Sorry for the delay, made more than a few cuts and edits to this chapter... including the title... and most everything below it.
Change/add-on list:
-Tina is now Nina… it sounds better, but it is also because my hands keep typing N instead of T… Just remember her as the Healer and it should be fine, I apologize for any confusion regarding this.
IMPORTANT:
-The more I think about Gía the less I find it appropriate to the story. As a result, I may or may not remove it soon. If I decide to keep it around until the rewrite, that is one thing, but I do not think that it will last beyond that point. It will stay for now though, because the only thing I could do to replace it would be giving DeMorte a berserk spell that would tear apart his muscles, which DeMorte could then heal back to full health.
Additional notes:
-When I say something in mana resistant, I mean that it actively blocks the movement of mana. Iron filters spell instruction because it is extremely mana conductive, not because it is mana resistant. If you hit a ball of iron with pure mana it will barely move as the mana passes through it, but if you hit a ball something mana resistant with mana it might roll or be blown away based on weight.
Chapter 33: Personality
“Pink-Souled, unacknowledged, ugly, old...”
I did not stop walking as I called back. “I understand what unacknowledged and the rest mean, but what is a ‘Pink-soul?’ Also,” I glanced back at the rude young fool who had been speaking, “given the fact that I am using an illusion spell you really should not comment on my appearance.”
The young mage blushed and tried to give a response, but his stammering was too annoying, so I ignored it instead of interpreting it and humiliating him further.
You really do have a gift for making friends.
I am not here to make friends Bella, but I do feel obligated to point out that he actually does need to learn to watch his mouth. Just because he cannot see a spell, does not mean one is not active and running his mouth like that, assuming that someone cannot hear you is extremely dangerous.
That is your excuse?
Who said I needed an excuse? You commented and I commented back.
“You really are rude you know that?” Healer Nina addressed me from beside me. We had been walking together near the front of the group so that she could keep an eye on me and I could ask her some questions about the dungeon.
“Apparently I am also a pink-soul, whatever that is, as well as ugly and old.” I retorted. Nina was determined to find fault in almost everything I did or said. So far the only thing that she had not admonished me on was the way I quickly killed anything that came within a certain distance of the group. Although that had not stopped some sarcastic comments about how good at it I was.
Nina glanced back at the young man and shook her head. “He was not right to say that, but you could have responded better.”
“I also could have castrated him. I chose to admonish him in my way and not yours because I feel no need for such diplomacy. All I did was give him some spellwork advice and now he is complaining instead of adapting to it. Not that it will matter for long, we should be at the village before long.”
Healer Nina stepped closer, the woman had no sense of boundaries, “and how do you know that? You seem to be completely unfamiliar with even the basics of the dungeon, yet you know its layout quite well. Gods, you even tried to eat a dungeon monster.” She shook her head.
It turns out that monsters and creatures inside the dungeon eroded away or something, even if they were in your stomach at the time. I had not had any problems myself, but I had directly absorbed what I needed the monsters I killed instead of harvesting them. I could actually be preventing the dungeon from absorbing it back because of how suppress I was keeping my own mana, but that was just speculation, I would need time by myself to test it out.
I stepped a little farther away from her. “I am just tracking the mana it is absorbing, it is slowly getting thicker as we get closer to the next floor, where it will change again as we go down to the next floor.”
She stared at me, in fact the SRMs also glanced back at me, but Nina was the only one who spoke, “You can actually sense the increase in mana density as we are traveling through the floor?”
I nodded, some people were sensitive to such things and I had been carefully tracking it since I entered the dungeon so it had become obvious to me. “You could make a few spells to test it yourself if you like, but it is easy enough for me to feel it.”
There was a lull in the conversation as we kept walking around this maze of a floor. Even if we were taking the shortest way out by this point we had still walked several kilometers and for some reason had run into a half-dozen different creatures that attacked us.
It might have something to do with the alleged gestalt consciousness.
Possibly, but I still have a hard time believing that the idea that the monsters are able to share their thought though.
“What would you do when we get to the village?” It was Nina again, stepping close enough that I could decapitate her without fully extending my arm. I tried not to let my hands drift to my swords, but her proximity was an aggravation I did not need.
“Sleep, eat, and rest before I continue to floor 23.” I lied easily, having changed my plans one I learned of the special path that was on each boss floor. The ‘boss floors,’ as the SRMs called them, had a special path that went parallel to the entrance you came in from and served as a fast way back to the 1st floor.
Regretfully, this meant that I was almost guaranteed a rough exit from the dungeon, but it did mean that I would not have to force my way back through multiple layers of reinforced mercenary positions. The path was also only worked one way and apparently anyone who tried to take one of the paths down instead was never seen again.
“That is fine, but what will you do if one of the guards decides not to let you in without your adventurer’s identification.”
“If he, assuming it is a male guard, tries to stop me and no one can convince him to let me pass without identification then…” I let an iron knife fall into my hand and smoothly put it against her throat before she could react. Of course, she gave a small squeak at the touch of the iron and jumped back quickly, drawing everyone attention. “I would put one of my knives inside of him and force my way past.” I finished, hiding my knife up my sleeve again.
I had to hold the knife up high, at an odd angle because of the difference in height between the illusion spell and my real height. Though some of the more observant people had likely guessed how tall I really was. It was annoying, but as far as I knew, Nina had not told anyone about what I really looked like, likely because of the reaction it would provoke. Someone as talented and young looking as I was in my current body, combined with my elf ears, would earn me even more animosity…
Although as long as my identity as Set was safe I felt that it was a justifiable risk to have those ears again. Especially if the guards compromised and promise to let me into the village after I got rid of the spell. Elf ears and an all-to-youthful appearance would not appeal to their superstitious side, but it would let them understand why I might want to keep my appearance hidden.
“You crazy-”
I whipped around and stared at Nina, daring her to finish that statement, standing still and focusing my attention completely on her. She flinched and shut up, so I did not let my killing intent leek out, despite the fact that I wanted too. This stoning woman had been continuously stepping on almost every pet peeve I had and I only had so much patience, adding that level of an insult was enough to make me wonder if it was worth the effort to even be this friendly.
Bunnies.
What?
Bunnies and flowers and fish and candles and books.
What are you stoning talking about Bella?
If I told you to calm down, would it work?
What are you…? Oh fine, fair enough, but we both heard that chime or whatever it was, neither of us are crazy and I do not appreciate any ideas to the contrary. Besides, we might really be in some trouble if what they said was true and the dungeon only does that for certain people.
Look at the bright side, it is just something else to explore and research while we are in this place.
The problem Bella, is that I do not think that we can investigate this place by ourselves. We would need at least a few reliable mages behind us and weeks of supplies to thoroughly investigate it.
Then we should leave and come back with help to thoroughly investigate this place.
We can… after we get the fungi from the 29th floor, like I agreed to.
I took a deep breath and let it out, concentrating on the current moment and the scared little leaf in front of me. “I would really appreciate it if you watch your mouth.” I stated in the calmest voice I could manage. “You have already demonstrated your low opinion of me that remained from the first time we met. I do not need to hear your insulting opinions simply because I answered a question a question in a way that you did not like.
Though if you finally learn to give me an arm’s length of space, feel free to insult me some more, I added mentally. I took this opportunity to glance at the mages in training around her. Most of them were scared of me by now, primarily because of my personality, but also for my skills.
Not that I could blame them too much for that as I was easily killing the things that would give them a lot of trouble and then I yelled at them fairly aggressively for their ridiculously slow spells. What I could blame them for was dragging me down with their borderline incompetence.
Stones, it took the fastest student here so long to cast a basic stun spell that I could have killed most of that student’s friends with only an iron pipe before they finished the spell, which I would likely dodge before killing them. It was just one more thing to add to the long list of things that got on my nerves in this place and no one had taken it well when I accused their teachers of incompetence.
Apparently, no one had the sense to tell either them or the SRMs that there were faster and easier ways to accomplish their tasks, so I had caught them completely off guard with my more aggressive fighting style. While the novice mages in this group were being ‘taught’ by being held in the rear and ordered to look for opening before attacking with their magic.
“Alright then, we better get moving again, almost there people!” I called, turning around and doing just that. The SRMs who were in front of me previously seemed happy enough to let me take the lead, knowing that I could protect them fairly well as long as they did not get in my way.
When I attacked, I tried to close the distance by habit before using both my Gía enhanced reactions and my various weapons to quickly kill any creature that got in our way. Though I did keep my use of Gía as low as I could, I was more interested in getting to the village than I was in conserving myself. Even I could use pure spells or brute force to break through any magical defenses instead, but that would have been a waste of calories in my opinion.
The SRMs, in comparison, stuck with their system of carefully killing the creatures with minimal casualties and in the best way to ensure that they could harvest the corpse afterwards. It was a fairly safe method, but slow and even the mages among them tended not to use magic to kill, but to protect themselves, resulting in a totally defensive mindset.
I honestly tried not to give them too much grief about that particular topic though as changing their way of fighting on the spot would be much more dangerous than staying with their current method. That said, I did enjoy lecturing them about practicing a more practical system for when they were not harvesting.
I did not confirm it with them, but I got the idea that they had never gone past this Village place, so this was the first time that these SRMs had descended into the dungeon without collecting at least something from the corpses that they killed.
The novice mages though were a bit annoying and completely absurd to me. They could cast spells while there was fighting going on, but they were fairly easily distracted unless they ignored the fight altogether. This created a problem when we fought a group of 3 goat-cows and I nearly got hit by a flurry of stun spells after I killed one of the creatures and moved onto another. The novices had not realized that I had already killed one and were trying to ‘help’ with the other.
As some of the SRM escorts were mages too I tried to have them talk to the novices, but they seemed more interested in proving that they were better than me.
It was all… barely comprehensible to me. I had grown up in the wilderness of a completely different type of world, so I could only guess at the explanations. Their school had apparently been a place to raise battlefield mages and they were being trained to those standards. I had seen it in one form or another in my previous life, but that was only while I was an unknown or while I was underestimated.
Apparently, because most battles in this world were between ‘civilized people’ they were decided at a distance. Large shields were formed to protect the armies and they hammered away at one another’s shields until they were broken and the side that lost their shields quickly surrendered. Therefore the first thing that all magical students learned was to always cast a spell that worked, as using anything other than a perfectly understood, systematic based, spell could cause a massive failure if you joined with other mages to cast that spell.
If I had been a bit more diplomatic when I realized that they had been trained for a joining instead of individual action, they might not dislike me so much right now. Instead, I had found it so absurd, that I had laughed in their faces at what I considered the most foolish thing imaginable. I had literally practiced singing, dancing, and sword moves while learning to cast spells in this body, so the idea that anyone would be better prepared to act with others than by themselves was almost insane to me.
‘Joining’ was, all sex jokes aside, something I was unfamiliar, but I knew some basic things from having seen it in action. Basically, in my opinion, it was a giant risk that put half of your most powerful mages in a position where one misstep would effectively remove them from the rest of the fight. The joining would leave the mages with the combined power of every mage who participated, while making them completely connected and dependent on each other, which was a powerful and useful weapon… unless your opponent fought by throwing large pieces of iron ore at one or more of your mages.
The fact that they were not trusted enough to even be taught how to participate in a joining was another thing to think about. While I could not fault that particular piece of ignorance, as I likely trusted them even less than their teachers did, I did find it strange that they sent anyone through the dungeon like this.
Maybe this particular group of the students had insulted their teacher once too often, but even then it was a dangerous proposition. The most reasonable explanation that I could come up with was that their teachers had sent these brats in here to emphasize to them that they were not ready for the real world.
Throwing that theory out to the novices had solidified me as their enemy. However, they did not truly fear me until after someone fired a small prank spell in the middle of a fight with some giant 6 legged bug. I showed them a bit of killing intent in retaliation and now most of them thought that I was going to go crazy soon and was barely holding myself back from tearing them apart…
I had not helped things by educating them on the difference between bloodlust and killing intent, after one young lady ran her mouth a bit too much.
In the end it came down to the fact that I was not going to be associating myself with them for very long. Even if we met in the future, it was more likely that we would meet as enemies and I preferred for them to fear me. Fear carried a recognition of danger and I would rather leave fear behind me than respect.
Even before Anton taught me, I knew that memories changed over time and in my case, fear was much more easily perpetuated than respect.
Out of the whole group there was only one person I had any real hope for and that Alfred was more curious than he was powerful, so I had to give him special advice about watching himself and being careful that his curiosity did not get him into more trouble. I think the advice fell on deaf ears, but I tried anyway.
As we were more or less walking in silence I finally saw what looked like a freaking stone wall a few hundred meters in front of me. It was not a solid, well created thing, like a city wall was, but it looked fairly thick and had thick iron spikes, not unlike my own, sticking out of it. It was also fairly short, only about a meter and a half high, but that was enough apparently. There was a gate with half a dozen SRMs patrolling in front of it.
Given how hard the walls of the dungeon were, I could only assume that they actually brought the stone in from the outside of the dungeon. “Finally here,” I muttered, now it was up to Nina’s sense of honor and should that fail, my brutality.
I turned back to tell everyone when I heard a roar from behind us, several actually. Before I could ask the SRMs to identify it they all started shouting at once, with their voices merging into a one general meaning: “Run!”
I let the students get hurried by Nina and the pair of SRMs who lagged behind to motivate the novices along. The others had already sprinted ahead, shouting something at the stone wall.
I had yet to see anything particularly impressive in the dungeon so I let them all pass and brought up the rear. I also took the opportunity to glace back periodically until the things chasing us came into view.
There were several very large cats, bigger than an average human was, but not quite as tall, with snake headed tails that swung wildly behind them. The leader of the pack also had something that looked like a crown of fur behind his head. I counted nearly a dozen as I cast a stun spell at the front of the group and was vaguely surprised when it broke over their fur.
A pack hunting creature that was resistant to mana? Interesting, but hardly a challenge that should be able to scare even slightly experienced mercenaries, much less ones that had mages with them. The problem remained the same after all, it did not matter how mana resistant a creature was, if you burned it with a fireball.
I drained far more mana than I should have, but I formed a trio of fireballs about a meter in diameter if I lined them all up together and sent them at the rapidly gaining creatures. They dodged easily, except for one, who was hit when one of his pack members jumped out of the way late. Though the fireball did not seem to especially slow the creature as it burst across the hybrid monstrosity’s side.
Interesting, but annoying, I thought to myself, glancing back at the wall in the distance, the sprinters were halfway there already and the guard were currently in a buzz as they saw what was chasing us.
I still did not get why they were so dangerous though, since I was trailing the group, I would find out soon enough.
I dropped my personal equipment started to reshape my bone armor into a pair of thick sword and turned around, stopping to face the oncoming pack without complaint. It was part of our deal and I wanted to keep as many of them safe as possible.
I crouched down and channeled my Gía as the pack leader closed the distance. To my surprise though, the leader and the rest of the pack tried to run around me.
It was not hard to stop them, especially with Gía, but it still worried me as I launched into the pack leader’s side and stabbed into his flank. The death spell ran down my sword easily enough and killed the pack leader, but I was already slashing at another creature with my other sword, even as I fought to withdraw my sword from the current leader.
The second creature went down as I shot another death spell down my sword into its eye as I slashed the creature’s face.
Then, my illusion was destroyed by something, if took me a moment to figure it out, but the snake tails were spiting some sort of liquid at me.
It was likely something venomous, which would finally explain why everyone was so worried. Fast, Mana resistant, hunts in packs, and spits venom from its tail, these things were quite dangerous to the unprepared.
Knowing what to look out for made it easier to dodge the venom attack, so I was not too worried, but I still had to deal with 10 tails, all spiting what I was presuming to be venom. Even being careful as I ripped my first sword out of the former pack leader, I was not sure if I could avoid everything.
As a result I made a snap decision and dove under one of the creatures that was trying to run around me, cutting into its belly and sending another death spell through my sword while I did so.
I came back up on the outside of the pack and found a glob of liquid flying at at my face, as I dodged, 3 of the creatures started to stop relatively slowly. I launched myself at them as fast as I could, but their tails were spiting whenever they swung in my direction, so I had to dodge slightly off to the side before I could move forward.
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The 6 creatures that ignored me charged at the student who were lagging behind. I had barely slowed them down, which annoyed me a fair bit.
I pushed myself off the hard dungeon floor and reformed one of my swords into a shield, while I slammed into the closest creature and killed it with another death spell. Instead of launching at the others though, I used mana roots on the corpse and absorbed some of it as I shot a few death spells at the snake tails that were trying to spit at me again.
Only a single death spell hit the tail, but that one landed while the snake head was open and it killed the creature instantly. Fortunately, the last one felt the need to turn around and roar at me, giving me the perfect opportunity to kill it… Though I swore I felt… no, concentrate.
I launched a death spell down its throat and killed the creature mid-roar, before cancelling mana roots and looking up at the rest of the pack. Unlike what I knew of other packs, these creatures had ignored their pack members being ripped apart.
I wondered if that was because of the nature of the dungeon, or something else, while I gathered and managed my Gía. It would be hard not to over shoot the landing if I went for pure speed and I needed to get a good stance to control my launch direction. They were a good two dozen meters away at least and I wanted to deal with those annoying snake-headed-tails as little as possible.
The creatures were just reaching the stragglers when Nina, to my great surprise, stepped back to kick the closest creature with a fair bit of Gía behind the blow. The kick caught one of the creatures in the chest and caused the chest to seemingly cave in before its momentum knocked her onto her back.
As she started falling though, I knew that there was not much time and instinctively threw enough Gía into my jump that I flew across the floor. I barely had time to make sure I had a death spell prepared before I stopped by slamming into the side of one of the creatures with my bone shield.
Given the forces involved, I was happy when only my shoulder was dislocated, but the pain was something of a distraction as I experience it with my enhanced perception of time. I still managed to get sword into position though and sent my spell into the small wound in the creature’s side.
By that time another of the creatures had already leaped at Nina and was mauling her, while the other 4 had turned to look at me. Naturally there was a volley of venom that I managed to keep out of my eyes with my shield, but a few splashes landed on my robe, with a bit reaching my clavicle.
I charged and slashed the snake tail of the nearest creature, barely missing as it turned around to try and lunge at me, but I simple gave its face a nice new scar instead, followed by another death spell.
Nina, still alive apparently, managed to give off a pair of huge blasts of pure mana while I was doing this, killing at least the creature that was actively mauling her, although the other might have already been dead by this point.
I felt a numbness trying to spread out from my clavicle as I took on the last 2 creatures, with both making the foolish choice to dive at me. I simply tilted my shield towards the creature nearest to it while ignoring my shoulder and slashed at the other with my sword. The creature I slashed at was just outside of my range so I lengthened the sword just enough to draw a thin line of blood across its face. I wanted to follow that up with another death spell, but the creature flinched and let its friend take the lead instead.
My shield was knocked out of the way by a large paw and I ended up shooting a death spell down the creature’s mouth as I took a small skip back and dodged the falling corpse.
The last creature did not deserve much thought so I simply dodged a blast of venom and gave it a death spell in the eye as I went to check on Nina, who seemed to be trying to heal herself at the moment.
Given the large blasts of mana she gave off earlier, I found myself wondering if my previous impression of her was incorrect. I thought that she might have been fairly weak, with perhaps 5 or 5 circles worth of magic, with bad mana control outside of healing, but now I found myself revising that.
From what I could now feel it seemed like she was actually stronger, magically speaking, than myself, around 13 circles or so. Though I was partially correct about her mana control, as, judging by the massive amount of mana she seemed to be using, she was all or nothing person when it came to magic. They were rare, but occasionally there were people who simply could not control their magic well and they were more of a danger to themselves than anyone else.
I walked over to her and rolled the dead creatures off of her while also taking the liberty of using mana roots to feed myself. I used my death spells fairly efficiently, but they still made me hungry. “You okay?”
Nina did not reply as the wounds on her face and arms seemed to slowly close up. I gave her a moment, but she still said nothing so I simply took my fill with mana roots and walked over to retrieve my equipment.
The guard adventurers were almost here by this point, so I reapplied my illusion spell and yelled at them to be careful not to disturb the Healer too much. Good intentions can kill just as easily as a sword if timed incorrectly.
Shouting that there is an injured woman they needed to care for also distracted them from me, meaning that I could more or less leave them to organize while I ran off to ‘rejoin my group.’ Of course there were a few who noticed and tried to call after me, but I was already shouting after the novices and pretending to be too busy to hear them.
My clavicle was still numb, but it did not appear to be spreading, so I only spared it a few moments of my time to examine the toxin that was in my system. I had other things on my mind for the moment though, like getting through the gate and into the village before the guards got organized.
I swept along behind some of the lagging students who were resisting the attempts to usher them into the village and told them that the Healer was fine, but we all needed to get into the village. After that, I more or less prodded them along as we enter the place that the SRMs called the village.
In some way it was fairly appropriately named, but I would not have called it a village as much as a watering hole. There were a few, fairly sizeable, stone buildings that had a small crowd of fairly well-armed mercenaries in front of a few. Though given the glasses of ale in the hands of some of them, I understood while this place might be considered a village of sorts.
Seeing that the buildings did not extend all the way to the walls of the dungeon I slipped away and quickly moved behind them. I was going to attract attention, but I tried to keep it minimal as I quickly moved behind the buildings in the direction of the opposite end of the village.
It did not take long to reach that wall at the opposite end and I briefly glanced back to confirm that no one had followed me. Though there still were the guards to deal with, I was fairly sure that I could force my way past them with minimal issues.
I came out from behind the building though and to my surprise the guards were only interested in what was happening at the other end of the village.
“Hey do you know what happened?”
I shook my head as I approached, “heard something about a pack of monsters chasing some Healer in, but that is it.”
“Shame,” the guard who called out before grunted, still staring at the crowd in the distance. “Wonder if it was a couple chimeras, but they are seriously rare. Anything to declare before you head back up?”
“No, only came down for a favor and the exercise.” I lied simply.
“Hah! Exercise, right, good one.” He laughed dismissively and waved me past.
I walked past without saying a word and heard them talking behind me: “Why would you think a chimera pack would come down here? It takes at least a C rank to attract their attention and I have not heard of any big names who have come back from that new dungeon to the East.”
I escaped quickly after that, trying to get to the 20th floor as fast as I could, while thinking about the energy I felt during the fight. It was odd, the mana around the both the creature and myself had suddenly changed, like I was being watched.
Suddenly I had a feeling that I had not truly felt in the entirety of this new life, I felt a sense that I was in danger. Even when fighting off that assassin in the woods near Entrials, I had not felt that I was in any major degree of danger, but this dungeon suddenly felt a lot less passive to me.
As I came to the sloping decent to the next floor I started jogging while my mind wandered.
One of the things that popped into my head as I headed down was exactly how deep underground I was. There did not seem to be any noticeable increase in pressure yet, although I was unsure exactly how far I would need to go down before I noticed it. I had live in mountains for most of my previous life and Anton had been vague about the precise measurements, but I did wonder if I would need to worry about the bends coming back up.
Regardless, I pressed on, deciding that any and all experiments from here on out could be done on the move and in that spirit I decided to try something that was close to a reverse of Gorith’s shroud. Instead of claiming the mana in the area around me with my mana I took my mana and simply expanded it outward in a large bubble like area, forcing the mana in the air around me away.
This allowed me some personal space where the dungeon mana that reminded me of Gorith’s shroud was outside of my sphere of influence. This method was more mana intensive, but it did not seem to provoke the same reaction as using the regular shroud did and this method might actually be usable in public. Though it did create a thinner version of the black miasma that surrounded me when I used the normal shroud, it was more like a light mist.
More tools for my belt, I thought to myself as I jogged into a room that was nearly identical to the 10th floor. Just like that one, it had paths leading every which way, including what I now knew to be the exit path that ran parallel to the way I entered. Unlike the paths on the 10th floor though these paths had strange symbols on the front of them that I could not make any sense of.
Deciding not to dally I withdrew my… reverse shroud? Gorith’s mist? Whatever my new spell would be called, back into myself as I walked down a random path.
After a walking for a while and scanning for traps, I came to an empty room with a podium and no exit.
I walked around the edge and examined the walls, but there was nothing besides the podium, which I found had 2 handprints with some elongated fingers in the depressed surface.
Deciding that I had no reason to trust such a thing, I turned around to go back the way I came in, only to hear the pathway start to collapse behind me.
I took a deep breath and investigated how big the cave-in was, but I did not need long to see that trying to dig my way through it was not an option. I also had the same feeling of danger from earlier when I dug through a bit of the dirt.
Either this dungeon really was intelligent, or someone was playing with me, because the dungeon walls were very solid and the only other area that I saw collapse was on the 10th floor.
The question had therefore gone from, was I being watched? To “What do you want?” I asked the air around me as I walked back into the room. “What is the purpose of this place?” There was no response, so I walked over to the podium and slowly slid my hands into the depressions.
After a moment I felt a magic spell shoot up my hands and into my brain. It felt like…
[AN: cliffhanger? Nope.]
I felt a great pressure, a fear, which pushed me, yelling and screaming for me to remove my hands. It grew every moment, as if I was going to be devoured if I did not remove my hands. My hands started to itch and burn, seeming to beg me to remove them.
It was honestly quite boring.
Mental spells like this one were all about noticing that the influence on your mind was foreign and then separating it from yourself.
After a life of experiencing the ]Guilt the most dangerous mental challenge for me had been keeping my sanity. This spell did not even measure up to the fear runes north of Entrials.
Concentrating on the spell, I tried following it back to its source and found that the source was actually a ward, one that kept going and going and going, until my mind could barely fathom how large it was.
The best analogy I could make was that it was like sensing every crevice and crack that made up a mountain.
Then I got a response. Not in words, but in feelings, like the time Leo became upset and talked to me like he would a Nalk, except finer and more clipped, like someone who either did not know how to speak, or had not done so in a long time.
Interest. Judgment. Approval. Entertainment… Age.
I felt my connection break as the spell ended and I saw the back wall open up into another path.
Then I heard it *ding* the soft chime-like sound appeared again, but this time I knew what it meant. The dungeon was congratulating me, acknowledging my effort in passing this stage of testing.
What I did not know, was why this place was testing me. For its own amusement? Or was there something else in this place that I did not know about… after all, it had apparently been here a very, very long time.
* * *
A few Km outside of Gate:
3 days later.
John ran through the steps as fast as he could in his head. Casting the spell while dodging the various posts and iron panels that swung around. They represented obstacles and would destroy his spell if it was caught up in them.
The fact that John’s Master was manipulating them to purposefully get in his way, or occasionally hit him, did not help John’s concentration.
Finishing the spell as fast as he could, John ducked under an iron panel and shot it his spell at the straw man that was set up as his target. He watched with pride as the spell flew as fast as an arrow and burst into flame just before contact with the strawman.
The thing burned fairly well, despite being wet from the past few days of heavy wonderful rain. Rain that gave John and Aran an excuse to spend time warming each other up.
His huge grin lasted just long enough for him to get hit on the shoulder with an iron panel.
“Keep moving!” His mentor shouted. “This is not a field combat training school, in the dungeon you should always expect to be in close combat!”
“Black-souled old man.” John grumbled, before dodging through a few more obstacles.
“10 laps after we are done for that!” How did he hear that!? John kept his curses to himself for the rest of the course, finishing it in his best time yet.
“Better.” His mentor, old Kal’da, admitted. “You would be massacred if you tried to go too deep in Tartarus, but you might survive the first few floors.”
“Master, the first few floors are empty of monsters.” John pointed out respectfully.
“Exactly. Now, how is your blade-work coming along?”
“I have been training exactly as you instructed Master.” John responded not that I know why you keep insisting that we train with a sword, anything magically resistant can be burn easily enough.
Kal’da chuckled, “Do you need another research assignment on the dungeon creatures Johnny-boy?”
Taking a deep breath, John concentrated “No master” and I am not a ‘boy’ I am 16 cycles old!
Kal’da shook his head, clearly reading John’s mind through some trickery that John did not know. “What has the body of a large cat and a tail with a snake’s head?”
“Chimera.” Easy.
Kal’da nodded “What would you say is special about the Chimera?”
“They are a minor boss Master, meaning they are noticeably more annoying to deal with and only come out on the floor before the boss.”
“What else?”
“They, as minor bosses, adjust their strength and numbers to deal with their opponents. Even using tactics to lure the more greedy adventurers on occasion as they are extremely valuable alchemic ingredients and they know seem to know it.”
“Almost acceptable,” Kal’da sighed. “However you forgot to mention the powerful toxin that their tail spits out. The one that can even incapacitate Healers in moments depending on where it hits. They are also both fire and mana resistant, making them very difficult to take down in pairs as they will sacrifice one of their own for the sole purpose of
“Also, they are not the intelligent, the dungeon simply modifies their behavior based on their prey. For example, if the dungeon thinks its prey wants a challenge, the creatures roar more often.”
“I thought the dungeon’s intelligence was unconfirmed Master.” John stated hesitantly.
“Make that 15 laps,” Kal’da responded. “You should know by now that only a fool or a king would question the dungeon’s intellect. If the churches could figure out how to, they would have removed all dungeons long ago.
“Now,” he continued, “how strong would an adventurer’s party have to be for them to draw out 6 chimeras?”
“Count rank sir, only a party of C ranks could draw out that many.”
There was a pause in the conversation as Kal’da looked John over. “Then what would it take to bring out a dozen?”
John’s mind started to race, not wanting to hesitate and earn more laps, but also to not knowing the answer. “I- I would imagine sir that it would take a well-known group, perhaps of entirely of D or even E rank.”
John’s master now spoke very quietly, “What if was a large group of A rank mages with some B ranked guides?”
John tried to figure out where this was going. “Sir, that could not happen, the dungeon would know that a large number of unexperienced mages would be more likely to panic and run, letting them easily be killed- would it not Master?”
Kal’da nodded, “So it would, which means someone quite dangerous must have been in the dungeon either hiding in, or near-by the group. Especially since a dozen of those things could get venom into even a fully armored combat mage.”
“Because they like to encircle or run past their prey and stun it with the snaketail’s poison.” John stated as much as questioned his master, receiving a nod in return. “If something like what you are talking about actually happened, then it could only be a high ranking noble’s guard or a King ranked adventurer.”
“Or something else altogether.” Kal’da mumbled before speaking up. “Do you remember the story I told you about the spirit sword?”
The one that no one actually believes? How could I forget when they make fun of me for my association with the spirit-seeker? “Yes master, you found a special sword, one made of pure Zugoran, which contained the soul of a shapely young woman who claimed to be trapped inside the sword before trying to convince you to release her and-”
“I said she was beautiful and she was beautiful, but she was a young teenager at oldest, brat, stop inserting your fantasies into other people’s stories.”
John blushed, indeed Aran’s shape had been running through his mind when he spoke. “-and you refused despite her promising to save you from a group of monsters and managed to escape. Although you were chased for a few days so when you finally got some rest you were too lost to find your way back and you spent the next decade looking for her again.” John finished, “but what does that have to do with the dungeon chimeras?”
“It is a reminder boy.” Kal’da’s eyes took on a cold look that banished Aran from John’s thought momentarily, “How many circles you can power is not how strong you are. The combat schools teach joining to their students only after they graduate because many people working alone cannot prevail against a small group who works smartly and in concert with each other. However smart enough individuals can destroy the group and dungeons are very good at testing how dangerous someone is, taking such things as intelligence into account, instead of just seeing how much mana they have. That is something for you to remember too boy."
“I will remember Master.”
“Good, now you owe me 17 laps Johnny-boy.”
“It was 15 master.” Darn old man, how long are you going to keep Aran and I apart today?
“You hesitated while answering my question because you were scared, get going, you have 18 laps before you can go see your girl.”
“…Yes sir.”
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Btw while any fight scenes with Gía would have to be rearranged after its removal, the results would remain more or less the same. In this chapter it would just be more along the lines of DeMorte running at inhuman speeds to catch up to the chimeras than him making an epic leap. He would also be more heavily injured in all of his fights, which is where is improved body and healing would come in – especially if he convinced Bella to help heal him while he concentrated on a fight.
All in all… not my best chapter -.- apologies. I spent over half the day going back over and editing this, but it still seems to me that it needs work.
On the bright side, the next chapter should be the last in the dungeon and soon after that DeMorte will finally get the chance to settle things with Bella.
Regardless, thank you for reading,
B_S