Zara was sitting in a tent hidden away from the townspeople, looking over various reports, and scowling. “Either these monsters are nomadic or this nest has been here for generations and had been stamped out multiple times. No, looking back at reconds once every two hundred years or so monsters would invade the surface and destroy the area above. This town had been a capital ten millennia ago and yet all that remains is a small village.”
“Miss Zara, based on our scouting we have found some underground ruins. It appears this place was once a precursor facility. Sadly it was conquered by leaping lizards some time ago.” Stated a young blond man. In his hands was a scroll he was ready to hand over.
“How often do monsters conquer facilities?” Zara asked the silent Casimar.
“I didn’t know it was possible, these monsters increase in size as they get older and stronger. Getting in or finding the place would have been difficult. If not impossible under normal circumstances. Not unless this isn’t the first time and we’re missing some information.”
“So either this is an outlier or we have bigger things to think about after we clear this one.” Zara stated.
The blond Gil nodded. “Yes. It is possible that the precursors in charge of the place abandoned it, leaving some experimental monsters inside. Or more likely, the facility was close to nesting grounds and a few of the lizards moved in, living off of its resources and growing until they found a way out. Whatever reason, these monsters show signs of being here for quite a long time. We’ll need some Nascent cultivators to fight them all.”
Zara sighed. “Casimar, write a letter to the sect leaders and have someone bring it back to the sect leaders. I doubt I’ll need help, but we may end up needing reinforcements. I can’t believe Yang was put on bodyguard duty.”
“He’s a better melee attacker than me, if it's just weapons, I’m versatile in my ability to manipulate earth. And a tier higher in cultivation.”
“Doesn’t make much sense to me.” Zara sighed.
“That is fair, you’ll understand soon.” Casimar nodded as he wrote the letter.
An hour later, the attacking team had entered the precursor facility, with Tang Bao acting as the vanguard, Zara following from safely in the middle, and Casimar protecting their rear with his defensive formations.
Bao was the meat shield, Merham was an armored warrior, and Knue was a snake whisperer; his technique let him control small swarms of snakes. Ling was an evasive brawler who focused on being the fastest person on the battlefield and stood right behind Tang and Merham.
Uriel was an unorthodox cultivator who blended light arts and healing magic. She was also the instructor for healing at their school and a friend of Rei’s. Her left hand was a prosthetic limb made from the same material as a unicorn’s horn. Her hair was almost white blond, and her build was a little below average in terms of height and musculature.
Derdof was a great archer, using arrows the size of lances conjured from his chi or crafted with various inscriptions that made them do exactly what he told them to do.
As the group of eight entered the ruins, swarms of leaping lizards attacked. Unlike their greater kin, the average leaping lizard didn’t use weapons and instead preferred to hop on foes, crushing them and dealing damage to organs en mass.
They attempted to do just that as a small bead of fire in the center of their hoard erupted in an explosion of fire turning the small hoard into ash. Leaving the area clean and in need of some dusting.
Zara blew smoke off her finger and looked at Casimar whose face held a monotonous expression.
“No need to fight hordes of small fry. Save your strength for stronger enemies.” Zara stated.
“I was going to say that to you. How much did that cost you?”
“Nothing. That was a basic spell for me, I could cast it continuously firing beads like that for 48 hours straight, before I'd need to sleep or risk losing control of my magic.”
“Does it cost you no magical energy?” Uriel asked in surprise.
“My efficiency is quite high and I can use ambient power to cast uncomplex spells.”
“Yet you still lost to the sect leader.” Bao said, hands behind his head.
“That should tell you how strong he is.” Zara defended.
Casimar nodded. “He made a nascent cultivator flee for their life. Someone I couldn’t beat.”
“Shut it.” Derdof stated as he knocked a lance with a spiral tip and fired it down the corridor the projectile passing through the wall and creating a new doorway while shooting off caltrops that covered the floors and walls. The sounds of bones breaking and splats could be heard before the next hoard ran out of the new doorway tripping on each other as the caltrops damaged them greatly and limited their mobility.
Zara waited a moment before the bodies crowded the hallway before flicking a second bead into the gathering lizards; this attack took the form of a pillar as it cleared the hallway of foes and caltrops.
“We should be clear for a bit.” Derdof said as he put his bow on his back.
“This isn’t fair. You haven’t given me a chance to fight yet.” Ling complained.
“Fine, you can try the next foe.” Zara rolled her eyes.
After a long walk, the group arrived in what appeared to be an egg incubation room where thousands of eggs filled the room as various groups of leaping lizards welding tools and gear tended to the freshly hatched lizards.
Ling closed the distance charging headlong into a mass of enemies, delivering swift death to two of the armored lizards in quick succession with a barrage of well-placed strikes before darting through the formation.
With the shock of the sudden death, Merham brought his hammer down on a third turning that one into an orange paste and creating a hole in the ground that swallowed up three of the hatchlings. His armor reflected the various weak blows that struck him.
Tang charged into the fray with his spear, putting down the remaining members of that group in quick succession. Bao then slammed the butt of his spear against the ground triumphantly. “See, we’re useful.”
“Move!” Casimar yelled as he began creating reinforced walls of earth, spears, and floating shields.
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The maw of a gigantic reptilian creature shot from the ground nearly swallowing the three melee cultivators whole. Had they not been warned it would have been a swift end to all three of them as it let loose a bone-chilling roar.
The reptilian creature's head rose above the ground just that limb alone was thirty feet tall, with a golden crown with a large black diamond encrusted in each protrusion.
The roar it released caused the ground above to open up as hundreds of eggs hatched and evolved as weapons and gear appeared in their hands, the leaping lizards then shot out of the ground in the form of an eruption.
The eruption sent the three melee cultivators out of the underground battlefield with
“A monarch!” Casimar took a step back in surprise as he hardened his resolve.
“Weasels.” Derdof muttered as he turned to a large Lizard with eight silver protrusions on their head. Then another with nine crawled out of the ground, followed by a third with two golden protrusions and eight silver.
“Derdof, get the others out of here. We’ll do what we can to take them out here, you’ll be collateral since I can’t hold back.” Zara stated.
“I’ll ssstay. Chimera Art: Partial release!” Knue stated as he pulled up his right sleeve and removed a talisman that had been on his left arm. The limb tripled in thickness as orange fur with black stripes covered his left arm.” Hundreds of snakes fell to the ground from his cloak and began to scatter. His cultivation shot from awakened to low nascent in seconds as his brown eyes turned red.
“Unicorn’s Blessing.” Uriel raised her prosthetic limb and cloaked the remains of her team in holy light.
Casimar was temporarily pushed to the middle awakened stage of his cultivation, while Knue soon hit the middle nascent tier, and Zara felt all of her magical abilities increase quite drastically.
“This blessing lasts an hour and will consume the power in my hand for a week. I was saving it for a big fight.”
The running Derdof nodded, “This should help me protect the others!”
“Eye of the Inferno.” Zara held a hand over her left eye, and the sclera turned black. From there a tornado of blue flame erupted in the Monarch's open mouth, cooking it from the inside and sending fire through the hoard of the rising lizard, weakening the hoard and forcing the Monarch to close its mouth.
Knue had moved into the front attacking the gold matron with his transformed arm, letting out a series of powerful strikes before darting away. A buildup of white energy stacking in layers around the damaged spots and grows after each attack.
When Knue moved away, the matron swiped her tail at the fleeing enemy only to be blocked by a shield of earth. That was then followed by ten stone spears passed into the Matron's head through its eyes as a golden light began to reverb and hum as it staggered.
“Holy Reverberation!” Uriel raised her hand and a beam from above shot down from the sky, turning that enemy to ash.
The second oldest Matron fled with a jump, seeing its queen brought down in moments. It wasn’t going to die down here. Not without taking the weaklings above with them.
Knue nodded to Uriel, before sinking into the swarm of snakes underneath his feet. His snakes surrounded the third matron and began to bite, leaving behind venomous decay that quickly began to eat at the monster from the inside causing it to stagger before falling dead in moments.
“I did not know he was that strong.” Zara stated.
“He is a demonic cultivator, not by his own choice, but still a demonic cultivator. My father has had him in custody for years. Although he wasn’t treated like a prisoner, two years younger than me and he’s been with my family for five years. So you can imagine what happened to get him to that point. The seal release tends to make him go berserk after a while which is why he’s using his snakes to attack. He’s out of the battle now.”
“So a demonic cultivator grafts or seals parts of demons or monsters, inside and or themselves while practicing chi fortification. Such an act is dangerous and likely to end in madness, even for those they call demons.” Zara scowled as she looked at the silent snake charmer; it was highly likely he had more than two monsters inside him.
“Wait, he’s how old?” Uriel looked at the pile of snakes currently going through the scattered leaping lizards.
A second roar filled the room as the ground shattered completely and everyone began to fall into the depths of the facility.
As the group fell Uriel turned in midair and held out her hand, “Slow Fall!”
The speed of their falling slowed and hundreds of snakes had latched onto their gigantic foe, although their venom proved useless to the behemoth standing before them.
Casimar slammed a serrated blade of earth into the monster's side, rendering scales and flesh off in chunks and slowing his fall exponentially.
Zara let loose a blast of explosive magic and slowed her fall with a small concentrated burst of power.
The part landed in a massive open space with a monster that stood over a hundred feet tall and two-thirds as wide. Although it seemed to have very limited mobility due to being underground all its life and unable to tunnel or crawl.
“Casimar?”
“Yes?”
“If this was above ground it would be much harder, but since it’s trapped like this, I need you to pierce the area right above where you started cutting. I’ll need to spend thirty minutes charging this spell up, so until then try to keep us alive.”
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As it turned out, carving the flesh off the lizard was possible due to momentum and gravity. The snakes bit repeatedly, building up a small mass of white energy. Casimar conjured spear after spear and peppered the monster while staying mobile and creating platforms that he used to get higher elevation.
Uriel summoned a bubble of light that protected Zara and kept them both five feet above the ground, avoiding the brunt of the shockwaves.
The colossal lizard stomped, punched, and slammed its tail about regularly but due to limited stamina it had to take breaks in between. Breaks that left it out of breath as smoke slowly entered its lungs from its nose. The venom had begun to build up slowly but surely while Knue reappeared in his human form, mental exhaustion evident as his snakes fled.
“I hit my limit. This is where I bow out.” Knue seemed a bit shorter than he started and quite shaken as his eyes seemed to shift between that of a snake and a dark brown fur trying to grow over his arms and his canines extended into fangs.
“What happens if you push it?” Uriel asked.
“I won’t be able to control what happens after. That's not a risk I'm willing to take, but my power will be at peak Nascent.”
“An uncontrollable peak Nascent cultivator?”
“Yes, and I won’t be able to turn back unless I’m subdued. So if you can’t beat that, and I can, can you promise I won’t hurt anyone else?”
Casimar nodded and interposed himself between the monster and his allies. “I guess I’ll need to hold it on my own for a bit. Uriel can you provide healing periodically?”
“I can try.”
“Good, also you didn’t see this,” Casimar stated as he placed both hands on the ground and caused a hexagonal prism to cover the others before layers upon layers of the earth began to cover his body. Each of the inner layers had been made from millions of hexagonal hoops linked together made create a flexible armor and core before thicker and denser plates covered them. The whirling earth and metal pushed him ten feet off the ground as his armor expanded and his body vanished, followed by his head as the armor grew upwards covering it and more. His body pushed closer to its center as it reached fifteen feet tall. His arms spears of condensed earth.
When the lizard stomped this time Casimar caught the blow with his earthen arms cracking them. He then used its momentum to bring the Monarch to the ground. Where he drove his arms into the monster's scales only managing to crack them.
The Monarch was fast for its size and used that speed to turn and slap Casimar with its tail sending him back five feet as the front of the golem had been scattered to the ground before reforming in front of him in seconds. “You hit hard.”
Casimar pushed harder and acted with mobility in mind. His armor shrank as he began to focus on dodging as he attacked occasionally making it remember him and forget about the others.
The plan was working well and two minutes had passed since Casimar took up the mantle of holding it back mostly alone. After those two minutes, however, the shell around the others had begun to glow a crimson light had power gathered in one area.
Frustrated the monster turned and began to charge towards the glowing light with more enemies inside.
Casimar sent hands of earth from the ground to trip the monster only to get ignored as it ran through and bit down on the barrier.
Faces crushed the stone prism in its maw only to find that it was denser than it imagined and continued to bite and claw, each attack hitting Casimar’s core directly.
After a solid thirty seconds, the shell shattered and the monster laughed in glee as it sensed the mana in the air. It then brought its maw down on his foe.
Uriels barrier blocked the first strike, then the second, it wasn’t until the fifth strike that Uriel also collapsed out of energy.
“I have the spell ready.” Zara said with a clipped cadence.
“It’s only been twenty-eight minutes. Didn’t you ask for thirty?”
“I managed to finish early. But I still need Cas to puncture the spot I asked him to.”
“Casimar! It’s time. Fine.” Uriel muttered a few words to herself.
Casimar blocked a fist with a raised wall of stone which wrapped around the monster's arm like a snake and then moved towards its face. Casmiar rode the platform as spikes extended from his legs and used the outstretched limb as a surface he ran up with cleats of stone cutting into the monster as he traveled.
“Blades of Light!” Uriel conjured pillars of light that were flung into the spot faster than eyes could track the monster yelling in pain as its eyes were fried and then pieced as Casimar dove all four limbs into the cooked right eyes opening the body up as he slid down carving a pair of thin bloody lines down its form.
The Monarch let out a roar and knocked Casimar off before he managed to get halfway sending him into a wall as his armor cushioned the fall and dispersed into sand. The monster raised its tail to end Casimar’s life when it heard words from another prey and abandoned that target for the much more dangerous threat.
“I offer up this sacrifice to call forth the Flames of Damnation!” Zara held up a small ring with a red gem in the center. The gem dissipated and the colossal behemoth was sent through a burning portal screaming as it was turned to ash from the bottom to the top, the only item remaining being its colossal crown.
Zara’s skin went pale as her eyes glossed over, collapsing from mana exhaustion from over-channeling a spell she normally couldn’t cast.
“Zara’s down now.” Casimar climbed to his feet, his armor reforming as a second hoard of leaping lizards began to charge toward them. His piercing arms extend. “Why does it seem like people tend to faint after beating an enemy? That is not a good trend.”
Casimar molded his platforms into spinning blades of earth which were used to slice the coming lizards into pieces. From there he grabbed the three crowns which he would turn into his sect leader and then later his father. A monarch crown was worth a lot to the empire his father was subservient to.
“Hurry up and pick Zara up. We have to clean up. I’ll secure the facility.” Uriel stated as small lances of light turned the lesser monsters to ash in moments.