“Argh, bladdarg! Getting attacked the moment we arrive!” Grimnir shouted, although I wasn’t sure if he was frowning or something under his helmet.
“Griiekkk!” the felgheist shrieked once more before diving at us with its vampire-like fangs protruding out, ready to snap at us.
Despite the obvious danger of the situation, I shrugged and lazily raised my hand up with a purple magic circle ready to fire. “Lightning Bolt,” I announced, shooting out a yellow streak of lightning at the oversized bat at a speed it didn’t anticipate. Flustered, it managed to barrel roll away from my spell, the electric bolt barely missing it, but the sudden turn left it unstable, forcing it to slow its descent by spreading its wings.
This small change in speed meant its end. Saori shot out as a [Stygian Lightning], shooting out a similarly fast bolt of black lightning, but this time the beast couldn’t evade it. Shrieking in pain, the monster quickly began to fall down from a lack of wing beats, but it’s incapacitated body was caught, or pierced, by Tasianna’s floating daggers, who delivered the monster’s corpse to us before it was lost in the ravine.
“Ahh, shame,” Saori clicked her tongue. “I still need more intelligence to make my lightning a sure-kill against Ds. I could kill it with a single dagger stab into a vital spot.”
After some testing, we’ve come to the conclusion that Saori’s [Stygian Lightning] was pretty much similar to electric attacks or [Lightning Magic] spells, only that the electricity itself was composed out of her dark elementally-aligned mana.
However, it had its limit, though. Just as with [Dark Magic] and [Lightning Magic], the amount of damage it could do was related to her intelligence stat, which was around 3500 less than her impressive over 6000 Strength. There was also the fact that she could only store the lightning in the white fur located mostly around her shoulders and arms, and it would dissipate relatively fast once she used it for an attack. I personally believe we could solve this issue with a catalyst.
After storing the monster’s corpse, more shrieks suddenly appeared above us, warning our party of a horde of felgheists. They hadn’t noticed us yet, so Grimnir suggested we avoid them for now and focus on traversing the giant ravine. After inspecting the cliff’s edge, staring down into the groundless chasm and into the landless horizon, I agreed as we moved into a cave opening.
“This is not good. This floor does not fit the design of the map,” Saori stated the moment we decided to move forwards. “Look. There should be a larger area in the start and there is no mention of a cave this close to the entrance. From the looks of it, the cliff path is also different.”
Although I wasn’t the most avid picture-less reader, I still did enjoy interesting topics. For example the dungeon book I bought from the Sarlenzia company, retelling the results and tales of an explorer-scientist from the Empire. Pretty expensive, but knowledge was worth the price.
In one of its chapters, the author noted that dungeons not manned by their dungeon masters 24/7 would randomly switch up the layout of a floor simply to challenge adventurers more in its pursuit to kill them. It wouldn’t do this too often, as the mana spent to change a floor compared to creating an entirely new floor usually wasn’t worth it, according to a dungeon master the author interviewed.
Also, a dungeon master who sought to turn the dungeon into a business was able to restrict the amount of floors a dungeon could create. This would make it more likely for a dungeon to change floor layouts, but it was still rare as the dungeon still abided its master’s will.
With Ellaine back as our cartographer, we began our search for the stairs. During our travels, we learned that the felgheists shrieked a lot, like a lot, a lot. Not ‘cause they found us or anything, but ‘cause they were communicating with each other. Although we knew this, there was no way for us to differentiate between aggressive-talking shrieks and aggressive-attacking shrieks. We made the mistake a couple times and mistook a supposed aggressive-talking with an aggressive-we-have-found-prey-time-to-attack shrieking.
“Pffff.” The moment a group of ten felgheists began to attack us, Saori attempted to whistle but couldn’t since she never practiced it once before. However, her attempt of being cool still triggered her garms to show themselves. “Uno. Song. Sarasa. Quatre! Help us.”
With their master’s command, the four giant wolves sprang out from her shadow, now adorned in monster leather armor made by Grimnir. While the armor did reduce their coolness rating, once Saori shrouded them in [Shadow Armament], the shadowy impression you would get from them came back, along with more defenses due to [Penumbral Armament].
“Mister Grimnir, get on!” Tasianna called over the large dwarf, offering her hand to pull him on Sarasa. Grimnir grumbled a bit how he hated riding, but relented after seeing more than the initial ten fly towards us.
After Tasianna, Ellaine, and Grimnir got onto two of the four garms, we all sprinted towards an open path deeper into the mountain, luring the felgheists with us. As Saori and I were faster than the garms on foot, we coordinated with Uno and Sarasa—to two unoccupied garms—to confuse the felgheists with our movements, allowing me to attack back without slowing myself down.
“Lightning Bolt!” I shot out, eliminating one of our pursuers.
There was no reason to use my scale-dusts or my large-scale spells here as it would only risk causing a landfill. I had smaller, more effective methods to attack. For example, terra spells.
“Ellaine, you ready?” I called out.
“Yes!”
Once I got the confirmation, I held my hand up while Ellaine raised her hand with her catalyst ring. We both cast [Terra Wall], materializing multiple walls of rock to impede the felgheists. Multiple of them crashed onto the walls, knocking themselves unconscious. Those in the back managed to avoid the same fate and continued the chase.
“Ellaine, don’t block the path in case we need to use it later! Shoot [Earthen Spears]! There are enough rocks around,” I suggested to her while preparing multiple [Lightning Bolt]s with my parallel minds.
“Understood! Although, they’re moving prett—”
“Ellaine! Quatre! Get away from the wall!”
Before Ellaine could finish her sentence, Saori shouted a warning to her and her mount, however, before Ellaine could understand what was happening, Quatre jumped to the ceiling the moment the wall right to them splintered into pieces, broken through as if a truck hit it.
“Ghoorr!” a massive creature with the face of a bat and front legs as developed as a gorilla roared.
Mana Eyes.
Rank D? Pretty sure it’s larger than those felgheists.
It roared once again before displaying its jaw extension ability against Tasianna and Grimnir, but Sarasa rammed right against it, protecting them and Song, allowing the latter to deftly dodge away.
“Quatre!” I called out to the garm Ellaine was riding, extending my hand towards him. Having understood my intention, he cast [Dark Tendrils] from his shadow armor and wrapped them around my arm, which I pulled at with all my strength, dragging his airborne body to my side before I mounted him to protect Ellaine.
“I guess expecting only one type of monster wasn’t reasonable. Of course this dungeon would continue throwing stuff at us!” Everybody nodded to my statement as we continued running down the path, now with an additional threat chasing after us.
After a few moments, we made it to the end of the tunnel and decided to fight the approaching monsters inside this closed cavern chamber, seeing as there weren’t any hazards we needed to watch out for. Running forever wasn’t an option.
The first to arrive was the felmight, its roar echoed inside the chamber like a bomb. Seeing this challenge, Grimnir shouted from the bottom of his lungs and jumped off Sarasa with his warhammer in hand. Having been informed of his intention beforehand, Tasianna blasted the stout taz with an amplified [Wind Blast], spending far more mana than was needed, to help him reach the giant beast with his hammer held up high.
“Heavy Slam!” Smashing his weapon right at the monster’s skull, both Grimnir’s hammer and the felmight crashed onto the ground, cracking and quaking the ground under them.
“Grouuuuggh,” the felmight groaned, letting go of its broken arms which somehow blocked Grimnir’s attack in time.
Damn thing is still alive? What a tank!
“By Crustacia’s twintails, you dimwit managed to block the attack with your arms?” Grimnir complained before picking its head up and headbutting the monster with his ram-like horns. With the felmight staggered, Grimnir had enough time to press something on his hammer.
The warhammer’s handle began to glow blue and mechanical parts started to move and twitch. Like a river’s stream, the blue glow began from the place the button was and flowed towards the top of the weapon, causing one of the hammerheads to automatically move up and attach itself to the handle’s tip, closing the gap between the two heads.
Once done, the button snapped out from the handle, forming into what looked like a gun handle … Wait, a gun?
“Volrun, umsleud!” Point-blank, Grimnir’s warhammer shot a shotgun-like mana blast at the felmight’s head, completely destroying it as it fell lifelessly onto the ground.
… I mean, if they can make those mana cannons, then handheld guns or rifles shouldn’t be impossible, right? Makes sense now why his Main Job was called [Blasthammer Gunner].
“Hey, lasses!” Grimnir called us out as his weapons returned to its original form, breaking my train of thoughts and my wonderment at his weapon. “This thing can only shoot once before overloading. Do something about those fliers!”
The shrieks of the felgheists then became louder, our warning to get ready for the impending battle. Our blood was pumping, adrenaline coursed through our blood as cold sweat drenched our brows wet. The fear of death was settling in … Which probably would be what a normal party would totally feel, but we had two rank B monsters, a fairy with a catalyst blessed by an Origin Goddess, four rank C garms, and a magic swordswoman who … Okay, Ellaine was actually quite scared but she wasn’t running away.
“Banishment Beam!”
“Stygian Lightning!”
“Icicle Gust!”
“Tornado Bullet”
“Wrooooooooooo!”
Luring enemies into a chokepoint and then blasting them with attacks, eliminating their ability to dodge since too many projectiles were flying at them at the same time. Bullet hell for the win. Imagine if the four of us were physical fighters only; that would have been dangerous.
D ranks really give far more experience than the Es and Fs we fought yesterday. Still, with how the experience is shared among five people and Saori’s garms, we need to kill a lot of these things.
After we mowed down the felgheists in our kill zone, we collected the bodies and checked if everybody was ready to move on.
“That was pretty cool. Sorry for my ignorance, but do all dwarves have guns like that?” I asked Grimnir, interested in his weapon.
“Gun? Ahhh, you’re using the Revolution Queen’s terminology. I guess being able to shoot does qualify it as a gun, but this is a tazongn blasthammer modified to shoot concentrated mana blasts,” Grimnir clarified. “And, no, of course not. This is the first real ‘dwarven gun’ you might say, well, one of many prototypes. Don’t want to go into the details too much, but this ‘ere was made by a dear, old friend of mine.
Grimnir’s mood began to sour the longer he talked. When I tried to ask him what was wrong, he waved his hand and told me to forget it before finishing his explanation. “Those ‘guns’ you mentioned aren’t a real thing, just saying. The blueprints exist, but the Queen never finished them. Mana cannons have been a thing since I was born, since waaaaay back. I guess you can call cannons ‘guns,’ but we never made a miniaturized one until the Revolution Queen tried it … Haaa.”
Grimnir then opened a small cabinet in the hammer’s handle, taking out what seemed to be a charred mana battery. “Thing’s a failed weapon. One use only, and then you need to replace the battery. The mana blast consumes your mana and its spread is too short-ranged, not viable to use against fliers or targets far away. A bow or crossbow would be better choices, in addition there are no gun related skills. Ha, for the only ‘gun’ in existence—I bet—this thing is nothing more than a one-time surprise attack.”
Only gun? As in, this is literally, and figuratively, the only gun-gun Peolynca has? How? No, I shouldn’t prod too much into his past. It’s none of my business. He seems really down.
Continuing our travel through this mountain, our trip could only be described as a rollercoaster. With the floor completely changed from the map’s specification, we had to wander around like headless chickens, having no idea where to go since this place gave us no clues. While it was peaceful at one moment, the next moment would be immediately disrupted by attacks from felgheists and felmights.
While the first two subsequent encounters with these things weren’t special, the third time was where it actually got dicy. Believing we had to pass the chasm to the mountain next to the one we started on, we managed to find a bridge, but a few fliers were already waiting there for us.
Just as Saori was about to suggest shooting down the horde of felgheists, I stopped her and stepped in front of everybody. Although my wings couldn’t keep me up without wind magic, I still was familiar enough with flying that I knew that our spells would have trouble hitting them, just like the first one we met was able to dodge my [Lightning Bolt], one of the fastest spells we knew.
Fighting inside a cave was easier for us, unlike fighting outside, where the felgheists could use flying’s omnidirectional movements to dodge our spells freely. If we started blasting spells here, we would only waste our mana, so I had another plan.
Volume up. Focus the sound. [Aerokinesis], record my voice. Draconic Roar!
“KriiiAHHHH!” With an ear-shattering roar directed forwards and amplified even further with my [Aerokinesis], I shattered the felgheists’ eardrums and morale at the same time.
Looking at them with [Mana Eyes], I could see that the total damage done wasn’t as bad as I’d hoped, but that didn’t matter considering the results. A few groaned as they lost consciousness, falling like flies into the abyss while others managed to remain composed, fleeing to save their lives. Battles weren’t about defeating the enemy, they were about surviving.
However, this is when a nerve wracking moment happened. One of the felgheists remained stubborn and tried to fly against my soundwave, but fell unconscious during its attempt. Unfortunately for us, it crash landed right next to Ellaine, which wasn’t the problem since she was able to dodge it just fine, but the issue was that the ground crumbled from the monster’s crash, causing Ellaine to lose her balance and fall forward.
Tasianna tried to grab her arm but the suddenness of the situation made it impossible for her to reach in time, while Saori was too far and too late with her [Gale Steps] to catch her. “Ellaine!” Saori and I shouted before we simultaneously jumped off the cliff, unwilling to lose a friend on this day.
Humanize! I instinctively used. With my wings unfurled, I cast [Wind Blast] on them to capitalize on their ability to capture wind better, outspeeding Saori’s [Air Walk].
As the headwind blasted on my face, it not only slowed down my descent but the drag caused by my dive was also causing my neck to feel uncomfortable. “Ellaine!” I called out, reaching my hand forward.
But her next action caused me to feel befuddled.
“Gargoyle, I release you!” Taking a small statue from her bag, she threw it in front of her before it suddenly grew into the form of a griffon. Ellaine deftly wrapped her arms around the statue’s neck and stopped her descent with the stone griffon’s beating wings, moving despite showing no signs of life.
… Oh verdammt, I forgot she brought that thing with her!
Saori and I stopped our falling by using [Air Walk], making us both stand on air besides the gargoyle. Both of us had flustered faces, slapping out faces as we let our emotions control our actions.
Ellaine smiled wryly as she saw our expressions, laughing nervously as she explained herself, “T-the gargoyle can’t fight and it’s rather fragile, ehehehehe …”
Most aristocrats possessed a gargoyle, a flying statue created through alchemy, for their personal use as an alternative transport method in case carriages weren’t ideal. I knew Ellaine had brought hers with her, but I kinda forgot about it after I told her not to use it. Since it was only supposed to be used as a transport method, any combat functionalities it would have were mediocre, too fragile to be used as an alternative mount.
Shaking my head, the three of us returned back to the cliff side. As I was sighing in relief that nothing bad happened, Grimnir suddenly gave me a quizzical look. “Where did those wings come from?”
“Huh? HUH?” It seemed I forgot to undo [Humanize]. I was stumbling over my words, trying to respond, luckily, I had parallel minds who could think extremely fast with [Thought Acceleration], so thinking of an excuse was a cinch “…What wings?”
I hid them under my robe. Perfection.
“You sure you didn’t drink too much before we departed yesterday, Mister Grimnir? You must be seeing things.” I activated [Benevolent Aura] and [Royal Presence], my charisma-based skills, and spoke with the confidence anybody would fall for!
Roll for charisma, let’s gooo!
He was dumbfounded, just as planned. “Your wings are showing underneath your robes … plus, they make you look wider than before.”
“Eh?”
Grimnir shook his head after he pointed those facts out, causing my eyes to widen. “Lass, next time, just leave your wings out if you want to act like a dragonewt.”
… Urgh.
Without saying another word, I slumped my shoulders as I came to the realization of how much I made myself look like an idiot. Tasianna tried to comfort me while Ellaine and Saori patted my shoulders, before the latter began transporting everybody over the gulf with the [Shadow Armament] and [Shadow Dash] combo. I was thankful nobody spoke about it any further.
The rest of the trip went relatively smooth outside of the occasional attacks, but our goal to find the stairs was nowhere in sight. As our bodies accumulated fatigue, we decided we traveled enough for today and made camp, preparing dinner.
“You know, I get humans—damn dragonkin slayers, right? But you didn’t need to hide the fact you’re a dragon from me,” Grimnir suddenly brought up while waiting for dinner.
“You know, I could just be a dragonewt who has [Humanize] just to mingle with people, right? Being a dragon isn’t a given,” I replied, knowing he probably won’t be persuaded.
“Nah, then you’ll just turn into a human altogether. Why learn [Humanize] as a dragonewt without turning completely into a human to hide yourself? I get your wings might get in the way of things, so I understand the argument, but you do know how most dragonewts revere dragons, yeah? A dragonewt would either be angry or embarrassed from the accusation, I’d wager, but you looked more defeated that your lie didn’t work.”
Cernust did mention how much dragonewts worshipped the dragons, since they originated from a dragon ancestor. He never specified how much, so how should I have known how to react?
After I sighed once again, Grimnir noticed my bad mood and tried to strike up a conversation to distract me. “Well, no need to look so gloomy, lass. Tazongs and krasuls—dwarfs and dragons; our nations are allied, so we know about your adulthood pilgrimage. My mouth is closed shut about your secret, I swear this on my honor as a blacksmith. I’ll probably forget about it over a tankard of the bladdarg those humans serve in taverns, anyways, gahaha!”
“Yeah, maybe … Now that I think about it, what does ‘bladdarg’ mean anyways? I’m not that familiar with dwarven.”
After laughing some more, Grimnir explained to me that this word was simply a substitute for any curse words I could think of. Shit, fuck, damn, poop, and so on and so on. Whatever I could think of.
“Well, it would have been better if you told me you were a dragon, anyways. I haven’t had any experience lately, but tazongs making weapons and armor for dragons ain’t uncommon. We have to sometimes work on dragonewt stuff, anyways, hahahaha!”
I nodded. “How long exactly?”
“Dunno. Forgot to count. It’s been years since I left my clan, Luedbrumdar, after Bleidla practically abandoned me for something as meager as helping a friend. He might be the most active of the Gods, but he's undoubtedly the darndest bastard in the whole world. Bladdarg! I can’t fucking believe he’s a taz. Hmph.”
Well, ignoring what he said about the God of Blacksmithing, I guess I don’t have to worry about him realizing anything about my royal status.
Saori and Tasianna then finished dinner preparations and began to serve it to everybody. Yesterday we had stew made from the meat we hunted during our descent, but today she decided to make something new.
“Ooooh, not bad!” Grimnir exclaimed, enjoying Saori’s sauerkraut casserole. “This would go damn well with some mead.”
“Oh, you think so, too? The sourness of the sauerkraut and rich umami from the meat does give me a craving for some alcohol,” Saori agreed, looking happy Grimnir shared her opinion.
The dwarf smiled, patting my wolf friend’s shoulder as if they were old buddies. “That can be handled. I brought a small keg with me in case I needed it. Not tazongn, but it’ll do.”
“Ooooh, count me in, then. I actually have some wine in my storage, so I’ll share mine. However, let us not drink too much.”
They are certainly hitting it off.
On the next day, we continued our travel through the whole floor but only managed to find the staircase the day after. While it took us three days to find the stairs down from floor ten, the floors afterwards were luckily unaltered from the maps we had, so our progress forwards was back to normal.
The areas were still the same mountainous paths like before with small variations, so to save on time, we decided to go all out. Ellaine flew on her gargoyle, Saori used [Air Walk] to move through the air while carrying Grimnir with her, while I flew around with [Wind Blast] while holding Tasianna, since she didn’t want to trust Grimnir with her secret yet.
Correct, despite not having any airplanes in Peolynca, we took to the sky, which made everything super easy. In under two days we made it all the way to floor 14, where the floor boss was guarding the entrance towards floor 15. It was truly an impressive monster!
The arena was a small area in the middle of a giant mountainous dome, where hordes of felgheists were hanging down, waiting for any would-be-challenger. As you would expect, this area was made to give the guardians the advantage, as there was always the risk of somebody getting dragged away by a felgheists. The nightlord being a mage also equalized any advantage of mages and archers in a party might have.
This was undoubtedly a trial with the sole purpose of testing parties before they entered the treacherous hell of floor 15. Undoubtedly, you would need to prepare extensively for this task. Train your bodies, acquire the correct equipment and tools, develop sophisticated strategies, and of course, the power of teamwork!
…
Or, you could just send me in there in my dragon form, blast the felgeists away with a [Draconic Roar] amplified through [Aerokinesis], then make everything explode with scale-dust while walking back to my party in my dragonewt form to ensure everybody got a split of the experience.
‘cause that was exactly what I did.
“You know, these things wouldn’t exist if you could destroy them so easily,” Grimnir complained at how I massacred everything in sight.
I shrugged.
As we approached the stairs, the sheer heat radiating up through the staircase from the fifteenth floor caused everybody except for Grimnir and me to sweat. It had taken us six days to get here, but our goal—Grimnir’s goal—was close at hand.
AbyssRaven Anybody played Baldur's Gate 3? Hestia just failed a Charisma roll with so many modifiers.
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“Argh, bladdarg! Getting attacked the moment we arrive!” Grimnir shouted, although I wasn’t sure if he was frowning or something under his helmet.
“Griiekkk!” the felgheist shrieked once more before diving at us with its vampire-like fangs protruding out, ready to snap at us.
Despite the obvious danger of the situation, I shrugged and lazily raised my hand up with a purple magic circle ready to fire. “Lightning Bolt,” I announced, shooting out a yellow streak of lightning at the oversized bat at a speed it didn’t anticipate. Flustered, it managed to barrel roll away from my spell, the electric bolt barely missing it, but the sudden turn left it unstable, forcing it to slow its descent by spreading its wings.
This small change in speed meant its end. Saori shot out as a [Stygian Lightning], shooting out a similarly fast bolt of black lightning, but this time the beast couldn’t evade it. Shrieking in pain, the monster quickly began to fall down from a lack of wing beats, but it’s incapacitated body was caught, or pierced, by Tasianna’s floating daggers, who delivered the monster’s corpse to us before it was lost in the ravine.
“Ahh, shame,” Saori clicked her tongue. “I still need more intelligence to make my lightning a sure-kill against Ds. I could kill it with a single dagger stab into a vital spot.”
After some testing, we’ve come to the conclusion that Saori’s [Stygian Lightning] was pretty much similar to electric attacks or [Lightning Magic] spells, only that the electricity itself was composed out of her dark elementally-aligned mana.
However, it had its limit, though. Just as with [Dark Magic] and [Lightning Magic], the amount of damage it could do was related to her intelligence stat, which was around 3500 less than her impressive over 6000 Strength. There was also the fact that she could only store the lightning in the white fur located mostly around her shoulders and arms, and it would dissipate relatively fast once she used it for an attack. I personally believe we could solve this issue with a catalyst.
After storing the monster’s corpse, more shrieks suddenly appeared above us, warning our party of a horde of felgheists. They hadn’t noticed us yet, so Grimnir suggested we avoid them for now and focus on traversing the giant ravine. After inspecting the cliff’s edge, staring down into the groundless chasm and into the landless horizon, I agreed as we moved into a cave opening.
“This is not good. This floor does not fit the design of the map,” Saori stated the moment we decided to move forwards. “Look. There should be a larger area in the start and there is no mention of a cave this close to the entrance. From the looks of it, the cliff path is also different.”
Although I wasn’t the most avid picture-less reader, I still did enjoy interesting topics. For example the dungeon book I bought from the Sarlenzia company, retelling the results and tales of an explorer-scientist from the Empire. Pretty expensive, but knowledge was worth the price.
In one of its chapters, the author noted that dungeons not manned by their dungeon masters 24/7 would randomly switch up the layout of a floor simply to challenge adventurers more in its pursuit to kill them. It wouldn’t do this too often, as the mana spent to change a floor compared to creating an entirely new floor usually wasn’t worth it, according to a dungeon master the author interviewed.
Also, a dungeon master who sought to turn the dungeon into a business was able to restrict the amount of floors a dungeon could create. This would make it more likely for a dungeon to change floor layouts, but it was still rare as the dungeon still abided its master’s will.
With Ellaine back as our cartographer, we began our search for the stairs. During our travels, we learned that the felgheists shrieked a lot, like a lot, a lot. Not ‘cause they found us or anything, but ‘cause they were communicating with each other. Although we knew this, there was no way for us to differentiate between aggressive-talking shrieks and aggressive-attacking shrieks. We made the mistake a couple times and mistook a supposed aggressive-talking with an aggressive-we-have-found-prey-time-to-attack shrieking.
“Pffff.” The moment a group of ten felgheists began to attack us, Saori attempted to whistle but couldn’t since she never practiced it once before. However, her attempt of being cool still triggered her garms to show themselves. “Uno. Song. Sarasa. Quatre! Help us.”
With their master’s command, the four giant wolves sprang out from her shadow, now adorned in monster leather armor made by Grimnir. While the armor did reduce their coolness rating, once Saori shrouded them in [Shadow Armament], the shadowy impression you would get from them came back, along with more defenses due to [Penumbral Armament].
“Mister Grimnir, get on!” Tasianna called over the large dwarf, offering her hand to pull him on Sarasa. Grimnir grumbled a bit how he hated riding, but relented after seeing more than the initial ten fly towards us.
After Tasianna, Ellaine, and Grimnir got onto two of the four garms, we all sprinted towards an open path deeper into the mountain, luring the felgheists with us. As Saori and I were faster than the garms on foot, we coordinated with Uno and Sarasa—to two unoccupied garms—to confuse the felgheists with our movements, allowing me to attack back without slowing myself down.
“Lightning Bolt!” I shot out, eliminating one of our pursuers.
There was no reason to use my scale-dusts or my large-scale spells here as it would only risk causing a landfill. I had smaller, more effective methods to attack. For example, terra spells.
“Ellaine, you ready?” I called out.
“Yes!”
Once I got the confirmation, I held my hand up while Ellaine raised her hand with her catalyst ring. We both cast [Terra Wall], materializing multiple walls of rock to impede the felgheists. Multiple of them crashed onto the walls, knocking themselves unconscious. Those in the back managed to avoid the same fate and continued the chase.
“Ellaine, don’t block the path in case we need to use it later! Shoot [Earthen Spears]! There are enough rocks around,” I suggested to her while preparing multiple [Lightning Bolt]s with my parallel minds.
“Understood! Although, they’re moving prett—”
“Ellaine! Quatre! Get away from the wall!”
Before Ellaine could finish her sentence, Saori shouted a warning to her and her mount, however, before Ellaine could understand what was happening, Quatre jumped to the ceiling the moment the wall right to them splintered into pieces, broken through as if a truck hit it.
“Ghoorr!” a massive creature with the face of a bat and front legs as developed as a gorilla roared.
Mana Eyes.
Rank D? Pretty sure it’s larger than those felgheists.
It roared once again before displaying its jaw extension ability against Tasianna and Grimnir, but Sarasa rammed right against it, protecting them and Song, allowing the latter to deftly dodge away.
“Quatre!” I called out to the garm Ellaine was riding, extending my hand towards him. Having understood my intention, he cast [Dark Tendrils] from his shadow armor and wrapped them around my arm, which I pulled at with all my strength, dragging his airborne body to my side before I mounted him to protect Ellaine.
“I guess expecting only one type of monster wasn’t reasonable. Of course this dungeon would continue throwing stuff at us!” Everybody nodded to my statement as we continued running down the path, now with an additional threat chasing after us.
After a few moments, we made it to the end of the tunnel and decided to fight the approaching monsters inside this closed cavern chamber, seeing as there weren’t any hazards we needed to watch out for. Running forever wasn’t an option.
The first to arrive was the felmight, its roar echoed inside the chamber like a bomb. Seeing this challenge, Grimnir shouted from the bottom of his lungs and jumped off Sarasa with his warhammer in hand. Having been informed of his intention beforehand, Tasianna blasted the stout taz with an amplified [Wind Blast], spending far more mana than was needed, to help him reach the giant beast with his hammer held up high.
“Heavy Slam!” Smashing his weapon right at the monster’s skull, both Grimnir’s hammer and the felmight crashed onto the ground, cracking and quaking the ground under them.
“Grouuuuggh,” the felmight groaned, letting go of its broken arms which somehow blocked Grimnir’s attack in time.
Damn thing is still alive? What a tank!
“By Crustacia’s twintails, you dimwit managed to block the attack with your arms?” Grimnir complained before picking its head up and headbutting the monster with his ram-like horns. With the felmight staggered, Grimnir had enough time to press something on his hammer.
The warhammer’s handle began to glow blue and mechanical parts started to move and twitch. Like a river’s stream, the blue glow began from the place the button was and flowed towards the top of the weapon, causing one of the hammerheads to automatically move up and attach itself to the handle’s tip, closing the gap between the two heads.
Once done, the button snapped out from the handle, forming into what looked like a gun handle … Wait, a gun?
“Volrun, umsleud!” Point-blank, Grimnir’s warhammer shot a shotgun-like mana blast at the felmight’s head, completely destroying it as it fell lifelessly onto the ground.
… I mean, if they can make those mana cannons, then handheld guns or rifles shouldn’t be impossible, right? Makes sense now why his Main Job was called [Blasthammer Gunner].
“Hey, lasses!” Grimnir called us out as his weapons returned to its original form, breaking my train of thoughts and my wonderment at his weapon. “This thing can only shoot once before overloading. Do something about those fliers!”
The shrieks of the felgheists then became louder, our warning to get ready for the impending battle. Our blood was pumping, adrenaline coursed through our blood as cold sweat drenched our brows wet. The fear of death was settling in … Which probably would be what a normal party would totally feel, but we had two rank B monsters, a fairy with a catalyst blessed by an Origin Goddess, four rank C garms, and a magic swordswoman who … Okay, Ellaine was actually quite scared but she wasn’t running away.
“Banishment Beam!”
“Stygian Lightning!”
“Icicle Gust!”
“Tornado Bullet”
“Wrooooooooooo!”
Luring enemies into a chokepoint and then blasting them with attacks, eliminating their ability to dodge since too many projectiles were flying at them at the same time. Bullet hell for the win. Imagine if the four of us were physical fighters only; that would have been dangerous.
D ranks really give far more experience than the Es and Fs we fought yesterday. Still, with how the experience is shared among five people and Saori’s garms, we need to kill a lot of these things.
After we mowed down the felgheists in our kill zone, we collected the bodies and checked if everybody was ready to move on.
“That was pretty cool. Sorry for my ignorance, but do all dwarves have guns like that?” I asked Grimnir, interested in his weapon.
“Gun? Ahhh, you’re using the Revolution Queen’s terminology. I guess being able to shoot does qualify it as a gun, but this is a tazongn blasthammer modified to shoot concentrated mana blasts,” Grimnir clarified. “And, no, of course not. This is the first real ‘dwarven gun’ you might say, well, one of many prototypes. Don’t want to go into the details too much, but this ‘ere was made by a dear, old friend of mine.
Grimnir’s mood began to sour the longer he talked. When I tried to ask him what was wrong, he waved his hand and told me to forget it before finishing his explanation. “Those ‘guns’ you mentioned aren’t a real thing, just saying. The blueprints exist, but the Queen never finished them. Mana cannons have been a thing since I was born, since waaaaay back. I guess you can call cannons ‘guns,’ but we never made a miniaturized one until the Revolution Queen tried it … Haaa.”
Grimnir then opened a small cabinet in the hammer’s handle, taking out what seemed to be a charred mana battery. “Thing’s a failed weapon. One use only, and then you need to replace the battery. The mana blast consumes your mana and its spread is too short-ranged, not viable to use against fliers or targets far away. A bow or crossbow would be better choices, in addition there are no gun related skills. Ha, for the only ‘gun’ in existence—I bet—this thing is nothing more than a one-time surprise attack.”
Only gun? As in, this is literally, and figuratively, the only gun-gun Peolynca has? How? No, I shouldn’t prod too much into his past. It’s none of my business. He seems really down.
Continuing our travel through this mountain, our trip could only be described as a rollercoaster. With the floor completely changed from the map’s specification, we had to wander around like headless chickens, having no idea where to go since this place gave us no clues. While it was peaceful at one moment, the next moment would be immediately disrupted by attacks from felgheists and felmights.
While the first two subsequent encounters with these things weren’t special, the third time was where it actually got dicy. Believing we had to pass the chasm to the mountain next to the one we started on, we managed to find a bridge, but a few fliers were already waiting there for us.
Just as Saori was about to suggest shooting down the horde of felgheists, I stopped her and stepped in front of everybody. Although my wings couldn’t keep me up without wind magic, I still was familiar enough with flying that I knew that our spells would have trouble hitting them, just like the first one we met was able to dodge my [Lightning Bolt], one of the fastest spells we knew.
Fighting inside a cave was easier for us, unlike fighting outside, where the felgheists could use flying’s omnidirectional movements to dodge our spells freely. If we started blasting spells here, we would only waste our mana, so I had another plan.
Volume up. Focus the sound. [Aerokinesis], record my voice. Draconic Roar!
“KriiiAHHHH!” With an ear-shattering roar directed forwards and amplified even further with my [Aerokinesis], I shattered the felgheists’ eardrums and morale at the same time.
Looking at them with [Mana Eyes], I could see that the total damage done wasn’t as bad as I’d hoped, but that didn’t matter considering the results. A few groaned as they lost consciousness, falling like flies into the abyss while others managed to remain composed, fleeing to save their lives. Battles weren’t about defeating the enemy, they were about surviving.
However, this is when a nerve wracking moment happened. One of the felgheists remained stubborn and tried to fly against my soundwave, but fell unconscious during its attempt. Unfortunately for us, it crash landed right next to Ellaine, which wasn’t the problem since she was able to dodge it just fine, but the issue was that the ground crumbled from the monster’s crash, causing Ellaine to lose her balance and fall forward.
Tasianna tried to grab her arm but the suddenness of the situation made it impossible for her to reach in time, while Saori was too far and too late with her [Gale Steps] to catch her. “Ellaine!” Saori and I shouted before we simultaneously jumped off the cliff, unwilling to lose a friend on this day.
Humanize! I instinctively used. With my wings unfurled, I cast [Wind Blast] on them to capitalize on their ability to capture wind better, outspeeding Saori’s [Air Walk].
As the headwind blasted on my face, it not only slowed down my descent but the drag caused by my dive was also causing my neck to feel uncomfortable. “Ellaine!” I called out, reaching my hand forward.
But her next action caused me to feel befuddled.
“Gargoyle, I release you!” Taking a small statue from her bag, she threw it in front of her before it suddenly grew into the form of a griffon. Ellaine deftly wrapped her arms around the statue’s neck and stopped her descent with the stone griffon’s beating wings, moving despite showing no signs of life.
… Oh verdammt, I forgot she brought that thing with her!
Saori and I stopped our falling by using [Air Walk], making us both stand on air besides the gargoyle. Both of us had flustered faces, slapping out faces as we let our emotions control our actions.
Ellaine smiled wryly as she saw our expressions, laughing nervously as she explained herself, “T-the gargoyle can’t fight and it’s rather fragile, ehehehehe …”
Most aristocrats possessed a gargoyle, a flying statue created through alchemy, for their personal use as an alternative transport method in case carriages weren’t ideal. I knew Ellaine had brought hers with her, but I kinda forgot about it after I told her not to use it. Since it was only supposed to be used as a transport method, any combat functionalities it would have were mediocre, too fragile to be used as an alternative mount.
Shaking my head, the three of us returned back to the cliff side. As I was sighing in relief that nothing bad happened, Grimnir suddenly gave me a quizzical look. “Where did those wings come from?”
“Huh? HUH?” It seemed I forgot to undo [Humanize]. I was stumbling over my words, trying to respond, luckily, I had parallel minds who could think extremely fast with [Thought Acceleration], so thinking of an excuse was a cinch “…What wings?”
I hid them under my robe. Perfection.
“You sure you didn’t drink too much before we departed yesterday, Mister Grimnir? You must be seeing things.” I activated [Benevolent Aura] and [Royal Presence], my charisma-based skills, and spoke with the confidence anybody would fall for!
Roll for charisma, let’s gooo!
He was dumbfounded, just as planned. “Your wings are showing underneath your robes … plus, they make you look wider than before.”
“Eh?”
Grimnir shook his head after he pointed those facts out, causing my eyes to widen. “Lass, next time, just leave your wings out if you want to act like a dragonewt.”
… Urgh.
Without saying another word, I slumped my shoulders as I came to the realization of how much I made myself look like an idiot. Tasianna tried to comfort me while Ellaine and Saori patted my shoulders, before the latter began transporting everybody over the gulf with the [Shadow Armament] and [Shadow Dash] combo. I was thankful nobody spoke about it any further.
The rest of the trip went relatively smooth outside of the occasional attacks, but our goal to find the stairs was nowhere in sight. As our bodies accumulated fatigue, we decided we traveled enough for today and made camp, preparing dinner.
“You know, I get humans—damn dragonkin slayers, right? But you didn’t need to hide the fact you’re a dragon from me,” Grimnir suddenly brought up while waiting for dinner.
“You know, I could just be a dragonewt who has [Humanize] just to mingle with people, right? Being a dragon isn’t a given,” I replied, knowing he probably won’t be persuaded.
“Nah, then you’ll just turn into a human altogether. Why learn [Humanize] as a dragonewt without turning completely into a human to hide yourself? I get your wings might get in the way of things, so I understand the argument, but you do know how most dragonewts revere dragons, yeah? A dragonewt would either be angry or embarrassed from the accusation, I’d wager, but you looked more defeated that your lie didn’t work.”
Cernust did mention how much dragonewts worshipped the dragons, since they originated from a dragon ancestor. He never specified how much, so how should I have known how to react?
After I sighed once again, Grimnir noticed my bad mood and tried to strike up a conversation to distract me. “Well, no need to look so gloomy, lass. Tazongs and krasuls—dwarfs and dragons; our nations are allied, so we know about your adulthood pilgrimage. My mouth is closed shut about your secret, I swear this on my honor as a blacksmith. I’ll probably forget about it over a tankard of the bladdarg those humans serve in taverns, anyways, gahaha!”
“Yeah, maybe … Now that I think about it, what does ‘bladdarg’ mean anyways? I’m not that familiar with dwarven.”
After laughing some more, Grimnir explained to me that this word was simply a substitute for any curse words I could think of. Shit, fuck, damn, poop, and so on and so on. Whatever I could think of.
“Well, it would have been better if you told me you were a dragon, anyways. I haven’t had any experience lately, but tazongs making weapons and armor for dragons ain’t uncommon. We have to sometimes work on dragonewt stuff, anyways, hahahaha!”
I nodded. “How long exactly?”
“Dunno. Forgot to count. It’s been years since I left my clan, Luedbrumdar, after Bleidla practically abandoned me for something as meager as helping a friend. He might be the most active of the Gods, but he's undoubtedly the darndest bastard in the whole world. Bladdarg! I can’t fucking believe he’s a taz. Hmph.”
Well, ignoring what he said about the God of Blacksmithing, I guess I don’t have to worry about him realizing anything about my royal status.
Saori and Tasianna then finished dinner preparations and began to serve it to everybody. Yesterday we had stew made from the meat we hunted during our descent, but today she decided to make something new.
“Ooooh, not bad!” Grimnir exclaimed, enjoying Saori’s sauerkraut casserole. “This would go damn well with some mead.”
“Oh, you think so, too? The sourness of the sauerkraut and rich umami from the meat does give me a craving for some alcohol,” Saori agreed, looking happy Grimnir shared her opinion.
The dwarf smiled, patting my wolf friend’s shoulder as if they were old buddies. “That can be handled. I brought a small keg with me in case I needed it. Not tazongn, but it’ll do.”
“Ooooh, count me in, then. I actually have some wine in my storage, so I’ll share mine. However, let us not drink too much.”
They are certainly hitting it off.
On the next day, we continued our travel through the whole floor but only managed to find the staircase the day after. While it took us three days to find the stairs down from floor ten, the floors afterwards were luckily unaltered from the maps we had, so our progress forwards was back to normal.
The areas were still the same mountainous paths like before with small variations, so to save on time, we decided to go all out. Ellaine flew on her gargoyle, Saori used [Air Walk] to move through the air while carrying Grimnir with her, while I flew around with [Wind Blast] while holding Tasianna, since she didn’t want to trust Grimnir with her secret yet.
Correct, despite not having any airplanes in Peolynca, we took to the sky, which made everything super easy. In under two days we made it all the way to floor 14, where the floor boss was guarding the entrance towards floor 15. It was truly an impressive monster!
The arena was a small area in the middle of a giant mountainous dome, where hordes of felgheists were hanging down, waiting for any would-be-challenger. As you would expect, this area was made to give the guardians the advantage, as there was always the risk of somebody getting dragged away by a felgheists. The nightlord being a mage also equalized any advantage of mages and archers in a party might have.
This was undoubtedly a trial with the sole purpose of testing parties before they entered the treacherous hell of floor 15. Undoubtedly, you would need to prepare extensively for this task. Train your bodies, acquire the correct equipment and tools, develop sophisticated strategies, and of course, the power of teamwork!
…
Or, you could just send me in there in my dragon form, blast the felgeists away with a [Draconic Roar] amplified through [Aerokinesis], then make everything explode with scale-dust while walking back to my party in my dragonewt form to ensure everybody got a split of the experience.
‘cause that was exactly what I did.
“You know, these things wouldn’t exist if you could destroy them so easily,” Grimnir complained at how I massacred everything in sight.
I shrugged.
As we approached the stairs, the sheer heat radiating up through the staircase from the fifteenth floor caused everybody except for Grimnir and me to sweat. It had taken us six days to get here, but our goal—Grimnir’s goal—was close at hand.
AbyssRaven Anybody played Baldur's Gate 3? Hestia just failed a Charisma roll with so many modifiers.
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