Chapter 388 - The Frozen Flame
At first, all Claire found was sand. Flux’s voice rang through her mind and she could feel the vectors around her distorting as she was warped away. And yet, the scenery remained unchanged. There was nothing but fine granules, bits and pieces of ground rock spread all throughout her surroundings. She could feel the sand pushing her along, sucking her deeper and deeper into what she could only assume to be a bottomless hole. Still, she remained unmoving. She was in no danger of suffocation, and if anything, the accompanying pressure was comfortable. It was like a massage, pressing into her tissues with just enough force to abate her exhaustion.
It wasn’t until about a minute later that something finally changed. The ground began to rumble. The shaking grew louder and stronger as a burst of energy came from down below. Suddenly enveloping her body, it pushed her through the sand and into the air. Like water from a geyser, she was launched, ten, twenty, thirty meters before the fountain lost its vigour.
Her newfound position provided a wide view of her surroundings. She floated above a lake made entirely of sand. Every few seconds, a pillar would erupt from within and blast the material up into the sky. Some of it was carried away by the wind so that it could pollute the lake’s shore with all of its grainy glory. But the rest fell back down to the pool from whence it came. The spawning area went on for a few hundred meters, with one of its far ends labeled as an exit and the other pointing to the dungeon’s depths.
She could have remained high up in the sky, but Claire landed on the lake’s surface and started to walk across it. She didn’t have to wait long for Sylvia to join her in erupting from one of the geysers. Giggling as she flew, the fox went up and down, landing almost perfectly atop Claire’s head in spite of the lyrkress’ outstretched hands.
“That was kinda fun,” she said, as she shook the sand out of her fur.
“A little,” said Claire.
Finally tearing her eyes away from the sandy pit, Claire shifted her hands back to her sides and looked over their surroundings again.
They stood at the base of a smoking mountain. There looked to be a village off in the distance, but like the rest of the background, it was unreachable. A barrier suddenly appeared and denoted the edge of the world whenever she considered exploring beyond it.
The very same lattice existed on both sides of the path. The strict route led straight towards a set of double doors carved into the side of the mountain. Though made of materials likely to be found therein, they remained completely out of place. For one, they were far too fancy. The trimmings, knobs, and motifs were all made of solid gold. There were so many decorations that one could have easily pulled ten pounds of material from them alone. It wasn't the sort of expensive object that one would simply leave in the path of an eruption.
Granted, the same could be said for its guardians. Both were covered in the same glimmering plating. Their armour shone of brilliant riches even though they were simple goblins—or at least the ghosts thereof. Like the golden ornaments that covered their bodies, they were eerily translucent.
“Halt.” One of the two goblins called out as she approached. His voice was gurgly, perhaps more reminiscent of a rubber duck than a dungeon’s gatekeeper.
Though more confused than anything, Claire followed the duck’s instructions and slowed her steps to a stop. “Why?”
“You must make a decision before you enter our Master’s domain.” The goblin stepped forward. “Choose. Which door shall we open? Left or right?”
Claire tilted her head. “Why does it matter?”
“Your answer will decide your fate.”
“Do they lead to different places?”
“No.”
Claire rolled her eyes. “Then why does it matter?”
“The answer is rather simple, really. My brother and I,” the goblin looked to his partner, “are simply deciding which of us will open the door for you and which of us will stab you in the back.”
A sigh escaped the lyrkress’ lips as she deployed a set of vectors and ripped both ethereal goblins in half. Walking right up to the doors they guarded, she grabbed one of the handles and gave it a tug. But it refused to budge.
“The gate will not open unless you answer the question. Which door would you like us to open?”
Turning around, she found both goblins completely undamaged. Even their armour, which she had clearly ripped in half, was returned to pristine perfection.
Claire narrowed her eyes before attacking them again. Another set of vectors tore them apart, but their bodies reformed almost as quickly as they were destroyed. The cycle repeated another four times, ending only as Claire spun around and punched the door.
There was a feral, bestial howl as her fist met the metal. Needless to say, it wasn’t hers, nor even theirs. Nay, the scream had come from the double door itself.
Completely bent out of shape, the decorated lump of metal sprouted a pair of feet, broke free of the doorframe, and started scrambling away. It was surprisingly quick, especially considering its shape, but it was unable to outrun the vectors that seized its body and crumpled it into a ball far too small for a creature of its original size.
Log Entry 854744
You have slain a Level 956 Phantasm Door Mimic.
This feat has earned you the following bonus rewards:
- 2 points of strength
- 4 points of wisdom
After taking a moment to glance between the corpse and the missing gatekeepers, Claire lifted the newly-formed fidget toy in her hands and played with it as she walked away. The volcano’s interior space was far smaller than she had gathered from its outward appearance. The hallway was only a little bit bigger than the door, with nothing to note but the grates that covered the path. Fire roared beneath them, often rising from the mountain’s core and scorching the pathway above it. There was no clear pattern to the rising flames; to safely traverse the hallway would typically require a set of fire-retardant equipment.
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Claire, however, had no such need. She proceeded straight through the flames unhindered. Her clothes—which she had reformed right after turning humanoid—were the only things at risk of catching fire, but even they remained untouched. The icy aura that enveloped her body kept them from spontaneously combusting.
One of the grates tried to bite her foot while a piece of the wall grew a pair of arms and threw them around her shoulders, but neither mimic caused any harm. A quick stomp put the first back in its place, while a compressed metal ball completely obliterated the latter. A third aggressor—the stone tile beneath her feet—suddenly opened like a trapdoor and left a pitfall in its place, but unbeholden to the rules of gravity, Claire ripped the mild annoyance out of the ground and shattered it with a smack of the tail.
Similar encounters continued to play out as she continued down the hall. Over a hundred dead mimics lay strewn throughout the corridor by the time she finally reached the exit. There, she found another golden door with another pair of goblins, which she promptly met with a sprinting dive kick.
The room beyond the gate was wide and open. It was a circular ring with a diameter in excess of a kilometre. Its floor was made of a metal mesh, much thinner and more tightly woven than the grates that had decorated the hall. The spacing between each piece was entirely haphazard. There were places where it was consistent, but so too were there spots without any rhyme or reason. Though there was no lava in sight, the fire that burned beneath her feet was hot enough for the whole room to shimmer, and the ash emerged in thick tufts, polluting the air with its sulfuric scent.
Looking up, she found a tiny distant hole that revealed the sky beyond. They had entered the volcano’s central chamber. There weren't any obvious doors in the wide open space, but neither was she given much time to look. One of the many pterodactyl-like monsters circling overhead dove at her the moment she stepped through the door. For a moment, Claire considered ripping it apart with her vectors, but flexing her claws, she met it head-on instead.
She drove a fist towards its sharpened beak, but the pterodactyl twisted its body out of the way. With a twirl, it drifted through the air and drove its face towards her spine. It was surprisingly fast for a primitive bird. When Claire spun around and raked at it with her claws, it abandoned its attack and darted away again.
Only as it eyed her from a distance did she get a better look at it. The shape of its body was fairly simple, with two large wings, two trunk-like legs, and a loosely avian frame, its shape barely deviated from that of its winged origin. Had more of its body been on fire, it likely would have resembled a certain goddess from afar, but its flames were reserved for its face and its tail. The fire emitted from both ends almost seemed out of place with the way the rest of its body was covered in a layer of liquid, though it was precisely from its watery bubble that the creature’s wings were made. Without the visible membrane that ran between its fingers and its hips, it would have just been a freak with eerily long arms.
Remaining cautious for only a second, the pterodactyl opened its mouth and ejected a wave of fire. It was a valiant effort, but the attack only went to waste. Claire walked right through the flames. It panicked and tried to flee, but she wrapped her fingers around its neck and squeezed its windpipe shut. She was half expecting an immediate log entry, but the monster slipped away as soon as she crushed its skull. It flapped its wings in an attempt to escape, falling silently only as she landed on its back and crushed it beneath her feet.
Log Entry 854873
You have slain a Level 854 Scaldino Skyborn.
This feat has earned you the following bonus rewards:
- 5 points of agility
- 12 points of strength
Two more pterodactyls charged her as soon as the first one fell, but summoning Boris into her hands, she caught each with a strike to the chest. One perished immediately, but the other was far more resilient. It took four hits to finally break its backbone and bring an end to its futile struggling.
She expected the others to descend from the sky and join in the attack, but though they squawked overhead, the remaining pterodactyls refrained from engaging her in combat. At least until she took away their right to choose.
Deploying her own wings, she rose into the vertical space and started swinging her lizard at every unfortunate monster whose path she happened to cross. They dropped like flies, falling one after another onto the metal grill. It didn’t take long for the scent of roasted meat to fill the volcano. Even unseasoned, it was far from revolting, but neither did it drive her urge to eat.
Evidently, the same was not true of the flames themselves. They rose from within the space beneath the arena and licked the pterodactyls with their charcoal breath. All pieces they touched were immediately consumed, turned to bits of ashen dust. If not for the laughter that accompanied the meal’s disintegration, she likely would have dismissed the flames as a part of the dungeon’s garbage collection mechanism, but the booming cackle was impossible to ignore. It rang throughout the whole volcano, shaking its base and rattling the many nests built right into its sides. It was like it was asking for more.
The sound came with a change in the pterodactyls’ behaviour. Though they had continued to circle, even as Claire weaved through their ranks, they immediately abandoned their formations and made for the hole at the top of the mountain.
At first, Claire pumped her wings and followed suit. She leisurely moved along and kept pace with the flock, even as the opening began to shut.
A quick glance beneath her revealed that the fire was rising. An ardent pillar climbed through the tunnel, filling every last gap in the stone as it worked its way towards the summit.
Its presence spurred the pterodactyls to flap with desperation, but Claire lacked the fear that drove them to action. Pumping her wings, she swiveled around in midair and dove at the fire instead. The flames weren’t any hotter than those that erupted from the vents in the hall.
Ignoring them outright, she dove back down to the mesh and through one of its openings. She hadn’t realised it at first, but the hostile, searing blast had made it loud and clear. There was a monster beneath the ground floor, and from the pterodactyls’ reactions, fighting it would prove a better use of her time.
The shaft through which the flames had erupted was a long, hollow tube. Bits of rock jutted out from the sides, along with spiders and webs made almost entirely of fire. One of the arachnids lunged when she passed it by, baring its fangs and working its engine. A jet of flame erupted from its posterior and accelerated its charge as soon as it left its web. The spider was a confident hunter. Its body was incorporeal, and its flaming webs were maddeningly adhesive, but Claire tore it to bits with her vectors without a second glance.
Log Entry 854911
You have slain a level 837 Infernal Hellspider.
This feat has earned you the following bonus rewards:
- 1 point of agility
- 4 points of wisdom
None of the other spiders fared any better. They were entirely dismissable; she only kept track of their death count because the goddess’ voice refused to leave her alone.
The bottom of the firewell was a simple open space with a floor that doubled as a set of massive, metal doors. A single monster stood within its depths, gazing up at the approaching lyrkress with its hollow, undead eyes. It had a frog-like head atop a humanoid skeleton, and not a single piece of flesh to its name. She would have assumed it a cross between a lich and a grug had it anything that resembled a core, but all that dwelled within its bones were flames of ardent red.
They flooded from within its frame, gushing out to create an outline that vaguely resembled a set of muscles.
Unlike the mimics, pterodactyls, or spiders, it refrained from attacking immediately. It waited for Claire to land in the arena before slowly walking into position and placing a hand on the greatsword strung to its back.
It carried itself with a seemingly noble demeanour. A scoff upon its lips, it drew its weapon with one hand and pointed the blade towards her.
Finally, a challenge—a foe that her instincts warned her against.