Ray had thought that he had landed on a giant airship. Sort of like the blimps he had seen flying over stadiums and the like, although this one was more ribbed, kind of like the old-fashioned. But there were key differences he didn’t fail to notice.
The major problem was that its front half was buried in another mound of debris. In fact, it was listing forward at an angle. If Ray wanted, he could have slipped forward pretty easily.
Behind him, the airship was pretty different too. It didn’t taper to a single point, still covered in the tarp and everything else. No, that ended halfway along the ship before giving way to some sort of gigantic engine-like structure. Tubes, pipes, gears, and other machinery all led to a set of enormous nozzles Ray could have established bedrooms in.
Those were probably what created the thrust for driving this entire rig forward. He didn’t think they created the lift needed to get it in the air. An airship didn’t have wings like an airplane. This thing probably had a very different method of achieving liftoff.
A method that the Sylvans entering its bowels were most likely going to explore.
Was that their main reason for coming here, though? Activating some age-old airship? Ray couldn’t figure out why in the world they might need something like this. Surely they had figured out flight on their own already, even if Ray had seen no proof of it yet.
It would be advantageous if he could get closer to see what they were doing, but he would get sensed if he got too close. So, he crushed a Mana crystal to top himself off with more Mana, then used Lifeblood Construct to create his flying eyeball.
“Off you go, buddy,” he said, sending it off.
Behind him, he kept his permanent eyes out for any signs of the Dreaded Guardian approaching. The monster had to be mad that Ray had left it. He didn’t know how far it could get from that chamber he had found it in—considering it hadn’t gone after the Sylvans—but Ray wouldn’t put it past the monster to emerge through the same tunnel he had.
Unlike Ray himself, the eyeball didn’t need to get so close that it would be detected by Total Perception. Its focusing range was really good. As such, it could stay distant and observe everything without giving its location away.
Problem was that it didn’t have hearing. Ray couldn’t tell what the Sylvans were saying among each other.
He certainly couldn’t read their lips. His understanding of their language was entirely a weird, internal-brain translation thing assisted by the System. Deciphering it without hearing just wasn’t going to work.
It was a little weird to have his attention so split. Watching the tunnel mouth while watching the Sylvans poke and prod at various buttons and levers within the airship’s main cabin. Some of it was even working. Little lights flashed into being here and there, the low hum of machinery waking up making the entire dirigible vibrate ever so slightly.
Hmm, maybe he ought to get down from here before the entire airship took to the air.
His decision was more or less made for him when Presence of the Primordial indicated his old friend was just about to burst out of the tunnel mouth. Ray could already hear the thunderous rumble.
[Presence of the Primordial—Dungeon Obstacle]
Take Flight
A graveyard strewn with the debris of yesteryears has nothing left to give. Except for the secret of its origin. As such, all that is left is to use this origin and depart. Take flight with the sole remaining functioning machine of the dungeon and escape from the past.
Now it was showing him the last Dungeon Obstacle? It felt like the final one. Ray read through it quickly, noting the word “escape”. Almost like it didn’t believe he could defeat whatever was after him. No way. He could beat the Dreaded Guardian, he was sure of it, if he prioritized it.
But then, why bother facing it down when he could let it cause more chaos among the Sylvans? Ray grinned. Time to act.
The monster was coming in hot and fast on his trail, but Ray moved quicker. He’d have to time things right.
Deciding that the next bit was going to be an official encounter for the System’s purposes, Ray summoned a True Mana version of his Greater Windbane Maw. The construct made of ethereal energy zipped off to one side to join his floating eyeball. Ray himself flew into the cabin just as the warning hit.
[Warning!]
Presence of the Primordial indicates your presence has been detected by Total Perception [Tier 3]. Sylvan Pride [Tier 3] has been nullified by Presence of the Primordial.
“Hello, there,” Ray said.
The Sylvans wouldn’t attack on sight. Not a single one of his confrontations with a Sylvan had started off with an immediate attack, except when a battle was already ongoing. He was right to assume this one wouldn’t start that way either.
“I should have known you were still alive, intruder,” said the Sylvan near the front of the cabin. His arm was on a strange, hemispherical steering wheel. “What with the update messages drying up.” The other two Sylvans in the cabin had turned to observe Ray with glowering looks, but the leader waved them back to work. “I will handle this one. You two ensure the airship rises.”
With nodded assents, and a last scowl at Ray, the other two Sylvans went back to work. Ray tried to observe what exactly they were doing, but his attention was drawn back to the leader. To the person he could gain all the information from.
“You Sylvans really haven’t discovered flight yet?” Ray asked, mocking. “We’ve had that for over a hundred years now.”
“Flight?” The Sylvan sneered, slowly pulling the spear with the curved blade off his back. Wait no, that made it more of a glaive. “Foolish human, you believe flight is what we are seeking here?”
“What else could you want?”
“We have it working,” one of the other Sylvans shouted.
The airship groaned violently. And then it began to lift off. Ray trembled along with everyone and everything else, but he managed to hold himself steady.
The Sylvan leader laughed. “Well done. Keep it steady and prepare for the Guardian.” He turned back to Ray. “You, unfortunately, are about to die, therefore, you do not need to know anything.”
Poised though the Sylvan was to attack, he didn’t actually leap at Ray. He had frozen instead, quickly jerking his head up. An instant later, the Dread Guardian dropped in.
The monster didn’t care about civilized exits and entry ways. Oh no. Its gaze was focused entirely on its targets, and for it, the closest means of reaching said targets was by crashing itself straight through the roof.
Ray wasn’t the only one to shout in alarm as metal splinters and pieces of the dirigible’s tarp all rained down among them. With a powerful thunderclap, the monster was in their midst.
“I thought this thing wouldn’t come after us!” one of the Sylvans at the back yelled, retreating backwards. “We used the evader after all.”
“It’s him.” The leader of the Sylvans glared at Ray like he had just cussed in front of his young children. “He dragged it in here, the fool.”
A lot of things became apparent to Ray at that moment. For one, this was clearly not the guardian that the Sylvan leader had just told his subordinates to prepare for. Here was this other guardian then, and was it a greater threat than the one before them?
Another thing that had rapidly become clear was that these Sylvans had never faced the Dreaded Guardian. Somehow, they had suppressed it, or evaded it without ever encountering it. Maybe they had never used the tunnel in the first place, just stationed a guard there because that was the most likely route Ray would end up taking.
Whatever the case, a level 19 Dreaded Guardian was now in front of them, and they had to deal with it.
“Scared?” Ray taunted. “If you really want, I can kill that thing for you.”
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Clearly, the Dreaded Guardian was in no mood to be killed. It uttered the same thunderous roar it had done earlier, like a furious salvo of lightning bolts going off at once.
It brought both its arms down with Thunder Charge activating at the same time. Lighting manifested at the end of its fist, ready to detonate at the moment of its fist’s impact with its target.
Ray flew back quickly, the lightning exploding outwards in the next second. He used Mottling Membrane to safeguard himself against any stray arcs of electricity. The Sylvan had dodged in the opposite direction. He shouted something at his subordinates, but Ray couldn’t quite make it out in the pandemonium.
The monster could apparently split its attention, going by how both Ray and the leader Sylvan were buffeted by a storm. Rain and wind lashed them both in equal measure. Lightning was beginning to erupt in their vicinity This Dreaded Guardian was something else.
Well, Ray had no wish to fight against anybody in these conditions. In fact, he wasn’t here to fight in the first place. He just wanted to win.
That was where his constructs came in. The timer of Lifeblood Construct was running down, but Ray had to wait until they were all in the right position. Though, that was going to be difficult. The Sylvan was moving way too furiously.
Ray had no time to think. Both his opponents were attacking. Thankfully, he had taken care of most of the thought before the encounter.
As the Sylvan flew in with his blade slashing, Ray dodged past with his wings and landed at his opponent’s original position. The monster’s Thunder Charge fist came flying in the next second—another heading for the Sylvan leader—but Ray dodged that too. It struck the dirigible’s wall behind him, the whole airship groaning as more of it burst asunder.
One of the other Sylvans was about to jump in the fray, something Ray only caught through the corner of his eye. But the leader shouted something and the new combatant stayed back. The Sylvan went back to assisting his companion with the airship.
Focus. Ray’s goal was to deal with the situation with one blow. Two birds with one stone? How about all of them instead?
He knew just how to do so. Time to get to work.
Ray flew in. He deposited himself behind the Dreaded Guardian, halting between the monster and the other Sylvans who were busy with the airship. Their leader was too busy with monster. More importantly, he was at Ray’s original location, which meant Ray himself was currently obscured.
Just the opportunity he needed to take advantage of. With his Silver True Mana Bracelet’s stored True Mana, Ray activated True Enhancement once more, placing it on Shatterclaw this time.
As soon as the black-and-white arms materialized, Ray fired them forward. They burst through the cloudy monster’s midsection. There was no time for the Sylvan beyond to dodge. Ray’s regular eyes might not have been able to locate his opponent through the monster’s body, but his third eye had been trained on the Sylvan all this while. His aim was inch-perfect.
Ray had locked the Sylvan in place.
He could have trued to attack the Sylvan directly with the True Mana Shatterclaw arms, but his opponent might have possessed defensive abilities. Honestly, he should have checked with Presence fo the Primordial. But regardless, this was a more foolproof approach.
“Now!” he screamed.
The True Mana variant of the Greater Windbane Maw fired off its compressed laser the next second.
Ray didn’t even get the time to blink before the laser hammered in. The fiery beam crushed through the Sylvan’s midsection and vaporized his chest in an instant. It struck his True Mana arm as well, destroying it with as little trouble, as well as burning through much of the Dreaded Gaurdian’s form too.
But the biggest blow had to be when it struck the side of the airship cabin. It carved a hole right through the metal wall and passed into the engine beyond.
Which promptly exploded.
One second, Ray was holding onto a Sylvan separated into two by his attack. The next, he was flying, his ears bleeding thanks to the sheer ferocity of the explosion, his whole body aching as he crashed into the opposite wall. Fire raged around him, a multitude of wounds covering his exposed skin, his head ringing as his vision swam.
Not good. Thankfully, Ray had enough presence of mind to control his Recovery and take care of the worst of the injuries. The rib he had broken, whatever had happened to his head, things like that.
There wasn’t enough Recovery to heal up the multitude of stinging sensations, nor was he able to numb the growing pain in his arm. That explosion had been a lot harder than he had expected it to be. Damn.
But most of his opponents were either dead or close enough to not matter. Ray spotted at least two Sylvan corpses, with the third slowly moving in the distance.
More importantly, the explosion had destroyed a huge chunk of the Dreaded Gaurdian. The monster’s cloudy form had been torn apart too instantaneously for it to have protected itself against the blast.
It wasn’t dead yet, though. Whatever bit of it remained was slowly getting itself back together, unheeding of the damage it had suffered.
Ray got to his feet. His vision swam in the heat and the smoke. Debris was strewn everywhere. Everything seemed to be groaning, and the way his stomach was sinking suggested the airship plummeting straight to the ground.
Cloudy wisps gathered as the monster partially recreated itself. Its attention was focused entirely on Ray, preparing to attack, a Thunder Charge fist once again slamming in for his head.
The blast had taken out Ray’s wings too, or the timer of Primal Summons had run out. Whatever the case, he threw himself forward to evade the monster’s crashing blow. Lightning shattered the area just behind him.
As Ray rolled back to his feet, he used Primal Summons again. This time, he called the Greater Windbane Maw to materialize along his arm.
An instant later, as it formed with a burst of chaotic energy along his arm, Ray immediately unleashed the maw’s fiery breath. It was good thing his enhanced dragon head’s laser breath and the subsequent explosion of the engine had destroyed most of the Dreaded Gaurdian’s body already. Ray was only left with less than a quarter to finally kill the thing.
The monsters tried to Dissipate, tried to swerve away from the chaotic flames and remanifest itself elsewhere. But Ray had a counter to that too.
He used Mottling Membrane. That slowed down its regeneration by pushing away the dissipated bits, which allowed his flames to burn away the monster a lot more easily. Soon enough, with a final but low groan, the Dreaded Guardian died.
[Enemy Defeated—Sylvan]
Acrobat Assaulter [Tier 3] Sylvan: [Level 16] x1
Crescent Wielder [Tier 3] Sylvan: [Level 19] x1
Dreaded Guardian [Tier 7] Monster: [Level 19] x1
Essence: +6,580
Mana Restored: +540
Knowledge: +9
Essence to level 18: 14,760/16,500
Knowledge to next Threshold: 466/500
Ray pushed away the notifications. Interesting as the things that he had killed had been, he didn’t have time to look over them all. He hadn’t used Chaos Chymify once during that battle, so there was nothing for Lifeblood Crucible to steal either. Fun as Cloud Form had seemed, it wasn’t something that fit what he already had.
Besides, now wasn’t the time. The airship was still sinking. Ray had more important business to attend to.
He hurried over to where his last enemy was still alive. It was hard not to trip on the rubble. The Sylvan’s legs had been crushed. Ray suspected there had been even worse wounds, but those had taken up all of the alien’s Recovery, thus leaving the legs unhealed and destroyed.
“Do you need some—” Ray coughed in the smoke. “Do you need help?”
With slow, clearly agonizing movement, the Sylvan turned to look at him through eyes that almost seemed like they were melting. Or maybe those were tears. “You… will not… be forgiven this trans… transgression.”
“Save it, pal. You’re dying.” Despite the flames, Ray was suddenly feeling rather cold. His spine had turned into a rigid iron rod left out in winter. “Let’s cut to the chase. I can help you, but in return, I want answers.”
“Help?” the Sylvan tried to laugh, but it just came out as a pained wheeze. “From…”
“Yes, from me.” Ray cursed. “Just forget everything for a second, You’re fucking dying. Do you want help, or are you really going to let your pride be the last thing you take care of?”
He stared up at Ray for a few moments, then winced. “What… do you…?”
“This airship. This whole thing. What was it about? What were you doing here?”
Ray knew he wasn’t going to get the whole story out of the Sylvan. There was just too much going on. But he paid attention to every word he was told, and that was enough.
“Old…” the Sylvan said, every word appearing like it was hauled out of a depthless pit. “Technology… the… Lord… wishes to… combine… ascend… all that the Floor… All other… collected…”
The Sylvan had to pause. Too much pain causing too much strain. The words just wouldn’t come.
But that was alright. Ray had heard enough to be going on with. He now understood the big picture. The Floor Lord clearly wanted some old Everair tech for his indubitably nefarious plans. It raised a lot more question, but Ray quickly narrowed down the most relevant one in this case.
“Where is the guardian you were preparing for?” Ray asked.
“Coming soon…” the Sylvan managed to squeak out. He was losing his voice. “Outside…”
Ray stood straighter. He had leaned in to listen better as the Sylvan’s voice had quietened. Now, he knew enough to be going on with.
“Thank you,” Ray said. He meant it. Piecemeal though it was, everything the Sylvan had said would be useful. “I appreciate all that you have told me, Enthadel.” Ray had peeked at the Sylvan’s name using Presence of the Primordial. It made the Sylvan look up in slight surprise. “Now, let me help you.”
An understanding passed between them. It was a strange moment, to have that sort of deep, integral comprehension between them. Alien though they might be to each other, they both understood the only help Ray could provide in the situation.
With a quick cast of Shatterclaw, Ray crushed the Sylvan’s head. Not the cleanest and most dignified of deaths, but the death was too instantaneous to cause any true pain.
Merciful.
[Enemy Defeated—Sylvan]
Acrobat Assaulter [Tier 3] Sylvan: [Level 16] x1
Essence: +2,400
Mana Restored: +160
Knowledge: +3
[Level Up!]
Reward
* +3 Intellect, +3 Spirit, +2 Vitality, +4 allocatable free stats.
* 1 Tier Point
* 1 Spell Synthesis Point
Essence to level 19: 660/18,900
Knowledge to next Threshold: 469/500
A Tier Point and a Spell Synthesis point with that level up. Now he could both upgrade his spells and streamline his overall loadout too. Excellent.
The airship jerked and groaned again. It was still crashing. Ray really hated moments like these when his circumstances distracted him from poring over some delicious rewards.
Taking one last look at the area to see if he had missed anything, Ray decided to exit the plummeting airship before it crashed and pulverized him. That was when he heard it. A distant, ethereal shriek floating over the wind straight to his ears. The cry of some gigantic beast.
Ray stared as he reached the airship cabin’s doorway, the wind making his hair flutter. Something was flying straight at him. Something huge enough to hold up the airship, if needed.
[Presence of the Primordial—Dungeon Obstacle]
Fly
A resurrection of old powers has failed. Your only hope now lies in taming the past itself as it arrives. Pass its scrutiny by any means necessary, whether by somehow defeating or taming it or simply proving you are not worth destruction. Your choice may spell your doom.