There was a small room with nothing more than a couple staircases. One was titled ‘Heaven’, and the other ‘Hell’. Well that’s ominous as shit, I thought, expecting some cheeky answer, but I forgot that Dawn and Donna didn’t come with me. Looked like they had enough of dungeons.
August came in after a few seconds. “Well, underwhelming, it ain’t?”
“You mean the heaven and hell staircases? I wouldn’t say underwhelming quite describes it.”
“Oh, that’s creepy,” he agreed. “Let’s just go to hell first. With your personality you’ll probably end up there anyway.”
“Ever had an Ice Javelin up the ass?” I threatened.
“My ass has magic resistance,” he retorted. We stepped into the ‘Hell’ staircase and got teleported to a gigantic rock surrounded by a sea of lava. We appeared to be in a cavern of sorts. A lot of the geology didn’t make much sense here.
Crawling up from the edges of our island, were enflamed boars. A lot of their anatomy looked to be like living magma. They charged in at us. I formed a circle of water around us and had it splay outwards at them, extinguishing them in effect. They fell and never got back up. Not much difficulty there. You know what the real issue was? Every wave would be a bit hotter than the last. The environment was what would kill people, not the monsters. But that would soon change. If one had control over the temperature of the place like I did with my mountains of ice, then the only challenge would be the ever-increasing strength of the monsters.
August released a big sigh of annoyance, “Hydra’s ass, how long have we been here?!” he complained. It honestly felt like two or three weeks, but it was hard to tell in this place. The only way we knew that we weren’t stuck in some weird loop was the constantly changing forms of the enemy with every wave. This time it was lava beetles. We had no idea what wave number this was. I did the usual and soaked them in water then stole mana. Once that was done, I returned to having my breakfast, or lunch, or supper; who knew?
It was August’s turn to defend the next thirty minutes. His sword decollated some jungle cats I couldn’t really place a name on, he ran back into the airconditioned location that was my oversized igloo and gentle winds.
Hey, Donna, how long have we been gone now? I siphoned mana into our connection to talk with the queen.
“Eh, like a month? Come back quickly! We want some dick.”
This is a PG-13 connection, young lady. Anyway, just use the clone.
“I’m not using a clone.”
I don’t know if I should be happy or heartbroken.
After a little chat, we felt a rumbling. “So, is that your stomach?” August jumped up. A long skeletal arm gripped our island surrounded by lava. Coming up from below was a devil, one just like the spirits of the fire faction. Its whip crackled and the skull in its hand floated around. Seeing that it was my turn again, I got up and faced the monster.
First, I sought to take care of the flying skull. I didn’t want the annoyance that was its flaming breath on me. I formed a thick wall of water and pulled the skull in with void magic. It hit the water and the sizzling that was evaporation sounded. The devil enraged at the sight and swung his whip at me. Magnet ensured it went right through me. Despite being immune to burns, I didn’t want to be whipped.
Seeing as this was a spirit second in power only to the late Phoenix of the fire faction, I sought to test a Gravity Field on it. Before, I used to think the spell would be obsolete in the face of void manipulation, but using it actually told me otherwise. What this spell had over void manipulation that achieved the same result, was that the spell could alter gravity as many times as the user wanted without taking more than the initial mana cost of the spell. Where-as, void manipulation would suck out appropriate mana every time the user changed gravity’s strength. However, I couldn’t increase the area of effect.
So, I decreased the gravity, making the fire devil float upward uncontrollably. Then, I immediately reversed the effect. It slammed so hard to the ground that its bones shattered. It looked like he was flattened. I’d gravely underestimated Gravity Field! The devil was gone, and we had to play the waiting game once more. “That was a splendid move!” Vena applauded after I absorbed the devil’s mana.
“Thank you!” I went back inside our igloo. “Now where’s that sex you promised me for mastering void manipulation?”
She smirked, “Sorry, I’m not adding to your harem.”
“Talk about false advertisement…” I scoffed, folding my arms disappointedly. If she taught me void, will Arcana teach me arcane? An interesting thought, but I couldn’t envision the lord of spirit lords doing such a thing. Once I dismissed the thoughts of spirits, my mind wandered on Aviana, then – like a leaf in the wind – blew over to First Flight.
My eyes set on August and Qora, wondering if he’d take action or not. As much as I knew him like the back of my hand, trying to figure him out was tedious. Hell, I wondered why he continued living in Methelia and instead chose to forsake becoming the greatest person to ever exist in Hyzek. Even in Ulanos, the highest possible position fell into his hands. Ugh, do I need to worry? I asked myself, centring my sights on light manipulation.
Thirty minutes came and went in no time. The monster this time gave us quite the shock as we peered out the igloo. “Hydra’s ass…” August muttered, grabbing up his iridescent longsword. It gleamed the bubbling orange of the lava surrounding us. “Are you playin’ some prank, dude?” he interrogated me.
“No, Earth-Sky is,” I denied his accusation, “and I bet it’s gonna get pretty dangerous.” That feeling of danger latched onto my psyche.
Standing before August and I, was August and I…
Our exact replicas spawned from nowhere. We sent Qora and Vena back, fearing something might happen to them. Suddenly, my body began floating upwards, far enough to get a proper aerial view. I knew it wasn’t my replica’s doing; everything about it made it obvious it was the mechanics involved in this dungeon. Following me, my replica was also placed into the air. It was such a jarring sight when I used Hawk Eye. Its pupils were non-existent, its skin dark like charcoal. Hell, looking closely, I noticed it didn’t breathe either.
August’s replica raised its sword, that tell-tale sign that a fight was incoming. Furthermore, one that would herald the maximum usage of quintessential energy. August and the replica both conjured a clone to help them, so there were now four Augusts at two hundred and ten percent quint usage ready to decimate each other. Sure, I looked at the fight, but there was no way in Hydra’s amazing rack that I would understand what was going on. As curious as I was, using Timedial and losing consciousness in front of my worst enemy yet, was not an option.
Suddenly, I felt myself being gently brought back to the ground. August appeared. Their entire fight was nothing more than random flashes of light from the sparks on the clashing swords and your occasional battle-cry or grunt. His entire body was ridiculously damaged, making me wonder how he was even alive. If the crystal shard transformation could manifest itself into a mortar and pestle, August would be the herbs it crushed. He was banged up. Bones were crushed, jaw broken, shattered, dislocated. An arm was missing, some fingers were crushed on the remaining hand. There were numerous cuts and lacerations. His skull was bludgeoned badly, but it seemed he made sure to protect himself from fatal hits. His clothes were soaked in blood. His boots were worn out from the extreme usage. The entire surroundings were in horrible condition with pieces of rock from the ceiling falling down and the ground bumpy, as if an earthquake had hit.
Just as I was made to be a spectator by Earth-Sky Tower’s dungeon mechanics, so did August. In fact, his body was instantly repaired, as if he was never in a fight to begin with. My turn now. Ugh… Whilst I was up there, I brainstormed a few ways to beat this replica, but let’s face it, if the monster was a replica of me then that meant its thinking pattern was exactly the same.
To beat it, I had to do something I’d never even think of doing before in my entire life, and that meant planning was utterly pointless. At first, I rued using Timedial, in fear that I would simply faint like a little bitch afterwards. Could I be in and out of consciousness for three entire months? No way, man! But… this was quite the issue.
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If I wanted to live through my replica’s wrath, all stops would have to be made and then some more. This was basically a test which forced you to push yourself past your previous limitations if you wanted to live. Sorry, buddy, I said to August in my thoughts, I’ll have to depend on you.
The split-second we were able to begin fighting, Timedial was stacked ten times. The Avatar spells were placed on as well as the God spells. Ten clones then joined me, as they did my replica. There were eleven replicas peering at me with draconic magic floating around them. And there were ten clones of mine doing the same thing. We all froze at each other, our minds warping into themselves from the sheer magnitude of thoughts tripping over each other.
This was a stupidly ridiculous situation. Eleven Erics versus eleven Erics. One wrong move and we could wipe each other out in an instant. That one thought was all it took. The thought that any slight movement could be the end of us, was ironically, the driving force behind the start of this magical brawl.
Gravity Field slammed the replicas, and the minute it even touched them, they disappeared into the void. I sent five of my clones inside with Mana Perception on so they could tell the real replica from the replica’s clones. That way, they could force him out of his own void plane. God of Earth magnetised the entire landscape and brought all the earth together and the rest of my clones and I entered Voidwalk in different void planes so the earth wouldn’t crush us.
Then, I cast Riftwalk quickly. Its ten-second cast time was frightening, but it was worth it. I appeared at a random spot back in the corporeal plane and Riftwalk’s ability to literally remove space from existence so that the objects it teleported into wouldn’t get mixed up with the space on a cellular level. It was a godsend. So, there I was, trapped in my own trap. Soon after, the replica came out and once he did, I cast Black Hole like the madman I was. One second didn’t even properly begin when I cast Black Hole, but it still managed to crumple half my ass like paper. I toggled Black Hole off the same second that I cast it. Being so close to it was a mistake, but it was precisely because I was too close to it was why the replica didn’t expect it. Truthfully, even I didn’t expect to cast it.
Once the replica was caught in the vacuum of Black Hole, its clones disappeared right after. The fight was over. I’m never using that fucking spell again! I complained in excruciating agony. Eden took quite a while before patching me back up. In fact, I was in too much pain to do it myself. My clones tended to me. After being healed, I tried replicating the landscape before August’s fight as best I can. I knew he was okay because my Light Link in him was unfettered, but I was still worried. Thankfully, he was just fine.
August was taking years to come back down whilst I was in ten stacks of Timedial, so I breathed a weary sigh and summoned Vena. She would at least be able to pull me about with void magic when I fainted. Here we go. I dismissed my clones after I made myself a meal. The minute I took off those Timedials, I began to nosh down and eventually my face dropped right into the food.
“-n’t worry. He likes when women take control,” I heard August’s voice and my eyes opened. My body was floating along in the air with Vena.
“Wow!” I exclaimed, jumping the two. “I’m, not hungry?!” I tried casting Candlelight and was successful. Usually, I couldn’t access a speck of mana when suffering the side-effects of Timedial.
“Must be the dungeon’s handywork,” August surmised. “It healed my beat-to-shit ass after all,” he shrugged. That made sense. I wasn’t in a questioning mood anyway so I just accepted it.
Vena, not putting me down even after I awoke, took me through the portal that appeared. We returned to the start of the dungeon with the heaven and hell staircases. The one representing hell had disappeared. So, if the heat doesn’t get you, the monsters will. If the monsters fail, then surely the devil spirit will. Supposin’ you’re good enough to beat that guy, you better be able to overcome your own limits. Heaven should be easier, right?
“Well, let’s go to heaven, then! That doesn’t sound dark at all!” August chuckled sarcastically. Vena yawned and stretched, warping into my staff. We entered the doorway and found ourselves overlooking a beautiful cyan pool of water. The sun was warm, the grass green and the winds gentle. It looked like the Dark Basin where Ashfur was, just without all the destruction. The place was beautiful, unlike hell’s atmosphere. The large open space that spanned along far in all directions seemed to be the summit of a mountain. It was basically an oversized lagoon.
The swish of the water caught our attention. Its azure transparency shifted as the rocks did at the bed. August and I stepped back a bit. “Maybe it’s just a natural occurrence?” he questioned nervously. It made me activate Life Perception, but the life essences I saw were so thin; they looked like loose thread floating along. Next, I watched intently with Mana Perception and was almost blinded; I recoiled and crammed my eyes closed.
There was so much mana in front of me that it actually emitted an extremely and equally unusual luminance unlike anything I’d ever seen, like a huge wall encasing us. My mind froze like a quivering fawn. Was I frightened? Not exactly. Rather, thoughts of what this ridiculous mass of mana even meant was what made me petrified, and that petrification came from the farrago of thoughts trampling the impulse in my mind, stampeding down the impetuosity that once oft lived in the head of a fifteen-year-old Eric Archibald.
However, the wall was closing behind us, it was entrapping us. Was it a boon or a curse? Should I risk it or not? This was very clearly something dungeoneers in this world would not ever recognise, and the system would never give them something they were unable to overcome.
I decided then, I would stay. Although, I would never play with August’s life like that, so I pushed him out with Divergence and a second or two after, the wall of mana totally encased me.
Would Donna know? I wondered if to ask her, but that would mean she’d have to enter into my mind in order to see what I was seeing. She wouldn’t be able to go back to Yunaris until we were finished with Earth-Sky Tower. Hmm, maybe… my thoughts wandered on a resource I never used.
“Do you see this?” I asked Arcana after summoning her. “I don’t suppose you know what it is?”
She took a while, then transformed into her humanoid form, “You were right to call upon me. This, mage, is mana in its purest, usable form.”
Usable form? I pondered a bit there about what that could mean, until she further explained.
“This is arcane,” she elaborated, which bound my mind into a conundrum on what arcane even was. To me, all I saw was a mass of mana bigger than anything I’d ever beheld. This in front of me seemed unnatural. If it represented a sea, I’d never even be able to fathom how far I’d have to go to reach the bottom. Her simple answer poked a question to my mind, one that derailed a lot of my past perceptions and understandings about arcane.
What is arcane anyway? I thought, revisiting the very definition of the magic type. It felt like the most ambiguous… No, it was the most ambiguous magic type, even more confusing than void magic because one could never tell what made an arcane spell, an arcane spell.
For example, who could say that Mind Break was a mind spell, and not an arcane spell? How could one prove Divergence is a space spell, and not arcane? Shit, I cursed my lack of knowledge then. “Okay, I’ve got a lot of questions, but what should I do about this?” The ridiculously dense mass of mana kept creeping closer and closer to me.
“You may be the luckiest being I know,” she smiled, which gave me some reassurance that this random occurrence was a good thing. “Vena has told me you can create potions that would boost your magic abilities. If you have them on you, please consume them. And if you can, remove the part of it that supports mana regeneration completely. You must try to keep your mana as low as possible, including your body’s mana.”
My body’s mana? Does she mean… I had a moment of admiration for her. It seemed she realised how I was able to achieve Division. She saw the extra mass of mana in my head.
I got to transmuting what I needed. I made both a potion and a pill. The potion, whilst being weaker than the pill, acted almost instantly. The pill, however, was ridiculously strong. Taking the pill was pushing it. Taking both of them? Guess we’ll see what happens. In fact, I did the same with the health and strength pills and potions. I threw a sack with the same stuff to August, just in case.
In about a half hour, the wall contracted so much that it touched just a part of my skin. The second it touched me, the mass of it expanded ridiculously wide, extending into the gigantic lagoon. It was then I realised the lagoon itself was where the mana stemmed from. That shade of blue, even its weird movements, said enough.
The mana began pouring into me, as if my entire body was a magnet. It felt searing hot and icy cold at the same time. I cast Clone, making as many as I can.
They all siphoned my mana to cast Vivify, the costliest channelling spell I knew. It was like mana conditioning all over again. The arcane mana constantly warped into me, whilst the casts of Vivify used up my mana. However, my absorption rate climbed steadily. My consciousness’ mana got full and began to forcefully expand; an excruciating experience. It got so bad that the excess mana started running to my body’s mana instead. To combat this, I had to constantly cast Clone instead, whilst dismissing them at the same time. It helped, for a few minutes.
My mind and body were like a funnel. At the top, pouring water, was the dungeon. At the bottom, was the casts of Clone. But the pouring water kept increasing in volume, and eventually, the funnel became full and water began running over.
This water that ran over wasn’t wasted, no, it forced my mana pools to expand. I wasn’t sure what the result would be, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. I summoned the Staff of Scien and threw it at one of my clones, unable to take the pain anymore. Continuing like that would only mean passing out, and in this dungeon passing out might mean dying.
He caught it, stuck it in the ground and it immediately began taking the pressure off of me. I breathed, and used the time to calm myself and focus. Thankfully, the staff was ridiculously strong. It continued pulling the mana away from sinking its fangs into me. After about an hour, one of the gemstones lit bright white. It was full of mana. My jaw dropped. After so long of taking that ridiculous amount of mana, only one gem got full?! What the fuck is that staff?!
Some hours later, the others filled up, and the dregs of mana remaining from the dungeon sept into me, but I was able to handle it. Finally, I was able to walk away alive. But August was passed out onto the floor. His life essence was waning when I checked him out with Life Perception. Immediately, I used Eden, and it at least stabilised him, but he was passed out nonetheless.
The dungeon’s gate to leave appeared, which signalled that we beat Earth-Sky Tower. I pulled August along with void magic and returned to the entrance of the dungeon. The heaven doorway disappeared and another portal appeared. Taking that one put us back in the fjord at the entrance of Earth-Sky Tower.