The ground thrummed and the bricks shuddered. A couple deep clacks followed it, tumbling down the intersecting hallway from the right. Jace turned and pointed his sword—and just in time for the deep, rhythmic pounding of footsteps to thrum down the hallway.
Something big and heavy was approaching. A faint orange glow filled the hallway—the same shade as the ‘X’ sigil on the kobolds’ armour.
“Get back,” Kinfild said. “We’ll take it together. It will outclass you.”
“The sheets said this dungeon was rated for level twenty,” Jace said. He took a fighting stance with the sword, but he didn’t really know how to use it properly—he had no formal training—so the stance felt a little awkward.
He’d have to get someone to show him how to use it. Someone who didn’t just use a staff.
But they had to live to tell the tale.
“Indeed,” Kinfild said. “The fodder were all low-level—standard for a kobold, and standard for what you might find near the surface.” He tapped the butt of his rifle on the ground and held it like a walking stick. “But the deeper beasts, or those that come from the depths, have been basking in the auras of the world for a long, long time.”
The edges of the hallway burst apart into dust and stone debris, and a massive beast, holding its head high, charged through the entryway. It sent chunks of rock skittering into the intersection chamber. Jace raised an arm, shielding his eyes and face. Pebbles pelted his forearm like hail.
A massive kobold smashed through the dust. Clouds whirled around it, tumbling off its flanks and streaming off its face, and the glowing sigil on the shoulder pauldron of its spiky black armour illuminated the dust like a streetlight in the fog. Black, gooey vines clung to its shoulders and draped off its back, forming a cape.
[Level 23 Elite Kobold]
And that explained the dungeon level rating.
It smashed through the fountain in the center of the room, then swept the dust aside with a crude mace. It pounded the ground with the weapon and let off one more angered howl.
“Got a plan?” Jace whispered.
“Keep it busy,” Kinfild said. “Both of you. I will contain it.”
Letting Kinfild handle it? Jace wasn’t sure if he could just let Kinfild be the one to subdue it, but the Wielder was level thirty-one. Eleven levels higher than the elite kobold. It was reasonable to assume Kinfild could contain it easily.
Whatever he was going to do.
“Just don’t hit me,” Jace said.
The elite kobold approached, swishing its mace side-to-side, but Jace ducked to the side and sprinted around the edge of the room. He held his sword up, letting the blade illuminate and whistle. Kobolds couldn’t see level ratings—only he could. If he made himself the biggest, loudest, and most dangerous looking target, it’d go after him.
Sure enough, the kobold turned to face him. It took a few steps, closing the gap between them. It was twice as tall as him and nearly three times as broad, and its muscles rippled beneath its armour. High Resistance or not, it’d still hurt if he got hit. Resistance would keep him on his feet, not keep him from getting injured.
Lessa ran around the opposite edge, but she didn’t draw attention to herself or make any noise—save for the flicker of her burning tail beneath her stolen officer’s cloak, visible only when she moved quickly and the cloak fluttered.
The kobold swatted at Jace with its club. He raised the Whistling Blade, preparing to intercept. The weapons collided as he was still moving, and the cutting edge was hot, but the mace struck too fast and with such force that it only left a steaming gash on one of the mace’s jutting-out ridges. He dropped to the ground. The mace swished overhead, taking off a tuft of his hair, but otherwise doing no harm.
“Kinfild!” Jace hissed. “What are you doing?”
“Switching to a different technique card!” The wielder reached into his robes and retrieved a different technique card from the folds of his robes, then switched it for a different card that he’d already socketed. The new card dematerialized in the palm of his hand, and the old one appeared.
Jace couldn’t glimpse the description of the new card, but it activated as soon as Kinfild socketed it.
A wall of orange flame rose up between Jace and the kobold, burning with a hollow crackle. The kobold staggered back, at first in shock, then from the radiative heat. Jace held up his arm, shielding his face from the heat.
The kobold swatted at the wall of fire, but the fire raced around, encircling the beast. The flames rose higher, swirling up in tendrils and making an empty cage. Fitting for Kinfild’s Path, Jace supposed.
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Turning, the kobold tried to run, but Jace altered course and moved to intercept the beast, keeping it from breaking Kinfild’s containment. He swept the Whistling Blade in a high arc, creating a swell of plasma.
It wasn’t enough to dissuade the beast. It thrust its mace out toward him.
Lessa blasted it in the wrist with a bolt of plasma, throwing its aim off. She pulled the rifle’s bolt back and loaded another shot, then blasted it in the shoulder. Its mace slammed into the ground a foot to the left of Jace. He turned to slash the tip of the mace off, but the beast was already swiping to the side with its weapon.
Jace activated the hyperdash card and phased straight through to the other side of the mace. The elite kobold followed through with its swing, but it reached up into empty air, and the tip of its mace slammed into the ceiling, dislodging a chunk of stone.
But the cage of flaming tendrils was almost entirely closed, and the kobold realized it too. It gnashed its jaw and sprinted toward Jace.
He’d only just gotten out of the way, and now this? It was easy to make a plan, but when a wild beast charged at you, dealing with it was a different story. He jumped back, and it took all his concentration to aim for the back of the kobold’s knee. He slashed through the armour and flesh and tendons in a single swipe, but it was only a couple inches deep.
Still, the kobold tripped, and the wall of flame sprang up in front of it, before encroaching and pushing it back until it could only stand upright. It slashed at a whirling fibre of flame, trying to break the cage, but its mace bounced off with a light spakk.
“What are you waiting for?” Kinfild asked, still holding his arm out. Flame-aspect Aes glimmered on the tips of his fingers, and he widened his stance, as if a strong wind was blowing against him. “Destroy it! I can’t hold the card active for much longer!”
Jace swapped to the cooldown rest card, activated it, then swapped back to his hyperdash. He wouldn’t be able to cut through its head while in hyperspace—he’d pass right through it—but he could draw himself up to the right height and destroy it once he emerged.
“Just drop the technique when I emerge from hyperspace!” Jace called. “I’m jumping in three…two…one…now!”
He activated the hyperspace jump card and flashed through the air. When he emerged, he was right beside the beast’s neck. The flame barrier fell, and Jace rammed the Whistling Blade forward. It jabbed into the kobold’s chest, and he wrenched himself to the side. The sword dragged to the side, creating a gash across the beast’s side. It collapsed, disintegrating into black dust even as it fell, and a puff of golden light rushed into Jace’s chest.
He fell to the ground and landed on his hands and knees. The Whistling Blade clattered across the floor, leaving light gashes and scrapes and glowing orange nicks in the ground. Jace picked it up before it could do any serious damage and tucked it safely into its scabbard.
He rose to his feet and faced Kinfild and Lessa. Kinfild lowered his arms and un-socketed his technique card, and Jace got a better look at it: [Technique Card: Empty Cage Calls (Rare) (Attack) (Compatible Class Designation: Wizard) (Compatible Aspects: Fire)]
“Why didn’t you use that before?” Jace asked. “Hell, why didn’t you have it socketed? That thing has to be so useful!”
Kinfild snorted. “It has a long cooldown. On my own, it has less utility. I can only trap beasts with it, not kill them outright—unless they ram themselves against it. And furthermore, it is only truly effective against darklings, for it requires a target abhorred by the Split.”
Jace nodded, then took a few shaky steps toward them. “How many cards can you hold at once?”
“I have five foundation pillars, and thus I can hold five cards,” Kinfild said.
“I…see.”
“Alright, so that was a big fancy kobold,” Lessa said. “That means it was protecting something, right? Or there was something nearby?”
“You’ve been reading too many holocomics,” Kinfild muttered. “It was likely wandering the halls, having ascended from a deeper layer, and was now approaching the meeting point. Whatever Stenol is doing, he has been mustering a legion of Kobolds.”
“Alright, but counterpoint,” Lessa said. “That.” She pointed down the adjacent hallway.
Jace turned in the direction that she was pointing. She swept her flaming tail out in front of her, illuminating the adjacent hallway. Kinfild activated his Flame Snap card again, providing more light.
Something golden glimmered at the end of the hallway—the same hallway that the giant kobold had come from.
Jace sprinted down the hall toward the glint, and Lessa followed close behind. “What is it?” she asked. “What is it, what is it? Treasure?”
A stone chest the size of an air conditioning unit perched at the end of the hallway. Rusty brass inlays made swirls on its exterior and drew foreign, swooping letters across the flat top of the chest.
Working together, Jace and Lessa heaved the chest’s lid off. Their feet scrambled on the dusty floor, but eventually, they dislodged the top of the chest.
Revealing a set of rotted black bones that had long since decayed, beyond even having a stench.
“Oh,” Jace said, staring down at it.
“Not treasure,” Lessa sighed, dropping her arms down.
Kinfild followed behind them, walking slowly and clicking his tongue. “That is indeed a casket.”
“You can’t blame me!” Lessa exclaimed, tapping the lid of the stone casket with the tip of her tail. “I can’t read whatever language this is!”
“Old Luminian,” Kinfild said. “This was the tomb of a planet-king’s trusted servant, who would’ve committed ritual suicide when his employer passed away and been set to rest with a few treasures of his own—gifts for their supposed afterlife.”
Jace grimaced and took a step back. They were robbing graves?
But the makers were long dead, and the dead had no use for the wealth. There was no need to let it rot and rust in the darkness.
“So there are treasures in here!” Lessa pumped her fist. “I was right! See, Jace, I was!” She turned her rifle over and pushed it into the chest, then ruffled around, shifting through the bones and black ash. There were a few pieces of rusty armour, but they weren’t valuable or important enough to even warrant a tag lighting up above them. After a few seconds, she unearthed an empty glass vial with a few sapphire flecks down at the bottom. “What’s that?”
“An empty elixir vial,” said Kinfild. “Sadly, not very useful without its contents. It would’ve acted as an infusion of Aes, and all Jace would have had to do was cycle it around for a little while before it would’ve integrated into his spirit. But alas, all the treasure so close to the entrance would’ve already been looted and used—this included.”
“So what I’m hearing,” Jace said, “is that we need to go deeper.”