Sidney blinked awake and clutched her head.
You have been blessed by the Archangel Cetrial
Sidney rubbed her eyes and opened her status.
Blessing Blinde Jesters Crest Rank A Description This blessing was placed upon you by the archangel Cetrial in the Abyssal Sanctum. You have given her loyalty and in return she has granted you power. Effects Cetrial has placed her mark upon your mind, the less you resist the stronger you grow. “Sorry but you don’t get to see the other effects just yet. That one is enough for now. Love Cetrial.”
Sidney felt a dropping sensation in her gut. She could feel something deep in her mind, scratch and chatter. Clutching her head she desperately pushed the thing into a corner of her mind. To her surprise the thing seemed content there and just continued the endless chatter.
“Anyway now that that’s done I’ll show you two the core,” Cetrial said with a wave of her hand. Cracks appeared in the air as the angel broke her own illusion. There in the stone in front of her was an ornate sword, blade embedded in the stone below it.
Sidney stared at the blade and the complex runes that ran across it. There was no doubt that it was the core. Constant leaking of mana making it very clear.
“Well this is unexpected,” Blurted a slack jawed Julien.
Sidney gave a short nod and turned to the cave entrance, “We got what we came for let’s go Julien, before we overstay our welcome.”
Julien gave a grunt of confirmation and they exited the room and rejoined the others. With a few nods and gestures the group confirmed that the two had seen the core and made their way back up to the surface of the water.
Once they had pulled themselves onto land Cassius pulled out a small cube and placed it on the ground. The rest of the party drew lines and runes in the sand around it and about fifteen minutes later the cube flared up and they were standing at the entrance of the dungeon. They began walking down the mountain Cassius barely waiting another seconds before asking what they had seen.
“The dungeon has a forgeborn core. It looks like a sword with thousands of runes I couldn't understand or even truly grasp the shape of running along it in neat and organized patterns. Looks like old dwarven craftsmanship. There were some jewels and engraved patterns on its hilt, but it didn’t seem to be ceremonial,” Sidney replied.
Julien nodded, “I agree with Sid, but I’d like to add that the jewels were cores. I have no clue what the metal of the blade was, but the hilt was definitely orichalcum.”
Cassius nodded slowly “This is definitely an odd dungeon. Did the rest of you notice that the second floor didn’t have a guardian. The two monsters in the core room were elites.”
“Dungeon probably wasn't done with the floor. Didn’t look like the angel had influenced the floor yet,” Replied Hanna.
Cassius sighed “We'll give a report to the guild and just tell them that the second floor is likely to change.”
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Sanctus watched the party leave, having a twinge of disappointment at the severe lack of death. With a sigh Sanctus turned its attention to a small project that it had started. It had up until this point been purifying the water that entered its dungeon from the sea. That is to say getting rid of dirt and microscopic life. To Sanctus this had seemed like an excellent way to keep the dungeon clean and free of disease. Recently however Sanctus had come to a realization. What if there was microscopic life that would later grow into more usable organism? This led Sanctus to get a few cubic meters of sea water from the outside and place them into separate containers. After that Sanctus f had let them sit and it was finally time to check on them.
Sanctus was not disappointed there were a variety of new creatures in the pools, but Sanctus was interested in three in particular. A bobbit worm, a cone snail, and an anemone. Upon viewing the last of these creatures something clicked in sanctuses brain. It had known what it wanted the second floor guardian to be, but something had felt off. Sanctus now knew what that something was. The idea had felt plain, unbalanced, and uninteresting, but now Sanctus had just the thing.
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“Cetrial, it's time.”
“Hmm okay.”
Cetrial made her way over and Sanctus began. First it moved the core room back and away from the second floor exit. Then Sanctus began to mold the space in between creating a sphere with a diameter of five hundred meters. Once it had the sphere Sanctus began pulling and pushing the stone creating stone columns that haphazardly connected parts of the sphere. Sanctus began creating tunnels about two meters wide that wrapped around the outside of the sphere creating dozens of holes. Finally Sanctus created a narrow bridge straight across the room from the entrance to the exit. Then it was time for a little help from Cetrial. Sanctus created an anemone and an eel and began to feed its own mana and that of Cetrial into the creatures. The eel began writhing and growing reaching a width of a little over a meter and a half and a length of about twenty three meters, it’s skin began changing colors and thick boney plates bagan forming on its head. The anemone on the other hand grew to cover the entire room, spreading across every surface except the bridge creating a forest of glowing green tentacles waiting for something unlucky enough to fall into its grasp. With a final shudder the eels helm of bone snapped into place and other bone grew in patches across its body. When all was done the creature gave a defining roar telling the rest of the creatures on the floor that it was their turn.
Cetrial’s mana coursed through the floor causing wind to start up and static electricity to charge the air. Lightning began striking in random locations and the sand turned to glass. The sharks grew four more eyes and began summing faster and more erratically. Crabs grew larger and seemed to gain charged electricity in their claws, other eels grew smaller less developed bone armor and a few cone snails grew to rediculus size with an additional three tentacles. The bobbit worm also grew bigger and looked even angrier than usual and a school of fish began having small bolts of electricity bounce between them. Finally Ceto and the leeches got their turn. Ceto developed an affinity for electricity and the leeches suddenly swarmed together and took on the appearance of a human before collapsing back into a wriggling mass.
Summoning honor guard for angel Cetrial
Five manikins appeared around Cetrial in different stages of disrepair, some missing fingers or feet with various cracks and parts chipped off. However, one thing was the same on all of them. A wide grin plastered across their faces nearly reaching their ears. Cetrial squealed and immediately began putting them in poses and playing with them.
Sanctus refocused on its new guardian weaving souls throughout the two beings until they became one entity.
Mitra thalassas has become the champion of the second floor
As that message appeared one last change happened, softly glowing orange gelatinous spheres nestled deep within the tentacles of the anemone took form.
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Cet noticed the changes within the dungeon, but alas the changes did not come with something worthy of his blood. There was one creature that the old one thought had potential, unfortunately it already had traces of another legend within it. Cet gave a low sigh if this dungeon couldn’t produce a worthy descendant soon he would destroy it and try again. After all this was the reason he had allowed the leeches to take his blood. He could for the moment remember everything. Before the leeches it had been a lamprey, before that a shark. He would allow them to escape, they would desperately search for a powerful dungeon and then Cet would repeat the process. Cet did this for two reasons the first was to search for a worthy being the second was because the ancient being was dying and eating dungeon cores would hopefully give him just enough time to find an heir. So in a sense there was only one true reason he did what he did, he wanted a legacy. Tears flowed into the salty water as his memory wavered again and the rage at the leech resurfaced. Cet once more wanted nothing more than to destroy this place and reclaim his blood. However he somehow knew it was not yet time.
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When the party returned to the city they could barely believe their eyes. In the time they had been gone buildings had sprung up and other adventurers and even merchants had made it to the island. It was almost at the point of a small city resting at the base of the mountain. They made their way to the guild hall while admiring the progress of the builders. They entered the guild hall and made their way to the front desk where a small board looking red head told them that the guild master would be with them shortly.
The wait took around half an hour and they spent most of the time discussing their recent stay in the dungeon. When the receptionist at the counter finally called them they got up and made their way to the guild masters office in the back of the building.
The man that sat at the desk was a giant, both literally and figuratively he stood at around eleven feet tall and was hunched over a piece of paper.
“Hello, we are here to deliver our report on the local dungeon,” Cassius said.
At this the giant looked up and spoke, “So this is the infimus “Dream Team.” Yes I do believe that is the purpose of your visit. However may I ask why you guys chose the name that you did for your party”
“It’s a bit silly but we were the fastest five to complete C rank out of the entire guild in the last eighty years,” Sidney said with a slight blush.
“So it is true that you made top five. That is quite impressive. Now why don’t we move on to that report.”
Cassius bowed, “We cleared the dungeon relatively quickly using everwake potions. There was one group of D ranked monsters on the first floor. They were humanoids that attacked us when we tried to rest. The first floor boss what’s a swarm fight with around a dozen D ranked cultists and a slightly higher D ranked which all had odd mutations. We believe that the second floor was not yet complete, however we did confirm to elites a octopus and a swarm of what appeared to be leeches, however we did not kill either. We found a few chests and this is where it gets interesting. The chests seem to require someone to unlock them otherwise the content will be replaced with something unfavorable. Lastly and most shocking is that the core is a forge born that can summon both demons and angels.”