To my surprise, I wasn't fried by the time we reached the top. I was sore and my head was ringing a bit, but I was more than functional. That whole mess with the shield had really worked out my soul, and shockingly, I was starting to see real gains from the constant grinding.

Once we hit the curvature, we had to pull everyone up, and I smirked a bit as I saw them all glaring in annoyance. Benny flipped me off when he finished untying himself. "That rock is HARD. We smacked into the damn mountainside like six times on the way up. You couldn't have been a bit more careful?"

"Considering I made like a thousand plus jumps?" I shrugged. "I feel like I did a damned good job." I slumped down with a groan, breathing hard. It was an interesting sensation. Unless Impact was involved my physical prowess had mostly been more than enough to handle anything I got into up to now. Not that I hadn't been overpowered on several occasions, but just wearing myself out through constant physical effort was something I attributed to the old me.

He rolled his eyes. "Whatever." Looking up the mountain, he winced. "So, this curvature thing isn't going to be a small trip huh?"

I sighed. "Probably not nearly as long as the trip up in distance, but given the sharp incline and the ice, not to mention whatever else is probably up here, we're most likely going to need to take it slow. It's coming up on nightfall, and I think going through frozen steep mountain terrain in the dark is a stupid plan. Luckily, we brought a ton of useful materials for exactly this environment."

I snapped my fingers and a glowing orange stone appeared in my hand. Tossing it to Benny, he gave a pleasant groan when he caught it. "That feels amazing. Like taking a dip in a hot tub. What is this?"

"Summerspark crystal." I said as I withdrew another and passed it to Callie. "We traded for it with Anna-Marie's brother. It'll be used up after a few hours, but while its active it cocoons your body in warm air. You can use a larger amount to cover an expanded area, create sort of an exclusion zone for cold. I'm going to set one up for the bunker. The conclave is tomorrow, and showing up so early won't have much point. Might as well rest up."

He nodded. "Seems like a good plan. I know I could use a break. Slamming into rock walls and being dragged through the air for hours isn't much fun."

"Next time YOU can jump on air for hours to drag literal tons of F-ranked beings up the side of a gravity altering space warping super mountain." I said sweetly. Then I paused. "Oh wait, no you can't, so shut up." Callie snorted at that, but when Benny and I turned to look she was gazing back at me innocently.

I heard a squeal of glee and Bethany basically APPEARED out of nowhere, scaring us all shitless. "That was SO MUCH FUN!" She cheered. "Can we do that again? Best ride ever!" Clearly she hadn't had a problem with hitting the side of the mountain, though somehow that didn't surprise me.

"I think we'll have the next conclave somewhere a bit less...hostile." I said with amusement. "In the meantime we're going to go ahead and bunker down for the night, literally. You guys have your own accommodations or do we need to share?"

She waved me off casually. "Oh no. Daddy makes me travel with lodgings. My Bone Burrow is pretty comfy. What about you? What did you guys bring to camp in?" Her cheerful demeanor made it clear she considered this a fun little outing, despite the circumstances. I also realized she wasn't holding a summerspark crystal and yet she was clearly fine in the cold. Vampire stuff probably.

Reaching into my spatial ring, I pulled out the spike of stone that was our enchanted bunker. "Picked this up in town." I said, brandishing it proudly. I really hoped it could actually penetrate the mountainside or we'd be screwed.

She looked it over with interest. "Wow, lots of really tiny runes on that, it must be super enchanted. This your first time using it? I bet it looks pretty cool when it makes your bunker for you. I can't wait to watch!" Her eyes were blazing with crimson glee as she stared at the device. It was honestly kind of terrifying.

Not that she was wrong. It did sound like it would be pretty interesting to watch. "Alright." I said with a laugh. "Let's get a bit further up the slope, maybe find a patch of more level ground or at least something away from the edge."

Callie nodded, pointing off to the left and ahead. "I scouted as best I could. I think there's a flat spot over there we can use. Hard to get a read with all this snow. The shadows aren't exactly numerous up here. It's stupidly bright."

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I paused. She was right. We were high up in the air, and night had fallen. The oversized moon above the dungeon had turned this snowy mountain slope into a field of blinding white light with barely any shadows to be found aside from a few random spikes of rock jutting up.

That was...unsettling. Seeing the moon so bright and close made me nervous, given what we'd learned about Suvaya. What exactly was this mountain? I shook that thought off. I was being paranoid. Not everything was some huge conspiracy. Probably.

Following Callie's advice, we DID find some flat ground, a small indent in the steep rock. I stepped inside, looking around with Eye of Revelation to make sure we were safe, then, kneeling down, I cleared some snow and slammed the rock spike into the mountain side as hard as I could.

It sunk in about an inch. I growled in annoyance, cracked my neck, took a firmer grip, and triggered Mercy Kill as I brought it back down. Heavy Hands was passive and with Mercy Kill boosting the attack and all my power behind it I got the damned spike halfway into the cold rock.

Once it dug in, I pulled my hands back, watching as a series of runes so small they were almost unreadable even to me lit the entire spike with yellow orange light. The light traveled down the spike then back up a few times before it finally expanded out into the small cracks in the rock around it.

The cracks widened, pushing themselves open as the ground under us shook slightly. As I watched, the stone began go spike up around us, the spears joining into joints and lines as they began to outline a rather decently sized building. I stepped back, watching in awe as the bunker constructed itself out of the mountain itself.

Once the rumbling stopped, I stepped inside and walked to the center of the floor where the spike still sat, yanking it out and looking it over. The thing looked...drained. I knew it wasn't single use, but it would take a while for it to recharge off the ambient energy. I stowed it away and walked to the door.

The stone had formed a barrier on a sort of interlocking rock hinge that could be pushed open easily, once I did, I stepped out of the spacious bunker and looked around, spotting my friends a bit away.

Benny whistled as he approached. "Well that's a neat little trick. Is it like a temporary template made of the natural rock? You removed the original spike right?" His inner Inventor seemed to be at the forefront, and I passed him the spike.

He looked over it. Benny wasn't an Enchanter, but runes played a part in enchanted items of all kinds and he could understand their basic meanings. Studying the tiny script, he hummed in interest.

"How does it work?" I admit I was curious myself, I knew WHAT it did, but how was a bit too much trouble to bother puzzling out.

He handed it back. "It's basically a rechargeable enchanting template. It makes the bunker and enchants the thing as it does. The bunker's enchantments fade over the next twenty four hours as the thing recharges, this will be gone by the time we can make a new one. You can leave it in place if you want to make it more long term but it won't charge while its embedded."

Nodding, I reached into my ring, withdrawing more of the summerspark crystal. "Alright, help me setup an exclusion zone around this place. Rock doesn't exactly retain heat, especially not up here. I don't want to sleep freezing my ass off."

He snickered and he, Callie, Bethy, and her two thralls who appeared from nowhere to help, all took crystals and laid them out in the formation I gave them. The Landrock Bunker itself was, as we'd been told, a twenty five foot square. At least on the outside. It was bigger internally, which could have been a feature of the enchantments Benny mentioned or could have been because of the nature of the mountain.

Giancarlo had said it drained power from the nearby rock when creating itself, and I wasn't sure exactly what that would do in a place like this. The rock was still F-rank, even nearby, so it wasn't like it drained it all dry. Once we set up the exclusion zone for the cold, I turned to the others. "So, everyone can pick wherever they want to sleep inside. I have sleeping bags in my spatial ring if any of you don't. Bethy's people will crash in her Bone Burrow apparently."

Ten people inside of a relatively spacious bunker wasn't too tight a squeeze, especially since several of us would be sharing sleeping bags. The interior, based on the quick look I'd had, was probably about a hundred feet in each direction. Stepping inside, I was relieved to see there was plenty of room. Well...for humans. Randall slept outside, playing guard bear and enjoying the warmth since he couldn't fit comfortably into the bunker.

After we confirmed everything with Bethy and agreed on a time to wake up, we all piled into the bunker, setting up our sleeping bags inside. In fact, the place was so big we were able to set up whole tents for a bit of privacy. Once we got settled, we all gathered around the spot the spike had been stuck in and I set up a small magic stove I'd picked up at the bazaar.

I cooked everyone a nice meal of grilled cheese, and we washed it down with some canned tomato soup. It was delicious, of course, and everyone seemed to be in a good mood by the time we finished. Once we were done, I paused a second before speaking to everyone. "Guys. This conclave tomorrow. It's going to be tense. No one will be happy finding out we're all sacrifices. Hell, some of them might not believe us. Be on your guard ok? I don't want to lose anyone."

Abel nodded solemnly. "People do stupid things when they're scared. Don't worry, kid. I'll keep an eye on everyone best I can. That Brightlaw guy seems like the type to back us up if we need it too. Between the two of us I doubt anyone will get anything by us."

I chuckled, remembering how we'd put down that undead in the temple. He wasn't wrong. As a combination my group and Gabriels were pretty damned scary, hell, just the three of us were kind of a nightmare. "Fair enough. We're not exactly pushovers." I wasn't going to take anyone's safety for granted, but at least I felt a bit more secure. With all that out of the way Callie and I retired to our tent to sleep, we had a big day tomorrow.