Exploration- Chapter 36

Sorry for the delay. I had been promising my son that we could watch the greatest Christmas move of all time, but we hadn't managed to do it over the holidays and its hard to watch it when his 10 year old sister is home. So we did watch it tonight and it never disappoints. The details that went into that movie always impress me.

Jake Peralta would be proud.

Anyway- Chapter 36 broke 4000 words, so I split it. I hope to have Chapter 37 to you within 30-40 minutes after I go through it. But either way before bed tonight.

I don't want to complain so don't take this like that- but my eyes have been killing me all week. It's gotten to the point where I wasn't sure if I was going to have to take the afternoon off. Then we got the call that my glasses were in. They had to adjust the lens. I lived 52 years without them, but after having them for a few weeks- my eyes went on strike when I had to live without them for 9 days. They still hurt, but if I get a good nights sleep and have the glasses available all day tomorrow, I think I'll be back on track for 10k days. Hopefully, I hit it today.

Chapter 36- More Dungeon Fun

I glanced over at Samvek and realized something was off. Me looking was enough for him to say, “Apparently, I can’t use Hunger inside of a dungeon.”

It was easy to see why that would be upsetting to him. If he’d gotten even 1 or 2% of the stats from the monsters he actually slew, that would have added up quickly. Even more so because the monsters were only going to rise in level from here. “Did it say why?”

“Only that dungeon constructs don’t contain vitae, just purified XP.”

“That sorta makes sense with the Hell System. It want’s you fighting other sapients not beings who are created by a dungeon. Sorry about that, I’d been hoping you were going to shoot up in stats.”

“Me too, but at this pace eventually, I’ll gain a level and that’s worth something.”

I nodded and then we moved on. We went unmolested for a few dozen miles which given our flight speed, even limited for the others, only took a few minutes. The terrain around us began to change.

The ground beneath us hardened as we moved, loam giving way to cracked basalt threaded with glowing seams of magma. The humidity burned off in a rush of heat that rolled over us like a furnace door opening, and the canopy above thinned until only skeletal branches remained. Far ahead, the land rose into broken ridges and stone spires, their edges jagged as if gnawed by titanic teeth. The dungeon wasn’t subtle about its escalation.

The first roar came from the sky.

Shadows passed overhead, vast wings blotting out the sickly light as a trio of draconic shapes descended in tight formation. They weren’t true dragons, but they were close enough to set my nerves humming. Wyvern-things, their hides were a mix of obsidian scales and crystalline growths, wings stretched wide as they banked into a diving attack. Their throats glowed with internal heat, not fire exactly, but something denser and more violent.

Primal Wyverns (Legendary)  Level: 265
Affinities: Fire, Earth, Chaos

Highest Stat: Will

Lowest Stat: Perception

A fifteen level jump in monster power wasn’t much for us, but it would help keep the XP coming.

Samvek called out, “Azuria would laugh at these little worms. I’m going to kill them out of respect for her.”

I wasn’t sure how serious he was, but I knew that his bond with his dragon was very powerful. I’d seen the same with Cece and Jiang. If it was only three of them, that wouldn’t be an issue, but of course as soon as I thought that I could see more groups ranging between three and seven of the wyverns filling the sky like an aerial assault.

As if to confirm it, the lead wyvern folded its wings and dropped like a spear, claws extended straight toward Clay and Oliver. I didn’t even have time to react before Samvek was in the air. Lighting arced from his body and he stopped holding back. Each of the wyverns were struck. Their wings were seared. The power he unleashed had to be near his maximum capacity but I assumed he was trying to make a point.

As for the wyvern, they weren’t dragons, but they weren’t easy prey either. There was no doubt as Samvek danced amongst them in the air, wielding spear and lightning with equal ease that he would eventually slay them, but they were capable of absorbing more damage than their level would suggest.

Clay fired arrows, trying to hit each one of the, while Oliver did the same with spells. Lexa realized that her vines from the ground wouldn’t work but massive thorns grew out on her arms and then were shot out as projectiles at high speed. I was reminded of my first blood evolution a long time ago when I’d gone to Galen and gotten spines I could project from that dungeon boss.  

Selena said, “I’m going to take out some of the others before they get here. You need to focus on protecting them.” Then she disappeared.

Reality folded around her as she stepped between points, reappearing on the back of a wyvern far in the distance. Her hooked blades flashed, carving deep channels through crystal scale as she severed one wing joint. The creature screamed and spun out of control, crashing into a stone ridge hard enough to break it in half. The other wyvern with that one all began to circle around her and I wondered if I was going to have to pull her out, but I should have known better.

Instead, she had simply gotten some distance so she could cut loose. Her abilities were without a doubt the most versatile that I’d ever seen, but they could also be insanely destructive. As she rewrote the laws of nature, the wyvern started falling from the sky and she moved around opening each ones throat. As they started crashing into the ground the notifications came pinging in. She was dropping them faster than I would have thought possible.

Samvek surged upward on a burst of lightning, in his continued dance, but I could see that he noticed Selena. It felt like any minute they were going to start having a competition to see which of them could kill more wyverns and I couldn’t help imagine Samvek as Gimli in that equation, mostly because he was the more hairy of the two.

He didn’t bother with finesse. A bolt erupted from his body, slamming into the wyvern’s chest and punching through scale and bone. He followed it with a spear thrust that detonated inside the wound, lightning exploding outward and shredding the creature from the inside. One after another the wyvern died and he warped space taking him to the next group.

Oliver asked, “Are we going to follow them?”

I shook my head. “Draconic creatures are more dangerous than most other kinds and while I want you three to gain practice using your power, getting levels for survivability is more important. I’m sure it’s frowned upon here to tell someone else how to spend their stat points, but whatever you get make sure you focus on some type of durability or evasion.”

“If a mage is getting hit, then the battle is over. My defenses are multi-layered, although I admit that they aren’t up to dealing with these monsters. At least not yet.”

“Well if nothing else this will allow them to cut loose a bit. I’m sure you know how difficult it can be to really go all out when you have allies around you.” He seemed to get that.

As quickly as my companions were killing the wyverns, a few got through, which was just fine for us. I’d gained a full level and was half-way to my second level, but Clay had reached level 203, Lexa was at 196, and Oliver of course was stuck at level 150. I could only hope that all the XP he was gaining was being stored up for when he would hopefully me awakened.  

A trio of wyverns reached us and I decided to let them have a shot at one of them. “I’m going to take two of them. I want the rest of you to work together on the third”

There wasn’t any time for more instructions and I’d have to count on their training.

I angled upward immediately, pushing Area Flight just enough to separate my vectors from theirs. Two of the wyverns peeled off toward me, wings beating hard as they adjusted to my movement, crystalline scales refracting the ambient glow of magma veins below. Their mouths opened in near unison and dense streams of incandescent force blasted toward me, not flame but compressed heat and earth mana fused together. I twisted through the space between the beams and felt the heat scour past my legs close enough to make my armor creak.

Wayfinder flowed into its polearm form as I closed the distance, lightning crawling along the blade in tight coils. The first wyvern slashed at me with talons like quarry picks, and I met the strike head-on, bracing with a force construct shaped into a slanted plane. The impact still drove me backward through the air, shoulders screaming as weight and momentum slammed through the construct, but it held long enough for me to counter. I drove the spearhead up under its jaw and released a focused burst of lightning straight into its skull.

The creature screamed and convulsed, wings locking for a heartbeat before it spun out of control. I didn’t let it recover. I ripped Wayfinder free and hurled a second bolt into its exposed chest, the electricity detonating inside and tearing the wyvern apart from the inside out. Fragments of obsidian scale and molten crystal rained downward as the dungeon reclaimed what remained.

The second wyvern was already on me, smarter than the first. It circled wide, forcing me to track it while it built power in its throat, chaos mana rippling visibly along its neck. I felt the pressure spike and snapped a layered force shield into place just as it fired. The beam hit like a siege weapon, shattering the outer layers of the construct and driving me backward, pain flaring through my ribs as the remaining force bled through. The chaos tried to disrupt everything around me, but I refused to allow it. My Will stood firm and would not allow it. It probably helped that I had an innate 90% resistance to chaos mana, the stupid lizard never even knew.

I gritted my teeth and leaned into it instead of retreating, forcing myself forward through the resistance. Lightning answered instinctively, not as a wild discharge but as a focused lance that punched straight through the beam and into the wyvern’s mouth. Its head snapped back violently, internal structures rupturing under the conflicting energies. I followed through with a brutal sweep of Wayfinder that severed one wing at the joint, and the creature dropped like a stone, smashing into the basalt below and skidding in a spray of sparks before going still.

I didn’t give myself time to watch it die. My attention snapped back to the others, and what I saw made my stomach knot. Clay, Oliver, and Lexa were locked in a desperate engagement with the remaining wyvern, and this one had figured out exactly how to press them. It stayed mobile, diving and pulling up sharply to force them to split their focus, while its breath attacks bracketed their positions and denied easy movement.

Clay was bleeding from a gash across his shoulder, armor cracked where a talon had clipped him. Oliver was hovering lower than I liked, mana flaring unevenly as he tried to maintain multiple defensive layers while still casting. Lexa had taken the brunt of a wing strike, one arm hanging stiffly as she forced roots and thorns to keep the wyvern at bay. They were fighting well, but they were being pushed hard.

The wyvern shrieked and dove again, this time straight at Oliver. Clay reacted instantly, stepping into the path and then flashing in a blur that I assumed was some type of magical ability. An instant later, he was clinging to the horn on its head and driving his dagger into its eye. Green poison dripped along the edge of his blade and the wyvern crashed downward. I thought for sure it was going to blow through Oliver’s shields, but Lexa stepped up. She slammed both her hand around its head and took the full blow. I knew she was durable but worried if even a treant could take that kind of damage.

Apparently, I didn’t need to worry though because the beast was thrashing on the ground as Clay went to work trying to sever its spine and Lexa was holding onto its jaws struggling to keep them shut like some crazy Australian guy wrestling with a crocodile. It would have been comical if it wasn’t life and death. It was everything I could do not to intervene at this point.

It was severely wounded and finishing it off would have been simple enough for me. Yet, that would have gone beyond kill-stealing. Sure they’d still get XP, if I killed, it but they’d bled and pushed themselves to their limits. To deprive them of the finish would have been wrong.

Oliver suddenly let out a shout of exultation and I felt the strongest magic yet from him attach itself to the wyvern and suddenly all the thrashing stopped. His victory shout changed to, “It’s not dead, just paralyzed. Finish it fast. I don’t know how long I can hold it.”

Clay drove his blade into it’s spine and from the way he was cutting I think he finally managed to sever a vertebrae. At the same time Lexa’s arm had become a long wooden spear. She jammed it into the unspoiled eye but unlike Clay’s dagger this was long enough to reach the brain. She didn’t leave it there though as vines started to sprout out of its ears, eyes, and nose all carrying bits of the shredded brain. They’d won.

I didn’t wait for confirmation. I dropped to Clay’s side and laid my hand against his chest, Celestial Restoration surging into him in a warm, overwhelming rush. Torn muscle knitted together, shattered bone realigned, and his ragged breathing steadied as color rushed back into his face. I extended the spell outward, catching Oliver and Lexa in its radius, sealing burns, mending fractures, and pulling them back from the edge.

Lexa exhaled slowly as feeling returned to her arm, flexing her fingers with visible relief. Oliver sank down onto an invisible perch, hands shaking as he let his mana stabilize. Clay looked up at me, grimaced, and then laughed weakly. “I’m going to invest more in durability,” he said hoarsely.

“Good,” I replied, keeping my tone steady. “Because that was only the opening act.”