Chapter 8
Alex could only imagine the size of the creature that might be causing such roars to rock the ground. A magma Leviathan? A colossal Mage-Tier Emberworm? He didn’t know for sure.
And it seed that no one else did either. For all the years that the Urhara Empire seed to be farming out the dungeon, it didn’t appear that anyone had seen what creature was at the heart of it.
The Dungeon objective didn’t require anyone to fight it, as it just required defeating a lesser boss. But on occasion, the roars were heard and felt. Not every party that entered the dungeon heard it either. It was almost random in that regard.
Perhaps a bit of system-generated ambiance, or additional lore that was added, like the bit Alex had uncovered in the Dark Den dungeon, under the Kobold village.
None of that truly mattered, it wasn’t important to know the mystery of the System’s ways, only to conquer and complete the task ahead of them.
The team ascended the steps, their feet clacking softly on the almost smooth-cut stairs leading to the open doorway. The steps were larger than typical humanoid ones, indicating they weren’t made by humans, dwarves, or other such creatures, the ones who were known for building into rock or mountain.
Contrary to Alex’s expectations, they weren’t attacked as they climbed the steps, nor when they crossed the threshold to the structure. The silence of the space was all the more unsettling following the heart-stopping roar of whatever beast lay hidden miles below, but that didn’t stop them from pressing forward into a large tunnel beyond.
It was sloped downward to a noticeable degree, leading the team further and deeper with each step, as if it were a gateway to the underworld, gently guiding them through twists and turns every so often.
All the way heading towards their demise.
A final twist in the tunnel brought them to a vast, square cavern that was unnaturally geotric after the rough-hewn tunnels before. The walls were smooth and dark stone, their surface as black as obsidian, but not nearly as polished. The stone was marked by ancient fire-burned runes that jittered faintly in the dim glow.
In the center of the room rose a stone dais. It was circular and raised a ter from the ground. Upon the dias stood a low, rectangular table, if it could be called that, made entirely of so blackened gray mineral shot through with veins of molten red.
The heat was even more oppressive there. It pressed in around them like the hot breath of a gaping monster’s mouth.
“Looks… hand-carved,” Kate said as she looked around, pacing along the periter. “Not a natural formation for sure.”
“No kidding,” Devon said. He stepped closer to the dais and peered at the red lines on its surface. “The runes on the table, they’re connected to the rest of the lines in the walls. Look.”
Alex followed Devon’s gestures, his [Aether Sight] flaring to life. At once he could see the threads of luminous energy snap into focus for him. Sure enough, the whole room was covered in complex arrays of glyphs and circular formations intertwined like a web.
Lines of fiery mana ran from the table’s surface, down into the floor, and out to the surrounding walls.
It wasn’t just ceremonial decoration or flair. Alex had so experience in studying and creating spell-work, so he understood rather quickly that the whole chamber was set up likea spell, but not one he could decipher easily. And it didn’t look like any of the spells he’d learned from scrolls, it used so kind of thod much older than what he had learned.
Devon crouched down, his eyes glinting behind his glasses as he traced a finger above one of the symbols. “It’s… really complex. Look here, that’s the old glyph for ‘Combustion’. And that one’s ‘Compression’. The table’s showing full formula structures for sothing, I guess must be fire-oriented techniques. Or maybe cultivation thods, even. But the logic’s different than any cultivation thod I’ve seen.”
That was interesting for many reasons. Alex hadn’t been able to recognize what Devon had, even with [Aether Sight], and he certainly didn’t know those archaic versions of glyphs.
Is Devon getting ahead of in [Glyphcraft]? He thought silently. Maybe Obby was right, he did need to focus more on his skill training.
Not to be outdone, Alex stepped closer and studied the table. The symbols looked ancient just as Devon said, almost rudintary in nature. It showed within its lines pictographs of swirling flas and dragons, each one rging into the next. His pulse quickened. “These aren’t normal runes. It's gotta be a test, a puzzle, or sothing like that. We can’t just ss about with it, though, it probably has defensive asures too.”
“Yeah,” Garret said, warily glancing at the glowing veins. “Probably summons monsters or sothing, and not the cute, friendly kind.”
Devon tapped his chin. “Maybe it wants us to complete runes, like the Dark Den did?”
Before Alex could answer, Devon reached out and lightly touched one of the engraved lines and injected a small bit of aether.
The response to his action was instantaneous. A deep rumble vibrated through the floor and every glyph across the table ignited at once in searing orange light.
“Devon—” Alex started.
Then the ceiling split open.
Molten rock poured through nearly revealed vents that hadn’t existed a second earlier, cascading down in thick rivers of glowing lava. It struck the stone floor of the room with a deafening hiss, sending up a wave of blistering heat and sparks.
“Move!” Cole roared, hauling Holly back from where a stream of lava splashed onto the floor.
They all scattered, spreading to the edges of the chamber as molten rock pooled and began spreading outward in a slow moving flow.
“Lava flow’s slow, but it’ll build up.” Holly’s eyes darted to the ceiling. “And the vents aren’t closing.”
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She was right, the lava kept coming. It moved along invisible channels against normal fluid dynamics, guided by the spell etched into the floor it began spreading outward. At the sa ti the pools below the vents were slowly building upward. It would take so minutes, but the entire room would eventually fill with lava.
A slow death by fire.
Alex’s gaze flicked to the table, which was now glowing, every glyph alight with energy. His heart pounded. “We need to figure out what the lines are, whatever the spellwork wants us to do.”
Kate’s eyes bore into him from the side, “And if we can’t?”
“Then we burn,” Alex said.
Garret stared at the spreading lava. “Hell of a way to teach a lesson. Can’t the System ever make dungeon rooms that don’t try to kill us?”
“Focus!” Alex yelled. “Devon, find the control glyphs there’s got to be a way to direct the aether flow or sothing.”
“I’m trying!” Devon’s hands flew across the many symbols, tracing the web of lines and glowing patterns. “The sequence is circular, going around the table clockwise, but it’s feeding itself in a way I’m not seeing an access point, and, there’s no end node!”
“Okay. Then we make one,” Alex said. He dropped to one knee beside Devon and frantically scanned the table and the surrounding floor, but it was exactly as Devon had said, he couldn’t find an end point, or an access way into the sequence.
He tried creating a new glyph sequence himself, a control set-up, and then connecting that into the already existing lines. But the fire aether that powered the table seed to just attack the new lines, filling the glyphs and burning them out within a mont.
Cole had tried going at it a different way. He raised his hands and channeled his aether into creating as much water as he could before creating a thick stream that he fired at the nearest vent. It rapidly cooled the lava around the vent, creating a huge cloud of near boiling steam in the process.
A new wall of water shot up just as quickly, protecting himself and everyone else from the steam cloud he'd created. But the vent was blocked off at the very least.
If only for a few seconds.
The pressure behind the cooled lava apparently beca too much as the cooled layer of rock Cole had created quickly cracked and burst apart, dumping a swathe of molten lava all over that area of the room.
"Fuck, I don't think we can stop it, Alex," he shouted.
Alex was aware of all this happening, but his focus was on the lines.
Obby, any help here?
"Sorry, this is a bit beyond even ," The rock replied in his head. "I've taught most of what I know to you already. Now, maybe if you increased your Wisdom like I said—"
God damn it, Obby, not now.
"I think I know what this is." It was Kate who spoke up behind him. Alex turned to her in confusion. She didn't show any interest in [Glyphcraft] in enchanting, nor any talent in it. How did she know what the lines were saying?
"You sure?" He asked.
"Yeah... I've looked at a lot, and I an a lot, of Fire based cultivation thods. I think Devon was right, its a cultivation technique. Specifically for Fire, and even further looks to specialize in a single aspect of Fire aether. Not sure exactly what on that part though." She stepped forward, looking more carefully at the table and the dais around it. "I think it wants us to use the technique."
"Use it?"
"For sure, yeah. The gathering technique should absorb the fire aether and stop the whole activation," Kate confird.
Alex looked at it, then back at the fire mage. "Do it then. I'll be back up for you."
Without a word of complaint, Kate nodded and stepped up on to the table and stood at the center of the enchantnt. Her eyes scanned about below her, as if reading an instruction manual. Though Alex realized that was pretty damn close to what was happening.
She hadn't ever used this gathering technique before, so Kate would need a bit of ti to understand what to do.
"Do whatever you can to slow the lava. Give her as much ti as you can!" He yelled out to Cole, Holly, and Devon.
The three of them sprang into action, Cole once more using his water to try cooling off as much of the molten material as he could. Though he carefully avoided the vents that ti.
Holly began using the air to catch and push the falling lava back against the far walls, having it cool and build up along the far parts of the room instead of closer toward the middle.
Garret looked to be doing sothing totally new, as he held out his hands and appeared to be absorbing the fire-aether and the heat from the lava into his body. Alex saw the energy move through his tissues before being pulled up into his soulspace where Alex assud it was being added to his mage core.
Devon couldn't help much at all, and only began throwing out a few enchanted aether-crystals, which created waves of water or blasts of cold. Nonetheless, it was at least sothing.
Alex took it upon himself to follow after garret's example and began using his aether gathering technique. With such high fire concentration, he didn't have to pick and choose the energy he wanted and instead pull and absorbed in whatever he could grab. Which was a lot, given he could now make nine woven aether threads.
Kate looked to be finished looking everything over and nodded to herself before she closed her eyes. Alex saw the aether in her body shift and undulate for a mont before her body gate opened and strangely connected a string of aether to the table driectly below her feet.
Alex was nearly stunned by what he saw next.
The table responded to Kate be suddenly reversing the clockwise flow of its aether and began pouring energy up through the connection she had established. It was a huge torrent of pure fire-aether, and he gate took it in rather easily, flooding her body before being pulled into her soulspace as well.
But it wasn't the efficiency of what he saw that startled him, it was the apparent shape that the energy took as it left the table and moved up to her nape to be absorbed.
In his [Aether Sight] Alex watched the fire aether coalesce and form itself into a winged serpent behind and below her, the fire aether swimming through the shape and into Kate.
It was a dragon, the energy was forming itself into a dragon.
Just looking at it sent his pulse into a stutter, and he almost felt the stir of Draconis Energy in his [Wyrm-Heart] react to the sight. It was still asleep and dormant, but even that little jolt was far more of a reaction than Alex had ever seen it do from looking at a painting or a statue of a dragon. The re image of such creatures didn't stir it at all, but this did.
What the fuck is this gathering technique?
"Oh, now THAT is interesting." Obby snickered in his mind.
“Alex!” Holly shouted over the roar of lava and aether in the room.
He looked back, seeing that the lava was still moving, but slower. Whatever Kate was doing, it looked to be working.
"Kate, keep going!" He scread.
“Almost—” Kate scread back. “Almost got it!”
The lines around her were being quickly drained of the red hot aether, all of it being absorbed into her. But it looked like it was harder to maintain than a typical gathering thod.
The rest of the team had retreated closer and closer, all of them now standing ont eh Dias with Alex and Kate. The glyphs around them flickered, fighting between collapse and stabilization. Still, lava surged closer, the edge of the molten pool now licking up the dais itself.
The temperature climbed to unbearable levels.
And then—Boom.
The light went out and the rumbling stopped.
Silence fell, broken only by the hiss and crack of cooling molten rock.
Steam rose around them in shimring waves. The lava had frozen mid-flow, solidifying into a rough, glassy layer that smoked all around.
Kate had fallen to her knees on the table, but her heavy gasps of air told Alex that she was still alive. After a mont, she looked up and gave him a small smile.
"Way to go everyone, good work. Especially you Kate, that was clutch," he gave everyone a nod in turn. Devon, probably need to do a Dungeon etiquette debrief later.
Devon frowned at him. “Okay. That was not my fault.”
Garret barked a laugh, “Yeah? Next ti maybe don’t poke the glowing murder table.”
Kate shakily stood up, flicking ash from her hair and wiping at her sweat-drenched face. She moved to the edge of the table and sat down. “That’s twice this dungeon’s tried to cook us alive. What’s next? Lava sharks?”
Alex chuckled but didn't answer. He was staring at the table, which now sat dim and inert… except for one faintly glowing line in the center. A single glyph still showed with a trace of aether. It almost looked like... a dragon.
But quickly, it too died away, going dark.
What the fuck is this place?
[Secondary Objective, Lava Temple Ritual Room Complete;
2,500 Dungeon Points
Additional Reward Granted]
"What the hell is an 'additional reward'," Garret said. "Ever seen that before?"
"No, I haven't," Alex muttered.
"Oh?" Kate said, just before her eyes glazed over, and she collapsed to the floor.
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