Stone Body], either. No Stone Domain, anyway, so he wouldn’t want to put himself underground even if he had the capability to do so.
Erick let loose, killing absolutely everything that moved, eliminating every possible threat that he saw.
Clearing out the cavern only took a few minutes. But there wasn’t just one cavern! Oh no!
Some giant bat/lizard/darkness thing tried to enter into the cavern from the next one over, once it saw all the light, or maybe it heard all the noise, but Erick sliced that thing into pieces and set those pieces on fire. Such a monster would have had Erick shitting his pants two years ago, but now? It was just another bump in the road. He encountered some Domain resistance, but it was a weak Domain compared to the worm, and Erick had gained a lot of experience since Fallopolis so easily broke his Domain back at Last Shadow’s Feast.
Plus! Very few things could deal with [Luminous Beam] when paired with [Lodestar], and the Deepnight Crawler, as its Kill Notification said, was not much of an exception. It had been level 91, though. Erick’s Experience increased for the first time in months.
And the waves of monsters from the next cavern over kept coming.
Erick began methodically killing every single monster that came into the cavern—
Well. Ophiel did that. Sometimes a Domain monster would come along and Erick would have to help, but ‘kill every single monster coming this way’ was a very simple and easily executed instruction for Ophiel to follow, especially when every single living thing nearby was a monster.
Chimeras. Stone things. Crabs. Another tentacle maw worm, or perhaps the same worm as before; this one got away, too. Everything that didn’t flee, died.
When the larger monsters stopped coming, but before Erick had time to think about the deeper questions of ‘where was here’ and ‘how to get back home’, it was time to secure his person. The first order of business was not figuring out his missing left foot, or even healing it. Erick could live with a missing foot for a little while since there was no pain, since he was in sunform. The first thing to figure out was his backpack and his supplies…
But returning to physical form would mean a return to pain.
Erick ripped off the bandaid and transformed back into a person, cushioned in a sphere of Domain-controlled light. He winced hard as everything hurt, from his missing foot to his full-body scrapes and wounds. He spared a moment to look at his Status.
Full on Health, and full on Mana. Good. But the numbers were wrong. They were low.
This was because his rings were gone. Both hands were bloody and both rings were gone; lost to the flowing mana stream, or whatever. He still had his Crystal Star upon his chest, securely stuck to his inner set of clothes; thank the gods, or perhaps just Koyabez, for that. Erick spared a glance at the rainbow flow of thick air in the center of the cavern. He was still trying to understand what had happened when he was inside that, but there were other concerns at the moment. Besides, he still had a bit over 40,000 Regeneration for both Health and Mana, even without his rings granting +61 to every Stat.
Defending himself was more important than items at the moment. And speaking of defense.
Erick had an Ophiel expend himself to cast a [Prismatic Ward] around him, and around his immediate space. The effect of that dense air flowing across his body was like stepping into a comfortable home. The gentle rainbow glows of the cavern seemed less dangerous. The shadows all around seemed less dark. Erick dropped his own Meditation, and relaxed for a moment, because he finally could—
Some new monster came down the intake part of the cavern, looking like a mess of red ooze.
Ophiels turned it into evaporated ooze and [Cleanse]d away the shit that remained. The kill notification was for a ‘Crimson Blood Ooze’, and the thing was level 85, or something.
No true time to rest.
Probably wouldn’t be able to rest for a while.
Erick returned to sussing out his current predicament, dreading what he would find when he actually bothered to look inside his backpack. Of course, as soon as he had this thought, he was already looking with his mana sense.
The adamantium knife was still there, but this was likely only because it was strapped in tight so it didn’t accidentally cut anything. A spare copy of his rings was strapped into a small, very secured pouch right next to the knife. Erick breathed a sigh of relief at that; he could enchant a new pair of rings without much trouble. He even had some beans tucked in with the ring. Both were very nice to have. He didn’t want to even try making it [Exalted Rain] down here, so he was glad he did not have to do that to remake a ring from scratch, or to get food after 24 hours of rain.
Everything else was gone. No papers. No pens. No food. No canteen. Erick still had the backpack itself, though, and he could fill that with more stuff, so this was fine. The backpack was very messed up, though, so he cast a [Mend]—
The backpack did not change, at all.
… Erick tried to mend his clothes, but they remained torn, too.
Erick frowned. Time in the mana stream must have fucked up everything on his person…
His person had seen better days, too. Erick thanked the gods that Healing Magic worked off of something greater than the natural shape of the soul. The lacerations down his arms and across his face, and the ones that twisted around his left thigh all the way down to the… void where his foot should be…
It didn’t hurt that much, actually. Not as much as Erick thought it should. Perhaps Constitution dulled the pain to a manageable level. Poi did seem to think that Constitution made the world a softer place, and seeing this, Erick could agree with that statement. He wasn’t even bleeding that much, at all. Rozeta’s Recovery probably had something to do with his resilience, too. Having his Mana Regeneration apply to his Health Regeneration gave him over 40,000 Health Regen, which was supposedly comparable to a low-grade [Treat Wounds] active at all times. He had never needed to test that theory until now, so Erick was glad to self-report that this theory was likely true. As he floated there, he even watched as some of his larger wounds became slightly smaller wounds. Glancing into the manasphere of the past—
Ah. Another problem. The manasphere in here was seriously borked. Gazing even half a minute into the past or future showed more static than anything. That static all flowed toward the mana stream in the center of the room, so that neatly explained that. Erick ignored that part of his mana sense, for now.
His wounds were healing. But not fast enough. And there was another problem.
Erick looked at his foot, and barely recalled the injury which caused the missing limb. He had been inside the mana stream… or something. Yes; he had been inside the mana stream and it had moved like a rushing river, but… there had been a twist in the river, or maybe a turn, or maybe he had caught himself on a sudden rock that jutted out into the river...
He wasn’t quite sure what had happened there, actually. The result was obvious, though. Erick stared down at the twisted bone of his leg and saw the raw, wrapped and warped flesh around that bone. It was like his body had been turned to putty, or something, and then someone had grabbed the foot and twisted… Trying to pull…
Trying to pull him out of the stream? They grabbed him by the foot and pulled—
Erick shook his head as a minor headache threatened. His memories of the flow were shot to shit. Well. Whatever. The missing foot was a problem. Problems required solutions. He had [Regeneration] due to his time in Star Song, but this was a strange, magically induced injury. He didn’t want to simply [Regeneration] it.
So Erick cast a [Cleanse] over the broken lim—
Almost his entire leg, but mostly starting halfway down his thigh, turned into a mess of raw, twisted flesh and pitted bone and so much blood and—
Erick’s thoughts flared for a solution, and not a temporary fix like turning fully sunform would accomplish. He found a solution in what his daughter had once told him. With a cast and a twist, Erick [Polymorph]ed into a light slime, falling into his own shirt. He let his clothes fall away in his sudden relief as the pain of his twisted, wounded leg instantly vanished. After a moment of quietude Erick realized that he was now a plopping dollop of light with a shimmering white core, hovering in the center of his own sunform and [Prismatic Ward].
He looked a bit dim, though.
So he did as his daughter had suggested. He cast [Greater Treat Wounds] on himself, and just like how Jane had told him his slimy body expanded. He became brighter; more whole. Suddenly, everything felt better. All he wanted to do was hover right there in the middle of a battlefield of dead things and broken land—
Some monster came over the lip of the outflow part of the cavern. It had a Domain. Erick came back to himself and instantly helped Ophiel kill the offending crab/rock thing, which was apparently called a Greater Rockslide Crab according to the Kill Notification. It had been level 89.
Erick luxuriated in the glow of the—
He frowned, and not just because his single moment of peace was broken by more war, but because there was a much more serious problem happening. There were rads condensing inside his light slime form.
With this many clues, Erick realized why all the monsters were here, next to the mana stream. This area had not been ‘primed by the Worldly Path to fuck him over’. The monsters were here to ‘feed’ off of the thick air, or something. It wasn’t really ‘feeding’, but it was certainly ‘allowing themselves to be exposed to the thick, glowing mana, in order to grow their own cores to a large and powerful size’, or something.
Erick ripped the rad droplets out of his slimy body, feeling like utter shit as he did so. With another cast of [Polymorph] Erick transformed back into a person. His foot was still missing and the wound looked like he had stuck his leg in a grinder, but at least it didn’t look like it had been twisted off and the rest of his body wasn’t bleeding; healing himself as a slime had done wonders, but some of the injuries from before remained. Erick cast a [Greater Treat Wounds] on himself, hoping that that would be enough—
The foot remained gone, and now he had a clean stump.
“Well, shit.”
Erick prepared himself mentally, then he cut off the stump with a slice of light. He breathed deep, exhaling his pain, and then he cast [Regeneration] on himself. Slowly, surely, the flesh of his lower leg began to grow outward, and then he felt hungry. This was the upside and the downside to [Regeneration]; it could repair deeper damage, but it ate up the body’s natural resources by quite a bit. Not normally a problem, but Erick didn’t have any extra resources at the moment.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
He looked to his bag, still shredded, and his clothes, also shredded, as they floated underneath him, nearer to the wall. He was naked and nothing was okay. Erick sighed. Then he glanced back up at the mana stream above, and finished having another thought that had bugged him for the last four minutes, since he fell into this place.
“So you’re where all the thick air goes in a [Cleanse], eh.” Erick said to himself, “Kinda pretty.” He stared inward with his mana sense, then looked outward again, saying, “But I’m gonna turn into a monster if I’m exposed to you. Odd that it didn’t happen when I was actually inside of you, though.”
On a whim, he had an Ophiel grab the body of a dead crab and chuck it at the mana stream.
The body broke apart like a mana construct breaks, but with blood and viscera turning into motes of light and thick air, to flow along with the stream. Yup; that was the same.
Erick looked around. Some of the bodies were floating in the air, toward the stream, but there appeared to be a maximum rate of conversion, and Erick had hit that maximum in his very first minute of Beaming everything.
Time for a bigger break! Erick turned to the ground and cast an [Obscuring Redoubt]. The land shifted and twisted then deepened, before a door appeared, and then opened, creating the home like an automatically-deepening well. Erick took his stuff and went down inside the hole to get away from the light of the mana stream, bringing his own, purer light with him.
The very first thing he noticed, after he saw the darkness take a moment to leave the hole in the ground, was that gravity was funky. Every solid wall had some gravity to it, but not a whole lot. The gravity in the tunnel, toward the cavern wall was more than it was here, in this oddly cramped-feeling space. Here, Erick could give a tiny hop on the floor and slump toward the ceiling, which was a new floor.
Erick left the Redoubt, hopping back out into the cavern. He recast the Redoubt.
This time, the inside was better suited for the crazy gravity. Erick alighted on the floor, while the ceiling was a good five meters away. He hopped on his good leg, and came back down to the ‘ground’. The gravity here was weaker, for sure, but it was somewhat normal. A cast of [Prismatic Ward] from Ophiel made the place feel more like home, but Erick was sure not to use too many of those. Jane or Poi or Teressa, or any of them, really, might be staying in the [Prismatic Ward]s that he had left behind in Enduring Forge, and he wouldn’t want to strip them of their defenses. Maybe in a few days he would cast a few more [Prismatic Ward]s and those up there would automatically pop. That way they’d know he was alive. But. Eh. For now…
With a tug of light, Erick grabbed his stuff, then he got to fixing everything that was broken. Food came first, though, for he had passed ‘hungry’ a few minutes ago. He wasn’t starving yet, but he would be, and soon.
With a controlled application of [Duplication Aura] from Ophiel, three Erick Beans rapidly multiplied into a thousand, and then more. A rush of air rapidly flowed outward, alongside the outpour of white-striped lima-like beans. Erick caught the beans in his light.
Erick set them aside in a bowl of stone.
Water came next.
Finding water wasn’t all that hard. Ophiel went out and found a monster, and then cast [Purge Water] on the thing, killing it as well as harvesting its water. [Cleanse] removed half of that water —of course, this land was poisonous!— but this was fine. Ophiel brought the water back and [Duplication Aura] solved the water issue.
While simultaneously on high alert, and with Ophiel mana sensing the world around him and helping to cook with [Incandescent Aura], Erick killed a few monsters inside the walls before they got near him, and he made soup as fast as he possibly could. It was bland, but it was passable; it was safe calories. As he ate his second bowl the pangs in his stomach stopped being so insistent. As he ate his fourth, the stomach finally stopped. He could already tell he was going to get tired of beans.
He got out the spare ring and copied it. It looked good; the clear diamond interior was fully covered by the metallic shell. An All Stat lightmask came next. Erick scratched the surface of the rings to expose the clear diamond, shoved them into the lightmask, imbued the rings with manalight from all of his Stats, and then he [Mend]ed the rings back to whole. Good as new! Slipping those rings back on his fingers felt like casting off a weighted blanket.
Erick tried telling a joke to Ophiel, “The world seems about 62 points easier to understand.”
Ophiel chirped happily; he loved being included in conversations.
Repairing his pants and backpack took a bit more time, but he had the raw materials necessary to repair everything present, even if those fabrics and threads and leathers and clasps weren’t in the right places or in the right amounts. [Duplicate] solved resource problems and then [Fabricate] put everything back together.
Pants acquired! Erick shoved himself back into them and finally stopped being naked. His shoes were both gone, though, and his outer dress robe that he had worn to the party was similarly missing. Constitution made his feet rather tough, so maybe he didn’t need shoes? He could do without the dress robe, too, but he should have a shirt, at least, so Erick made himself a shirt.
“I’m probably going to lose them, anyway, Ophiel. The wrought live down here and they don’t wear clothes.”
Ophiel nodded. Those wrought certainly were exhibitionists, weren’t they.
“They are.” Erick nodded back, saying, “I could let it all hang out, too, but what if I meet someone I know?”
Ophiel chirped as though that would never happen.
“There’s Melemizargo, but he’s already seen everything.” Erick said, “And he’s everywhere, so he doesn’t count.”
Ophiel did not respond, except to form a few more eyes and look everywhere. Erick also waited for the Dragon God of Magic to appear, but nothing happened for a full 20 seconds, which was as long as Erick was willing to wait. The Dragon God of Magic must have been a bit shy, so Erick decided to let that dragon lie.
He saw at least one good thing about his surroundings, though. He said, “The mana stream is blocked by even a bit of rock, isn’t it? This is good. Means I can raise an umbrella of stone and walk out there… Or something. I’ll figure it out.”
Ophiel chirped in a scoffing sort of manner; it was dangerous out there! The mana stream was barely a worry compared to the monsters.
“It’s all dangerous, Ophiel.” Erick smiled at his [Familiar], saying, “Listen: I’m sorry about the sudden unsummon. I’m not sure how deep we are, but I left all of you behind, didn’t I? I should have accounted for that.”
Ophiel hopped over and plopped at Erick’s chest, hugging him tight. Erick laughed a little in small joys as he hugged Ophiel back, while Ophiel chirped and chirped. And then Ophiel turned small, and alighted on Erick’s shoulder.
Erick let him stay there while he [Fabricate]d himself a nice shirt and fixed up the backpack. Ophiel briefly fluttered away as Erick put on his clothes, but he rapidly fluttered back onto his designated spot when it was once again available.
“I wonder where Yggdrasil is,” Erick asked, not expecting an answer.
Ophiel chirped, not supplying an answer, either.
A thought occurred.
Erick said, “Well… We’re down here anyway. And I’ve never seen these mana streams, but if the mana streams were more prevalent then I would have heard of them before now… And the monsters here are level 90 at the highest. We might be near the Core, Ophiel.”
Ophiel chirped in agreement; he thought so, too.
“And if we’re near the Core, perhaps I can find a nice spot to plant Yggdrasil. And if I can do that, then perhaps that’s all there is to [Gate]; I just have to make the damned thing.” Erick said, “I’ve been meaning to practice Spatial Magic with him, anyway, so this is the perfect opportunity—”
In the rocks below, a quick-moving rat the size of a subway car rapidly rushed in Erick’s direction. Erick had an Ophiel in the walls, in small tunnels he had made all throughout the space, meet the rat head on and [Fulmination Aura] it to death. The rat’s body stopped moving. Stone crushed it down, and it joined all the others that Erick had killed in the last half hour.
He had briefly lost his focus on the danger while he was talking to Ophiel and fixing himself up.
That was bad.
“I can see how Darabella’s husband died— Ah.” Erick frowned. He looked to Ophiel. “Is it ten days later? Or did Goliro survive for a while down here? You don’t know the date, do you?”
Ophiel chirped a sad sound; he did not know the date and he was ashamed for his lack of knowledge.
“It’s okay, Ophiel. I didn’t think you did. Don’t worry about it, okay?”
Ophiel chirped; he wouldn’t worry.
Erick looked around his temporary room and decided it was time to go—
He decided, “It’s not time to go, yet.”
He put his backpack on the ground and went through everything he had. He fixed up some bean reserves by putting them in a small pocket to have for more copying later, while he also cooked up some more beans both to have a fifth bowl, and to have some later. To have some bean soup for later required a longer term solution than ‘holding the soup in his light’, though. First, Erick copied some rustless steel buttons from his pants, enough to make a hundred thousand of the little things. Then he used [Incandescent Aura] alongside [Metalshape] and [Cleanse] to burn away all impurities, as he Shaped the metal into a canteen that would comfortably fit into his backpack. [Duplicate] made a second canteen. One was for water. The other was for bean soup. After filling those containers and strapping them in he was mostly ready.
His regrowing foot looked like a baby’s foot stuck at the end of his full grown man’s leg, and it probably wasn’t going to get much better than that for a few hours. But that would have to do. There was one more thing to do, and then he was gone; back into the cavern.
Erick waited till the latest encroaching monster was dead, then he cast his daily [Personal Ward], using almost all of his mana. White light flickered across his skin, briefly flowing over the edges of his clothes. With over 150,000 defense in his [Personal Ward], this would have to be enough. Ten minutes later, his mana was filled. This was enough.
He was strong, and he was mostly healed, so it was time to go.
Erick exited his [Obscuring Redoubt], and heade—
“Ah.” Erick had an idea. “I could have used [Unmoving Stone] to protect my space from stone swimmers. Ah. Well. Next time.”
Erick briefly hated how fast things were moving, but this was the Underworld. And then he focused on the new thing that caught his attention. He glanced up at the mana stream, and also at himself.
He couldn’t quite tell what was happening, but his [Personal Ward] was obviously taking tiny bits of damage under the light of the mana stream. It flickered here and there with glowing glimmers every so often, and most of those glimmers were decidedly not the white of Erick’s own mana color. They were reds and greens and yellows and blues. Magenta and cyan. The colors of the prismatic mana stream.
And, it seemed, there were no more rads forming inside of him, as they did before. Perhaps having a monster form sped up the process, but it would make sense for the process to still occur if he was a person.
… Whatever! He’d keep an eye on himself for the presence of rads.
Glancing upward, the river flowed from right to left…
Erick said to Ophiel, “I wasn’t sure before, but that thing is 100% the [Cleanse]s of everyone up above, which might mean that this tunnel has to be one of millions of such tunnels. What do you think?”
Ophiel agreed with a happy chirp.
Erick nodded, and began heading left, following under the stream. “So let’s go see the Core, wherever it might be—”
A crab burst out of the wall ahead. It was twenty meters tall and bloody red.
Erick killed it with a [Luminous Beam].
And then he walked on, his feet not touching the ground as his sunform glowed all around him. He did not lightstep, but he did walk upon his own light, above the stone below. Maybe later he would attempt a lightstep, but...
Hunks and masses of dead crab began to float away from the cavern wall, into the mana stream, to become one with the glows therein. Flesh and filth seemed drawn to the stream, to become mana. But the broken rock kicked up in the fights had the exact opposite reaction; they sank away from the stream, back to the cavern wall, where they melded with the cavern.
All around, the dead became thick, glowing air, and stone returned to the cavern wall. Back behind him, after Erick stripped the spellwork holding together his [Obscuring Redoubt] the stone began to fold in on itself, as the dead monsters inside the walls were pulled out of the walls, into the cavern as the stone expanded, filling in like it was made of rising dough—
“Ah. Not good, Ophiel.” Erick said, “I’m starting to want bread! Maybe some of these monsters are tasty, but… Whatever happens, this isn’t going to be comfortable…” He stared at the glowing lights above, while he simultaneously watched from the eyes of four different Ophiel as they killed another four monsters.
He leveled to 91.
Erick shrugged. “This is fine.”
Ophiel twittered in happy agreement.
He walked down the cavern, stepping on the light he made, but not lightstepping; not yet.
- - - -
It was time to try lightstepping; this walk was going to take way too long otherwise.
Erick took a tiny lightstep forward, planning to go only half a meter. He ended up doing that, but he also ended up a meter closer to the mana stream.
All experiments with lightstepping to make this journey shorter suddenly ended; just like that. Erick was not going to fall into that stream a second time.
So he simply walked as a normal person would, upon the air.
He did a few experiments as he walked, just to see what he could get away with if he needed to do something drastic.
Gravity pointed toward the cavern wall. Large expenditures of magic pulled him toward the stream. An Ophiel extended their [Domain of the Withering Slime] into the cavern, easily reaching the mana stream only kilometers away, and was promptly sucked into the mana stream. Good news: Ophiel lasted 20 seconds in the stream. Bad news: he was not able to get out before the thick, glowing air tore him apart.
“Gravity pulls us to the stone,” Erick said, “But magic pulls us into the stream. Good to know.”
Ophiel chirped in recognition of these wise words.
“I was going to try for an aura of [Unmoving Stone] so that these monsters couldn’t crawl out at us all the time, but I can save that for later.” Erick said, “Maybe this cavern expands further down. Veins are like that, after all, and this seems like a vein to me.”
And so, he walked, with the stream of glowing, thick air leading the way overhead, flowing forward and down,
down,
down,
down….
- - - -
The 5 kilometer wide cavern joined to another cavern of roughly the same size, both heading in the same-ish direction, connecting to a third cavern that was the combined size of the other two. The new cavern might have only been 7 kilometers wide, while the kilometer-wide stream of glowing, thick air was only marginally bigger, but this place was bigger, for sure.
“The [Cleanse] streams operate like veins, then,” Erick decided.
Ophiel agreed with a chirp.
Erick gazed upward at the joining of two ethereal rivers, his own [Personal Ward] glittering with reflected rainbows, as Ophiels murdered every single attacking thing all around. The murdering of local wildlife had not stopped, all this time, on the entire walk to get here. Erick gained a lot of experience in crushing opposing Domains, while also gaining a lot of Experience, too.
He was now level 92. Most of the monsters didn’t budge his Status at all, but some of them did, and when they did, it was noticeable.
Erick took a little while to clear the monsters of this juncture of the mana stream, murdering absolutely everything while he enjoyed the sight of the flowing, glowing thick air above. He wondered what the locals called it, and then wondered if there were locals, and where they might be, if they existed at all. There had to be wrought locals, right?
Right.
His foot was fully healed now; it had been hours, after all. Erick experimentally stepped down onto the stone, directly, testing the foot out. It felt fine. It flexed fine, too. It was probably good to go.
Erick stepped back into the air and resumed his walk.
This time, with the mana stream being an extra kilometer away, Erick could actually lightstep a bit. It wasn’t what he was used to, but it was something. It was an increase in speed if nothing else.
- - - -
Erick pulled his canteen of bean water out of his bag and frowned before he even opened the cap. Something had happened while he was walking and now—
Yup.
Erick held open the container and watched with both his eyes and his mana sense as the green bean water began to rapidly solidify all at once, supersaturated ice forming out of the soup. The metal container popped a seam, spurting green crystals out of the crack, while a cylinder of green solids rose out of the opening.
And then the whole thing sludged over in muck and goo.
Erick had to check the history of the manasphere to understand what he had seen. In one flickering second, thick air had gathered around the whole container, and then became something thicker than air. Back in the present, Erick held a baby slime with a bean water canteen as its core.
The slime slapped at Erick’s arm like a crawling puppy, trying to get away, or to eat him, Erick wasn’t sure. Probably both.
Erick used his sunform and broke the core out of the canteen while also breaking the slime in the process. As fast as the monster had been born, it was now dead, and transforming back into thick air along with the fragments of its ‘core’.
He grabbed his water canteen and this time he didn’t let the slime fully form, ripping the nascent core out of the metal container before it could get too large. This one, Erick set it down on the ground, near the remnants of its beany cousin. That slime finished being born, but Erick doubted it would survive for very long once he left this cavern behind. There was no need to kill it, whatever the case.
Erick gazed out at the shadowy, rainbow landscape, and at the Ophiels flying all around in their sunforms, killing every monster they saw.
“… It is an awful lot of killing,” Erick said. “I can see why Goliro died. He would have tried to run, though, right? Not many people are strong enough to survive down here.”
Ophiel chirped; running is always an option.
“Ah. Well. He might have been able to get away. Doubt that, though. A Spatial Mage down here? Where Spatial Magic doesn’t work? Hmm.”
Another chirp; maybe he was killed instantly, then.
“Then that would mean we were stuck in that mana stream for ten days, and I really don’t think we were under there for that long.”
Chirp chirp; no way to know!
“You’re right; we don’t know. Can’t know until we get out of here, either.” Erick said, “We were at least in that stream for a day, though. My [Personal Ward] was gone.”
Ophiel chirped.
Erick walked on, only now, he had a temporary goal: the search for water.
He fulfilled that goal in thirty seconds upon finding a plant monster and having Ophiel purge it of all water. Repairing and cleaning out the canteen was easy enough, too. The water wouldn’t last forever without turning into a slime, but that was fine.
- - - -
“I’m rather sure I’m walking at a speed of 25 kilometers per hour, what with the light letting me move faster, and all.” Erick added, “But I’m definitely walking.”
Ophiel chirped.
“Maybe more like flying; you’re right.” Erick nodded. “And you can’t fly too fast, either, or you get sucked into the mana stream. So both of us are just going a bit faster than normal.” He continued, “I’m no perfect judge of distance, but I think we’ve gone 250 kilometers. Maybe a bit more. Maybe less.”
Ophiel chirped; agreeing.
“And the tunnel is the same since that junction back there.” Erick said, “No side routes, all this time, either. Only forward, or back.”
Ophiel chirp-chirped. Time for a break?
Erick said, “I haven’t seen any good places to stop.”
Ophiel mournfully chirped. He hadn’t seen any, either.
“Not your fault, but if this continues on much longer then I’m going to have to make a space to rest.” Erick said, “Probably going to have to do that anyway—”
Yet another monster roared in the distance, charging over a crest in a distant bend in the tunnel, like the bend was a wave, moving half in the wall and half out like a stadium-sized shark in an ocean of stone. Ophiel moved to intercept before it got too close, lighting up the beast with [Luminous Beam]s and [Fulmination Aura]s, and then requesting, and receiving Erick’s help when the landshark proved to have a Domain of its own.
Fried landshark soon began to dissipate into the thick air, while the crater it left behind began to flow back together.
Erick told Ophiel, “We’ll walk for a full day, then stop to rest.”
- - - -
The cavern joined to another cavern, and the two continued on together heading down.
The two mana streams also joined, forming a river in the sky of thick air and flowing glows. Referring to that space above as ‘in the sky’ was very much incorrect, but the diameter of the cavern was nearly 10 kilometers across —or maybe even eleven at its widest points— while the diameter of the stream was at least a kilometer wide. This meant there was about four kilometers of open air between the wall and the flow above. Erick remained near the wall, of course. He did manage to increase his pace a bit from an estimated 25 kilometers per hour, to 35, though. He could have gone faster, but then he ran into another problem.
There were still monsters down here, Erick was still the brightest thing this land had seen in a very long time, and thus, they all wanted a piece of him. But one and all, every monster ended up with facefulls of light, or lightning. They joined all the rest who thought to test his power.
After a particularly tough vine-like monster blossomed out of the walls and tried to eat him, Erick killed it instead, and reached level 93. He also decided that he was far enough out of the manastream to attempt the creation of a new spell, which turned out exactly as he wanted.
Aura of Unmoving Stone, instant, super large area, 1 mana per second
Lull the land to slumber!
Nothing came out of the walls after an Ophiel started running that nifty little massive spell, and with that taken care of, Erick now had time to send his sight further outward, to see the other battles taking place everywhere out there in the deeper, rainbow-lit shadows.
Erick wasn’t the only one fighting for dominance all around, but he was certainly one of the brightest. Spells sparked here and there in the prismatic dark, while Erick’s light lit up his small portion of the world, and not much more. A lot of those distant battles stopped when Erick came close enough, though, with many of the monsters who had been trying to kill each other both going after him, instead.
Lizards the size of apartment buildings, covered in blackened, craggy lava scales.
Wolves made of glass and cutting shadows, or ooze and mist, each one the size of a semi truck, working in small packs, or pairs. Not too many pack-animals out there, but there were certainly some.
A massive stone elemental made of silver metal—
That one caught Erick’s eye.
The metal elemental shimmered like a polished thing of flowing silver light, brighter than anything down here had any right to be (or maybe the thing was simply reflecting Erick’s own light), but at 20 meters tall and moving like an animated tumbleweed, it certainly fit with all the other monsters Erick saw. A problem occurred, though, when Erick engaged the elemental. [Luminous Beam] did not solve the problem of this encroaching, now-screaming monster. Erick supposed that Particle Light didn’t work too well against the pure metallic construct, but he had eleven possible sources of [Luminous Beam], and he had only tried one.
It took seven [Luminous Beam]s and four seconds of concentrated fire to kill the thing.
As they say, if violence doesn’t solve the problem, then you’re not using enough.
… Which was a rather abhorrent thing to think about, but Erick recognized where he was, and what was required of him to survive this mess. Different times require different solutions, after all.
Anyway.
The Kill Notification declared the monster an Abyssal Steel Elemental, but Erick wanted to know if it was steel, or actually platinum, since there was some Shenanigans going on with that particular naming scheme; thank you, Headmaster, for that. Erick had time to check, too, for the scattered, dead monster was not vanishing into the manastream. The various melted and splattered pieces of the elemental were flowing back into the cavern walls. Maybe in centuries they would become a vein of metal for some intrepid miner to find.
Erick grabbed some of the rapidly disappearing body, though, before it got too far.
A quick series of Particle spells sussed out that the ‘steel’ monster was actually platinum, and of an odd variety, but [Incandescent Aura] killed the Elemental Abyssal inside the metal. Well. Whatever! Erick could imbue his own magic, later, if necessary, and he was starting to think that it would be necessary. He had plans for runework and [Renew], perhaps after he found a place to plant Yggdrasil, so a bit of platinum would come in handy. Thank you, Worldly Path.
Erick stuffed some platinum pieces into his backpack.
And he continued walking.
The fighting only got worse.
- - - -
Erick occasionally stopped for twenty minutes here or there, to open up a hole in the side of the cavern to protect himself while he made some food and gathered some water. Occasionally, he found a particularly healthy, meaty monster specimen, but a quick check with [Cleanse] always erased the whole monster, revealing that the whole thing was poison to him, or something.
Oh well.
Beans were fine.
- - - -
White light flashed across Erick’s skin.
He paused. He stared at his arm—
“Oh. My [Personal Ward] is gone.” Erick glanced around, and since he was mostly safe at the moment he recast the spell, draining almost all of his mana in the process. With a half shrug using the shoulder Ophiel was not occupying, he said, “That’s 24 hours.”
Ophiel chirped. He was doing fine.
“I’m doing fine, too.”
Erick kept walking.