It took me another few seconds to comprehend what had just happened. Richard… The Champion—my only connection to Earth—had just been swallowed.
One moment he was there, and the next…
What the fuck was that? Richard was dead… Just like that? And I was supposed to accept this?
Screw this bullshit.
Screaming like a deranged man, I beat down on the gouge Aerion had started with my mace. Nothing but fury drove me, and in that moment, I felt like I got a glimpse of what Aerion felt when she activated [Reave].
The world may as well not have existed, for all I cared. It was just me. This fucking snake, and my Steel Mace.
I lost count of the number of times I smashed my mace into the serpent’s back, dodging the debris that went flying everywhere. Some pieces actually hit me, pinging off my armor or smashing into my face, but I barely noticed. I didn’t even notice the slew of minimized notifications fly down my screen. Or that, at some point, the hole I’d gouged had gotten so big that I was standing in it.
It was like a never-ending wall of ice. In any other situation, I might have gotten dejected. I might have given up. But the rage blinded me to all that. I was a machine, designed for one task and one task only—breaking this snake’s skull.
I kept hammering, smashing away at the thing, bit by bit.
Suddenly, my mace hit something that felt like water and looked like water, but was much gooier, and thicker in substance.
I noticed, because the fucking snake had finally stopped moving. And because Aerion was screaming her head off, trying to say something.
When I came to my senses, I realized I was actually standing inside what must’ve been the snake’s brain. Extricating myself from the mess, I jumped off the creature and met up with Aerion.
“He might still be alive,” Aerion said. “Help me break through its jaw!”
The snake died with its mouth firmly shut, and so Aerion had been hacking away at it with Light of the Fearless, trying to get in. I joined in the effort—much easier now that we were both on solid ground, and when Aerion activated [Reave] and [Fading Fury], it stood no chance. Her Essence was already quite low, which made [Fading Fury] extra potent. Every strike of hers broke off boulder sized chunks.
I soon realized I wasn’t of much help, so I worked on cracking the pieces Aerion broke into small ones, which I then hurled away, clearing the path for Aerion to continue her work. In just a few moments later, we were through. [Reave] shut off the moment the last piece fell, leaving Aerion weary, but conscious.
As we stepped into the throat of this gargantuan beast, I had to wonder how such a thing could ever have lived. As I’d seen before, the inside was surprisingly clean, and we walked on mostly ice, filled with bits of snow… and skeletons. Lots of skeletons.
“Is it just me, or did the temperature drop by about forty degrees?” I asked, teeth chattering even though we were both running as hard as we could, trying to find Richard. It wasn’t like it was warm outside, either—I’d have put it close to freezing. Inside here was much, much worse.
It didn’t help that both Aerion and I were sopping wet with ice-cold water, which had already begun to freeze in places, forming icicles and ice droplets all over. Our hair had frozen into a block of ice, making my head so heavy I actually felt it, and my body ached all over, like someone had pounded every bone in my body with a hammer. I didn’t even want to guess how miserable it must’ve been for Aerion.
We toughed it out, though. With our enhanced stats, we could handle this for a few more minutes. Compared to us, Richard was in a far worse predicament.
“Must be how it kills its prey. Look,” Aerion said, pointing to the corpse of some animal. “See how it’s frozen solid?”
“Huh. So it freezes everything it swallows? And then, what? Slowly digests them?”
“Seems like it,” Aerion said, jumping lightly over a half-digested frozen corpse. “I believe there is a good chance Richard is still alive.”
If his earlier injuries haven’t caught up with him, I thought darkly. Neither Aerion nor I were versed in medicine, so even if his injuries were treatable, chances were good we could only manage the basics. Even that was only thanks to our recent training. After agonizing about this deficiency, I’d finally decided to have Baron Sinclair arrange for some medical training. We could now set bones, disinfect and suture wounds, and administer various salves that functioned as painkillers and immunity boosters.
I only hoped it would be enough.
We found Richard collapsed on the ground, cradling his leg with his back up against a wall. His eyes meandered lazily, and it was with a long delay that he half-heartedly tried to greet us. All he managed was an unintelligible garble.
“He’s on the verge of hypothermia,” Aerion said, kneeling beside him and touching his hand and his forehead. “Maybe frostbite, too. We need to get him out of here.”
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“Yes, let’s,” I said, looking around the space. The light from outside filtered in, so it wasn’t especially dark. But being inside what was essentially the serpent’s intestines felt all sorts of wrong. Not to mention the cold. “This place gives me the… creeps?”
Something caught my attention in the distance. A few dozen feet away from where Richard lay was a small mountain of detritus. Everything from hunks of ice to the frozen remains of eaten fish, whales, and all sorts of other goodness... Including my shield and poleax, or what was left of it.
As well as some skeletons. Skeletons, armor, and swords.
But now was not the time. Richard was dying. He needed my help, and only I could carry him.
So I did the next best thing.
“Aerion? Go deeper and see if you can’t find this serpent’s core. I’m guessing it’ll have one, just like the giant and the dragon in Dominion’s Trial did. Also, if you see any gear rivaling the quality of our current gear or better? Pick it up. And grab my poleax and shield while you're at it.”
Aerion glanced at me, then at the pile, and nodded. “Understood.”
I scooped up Richard as gently as I could and slung him over my shoulders, even as my teeth chattered uncontrollably. Not wasting another moment, I sprinted out the way we’d come, reaching the snake’s broken maw in just under a minute.
Outside, the air was much warmer, and I laid Richard out on the ice before stripping off his cloth armor. It was thankfully a much simpler design than my own plate, and I got it off without much trouble.
Underneath, the situation was… not good, though with all the frozen blood, it looked far worse than it probably was. The good part about that was it had prevented the elf from bleeding out. The bad part?
I had no freaking clue how to heal this.
I did what I could, breaking off the frozen blood and cleaning him up, which revealed a number of superficial cuts, and two deeper wounds. Those must have been from the ice shards when the wall first blew.
That was when Aerion joined me, kneeling beside our fallen friend. “We should sterilize and stitch the wound as best we can,” she said, opening the medical kit I’d pulled out of my inventory earlier. “You ensure he stays warm. I’ll make the sutures.”
“Roger that,” I said, feeling some of the worry subside. Richard wasn’t badly wounded. He was weak, and needed insulation.
Lacking fuel for a traditional fire, all I could do was activate [Light of the Fearless] as often as I could, placing it as close as I dared to Richard’s body so he could absorb the residual heat.
It was painfully slow-going, and I kept at it for well over an hour after Aerion wrapped up her stitching job. As usual, she did an excellent job, and if I didn’t know better, I’d have thought a professional did it. She’d disinfected the area with some alcohol from my inventory, and covered the wounds with gauze. So long as he didn’t push things, Richard would heal just fine, without danger of infection.
I had to wonder how many other Champions had died early in previous cycles. I thought it was a tiny minority, but after seeing this dungeon… Not to mention how lopsided Richard’s powers were. He was a glass cannon, through and through, and unlike me, he couldn’t reconfigure that on a moment’s notice. His powers were even more lopsided than Aerion. Without us and his guards to protect him, he’d surely have died.
It made me realize how right I’d been to pick such a versatile Blessing. It progressed slower, sure, but it’d pay dividends in time. I was becoming increasingly sure of that.
As for the rest of him, well, my efforts at least ensured he wouldn’t lose any fingers or toes today, and that went for all of us. Both Aerion and I had stripped off our waterlogged armor and clothing, and put on a fresh set of clothes I’d brought along in my inventory. I’d agonized over whether to bring them, considering my extremely limited space, but I was now glad I did. It might very well have saved us.
“He owes us a drink,” I said dryly, when the color had returned to Richard’s flesh, and his skin no longer cold and clammy. He rested with regular, even breaths, which I took to be a good sign.
“I’d say he owes us more like ten, would you?” Aerion said with a smirk, laying down my poleax and shield.
“No argument there," I replied, inspecting the remains of my weapon.
“Sorry about the ax... I couldn't find the shaft anywhere.”
“Don't worry about it. Was probably blown to smithereens when the snake swallowed Richard.” The shaft was mostly missing and the spear tip was bent, but the weapon miraculously still had a bit of Condition left. It was useless in its current state, though, so I shoved it into my inventory. My shield was in better shape. Still serviceable. I put that in my inventory, too.
“So, uh, you manage to find anything good? Inside, I mean.”
Aerion shrugged, gesturing with her chin to an odd-looking something a few feet away.
“Is that… a rock?” I asked, genuinely baffled as to what it could be.
“Dunno. All of the gear was frozen and either cracked, rusted, or of subpar quality. This was the only thing that stood out. I found it deep inside, suspended in the middle of a pillar of ice.”
That sounded an awful like a core… Except this thing didn’t look like a core.
“It’s… a rock,” I muttered, inspecting the object. It was smooth, like a water stone, but easily grapefruit sized.
Aerion shrugged again. “It’s pretty. And, it was the only thing that wasn’t frozen solid.”
While true—the rock didn’t have a trace of ice on it, and was only slightly cool to the touch—that didn’t make it special enough to lug it around. It didn’t resemble the other cores at all. In fact, its only other notable feature were the reddish-yellow lines that ran down the rock like ore veins, but that didn’t say a whole lot.
“Well, maybe the System Message will tell me something…”
I stared blankly at the screen that popped up the instant my fingers touched the cool stone. Uncomprehending, I could only blink in disbelief…
“Greg? Greg, what’s wrong?”
Name: Rocky the 423rd
Abilities: Dormant (Inactive)
Classification: Champion of Order
Age: 42,344 years
Stats:
Vigor: Rocklike
Order: Rockish
Wisdom: Rockesque
Passion: Rocky
Grace: Rocked
Cunning: Rocket
Dominion: Rockadoo