Chapter 214: ...Claw's Nest (15)

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3:31.

3:30.

3:29.

Behind the [Golem of the Grand Magus], the magical numbers kept ticking down.

“HHHYYYAAAAAAA!”

L’teya’s battle cry filled the cavern once more.

Before, she’d tried running head on at the thing.  Learning from her past mistake, the barbarian tried something else.  She leapt into the air, somehow gaining a vertical of at least ten feet despite the fact that her body was made of stone.

The Golem raised her hands, stony eyes unflinching, to cast another spell.

This wasn’t the game.  Every little detail counted.  Everything I knew.

What was it that little bit about spells that I learned while doing a Mage Playthrough?

Spell Components.

Specifically, the requirements of casting a spell.

What were they?  Of course, the mana cost was a given.  Sometimes, they chanted which covered the verbal component.  Some enchantments required materials… line of sight and then–

It clicked just then.

Somatic components.

Hand signs.

It wasn’t just a fluke that Arione had gotten ahold of the Grand Magus questline.

Could there be a set of requirements? A set of prerequisites that one had to meet before receiving a questline for the [Six Heroes]?  If so, then there was a way to artificially create–

“HHHHHHAAAA!”  Lety screamed again, bringing me back to my senses.

“HANDS!”  I cried out, rushing to my feet, “GET HER HANDS!”

Before the first word was completely out of my mouth, the sound of metal hitting stone dropped in the background; almost unnoticeable due to the the echoing warcry of the airborne barbarian.

Stole’s arbalest thrummed a split second after the bolts struck the Golem’s hands, knocking them out of order and messing up whatever spell the Grand Magus Clone had been in the middle of casting.

L’teya came crashing down on the Golem with both her battleaxes, barely managing to chip the statue’s stone skin.  Acidic venom dripped from L’teya’s axes.  They oozed down the Statue’s body, an angry purple that swelled and bubbled at the same time.

But it’d be no use.  The [Earth] element has a natural resistance to all elements; not to mention poison is pretty much ineffective against–

“SLAVEBORN! I’M HOLDING HER IN PLACE!  QUICKLY!”

Lety had the golem’s wrists locked up.

3:00

2:59

No time to waste.

My feet moved before my brain could.

The surroundings transformed into a blur; streaks of color at the edge of my vision as my legs pumped against the floor and sent me hurtling towards the [Golem of the Grand Magus]. If I was stuck in the body of a regular human, the sheer shock alone would send my inner ear canals into disarray.

As it was, my body was enhanced by Cores.

I brought my sword back…

And instead of aiming for its neck, I grabbed my shield at the last second and bashed the side of its face with a spinning move reminiscent of the backfist.

Another sharp crack, like a bullet shattering marble into two.

Hundreds of tiny chips appeared across the blow, spreading into the statue’s eyes, and parts of its mouth and nose.  Stone screamed in protest as they split apart, cracking spreading like a network of spiderwebs down one down while a huge crack –in the shape of a lightningbolt downwards.

The most damage we’d done in the two minutes.

The statue went livid.

Its humanoid shape gurgled unintelligibly and started convulsing like a tadpole taken out of water.  An alien and inhuman quality to the movement and action, I instinctively let go.  L’teya followed suit.

One of the rules of being a frontline adventurer… when a monster starts acting unpredictably, create space.

And one of the rules of being a backline adventurer… when there’s space –blast the monster into hell.

｢Stolen Stars fall Silently casts [Spring Rain] ｣

｢It is now raining. ｣

One second, the air was thick with the scent of blood, gore, and sweat.  The next, moisture filled the air, brimming over into condensation, foggy mist, and into a drizzle.

The golem was still spazzing out.

The hairs on my arm stood up as the air filled with the strong smell of ozone.

A tiny spike flew out from behind me.  No larger than two palms of my hand lined up together, the only thing in the world that was allowed to move while everyone stood transfixed by the latent power that was being held in the air.

｢Kyrian Tricilan casts [Lightning Rod] ｣

I heard his voice from behind me.

“Lock, back up.”

His voice broke the strange trance and I leapt back.  Once more, L’teya followed my cue without me having to explain it to her.

｢Kyrian Tricilan casts [Lightning Rain] ｣

Then it began to rain lightning.

When Kyrian cast the spell before against the [Samsoogook], the spell created a visual effect of lightning falling down slowly.  Like yellow-blue cotton-pads or dandelion seeds were drifting down peacefully.

Now…

The spell, [Lightning Rain] interacted with [Spring Rain].

C-C-C-C-C-C-C-CRACKKKKKKKKKKKK

Each bead of lightning became a pillar of pure electric death and they fell like an execution technique, each of them carrying enough power to fry a person and more.

[Lightning Damage] was reacting with the status: [Wet], doubling damage output.

One of my favorite elemental combinations in the game.

I’d never seen it like this.  The videogame graphics from my shitty graphics card did not do this scene justice.

The whole fucking ground was left sundered apart in small smoking craters as the beads slammed themselves down like suicide-bombing hawks, gravel flying everywhere.  The air hissed and popped a hundred times in the span of a second, hypercondensed sound almost blowing out my eardrums as they created one large death-inducing gunshot-like noise which told an ancient buried instinct to run; that there was no way for man to fight against natural disasters.

And the [Golem of the Grand Magus] disappeared from view, swallowed by the instantaneous pillar of energy.

Sometimes, we see a car wreck.  A train accident.  A plane falling.  Or great hurricanes swallowing small coastal towns like they were pieces of cheese.  See it on TV?  It’s distant enough so that you can detach yourself from it.

See it in real life and it leaves you feeling small.  Insignificant, weak, and shaken; because one just realizes how small they are.  If Mother Nature ever decides she had enough of us people making playthings of her planet…

No doubt about it.  No science is enough to change her mind.

Don’t believe me?  We still don’t know what the true deep ocean holds, because our submarines can’t withstand water pressure.  Tsunamis and earthquakes? The best strategy to deal with them is evacuation for a reason.

I got the same feeling watching Kyrian’s most powerful spell in combination with Stole’s Core ability.

“...By the Nine.”  Freier’s small comment filled my chest with pride.

If I had to rank it…

In terms of instantaneous damage, Kyrian x Stole was at the top of the top right now.

An instant nuke that was able to kill a grade-4 monster at the right time.

Of course, it was different than steady constant damage output like Skaris’, which started out strong and ended strong.

And different from mine, which started slow but spiked over time.

My party was becoming one of those hyper-offense oriented ones, not that I was thinking about it.

The last droplets of rain fell, the mist clinging to the air disappearing as Stole’s Core Ability reached the desired end as the input mana ran dry.

And in the center of the room, where the [Golem of the Grand Magus] was supposed to be…

A deformed rock.

It was round in places, but too misshapen to resemble any of the original shapes.  Almost like it had been in the middle of bubbling over when Kyrian and Stole shot it down.

“Is it dead?”  L’teya didn’t lower her axes.

“I…”  I stopped walking towards it, caught off-guard by Lety’s question.

The [Golem of the Six Heroes] resembled their counterparts.  The [Golem of the Grand Magus] had an arsenal of tools at its disposal, from support spells to damaging ones.  But just like the boss itself, compared to the other boss monsters at the SS-grading… it didn’t boast a high HP pool.  Hence, why the Core x Spell combination could damage it enough to destroy it.

I was sure of it.  It was dead.

But why did it leave a corpse?

The Golems didn’t drop Cores or Loot, but they were still considered monsters.  They shouldn’t leave corpses behind unless a Mage cast some kind of [Preservation] spell on it.

“Slaveborn?...”  Freier left the unsaid question hanging in the air.

“The monster is dead for sure.”  I said.  “That’s a clue to the next floor.”  But I sounded unsure.

Too many things different to the version of the game I knew was popping up.  It was hindering my ability to make decisions.

“The clock,”  Stole said somewhere behind us, “It’s still counting down.”

2:11.

2:10.

2:09.

Shit.  No other way to go about it.

“Stay back.”  I approached the strange ‘egg’ like corpse in the center of the room.

I must’ve looked crazy.  Getting on all fours to check if there was anything on the surface facing the floor, or smelling the statue.  Again, nothing.

What the hell was this thing?

While I spent time there, I heard the others talking.

“You’ve grown more powerful, Mage.”  Lety’s voice.

“It was Stole.”

“Heh, well, I was always strong.  Mister personally recruited me after all.”

“Personally?...”  L’eteya sounded curious.

A tone reserved for children that were showing off in front of their peers, “Yup.  He was looking for a Wayfinder and I happened to be free.  When we met, I saved him from monsters.  He was about to get swallowed whole by a [Nurionna].”

“Kyrian, I’d like to check to see if your condition has fully recovered.”  While Stole chattered away, Freier spoke up.

There was a slight pause.  Then Kyrian said, “Thank you.”

That’s how adventurers are.

You start out as enemies.  You start out as strangers.  But you go through one life-threatening battle together, then another, and another; and you can’t help it, the bonds begin to form.  In a world where Monsters are the defacto kings of the world and the rest of us are playing catch up, adventurers are the first line of defense against the destruction of civilization.  There’s an unsaid sense of camaraderie between all of us adventurers… the mutual understanding of what kind of life this is.

I sighed.

Could L’teya and Freier blend into the party if we all decided to accept them?  Neither of them made sense from a moral point of view.  Both of them were friends of current enemies.

At least Freier made mechanical sense, L’teya’s build was shit.

Distracted, I cut myself on the small statue.

I hissed, bringing the finger to my lips and sucking on it.

And suddenly, I felt dizzy.

Everything happened simultaneously.

My [Mana Sense] isn’t strong, but I recognized this feeling.

Teleportation.

The air zipped open as the world spun out of view, I felt myself falling backwards.

“Slaveborn!”

“Lock!”

Hands caught me.

Kyrian’s blonde hair blocked my view.

“W-What’s that?” Stole’s frightened voice.

｢Blood of the [Sword Saint Disciple] has been fed to the [Golem of the Grand Magus] ｣

｢Curse Activating! ｣

｢Lock Slaveborn has been [Cursed]!｣

｢Lock Slaveborn has been [Paralyzed]!｣

｢You have successfully slain the [Golem of the Six Heroes] under the time limit!｣

｢Calculating Reward…｣

｢Calculating Reward…｣

｢Curse Detected!…｣

｢Reward: Teleportation to Upper Floors!｣

｢Curse Penalty: Targets will be teleported to Random Locations in the Upper Floors!!｣

My mouth wouldn’t move.  My arms couldn’t either.  Neither could the rest of my body.

“Portals! Stick together!”  Kyrian yelled out.

Even while he yelled out, dozens of blue, red, yellow, and green portals began to open up.  All of them floating in the air.

And they began to absorb.

“GRAB ONTO SOMEONE!”

“MISTER!”  

I couldn’t turn my head but saw Stole from the corner of my eye, trying to reach me.  One of the portals swooped down, swallowing her up.  Freier saw it and threw herself to the portal, getting swallowed up together.

“SLAVEBORN!”

The same fate happened to L’teya.

And next…

I saw Kyrian’s eyes tremble with fear.  We were all being separated again.

I felt his hands lock around my forearms and the young blonde mage, frailer than a software engineer who stayed home and never saw the light of day, leaned over me in an effort to protect me.

And the portal swallowed us whole.

We fell through it.

People expect teleportation to be some grand thing.  It’s more like blinking, the sense you get of losing your balance when hovering between waking consciousness, and sleeping unconsciousness.  That exact moment when people catch themselves with the sensation of falling.

I plopped on the hard surface, my limbs splayed out.

Kyrian landed right on top of me.

“Lock, are you alright?”  He asked.

And my eyes widened.  Or they would have, if I could move.

I tried desperately to move my pupils, to warn Kyrian.

Too late.

Footsteps.

A man, dressed in well-oiled leather garbs.  

Nearly bald.

Beady eyes, that betrayed instant joy when he saw us.

“Well, well, well,”  Delas Ender said, “What do we have here?”