Ray was glad he could hang back for a bit while the battle went on over there. It didn’t last long. He had arrived at the tail end, where the fighting was winding down and the winners had just about secured their victory.
It was the first time Ray was seeing competitors actually dying in this tournament. He wasn’t unaware of the risks. Hell, if he hadn’t been so bent on reaching the end of the dungeon to claim its treasure, he probably would have already killed a couple of competitors himself.
Sure, Eliza looked particularly pesky, but Ray was pretty certain he would have found a way to get to her eventually.
Though, to be fair, right this moment, he couldn’t really tell how many of the combatants were actually real participants in the tournament. Some of them definitely shrieked as they fell. The call of dying Darksigns. Huh. Maybe they weren’t all competitors after all.
Ray didn’t go ahead. There was something curious going on, and he decided observation was his best bet here.
He still had Primordial Gauge allowing him to see Mana. The large portal at the end of the chamber glowed with incredible power. But it wasn’t just an oversized pool of glimmering blue energy like the previous ones Ray had interacted with. This one had an extra layer of colour over it, almost like the multihued orbs that Eliza had used.
Even more curious than the portal itself were the competitors still standing. It was clear that the four of them were part of a single team with how at ease they were with each other now that the fighting had stopped.
But it wasn’t just the four of them there. They had their Darksigns with them too.
That was what Ray stared at. The Darksigns were basically clones of the competitors, just as they had been for Ray and his team whenever he, Gritty, and Marcus had come across them.
But unlike their hostile meetings, these Darksign were almost cooperating with their original counterparts. Ray continued gawking as they all approached the enormous Mana portal, real and fake competitors alike. Once they were close enough, the Darksigns began to fade, their forms dissolving into streams of energy that floated into the huge portal.
The colours over the Mana barrier changed in intensity. Certain colours grew stronger than before. If Ray wasn’t mistaken, then the colours that the Darksigns had dissolved into were the ones that had grown.
Ray blinked. He still wasn’t sure what exactly was going on, but he was starting to get a wild idea.
A quick cast of Lifeblood Soulform created a Scouring Eyeball that he sent flying off on its own. It allowed him to get a better look but it wasn’t super helpful. If only he had a Scouring Ear or something.
Oh. Ray silently called himself stupid before using Lifeblood Soulform again, this time to call up his Imitator construct. Origin Resonance allowed him to use the Mimic Mana to create a camouflage over himself, with the Tower Node of the Augmenter making it look extra real and lifelike. There, now he could get close.
An Amulet of Blindness would have helped too, btu the Augmenter Tower Node ought to do well enough on its own. Still. Ray needed to get those amulets at some point.
“…can’t,” a human woman was saying. Ray, camouflaged in the gloom of the dungeon, had gotten just close enough to overhear. “We’ve been at this too long already. There can’t be anymore of them out there.”
“I’m still worried someone else will mess this up.” This one spoke with a slow, grinding voice, to match his slow, boulderlike appearance. Another new race for Ray. He looked kind of like if someone had stuck crooked tree branches to a misshapen hunk of rock. “We should leave Ankhor to guard.”
The Sylvan, apparently this Ankhor, shook her head with great reluctance. “No. I am not staying behind. We will go together and we will enter the chamber beyond as one. That was the deal.”
“Fine, fine,” the woman said before the rest of them could continue arguing. “Let’s go find the rest before anyone else shows up. There can’t be many more. Just hurry, alright?”
Ray held his breath. Even as the competitors moved out, he wasn’t spotted or sensed. Perfect. Bless the Augmenter Tower Node.
He had so my questions. This couldn’t be the only doorway into the chamber beyond, right? Because it had sounded like that just beyond the massive Mana portal was what was ostensibly the final room of this dungeon. The location where they could beat the boss and claim the treasure within. Why else would there be a giant Mana portal?
But if this was the only one, it couldn’t be that just the one team had access to it. After all, Eliza and Karkatrix had been guarding the entrance to it. So had their teammate passed on into the final chamber and this team Ray had just observed come from some other tunnel?
Likely, since they had departed via a different tunnel. Not the one Ray had come through.
Ray was also wondering if his supposition that he had to find a way to feed the Darksigns to the Mana portal was correct or not. His question was answered as he arrived close enough to the huge glowing doorway to get a notification.
[Primordial Gauge—Dungeon Obstacle]
Embrace the Darkness
Darkness lurks within even the greatest of beings. But the difference between greatness and mediocrity is in one’s ability to embrace everything, light or dark. Thus, the truest way forward is through acceptance, understanding, and cooperation with a side that one would rather not deal with.
Ray stared at the description of the Dungeon Obstacle with growing annoyance. The System couldn’t have been vaguer if it had tried.
There were clues there, sure. But the fact that he couldn’t immediately figure it out, while certain teams and individuals had already done so was bugging him.
Ray closed his eyes for a second. Embrace the darkness. That was what it said. Maybe it didn’t need that much thought. Maybe what the others had done was take it literally. Embrace the darkness. Embrace the Darksigns. He had just seen the other team working alongside their fakes.
The question was how? None of Ray’s interactions with any of his fakes—
Oh, hold on. He had never encountered any of his fakes. Those of Gritty and Marcus, yes, and he had seen fakes of other competitors too. But where in the world were the fake Rays?
Something told him that was connected to what exactly he had to accomplish here. Finding his fakes and bringing them here so the portal could… eat them? That was what it had looked like moments ago.
Ray sighed. No. No, he couldn’t run off on such a wild goose chase. He had already spent too long in the dungeon. Already late, lagging behind.
There was—most likely—already someone inside the final chamber, probably killing the boss and about to claim the treasure.
Ray couldn’t play by the dungeon’s rules. Not if he wanted to win.
If victory was to be his, he had to make everyone play by his rules.
Core Deconstruction created a sparking orb of Origin Mana. Ray looked at the huge Mana portal. The way it was connected to all the Mana threads running through the dungeon reminded him a lot about how Mana Cores functioned.
And Core Deconstruction was the best way to deal with Mana Cores.
It made him wonder if this dungeon possessed some sort of sentience. If they all did. As far as Ray had seen, a Mana Core only existed within living beings. Then did the dungeon qualify?
He also wasn’t sure how exactly Core Deconstruction would affect the huge Mana portal. Surely it wouldn’t make the entire dungeon collapse. That would be too easy.
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But if this turned out to a brute force way of getting into the final chamber, then whatever else happened would be worth it.
Ray wasted no time rushing in and smashing the sparking orb of white light on his hand into the gigantic doorway of Mana. He didn’t hit the main portal. Crap. He had forgotten about that swirling barrier of colours in front of the portal itself. But when Core Deconstruction hit it, the colours dissolved and melted away after a sparking burst of white.
“Huh,” Ray said.
Well, that left just the doorway itself. Ray stepped forward. Now that the barrier was gone, would the huge portal function like the ones he had used so far? Would it just allow him to pass through?
Nope. Ray was rebuffed. The glimmering barrier of energy was solid, slightly cool to the touch, but firm and unyielding. Looked like he’d have to resort to his original plan.
Ray used Core Deconstruction to create another orb of sparking energy. Then he slammed it into the huge, glowing doorway. There was no visible effect at first. A massive spark burst at the point of contact, making him flinch backwards, but the huge Mana portal appeared unchanged when he looked back at it.
Maybe he had been a little too optimistic thinking he could affect an entire dungeon with his abilities. After all, he was just one—
The dungeon chamber started shaking. At the same time, the Mana portal began fading. Ray’s eyes widened. That chromatic bubble before the portal, one he had passed through with no trouble, flickered to life before shattering with an audible crack.
Ray frowned. Wasn’t that supposed to be gone by now, already? Well, whatever. The portal itself was fading. The real thing Ray had decided to break through was falling apart.
It wasn’t revealing an open doorway though. He had expected some sort of tunnel opening like the ones had been using so far, just much larger. But all he saw was solid rock behind the glimmering Mana. No, that wasn’t right. Ray inspected closer. The rock wasn’t as solid as he had first thought. It was cracked all over, crumbling and falling apart.
Ah, so he just needed to break his way through the last barrier. That wasn’t going to be difficult.
Except—Ray twisted around. Primordial Gauge had warned him that people were approaching. A whole bunch of different skills indicating Ray’s presence.
Which meant a whole bunch of people approaching at once.
His heartbeat climbed rapidly. Too many people. There was no good reason all of them would be coming here together. It was too many for it all to be one team. Something else was going on.
It was the appearance of the first person that clued Ray in on what was happening. He could use Primordial Gauge on the approaching competitor.
The Ryous either didn’t have an Amulet of Blindness, or as was proven moments later, was just a Darksign. Ray shifted the focus of Primordial Gauge from one competitor to the other, finding that he could peek into all their statuses with his spell. None of them had an Amulet of Blindness.
Which meant every single one of them was a Darksign. The fuck?
It had to have been his attack on the dungeon portal. The whole place was still shaking, the tremors bursting along the ground with alarming frequency. Were the Darksigns controlled by the dungeon? Had it called in all the Darksigns to stop Ray?
Considerations that he would have to leave for later. The first of them were already attacking.
For the first time since entering the dungeon, Ray felt properly threatened. To the point that he no longer had any stray thoughts about getting to the final chamber and getting the treasure before anyone else. That was now a minor concern at most.
Right that moment, all Ray could think of was surviving the onslaught he was about to face. His skin tingled, his spine threatening to shiver as much as the earth around him was.
This was going to be intense.
The first Darksign to come hurtling at him wasn’t the Ryous he had spotted. It was a fake of the gigantic, boulderlike being he had spotted in the chamber with the other team. In fact, this was a carbon copy.
Ray grinned, part nervous and part excited to see just what his opponent was capable of. He wished he had time to read through the status, but he was going to get a first-hand demonstration anyway.
The boulderlike alien didn’t move with legs. It didn’t have legs. Instead, the whole body rolled forward at a surprisingly quick burst of speed.
Ray thrust his arm forward, calling up a draconic head with Primal Spiritcraft to belch out a blast of chaotic fire. Even if it didn’t kill, the force behind his attack ought to at least redirect the onrushing alien.
It appeared he had underestimated the capabilities of a living boulder. Continuing to roll over the rocky bridge to hammer into Ray, the alien manifested a strange, glinting barrier around itself. The blast of chaotic fire hit it square in the middle, but that shielding skill made sure it suffered nothing.
Ray took a deep breath, then cursed. Another difficult-to-pierce shielding skill. So annoying.
The only option left was to dodge. Ray called up Soaring Wings just in time to take himself to the right. The boulderlike alien crashed against the rocks after shooting past him, ruffling his cloak and hair.
Ray wanted to turn and blast his opponent’s back. It should have been open now, letting him get a good hit in from behind.
But there were too many other Darksigns in the area. And of course, they had no shred of decency to allow him to fight them one-on-one.
Just as Ray had finished dodging the roly-poly fake, a Ryous was slashing in at him with four swords on four of its arms. Ray almost thought it was the one he had tricked and gotten away from. But no. Only four arms. Not six. This was a different fake Ryous.
Ray evaded the Ryous with the help of his wings. He left it late enough that the recovering boulder-alien had come in from the other side too. This made the two fakes collide against each other.
Problem was, there were a lot more than just the two of them all over the place. All of whom were still rushing towards him.
Two Sylvans were using a Growth Mana ability he hadn’t seen before. Streams of Growth Mana flew through the air towards him. They were slow, easily avoidable, but the streams left solid residue that took up a lot of space. Basically, they were closing in the space Ray could actually use. It was almost like these Darksigns were collaborating to take him down.
Ray would have destroyed the Growth Mana with a blast from a Windbane maw, but he couldn’t focus on what wasn’t immediately attempting to kill him.
There were other concerns. Like the sparking human rushing towards Ray’s location.
The man was wreathed in little snakes that jolted with purple electricity. Ray didn’t know what that was, but he was pretty sure letting that guy get too close would not be good for his health. So, he dived straight down.
When his opponent followed, Ray cast Mottling Spiritguard to call up dozens of sparking orbs around him. But not chaotic orbs. Ray used Lifeblood Soulform to call up the Viledrake tail, with Origin Resonance the next second ensuring they all turned into orbs filled with Molten Mana. Just as his opponent neared, Ray spread them all out, turned them into attacking stance.
The result detonated them all. If the lava flying everywhere didn’t get to the fake, then the bridges of stone collapsing from above had to.
Ray climbed above the collapsing explosion. He still wasn’t free. More and more. There was an endless number of these Darksigns.
The boulder-alien and the Ryous both rushed at him. Ray used Soullife Cloak to boost his speed, dodging away from his opponents.
Another Sylvan flashed in at him from the front, curving blades of energy slicing in to guillotine off Ray’s head. Bringing up the draconic head to fire off a chaotic laser breath was all that saved Ray, though even that wasn’t enough. Those blades were slicing through his chaos flames, still aiming to cut him in half.
He had to bless the fact he could think quick. Project Presence sent Ray’s soul through the Sylvan, and he used Spectral Step to appear just behind.
Ray immediately twisted around to attack his aggressor. Of course, with his teleportation, the Sylvan was able to flash forward, well out of Ray’s reach. But he prevented the escape with a quick use of Soulstrike with the draconic head at the end of the True Mana arm.
It was the first satisfying moment in that entire fight to see the fake Sylvan’s head crushed to bloody pulp.
There were still more of them. it was getting to be a bit much, so Ray called up help. Lifeblood Soulform called up the Imitator construct, as well as several of the flying Windbane heads.
His little cavalry was here. Ray didn’t even need to command them for long before they engaged several of the Darksigns.
He couldn’t pay them much attention. Deafening cracking noise pulled Ray’s eyes to where someone else was using a strange skill. Huge rents tore through space itself almost a hundred feet away from Ray. Rents that spewed a strange, liquidlike substance that rushed straight for him with ferocity of a tidal wave.
Ray could have dodged. Even though that wave was splitting off into multiple paths, he could have flown off and evaded.
But several Darksigns, as yet unengaged, were waiting for just that. As soon as Ray started dodging, they’d swoop in for the kill. In that instant, he saw their plan. So Ray stood stock still, letting that huge tidal barrage sweep at him.
The Darksigns’ impatience won out. They rushed him from either side, unheeding of the fact that another of them had used a skill that was going to wipe them all away.
But Ray was already prepared. The Mana Infuser ring allowed him to push more and more True Mana into his draconic head. In mere seconds, the maw turned spectral and grew in size, brimming with fiery power.
Just as the Darksigns and the huge tidal wave were about to reach Ray’s location, he roared out and thrust his arm forward. The oversized Windbane maw unleashed a gargantuan lasering breath of compressed, fiery chaos. Ray was flung back by the momentum behind that blast, which punched through the onrushing wave to strike dead-centre on the ability’s caster.
But Ray wasn’t paying attention whether that annoying asshole had died or not. Because he was too busy calling up another draconic head on his free arm, firing its breath against the main, geyser of a blast.
As the two beams met, a thunderous explosion rocked the chamber, beating back the tremors of the dungeon itself. Ray was flung back even farther once more.
But more importantly, those last few assailants who had dived at him were now obliterated.
He couldn’t relax. Someone else was approaching already. Ray cursed under his breath. It was a fake copy of the Eliza. She already had that chromatic bubble of time wrapped around her, securing her against anything Ray could have done.
Well, anything direct, that was.
Crushing a True Mana crystal, Ray called up a few more of his flying Windbane constructs. Enough that his head started to hurt.
The blasts from the maws, either flying or on his hands, didn’t hit fake Eliza. That was alright, though, because Ray had directed them at the ground around the Darksign instead. Where fake Eliza was perfectly fine, the rocks beneath her feet broke apart.
“Try getting out of that,” Ray said as he stared at the growing hole the combined blasts had left. Fake Eliza was continuing to fall, struggling to climb out while the ground continuously gave way. That took care of that.
Ray looked around him. For just a moment, he had a bit of a breathing room. No one was attacking him just yet. He looked back next. The rock behind the Mana portal was cracked. Breaking apart.
He grinned, using Mimic Mana and the Augmenter Tower Node once more. Time to get to the final chamber.