Henry and Julie stood on their porch once again, clutching their coffees close and watching as Jeremy did a final weapons check. They were bringing the M4s for backup. A swath of solid gray clouds hung in the sky as they had every day following the storm. Any relief that it had brought from the high temperatures and humidity was gone by that point. The air was thick with moisture and smelled of rain, but no wind stirred against their skin or raised the flag in the front yard of Henry’s house yet. If another storm was going to hit, which seemed likely, it would not start for another few hours.
When they woke up and smelled the ozone from within their tents, they decided it was best to try and get into the dungeon and clear it before another rainstorm hit. Since they had no idea if it would be as bad as the last or if it would add mana to the dungeon somehow. They could keep practicing and leveling through the colors of their arrays in order to gain more mana potential to be able to cast more spells at once, but Jeremy felt confident that if they stuck to their plan of hiding behind Zanie’s lightning barrier while advancing through the dungeon, they should be alright.
“Good luck,” Julie called after them with a wave as they gathered around the dungeon entrance.
Jeremy adjusted the strap of his M4 and looked between Caleb and Zanie. Caleb’s expression was drawn tight, lips pressed thin, and eyes a little wider than normal, despite his best efforts to remain calm. He wore one of the backpacks filled with extra ammo, the first aid kit, and room for them to potentially bring back some of the strange crystals or whatever reward they received after clearing the space.
Zanie had her hands on her hips and was frowning up at the threatening sky. “What do you think will happen if the dungeon gets hit by lightning while we are inside?”
Caleb made a strained noise, and Jeremy glared at Zanie. “That’s unlikely. The wind hasn’t even picked up, and I haven’t heard any thunder at all. The most we’ll be inside is maybe a couple of hours, so the storm won’t hit by then.”
“Yeah, but…”
Jeremy cut Caleb off. “The sky has looked like that for days now, and it hasn’t rained. It will hold out for a few more hours.”
Jeremy’s one anxiety was about the boss at the end of the dungeon. If the regular creatures in this dungeon were such a challenge that they had to regroup in order to face them, he was not sure they would be able to deal with the larger threat looming behind them. He assumed there would be one since this dungeon had a ring like the first one he’d gone into had. Hopefully, also like that one, once areas were cleared, they would remain clear. That way, they would have a clear exit to flee down the way they came if they had to retreat again.
“Okay, it didn’t seem like they rushed us as soon as we entered the dungeon last time,” Jeremy said. “Just when we got to the hallway, so we should have a minute once we go through to get ready. Are we ready to go through?”
“Okay, Zanie said. Caleb just grunted, which Jeremy took as an affirmation. So, he stepped through the entrance, static clinging to him and gun raised just in case.
Nothing came rushing at him right away. Zanie and Caleb stepped through behind him and they looked around the room cautiously. The space looked exactly the same, with the low ceiling, earthen floors, and crumbly stone walls with clusters of crystals jutting from them.
“Okay, we ready?” Jeremy asked. They made noises of affirmation, and he took a deep breath. “We move as slowly as we need to. They all seemed to come out of the rooms before, so we’ll have to deal with that first. But then we will check each room before we pass it so that we know everything is clear at our backs.”
If they had to start throwing up barriers in front and behind, they would quickly fall apart. He hoped that this dungeon had a similar layout to the other one, with hallways and self-contained rooms.
“And keep track of your spells so that we can dip before anyone passes out and needs to be dragged out,” Jeremy reminded them.
“We got it,” Zanie said, not impatiently but perhaps urging him on a bit. They had already gone over all of this multiple times before even coming into the dungeon.
Jeremy nodded and took a deep breath. “Let’s go then.”
They stepped into the hallway and did not have a crowd of lightning elementals descend upon them, which was a relief for now. Jeremy poked his head into the first room. There was a lightning elemental inside. It cast a glow across the mossy stone walls, turning them into a patchwork of blues instead of the gray and green they actually were. It did not notice him right away, so Jeremy leaned back out of the room.
“This one regenerated.” He spoke lowly, even though he had no idea if these creatures could even hear.
“That makes sense,” Caleb pointed out. “If an elemental came out of the dungeon yesterday, that means that the dungeon was probably over capacity.”
“If that’s how it works, maybe,” Zanie said. “Hopefully, they don’t regenerate too quickly.”
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“I doubt that they do,” Jeremy assured her. “At least in the other dungeon, the creatures did not regenerate within the time that we were there.”
He stepped away from the door and switched to Caleb’s other side to nudge him toward the room. “See if you can kill it without tipping it off first.”
Caleb’s spell was the only one that could kill one of the creatures in one hit when it split open their core. Theoretically, Jeremy’s mana spells could wear them down enough, but it would take several. And he was curious to know what would happen if they killed one stealthily.
If it died without seeing them coming, maybe there would be nothing to tip off the rest of the lightning elementals, and they would remain in their respective rooms rather than congregating in the hallway for an attack. Then, they could pick them off one by one, which would be significantly less stressful.
However, all of the lighting elements were connected in some way. So, more likely, even the death of one would tip the others off to their presence, and they would face a unified attack regardless.
Caleb planted his feet in the hard-packed soil floor and peeked around the edge of the doorway. His hands remained by his sides, out of sight. One of the things that they had realized over the course of their days of practice was that it was not necessary to hold your hand out in order to cast a spell. It seemed to help with directing focus. Where Zanie pointed her palm, an arc of electricity would more easily follow. But all she actually had to do was strongly intend for the electricity to strike in a particular place, and it would.
So, holding their hands out to cast the spell as if they were directing a wand was more of a crutch than anything else. Caleb, who had reached the limit of putting strengthening runes onto his spell, had begun to practice casting it without moving his hands at all. And this came in handy now because he only had to peek around the edge of the doorway in order to set his sights on his target rather than put his hands out and risk drawing the lightning elemental’s attention.
“Get ready,” Jeremy murmured to Zanie.
A bright flash dashed out of the room, and the small tinkling of the core shattering against the hardpacked ground sounded. Caleb stepped back and looked down the hallway with wide, weary eyes. But Jeremy was more focused on the fact that he could see a physical representation of the mana flowing from Caleb’s kill into their overlays.
It looked exactly like the mana had when it gathered during to storm to morph into the dungeon, like heat waves rising off a sunbaked pavement or alcohol vapors. It was kaleidoscopic and mesmerizing, just as the world had become when he first was able to see mana before the old god had limited his sight to the overlays. It fed into their overlays but was not enough to shift the color by a visible amount.
“Ah, shit,” Caleb said, “Here we go.”
A buzz filled the room as a few arcs of electricity slammed into the ground in the hallway from within the other doorways. The other elementals were moving forward for their unified attack. As the blots of electricity arced into the hallway, so did the glow from their forms, bringing with it not only the charge of electricity that made Jeremy’s hairs stand on end but also a hair-raising anticipation to see if they had planned well enough for this.
“Zanie,” he said, but she stepped forward before he could get any more words out.
“Already on it.”
Her hands were out because there was no need for stealth here, only efficiency. And any device that could help her focus her attention would be critical. She cast the spell and the runes for manipulating heat, as well as the modifier to shape it into the barrier, materialized before her. Accompanying them was a second step that she had played around with since leveling which allowed her to channel mana into the barrier at a constant rate to keep it in place even as it received damage.
The moment the glow in the hallway brightened as the creatures gathered in the doorways, her barrier formed and added its own blue light to the mix.
“Here we go,” Caleb muttered, rolling imaginary sleeves up his arms and holding his hands out as well.
The hallway did not stretch as long as the ones in the other dungeon had, so Jeremy could count the number of doorways – eight – that the creatures emerged from, and he could count the number of elementals themselves – seven so far. There were more to come, however, because, from one of the rooms, a second emerged. Jeremy joined Caleb and Zanie in lifting his hands.
Caleb took out one immediately with a small version of his spell, without any strengthening runes on it, before Jeremy had a chance to begin casting one of his mana spells to knock them back. Just like the last time, a flow of mana materialized out of the flash of light as the elemental died and flooded toward them. Jeremy blinked at it, stunned and mesmerized. Only Caleb’s irritated muttering at the bright light, which hurt his eyes, brought him back to the fact that they were in a serious fight. He shook his head and began casting the mana attack spells.
As expected, his attacks did not do much in the way of actually taking out the creatures the way that Caleb’s did. However, they did connect with the elementals each time he cast one, as evident by a slight burst of light from their figures. Jeremy was pleased to see that when the mana impacted one of the elementals, they slowed their approach, as expected, and did not send an arc of electricity toward Zanie’s barrier for a period of time until they resumed their approach.
He was also fascinated to realize that he could see the mana of the attack now. He had not practiced very much since leveling up – focusing more on entering information into the notes of the digital copy of the book and recovering from his terrible migraine. So this was the first time he realized that when he cast the mana attack spell, he not only saw the runes for it but also the literal kaleidoscope of mana materializing and impacting the elementals.
This, in combination with the mana flowing toward them from Caleb’s kills, made their compact battlefield into not only a strobing cacophony of light and electricity but also one of wavering mana. It looked like a sea of colors and light, which made it difficult to distinguish the ceiling or floors, or walls, let alone the creatures. Jeremy shook his head and tried to concentrate, but by that time there were only two elementals left he had to shut his eyes and put a hand over them.
Caleb managed to finish the last two off and then there was only the buzz and zap of Zanie’s barrier in front of them. Then that disappeared as well as she let it drop away and there was only the sounds of their harsh breathing in the corridor. Jeremy pressed his fingers to his eyes for one more second, then lifted them away and blinked into the now dark space.
“Everyone alright?” He asked.
Zanie and Caleb nodded.
“Let’s make sure these rooms are cleared real fast, then regroup and see if we need a break.”