TS6 - Chapter 27

The snake opened its mouth, letting out a sibilant, hissing bellow of anger before lunging toward the three of them.

Kat yanked herself to the side while using her empowered domain to push downward on the guardian’s head, but it managed to struggle back against her gravity, wobbling slightly in flight as it tried to bite down on Kaleek.

He flailed wildly for a moment, struggling against the gentle grip of gravity that was holding him aloft.  Kat immediately released him, but it was too late for Kaleek to fully dodge the attack.

Instead, he swung his sword with all his strength just as the monster reached him, knocking its jaws to the side and sending himself flying in the other direction as Newton’s third law pulled him out of danger. 

A second later, Dorrik pounced on the monster’s face both of his swords glowing with Psi Energy as he buried each of them into its eyes

“Clear!” Kat yelled as it thrashed angrily, splitting her attention in order to cast Overpressure and manipulate her domain at the same time.

Dorrik ripped out his swords before jumping free just as Kat’s spell took hold.  Blood and the jellified remains of the monster’s eyes sprayed outward, dissolving rapidly as the cloud of acid ate away at the fragile biological matter.

The floor guardian thrashed, sending rivers of blood flying from its dozens of wounds, and Kat cranked the gravity field around the snake up to the maximum.  It twisted in the air, but without eyes it couldn’t focus enough to truly fight back against Kat’s domain and she sent it plummeting into the stairwell that led out of the floor.

Before it could adjust to the sudden change, Kat cast Improved Laser, dumping mana into the spell as Kaleek sprinted at the stunned guardian.  A pair of purple arcs flew overhead as Dorrik swung his swords, and more scales shattered and fell away in a spray of shrapnel and blood.

Then Kat’s spell lit up the acidic cloud, ionizing the floating droplets of acid instantly.  Greenish-blue light filled the room, half-blinding Kat before her eyes adapted.

By the time the laser struck the guardian, almost half of its potency was gone, strobing light and spraying superheated plasma.  Kat’s mana pulsed four times per second, each swell of energy sending another blast of destructive coherent light deeper into the monster’s sizzling flesh.

It shrieked in agony.  The dignity and danger of its earlier bellows of anger a thing of the past.  She tracked the Laser along the creature’s flank, cutting a deep, almost fist sized furrow in its flesh.

A flash of instinct warned her an eyeblink before the Improved Laser hit one of the guardian’s scales.  Kat jerked herself to the side with her gravity domain just as the beam of light was reflected backward, slashing its way back out of the cloud of acid to blast apart brickwork and dirt right behind where she had been floating.

Every scale on the creature’s side was like the facet of a disco ball, reflecting destructive light in random directions only to detonate chunks of the floor, wall, and ceiling.  Still, Kat persisted, and her efforts were rewarded when the pulsing beam of light found another chink in the monster’s armor.

Her laser bit deep, each throb of mana burning the creature’s flesh so fast that it detonated, damaging the tissue around it.

Once again the guardian shrieked, its desperation palpable as Kaleek threw himself at it again, his entire body glowing red as he hacked his sword down on its neck.  Sparks flew and another scale was crushed, leaving one more hole in the monster’s formerly impregnable defenses.

Dorrik jumped onto its back and sprinted along the giant snake’s length, his swords darting down to cut loose scales and stab deep into the holes that had already been drilled into its defenses.  Purple flashes of light followed his progress, warring with the semi constant glow of Kat’s laser as it refracted and overcharged the floating acid.

Magic surged around the guardian as it built energy for another electrical attack, and Dorrik leapt into the air.  Without thinking, Kat twisted the gravity around him, sending him sailing upward and well out of the monster’s reach.

Kaleek didn’t budge.  Instead, he rammed his sword into the side of the giant snake’s neck and his entire body began to glow a deep red.

Kat’s hair stood on end as the floor guardian flared with electricity, writhing snakes of blue white energy burning holes through the cloud of acid as they arced from its sides and grounded themselves in the floor.

One after another five streamers of lightning connected with Kaleek only to be shunted back through his blade and into the guardian.  Its body stiffened and went rigid as ever muscle flexed simultaneously.

Smoke began to pour from the gaps in Kaleek’s armor as the crackling field of electricity intensified.

Kat bit her lower lip, glancing up to where Dorrik had secured himself to the chamber’s ceiling with one of his swords, just outside the giant cloud of acid.  The lokkel gazed down on the fight, his crest tense and rigid and his eyes filled with worry.

Smoke was beginning to rise from the gaps in the snake’s scaled armor as well, puffs of black obscuring its eyes and nose as the redirected electricity ravaged its innards.

A muffled groan from Kaleek was enough to spur Kat into action.  She began casting Resist Electricity on herself even as her gravity domain sent her zipping toward the struggling floor guardian.

Her spell activated just in time, but even with the resistance active at full power, the arc of lighting that hit Kat directly in her chest took her breath away.  She ignored it, diving closer to Kaleek.

The polished metal of his armor was blackened and tarnished, the soot from burning hair and flesh caking it even as the desoph held firm, his sword still planted firmly in the snake’s neck.

Kat forced out the words to Cure Wounds through gritted and tingling teeth.  When the spell finally finished, she didn’t waste any time, slamming her glowing golden hands into Kaleek’s back.

Almost instantly some of the extra electricity jumped into her.  It was only a fraction of the damage Kaleek was suffering through, but Kat didn’t have the armor or the vast reserves of hit points that the desoph did.

Still, she hung on.  Through Cure Wounds she could feel how much damage Kaleek had taken.  Half of his body was covered in third degree burns, his luxurious fur long since burned to a crisp by the absurd currents running through his armor.

Muscle began to knit back together, warring against the constant damage from Kaleek channeling more and more of the monster’s electrical field through himself and back into his opponent.

Kat felt both her mana and health ticking down.  She could only maintain the spell for another thirty seconds or so before she would need to back off and drink some potions.

Kaleek grunted, using his newly repaired body to shove his sword deeper, until the tip of the blade embedded itself in the floor guardian’s spine.

For a brief second, the electrical output doubled.  Even through Kat’s protective spells she could feel almost twenty percent of her hitpoints getting shaved off in the blink of an eye as the lighting tore at her skin and muscles.

Then, the monster flopped limply to the ground.

Kat held onto her spell, finishing the job of healing Kaleek as she watched the guardian’s body.  It didn’t move.  The only sound in the chamber the steady clicking of superheated rock cracking as it cooled rapidly.

After about ten seconds, she shifted the focus of Cure Wounds, working on herself as she used the dregs of her mana pool to fuel the magic.  It sputtered once and went out as she reached about ninety percent of her total hit points, but that was more than enough for her.

Dorrik dropped from the ceiling and into the dispersing cloud of acid, counting on Kat to catch him with her gravity as he plummeted toward the three of them.  By the time he touched down, most of the acid fog was gone, revealing the entirety of the dead floor guardian.

It was almost forty paces long, its thick torso slightly taller than Kat herself.  Up and down its body, almost hundreds of scales were missing.  Underneath each wound was a wound.  Some were only a handspan in depth while others bored deep into the creature’s innards, exposing shiny white bone and flayed organs.

Kat’s hand strayed to her belt, her fingers resting on the top of her mana potion.  Part of her wanted to save it for later, but she couldn’t stop herself from looking at the entrance to the boss chamber.

Fried and half crushed corpses littered the entryway, a stark reminder of the interlopers that had followed them into the fight.  There were far too many for their plan to have simply been observation.  Rather, their corpses were a graveyard of damaged and broken weaponry.

There was no doubt in her mind that the goal had been all of their deaths.  It might have even worked too.  With the three of them distracted by the floor guardian, a surprise attack could’ve easily tipped the balance against them.  Luckily, Kat’s Sharp Hearing and Gravity Domain were more than enough to use the two sets of belligerents against each other.

She sighed, popping the cork off the top of her potion and taking a swig.  Dorrik went over to the monster’s corpse to harvest marks, ingredients and crafting materials as she drank the entirety of the alchemical concoction.

Kat’s mana refilled itself quickly, all while she strained her ears for the sound of other opponents.  Finally, she relaxed slightly.  Unless an enemy was using magic to nullify their footfalls or flying, there was no way that there was anything moving within a half league of their location.

Finally, once Dorrik finished looting the monster, a familiar screen popped up.

Kat frowned.  For some reason the award didn’t seem to acknowledge that there were only three of them that participated in the fight.  Her eyes flickered back to the minefield of charred corpses near the entryway.

“Hey Tower,” She said, instantly feeling silly for addressing the world around herself.  “I think you screwed up.  There were only three people involved in the fight against the floor guardian.  The rest of the people came here to harm us, not help us in the battle.”

Both Dorrik and Kaleek shot her strange looks but before they could say anything, another box appeared.

The box flickered.

“While I have you,” Kat said with a nervous cough.  “My world is under an embargo at the moment.  An outside race is interfering in my climb in order to aid another candidate that’s already on the twenty third floor.  Is there anything that you can do to even the playing field?”

This time, Kaleek and Dorrik were staring at her like she’d grown a second head.  Frankly, Kat couldn’t really disagree with them.  Talking to the tower felt insane, but at the same time, it was responding.

She laughed nervously to herself.  Maybe the electricity had fried something in her brain and gone a bit loopy.  Still, even if that happened, it sure looked like she had found someway to drag the rest of her party into her delusions with her.

“So the thing is,” she began, pausing for a second to run a hand through her hair.  It was still slick from the anti-acid compound but that didn’t stop her from nervously brushing it.  “The Galactic Consensus allows the first person to reach level twenty four on an embargoed world to decide the world’s fate after some sort of ritual.  The guy that’s ahead of me has gotten a whole lot of outside support and I’m about 95% sure he’ll just use space lasers to have me killed if he leveled up before me.  That doesn’t seem fair to me so-”

She took a deep breath, trying her hardest to hide a triumphant grin.  Kat had no idea what ‘T’ would want from her or what role his help would take, but she was maybe a month away from Mr. Jackson making the breakthrough to level twenty four and she had just ascended to level twenty three.  The math was not in her favor.  Maybe a small bit of cheating in her favor is exactly what the situation called for.

“What will you need from me?”  She asked.  “Ask it and I will do it.”

“One quick question,” Kat pressed, a thrill of adrenaline running through her as she processed the dialogue box’s cryptic reply.  “What does ‘T’ mean anyway?  Is that a name?  A designation? Something just to throw me off?”

There wasn’t any reply.  Whoever or whatever it was that was observing her had left.  Either that or it had stepped back and returned to simply watching her and her friends.  Either way, she didn’t expect an answer anytime soon.

“Just a quick question,” Kaleek said, walking over toward her.  “A show of curiosity more than anything but what in the name of a million blazing supernovas was THAT?”

“The Tower incorrectly identified the people that tried to ambush us as part of our group,” Kat replied.  “I didn’t want to give up the bonus point that came with clearing the floor in a smaller team so I complained about what happened.  Apparently the Tower agreed with me and solved the problem.”

“Okay,” Kaleek responded, closing his eyes and grabbing the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger.  “First of all, you know exactly what I’m asking about.  Second, people lodge appeals all the time.  Usually it takes years to get a response and more than half the time the dreamscape never responds.  Getting an answer within seconds means that something is paying attention to you in particular.  Given the trillions of beings active at any point in time-”

“Between thirty and forty trillion on average,” Dorrik interjected helpfully.

Kaleek stopped for a second, glancing back at Dorrik as if searching for some sign that the lokkel was mocking him.  There was nothing but an earnest and encouraging smile on the lokkel’s face so he continued his diatribe.

“Right.  A lot of people.  Whatever it is that controls the tower, it just doesn’t respond quickly.  The fact that it gave us an answer within a month is absurd.  The part where you had an actual conversation with it and it responded is-”

He sputtered, unable to articulate a proper answer to his own question before finally throwing both of his hands up in the air in frustration.

“It’s dumb, okay?  This is all silly and dumb.”

Kaleek crossed both of his arms, glaring at Kat, silently demanding that she explain, as if she were at fault for the Tower’s eccentricities.

“I can ask that the Tower take your bonus attribute back?”  She replied, shrugging helplessly.  “I honestly don’t know what you expect me to say or do.  I've been off and on, receiving commentary from an administrator or something in my status boxes.  I never really brought it up because it didn’t seem super relevant.  I just kinda assumed that this happened to other people as well.”

“No Kat,” Kaleek said.  “This absolutely does not ‘just happen to other people as well.’  You are in fact describing an incredibly unique set of circumstances.  The sort of situation that experts study and ruminate over for decades if not centuries.”

“I must agree Miss Kat,” Dorrik interjected, nodding toward Dorrik.  “Your revelations today on their own would warrant further discussion.  The fact that they have been confirmed by the Tower itself are beyond the scope of anything I can think of, and I have studied the records of interactions with the dreamscape administrators fairly thoroughly.”

“These results are simply too fascinating to study on my own,” he continued.  “As soon as we wake up, I must call Jaalin.  I am sure she will be fascinated by what we have discovered.”

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