Reinmund’s first reaction was to turn the spider to paste. His second was to laugh at how stereotypical that was, and his third was to pump the mob for all the information it was worth.
“Who are you?” Reinmund demanded.
“He’s been working so hard, but finally it's time.” The little thing cackled again, blatantly ignoring him. Reinmund felt his stomach slowly drop.
“Time for what? What more can the Core do, kill us?” The new guy taunted. The word torture sprang to Reinmund’s mind as he willed the guy to shut up.
“Oh, that would be too easy. You can’t really hurt someone unless they have hope. Hope to live another day, to gain just a bit more power. To see the sky again.” The words were said in a dreamy whisper that hit with the force of an A ranker.
The spider didn’t have a face, besides being an unusual shade of black it was perfectly normal, but Reinmund could have sworn it grinned maliciously. For a second, he didn’t understand why, couldn’t compute the words. Not out of shock, but self-preservation because, as mad as the arachnid sounded, there was a grain of truth to its words.
Hope killed.
“What do you- no- what does the Core want?”
“For to be yourselves! To channel all that Adventurer energy into the one thing you poor fools are good at. Just clear a little dungeon.”
Reinmund blinked, glancing to his nonplussed party. For all he’d probably come to regret it, there wasn’t really a choice.
“If we clear this dungeon the Core will release us unharmed?”
“Of course, of course.” The spider said, like a salesman assuring their latest victim the armor was worth five platinum. Reinmund internally cursed as he made the inevitable choice.
“Fine. Where-”
BOOM!
One corner of the room turned to shrapnel, sending them all scrambling.
____________________________________________________________________________
Architecture is hard.
The Underworld was set up as a series of square floors, cells branching off from each square’s side. This was neat and symmetrical and all but didn’t leave room for a starter space. Sure I could have stuck the Adventurers in one of the cells and left the door open but that seemed… lazy. This was to be my masterpiece, my ever-evolving final floor, my gimmick. Compressed hydrogen placed in the walls blew open one of the floor’s corners easily enough. Pluss, it gave cultivators that terrified-for-your-life feeling I was going for.
Don’t judge me.
Anyway, I was waiting for the Adventurers to pick themselves up when MurderCat made it to floor two. How did I notice a single cat moving to the second floor above literally everything else in my dungeon? Simple. Everything else slowly stopped as mobs died by the dozen.
By the time I flicked my attention to the one cat "cat"-astrophe… ok that was bad. Even I have standards. Anyway, by the time I reached the thing half the second floor was dead. Strangely it wasn’t the blood painting the floor, the occasional mob desperately trying to escape, or even the teamwork of the remaining mobs that caught my attention.
“Granite, tell me I’m not dreaming.” Ryia sounded like she’d died, gone to heaven, then committed suicide and gone to heaven 2.0.
MurderCat was hovering just off the ground, orange fur tinged red as B ranked mana swirled around him, glowing crimson just for the heck of it. A dozen mobs rushed it, everything from apes to PantherCats to an oversized rat I’d thrown in as a joke.
It was like tossing meatballs at a bear.
Each mob was shredded by the screaming mana, its blood and cultivation sucked away to fuel the growing B ranked aura. Blood swirled like a slowed down hurricane, the sheer quantity engulfing a quarter of the massive room.
The feline was floating towards the third-floor stairs. Probably. He could also be heading towards the Litterbox, drawn by the prospect of a B ranked opponent but… nahhh. He didn’t look the sort to pick a fight.
I glanced back at the meat grinder on wheels and, with dawning horror, realized I was a terrible judge of character. Who knew?
While a probably insane C ranked cat wielding B ranked power slaughtering its way through my dungeon was neat and all, this felt like something I should be stopping. Usually I’d just laugh and say that feeling was for mortals, but I did have to keep this place running. Or deal with a bored Ryia which would be… interesting. With a sigh equivalent, I hit the mental un-manifest button.
Nothing happened.
“Well waddya know, the second most powerful mob I’ve ever created is no longer under my control. That’s probably not good. Ryia, I think we're all going to-” I was cut off as Murder Cat quit playing around.
B ranked power flooded forward with bone shattering force, reducing the mob of mobs to a shattered mass of whimpering animals. It accelerated, aura flinging it across the room straight towards the Litterbox.
Well, that answers that question.
My thoughts came to a crashing halt as a sound reached not my current perspective on the second floor, but my Core itself. The all too familiar sound of stone shattering like glass. I oriented on the noise, flicking my perception over as another blast shook my dungeon. My perception oriented towards the sound of a minor earthquake, back to the cat with murder on its mind, then towards the earthquake.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“I’m sure that’s fine.”
A second explosion shook my entire dungeon, sending dust down from the ceiling.
“Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-fine. You... just… stay here. Don’t get in any trouble until I get back.” I slammed my perception towards the noise as MurderCat reached the LitterBox stairwell, obviously ignoring me.
The sheer audacity…
____________________________________________________________________________
Two minutes earlier.
Reinmund clambered to his feet, trace dust in the air barely registering on his molten eyes.
“Everyone ok?” He asked for the second time in five minutes.
“Good” Replacement Guy muttered, once more clambering to his feet.
Some sixth-sense made Reinmund turn, fiery orbs flaring wide at the cloud of darkness flooding into the room, so thick it took him a moment to recognize it. Dust, a sheer wall of pure powder dust so fine it flowed like water.
Reinmund braced, mind flickering through a dozen combat scenarios, imagining the mobs pouring towards him. Braced as the dust, powdered remains of doors and four dozen skeletons, washed over his molten form.
And ignited.
The world was fire, pure unending flame so hot he began to melt, molten stone running like liquid. The ambient mana burned and converted, turning the room into a cauldron of mortal and ethereal flame upon flame.
Reinmund staggered as a force slammed into him. Not the physical heat wave, that barely registered on his golem form. Force from flame mana slamming into his matrix, impacting his cultivation technique with enough power to stagger him.
Lava mana, being a subcategory of both earth and flame mana, was highly resistant to explosions. A normal lava golem’s matrix would have been impervious. But the only golem matrix he possessed was a C ranked cultivation technique layered over a human matrix that didn’t take kindly to pure flame mana. For all that technique shielded him, mana still squirmed through the cracks, still scorched the fleshy matrix beneath.
The flames snapped off just as something in his technique broke. Reinmund screamed as residual flame mana charred his unprotected human matrix. Screamed as his lava cultivation unraveled, as his cultivation ranks plunged. He screamed in pain, screamed in rage at the decades of work being undone.
Screamed in darkest, bitterest grief.
As the world narrowed, as matrix lines burned away, as his human matrix withered, he could have sworn he heard a sound of vengeful glee, swore the mana itself carried the message.
“Burn.”
____________________________________________________________________________
Jeannette couldn’t stop herself from laughing, the ManaSpeach equivalent rippling through the room like the foreshocks of armageddon. Flame mana rotated through her, breathed through enhanced cultivation with such force her matrix trembled.
Distantly a cold, analytical voice drilled in by years of education prattled. It said elementals broke through ranks by increasing their mana tier, but she already knew that. Knew it in the way her matrix flexed, how the flame mana in the room swirled like water down a faucet, called by her Intent, by her attunement, by her very nature itself. Was she not a flame elemental? Was this not hers?
Her mana compressed as something changed. Some deep twist of her matrix that separated cultivation technique from human matrix strained as her mana compressed again until she was as dense as her Intent could hold, strained more, pushing past her limits pushing into-
A choice.
Because for all she’d borrowed a flame elemental’s body, it was merely technique manifested. She wasn’t really an elemental, not deep down, past the shell of cultivation. Flame would never yield to a human, to a thing burned by its very existence.
So came the choice.
As her Intent strained under the weight of mana density, as her B ranked mind flexed and waned, threatening to turn her into a shattered wreck of a failed cultivator, she looked out into the ocean of flame. Looked at her team, melting under the sheer heat. She searched for the one that cold voice said was weakest in this environment, saw him swirling in the flame, intangible form shredding under the unending assault.
A choice.
Her humanity, or the lives of her team. Power or weakness. Life... or death.
Truly, not a choice at all.
Two things broke. Firstly, her mana, over-compressed particles crumpling together to form new, denser ones. Dense enough to tear through C rank energy like a hot knife through tissue paper.
B ranked.
Secondly that deep, almost invisible mana protecting her humanity, the line between cultivator and elemental. Her form collapsed, compressed to half, then quarter size as the room’s mana slammed into her. Reinmund collapsed, residual flame mana still eating away at his matrix as the replacement guy crumpled to his knees with the sound of church bells. Janus’s form, visible by the shifting of charred dust, swirled along the ground so faintly she could barely perceive it. And yet for all her new power, she could do nothing for them. That cold voice said trying to interfere so close to the matrix of their beings would be a very, very bad idea. She’d given them all the help they could, the rest they’d have to battle alone.
Such is the path of cultivation.
She levitated, a melon sized orb of purest flame. Not mere mortal flame, not the burning of fuel to release heat and light. No, this was ManaFlame, B ranked fire constantly manifesting from the sheer density of her mana, mind-shatteringly, overpoweringly, unimaginably hot. She contained that heat as she moved, the barest hint of Intent slamming dust into the walls, compressed to a sheet of charred calcium as she surveyed the next room's contents. A series of openings, obviously designed for doors long unmanifested, were set along a hallway. She stood where two hallways met; half dissolved remains of whatever mobs waited for them smoldering below her. And beyond that lay the sources of it all.
A pair of Consumer runes.
She recognized them instantly, saw how the dungeon had erred. While Consumer runes- technically inverted force projection runes- could stop most forces, they had serious long term side effects. Such as powdering everything in an enclosed environment while heating to flesh melting levels.
Someone needs to teach that Core the basics of mana theory.
The thought curled through her as runes shattered under her Intent, the doors they protected burned to cinders by the miniature sun she had become. The space beyond, also packed with powder dust, instantly ignited. A half second later the doors beyond shattered, the rest of the dungeon floor igniting in an instant.
Normal fire would have winked out, oxygen long depleted, but as flame mana flooded the area she forced it to manifest, forced it up the stairwell she found. Beyond was a beast of a door barring access to the second level, the hole for some long slagged key set into the center. For an instant the floor’s mana and air pressure spiked to unimaginable levels, then the door vaporized with the sound of shattering stone.
KRAK-KOOM!
The entire floor-the entire dungeon trembled as Jeannette laughed at the sheer irony, ignoring how unhinged the ManaSpeach sounded. Her team nearly died to flame, but that only created her. The energy that even now ate at their existence gave her the power of B grade. Truley, the path of cultivation twists in ways none can foresee. A word came to her, one so in tune with her emotions, with her cultivation, with her mindset that she screamed it through the laughter, through the last of her humanity wisping away. Screamed it as Jeannette ended, and a true flame elemental was born.
“Burn.”