The others nodded. Jie unlocked the door and threw it open, revealing a corridor teeming with noctilith. They skittered over the ceiling, walls, and floor. One right in front of Jie reared up, its massive mandibles dripping with deadly, venomous liquid and black qi.
But, neither it nor any of the others in this corridor compared to the mummies Jie had just fought. It lashed out at her, and she struck with two chain finger of light attacks. Dragon lightning qi incinerated it to ash before it reached her and arced from one noctilith to another, reducing even the strongest to smoking husks with patches of their chitin glowing orange from the heat.
Jie swept her spirit sense over the corridor just in case she missed any. A particularly stubborn one that'd been clinging to the ceiling finally dropped, its legs twitching feebly before it stilled.
"Wow... you're even stronger now. Did you somehow have a breakthrough even without stepping into the Elementalist rank?" Pan Tian asked.
"I'm not sure... maybe? Or maybe I'm getting closer to it..." Jie said, "There are more in the side rooms. One moment."
Jie used lightning step and cleared each of the side rooms with a chain finger of light attack, the noctilith inside meeting the same fate as the others. Then, she returned to her friends, still feeling wary with so many noctilith around.
She heard them scuttling, crawling, and flying all over, their movements echoing through the long corridors and their auras a chaotic haze on the fringes of her spirit sense. It was almost impossible to get a real sense of them as the pyramid interfered with sensing anything in other rooms... still, she felt enough vague impressions to know the building was filled with a teeming mass of the creatures.
They closed and locked the door behind them in the vain hope that they might somehow return to the cultivation chamber, but Jie doubted they ever would. Not with the pyramid being in the air and the fact that some of the auras she could just barely feel were strong enough to be a threat even to her. Especially fifty at a time with hundreds, if not thousands of smaller ones at the same time...
She couldn't help feeling disappointed about that. The cultivation chamber was truly amazing... but it's also not the most important thing for me to focus on right now... Jie thought, remembering Kazzak's words and her blockage keeping her from breaking through to the Elementalist rank. She ground her teeth. It was her body. Her mind. It should obey her and break through already and stop being so conflicted!
But, of course, it wasn't so easy.
The sounds of battle grew louder as they walked along the labyrinthine corridors with Jie in the lead as Pan Tian reminded her which way to go. Once again, Jie was glad to have her in their group. She was certain she'd be lost with the countless turns and walls that all looked much the same to her.
Strangely, after their initial scuffle, they hadn't found much in the way of noctilith to fight. Not even the corpses. In fact, they hadn't found any corpses. An awful lot of yellow blood and the occasional severed body part or piece of chitin... but no bodies.
They continued on, and finally, Jie sensed things moving around the corner. Countless auras. Though, they felt... off. Not like the auras of the noctilith they'd fought. Not even like any of the undead they'd fought. They stepped around the corner.
Noctilith stared at them. Only these ones glowed with a dark purple energy and it looked like someone had ripped open their backs and pulled something out. Among those undead noctilith were spectral ones that flickered in and out of existence. But they made no move to get closer to Jie or her friends. They just stood there... watching.
The ground shook and a statue with a jackal's head and a muscular humanoid body stomped into view beyond the doorway. Lines of purple energy flowed up from its feet and its eyes sparkled like a collection of stars in the void of space with no pupil or white of the eye. The Anubis statue carried scales suspended from a thick chain in one hand and a large double-bladed staff in the other.
Beside it, walking on all fours and still coming up to the towering statue's hip was a creature out of nightmares. It had an enormous crocodilian head, a thick raggedy mane, a bulky heavily muscled body, and a long scaly tail. Its eyes were utterly black and when Jie looked into them, she felt as though she were being sucked inside. Its stony hide glistened with red liquid.
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
But, the most disconcerting thing for Jie was that she couldn't sense either of the statues at all. They didn't register in the slightest in her spirit sense, which meant they were powerful enough to keep her from sensing anything even when she was looking straight at them. Stealth techniques were one thing, but to do this... she suspected they were beyond the Elementalist rank.
Things that they could not hope to fight.
"Ru--" Jie began.
The Anubis statue extended a single finger and dark purple qi shot across the corridor and wrapped around them, thick like the coils of a snake, before any of them could react. It then yanked them through the hallway and deposited them at the statue's feet.
The monster to its side opened its enormous jaws, which seemed to expand beyond physical limits as the Anubis statue stared at them as though seeing into their souls.
"Aicine narkine," it said. Each word shook the room, though it sounded slightly garbled and broken on top of being in a language Jie didn't understand.
She swallowed hard. She heard the others hold their breath.
The Anubis statue nodded and the creature beside it closed its gaping maw.
"Rokcen misejoi," said the statue.
It stomped off in the direction of the transportation room and the undead with the purple glow surrounded Jie and her friends, creating a gap in the center. Jie followed after that statue, and looked at her friends, hoping one of them would know what was happening. But they looked just as mystified as she felt.
The transportation room was filled with noctilith that were very much alive. Several of them were in the Expert rank. Although of lower stars than Jie.
The Anubis statue raised its scales and the noctilith shuddered. Their backs ripped open and a long fleshy organ that seemed to run all the way down their bodies streamed out of their wounds as they shuddered and crawled, gushing yellow blood everywhere. The organs flew through the air toward the Anubis statue and shrank as though traveling to somewhere far... far away... until they balanced upon one side of the scales in a sickening, shrunken heap.
The crocodilian creature at its side lashed out with a long tongue and pulled the heap of organs into its mouth then snapped its massive jaws shut and swallowed.
Jie shuddered as the noctilith in front of them writhed slower... and slower... and stopped moving. Two purple orbs formed upon the Anubis statue's scales and shot off into the room. They landed with a splash that covered everything within. Spectral noctilith rose up as their bodies filled with dark purple light and jerked into undeath.
They cleared a path, and the statue strode forward into the room, then stood in front of the other doorway and began the same grim work on the noctilith beyond it.
"Let's go. Now," Pan Tian whispered.
Jie was sure that the statue could hear them with ease, but she felt just as unsettled by its casual displays of horrifying power and stepped up onto the pad with her friends. Where before it had been cold and dead, now it pulsed with purple light.
"How do we use it?" Jie whispered.
Pan Tian gripped the pyramid-shaped keystone in her hand. "We pour our qi into it and will to go down to the surface... and pray to the Heavens that it works because I don't know what else to do," she said.
The others did as she said, Xue holding his between two paws. Jie watched the others close their eyes as their keystones lit up with the colors of their qi and swirls of purple energy. The pad fluctuated with a complicated weave of auras that moved too quickly for Jie to study long enough to understand. Purple energy wrapped around Xue, Ithilix, and Pan Tian and they shot downward into the pad with only a puff of purple energy hanging like smoke in the air where they'd been.
Jie squeezed her eyes shut, gripped the keystone, and pushed dragon lightning qi into it. As she did so, Jie pictured the city near where they'd first entered the pyramid and tried to project her desire to leave the pyramid into the keystone.
It felt like her stomach was wrenched into her throat as bright purple light shone through her eyelids and she hurtled in every direction before finally plunging downward at incredible speed.
She opened her eyes and saw the city and the ground rushing up to meet her. Three ghostly, glowing purple missiles resembling her friends raced ahead of her and flying noctilith swarmed them. Several noctilith swiped at Jie or flew through her body. But, though it made her skin crawl, they passed through her as though she weren't there. They doubled back and tried to do it again but lagged behind. In front of Jie, a cloud of noctilith chased after her friends, falling further and further behind.
Above them, the pyramid that had once been on the ground now hovered far above the city, radiating purple light and swarming with noctilith, just like its twin.
Jie reached the cloud of noctilith chasing her friends and she shuddered as she passed through them with a disturbing sensation and then overtook them. She sped through the air toward a large building with massive obelisks in front and enormous statues of sphinxes on either side of the entrance.
Her friends zipped into the entrance, and Jie followed mere moments later, into a room much like the one they'd left, with her friends standing on a similar-looking pad. Though it was dead and cold.
Jie smashed into the pad, but there was no pain as purple energy swirled around her and she was back to her normal self once more. Aside from the entrance, three passageways led into dark hallways.
"That was incredible!" Ithilix squealed with delight.
"I know right? What a wild ride! I'd rather like to do it again. Those constructs scared me, but that was great," Pan Tian said.
The buzzing hum of countless insectoid wings grew louder.
Ithilix drew her spear, Pan Tian extended her claws of light, and Xue's fur crackled with dragon lightning qi.