Chapter 7
[You have entered: The Heart Forge
Dungeon Floor 1 - Subdomain: Ore Mines
Objective: Make it to the Inner Sanctum.]
The world snapped back together in a rush of heat and color.
Alex stumbled forward and his boots pattered against glassed stone below him. The air hit like a forge blast with heat that was damn near high enough to sting the throat. He took a breath anyway as he looked about to gain his bearings.
They stood in a small cave with various tunnels leading off seemingly in random directions.
Veins of crimson crystal jutted from the walls deeper in the tunnels. In his [Aether-Sight] Alex could see their cores glowing with sothing that almost looked like liquid fire. Deeper behind the sheer rocks, there was the unmistakable concentration of fire aether that told him the existence of magma, which trickled in narrow channels through the rock, and out into the cave proper. The tiny magma stream fed into small pools that stead and hissed where droplets splashed onto the stone. The scent of scorched iron and acrid sulfur filled the air.
“Okay,” Garret said. “So this isn’t ominous at all.”
Kate crouched and ran a hand just above one of the glowing magma pools in the floor. “Fire-aspected, obviously. The ambient aether density is high. I’d say even enough to cause spontaneous ignition if you draw too much at once.”
Holly’s straight blade glead faintly as she drew it free from the sheath at her hip, the blade reflecting the magma light. “aning?”
“aning,” Kate said, “if you overcharge a spell, the fire-aether concentration will try to compete against your own energy. If you fail to maintain control, it might blow up in your face.”
“Noted.” Garret flicked his wrist, his weapon igniting in a ribbon of controlled fla. “Guess I’ll keep it simple.”
Alex raised a brow at Garret’s display. Up until now, he hadn’t really shown much of the fire half of his aether attunent, mostly relying on his Earth spells. It appeared that all the ti in the city had given him so inspiration.
“Let’s move then, standard formation,” Alex said.
They pushed through the dungeon preparation chamber and into one of the natural tunnels leading deeper in. The walls bore faint marks of construction and sentient work. Tool marks were spotted here and there rather easily, as well as collapsed scaffolding, lted tal supports, and even a few burned-out rune pylons.
He eyed one of the crystals that poked from the wall. Obby kindly gave him a description of what he was looking at.
“Fire-attuned aether crystal. Like the basic stuff from the Kobold tunnels, but this is highly leaning towards the fire elent, obviously. Good quality too, probably all of this is Adept tier material.”
Can we take any of it? Is it worth it?
“Yes on both accounts. It can be used for many things, weapon enchantnts, explosives, and many other things. But I wouldn’t try to gather it if I were you. It’s volatile and takes careful hands and lots of training to mine it out safely. And you don’t have ti for that anyway.”
Damn.
“Indeed, you know I love a good explosion.”
Alex let the idea of gathering up so crystals die and instead continued to lead them through the tunnel. The further they went, the hotter the air seed to grow. The heat didn’t bother him, not like it should. If anything, it felt comfortable. Sothing he figured was due to his old, latent aether attunent.
The others didn’t feel the sa, though.
“Feels like being inside a forge,” Cole whined.
“Or the mouth of a damn drake,” Garret added.
Alex nodded toward the next archway ahead of them, where the stone opened into a massive cavern beyond. “Just push through for now. And keep your eyes open. Whatever is causing that instability in the Dungeon is probably deeper in.”
They stepped into the open space and the scale of the Dungeon they had entered hit Alex all at once.
The tunnel there were just end ca to a cliffside that dropped down below into a giant cavern. The inside of it stretched dozens of miles across, to the point Alex couldn’t quite see the other side besides knowing there was one. It ended at a wall of stone eventually, since he could see one that rose up, and up, and up to a ceiling.
It was a naturally ford cathedral of fire and stone.
The ceiling shimred with hanging spires of glowing crystal that must have been hundreds of ters thick. Magma clung to them like condensation, dripping molten slag below that hissed as it hit the stone floor. Rivers of magma traced lazy paths through the terrain, illuminating everything in a red hue.
In the center, far below and way off in the distance, was a rocky formation that could have been hundreds of feet tall. From where Alex stood, it looked like a small collection of children’s blocks stacked up on the ground.
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Alex stood and looked about for soti, just trying to take it all in. It was even larger than the Chira Dungeon. Ten tis the size, maybe more.
Devon whistled. “I’m seeing lots of energy flow. This place is like an ecosystem. Readings are spiking every minute or so. Looks like it’s mostly coming from that center area.”
“Got it,” Alex replied. “Let’s go.”
Alex stepped off the cliffside and let himself plumt down to the area below. He had learned far better aether control now, and it only took tiny releases of aether through his [Aether Burst] spell to slow his speed and land softly on the stone ground.
The others followed after him, each touching down just as softly as they used various strategies of their own.
“Rember, eyes open,” Alex said.
They all nodded in return and Alex began walking out of the rough ground.
That was when the first tremor hit.
The floor shuddered underfoot. It was a deep, rumbling groan that echoed through the rock. A cascade of glowing dust fell from the ceiling. The giant red crystals shuddered, raining down even more liquefied fire-aether, forcing everyone to either dodge or block the fiery rain with spells. The droplet hissed where it t the ground.
“Movent,” Holly said sharply. “Below us!”
The floor split.
A gout of molten stone erupted and sprayed into the air, and from it burst a creature the size of a wagon. Its body was a mass of blackened rock and glowing seams as segnts of itself moved and writhed. Its maw gaped wide, drooling magma.
“Early Adept stage Emberworm!” Obby yelled into Alex’s mind.
The beast let out a shriek and more movent stirred in the broken stone floor around it, the ground lighting up with heat signatures.
“Multiple contacts!” Cole shouted.
“Three!” Holly confird quickly.
Kate’s rapier flared to life with flas. “Perfect. Sothing to kill at last.”
The first Emberworm lunged at Alex, spraying a torrent of molten saliva that hit the rock with a sizzling splat. Alex dove sideways. His gauntlets flashed with aether light as he twisted mid-roll, landing and driving his fist forward and releasing an [Aether-Burst]
The shockwave further cracked the stone beneath him before sending a blast of shaped aether-force into the creature’s neck. The worm reared back with a bellow. The attack had split its hard outer skin and it leaked orange blood all over.
Cole ran in next to Alex, his hamr glowing with water-aether as he drove the weapon’s head straight into the creature’s now wounded neck. As soon as his attack made contact, the water-aether and fire reacted violently, releasing an explosion of steam and molten shards outward.
The blast sent Cole flying away and Alex caught him with one arm as he passed, setting the water mage back on his feet.
As they fought the first worm, two more broke the surface of the ground. Holly was already engaging with one of them, while Kate distracted the third. Both won used mobility to keep out of the creature’s attack range, which seed to be limited to spewing magma from its mouth or attempting to crush them with its large body.
The one Alex and Cole had attacked and injured shook once more and suddenly slamd its head into the ground, pushing its way deeper and deeper within monts.
“Don’t let it burrow!” Alex shouted.
“I’m on it!” Garret roared. He rushed in from the flank, sword alight with fire-aether heat as he slamd a series of quick jabs into the worm’s lower body. The strength and impact of his attacks knocked it sideways and pulled its head from the ground, making it wiggle on the surface in anger.
Behind them, Holly released a crescent of condensed wind that sliced the air and struck one of the erging worms dead in the mouth, splitting open its head with a huge gash. It shrieked and reeled, before trying to attack in return. It activated so sort of new ability, fire aether folding in around Holly as she twisted and stepped on the air itself, blasting her away just as the fire rushed in and collapsed on the area she had been.
Devon had found a good position by then and fired off a round from his rifle. The energy-filled projectile blasted into the worm with enough force to stop its movent before it could chase after Holly any further. Another round sounded right after, and by then, Holly was forming another wind crescent.
Kate danced around her own target with a smile on her face. She struck over and over with her sword, the rapier’s fla trailed behind each strike, carving deep, glowing lines into the worm’s armor before exploding.
The creatures could handle magma, and were fire-attuned themselves. But that didn’t matter when Kate’s more advanced cultivation and aether powered her attacks. The difference between Gaseous-stage and Solid-stage was just too vast.
As she continued her assault the air filled with the sound of cracking stone, hissing fire, and the rhythmic boom of spell detonations.
Alex leapt upon the Emberworm that Garret had managed to bully out of the ground and brought a fist down on the top of its head. The rocky skin cracked apart with a single blow, revealing the soft flesh underneath. His second punch splattered the flesh against the stones beneath it.
You Have Slain Emberworm!
451 Experience
100 Dungeon Points
When the last worm finally fell, it did so with a sound that was almost a whimper. Kate stood on top of it, orange blood streaked across her armor and clothing. “Wasn’t that a nice warm-up?”
Garret leaned against a rock, panting. “Anyone else getting tired of bugs the size of wagons?”
Kate wiped sweat from her face and smirked at him. “Depends on the pay.”
Alex stood in the center of the wreckage. “Let’s keep moving,” he said. “Sothing’s feeding these things a lot of fire-aether. It isn’t the crystals from the ceiling, they don’t rain down enough from what I can see. So they have so other source. And whatever it is… I’m betting it’s that structure at the center of this place.”
The others nodded and together they pushed forward.
It took so quick thinking and well tid spells to deal with the crystals raining near literal death on them at random. The “drops” that fell off them looked small from up on the cliff, but they were actually the size of a basketball, and damn dangerous, even to the likes of Solid-Stage adepts.
Luckily, Alex’s senses gave them ample warning to prepare whenever a drop was about to co their way.
The Emberworms were also not as much of an issue as Alex would have guessed. They ran into a few more as they traveled, but they seed to like sticking to themselves, far more preoccupied with gathering fire-aether pockets. Of which, there were many, more and more showing up beneath ground the closer to the center they ca.
Eventually the team made it to the structure they had seen from the cliffside, which looked to be a confusing ss of natural rock formation and sentient carved building. It was as though whoever had made the place wanted to keep as much of the natural rock as possible while still making space for an entire mining operation.
The front face had a tall thirty-foot doorway, the “doors” of which might have existed at so point but were long gone by then, leaving only a gaping opening. They continued inside regardless.
“Devon, I swear if I hear you jinx this thing as we enter, I’m going to break your glyph-stylus.” Garret said.
“I wouldn’t!” Devon tried defending himself.
Even Kate gave him a look that said otherwise.
“Head in the ga,” Alex said.
Just as another colossal roar rumbled through the Dungeon.
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