There was a survivor?
That wasn’t in the contract. Did an elf survive here alone for three thousand fucking years?
Are we doing a Zerei volume 2? I’ve had enough of this crap once! What is it with people surviving in shitty places every time? Seriously, every single damn time! The dread apostle, the dominion apostles, Zerei… That’s a lot of demons actually.
Urgh. Fine. I’ll go save whoever again. It’s only been lucrative ventures so far…
Sofia took a single step out of the isolation field.
HELP!
Holy- “CAN YOU STOP FUCKING SCREAMING?!”
Help!
No way that worked.
“I understood the first three times…”
Help!
What… Oh, maybe they only understand elvish. Even if they got that I wanted them to stop screaming. I can understand it fine, speaking though…
Trying her best to remember the sections about pronunciation that she had skimmed through when studying the book on elvish, Sofia tried her best to say something intelligible in elvish.
“Can you hear?”
I hear!
“Why only try to talk now?”
I, emergency supply!
“You-” Actually, I’m not even gonna ask. “Who are you, how can I help?”
Power! Don’t really know… Stuck.
“Extremely helpful.”
Come! Emergency supply!
“Alright… Anything useful you can tell me?”
Danger!
Sun better pay me extra for this one…
The elvish voice stopped after that, leaving Sofia alone with the sound of the rumbling machine all around her. But even that felt wrong, there was something else going on. A symphony of fast clicks.
Crap. The swarm.
Sofia hurriedly dispelled her rats, and called upon the graveyard skeletons to take her and the Engineer to the outside.
“Narrowly avoided that one. I can actually hear them now! They’re much less scary like that.”
Sofia’s plan now included tried to ‘rescue’ whoever the person that called her was, though it would be the last thing on her list. The quest took priority, her own life before that of others. So, since her last known position to the parasites was the bottom floor, she would next start from the top. Supposedly there was already a parasite up there, it would be her first target.
And I still can’t fly. Why does mana have to conflict with these electric power supply things? Pretty annoying. I even saw it flicker when I used the graveyard to get out.
Such a weird notion. How does mana conflict with electricity? I use mana to make electricity all the time and it’s very stable.
The image of a giant ball of blue fire came back to haunt Sofia’s memory for a second.
Maybe not so stable alright. Did I just understand the secret of the Angel’s bolt’s destructive power? Wouldn’t that make all lightning mages very strong?
Are there lightning mages actually? I think Nicet mentioned something about them…
I’m getting sidetracked again. Happens often recently. Let’s just walk to the top floor.
Sofia was in one of the 7th floor’s closed rooms. She had entered through the ceiling, finding nothing but a bunch of gold in there. This was clearly some kind of vault. Now, why would the elves need so much gold in an isolated temple orbiting around the sun? She didn’t know. But she knew that now it was her gold. There were coins and ingots, she didn’t bother counting them, and cleaned the place completely. If Sun has any complaint, she can give me a better briefing next time. One that includes details like the mention of parasites from the Deep or the presence of survivors to rescue.
She left through the ceiling again, walked on the roof to the other closed room and phased directly inside again.
And another dead elf, can’t tell what happened to this one, dehydration maybe? They’re all dry like blocks of sand anyway. Welcome to the book, we’ll check your skills later.
Back up on the roof, she went over to the spot the parasite had been spotted by the rats, which was actually right under where she killed the previous parasite. Her rot had eaten through an uneven layer of one to two centimeters of the strange material that made the pyramid, nowhere near enough to pierce through the ceiling to the floor under. Every external wall, floor and ceiling in the temple was at least half a meter thick.
As her page with the one rat was no longer part of the book, Sofia summoned the next best thing, the skeleton dog. She had the graveyard skeletons drop it directly on the last known position of the seventh floor’s parasite.
He’s just moving, no parasite then, search for it, I’m following from above.
While the dog ran around the floor, searching, Sofia used the last of the book’s fog to summon the group of twenty-five paladins. First the dog would spot the parasite, then the paladins would drop down on it through the ceiling and pile up onto it to prevent it from moving.
I call this move, the Dog-Pile.
Then Pareth would go down also, throw a shade dust ball at the thing and activate his halo. Sofia would stay safe above and just activate her rot for a second or two and repeat that until the thing was dead.
The only bad part was that this would spread a lot of rot inside of the temple, but now she had a good idea of the layout and the size of the module machines. She knew that as long as she kept the rot to the corridors, she wouldn’t hit anything important, especially with all doors still closed.
In a matter of seconds, the dog found the parasite. Or rather, the parasite found the dog, the paladins weren’t even fully formed. Sofia had the dog run away until the paladins were ready and in place, and when the dog led the parasite to the spot where they were waiting, they phased through the ceiling as planned.
Everything else went according to plan, twenty mere seconds later, another parasite was gone. And Sofia never had to come close to it. One of the paladins had been smashed to bits, but besides that, she was astonished that her plan had worked so well. That never happened. It was worth it to spend so much time understanding how they worked with the first one.
“Let’s quickly get rid of the rest!”
The other two parasites fell to the same fate, too slow to even release their swarms as the army of paladins threw themselves on them. The parasites still within their Elven shells always tried to defend themselves with physical attacks first, and that was their downfall. They could kill a paladin or two at the start, but it was rapidly over after that.
“That’s it for the main temple… But the quest is not complete. So there's more inside of the last closed section spanning three floors… Or it counts the whale and I’m dead.”
Who knew I’d hope to find more parasites… I’m guessing the elf who called me is stuck in there too. Might as well go while the paladins still have a lot of lifespan, but I need to dispel the rune and regenerate some man first, I’m running low.
Now, should I start from the top or from the bottom?
Sofia was on the sixth floor, about to drop the dog into the closed-off section of the floor below. If there were more parasites, she wasn’t about to change a winning tactic.
Ormoncleth probably just dropped one parasite and it reproduced. Only one monster causes so much chaos. I didn’t find any fighters among the elves except the one who became the first parasite I killed. There weren’t very many of them to begin with. I’m starting to believe the rescue crew the Oracle spoke of never even reached the temple in the first place.
Or maybe they’re all in there. Your time to shine again, good dog!
Wagging its skeletal tail, the dog let itself be grabbed by the graveyard skeletons. Sofia let it run around on the highest floor for a few minutes, nothing came of it, so she went down too.
Looks safe. Another module, let’s see… ‘Trajectory correctors’!
So this is the thing that’s been keeping me alive all this time. Thank the Lords there’s no parasite in here. I’m guessing in one of the other two levels I'll find the ‘Temperature regulation’ module too.
Without further ado, the dog was sent down once again, there were maybe stairs somewhere nearby, but Sofia couldn’t be bothered to look for them.
The dog died before hitting the ground. Sofia felt its page forcefully ripped from the book.
“NO!”
AGAIN?!
FUCK!
WHATEVER DID THIS, YOU’RE DEAD!
There was a survivor?
That wasn’t in the contract. Did an elf survive here alone for three thousand fucking years?
Are we doing a Zerei volume 2? I’ve had enough of this crap once! What is it with people surviving in shitty places every time? Seriously, every single damn time! The dread apostle, the dominion apostles, Zerei… That’s a lot of demons actually.
Urgh. Fine. I’ll go save whoever again. It’s only been lucrative ventures so far…
Sofia took a single step out of the isolation field.
HELP!
Holy- “CAN YOU STOP FUCKING SCREAMING?!”
Help!
No way that worked.
“I understood the first three times…”
Help!
What… Oh, maybe they only understand elvish. Even if they got that I wanted them to stop screaming. I can understand it fine, speaking though…
Trying her best to remember the sections about pronunciation that she had skimmed through when studying the book on elvish, Sofia tried her best to say something intelligible in elvish.
“Can you hear?”
I hear!
“Why only try to talk now?”
I, emergency supply!
“You-” Actually, I’m not even gonna ask. “Who are you, how can I help?”
Power! Don’t really know… Stuck.
“Extremely helpful.”
Come! Emergency supply!
“Alright… Anything useful you can tell me?”
Danger!
Sun better pay me extra for this one…
The elvish voice stopped after that, leaving Sofia alone with the sound of the rumbling machine all around her. But even that felt wrong, there was something else going on. A symphony of fast clicks.
Crap. The swarm.
Sofia hurriedly dispelled her rats, and called upon the graveyard skeletons to take her and the Engineer to the outside.
“Narrowly avoided that one. I can actually hear them now! They’re much less scary like that.”
Sofia’s plan now included tried to ‘rescue’ whoever the person that called her was, though it would be the last thing on her list. The quest took priority, her own life before that of others. So, since her last known position to the parasites was the bottom floor, she would next start from the top. Supposedly there was already a parasite up there, it would be her first target.
And I still can’t fly. Why does mana have to conflict with these electric power supply things? Pretty annoying. I even saw it flicker when I used the graveyard to get out.
Such a weird notion. How does mana conflict with electricity? I use mana to make electricity all the time and it’s very stable.
The image of a giant ball of blue fire came back to haunt Sofia’s memory for a second.
Maybe not so stable alright. Did I just understand the secret of the Angel’s bolt’s destructive power? Wouldn’t that make all lightning mages very strong?
Are there lightning mages actually? I think Nicet mentioned something about them…
I’m getting sidetracked again. Happens often recently. Let’s just walk to the top floor.
Sofia was in one of the 7th floor’s closed rooms. She had entered through the ceiling, finding nothing but a bunch of gold in there. This was clearly some kind of vault. Now, why would the elves need so much gold in an isolated temple orbiting around the sun? She didn’t know. But she knew that now it was her gold. There were coins and ingots, she didn’t bother counting them, and cleaned the place completely. If Sun has any complaint, she can give me a better briefing next time. One that includes details like the mention of parasites from the Deep or the presence of survivors to rescue.
She left through the ceiling again, walked on the roof to the other closed room and phased directly inside again.
And another dead elf, can’t tell what happened to this one, dehydration maybe? They’re all dry like blocks of sand anyway. Welcome to the book, we’ll check your skills later.
Back up on the roof, she went over to the spot the parasite had been spotted by the rats, which was actually right under where she killed the previous parasite. Her rot had eaten through an uneven layer of one to two centimeters of the strange material that made the pyramid, nowhere near enough to pierce through the ceiling to the floor under. Every external wall, floor and ceiling in the temple was at least half a meter thick.
As her page with the one rat was no longer part of the book, Sofia summoned the next best thing, the skeleton dog. She had the graveyard skeletons drop it directly on the last known position of the seventh floor’s parasite.
He’s just moving, no parasite then, search for it, I’m following from above.
While the dog ran around the floor, searching, Sofia used the last of the book’s fog to summon the group of twenty-five paladins. First the dog would spot the parasite, then the paladins would drop down on it through the ceiling and pile up onto it to prevent it from moving.
I call this move, the Dog-Pile.
Then Pareth would go down also, throw a shade dust ball at the thing and activate his halo. Sofia would stay safe above and just activate her rot for a second or two and repeat that until the thing was dead.
The only bad part was that this would spread a lot of rot inside of the temple, but now she had a good idea of the layout and the size of the module machines. She knew that as long as she kept the rot to the corridors, she wouldn’t hit anything important, especially with all doors still closed.
In a matter of seconds, the dog found the parasite. Or rather, the parasite found the dog, the paladins weren’t even fully formed. Sofia had the dog run away until the paladins were ready and in place, and when the dog led the parasite to the spot where they were waiting, they phased through the ceiling as planned.
Everything else went according to plan, twenty mere seconds later, another parasite was gone. And Sofia never had to come close to it. One of the paladins had been smashed to bits, but besides that, she was astonished that her plan had worked so well. That never happened. It was worth it to spend so much time understanding how they worked with the first one.
“Let’s quickly get rid of the rest!”
The other two parasites fell to the same fate, too slow to even release their swarms as the army of paladins threw themselves on them. The parasites still within their Elven shells always tried to defend themselves with physical attacks first, and that was their downfall. They could kill a paladin or two at the start, but it was rapidly over after that.
“That’s it for the main temple… But the quest is not complete. So there's more inside of the last closed section spanning three floors… Or it counts the whale and I’m dead.”
Who knew I’d hope to find more parasites… I’m guessing the elf who called me is stuck in there too. Might as well go while the paladins still have a lot of lifespan, but I need to dispel the rune and regenerate some man first, I’m running low.
Now, should I start from the top or from the bottom?
Sofia was on the sixth floor, about to drop the dog into the closed-off section of the floor below. If there were more parasites, she wasn’t about to change a winning tactic.
Ormoncleth probably just dropped one parasite and it reproduced. Only one monster causes so much chaos. I didn’t find any fighters among the elves except the one who became the first parasite I killed. There weren’t very many of them to begin with. I’m starting to believe the rescue crew the Oracle spoke of never even reached the temple in the first place.
Or maybe they’re all in there. Your time to shine again, good dog!
Wagging its skeletal tail, the dog let itself be grabbed by the graveyard skeletons. Sofia let it run around on the highest floor for a few minutes, nothing came of it, so she went down too.
Looks safe. Another module, let’s see… ‘Trajectory correctors’!
So this is the thing that’s been keeping me alive all this time. Thank the Lords there’s no parasite in here. I’m guessing in one of the other two levels I'll find the ‘Temperature regulation’ module too.
Without further ado, the dog was sent down once again, there were maybe stairs somewhere nearby, but Sofia couldn’t be bothered to look for them.
The dog died before hitting the ground. Sofia felt its page forcefully ripped from the book.
“NO!”
AGAIN?!
FUCK!
WHATEVER DID THIS, YOU’RE DEAD!
