Sweat beaded on his brows as he neared his goal, and his fingers were beginning to get clammy. He was glad that he had put on his armor, as the armor itself would not grow slippery, even if his hands were sweating. He had not sweated in quite some time, and it was a testament to the extreme temperature that he was in that he was doing so. It was so hot here that any normal human would have died within a minute of stepping foot into the area.
Sam shook his head, and focused on his descent over all else, keeping his mind on setting one hand down after the other. His stamina bar was still quite high, but that did not mean that he wasn't feeling the strain as of now. Stamina only measured maximum output, rather than realistic output. One could technically empty their stamina bar completely, but it was quite hard to do, and most people would stop long before doing so. Sam was not most people however and he kept going.
By the time that he was within twenty feet of the target, he decided to drop the rest of the way, landing securely on the ground next to the chest. It was visibly reddened by the heat, and his breaths came in labored pants at this point. However, he had reached his goal, and it was all worth it at this point.
Sam walked over to the chest, and set both hands under the lid, opening it. Inside was nothing but white light, that quickly turned into a plethora of items. A few crystals here and there, a few ingots of various metals, and even a ring that looked to be quite valuable. Sam quickly pocketed all of them, and started to climb back up.
The chest faded away as he left it, but he paid it little heed. He did not want to linger in this place for any longer than he had to. However, the crater had different plans for him. There was a deep rumbling noise from the base of the crater, and a crack spread up the wall in front of Sam. He frowned, and then dropped down just in time before a large chunk of rock broke off of the side, and fell down into the roiling sea of molten rock below. Sam landed on the outcropping once more, but now there was a large hole in the side of the wall which was an obstacle to his path. Even worse, more cracks seemed to be forming on the sides of the wall, and the sea of lava below was beginning to churn violently beneath them.
Some of the damage seemed to be spreading out from where the chest had been, heading down into the crater below, and prompting what looked to be the beginning of a volcanic eruption. It seemed that the little outcropping of rock that the chest had been resting on had been created by the chest itself, likely in order to allow people to reach it. However, now that it was gone, the crater was being destabilized by its absence.
Sam started to scramble up the wall, using all of his enhancement abilities in the process. The warm rock shook underneath his hands, threatening to send him plummeting down into the fiery sea below. He held on however, and started to pick up the pace, ascending it like he was flying.
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As soon as he reached the halfway point, more cracks started to spread, and he scrambled to the side in order to avoid one. More chunks of rock fell from the side of the crater, and he was almost struck by one of them as he made his way up. However, he managed to reach the top without any further incident, finding that the others had removed themselves from the general vicinity of the crater, and were waiting about a few hundred feet away, where it wasn’t as hot.
Sam began to run towards them, just as a huge chunk of the crater wall slid down into the lava below. It seemed like the crater had formed a conduit to the lava below this area, and it was now beginning to destabilize. Sam raced towards the others, and soon reached them, not having time to tell them what was going on.
Neither of the men were stupid however, and they immediately ran after Sam, trying to get away from the encroaching eruption. The others waited a few miles away, and they reached them within a minute, eking out as much speed as they could on such uneven terrain.
Sam took the ship out of his pocket, and set it down, letting it expand to its maximum size. As the door swung open, he hurriedly ushered the others into it, not saying anything. They could all recognize the urgency of the situation, and he waited until they had all entered before following them. The ship shuddered as it took off, and they were soon hovering a few miles above the crater, ready to take off fully. It juddered in the unstable air of the crater vicinity.
The ship accelerated, taking them away from the crater. The plating on the bottom of the ship split back, allowing them to get a good look at what was happening behind them. The crater was rapidly eating away at the landscape around it, and great slabs of earth were falling into its hungry embrace. The green lava in the center of the pit was slowly starting to lose its greenish tinge, and normal lava was beginning to well up in the center.
The lava began to bubble and swell upwards as something immense started to rise up from beneath the surface. The top of what looked to be the head of some titan of a humanoid rose out first, revealing skin made out of black obsidian mottled with veins of lava. Hair wrought out of pure diamond swung around the monster’s head, and as the rest of the body emerged, Sam realized, with a start, what it was.
“Shit! That’s Gaea!’ he exclaimed, as he studied the massive creature rising out of the lava.
Jeffrey narrowed his eyes, and nodded.
“Seems like it. We might have released her a bit ahead of schedule.”
Jeffrey was trying to appear nonchalant, but Sam could tell that the man was terrified. An oppressive aura rolled out from the titan in waves, causing Sam’s heart to beat loudly in his chest and his breaths to come quickly. It was so terrifying that for a briefest of moments, his Dao deserted him, retreating to some place deep within him. Then he mustered his will, and pushed away the aura.
His resolve had been cracked somewhat by the fact that he had released the monster, but he then realized that it would have simply been a matter of time until it had happened. Perhaps the System was moving the schedule somewhat of the questline, while the other one was still active.
They had only dealt with one of the Engines of the End Times subquests as of now, and they were most certainly not prepared for what was to come. For now, their only hope was getting away from Gaea.