ALEXiThymiA: Chapter 104 Bullseye

<<<<Author's Note: Thanks to Steen Kaasgaard, for the new chapter name>>>>

Chapter 104

Bullseye

Alexa was surrounded by death on all sides, the path behind her was filled with a rumbling stumbling minotaur, to her right and left were the maze walls filled with poisonous plants that would likely incapacitate her enough to force her to get chased down and trampled on by the aforementioned minotaur. Then before her were row after row of interlocked elves at least three elves deep and four wide. Each elf was side by side, over top of the others in a tightly packed ball, to make matters worse there was a spell form growing overhead that multiple elven mages were working on weaving together. With so many casters all working in unison Alexa didn’t have the ability to infuse her own magic into the threads and take control.

With so many magical wills working in concert, she was fairly certain that if given enough time she could take control of the spells as she had previously in her run thus far.

Seeing that she had no other options, no tricks left to call on to make this a quick and simple gesture, she instead decided to make this hard. Hard for everyone.

If the elves wanted to bury themselves in a defensive formation down a hallway with poisonous wall plants, knowing that a minotaur was just a few seconds behind then more power to them. Seeing this tactic, Alexa attributed it to the spiteful loss scenario, the moment when people realize they have nothing left to lose, so rather than still trying to win, they instead do everything they can to make you lose. Given that these were just aspects of the real elves, this tactic made sense. These elves had nothing to lose by a death, dying here wouldn’t truly affect their actual bodies. As their actual bodies were on a planet far away, no this was just them being spiteful. Realizing that, Alexa couldn’t help but smile, part of her could respect people being ruthless.

The elves putting themselves in this position, one where they would all likely get trampled by the minotaur, only after impaling Alexa on a wall of spears and spells, made it so Alexa didn’t feel guilty in the slightest when she set about her plan.

Her plan was simple, disturb the defense of the formation, break apart the cohesion of the group, and charge forward in that order. To do this, Alexa rather than wasting her time and energy trying to take control over the densely elaborate and far too complicated spell structure to be effective, instead directed her magic towards the walls and floors.

Using a deeply complex weave of power she dual casted two spells at the same time. The first was the same plant growth spell she had been using all along to help the plants grow out from the wall and attack people. Being her third time casting the spell, the form was a relatively simple construct in her mind and cast without much fanfare or hesitation. She made sure to infuse a good amount of her personal magical energy into the spell. Then her next step was a combination Water, Earth, and Light spell. This was the spell she infused with the remainder of her magical energy, realizing that if she didn’t pull through this, she would likely fail the dungeon. In her mind she knew that she could likely still complete the dungeon, but in order to win the dungeon she had to do the dungeon correctly, which in this particular instance meant finishing this third loop around the maze and sealing the minotaur away.

At least sealing away the giant beast is what she thought was the final goal for this dungeon, it would be hard to fully guess the true purpose of this dungeon until she completed the last loop of the giant warding rune.  But before she could worry about such things, like giant warding runes for demonic entities, she focused on the problem at hand.

Weaving together the three elements of Water, Earth, and Light Alexa created a blinding pool of what was effectively quicksand under the feet of her would be attackers. At the same time the walls began to grow and bulge in.

Alexa realized the pointlessness of using magic to carve her way through so many individuals. Instead she decided to use their own compact and interlocked nature against them. No one liked to die, the way these combatants seemed to hesitate at the thought of death all but confirmed her thoughts on this matter. The fact that these people were forced to spawn time and time again as part of these dungeon trials seemed deplorable to Alexa. But it was that very hesitation that she sought to exploit.

There was still a fear of death that was in every summoned aspect’s eyes. A look that spoke of knowing the pain and misery of dying in new and horrible ways. That was the very instinct that Alexa wished to exploit, that moment of fear and hesitation.

Individually her spells would do little. The growing plants wouldn’t be enough to cause true panic, as the guards could just fall back. The quicksand was barely enough to submerge the rows of elves in ankle deep slosh. Even the lighting effect to the quicksand was little more than an annoyance, as the light was just enough to cause a few to cover their eyes for a split second. But it was the combination of all three effects all at once that made her actions so devastating.

The walls began to grow and lurch in, spindly poison needle filled vines reached out and swatted at the guards that were the closest to the walls. This caused a slight panic, especially as the next second, everyone’s feet began to sink all while a strange glowing light burst forth from the suddenly semi-liquid state of the floor. Even the casters who had been huddled together found their concentration broken for a moment, causing their growing storm cloud that they were all summoning into creation to begin to spin about wildly, as no one had the presence of mind to maintain control over the spell form.

Zap.

An errant lightning bolt shot out from the rapidly spinning storm cloud, the bolt of lightning went straight toward the nearest conductor, which happened to be a glowing silver staff wielded by one of the mages. A mage that was also ankle deep in the pool of quicksand.

The effect of the strike was near instantaneous, the bolt of lightning surged down through the elf, into the ground, causing a dispersed version of the blast to be disbursed through everyone present, everyone that was unfortunate enough to be in the liquidized stone beneath their feet.

This of course created further panic, as people flailed about wildly from the pain that was wracking their bodies. Pain that they were not expecting. This caused the already tightly packed group of elves to stand up, their bodies instinctive reactions to get away from the source of pain, namely the floor all but breaking up the tight formation that had stood proudly a second before.

“AHH”

Soldiers cried out and flailed about in pain. Shocked soldiers in the middle pushed away their fellow warriors, pushing many into the growing wall of poisonous thorns and bristles. This of course only elicited more cries of pain from the elves.

“Gah, it hurts!”

“Stop pushing!”

“Move!”

Seeing that, Alexa charged through the gaggle of soldiers. Her elf stolen Agile and her heightened reflexes making it so she could easily jump the five feet in the air to jump over the tips of the spears. Spears that were only being carried by one hand, or with little to no purpose as pain, panic, and fear gripped the minds of the elven soldiers at the last moment.

Like a wrecking ball, Alexa charged forward, moving as close to full speed as possible. Her body seeing points to step on, to avoid coming into contact with the ground. At first, she found herself taking three quick steps up the shaft of a spear. One of the very same spears that had been aiming at her torso a moment ago. By the third step she was at the first soldier, who she climbed up onto the shoulder of, with a well placed foot. From there she bounded her way across and over and through the warriors. A random spear struck her in the left calf, a second stabbed her in the right thigh, but she focused through the pain. She knew this was her only chance to get out of here, she didn’t have infinite retries like these summoned elves did. Instead she had to fight her way forward, kicks flying out to push an opponent back just enough for her foot to land on the person, driving them down to the ground as she jumped up and over onto the next person, tackling warrior after warrior.

ZZap!

This time she was over top of the quicksand when she herself was caught up in the next electrical strike. While she had lucked out in that she was only touching someone who was being electrocuted, she still felt the jolt and pulse of electricity pulse through her. The sensation was painful as all of her muscles momentarily seized up, as her mind and body were told to constrict every muscle all at once.

Her Regeneration kicked in almost immediately, allowing her to regain control over her body within the span of a heartbeat, but that was more than enough time for the minotaur behind her to gain a lot of ground. The minotaur’s pace had been set at only being able to go at the fastest speed she showed. Which up until now had been slightly less than her full out sprint. She had been holding back a bit of speed in reserve just in case. Now it seemed like this would be it, she was tired. Her mana depleted, wounds on her body, her body pushing its way through electrical shock. She stumbled forward, her foot making contact with the quicksand and sinking ankle deep in a second.

The next she was plowing forward, right into the middle of the gathered and distracted mages. Alexa’s goal was not to hurt, maim or incapacitate, instead she kept with the mission plan, of disorientation. Her entire strategy thus far had been one of distraction, causing the enemy to focus on too many spots all at once, the ground, the walls, the minotaur, these were all factors that she was wielding as part of her plan.

Focusing her will, she lowered her shoulder and rammed into the elves like they were bowling pins and she was a black clad bowling ball barreling towards them. The effect was as one would expect, elves are generally considered to be light, their main attribute in combat is their enhanced speed and graceful nature. Take that fluidity away, force them to sit still and wait, and you take away their main advantage. Also, this group in the back were the casters, these were the ones who focused solely on learning magical spell constructs, on weaving complex spells together as a unit. By focusing on them, with her Rank and Title enhanced attributes, Alexa was more than powerful enough to send the disoriented mages stumbling into each other, the ground, and most importantly the poisonous walls.

“SKREECHH!”

If the pain filled sounds the warriors made sounded painful, the sounds that the weak casters made when they were hurled into the spiny thorns were akin to them being murdered. They were being murdered of course, they all were. Not by Alexa, though it would be hard to say she didn’t play her own part in this. Instead, she had more of the role of an assistant to the deaths and murders that were sure to come.

Splash, slosh.

Alexa charged her way forward, through the murky water and finally to the part of the maze that was untouched by her magic. The second her foot impacted solid ground her foot squished inside her boots, her clothes hung heavily in that way that all items recently freed of water and muck tend to do. And most importantly, she began sprinting.

For the first time since she got to this dungeon she sprinted, holding nothing back, and not a moment too soon.

ROOOAAARR!

The minotaur screamed as it came into contact with the front line of the elven blockade.

WHOOM!

A burst of flames could be felt bursting to life from behind Alexa as she charged forward. Full speed, she knew this would change the speed that the minotaur followed, she also knew that this was likely her only chance to get ahead, to keep ahead of the beast that was now far closer than she wished.

Stomp, rumble, slosh.

The minotaur’s massive hooves could be heard charging into and through the quicksand she had left behind. Alexa hoped that the quicksand would be enough to slow the beast down, but if anything it only increased its speed. Alexa knew this was a direct result of her increasing her own speed, but it was needed.

Going around the last bend in the maze, she turned right and then charged for the finish line. The minute she hid the proverbial starting line Alexa didn’t stop. She knew that this dungeon wouldn’t be able to be solved that easily.

Just as expected the second she crossed the line, the rune she had been tracing clicked alive in her mind. Then she felt a system message pop up in her mind.

Dungeon Quest Update: Greater Banishment Ward: You have successfully created a Greater Banishment Ward, now that you have successfully created and charged the rune, you need to lead your intended target into the center of the ward and activate the effects.

“What?” Alexa said to herself as she continued to run. Then just like before the path before her began to glow. She followed the path out and around. In her mind she saw the path she was being told to take as being near the center of the rune she had just traced out. Getting close, she felt a strange sense of energy begin to fill her, to flow all around. The ward was active, that much she was certain. The further she ran, the more she could feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand up with a form of electric energy.

Then the path before her stopped, forming a glowing circle. Seeing the spot, she sprinted forward, until she was right on top of the mark, then stopped.

Thud, thump, boom.

The massive minotaur and its hooves came forward. Seeing the beast, she could see that the monster had suddenly changed. The normally light blue color that had been coating the beast was now gone, replaced with a dark blue light. Seeing the change, Alexa knew the status of the minotaur had changed, it had gone from the least important part of the dungeon to suddenly the most important part of the dungeon.

Seeing the lumbering beast, Alexa felt a thrill of excitement wash over her. This was it, this was her moment, the moment she had been waiting for.

Hidden Quest Update: Greater Banishment Ward: You have drawn the demonically summoned monster to your trap, now you must activate the circle by drawing the beast’s blood and letting it make contact in the center of the circle.

Seeing that, one word came to Alexa’s lips as a smile played out on her face.

“Finally.”