Chapter 26

Fourth Floor of the Abyss

Gorgath knew a shortcut through the fourth floor of the Abyss that would have my children at a foreign dungeon in two hours. It was the shortest possible route to safety, but only if you were crazy and tough enough to survive. I assumed we fit that description.

We did not.

Far above my head, the dracolich flared her wings, dodging the swarm of swordflies rushing towards her. The insects didn’t have wings, but they did have bodies shaped like swords and magical flying abilities that made them a nightmare for me to kill. Every time I tried to put a necrotic cloud in their way, they pivoted around it, making turns that were close to right angles, so killing more than a handful at a time was extremely difficult.

The fourth floor of the Abyss was fundamentally different to the floors above it. The ambient mana was so concentrated that every monster had magical abilities. Monsters that could be ignored on higher floors had to be taken seriously down here, and first and second-floor bosses were all too common.

A creature the size of a wolf blurred towards me from my right, unleashing a guttural snarl, only to charge head-first into my deathlock barrier. Its skull shattered, and its brains turned to goop as I continued sprinting through the tunnel ahead of Luke and Davina.

This deep in the Abyss, size and power were the best survival strategies. Flightless monsters that focused on speed were rare, and those that fit that description were never strong. They excelled at stealing food rather than hunting for it themselves, which meant the safest way to travel was on foot.

Above my head, the swarms of swordflies closed their net around the dracolich, cutting off all directions for escape. Angelica recognised the danger before her mount and swung her staff at the approaching swarm, releasing a wave of death fire to drive them off and protect Kathrine and Celest.

A wall of black flames burst from the end of her staff, roasting the monsters alive, weakening their exoskeleton, and redirecting their trajectory. Dozens of swordflies missed her passengers because of her swift actions, but it wasn’t enough.

Seeing the incoming threat, Kathrine let go of Celest’s waist and threw herself over the side of the blood-red saddle, gripping it in one hand so she wouldn’t fly off. She tucked her body in behind dracolich, using it as a shield.

The surviving insects began colliding with Celest’s barrier like cannonballs, causing green bursts of light as they exploded against the intense wall of magical energy she’d summoned. The violent impacts quickly overwhelmed her defensive spell, causing it to fizzle out. As her spell dissolved, a secondary barrier conjured by her robe replaced it.

With a darklord father, Celest’s equipment was top-of-the-line, but top-of-the-line wasn’t built for the fourth floor of the Abyss. The swordflies’ strikes came hard and fast, quickly triggering a failsafe. The barrier shrunk to save her life, only protecting her body and head.

The swordflies flew through Celest’s arms, turning those sections into a pink mist of flesh and bone. What was left of the limbs began to fall. Without a connection to her mana, the flesh lost its appeal to the monsters, and they varied off after tastier targets.

Kathrine pulled herself back onto the saddle and tried to wrap an arm around Celest’s waist to keep her from falling off. The barrier protecting Celest didn’t like that. It released a concussive wave, snapping Kathrine’s head back and almost knocking her from the saddle.

This was a dangerous problem.

I telepathically messaged Angelica as I changed directions to collect her missing limbs. “Celest is injured, and her robes attack Kathrine. Get her to Davina.”

Angelica heard my orders and turned the dracolich, immediately colliding with a dragon-sized, invisible, flying squirrel. The squirrel shimmered in and out of sight as the dracolich began racking her claws across its soft underbelly. This wasn’t the first time this had happened.

Angelica leapt from her saddle, landing on the attacking creature’s arm. She was becoming more dangerous with each passing minute as her armour feasted on the ambient mana and lifeforce. The fur around the squirrel's arm became visible as Angelica’s armour fed upon its lifeforce, and she attacked it with her staff.

We had the bad luck of trying to pass through this section of the Abyss while the local floor bosses marched towards each other. Every monster was on the move, hoping to get a taste of their purer bloodlines.

I blurred to where Celest’s arms would land and raised my hand. Since we’d entered this floor, I’d saved everyone’s life a dozen times over, throwing out master-tier spell after master-tier spell to keep them safe. That wasn’t going to change anytime soon.

Mana rushed from my core, weaving a path through my body to explode from my fingertips in the form of a destruction spell. The spell disintegrated the head of the second invisible flying squirrel heading for Angelica, killing a monster stronger than a first-floor boss. Too many monsters around here fit that description.

From the tunnel behind us, I heard another deep roar. It belonged to a creature that was a Godzilla-sized Loch Ness Monster with four spider legs rather than flippers. The roar was answered by an even louder hiss from the direction we were heading.

Davina rushed by me, spotting the falling arms. Luke followed to protect her, striking down monster-shaped blurs, leaping at them from every direction. This was a dangerous place to rest and recover, but I had no choice. Celest’s robe was an even more dangerous distraction.

I watched Angelica remove the flying squirrel’s head by surrounding her staff with necrotic magic and passing it through its neck. She then kicked herself away from the squirrel’s limp body, backflipping onto her dracolich’s head. She easily manoeuvred down its neck to her saddle as the dracolich released the squirrel and descended.

Another flying monster snatched the dead squirrel out of the air before it reached the tunnel floor, and I threw out more spells to cover their descent.

“You owe me a manicure,” the dracolich complained loudly as she spread her wings and crashed into the ground behind me.

My spells exploded above her in black clouds, disintegrating the ravenous swarm of swordflies that had tried to follow her. Angelica turned and tried to grab Celest’s blood-soaked limp body. Her Crypt Keeper armour immediately went to war with Celest’s magical robe as the robe tried to stop her from interfering. Angelica recognised the danger and shoved Celest from the saddle.

Celest’s armless body tumbled to the ground with a dull thump.

“We need cover,” Luke shouted.

We were in a tunnel close to three hundred feet wide and almost one hundred feet from the edge. The only direction we couldn’t be attacked from was below, and that was a problem.

“I’m on it,” I shouted back.

I raised my hand, drawing in a flood of ambient mana from the air around me. I cycled it through my core before weaving it into the seed of a spell. I snapped my fingers, bringing the ocean of death magic together and unleashing it on the world.

A death void appeared to our left, filling the tunnel with a swirling black mass and making an impassable barrier for the weaker monsters. The swirling vortex of darkness would consume all the lifeforce and death magic that entered, growing stronger the longer I kept it in place.

It crackled, floating in the air, growing with each passing second. A swarm of diving swordflies turned away from what was now a suicide mission.

Luke grabbed his sister from the saddle, as the death magic washed over them, and pulled her to Davina’s side. Davina’s ability to absorb death magic made her a natural safe zone. The moment Kathrine was safe, he went back to killing monsters.

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Davina didn’t look up as she gathered the last of Celest’s missing flesh to reform her arms.

I snapped my fingers again.

A second death void appeared to our right, blocking off the other side of the tunnel and consuming most of the turning swarm.

I snapped my fingers a third time, placing another death void behind us. This left us a thirty-yard gap between the three orbs of death where we could hide. I channelled mana into the death voids, growing their destructive power to maintain the temporary safe zone.

The dracolich raised her head and filled the tunnel around us with a massive breath of death fire, injuring or killing the remaining nearby threats.

She then closed her mouth and lifted her front right foot, showing it to Angelica. “Look at my claws. They’re a mess.” Blood and chunks of flesh fell to the ground as she wiggled them to show the problem.

Angelica leaned forward and stroked the side of the dracolich’s neck bones. “They’re not that bad, Dee. I’ll get them cleaned up when we get to the surface.”

“Angie, they’re chipped! This is unacceptable. I simply must have a manicure this instant.”

I glanced at Davina, checking how much time I had, then blurred to the dracolich. I’d planned to do this somewhere safe, but that didn’t seem possible on this floor. “Give me your claws.”

The dracolich backed up a step. “Angie, the evil vampire, wants to give me a manicure. What do I do?”

Angelica leaned away from me, too. “Do what he says. The last time I tried to compel him, I spent months without free will.”

The dracolich offered me her foot. “You may file, soak, and buff, but only in that order. Right, Angie?”

Luke chuckled.

I took hold of one of her fifteen-inch-long bone claws and cast the first rank bonemeal spell on it, feeding the spell a horrendous amount of mana to overcome her body’s natural resistance. The claw crumbled into bone chips, falling from her skeletal body.

“My claw! Angie, he destroyed my claw. Stop him!”

I didn’t have time for their drama. “Both of you, watch.”

“Angie, he’s making me watch as he defaces my beautiful body.”

Angelica leaned to the side and looked at what I was doing. She raised her visor to see better. “I think he’s trying to help you.”

“By destroying my claw!”

“All of his help involves some sort of trauma.”

“I’m a delicate flower. I won’t survive his help.”

I met the dracolich’s gaze. “Stop complaining and being dramatic and pay attention to what I’m about to do to you.”

“What are you about to do to me?”

“Watch.”

I broke down the bone powder from the claw using the fifteen ranks of the bonemeal spell and began reforming it with the bone stitch spell before adding most of the undead enhancements I had taught the Undead Enhancement Club. The ambient mana in the air made it easy to overcharge the spells, and I was finished with my core still full in only a few seconds.

Resting on the ground was an eighteen-inch-long ivory-white claw that radiated undead power. I picked up her new claw and placed it against her foot. “Claim it.”

The dracolich reached out to the claw with her aura and claimed it for her body. There was a crack as bones slammed together, and the claw began to radiate death magic, projecting a black haze around itself. She turned her head to peer at her foot. When she realised how much I’d improved it, she began dancing from foot to foot excitedly.

“Angie, his manicures are amazing.” She shoved her foot at me again. “Do the others.”

Angelica frowned. “What did you do?”

I started on the next claw.

It crumbled like the first.

“I’m using undead enhancement spells to strengthen your dracolich. If you want to keep her as your mount, you’ll need to start helping her grow stronger to keep up with you.”

Angelica’s frown became a scowl. “Dee isn’t my mount. She’s my friend.”

“You tell him, Angie!”

“Well, your friend is being left behind. If you don’t put in effort, you’re going to end up taking her somewhere she’ll be killed. Somewhere like where we happen to be right now.”

Angelica stiffened, looked around, quickly climbed from her saddle, and walked to my side. “Show me what I need to do.”

I hadn’t mentioned this opportunity to Angelica before now because I’d been waiting for her to stumble upon it herself. Enhancing a dracolich was a mana-intensive process that would take years for someone with Angelica’s skill. My plan was for Angelica to happily spend her spare time trying to strengthen her dracolich in the hopes of one day escaping from my service. It would have kept her busy while improving her casting skills and mental health.

Now that I was guiding her through the process, she wouldn’t be excited or hopeful about any of this. If I was willing to show or teach her something, Angelica took that to mean it wasn’t something she could use to escape.

She wasn’t wrong about that.

I glanced at Davina again, double-checking how much time I had. She was still repairing Celest’s arms. The area the pieces were spread across was slowing her down.

The dracolich needed to grow as strong as I could make her in the limited time I had. That time turned out to be less limited than I originally imagined.

I got to work enhancing the other claws. You couldn’t do everything to a naturally sapient dracolich that you could to an undead skeleton, but there were still enough improvements to make a serious difference. Starting with her claws, let me know if the dracolich was capable of quickly adapting to these changes without risking her ability to fly if she wasn’t.

Getting through the fourth floor with everyone alive was no longer assured, so I wasn’t willing to take unnecessary risks.

As the dracolich successfully reclaimed her last claw, I moved on to the wings. Unlike regular dragons, a dracolich didn’t need to use magic to fly. They were skin and bone and could stay in the air without magic. That being said, with magic, they could fly faster.

Usually, increasing a dracolich’s magical potential was a long, lengthy process. However, Angelica’s dracolich had consumed so many sharn cores that she was on her way to becoming a greater dracolich. I wasn’t infusing her with magic. I was allowing her to tap into some of that magical potential.

The changes I was making would allow her to fly faster, further, and more easily. It also made all her bones significantly stronger, helping her deal with the weight of extra people. These changes were changes a dracolich typically made to themselves.

The only reason she wasn’t a greater dracolich already was that she seemed to have Angelica’s work ethic. If someone didn’t force her to learn to cast spells, it was unlikely she would ever learn how to do so herself, leaving her horrendous supply of mana unused.

Even as I explained what I was doing to Angelica, I could tell the dracolich hadn’t put that together. She was still preening over her claws when I finished working on her wings and started on her vertebrae.

I was almost to the tip of her tail when I sensed a change in Celest’s condition through our bond. I finished the last few bones to stabilise the enhancements and then blurred to Davina's side. She was kneeling beside Celest, contending with her robe, as she reattached Celest’s arms.

Davina didn’t look up. “Do you want me to wake her, your Dark Eminence?”

The tunnel began to shake with the fast, even rhythm of heavy footsteps.

“Yes.”

Davina placed her hand above Celest’s forehead, and the girl’s eyes shot open. Pain flashed across her face as injuries made themselves known.

Celest was manipulating me into keeping her alive, endangering my children. It was hard for me to find reasons to be merciful to her. Right now, her weakness was slowing us down.

“Celest, immediately increase your attributes using the kingmaker distribution.” I shared the correct distribution in case she didn’t know or couldn’t remember them.

Pain turned to horror as my compulsion took over her body and forced her to do as I said. “No. No. No. Please take that back. No. No. No.”

“Tell me when you’ve done as I commanded.”

“It’s done,” she said a few seconds later, looking ill.

“From now until we leave the Abyss, you will spend your attributes the moment you gain more with this ratio: Four to agility, two to endurance, constitution, and mana regeneration, and one to strength, dexterity, and recovery. Spend the rest of your attributes using this ratio.”

This time, Celest was so horrified she couldn’t speak.

“I’ve never heard of that ratio,” Davina said.

“It’s a survivalist build. Nothing will be able to hit her, but she’ll never be more than a mediocre sorcerer.”

I felt Celest’s aura grow stronger as she increased her attributes. She was an archsorcerer, and like Carolyn, she’d been one since she was level 10, so when her aura finished growing stronger, I put her level at somewhere around 150. The fourth floor was very good for leveling.

“Turn off your robes defences so Davina can heal you.”

Celest spoke a command word, and the barrier around her vanished.

Davina placed her hand on Celest’s forehead, and her flesh finished flowing together, reforming without scars. The pain in her eye vanished as Davina began casting buffing spells. Gaining this many physical attributes at once would leave her bedridden for a week, but we couldn’t let her pass out until we reached the surface. It would lengthen her recovery time, but that was fine.

The shaking in the tunnel grew stronger.

Davina nodded to Angelica while she continued to buff Celest. “You’re worried about her.”

“No. I’m worried about her armour. It’s growing faster than armour typically should.”

Davina frowned. “How much faster?”

“It’s like she’s had it for decades. It’s developed a vampiric aura and is feeding off the ambient mana and lifeforce of the monsters she’s killing.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“No. Fast growth is almost always unstable.”

“I don’t sense any instability.”

“That’s the part that worries me. I don’t sense it either.” Dozens of third-floor boss auras suddenly flare to my right, appearing out of the fourth-floor boss's aura. “Everyone on the dracolich and to the ceiling!”