Crossing Serpent's Way, page 19
part #1 of Trials of the Endless Planes Series
20/40
Arcane Breath (Ra)
Active ability that unleashes a blast of raw mana, significantly damaging all foes in your immediate area.
1/40
It wasn’t much of a change, but he hoped at rank 20, his [Diamond Soul (Ra)] would give him a sharper edge. If need be, he could dump more mana into another ability, though he was hoping to avoid that. There was only the last challenge left and he felt ready to take it on, no matter what it was.
Kaito glanced around the sanctuary to see how the other groups were recovering.
The humans were the worst off. Their poorly made armor was all but in tatters and most of their weapons were chipped along the edges. Fortunately, the seven of them appeared to have regenerating abilities since their skin was still unblemished underneath the dust and dirt from the battle. He was still surprised that they’d survived, but then again, they were as much a survivor as he was.
The sulfurions sat slumped in a circle, the mana-infused symbols on their armored skirts now dull. The fains’ plated armor was scuffed and dented in places as they lazily passed around a wineskin. Only the onikai seemed to be readying themselves for the next challenge by sharpening their harpoons and repairing the symbols that ran down their shafts.
As for the fowlings, Kaito didn’t even know what they were doing. The trio of bird-people were floating on their aerospheres above the bonfire with their eyes closed as if they were meditating. It looked odd to him, but if it helped them center themselves, then who was he to judge.
While the others were collecting themselves, Kaito decided to sprawl in the tall grass and close his eyes. While his [Diamond Soul (Ra)] had mitigated much of the strain on his body, he still felt stretched like a worn rubber band. A bit of sleep would do him some good.
Besides, who knew when the next challenge would begin.
Sleep came easily as he was pulled under in less than a handful of breaths. It was the sleep of someone who just worked a double. Of someone on their seventh day of overtime. Of someone whose body craved sleep more than anything else.
He didn’t know how long he was out for, but the rattling of the earth beneath his back abruptly jarred him awake.
It felt as if the entire dungeon was waking up. And it was mad.
Kaito immediately shot up, wide-eyed and panting, only to find flaming embers raining down on the entire sanctuary. Some landed on the top of his head and exposed skin, smoldering and trailing smoke while filling the air with the smell of burnt hair. Fortunately, his passive heat resistance kept them from charring his flesh.
He didn’t have any mind for the paltry damage though, all his attention was somewhere else. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the bonfire in the center of the clearing that continued to gush high into the air, spewing more and more embers into the moonless night sky like an angry, erupting volcano. The ground beneath his feet rocked like an earthquake and he knew this was trouble.
The other groups were up as well, muscles tense and hands gripped tightly around their weapons. Their eyes were glued to the bonfire, grinding their teeth, just waiting for whatever was about to happen.
A brief pulse of his movement ability brought him close to the fowlings and he had to raise his voice so he could be heard over all the noise, “What’s happening?!”
“It’s the last challenge! The dungeon boss is about to be summoned!” answered Teras as she pointed her bow straight at the bonfire.
As if something had heard her, the pillar of flame suddenly winked out just as a powerful gale kicked up to blow out the rain of embers like candle light in a stiff breeze. The darkness of the moonless night instantly swallowed them whole, the sanctuary now pitch black as the ground continued quaking.
Kaito’s keen senses kept him from panicking as his vision quickly adjusted to the utter darkness. Something was coming from beneath the earth and it must have been gigantic. His senses screamed at him like they did with Thaxus and he cursed to himself that he no longer had the perfect sphere of perception he used to have. His old set of abilities could have told him what was happening beneath his feet, but that was then and this was now. And at this moment, he was stuck waiting for the big bad boss to rear its ugly head.
In the next instant, a veritable mountain of dirt and rocks exploded out of the center of the sanctuary where the bonfire once burned brightly, spraying everyone in the clearing with soot and clumps of grass. Then, a wave of earth rippled outward and Kaito was forced to jump up to avoid it. A few others did the same, while the rest simply shifted with the tumultuous ground.
As soon as he touched back down, the ground rumbled one last time and then began to crumble at an alarming rate, whole tracks of dirt simply falling away into nothingness. Panicked screams spread throughout the area, one after the other as people plummeted into the rapidly forming pit.
Kaito hastily scrabbled backwards only to find that there was nowhere to go. The ground continued to collapse, quickly turning into a yawning maw that promised to swallow them all up one way or another.
He barely had a second to spare before the piece of earth he clung to abruptly angled downward and suddenly, he was sliding and no amount of flailing was helping. His world lurched and a shout of alarm ripped from his lips as he quickly found himself falling into an abyss so dark that even his eyes couldn’t pierce the veil.
The final challenge had begun.
* * *
Chapter 17
Kaito bounced a couple of times before landing in a heap. His pained groan mingled with the chorus of complaints coming from the other groups as he heaved himself to his knees to look around. Unfortunately, his vision failed to adjust to the darkness, almost like a sheet had been thrown over his eyes.
That’s…not good, he thought as a knot formed in his stomach. With the range of his senses stunted, he barely had enough awareness to perceive just a few feet away, so he groped around helplessly to try and get his bearings. Practically everything beyond arm’s length was nothing more than a diffuse cluster of impressions.
Everything that is…except the enormous mass of writhing mana at the center of whatever pit he’d fallen into.
The dungeon boss — because that was the only thing it could be — was a blazing torch among matches to his senses. Its strength blotted out his perception of the other groups, preventing him from pinpointing who or where specific people were. And with his senses as handicapped as they were, he couldn’t imagine that the others were faring any better.
This battle hasn’t even begun and we’re already fucked…he thought bitterly to himself.
All of a sudden, he perceived a distorted sense of someone fumbling their way towards him as he kept his focus trained on the monster in the shadows. It hadn’t moved yet, but the sheer amount of mana radiating off its body made his limbs feel heavy, giving off the feeling of drowning in quicksand.
“Is anyone there?” cried a voice that sounded as if Kaito was listening through a wall, though his meager senses told him the person was closer than the voice implied. “I’m here. Just keep coming the way you’re going,” Kaito called back.
He was certain similar situations were happening all around the area, but he just couldn’t detect them. He was dumb and blind at the moment and he didn’t like that. It made his skin crawl worse than the creature’s mana.
A few seconds later, one of the fains came stumbling into his perceptive range, their hands outstretched before them, fumbling through the air for something, anything.
Kaito quickly grabbed their wrist just before they bumped into him, “Right here, Nightroot.” He’d heard the onikai call them that and he saw that same name on his blue screens at the end of the last challenge.
“H-Human?” the tailed dark elf asked hesitantly.
“Ya, that’s me. Is your perception ability that limited right now?” Kaito asked, worried that the others were similarly restricted.
The fain growled, pulling their hand out of his grip, “For Lady’s sake, why did I have to stumble into you. The mana in this place is absolutely chaotic and wreaking havoc to my senses. I can barely detect anyone else. That monster over there is like a cloud blotting out the sun, overwhelming every other mana signature around me.”
Kaito nodded along, his suspicions confirmed. If the other fains had manareception as their only perception ability, then they’d be just as worthless as this one. He hoped the other aliens had different abilities, otherwise they’d all be fucked.
“Do you know anything about the boss that has been summoned? Does your coven have records like this?” Kaito prodded.
“All I know for certain is that the final challenge of the Forest is an epic monster. Their abilities are usually empowered versions of others we’ve encountered before, though which in particular is anyone’s guess. These beasts are powerful. Meant to be defeated by six full groups of rare Classholders, not five and you.”
Kaito scoffed, “You wouldn’t even be here without me, fain. You’d have tucked that tail between your legs and ran from those beetles, so don’t bark at me now.”
“How dare you, human! My name is not ‘fain.’ It is Akiot, which you would do well to remember. You’re just blinded by your pride — we would have been fine without you. And if we’d had a full sixth group, they wouldn’t have hogged all the glory for themselves!” cried the disgruntled fain.
He wasn’t certain if the fain was a male or female or what, but either way, he didn’t pay them any attention because the monster before them suddenly stirred like boulders grinding. It was the only sound that could be clearly heard in the entire room.
Kaito held his breath and felt Akiot do the same, a silent agreement passing between them that they did not want to attract this monster’s attention. Then, a dark green eye as large as his head abruptly lit up the darkness and Kaito instantly recognized it for what it was…
Dragon…
He’d fought dragons back on Earth and this creature’s pupil looked just like theirs. Sharp as one of their fangs, its gaze could sunder a man’s heart at a glance.
One was bad enough, pinning Kaito and Akiot in place, but then six more snapped open running along the beast’s sinuous flank and a pit formed in Kaito’s stomach.
Without thinking, he used his [Predatory Insight (Ra)] in an attempt to inspect the monster and for the first time ever, there was a delay in his ability as if something was actively blocking him. It was a clash of wills between predators.
A sharp pain suddenly stabbed him between the eyes — there and gone so quickly he could have just imagined it.
Remnant of Miremaw (Ep) Lvl.20
Kaito’s mouth instantly went dry. An epic lvl.20? And ‘Miremaw?’ That didn’t sound like a species…that sounded more like a name. He couldn't stop the shiver that ran down his spine. This wasn’t good.
On instinct, he activated his newly strengthened [Diamond Soul (Ra)] and instantly, the veil was lifted from his senses by a fraction and a half, just enough for him to perceive his surroundings. There was still a weight on his shoulders, but his ability held it back, which implied that whatever was happening to him and the others was some sort of mental attack.
Now that he could actually see a bit, Kaito realized that they were in a chamber that looked eerily familiar to the one in his illusory challenge — wooden walls that climbed up to a blacked out ceiling far above. In this case, it was the dungeon’s starless night sky. He only hoped that there wasn’t any sap running down the walls.
His ability also gave him his first glimpse at the dungeon boss. It was a titanic worm with the head of a dragon and a multitude of green eyes running along its sides. Even when coiled in on itself, it was easily the size of a barn.
It’s a wyrm…Kaito thought. That was what Thaxus had said. I just didn’t understand it.
Without even thinking, he tapped into his mana core and dumped 11 GM into each of his three other Class abilities to bring them all up to rank 10, dropping his reserve down to just 64 GM. But he didn’t care. If he died to this worm-looking wyrm, what did his mana matter?
“Akiot, do you have an ability for mental defense?” he whispered to the side. The fain didn’t answer at first, they were too entranced by Miremaw, so Kaito had to smack them in the arm to get their attention. “Akiot!” he hissed, “Can you protect yourself mentally?”
The fain swished their tail, shaking their armor-plated head as if banishing a fog, “I-I do, but it’s barely helping. This creature’s presence is stifling.”
“Can you find the others at least? Warn them?”
Akiot hesitantly moved their head around the chamber, seeing if they could pinpoint where the other groups were clustered. After a long pause, they finally nodded, “Yes, I know I can find them. I can’t tell who they are, but I know where they are.”
“Good, snap them out of whatever fucking hold this thing has on us. I just hope they have a defensive ability too.”
“What will you do, human?”
“It’s Kaito, Akiot. Just Kaito. And me?” he turned to look at the towering leviathan. “I’m gonna go pick a fight.”
Sucking in a deep breath, he rapidly layered his abilities. His flesh rippled as bone-white scales erupted along his skin. Then, his fingers and toes lengthened, forming sharp claws that suddenly radiated dense blue and green energy, a mixture of his mana-empowered strikes and his claw frenzy.
Before Akiot could say anything, Kaito took a large step and vanished.
* * *
Miremaw had been lazily rubbing his coiled body together, slowly waking up from his deep slumber. This wasn’t his true form, he at least knew that much. He could feel his power barred behind a seal of the Lady, which meant that this body was simply a remnant of his soul. Something that the Lady summoned as a challenge for budding Planewalkers.
This was simply a part of the cycle of the Endless Planes. Miremaw had bested the shadows of other champions as he ascended the planes himself and this was apparently his time to give back.
Stretching out his senses, he felt the curves of his limited form and quickly identified what had summoned him. Or rather, who.
Insects had found his remnant’s nest and his stomach suddenly rumbled with the prospect of his next meal. So, in this scenario, the Lady placed him in the role of the powerful beast. Well, if She wanted him to give into his more primal urges, then who was he to argue?
Half of his multitude of eyes flicked open and his [Perilous Gaze of the Behemoth (Ra)] billowed out. In a blink, every creature in his pit froze like the frightened little insects that they were. Then, he inhaled deeply, fully adjusting to this restricted body. Ah, how Miremaw had missed the smell of fear from those so young, so untested.
But something rankled in his serpentine nostrils and he hastily took another whiff. I smell old blood. Stale blood. So much of it in fact that it smells like a few of them have practically bathed in it. I haven’t smelled that in ages.
Miremaw cracked open the four main eyes on his draconic skull and grinned to himself in the darkness, Pioneers…
The Lady is ever gracious. She’s offered me a glimpse of future powerhouses and an opportunity to lay them low now, before they can step onto the higher planes. Wonderful!
But before he could gloat too much, one of the insects suddenly came to life in Miremaw’s senses, his many eyes tracking the little mouse, for that was what it had become. Although, whether a mouse or an insect, it did not matter to him.
Food was food.
The mouse was fast, Miremaw would give it that, but it couldn’t escape his dozens of eyes. He easily tracked it around his pit as the mouse flitted from one end to the other. It was the only one that seemed to be able to move within the range of his perilous gaze — a feat unto itself.
However, Miremaw had not been summoned to lose.
In the next instant, his massive plated chest puffed up, then he slightly parted his colossal jaws and exhaled — [Miasma of the Sunkenlands (Ra)]. A torrent of dark purple mist gushed around his fanged lips and cascaded down his chin, inundating the pit with noxious fumes that further enfeebled the insects surrounding him, sapping them of their vitality.
Some of the bugs dropped, collapsing onto their backs with twitching limbs as if they were in the midst of their death throes. A handful of them turned out to be flies though, hurriedly shooting above the reach of his miasma. Miremaw tsked and prepared to use another ability, but the flitting mouse suddenly appeared before his face.
In that frozen moment, his four eyes snapped up to meet the gaze of the rodent that dared to challenge him.
It was a brown-skinned mouse with eyes like a predator. Adorable.
Miremaw had to admit that it was stronger than the other insects barely withstanding his miasma, but that didn’t mean the mouse would intimidate him. He ignored the buzzing flies that rushed around his head, plinking their insignificant arrows against his hardened scales. Instead, he focused on the singular mouse bold enough to face him head-on.
The mouse’s arms were engulfed in dense mana, though Miremaw wasn’t particularly concerned. He activated his [Wyrm Fangs (Ra)], conjuring an array of skeletal fangs, each twice as long as his own teeth. They whirled around his leviathan body to act as both his shield and sword. With his perilous gaze pinning most of the insects down, his miasma sapping their strength and his bone barrier covering him…now, Miremaw was at full strength.
Let the mouse scratch. Let the insects sting. They would not move him.
But…to Miremaw’s surprise, the mouse didn’t swipe with its mana-empowered claws, instead, it roared. And a plume of corrosive energy shot straight into his nostrils.
Miremaw instantly whipped his colossal head back, bellowing in rage. How dare it!
