Many of his stats were at truly unbelievable heights, but they were still nothing compared to what he needed. The Hells were a series of enclosed realms, with little way to experience the potency of those in higher realms.
“Is it higher, or lower?” Jonathan wondered. “I’ve been calling it higher because of power, but perhaps it should be lower, as it is Hell.”
Then he shrugged. Did it really matter? Closing his sheet, he turned to Edgar, who seemed to be doing much the same thing.
“Let’s go. We have a lot of ground to cover.”
The next few hours passed in an uncomfortable trudge through filthy muck slicked with oil and detritus. There were grumbles among some of the soldiers but for the most part, the journey was silent. Although the realm of Mire was filled with the servants of Slothari, it was so large that they didn’t run into any enemies, save for a few pathetically weak monsters that died in moments.
One of the main problems with the Hells, at least for the mental states of those traversing them, were the monotonous landscapes, filled with the same things over and over again. The Spillway was so large that the factories, of which there were thousands, were only visible at rare moments. The Spillway belt easily covered as much surface area as Earth, if not more. Though, as Tier 3s, Jonathan and the others found it to feel far smaller in relation.
The first sign of resistance they came upon was one of the factories, protruding out of the muck like a shard of grayish bone poking up from a cadaver. It belched torrents of fumes into the atmosphere, suffusing the land around with the aroma of oil and decay.
Its walls bristled with armaments, firing off every now and again at the monsters stupid enough to attack. The Spillway was about middle of the road in terms of average monster strength, which still put it near mid Tier 3. That meant that the cannons and ballistas that lined the walls were potent indeed.
Whenever they missed, the ground beneath exploded up in a vast eruption of filth, spattering the land around with so much detritus that had it not already been so unilaterally filthy, it would have become a true example of what Mire stood for.
Jonathan considered avoiding it, but then realized that it would be a good place for his allies to gain some levels. Besides, he was curious about what exactly the factories did. All he knew was that they existed, but people refused to talk about them.There was something deeper going on here. During his time in both the Ash Heaps and Mire, he had learned that there was far more to the Hells than met the eye. Ranging from chained gods to ruined cities, Jonathan had found a plethora of wonders.
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Pausing about ten miles away from the factory, just outside of the range of the weapons, Jonathan surveyed the building. He was sure that the defenders already knew they were present, but chose to wait rather than attack the likely numerically superior force. The factory was only large enough to host a force of about five or six hundred, along with the people working there.
With his immensely enhanced senses, he could see every part of the fortress as if he were standing beside it. It seemed to have almost been grown out of the bedrock of the realm, without any seams in its rocky construction. Made out of a uniform gray rock, it was mottled with moss and speckles of mud. Three vast chimneys poked above the top of the walls, leaking their noxious fumes into the air. Other than that, nothing else could be seen of the factory’s interior. A few figures patrolled the walls, all of whom were pointing at the small army massed on the ground below.
“You can do the honors here,” Jonathan said to Edgar, waving his hand towards the factory.
“With pleasure.” Edgar clapped his hands together, and a fierce wind picked up around him. A swirling mass of air formed above the factory, rapidly growing in size and strength. With a sudden crack of supersonic acceleration, the sky seemed to condense down into a blade of wind a hundred feet in width. It slashed down, cutting through the looming factory’s wall with ease. About halfway down, it detonated, blasting it apart. With a grinding roar of shifting and breaking rock, the wall fell for a few hundred feet in width, exposing the interior of the factory.
Jonathan’s enhanced eyesight painted a picture of what was inside, and he suddenly wished that his senses were just a little bit less potent. He felt a sudden urge to burn what he saw until it was nothing more than a smear of grease on the ground. A vast, bloated monstrosity of twisted flesh squatted in a pit, with hundreds of tentacles extending outwards in all directions. Three massive tentacles extended upwards, shifting and changing as they rose. Eventually, they calcified, turning into the chimneys that exuded the noxious vapors into the air of Mire. Each one of the smaller tentacles was buried in a corpse. Pulses of energy ran down the tentacles and back into the monster, causing it to glow with a steady light. Its flesh was slimy and suppurating, covered in welts, burns and boils.
“What the hell is that thing?” Jonathan said, fighting to keep down his disgust.
Before anyone could say anything, the fortress’ defenses fired in unison, sending a barrage of various projectiles hurtling across the divide. Ranging from ballista bolts to what looked like rotting human skulls, they seemed to run the gamut of the normal to the grotesque. However, nothing was as bad as the thing that took pride of place inside the towering edifice. It was like cracking open a stone and finding a nugget of raw excrement within it.