My footsteps squelch on the hard, black tiled floor as I wade through the guts, jagged bone, and pieces of uniform that are heaped in the area past the door. The curved corridor slopes gradually down for another hundred paces. My minimap, bolstered by all my Skills including Environmental Sense and my Perception, is doing a great job of helping me to understand what’s ahead. Every step I take my mind feels more jittery and anxious, driven by the oversaturation of Mana in my body. I can tell I’m definitely not ‘in the zone’.
I trigger Omnipresent and the Skill comes rushing in faster than normal, almost overwhelming me. My mind races and stretches to contain the vast information that’s hitting me for a couple of seconds and I draw on the full weight of my Affinity to help me before it stabilizes and my SMI manages to support my mind enough to get it under control. This feels dangerous. I need help here, someone who maybe isn’t as affected by these high levels of Mana as I am. With my teeth clenched, I reach out to find Jon so I can open a Portal to hopefully bring him here to help me, but my Skill comes up short and a wave of anger, grief, and frustration washes through me as I remember he’s dead. My mind really isn’t fine.
Instead, I search for Jeff and locate him quickly then open a Portal to him. Before I can even step through the Portal he rushes through, swords in his hands and in full armor with all his defensive Skills triggered, ready for anything. When he sees there’s no immediate danger from Monsters he turns to me.
“Took you long enough. I knew you were going to get yourself into trouble,” he says without any judgment. Just confirming what we both already know. I can feel the Portal buckle under the intense Mana in the area and with my Affinity I can feel how hard it is to keep it stable. It’s almost as if the Mana wants to claim it for its own, perhaps to bring Teleports here to soak up all the excess Mana that’s in this place.
“What the hell is going on here?” asks Jeff. ‘My skin is tingling, and you look like you’ve snorted a barrel of cocaine!”
“Ambient Mana levels are very high here. Higher than in Milford Sound in the Mana Influxes.”
“Seriously?” he asks and cocks his head at me. I can see the flow of his defensive Skills rippling and fraying around the edges.
“Yeah, it’s playing havoc with Skills right now. Almost like a DDoS attack, except instead of the internet it’s Mana overwhelming our Mana Interfaces and interfering with the way things usually work. I… I tried to get Jon. I forgot for a second. Just instinct.”
“I hear you,” agrees Jeff. “I think about him a lot too. Can’t believe he’s gone. What you want to do about this, Bronwic?” he asks while gesturing to everything around him.
“Not sure.”
“There are plenty of places in the world with dangerous shit to go toe to toe with, dude. You want to give this one a miss? My Skills seem unstable at best right now.”
“We might get to the place I want to leave. Are you open to moving through here with me for a bit? I can see some tougher creatures ahead on my minimap,” I say and share it with him. The fact he’s looking it over makes me confident Jeff is going to stay.
“Should I Portal in anyone else?”
“Know anyone who can take punishment like the two of us?” he counters.
My mind flicks back to a couple possibilities, but I discard them and shrug.
“Let’s keep going, but I reserve the right to get you to Portal us the hell out of here if it gets too rough,” he says.
“Agreed,” I commit.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
We soon come to another, similar door to the previous one. This time with Jeff’s help it’s a lot easier to get the piece I’ve cut out moving and we shove it together at a good pace right out into the next section and split around it with me on the left and him on the right. My Danger Sense is definitely active now and my minimap shows swarms of Monsters that aren’t individually too much of a threat but at these kinds of numbers they might be. I barely get through the narrow space between the door segment and the wall when a jagged crystalline arm slams into the wall beside me as I dodge back with Acceleration cranked up to maximum.
The Mana levels here are even higher, to the point I can almost feel that the air is thicker with it. Shards from the wall bounce off me and I slice up with a Sword, severing the light pink crystalline arm with some resistance. I surge forward and glance to my right to see Jeff do the same and smash into an army of hulking creatures formed from light pink and blue crystal. Their bodies are sharp, jagged, and glow with an inner magical energy.
Superheated air washes over me as Jeff blasts straight through the group of creatures with a ‘firenado’ which doesn’t seem to bother them in the least. I chop into them with my Swords at my fully Accelerated speed, dancing and spinning to avoid their striking limbs. Every time I cut through them my Swords waver a bit and sometimes my blades don’t even make it through their thick, reaching arms. My Elemental Aegis flares green as the blows I can’t avoid are turned aside by my shielding. I trigger Fury of the Clan a few times, but it seems to slide off them without its full effect, or maybe the damage is absorbed in some way. They’re high Level creatures and I growl in frustration that my go-to Skill seems increasingly irrelevant in the fights I’ve gotten into lately.
Evolved Crystal Elemental (Level 211)
Health: 11450/13590
Mana: 2780/3260
Conditions: Mana Siphon, Shockwave Soak, Impact Reflection, more…
There are dozens, maybe hundreds of these things pressing forward trying to get at us. Their crystalline appendages shoot forward like porcupine quills and I can’t even see their bodies to figure out where I need to strike. I pull a pair of warhammers from my Inventory, designate them as Personal Weapons, and then lay about me, smashing the reaching appendages of the crystal elementals apart with brute force, triggering Critical Strike with every blow since Stamina is no concern. My warhammers flash everywhere to crush and crack whatever reaches for me. I glance over at Jeff and see he’s not doing as well. His defensive capabilities are a lot higher than mine with his Class, but his background of being a Blademaster has him falling back to using his traditional swords which are even less effective than mine.
“Blunt weapons,” I send to him over our GPC and between strikes I see him switch to a pair of large, heavy maces that are more likely to do the job. There’s no finesse with them so close and thick, just endless bashing and Stamina. It takes almost a minute of smashing and getting smashed back to make it through to the first of the front line. I surge into them with Charge, arms crossed, then deliver a double backhand blow to the two closest to me. Their crystalline bodies shatter and I’m blasted back by a shockwave of energy that rips and tears at my shredded armor and my flesh beneath.
A deep thump hits me and then passes by and I immediately identify it as Jeff’s Shock and Awe Skill. It thumps twice more and the Crystal Elementals are pushed back and flattened, stunned for only a second. I glance over at Jeff and see he’s torn to shreds, his Health regeneration unable to keep up with the damage despite his massive defensive Skills. Adrenaline dumps into me as I momentarily think he’s at the end just like Jon, until I get a GPC message.
“Retreat,” is all it says. On instinct I trigger Omnipresent to the Somerset MIS Hub and place the Portal across the entire corridor. The Portal flexes and wavers, bucking against my control, so I grit my teeth and bare down with my Skill and my Affinity. Slowly it solidifies and we can see the inside of Jeff’s castle through it. People nearby have seen us and rush toward us but I leap forward and hold my hand up, then Inventory my warhammers to grab Jeff’s battered and shredded body and drag him through, holding the Portal open behind me with an intense effort of will.
I place Jeff gently on the ground. His dark skin is slowly, too slowly, closing over and the blood welling from his wounds gradually slows down. I hit him with Rise Again to instantly give him 1,000 Health and then I hit him again to make sure he’s out of danger. I can feel the Mana on the other side of the Portal pouring through my Portal like water rushing through a fire hose and the strain to keep it open is almost unbearable. I focus for a second to make sure Jeff is going to be fine and then step back through the Portal into the hallway. I can see now that whatever’s in Derinkuyu is deadly and there’s no room to bring in an army; it’s classic Dungeon diving or the threat is going to build and build.
I take a deep breath and steel myself to take on whatever’s in here, alone, then drop the Portal.