Chapter Eleven: Pushing the Limit
----------------------------------------
“Trelen, swap!”
Blychert spun around on his heels. Immediately he took several steps forward and filled in the vacant spot where Bredic had just been standing. Without any time to waste, he thrust his arm into the air and pointed his hand in the direction of the oncoming wolf spiders.
White-hot mana had been pooling at the center of his palm for exactly this moment, and so with a simple mental gesture, the newly formed icicle left his grasp at full speed, blistering across the empty space in front of him.
Impact was instantaneous, and the foremost wolf spider plummeted to the ground as a jagged spear of ice pierced straight through its body, leaving it a shriveling mass on the rocky floor. Though the rest of its ilk scurried into the gap, leaving little time to relish the small victory.
Steadying his arm, Bly issued three more icicles into the cluster of spiders. The first two missed ever-so slightly between the gaps in their gangly bodies, though with a mental gesture he issued a scatter shot, allowing the third to break off and make up for the missed attacks. However, the icicles merely seemed to graze the spiders this time, and by then it was too late to muster a fourth attack.
“Swift shield—” Blychert muttered, just in time to parry a long-legged, leaping pair of teeth.
As the burst of defensive magic dissipated, Bly aimed his hand down directly at the spider’s discombobulated face and fired off his fourth attack point-blank. The creature burst in a spray of dark ichor, falling limp against the cavern floor.
At that moment, the terrain beneath Blychert’s feet shifted. Before the rest of the spider cluster could even get to within biting range, the rocky floor had been erected to form a solid wall in front of him.
“Swap!” Bly shouted, noticing Bredic out of the corner of his eye.
The two of them traded places, and as Vineta released her terrain spell, a brilliant mote of blazing flame erupted from the familiar sigil glowing above Bredic’s head. The remaining cluster hissed with fury as each spider tried desperately to escape the funnel of burning flames, though to no avail.
“Nicely done, boys.” Vineta said in a hurried tone of voice, though her usual impishness still seemed to poke through, “Let’s help them finish that golem.”
Blychert nodded wordlessly.
He was sweating too much and breathing too hard to offer anything more than that. But as he turned his attention towards the other side of the cavern, where Xander and Lisel were fighting, the sounds of metal grinding on stone became immediately present. Blue flash after blue flash lit up the darkened chamber, as Xander’s longsword streaked through the air with fervor, intermittently broken up by the deep violet energy radiating off Lisel’s usual volley of arrows.
“What the…?” Bredic said abruptly, “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me! Already?”
Snapping his neck in the wizard’s direction, Bly followed Bredic’s gaze for a moment until it settled on the area they’d just cleared of wolf spiders. Lo and behold, a secondary stone golem was already stomping its way towards them.
Bly’s eyes widened.
This was only the second day of their delving trip, and they were already making good progress through the second floor. But this? This didn’t seem normal. He’d never fought so many monsters at one time before. Was this how many spawns they could expect moving deeper inside?
“Hey.” Vineta was the one to snap him back to reality, and Blychert shook his head clear at her in understanding. She looked at him with a consoling but deeply serious expression, and said, “Go. You help them take that one out. Bredic and I can handle this one ourselves. Or, we’ll stall for time if we must.”
And just like that, Vineta and Bredic were back into the fray, hardly receptive to just how chaotic everything was around them.
Blychert exhaled, steadying his breath somewhat.
She was right, he had to focus.
Back the other way, Xander ducked, narrowly avoiding a massive, rocky arm swiping through the air. He flourished his blade, two diagonal cuts across the golem’s midsection, causing the core to spark momentarily. Lisel was at more of a disadvantage by the looks of it, given the narrow layout of the cavern tunnel. She fired off normal arrows here and there, but ultimately was resigned to navigating around the golem’s path of attack.
Alright, just like we've been doing. Bly reassured himself, as he worked to close the distance.
“Binding element, let the depths of frost take root.” He began muttering, extending his hand as he aimed for the golem’s core, “From the heart of winter’s embrace, I summon with might, an icy bond, swift and merciless! Freezing chain.”
In an instant, the elemental energy coalesced and burst forth. However, unlike his last success, the end of this chain did not reach its intended target. Instead, it sunk deep into the golem’s forearm just as it began to swing its arm around for an attack.
The golem paused for half a second, grabbed ahold of the chain in its other hand, and pulled as hard as it could.
Before Bly even had the chance to react, his body was suddenly propelling through the air, dangling from the end of his magical chain as he whipped across the cavern towards the golem.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
“Hyah—!” Xander heaved, his sword arm reacting quickly as he stepped forward, cutting the spell free in an instant. The chain shattered in two, and Blychert tumbled to the hard ground, rolling and tumbling somewhat before he came to a painful stop.
“Guh…” He winced, suddenly very aware of the rock that had just grazed his leg.
“Up you get—” Xander said sternly, hastily reaching a hand down to help Bly up to his feet.
Bly nodded, though as he reached his own arm up to meet Xander’s, a hulking shadow suddenly loomed large over the both of them.
“Swift shield, threefold lattice—!”
Giving little more than a reactionary thought to his casting, he reached up and yanked on Xander’s arm with his free hand. In the same instant, a swell of magic burst from his other fingertips and formed a several inches thick barrier in front of them. As Xander hit the ground next to him, an incredible crashing sound echoed throughout the tunnel. The impact of the golem’s fist on his shield spell completely shattered the first lattice and inevitably cracked the bottom two, sending small tremors throughout the rock beneath where they lie.
But as the barrier magic began to dissipate, Bly regarded the core of the golem above him with a renewed sense of optimism, realizing that he had a clear shot all of a sudden. And by the looks of it, the protective stone was already worn down.
“From frozen depths, I call on the element, ice, to pierce the air with frost’s embrace. Icicle.”
The frozen projectile soared upwards—soaring straight up through the stone golem’s chest. What remained of the core’s protective barrier all but shattered to pieces, leaving the energy crystal completely exposed.
Xander was quick to scramble to his feet, which was just as well because no sooner ad Blychert broken the core’s barrier, did the golem’s other arm come swinging around for another attack.
A burst of blue energy erupted from where Xander stood, engulfed almost immediately by a deep green color thereafter. Bly’s eyes adjusted against the sparking brilliance as he crawled backwards slightly. He realized that Xander had fully parried the stone golem’s attack, and was holding it at bay with nothing but the flat edge of his longsword.
“Lisel!” Xander shouted over his shoulder, “Now!”
“Hold it there!” She shouted back, and not a second later, the twang of her bow had snapped loudly.
Time stood still for a moment, all before violet pierced the auburn innards of the golem’s core with a bang. A swirling, purple orb formed on the core, twisting and bending light all around, before collapsing in on itself. In a small explosion, the creature had broken down completely, tumbling to the ground at their feet soon after.
Xander turned, acknowledging both Bly and Lisel with a brief but steeled expression, before looking past them. He then set off towards the other end of the tunnel, saying as he moved, “Come on. Looks like they’ve got the other one handled We need to keep moving, or there will just end up being more.”
“You alright?” Bly turned towards Lisel quickly, “Not hurt, are you?”
She shook her head, “I’m fine. You?”
Bly ignored the pain radiating from his leg for the time being, and nodded, “I’m okay. I’m short on mana though.”
“Mm.” Lisel resounded, a slight look of worry on her face as she gnawed at her lower lip. She opened her sage terminal for a moment, and narrowed her gaze, adding, “My stamina is getting low too.”
Bly simply nodded, looking farther down the cavern tunnel as he did.
This was the furthest he’d pushed himself in a long time, at least without having to resort to using his transmogrifier in order to replenish his mana. Realistically, none of them should have much left. He wasn’t sure if that was a good sign of their progress or not, but it would almost certainly become a problem sooner rather than later.
Crossing to the other side of the chamber, the sole remaining stone golem tumbled to the ground in a burst of fire. Tendrils of mud seeped back into the ground and hardened all around it’s body, no doubt Vineta’s work. Bly was at least glad to see that their slight adaptations with combining elements to take out the stone golems was working somewhat well. It wasn’t foolproof, but the combined magic damage was effective against the creature’s protective layer, if nothing else.
----------------------------------------
[SAGE --> Raven System Notification]
[Experience gained: +92 xp]
[Experience total: 8,495 xp]
[Cumulative total: 15,573 xp]
----------------------------------------
“Bredic, grab that crystal.” Xander said without a moment to waste. He turned towards Vineta, and asked, “What’s the layout looking like?”
“Hmm…” Vineta resounded ponderingly. A sparkle of gray coated her eye for a moment—divination magic—causing them to become cloudy, as she gesticulated with her fingers, “The tunnel ahead splits off in three places. I’m getting a strong magical reading from one of them, but it could just be a high density of spawns.”
Xander nodded slowly, and shifted his attention towards Bly and Lisel, “How are you two holding up?”
“Not where I’d like to be.” Bly admitted, fully aware of how much mana he’d spent over the last few hours.
“Me neither.” Lisel seconded, “I won’t be able keep my sensing active for very long if we keep going.”
Vineta frowned, as her eyes returned to normal, “Which means no trap detection. Xander, that’s not a risk we should take lightly. Not with these mana signatures I’m reading.”
“If we turn back, we’ll be losing all the ground we covered today.” Xander replied, a slightly despondent tone of voice, “In other words, back where we started.”
“We have more mapping data.” Vineta insisted, “And I’m not so great on mana either, by the way. What about you, Bredic?”
“I could go a little longer, but…” Bredic tarried for a second, as he worked the energy crystal out of the stone golem’s chest. It plopped out a second later, and he looked towards the group with flushed features, “If the rest of you are tapped out, then it doesn’t really matter. Does it?”
Blychert studied Xander’s expression as the rest of them chatted.
He couldn’t help but notice that the party leader’s gaze shifted towards the tunnel on the far side every few seconds. It was as if part of him was looking for something, maybe some excuse, or maybe he was thinking about running headlong into further danger. Whatever the case, Bly thought about his private conversation with Lisel for a moment, and stepped forward.
“Hey?” He said, tapping Xander on the shoulder, “I’m sure we can go even farther tomorrow. If the first floor layout is anything to go by, we have to be getting close.”
“Uh—” Xander stared down at him blankly for a split-second. Bly was certain that in that moment he saw a flash of something. But whatever it was, Xander simply nodded his ahead with a small sigh, “Alright, Trelen. Fair point. Let’s head back to the wayshrine. We’re done for today. Good work, everyone…”
Blychert sighed in relief under his breath.
It had been a tough day, tougher than their last weeks' worth of delving combined. Frankly, it seemed like they were only testing their boundaries as a group more and more with each passing day. Bly figured that was probably a good thing, but then he couldn't seem to stop himself from keeping one eye on Xander all the while. He hadn't shown too many signs of recklessness, but then they were making too good a pace each day to really know for certain.
If one thing was clear, it was that tomorrow wouldn't be any easier. And sooner or later, they'd have to reach the boss room. It was inevitable at this point, surely. But then, so was uncertainty. In a place like this, it really seemed as if peril and glory were two sides of the same coin.
Neither was a safe bet.