Chapter 76

Wonders of Life

Ethan mulled inwardly while the young woman stared at him as though he was mad. The memories were distant and somewhat foggy, but he could still recall that day well enough.

It was about fifteen years post-Descent, and the world had all but collapsed. There were no true countries or borders left, just groups surviving the hellscape the best they could. Ethan, however, didn’t belong to any one such group. He was a vagrant, moving about during the darkness of the night and digging a hole to sleep in during the day. He wasn’t weak, but he wasn’t strong either–barely so-so: too much of a headache to hunt down and kill, but not enough of a potential to recruit.

Tunnels were everywhere at that point, opening up at a pace that the world simply could not keep up with. Just along the western border that Ethan used to move up and down through, there were over six hundred Tunnels, and globally, some estimated, that there were at least several tens of thousands. Most were just ordinary Tunnels, but even if merely a small percentage of them all were Tunnels with the potential to become Fields, it was still at the very least a couple of hundred. Those were the Tunnels that the strongest mostly focused on as they yielded the most rewards.

Greedy, Ethan managed to sneak into one of them alongside an expedition led by one of the Ten Beasts–Mingzhu herself. She was a well-known bomb with a short fuse, but her skills were unquestionable. If Ethan was a master at sneaking around, then she was the archmaster of the ability itself. And that was only the beginning of it all.

The Tunnel, like many others, had a beyond hellish environment–they were stranded atop an island with an active volcano spewing lava and ash day in and out, with a countdown until the entire island would sink into the ocean. The only way to clear the Tunnel was to go into the heart of the volcano and fight a Draconic Vulture variant. Ethan rather quickly regretted ever coming into the place as there was quite literally nothing else of note in the entire Tunnel.

There were no other monsters to hunt, no plants to harvest, no sub-quests to clear, no treasures to find–there was just one monster, and a volcano drowning the island in lava.

He couldn't quite recall how, but he got trapped within a lava fork and was quickly discovered by a random group of the Awakened. Rather than saving him, they laughed and started throwing daggers and spells at him as he desperately dodged them. Just as he thought he would die, Mingzhu showed up, sliced off a couple of heads, and saved him. She did give him a bit of a beating after the fact, but she never reported him or bothered him–just told him to stay back and wait for her to clear the Tunnel.

She did as much a few days later and Ethan got to leave alive and well… while she lost her left arm, never quite recovering. As far as he knew, she should have been alive when he returned, but for about four years prior, he didn’t pick up any rumours about her.

“Forget about that,” he said.

“Forget about that?! Fuck you! You just told me I saved your life! Are… are you one of those demented dudes who get obsessed with a cute girl and imagine in their heads that the girl saved them?! Shit, you are, aren’t you? Oh, fuck me!”

“...” Ethan sighed inwardly, though smiled. She was exactly the same as he remembered her. It was a miracle, truly, that she hadn’t changed for so long. It wasn’t that she was without sin–after all, there was a reason why even among the maddened she was known as the ‘Lunacy Queen’, but, for better or for worse, at least she wore her sins on her sleeves. “I ain’t that bad. I am demented, just not in that way, I’m afraid. Sorry, I can’t be your stalker.”

Two and a half days passed rather quickly–throughout, Ethan mostly kept to himself while Mingzhu largely interacted with Ronald, Elijah, and Delilah, falling slightly catatonic when she heard Ronald describe what Delilah was doing and how they were planning on leaving the place.

“I’m finished,” Delilah, appearing rather weak as she barely slept, once again, to finish the portal, came to the tent to inform them.

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“... you really don’t listen to me, huh?” Ethan sighed. “Why were you in such a rush? I’ve yet to fully convert sis Mingzhu to our glorious ways. What will you do if she rebels when we come back and runs away to live in the woods like a witch?”

“Oi, don’t scare the kid using my name, you shithead,” Mingzhu said.

“Well, what’s done is done,” Ethan said, standing up. “Let’s go.”

“Immediately?”

“Yeah. Delilah, go back to the underground chamber and stay there. If we don’t return within the next week, walk through and get back home. Tell Sarah what happened and ask her to take care of you and Layla.”

“You–you’ll come back, right?! If it’s that scary–don’t go, then! Let’s just go home together!”

“Ha ha, don’t worry, it’s just a bad habit of mine,” Ethan laughed as he left the tent, with the other three following. “We’ll be back in a jiff.”

“Will we?” Mingzhu asked as they made some headway from the tent toward the Heart.

“Hm?”

“If we aren’t, I’ll stay behind and take care of the girl.”

“Maybe I take care of you first and then clear the Tunnel?”

“Tsk.”

The journey was rather short as Ethan expected and, soon enough, they saw the flicker of light grow larger as they approached it. Bursting through the end of the fog and the trees, they found themselves staring at a rather large pavilion, an altar erected at its centre. Above the altar, a sphere of emerald floated gently, holding within a finger-sized creature. A fairy? Ethan immediately recognised that the creature was quite similar to Tian. Ronald and Elijah, too, seemed to have noticed it, though stayed silent.

There was nothing else around–the pavilion was otherwise rundown, with a caved-in roof and the tiled floor uprooted almost entirely. Moss and weed began to crown and crowd from the edges toward the centre, though the fog never went past the pavilion’s borders.

“Scroll must be within the altar itself,” Ethan mused as they approached the altar. Just as they got within six feet of it, they all got a notification as the ground beneath them shook.

[Choose, Travellers! Shall thine sins of trespassing be paid in blood or in a trial?]

[In order to clear the Tunnel, fulfil one of the following conditions:

1. Exchange the lives of half the participants for the right to leave

2. Challenge and defeat Level 45 Fairy Guardian]

[You have 3 minutes to decide]

“... Level 45? So, we’re fucked either way, right?” Mingzhu cursed. “Shit. I should have just let you kill me back then.”

“Why are you panicking?” Ethan expected as much. Level 45 is a rather high number, especially this early on as folk were yet to understand how Level disparity truly functioned. There were quite a few clues that most would have missed as they simply didn’t know. One was that ‘Fairy Guardian’ was a generic title and not a name. So, by default, the highest rank of a monster that could spawn was a Sub-Elite. Unlike the Emperor or the Lion in the Savanna, the monster’s skillset would be extremely limited and its raw stats likely wouldn’t even reach the Lion’s.

Beyond that, however, there was another clue in the name itself–Fairy Guardian. If the party found it impossible to defeat the boss, they could simply kidnap the fairy floating above the altar and clear the fight that way. Ethan, and virtually everyone else twenty-five years into the future, was well versed in the nature of the Tunnels. Even the most difficult ones were never impossible, and there were usually several ways to clear them. Usually. Sometimes, it really was about just beating the final boss.

“What? You think you can kill a Level 45 boss? Shit, are you a smurf or something?” Elijah and Ronald stifled their laughter while Ethan looked at her oddly for a moment. “What?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.” Ethan, as the party leader, chose the second option without much hesitation. The world quaked once again as an unhinged roar echoed out. Mingzhu froze in place, her heart stirred in horror and fear. “Relax,” Ethan slapped her gently on her back, waking her up. “Just do as I say and not only will you survive, you’ll recognise just how fucking broken your Class actually is.

“Elijah,” Ethan turned to the other two as the approaching footsteps grew louder, beckoning through the fog. “Save your Mana for emergencies. Ronald, just jab it from the flanks. From the sounds of it, it’s just a really big tree so it’s gonna be immune to ‘Bleed’. Just punt holes into it when it’s focused on me. Mingzhu,” he then turned to the young woman as the frame of the bulking thing appeared from within the fog–as Ethan suspected, it was a big tree, a willow tree at that, with a horrifying number of branches extending from its thin trunk like tentacles. “Your stealth doesn’t work like the stealth for other Classes. Think of the name–Shadowbinder.”

“Right, I, I blend into the shadows and I…” she mumbled, her fear gnawing at her soul as she stared at the monster.

“No,” Ethan said. “You don’t blend into anything. You bind shadows together to construct illusions. The emerald globe is the only source of light. It is consistent and unmoving. Light will always move in the same direction at the same angle. The shadows will not change at the same position. Your job is to figure out how to bind them together to hide Elijah. Make him invisible, so that the monster doesn’t realise he’s even there. Once you’ve figured it out, do the same thing for Ronald and help him flank.”

“What about you?”

“Me?” Ethan said with a faint grin, creating a short sword through Hemomancy. “Oh, don’t mind me. I’ll just dance a lil’ bit with nature.”