Zalia looked out on the field of no longer undead corpses strewn in front of the bunker. The fight had been short and brutal, only very few being even Bronze rank. With only one shot required for her to kill the Tin and not much more for the Iron, Zalia was able to take down the undead from afar. Annoyingly, the undead within the bunker had not come outside for a reason she was about to discover. First though, her ability levels. Kill shot, Hunter’s mark and Fight or flight had all received only one level each, probably due to the ease of the fight.
Hopping down from the roof and lightly stepping past the half disintegrated skeletons of Bathar, Zalia moved up to Boreal who was sitting perfectly still by the door like a statue. She frowned at the door, finding it quite sturdy looking. Realising she probably should have had a closer look before she had decided to fight half the neighbourhood, she tested the handle.
Frustratingly, it didn’t budge more than a slight movement informing Zalia that it was indeed locked. She gave a test kick but it didn’t move in the slightest. It was unfortunately magically protected in some manner because she couldn’t just walk through it either. It made sense, having survived this long and being a magical research facility and all. She tried a few other things like slashing at it, jabbing her sword into the gap to cut the lock, manipulating the floor and door with her stone manipulation and even a ritual meant to target the lock mechanism with the spreading ice curse to try and shatter it. She finally gave up on it.
Instead, she would have to unlock it from the inside, leaving Boreal behind for a short moment.
“Wait here,” Zalia told Boreal, flying back up to the roof of the donut shaped bunker and walking towards the deep pit at its centre.
She dismissed the notification that was tallying her Flight passive up another eight levels to Tin fourteen so far and tried to fly down into the pit. She could see the windows leading into the building and thought the lack of protection here with such a strong door at the front a silly design until she felt a wave pass over her as she flew down. Her flight turned to a fall as her ritual was dispelled.
In a panic, she tried to quickly recast the ritual but found the magic not working as she plummeted to the floor below. Luckily, it seemed her passives still worked and she managed to slow her fall three times with the Mobility passive air step until she safely reached the ground, her greatly enhanced body doing a lot of the work on lessening the impact. Now at the bottom of the pit, she quickly inspected her surroundings for danger.
The near area was a likely once beautiful garden, now decrepit and twisted by the corruption permeating the air. The feeling of corruption was thankfully lessened probably due to whatever magical protections lay built into the structure yet panic, just a little bit, crept into her mind as she realised her healing was not working. The defences were suppressing all her class abilities, only the general passives available.
She desperately searched around the ground level for an exit but found only another door locked and sturdy against her efforts. Feeling a fool, she got a run up and using her three air steps managed to get high enough to catch the bottom of one of the windows. She hauled herself up quietly and checked both directions, not wanting to get stuck down here with no abilities and a bunch of high levelled, very awake undead.
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Thankfully, the moment she stepped over the boundary of the window, she could feel Healing presence activate once more. She hadn’t been aware that power muting or disabling effects were even a possibility and her first experience with it was horrible to say the least. She had grown used to the feeling of power, the constant healing flowing through her body and its absence had been nothing short of terrifying.
Trying to calm her nerves and only half succeeding, she began softly padding through the curved corridor she found herself in. There were many doors leading off of it but her goal was to reach the top for now. Once she was safe with no undead behind her, the more dangerous part of exploration could begin.
Sensing no vibrations of movement, she explored the entire corridor and found that there were no easily visible exits from it. If she wanted to find a way out she would have to start opening doors and hope to find the right one. She moved towards the nearest door but had a better idea. She went over to the window and had a look outside and up, seeing that there were indeed more windows lining just the next floor up. She had seen that previously of course but wanted to make certain of their location before attempting the idea.
With a run up, Zalia vaulted out of the window, used one step to push herself into a sideways motion, a second for height and the third to slow herself as her hands caught the next window's ledge. It was a difficult maneuver to pull off that a less dexterous Zalia wouldn’t have managed. At this height it was mostly harmless but as she looked up, she dreaded how many times she would have to pull it off to get to the top. Another… sixteen times by her count.
She managed another twelve floors before she slipped up. She screwed up the final step and almost flew straight past the window, barely catching on with one hand. She managed to get her momentum under control and hauled herself through the window, standing in silence as her heart beat loudly in her chest. She had thought of and tried passing through the floors but found them magically protected as well
“Boreal?” Zalia asked, projecting her thoughts.
She had tried to contact Boreal on each floor but was met with further silence each time. A few of the floors did have undead unconscious or strolling about but none had taken notice of her as she quickly ascended the floors. This floor had no more undead on it so she took a moment to rest and relax, considering her next move. Statistically speaking she could probably make it to the top but she wasn’t much of a statistics person anyways. The risk of falling the entire way to the ground with no air steps left was much too high for her. She loved flying but falling to her death didn’t sound so fun.
With a gentle, almost silent sigh, she pushed off the ledge she had been leaning on and looked down each side of the corridor. Much like the rest of the bunker, it was a single corridor with many doors leading off of it. She was starting to wonder if they even had any stairs at all or if they had just somehow floated between levels via the windows. What were the chances that a magical system controlling travel between levels was broken where the magical system in charge of defending wasn’t?
Thinking about it, she realised it would probably be likely.
She remembered that in her world, before she had moved to be more solitary, methods of travel tended to break down quite often.
Her mind made up, Zalia stepped up to the closest door and inspected it closely. It was definitely magically guarded by her inability to step through it but testing the handle she found it unlocked. She released the handle gently and observed the vibrations coming through the door and floor beneath. She couldn’t identify any signs of movement from the other side of the door and so turned the handle and pushed it open slowly. Inside was a bare room with the remains of various instruments on a desk, seated in front of the desk was an undead slumped in a chair.
In the centre of the desk and the focus of the instrument's attention was a single object. A glove.