Karma sprinted through uneven welters of jagged rocks and jutting branches. Periodically, he confirmed the positions of the Spectral Coup battalion, ensuring their paths neither intersected nor diverged.
In front, the target of their maddened charge loomed: a timeworn stronghold bridging the ravine's neighboring slopes. Its sandstone battlements contradicted the decayed greenery it inhabited, surrendering to time but not nature. Guards draped in the dark-brown robes characteristic of the Selenium Clan manned the balustrades, hawk-eyed toward any would-be besiegers.
"You have one last chance to surrender!" blared a stern, hefty outcry. "To draw arms against the Selenium Clan is tantamount to a forfeiture of life."
A malevolent chuckle echoed in response, "Your fear, Warden. I can smell it. Taste it."
Seemingly at once, two monstrous auras flashed overhead, obstructing the empty sky.
"You refuse to yield?" asked a wide-jawed, brutish man with a jet-black beard.
"I refuse your right to continue breathing," cackled a thin-set figure, their features obscured behind a ghoulish white mask.
"Then fall!"
A colossal silver hammer teleported to the Warden's grasp, shimmering between real and illusion. Opposite, purplish fumes billowed in meaty tendrils, writhing in vein-like pulsations.
Silver met purple in a heaven-rending clash, quaking the gorge underfoot. Karma, stumbling forward on unsteady footing, loosed a string of curses.
Fuck me! I divined encountering threats at level four–five Qi Formation ... It seems that's predicated on not alerting those nut jobs duking it out.
In the midst of deafening collisions, Karma's eyes shone bronze-white as he sought ingress into the vault ahead. He'd managed to sneak three mules' length from its border, but any further, and he risked exposure.
Can those ghost slugs get a move on? What, are they taking a scenic route?
The fortress suddenly rumbled, granules falling from its aged ramparts. Furious shouts and elemental barrages sounded in the periphery, signaling another series of feuds.
Finally!
Just as Karma stepped to advance, a pulse of whitish gold prompted his retreat.
Slam!
"Oh? Dodged it, did you, little rat?" spoke a gruff-voiced barbarian of a woman whose fists glowed in swirling copper. She stood from her crouched position—Karma's previous locale—her teeth bared in a nasty snarl.
"I'll squeeze that masked head of yours like a melon!"
She lunged at Karma, arms poised like a leaping gorilla. Karma's spiritual energy ebbed at a climbing rate, blessing his vision with the power of foresight.
Karma deftly sidestepped the descending berserker, then ducked beneath her immediate follow-up.
"Some skill ... but not enough!" her swing redirected to the ground, launching a circle of fragmented projectiles.
Karma dodged what he could, accumulating bloody gashes in the process. His movements hid a second purpose: taking advantage of the blurred visibility, encroaching upon his unsuspecting foe.
A flicker of azure pierced the storm of rubble, separating limb from body. Karma skidded past, coated in crimson pools. His amputated rival barked a guttural cry, pivoting her surviving arm in a crude haymaker. An outstretched palm welcomed the attack, and then there was only flame.
Blinding, pallid, incinerating flame.
Karma heaved, passing a smoldering carcass as he hobbled forward. Pressing a scarlet handprint on a nearby pillar, he reflected,
It would've been trivial to manipulate her psyche, but I fear this is only the beginning. I mustn't waste my limited spiritual energy.
After a moment's rest, he returned to the woman's corpse and pried a spatial pouch from her charred remains. Within, he found some medicines, quickly consuming them as he neared the building's exterior.
Beneath an unmanned parapet, Karma wielded an incandescent saber as a paintbrush.
His canvas?
That'd be a wall.
**
Thump.
Karma crawled through a circular opening, wading past slabs of stone. A glance around revealed a barren, torchlit hallway.
Hmm, which way for treasure?
A flicker of augury responded: left.
So left he went.
...
Tip tap.
Tip tap.
Footsteps reverberated as Karma navigated the narrow halls, each fork addressed in the same manner as the first. Vaguely, he could hear the Spectral Coup battalion making headway into the vault's interior, their progress mired by a lack of direction.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
A twitch of Ouroboroi halted Karma's steps as he peered toward an arbitrary wall segment.
**
Two layers out from Karma, a man and woman stood sentinel before a chained door. Despite the chaotic noises streaming in, the two appeared unconcerned, engaging in idle chatter.
"Those fools should just give up. Grandmaster Frederick personally requested an Earthly Monarch to barricade the entrance," spat a short, blond-haired man with light stubble.
"Hmph, what dogshit luck. Father cashed in a decade's worth of favors to get us here, and these idiots decide to attack," replied a young woman bearing similar aesthetics.
"Ignoramuses, I can't wait for Warden Delphose to bring back their heads. An apt punishment for clowns who don't know their place."
Unbeknownst to the pair, pale golden threads slithered around them in a dimension unseen.
"URGH! Sister, I am losing it! This job was supposed to be relaxing!"
"Well ... the lock is unbreakable, right? Brother, what say we go hunt down some rebel scum?"
"I say we do!"
With irate indignance, the two marched out from their secluded den, negotiating toward the closest signs of battle.
**
Karma's head peeked from an intersection, finding an empty clearing.
I've got roughly a third of my spiritual energy reserves left. I can't risk any more than one or two more confrontations.
Skittering up to the purportedly unbreachable entrance, Karma's inhuman eyes scanned about a lattice of golden threads.
This one connects to an alarm, that one triggers a trap, this one ...
Droplets of sweat coated his brow as Karma browsed for the locking mechanism, the sounds of fighting growing closer and closer.
No, no, no, eh—What's this thick thread pointing to that far away? Never mind, no time, no time.
His mounting anxiety sent tremors down his palms; it felt like—at any moment—a group of guards and insurgents would arrive and cut him down.
YES!
He spotted it! It was incredibly minute—scarcely visible—nestled between the unknown material of the door and its binding chain. Karma summoned a blade of light to his fingertips, slashing the tiny thread into ribbons.
Rumble.
The monolith swung open inwardly, Karma darting inside the instant he could fit. Then, straining his muscles to their limits, he warred the door back to its original place.
"Sorry, sister. I don't know what got over me, how could we just abandon our positions like that?"
"Me neither ... Is it the stress from the attackers, maybe?"
As the two scratched their heads, a minuscule golden thread slowly reformed, solidifying the mighty egress back in place.
"Brother, did you hear a click just now?"
"No? Have we both gone down with a case of food poisoning, perhaps?"
Gawking, the siblings simultaneously exclaimed: "The pork chops!"
**
Karma released a breath once he sensed the renewed fortification. Licking his lips in avarice, he descended the catacombs with burning hunger.
My precious threads, please guide me to the treasure I seek.
To his surprise, his call was answered by only one—colored in an unprecedented magenta.
What does magenta denote?
Karma's course sent him deeper and deeper underground, looping around a spiral staircase.
Tip tap.
Tip tap.
The air moistened, dirt dampened, and all else remained as it was. Karma persisted in the endless plunge to unknown depths, monotony his only companion.
Until it wasn't.
"What ... is that?" blurted Karma.
No answer.
Reflected in Karma's vision was no sprawling treasury nor shelves of uncountable wealth. There was but one item—if it could be classified as such—suspended atop a gnarled wooden pedestal.
A gem of crystalline yellow.
Eat it.
"Huh!?"
Looking left and right, Karma failed to identify the message's source. Somewhat disbelievingly, his gaze rested on the magenta thread connecting him and the mysterious artifact.
"These things can talk?"
Eat it.
"I probably shouldn't ..."
Eat it.
"What if it's poisonous?"
Eat it.
"You drive a hard bargain. Alright, what's the worst that could happen?"
Karma, rife with caution, closed the gap between himself and the gem.
"It's linked to a ... self-detonation trigger?"
Eat it.
"If I do that, I'll only have roughly three hundred breaths before the causal interference wears off."
Eat it.
"Will eating it help me survive a massive explosion?"
Eat it.
"If you say so ..."
Of course, Karma was not wholly reliant on the magenta thread. Surprisingly, his own deductions aligned perfectly with its single-minded advice; all portents pointed to eating the damn thing.
Convinced, he snipped the golden thread anchoring the yellow crystal to its pedestal and swallowed it whole.
Gotta get the hell out of here!
...
Karma bounded up the stairway five steps at a time, his heart and footfalls competing to see who could pound faster.
240 breaths.
He arrived at the sealed entrance.
200.
He brute forced the guardian siblings' consciousnesses, disorienting their senses.
180.
The door creaked open and shut, Karma shooting out into the halls, knitting back the way he'd come.
130.
A burning heat assaulted his organs, the swallowed gem nowhere to be found. Yellow light shone from his masked orifices.
100.
He ran out of an oval gateway, feeling nature's caress through his robes.
70.
An ancient voice whispered in his mind, the searing heat transferring from his physical vessel to his soul.
"Earthly Domain: Karmic Collapse."
30.
The monsoon of purple and silver light ceased their entanglement in the night sky, two domineering glares honing in on the glowing escapee.
20.
An invisible membrane warped above Karma's skin, undetectable to all.
Ten.
Warden Delphose thundered a loathsome roar, launching his warhammer at Karma's figure. His ghoulish opponent instinctively impeded, only to be caught unaware by the silvery missile's overwhelming force. Consequently, its flight continued, slightly blunted but very much lethal.
Three.
Like a comet sent by the heavens, the attack was upon Karma before he registered its existence. It slammed against his encasing membrane, vibrating his body with such intensity his skeleton wept beneath his skin.
Two.
Karma shot forward, disappearing into an adjoining cluster of trees; the hammer hollowed a crater in the dirt, somehow stranded at the original point of impact.
One.
Both Warden and Ghoul froze in unadulterated shock, unable to react as a heatwave blossomed at their rear.
BOOM.
The world convulsed in agony, wracked by a mountain-sized wound.
**
Lodged between a craggy boulder and a towering tree trunk, Karma spat a mouthful of blackened blood.
I will never—never!—trust the color magenta again, no matter how convincing.
Wincing as his pain receptors flared in a symphony of suffering, he shakily summoned healing pills from the pilfered spatial pouch—directly in his mouth.
Cursed! Medicine is an accursed art of the wicked, a cruel mockery to bandaid its sordid torment.
**
Frederick, seated in the lotus position, lowered his communication array to the floor.
"Dismissed, Penelope."
"As you wish, Father."
His eyes trailed his daughter as she exited the hall. Belying his calm facade, droplets of blood pattered from his tightly clenched fists. Between uneven breaths, Frederick rigidly unfolded his hands before his face, studying the broken nails embedded in their flesh.
His cousin's quiet words echoed in his mind, stripping away the semblance of peace he so desperately sought.
"The Domain Catalyst was stolen."
Finally, he could suppress himself no longer.
"THAT WAS MINE! MY KEY TO THE EARTHLY MONARCH REALM! MINE! HOW DARE YOU TAKE IT FROM ME!?"