The next “room” was flat and twisty, like a maze whose walls were all tilted at forty-degree angles, providing ample opportunities for more cynomis to ambush them. Despite the territory advantage, they faced only four of the nuisance creatures on their trek, none of which did more than minimal damage as each attacked individually. If they'd come in a swarm, they might have had some chance of causing injury, but alone, they were all but impotent. Gordon kept Flomper close, not repeating the mistake of sending her out after their adversaries.
“That one did it,” Gordon called. “I'm putting into Strength first again.”
“Good choice.”
After the maze room came a treasure room—two health potions, much to Levi’s relief, a Stone token, and a blank spellbook.
The stray ceiling cynomis chose that moment to return, diving at Centoo's unprotected back, only for Cen to lunge and snatch it in his mandibles. Centoo spun and bit onto its legs, the two engaging in a brief tug-of-war over the squealing cynomis until its few health points were expended and it tore apart in a furry splatter of bloody meat.
“I expect you both to clean that up,” Levi said, flicking cynomis bits off his arm onto the floor.
Cen started gathering up the pieces, but they disappeared before he could finish. The giant centipede stared at the empty floor, then up at Levi.
Centoo hadn't moved toward the mess. Skarm, still on his back, cackled with laughter.
“Good job,” Levi said, straight-faced. “Move out.”
The next room was the boss room, and the boss was a hyper-fast cynomis. Though only a little larger than the usual ones, it more than made up for it in mobility, diving through the floor and walls with incredible speed.
This room had stone pillars that reached all the way from floor to ceiling, providing it countless avenues of unexpected attack.
Thankfully, the boss wasn’t very sturdy or very damaging, only very fast and hard to track. It zipped around the room, diving in and out of pillars, biting and retreating before it could be touched. He had time to think, to find some way to pin it down with what they had available.
The ability to disappear into the pillars wasn't easy to counter under normal circumstances.
But Levi did have that traced lens. The life-sight mode on it would provide a huge advantage, but he hadn't yet found appropriate materials for a setting. He couldn’t very well spend the whole fight holding it up to his eye with both hands, carefully keeping the power stone aligned; the slightest jostle while running mana through it could destroy it. Not something he wanted to risk in combat.
Was there another option? If there were any way to make it work...
It wouldn't be conventional, but there was the blank wand he'd been carrying around for a while. “Lens on a stick” wasn't a huge step up from “lens in the hand,” but it would at least free up his second hand for a sword and prevent the lens from being shattered at the slightest bump.
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The wand would have the ability to mold to a power stone and an augment. The only question was how to affix the lens, and Levi knew enough about the basics of crafting that it should be possible.
“Cover me,” he called, and Cen immediately scurried over to enclose Levi in a cocoon of stone scales and bladed centipede legs.
Levi knelt on the ground and set out the ingredients. The wand and the power stone would go together easily. There was a curved spot at the wand's end that would conform perfectly to the power stone. But ordinarily, there would be inscriptions along the wand's length to describe its loaded spell, much like the tracing on his sword.
The lens wasn't a standard wand accessory, so he'd have to fudge it a bit. With the tip of his sword, he carefully split the wand from the top to midway along its length. The silvery metal resisted until he pushed mana into the blade. Then it slid easily through the wand's material, leaving it slightly bent apart.
Levi checked the life-sight tracing to be sure he’d aligned the right one—the last thing he wanted was to end up with a Wand of Seeing Everything but Living Creatures. Then he gently began to slide the lens into the gap, forcing the two halves of the wand further and further apart.
With a snarl, the boss burst out of the floor, biting Levi’s arm. The jostle knocked the lens from his hand. It sprang free of the bent wand, arcing through the air—
“No!”
Levi lunged for it, even as the boss dove for the ground. Hit-and-run. The precious lens toppled toward the unforgiving stone floor. Levi’s outstretched hand knocked it slightly off course but he was too far away to catch it.
It landed on the fleeing cynomis’s back, nestled in its fur as it vanished into the ground. The floor barely rippled with its passage, but it left the lens trapped half in and half out of the rock as the stone solidified in the boss’s wake.
“Flomper!” Levi shouted, “I need you!”
“We could use your help out here,” Gordon shouted over the sounds of fighting. “Aaagh, damn.”
“Gimme a minute. And Flomper!”
Levi tugged gently on the lens, but it stuck fast. He could try to carve it out with his manablade but didn’t want to risk scratching new lines across the tracings. That would ruin it as surely as shattering would.
The ground rippled again, and Levi jumped back against Cen's side, his blade ready. Flomper poked her head out, eying Levi distrustfully, and he relaxed fractionally.
“I need that lens out of the stone, very carefully. Can you do that?”
She stared at him for a long moment, and he almost thought she would dive away, but she swam over to it and shoved it carefully out of the stone and onto a more solid patch, gave him one last look, then dove and vanished from sight.
He resumed levering the lens carefully into the gap in the split halves of the wand. His hands trembled, heart pounding as the sounds of battle outside urged him to haste, but he couldn't risk messing this up. If he broke the lens, he might never find another.
Once the lens rested securely at the base of the split, he pressed the assemblage against the floor, leaning on it to bend the ends of the bisected wand back together until they touched. Then he pressed the Beast stone against the wand's tip, between both ends of the metal where he'd split it, as well as the input tracing of the lens.
He was left with... well, it mostly resembled a very strange magnifying glass, with a thin short handle and a brown gemstone set above it, but as long as it worked...
Levi carved a line from the power stone down to the handle, then carefully ran mana into the channel.
It worked, highlighting Cen while fuzzing out the environment. Levi held it up with one hand, looking past Cen to the boss as it zipped from place to place, tracking it perfectly.
“Yes!” Levi patted Cen, who was still wrapped protectively around his workspace. “Well done. Now we can fight this thing on even terms.”
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