We arrived in the safe room and the clock stopped, and then changed to one hour. Apparently, this next floor decided how long we got from the moment the door opened. Thankfully, it was stopped for now.
I passed around food while Alphonse and Yui worked on patching everyone up. It was decided that we wouldn’t be moving forward until everyone was in top condition physically. Mentally was yet to be determined.
While everyone settled in my Handler took out the stones and brought them over to me. “Mind using your Identify skill on these?”
I took the stones and identified them one after another. “Three of them are for a skill called Fire Aura. A semi-passive that burns anyone you consider an enemy once activated. At higher ranks it can be used to reduce fire related damage to those considered an ally.”
My Handler nodded, “We’ll give one to each of the fire element users. Let them decide if they want it or not.”
I agreed, it would be a boon for both Rober and Robin. Sam would probably greatly enjoy it once he was conscious.
“This is for a mystic skill called Slurry, it’s water and earth combination. I think this is meant for Han,” I said, handing over the next stone.
My Handler nodded his agreement.
“This one is for something called Masui. It’s meant to numb or block pain. I’m pretty sure this is meant for Yui,” I said, handing the last one over to the foxgirl, who gave me a small bow after taking it.
The last stone was a skill called Yin-Yang Bolt. It was a skill that combined two opposing element attacks into a single ranged spell. I was almost certain this was meant for me. “I think this one is meant for me.”
“What is it?” My Handler asked with curiosity.
“A skill called Yin-Yang Bolt. I need to learn Shadow Bolt and Light Bolt to learn it but once I do, it creates a combined element skill,” I explained, having tried to learn it out of curiosity.
My Handler’s eyes widened slightly before he spoke softly, “That is a very powerful skill. You are the only one here with opposing elements so I won’t argue your decision to keep it, but do me a favour and keep it secret, yeah? I don’t want anyone coming after you for it.”
I agreed and slipped the stone into my belt pouch. My Handler was about to walk away with the four stones but I stopped him with a question, “What was the book?”
“Storm Attunement and Manipulation. I think we both know who that goes to,” my Handler said with a chuckle. “I wish him the best of luck in learning it. Combination element attunements are difficult, even when they are complementary elements. Robin and Rober for example, both currently have Fire and are working on Earth. If they really push themselves, that can lead to a Metal Attunement. The best defender I ever, and I mean ever worked with, had a Metal Attunement. Or, if that doesn’t suit them, they could also push for a Lava Attunement which is more offensive. Han has Earth and Water Attunements, he could gain a Mud Attunement. Me, I only ever learned Shadow, I never had the talent for anything else but that stays between us, yes?”
I agreed. He kept my secrets, those he knew of anyway. The least I could do was keep his secrets when he shared them with me . . . assuming he wasn’t lying to me.
“It’s too bad. I would have loved an Ice Attunement to go with it. Ice and Shadow make the Void Attunement possible. That is some powerful stuff right there,” my Handler said wistfully. “Anyway, get some rest. We won’t be moving for a while.”
As my Handler walked away, I finally pulled up the system message that had been blinking in my peripheral for a long while now.
Congratulations! You have learned the Rare Skill Zhanmadao Fighting. The skill has been added to your list.
That was . . . unexpected. Welcome, but unexpected. I certainly didn’t have any talent for the skill, but it was good to have. For as often as I seemed to create the extremely oversized weapon, it would come in handy.
We rested for two days. Sam woke up after a day but he wasn’t the problem. Beau needed a lot more healing than the cattleman let on. He had ruptured internal organs that he damaged further when he ran the gauntlet. It took both Alphonse and Yui longer to heal than it did anyone else. Al lacked the experience and didn’t know the damage was there. He was lucky to have Yui there to teach him and help him advance his skills.
When everyone was fully healed and rested, I could feel the mix of fear and anxiety from my team as we were about to get moving again. We’d already lost two of our team and some of us wanted payback. Hopefully it wouldn’t be another gauntlet. With only an hour to reach the end, it was unlikely we’d survive another gauntlet.
The Dubois siblings stood ready before the double doors with the rest of us arrayed behind them.
“Whenever you’re ready,” my Handler said, giving the signal to start.
Robin and Rober gave each other a nod and together they each reached forward and pulled the door open. Robin and Rober leapt through the open door and were met with a wall of ice and fifteen frost beasts. The creatures were a twisted array of limbs and teeth, with the biggest looming at the back. Its four insectoid legs held a hunched mutated kin body that seemed to vibrate with an icy aura.
“Kill them all!” Alphonse barked, letting loose with lightning from two extended hands while Sam did the same with fire. Robin and Rober charged in, their bodies burning with hot embers that exploded outwards in a display of destruction. My knives flew in a flurry while Han hurled rocks with precision. Beau hurled his throwing axes and Signore Barducci's spear moved in a furious blur, shattering monsters left and right while Yui hurled throwing stars with deadly accuracy and was ready to heal any wounds.
The room was alive with chaos, energy crackling in the air as the group fought against the onslaught of creatures. There was no room for failure as they knew lives were on the line, and together they fought bravely until all fifteen frost beasts lay broken before them.
In less than two minutes, all but the last larger beast were down for the count, and it wasn’t in good shape. Within seconds, Rober’s mace crashed down on the monster’s head, ending the fight.
We had no time to celebrate before the immense ice wall dropped, revealing a hoard of twenty-one menacing fire monsters. Despite being small in stature, their power was immense, with the last beast at the back standing larger than all the others combined. Their roars filled the air as they came charging towards us in a single unified force.
“Press forward!” my Handler barked, then added an explanation, “It’s a race to the end. The groups will get larger with each successive wall that drops. So, again, press forward!”
It turned into an all out brawl. Robin's shield became an instrument of destruction as it slammed into one monster and her brother's sword pierced its chest in one deft stroke.
Alphonse was overwhelmed for a moment as six snapping monsters attacked him at once. A roar of pain was accompanied by a burst of electricity that stunned the creatures. Yui was beside him quickly protecting his injured side and the two fought back to back. Al wielded his rapier with an electric fury as lightning danced along its blade and Yui was a whirlwind as she cut down the creatures that had attacked Al.
Han and Barducci fought side by side, the mancer blasting icy missiles while my Handler brandished a dark blade that seemed to be made of shadow cutting down the creatures that tried to kill the mage. Sam fell back, his fire magic useless against the foes. Time seemed to stand still as we battled with a ferocity born out of desperation.
With Shadow Cloak to help me slip through the shadows of our enemies, I carved my way through them, slashing and stabbing them before they even had time to process what hit them. I ripped out my Shadow Blade from the neck of a seventeen-legged flame monster and swiftly shifted it into a Zhanmadao, the extra weight granting me special momentum and power as I hacked through it, barely failing to cut it in two.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
I’d never done something like that before, shifting the blade from one form to another was new to me. I knew then the Shadow Blade skill had improved to Advanced. The knowledge that came with the advancement made me grin. I could throw the weapons I created now and they wouldn’t vanish for about five-seconds. I formed a flechette just to see if I could and a small shadowy dart formed in my hand.
I couldn’t admire it for long as the last of the fire beasts fell. The wall of flames dropped and we now faced twenty-seven ice beasts, two of which were bigger than the others. The difficulty had increased. I glanced at the timer, the last group cost us six-minutes, almost double the time of the first group. I really hoped that pattern wouldn’t persist.
Not wanting to waste mana, I threw the flechette, getting lucky and piercing the eye of the closest ice beast. It was the first time I’d ever done such damage to the ice creation. Usually, the hardened ice that made up their bodies was impenetrable to simple blades, even those created by magic.
Robin and Rober charged past me, fire and heat washed through the frozen room and much like the first room, the ice rapidly melted under the barrage.
Four minutes and seventeen seconds came off the timer by the time the last one dropped. I wanted to give my teammates some of the mana rich food I carried, but there was no time between rooms to do any of that.
The wall of ice dropped and thirty-two fire mutants waited for us, and again, the last two in the room were the bigger versions.
“Hold the line,” Alphonse roared, unleashing a maelstrom of energy that filled the room with raging thunderclouds. Torrential rain suppressing the creature's fire, and jagged lightning bolts fell that killed multiple soaked creatures with each strike, shredded through the fire monsters. His power had grown exponentially, surpassing even his own expectations as his spellcasting speed increased dangerously fast. With horror, he sagged tiredly and watched the total destruction he caused.
When there were only a few remaining enemies, my Handler shouted out a new order, “Robin, Rober, try to pin one down without killing it. Burion, be ready to give out bread to anyone who uses a lot of mana. Al, on my signal, end the storm.”
No one said anything, but I could see Robin and Rober smacking the beasts back with their shields, forcing it back a step or two but not really doing any damage to it.
“Now!” my Handler yelled and Alphonse’s storm petered out.
A few water jet strikes from Han ended the two larger beasts and a handful of attacks from the rest of us all but one of the beasts.
I was already moving when the order came in from my Handler, “Burion, distribute food to everyone but give the spell casters extra. And be quick about it, the clock is running.”
I gave everyone a mana regenerating roll then gave a second to Alphonse, Yui, and Sam and then to Robin and Rober. The later two took turns eating and controlling the last beast.
“Eat faster!” Signore Barducci shouted, watching the clock tick down. As soon as the clock read forty-five minutes remaining, he shouted, “Kill it and press forward.”
Robin’s mace fell, the last fire beast died, and the wall dropped revealing thirty-eight icy beasts, with three larger versions amongst them this time. The lair was escalating, not that I was surprised, and it was following a pattern.
Fire from Sam, Robin, and Rober flooded the room again and icy beasts roared in pain as they were destroyed, one after another. With so much fire, I could only stand back and throw shadow formed flechettes, doing limited damage.
We all burned through mana to the point that we tried to leave one beast alive in every other room. It was our only opportunity to recoup as much mana as we could with the food I prepared for the lair.
We cleared the room of four large ice beasts in five minutes. The room of four large fire mutants in eight minutes. We were running out of time and had no idea how many more rooms were left. Then the wall crumbled and we were confronted with a horde of fifty ice beasts. Each one was grotesquely twisted, their icy exteriors speckled with razor sharp points. Their eyes glowed a deep, menacing blue. The five large beasts stood twice the size of us, their jagged claws twitching in anticipation of our demise. And at their helm, a giant ice beast with massive, jagged horns and beady, malevolent eyes that brimmed with power.
“No holding back, burn it all!” my Handler yelled.
Fire blazed into the room, scorching through the ranks of ice beasts.
I looked at the time, we had just over fifteen-minutes. I threw flechette after flechette, unable to engage more closely due the fire Sam was channelling near constantly. Lightning arced from Alphonse’s hands, flooding into the room. I worried he was using too much mana but understood the push to end things before we ran out of time.
“Press forward! Sam, push the fire deeper into the room!” my Handler barked, moving into the room but staying behind the line of fire that was now pressing forward. He was striking at beasts that were mostly already dead. I quickly joined him as did Yui, Han and Beau. “Al, save your mana for the next room.” And just like that, Alphonse was in line next to me, his rapier stabbing into the joints of the ice beasts, the piercing power of the rapier doing surprisingly well.
The fire burned and mostly killed the beasts then we cleaned up any that survived. It was exhausting. It took eight minutes to burn through all the ice creatures and the boss. Sam really proved his worth in that room. Unfortunately, it left him completely mana depleted to the point where he collapsed again. The snakeboy was going to damage his mana pathways if he continued fighting to that point with any regularity.
Then the wall dropped revealing a single fire beast waiting. The creature stood several stories tall and imposing in the centre of the domed room. Its body was an abomination of mutated cattle-folk, with bulbous eyes that glowed red in the firelight. Its horns curved around its head, almost spiralling all the way to its back. Its body was a kaleidoscope of orange and yellow flames that illuminated the room in an eerie light and two of its four arms ending in deadly looking pincers.
Signore Barducci cursed. He took a deep breath then started barking orders. “Beau, Robin, Rober, keep it in place. Everyone else, kill it as fast as you can.We’ve got maybe five minutes to take this thing down. If you were ever going to push yourselves, now is the time.”
I glanced over at Alphonse and couldn’t help but get in a quick jab, “Don’t suppose you’ve got something up your sleeve to deal with this thing?”
Al hesitated, making me raise a curious eyebrow. “Al, if you’ve got a way to get us through this, now is the time.”
“I don’t know if I can . . . it . . . it could kill me,” Al replied, fear in his voice.
I watched as Robin and Rober were both batted aside by the beast, only Beau managed to hold his ground and he wasn’t going to last long.
Han shot twin jets of water at the beast, getting bursts of steam where they impacted and carved small gouges into the beast’s flank. Gouges that were quickly filled in by more fire.
I couldn’t believe I was going to push the Hero to put his life on the line, “Al, if we don’t get out of here, it won’t matter if you’re the hero or not because you’ll be dead and so will the rest of us.”
“I’m afraid,” Al admitted.
I slapped him. “Lulu was afraid and she still put her life on the line because of you. Plvoer chose to be on this team because he believed in you, in what you stand for, he’d be angry with you for being afraid now. And what about Coach Liv? He’d be threatening you with bodily harm if you didn’t find a way to save us all.”
Al snorted. “If I die, I promise I’m going to haunt you.”
I barked a laugh, “Ha! I know a good exorcist.”
Al took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You might want to stand back for this part.” He stepped forward and spoke two words, “Storm Avatar!”
Alphonse became a force of nature, transforming into a living maelstrom that towered over the beast. Lightning flashed and Al was gone in an instant, a tornado of wind and water shooting through the air towards the beast. It roared and swiped at Al but he was already gone, leaving streaks of lightning in his wake. The clock ticked by but it felt like it had slowed down, barely keeping up with Al's unthinkable speed.
“Range attacks only and don’t hit Al, Beau, Robin and Rober, be ready to taunt,” Barducci ordered while we watched the transfixing sight.
We followed the order, but no matter how hard we attacked the beast, our efforts felt useless compared to Al's mastery of the elements.
It was all pointless though. Al seemed to have figured out something because suddenly he was unleashing tornados of water that flayed burning flesh from bone. In one final burst of power, Al formed a rapier out of the very storm he had created - a blinding lance of lightning that he thrust straight through the beast’s heart. The creature howled in agony as it was torn apart, limbs flying off in every direction until only its head remained. As it lay dying, Al unleashed one last flurry of electricity and plunged the rapier straight between the eyes of the monster, destroying it for good.
It seemed it was just in time too. Al’s Storm Avatar form vanished in a flash of light and Al collapsed where the avatar once stood. I couldn’t help but notice the burns and cuts that were scattered across his body.
I was awestruck. Al’s power . . . it was so much. Was this what the Hero was really capable of? Was that what I would have been capable of if I had chosen the Job?
My Handler broke me from my awe with a shouted warning, “Stop dawdling! We need to get down those stairs before time runs out!”
There were still five minutes on the clock, even if it was ticking down, it wouldn’t take that long to cross the room. But what if this wasn’t the end of it? That extra time might be added to the next floor. It didn’t take long for the others to realise the same thing. We ran.
I smelled and heard my Handler pick up Al and carry the injured dogboy as we went. Yui was right next to him, already moving and chanting as she used her spirit magic to heal him.
I didn’t watch long, I focused on the destination and charged right down those stairs into darkness.