Eli smiled as the troll shoved its way through the mound of goblin, troll, and spider corpses. Multiple bodies were mangled or outright pulped from severe blunt trauma. Others were crispy remains reduced to ash after his beams and bolts of stellar lightning had struck. Several had rotted when he used [Blight]. Even more were steaming burnt husks after he loosed copies of his Radiant enchanted arrow.
It created a knobbed club out of stone before the troll lashed out with it. Air whistled as the club whooshed toward Eli's head. He used Lumencloud Transfiguration as he transformed into pure lumencloud charged with radiance as Body of Light kicked in. Stone swished through his body without resistance as the volatile heat baked into the club with a crunch as it crashed into the ground. Eli lunged forward with a jab as he focused Lumencloud Transfiguration into pure light.
Bestial howls shook the cavern as his knuckles rammed into the troll's gut with a squelching pop as organs ruptured. Blood and bile dripped out of its mouth, but Eli pushed his twice radiant fist deeper into the troll's stomach. Leathery skin melted as it boiled around his sloppy cauterization.
Eli frowned at his slightly lacking strength still. Goblins practically burst like a watermelon when he hit them like that. Same with the giant spiders, but trolls still didn't die in one-hit unless he used enchanted weapons or fired a volley of stellar lightning. That was before their heightened regeneration came into play.
The other spawn rushed toward him in the grips of dungeon madness as the troll thrashed to get away from Eli.
Stellavoltaic Nullspace stretched all around him as it showed him every one of the goblins, spiders, and trolls rushing to tear him apart. With each spawn he killed, he felt the Colossal Titan Spider stir from its slumber. Nullspace sparked as stars orbited him before they charged their starlight into electricity and arced into each spawn close to him.
Body parts vaporized from the instantaneous combustion as each bolt teleported through nullspace to strike each spawn deliberately. Stray starlight and lightning arched back through space to crackle into the next spawn in a chain of death and ozone. Troll bodies rose as they crawled forward, their regeneration regrowing devastated flesh before starlightning struck them again and again until they died.
"Bah!" The troll roared in Eli's face as it clawed its hand ineffectively through his lumencloud head. Radiation left its hand and fingers covered in burns and tumors after pushing its hand through his Photon Shot charged lumencloud radiance. More spawn filled the gaps and tunnels of the cavern.
"You just aren't going down, are you?" Eli muttered to himself while he pumped lumencloud into the troll's gut wound and watched its injuries regenerate faster as he helped heal the troll. He stepped back while he dumped all the corpses in the cavern into nullspace where he compressed their mass into his growing orange star he was preparing for the big spider once it woke up.
The troll swayed while it studied him with baneful eyes now that Eli no longer had his fist in its stomach. Tendrils of earth rose toward the troll’s reaching hand as it tried to mold the dirt and stone into a new weapon.
"No. Bad troll." Eli snapped his fingers. A portion of the lumencloud he had flooded into the troll's body rushed through its cardiovascular system into its non-cancerous hand where it reached for the new club. Lumencloud solidified in the shape and size of a trunk as it burst out of the troll's arm. Blood splattered as fragments of bone pinged off the cavern floor. "This is a fist fight."
"Agh!" Bad Troll shouted at the flash of agony before Eli used lumencloud to reform its ruined stump with lumencloud before it transformed into trollflesh. Eli knew he could have healed it based off his own DNA and killed it that way while its body rejected his human anatomy and shut down. Its regeneration power would have fought against it while his incompatible biology would've poisoned it.
He didn't need to do that though.
Eli squared his fists while he ducked into a crouch. He mimed out a couple of jabs with a nod at Bad Troll whose beady eyes widened enough he could see the gray of its eyes. It bowed its head as it dropped to its knees with its throat bared to him. Dim intelligence showed in its eyes with no trace of the dungeon madness present in the other spawn already rushing to kill him.
Goblins threw spears and stones at him. He rapidly enchanted with lumencloud starlightning before he teleported them back into their ranks. Explosions rattled the cavern with their booms before Eli noticed he wasn't the only target. Blood poured out of the squealing, broken form of the troll.
Screens flashed in front of his eyes while the troll bleated in terror as it thrashed. Veins and muscles throbbed as it seized. One second it flailed in agony and in the next, it vanished.
Eli couldn't believe his eyes or the sheer disappearance of the troll. No trace of its existence remained other than the half-formed stone club that still rose out of the cavern floor. Even its blood splatters and chips of bone had been wiped away. Its sudden sapience and demise had wiped away the joyous thrill of the delve for him. He wanted to test out his powers. See what he could do his Lumencloud Transfiguration, his enchantments, and Stellavoltaic Nullspace.
Not be slapped with existential issues by the System.
Were all spawn truly alive and intelligent?
Multiple races did exist in various states of harmony, but they usually didn't mingle with humanity. Or at least not this far central in this world's version of the United States. What really separated a goblin or a troll from an elf or a sprite?
A pack of goblins screeched out their shrill war cry as they leaped for him, their claws outstretched and their fangs dripped with saliva.
Lumencloud ignited in his body while Photon Shot collected the light and shot out a salvo of needle thin bullets of hard light that burned straight out the center of their foreheads. Twelve goblins tumbled to the floor, dead. This wasn't the time to think about these things. He'd have to ask Maeve about it and see what she said.
Eli churned out massive volumes of lumencloud while he manually charged it with Photon Shot. If he ever wanted it to upgrade, he'd have to focus on the core principles and how to improve them. Evolve Body of Light manually. More spawn flooded out of the cavern tunnels while the Colossal Titan Spider stirred in its nest below.
No point in wasting this delve to experiment. Not when he was already risking his actual life with permadeath enabled.
He created constructs out of Stellavoltaic Nullspace and smiled at the jagged blades stained violet with stars crackling in a constellation spelling out his enemies' deaths. Warlock's Sanctum twinged in his awareness as they entered his zone and his smile turned wicked while he pumped durability and photon enhancement enchantments into each blade. Spawn hurled themselves into his blender of death as he willed them back and forth through air and space.
Volatile light flashed every time they cut through the stone-hard leather flesh of a troll, the scaly hide of a goblin, or cracked into the exoskeleton of a spider. Insides glowed through their skin or scales as the light seared into their wounds, and starlightning wreaked havoc on their internals. Spiders writhed as smoke curled from their bodies before they popped open.
His evo-0 powers still had difficulty cutting into them to do fatal damage, but his higher mastery of his powers and all the merges stuffed into them let him push them farther than he could before. Lumencloud Transfiguration and Body of Light made up the difference with the help of his enchantments.
Tremors shook the cave as the Colossal Titan Spider pushed itself up with its spindly legs as it skittered out of its nest up the shaft. Through the silhouettes of his spatial field, he watched it rear its front legs up and back as it prepared to skewer the cave wall.
Eli didn't care to let it make the first move.
Portals snared all the living and dead bodies of the spawn while he stuffed starspace bubbles into the cavities of the corpses or into nostrils and ears of the living ones. So what if he couldn't penetrate through their power resistance, he would always find a way.
Starspace constructs crackling with constellations of starlightning flowed over his old lumencloud armor enchanted with Hyper-Regeneration before he teleported in the damp recesses of the spider's nest. Strands of web as thick as trees coated the nest strewn with fresh kills from the spawn above. Deeper in the recesses of the nest were chests ripped straight out of a pirate film packed with enchantments he couldn't decipher.
Stellavoltaic Nullspace and Warlock's Sanctum worked together as he tried to teleport it straight into his vault, but the second he tried to 'take' it, the chest became immune to his power and barely twitched from its position. A notification slapped into his mind with a stinging jolt.
Hairs bristled on the massive spider as its legs twitched with a thunder crack. Pebbles plinked across the nest as the spider hurled itself through the air at him. Mounds of stone clasped around his legs with a sharp snap as starlightning strobed from the trap before he was sent flying from the gale. Shockwaves battered Eli inside his cocoon of fracturing starspace armor while his eardrums burst with a pop from the pressure.
Mandibles opened behind him as the spider darted in.
Lumencloud Transfiguration turned his body into pure lumencloud as he withdrew his shattered legs out of his trapped armor and teleported himself out of the way. Mandibles snapped shut where his head had been a mere second ago. With Warlock's Sanctum providing a guide, he created a bow out of lumencloud, solidified starspace, and pure light.
Starlightning blade constructs bounced off its exoskeleton with flashes of light and sizzling hair.
Stone liquefied around him as it gooped through his lumencloud body to snare him in the spider's trap. Irritation flared from the tearing sensation of liquid stone petrifying his insides.
Giant spiderlegs swelled as rapid growth overtook the colossal spider. Its nest stretched around its towering size without impeding it as metal armor sheathed its exoskeleton. Spearheads flickered over each of its legs while each of its eight statue-sized eyes stared him down. As it grew a conceptual weight emanated from it along with an overpowering sense of instinctive danger.
Eli blinked dumbfounded at the spider that appeared to be the size of a skyscraper, but his starspace field showed him that it had only grown a couple feet. It only looked like it had changed.
Earthquakes rumbled beneath and around him while a forest of massive spikes flew all around him. He flickered through and around space while lashing out with Body of Light enhanced starlightning boomed against its shields of stone. Space distorted all around the nest while the cavern walls writhed.
He ducked and contorted himself while he drew and loosed his bow again and again through portals, leaving arrows lodged into the eyeholes of its armor. Ichor poured out of the wounds in a tide while it raged at the intrusion of lumencloud arrows. Spatial bubble anchors nestled themselves into the gaps of space in the pulped gel of the eyes.
Death loomed as the cavern walls shut around him.
Starspace layered around him while he vanished first into his void and then deeper into the nonexistence of nullspace.
Tons of canyon walls and the dungeon's mantle below shifted to pound into his hiding spot. Pockets of air boomed with a devastating crash as the cavern imploded, then exploded from the rebounding force as physics reasserted itself in retaliation against the spider's terra domain. His control over space eroded from the bombardment and trap of the spider's superior powers.
Eli teleported a lumencloud decoy back into real-space and smiled as the next crash sent ribbons of lumencloud out of the earth into the sky above, where he watched the Colossal Titan Spider lie in wait to ambush him. He pushed himself into Lumencloud Transfiguration while he launched himself out of nullspace into the wisps of lumencloud above. Space distorted, then fractured around him in the sky.
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He hefted his bow while he summoned a copy of his radiant arrow. He slapped one final enchantment onto it along with a spatial bubble filled with spawn corpses stuffed inert starspace bubbles. He nocked the arrow and tugged the string back. Tension shook in his arm while Body of Light and Lumencloud Transfiguration charged incandescent strength into his arm.
Light gathered at the tip of his arrow while Photon Shot charged a never-ending loop of radiant lumencloud into the weapon as time seemed to slow.
What remained of his lumencloud and crusted armor broke from the strain of drawing the bow. Starspace constructs and starmetal weaved lumencloud shattered everywhere except for his already bare transfigured legs. All the shrapnel vanished into the spatial bubble attached to the enchantment in the arrowhead.
Cloudy feathers tickled his cheek while he created and linked a corridor of six portals together with one final portal linked to each of the spatial bubbles in its eyes. Power drained out of him as he put all he had into the arrow.
Air and space cracked once Eli let go.
Celestial radiance plummeted through his chain of portals until his arrowhead paradoxically shattered itself into eight fragments and skewered the Colossal Titan Spider from the inside of its eyes. Columns of starlightning lashed through the air and rubble of the earth as the artillery. of bombed corpses detonated. Slabs of earth and plumes of spawn ash sprayed from the impact.
Eli fell even while he tried to use his utterly spent Stellavoltaic Nullspace to recharge Body of Light. Sparks of starlightning converted into light to jumpstart Lumencloud Transfiguration while he neared the impact site. He smiled at the sight of his quarry below once he arrested his descent with a jerk of Lumencloud Transfiguration.
Spiderlegs twitched chaotically while the Colossal Titan Spider seized. A single arrow shaft poked out of the smoking ruin of its head. Pools of molten metal cooled beneath what remained of its limbs. Three of its legs and one of its mandibles had blown off or vaporized. Gravel trembled under its will as it struggled to attack.
Tried to live.
"No notification?" Eli coughed as he breathed in the air thick with ozone and ash. Guess that wasn't enough still.
Warlock's Sanctum linked to the enchantments in what remained of the shaft and fragments of the arrowhead. Stored kinetic and thermal energy converted into and reinforced the payload of Photon Shot's charged light as the arrow glowed a dazzling white that blinded him despite Body of Light.
Gouts of flame roared as the spider flailed. A storm of metal impaled in its body seared with radiance as strands of burning light connected to each fragment until there was an explosion of light and heat that consumed the spider in its celestial wrath.
Eli's feet landed on an invisible surface as a massive chest appeared in front of him along with notifications from the Crucible before his normal status notifications which had an unfortunately shorter list since he'd already killed these spawn before and had no more powers to get from them, so he skipped seeing what powers they had.
Congratulations, Elias Newton! You have cleared Diabolic Descent (Permadeath) with a runtime of 02:49:23! Spawn Slain: 2, 200 (Flawless) Boss: Colossal Titan Spider defeated! (Flawless) Reward Bonus Achieved due to enabling Permadeath> Giant (x 1) Troll (x 600) Goblin (x 600) Titan Spider (x 1000) Colossal Titan Spider (x 1) You have already obtained versions of these powers.> Energy flowed out of the notification window directly into the waiting chest as inlaid grooves in the lids glowed with power. It seemed to wait for him to reach out and accept it with bated tension as he slid his hand under the latch and opened it with a soft click. Matter shifted out of the chest as it settled in each of his hands with a surprisingly hefty weight. Cradled in his left hand was a dazzling gem the same color as his System screens. Bands of kaleidoscopic light shifted through each facet of the crystal as if it were a fluid contained inside. An intense longing tugged at him, almost overpowering him to crush it and absorb the liquid inside. He tried to shove it into Warlock's Sanctum or a spatial bubble but it ignored his attempts to use his powers on it as if they didn't exist. He glanced down at the simple bracelet on his wrist with a spider pendant wrapped to the leather cords. Impeccable enchantments blazed from inside of it. While he studied it, the Crucible faded around him as his feet touched down in the containment room outside the Crucible's double doors and the elevator. Eli figured out its suite of enchantments with unshakeable certainty, despite its web of complexity. It would let him summon a sword that he'd be able to customize and change the shape and style of at will. He'd be unable to drop it or be disarmed as long as he didn't want to. And finally, it'd be able to create seven exact copies of the blade that he'd be able to wield as if they were a single weapon. "You got a fucking Power Gem?" Nora scoffed loudly, startling him as she stalked away from where the others had gathered. "What the hell are you thinking? Now the Crucible and that dungeon won't be useable until it cools down and resets. You've been acting awfully dumb lately, Herbert." Eli winced at the acidic tone of her voice while he glanced at Roman's dour expression. His friend shifted while he refused to meet Eli's gaze. "You know?" Eli asked coolly while studying Nora's furrowed brow and flared nostrils. She already had her violin in her hand. Dorian stared at Eli with a blank expression that sent chills down his spine. He had his arms crossed so that his gargantuan muscles twitched from how hard he flexed. Eli remembered how quickly the professional Delver could move from the last time he cleared the Crucible by forcing his portals together. It wouldn't surprise him if Dorian could easily snap Eli's neck with a twist of his hand. "Yes, we know! We knew something was up this whole time, but we hoped you were both acting awkward over a bet or Savior knows what else! Not that you both secretly came from another dimension replacing Romulus and Herbert." "Speaking of... Where are they?" Dorian asked, far too casually as he moved his hands to his sides. “Roman wasn’t exactly forthcoming about the details and I hoped you would have more of an idea?” "Back home in our dimension. I saw them a couple of days ago." Eli admitted while he rolled the 'Power Gem' around in his hands. Warmth radiated from it like the heat of a bonfire, but far more relaxing. Even now, he wanted to break it and see what it did. He eyed them both cautiously while he prepared copies of his radiant arrow in Warlock's Sanctum. He was moments away from blasting them if they attacked or donning a copy of his lumencloud armor. If they wanted a fight, he'd give them one. "You saw them?" Nora scoffed. "I'm not sure if I should buy this bullshit. Dimensional travel is hardly proven. Sure, people vanish or weird things are summoned, but that could be Dream or something else." "You didn't tell me you saw them or home." Roman frowned while he clenched his fists with a scrape of metal as they seemed to transform into polished chrome. "I wonder why, Roman." Eli scoffed with a shake of his head. "You've been avoiding me, so how could I tell you?" "I've been avoiding you? Okay, Eli. Whatever." Roman rolled his eyes. "We just had a minor disagreement and you've been sulking ever since. You're my best friend, but goddamn, you're insufferable sometimes. Did you even know that I've put in enough work that my build is completely different now? I merged Oneiromantic Summon with Dreamer's Enchantment at evo-1 to create Magitech Fabrication. I merged Analytical Mechanica Control with Soaring Bounce for Gearshift Constitution, and even created a new power, Legion's Impact, that makes everything I do echo as if multiple people were involved or did the same action. You’ve been so busy sneaking out, I wasn’t able to tell you. I told you that I would help you figure this out. Stop taking all the burden for yourself.” Eli winced at the accusations and even sharper tone. He had been too focused on improving his own powers and wallowing after Maeve pushed him away and Hazel rejected him. "So. What now?" Dorian asked Nora after a slight pause. "I don't know." She tapped the bow of her violin against the side of her leg. "Crucible's out of commission for the rest of the day now and I'm not exactly thrilled to force practice with only two months left until the Tri-Delve Cup with two rookies, even if we wanted them to participate." "I mean, if they don't, then we'll have to forfeit." Dorian glanced at each of them with a frown before he focused on Eli. "Unless you think you could bring them back in that timeframe? Roman said you Initialized with spatial powers?" "Yeah." Eli slumped at the sudden disappearance of all his secrets. "I've been working on it and I think it'll be possible, but my powers still have a long way to go." "Ugh, I was really looking forward to finally clearing this dumb dungeon." Nora kicked the toe of her boot into the wall with a hard, echoing clang. "By the fucking Savior, why did you have to clear it now?" "I wanted to get some actual practice in before I would have to pretend to use powers I don't even have." Eli shrugged sheepishly while she scoffed and rolled her eyes. Stellavoltaic Nullspace would have probably helped him fake some weak plasma, but he would've been out of luck with Lumencloud Transfiguration. "Who is this 'Savior', by the way? Everyone refers to them, but when I searched online for it, I just got conspiracy theories?" Roman interjected. "Well, first of all, Dorian and I were already really suspicious of you two. I was half afraid you had both reverted your systems or made a dumb fucking bet or something else, because the truth was on the bottom of my suspicious." Nora said with a shake of her head. "Secondly, the Savior is... complicated." "They're immortal and ended the Great Power Wars, you mean?" Dorian leaned against the wall while he sat down. "Unkillable isn't the same as immortal. They’'ve only been alive for about two hundred-fifty years." "Give or take." Dorian shrugged as if that were a small amount of time. Maybe it was for them. After all, they both did grow up in a world with superpowers as the norm. "No one knows who they are or anything about them really except for their main powers. Who knows if their build has changed since then, but they're physically unchanging and unkillable as a result. They also have a sort of peace domain where violence is impossible, which is how they ended the wars. They just strolled across the battlefields, stopping weapons and powers in their tracks. And they can copy either one power perfectly or blend a certain amount of powers in their vicinity into one power." "Why call them 'Savior' though?" Eli asked with a frown of distaste at that. It seemed almost... religious. "Because they saved us. We were in amidst of a global war and their presence allowed humanity to get a foothold and push back against the spawn threatening us. People say the country in Europe where they appeared, Amity, is where the Savior rests in stasis until we need them again, but who knows if that's true." Nora explained before she stopped with a pause as she glanced at the closed doors of the Crucible and the Eli. "We might as well still practice today. Let’s do it in a real dungeon then.” "We're still doing practice? But we're not Romulus and Herbert." Roman winced at the proclamation as everyone turned toward him. "I'm not losing out on one of my only chances to win the Tri-Delve and it’s too late in the season to hold try-outs and we don’t exactly have coaches to help us out. If you haven’t noticed, this is an independent team sport. So, how about it? Do you want to miss out on winning either, Dorian?" Nora asked him with a raised eyebrow. He shook his head. "There you have it. We need to find out how useless you are. I'm hoping that training you for the competition will help you learn how to get them back by then too and it'll cover our bases." "Where are we going?" Eli asked with a frown as Nora walked into the elevator and they all funneled in behind her. "Delver's Dive. It's not a true dungeon, not that the Crucible is either, but it should help put us all in a bit more of an even playing field while we practice." She explained while she pulled out her cellphone and tapped away on it before she held out to reveal a pinned location on her map three hours away by car in a small familiar suburb called Little Anchor. Eli hid a grimace as he realized that was where the police had thought he was a spawn and attacked him. "I've been meaning to go there, but the train ride is so long and air shuttles are expensive as fuck." Dorian fistbumped Nora with a smile at the suggestion. "Would you be able to teleport us there at all?" "I guess. I haven't done long distances like that, but I probably could with portals." Eli sighed, resigned to being used as a transportation service. Something about telling them more about his capabilities rubbed him the wrong way, but he wasn't exactly excited about a six hour long trip otherwise. "Wait. Since when can you make portals?" Roman asked, with faux outrage at being left in the dark as they piled out of the elevator into the gym. "Last Monday after Power Crafting class. I haven't told you yet?" Eli asked with a small pang of guilt as his friend shook his head. He shook himself mentally at the realization that he had been slipping into his old habits of trying to fix everything by himself. What was the point of getting stronger and gaining more power if it only made him more paranoid and miserable? "Well, let's get going. Make the portals already Space Guy." Nora crossed her arms in front of her chest. "Dorm security is too tight. We'll have to leave campus for me to make a portal, and I've never been there." He admitted with a small frown at the realization that he'd given them two other snippets of information about his powers and limitations. “I could definitely get us back faster, but we'll probably have to get there the long way." Not that he couldn't take them through the air, but he'd rather keep some cards close to his chest. "Fine. That's better than nothing. Let's go then." She shoved the door out into the gym stairwell open with a crash while they followed behind her. "I'm fucking pumped, bro. I wonder how many points I'll be able to get? I bet I could buy some new powers or perks... ooh or maybe a new enchanted weapon to add to Conqueror's Vault? What are you going to get Nora?" Dorian's voice echoed up and down the stairwell. "Something good after I bet on myself. Daddy made me a new violin enchanted to produce more beautiful resonant sounds for the Tri-Delve Cup, but it cost him a lot of money, so I'm hoping I can pay him back or pay for him and Mom to go on vacation somewhere nice." Eli grinned wider and wider as they talked. New powers and perks? Enchanted weapons? Gambling? He couldn't wait to see what this place was about. He hefted the resplendent power gem in the palm of his left hand with a maniacal sense of joy at how this was going to go. Before they exited the stairwell, Eli pulled his backpack out of Warlock's Sanctum and shoved the gem into it. No point in flaunting it if he didn't have to. Something about a new challenge and competition reawakened Eli's passion to win. He hadn't felt that way in a long time since he was on the swim team. It felt wonderful.