Chimera Summoner: A Deckbuilding LitRPG, page 8
“Right,” Gareth said. “Let’s do this then.”
Chapter Seven
Sarkuran led the way, ducking beneath the large chunk of stone that blocked much of the entrance. He was after all the party’s closest thing to an expert on traps that they had, though Sarkuran had no doubt that there were many rogues and scoundrels who had a better grasp of their mechanics than he did. Still, he understood that his knowledge was useful, and the demon king had no doubt that such a large and impressive structure would be protected by them, especially when its purpose was to store magical artefacts.
The darkness was overpowering, forcing Sarkuran to hold his sunstone out as far ahead of himself as he could. It was far from ideal, most traps were difficult to see in full daylight, the shadows would only serve to make his life more difficult. That wasn’t even considering the beasts that could be lurking in the corners out of sight. Henig thought there was a chance that the monster repellent warding the repository had would still be functional, as it had been for the tower, but Sarkuran suspected that if the avalanche was enough to disrupt the magic that worked the lights, then the warding couldn’t have been far behind.
Somewhere in the back of Sarkuran’s mind was the fragment of a memory, a shard of recognition that was frustratingly out of focus. He had been alive so long that his earliest memories of Acamida had faded into mental dust, and it annoyed Sarkuran no end, though he tried his best not to show it. He knew he had been sent to the world to rule, that much he was certain on, but with what he knew now it raised unsettling questions.
Gareth and Magda had been tossed into the world because Magda had left the window open, albeit temporarily. Only she was supposed to have access to the planet, Acamida locked off from the other gods. How exactly they had managed to send Sarkuran here was a conundrum. He knew he wasn’t of Acamida, that was something about his past he was certain of, but did that mean the window had been opened before? The most likely scenario was that it had happened when Magdalena had returned to the afterlife, but then the timing of his choosing became inherently suspect. The timing of it was all just too convenient.
Not that Sarkuran planned on sharing his worries with the others. That would mean showing weakness and that he could not abide. He still planned on reclaiming his empire eventually, and anything that could be used as ammunition against his plans in the future Sarkuran considered taboo. He wasn’t going to betray the others, that would be counterproductive. Instead, Sarkuran planned on giving them high-ranking jobs within his empire. People said to keep your friends close and your enemies closer, but Sarkuran hated that advice. It just meant it was easier for your enemies to stab you.
“See anything?” Magda shouted through the opening.
“Nothing immediate, no,” Sarkuran said. Despite the revelation that his ancient rivalry with the forces of good had been nothing but a sham, something about the goddess still annoyed Sarkuran. He wasn’t entirely sure what it was, it wasn’t like she acted as someone might imagine a goddess. She was hardly wandering the streets curing the sick or answering prayers selflessly. Magda could be vain and petulant, often more concerned about herself than anyone else. Perhaps that was the way, Sarkuran had built up an idea in his mind about what the gods were like over centuries of conquest and Magda just didn’t fit into that mould. “Step inside, I could do with more light.”
The others piled in through the entrance, their sunstones adding to Sarkuran’s and pushing back the darkness. The chamber they exposed was massive, though notably well within the expectations set by the entrance. The tower defied the laws of physics, its floors stretching far beyond the bounds of what its wall would dictate possible. The same could easily be true of the repository, but with its failing magic, it was equally as likely the effect had been shut off.
“This is a problem,” Gareth said, realising what that meant. “If the room stretching magic isn’t working then it could be that whatever treasure might be in here is shut off from us.”
“Because the rooms don’t exist anymore?” Magda asked.
“Yeah exactly.”
“Well, something is here,” Mazel said holding the dowser forward. It was still spinning with furious intent and no matter where the groblin pointed the device it kept the same maddened pace. “There’s strong magic all around us.”
“That good or bad?” Gareth asked. “Are we going to need your expertise?”
“Hard to say. If we were in Thot-Ankor then this kinda magic level well…” Mazel let out a long whistle. “We would probably be evacuating the area. You would get reanis breaking their shackles, death elementals popping out everywhere, the fungus going nuts and spreading over everything.”
“Like Lipton Street,” Krunk said with a knowing nod.
“Uh, Lipton Street?” Gareth couldn’t let the reference go unexplained, his morbid curiosity getting the better of him.
“Pump failed in the sewer under the street. We were able to close the emergency doors and seal it off, but you can’t exactly do that up top.” Krunk shuddered, trying his best to repress the memories. “We had to close the street at both ends, thankfully there were gates back from when the city was smaller, it used to be right inside the walls. The whole street is a no-go zone now, covered in fungus and full of dangerous monsters. The government keeps saying they’ll hire duellists to clear it out one day, but I’ll believe that when I see it. Too dangerous is my bet, no one will do the job.”
“So, they just abandoned it?” Magda said. “What about the people? Did they get them out at least?”
“I think you know the answer to that, your godliness.”
“That’s awful.”
“Honestly, considering what else we saw in Thot-Ankor did you expect any different?” Gareth said.
“Yeah, it wasn’t exactly the nicest place,” Imelda added, her gaze darting to the groblins. “No offence.”
Mazel slid her dowser back into her pocket. “None taken. It’s not like most folks are happy with the situation either, especially the engineering guilds, we see the real problems up close. Things keep going the way they are well, then it’s only going to get worse. You lot bought us some time, but it's bloody inevitable, even if it takes a few centuries.”
“All empires fall eventually, even mine,” Sarkuran said as he ran his hands across the smooth stone floor. Every surface was near perfectly smooth, aside from a few cracks near the entrance where the falling rocks had taken their toll. “It can’t be helped. Empires are founded by people, and we’re imperfect creatures. Even if they have the best intentions there will be flaws in the foundation, so to speak. Much like your machines I expect, tiny problems left for long periods will eventually become fatal ones, correct?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Mazel said. “What are you looking for, exactly?”
“Seams, gaps where something has been inserted into the stone. Anything like that. The stonework here is of the typical high quality I would expect considering the tower, but it’s impossible not to leave a sign of some description.”
“Right yeah.” Mazel crouched down, copying Sarkuran’s motions. “When you think about it, traps are just another kind of engineering, right?”
“I suppose so.”
“Can we move on yet? There’s got to be a ton of this place to explore, and I don’t think hanging around is a good idea.” Gareth’s eyes darted about, examining where the light reached its limits and the darkness began. “If this place is radiating mana, then who knows what has moved in here. There are monsters in here, I know it.”
“You know it? What you have monster sense now?” Magda said with a snort. “You might as well have said that the sky is blue. There’re always monsters. You climbed up and down a big hole in the ground filled with giant bugs whilst angry bird-lizards watched from the trees to get here.”
“Yes, I know that! I just meant…look you know what I meant. You’re just being difficult on purpose. As usual, I should point out. I was just saying we should be careful.”
“On the upside,” Sarkuran said, standing up straight. “I suppose that if monsters are lurking around this place, then we should have a better idea where any traps are. If there indeed are any. The entranceway is clear at the least. We should be able to press onwards. Slowly and carefully, of course.”
“Can you teach me?” Mazel said, doing her best to look as cute a groblin possibly could, which wasn’t much. “I would love to learn about these kinds of things. Imagine if we had laced the sewers with traps, Krunk? Would have made life a little easier in case something went wrong, right?”
“Or you could get your head cut off by a spinning blade or something equally as absurd,” Krunk replied, not impressed at the statement. “Sounds like a good way to get killed.”
“Typically, you have a system to prevent such a thing,” Sarkuran said, adjusting his coat slightly. It had ridden up as he had crouched, the outfit not designed for wandering through lost temples. “Magical or otherwise. It would defeat the point without one. Even if sometimes it’s just simply knowing where they are. You can do a lot with traps.”
“Yeah, just imagine it, Krunk,” Mazel said. “You could have a micro sump set up to absorb mana, even regular mana rather than necrotic energy. It stores it up, and then when someone walks by, boom! It lets it all out in a burst.”
“Like a bomb?” Gareth said.
“Yeah! But one that will recharge itself after it goes off.”
“That’s a rather good idea,” Sarkuran said with a smile. “It would be perfect for defending the towers. We could set them in areas where we want to keep ancients from. Hunting grounds of predators for example. Even if the blast isn’t fatal, it would scare them off, and if we don’t need to reset them it’s a good long-term solution.” The idea intrigued him, adjusting the technology of Thot-Ankor to another purpose something he found fascinating. “Do you think you could make something like that?”
Mazel nodded. “Should be easy enough. We would need something cylindrical we can etch runes onto, but I can’t see that being a problem. We could do it with wood, but those might be a one-shot kind of device if we did.”
“So, something like spider crystal?” Gareth said.
The groblin’s red eyes lit up. “Yes, that would be perfect! Assuming we can get runes onto it. It’s tough, easy to get and partially magical anyway. With all the mana around the tower, they would charge fast too.”
“Right, glad I could help us reinvent bombs. Can we get on with this please?”
Gareth looked around the chamber they were in as best he could with the scant light they had. Sunlight struck through the narrow entrance like a sword piercing flesh, reaching out into the black a thin strip of gold. It didn’t show much, and the extra light of the sunstones wasn’t pushing back the oppressive wall of darkness as much as he would have liked. As far as Gareth could tell they were in a large room one that stretched onwards into the mountain, no doorways present in the walls at the side that he could see.
“You think this is supposed to be some kind of grand entrance?” Gareth said, musing on what the room was for. “Like the ground floor of the tower?”
“Maybe,” Magda said, reaching forward with her sunstone to get a better look. “Could be when the magic was working this room was something else. I have to imagine if you can shift stuff about then the real building is going to be a bit boring, right?”
“The goddess has a point,” Sarkuran said in rare agreement with Magda. “If you can rearrange the interior of a structure through arcane means then yes, keeping the base building as simple as possible would be the smartest idea.”
“Oh, you know there’s trouble when these two agree,” Imelda said. “Can anyone else feel that?” She had one hand on the wall near the doorway, her fingers tracing invisible lines across the stone.
“The rumbling?” Sarkuran said. “Yes, I could feel it when I touched the ground. Faint and constant, a distant hum of some kind.”
“I thought that’s just what it was supposed to feel like,” Mazel said, blushing slightly, her face turning a darker shade of green. She hated seeming like she hadn’t noticed, but she had written off the faint buzz as the effects of the mana permeating the place. It wasn’t uncommon for the devices she worked with to have a similar feel like electricity was coursing across their surfaces.
Sarkuran nodded at the groblin. “Possibly. The tower certainly doesn’t but it is possible that the disruption in the magic of this place is causing it. It’s very faint.”
“Might have been worth mentioning it then?” Gareth said. He was a little annoyed that Sarkuran had noticed it before Imelda and chosen not to say anything.
“Seeing as I have no idea what it is or what it means it seemed pointless to worry the rest of you. It could simply be that there’s an active steam vent below the building or something equally as mundane.”
“In future, let’s keep everyone in the loop about strange things, no matter where they come from hey? It could mean nothing, but it could also mean something dangerous. We don’t have the luxury of failing at our ultimate goal. No one else knows about the Godswords, so if we get in trouble that’s it. The world is doomed.”
“You should probably sort that,” Krunk said. “You could easily let the government of Thot-Ankor know, send someone with a message. I know they’re out to get you but at least it would mean more duellists working on the problem.”
“This the same government that ignored the fact that their entire undead based society was doomed to collapse?” Gareth said with a raised eyebrow.
Krunk lifted his hands in concession. “You’ve bloody got me there.”
“Only I can reactive the Godswords,” Magda said, nearly in a whisper. “It wouldn’t matter anyway.”
“Right now, that depression fest is over, can we finally get exploring this place? It’s already kind of a distraction, even if it might be useful in the long run.” Gareth hated hanging around by the entranceway. It was like inviting trouble, the sounds of talking no doubt likely to attract one of the ancients in the jungle outside. He reached up to his neck, scratching at where a mosquito had bitten it. They didn’t seem to mind the mana flowing out of the repository at least. “Ow, stupid bugs.”
“They are rather annoying, aren’t they?” Sarkuran said.
“More than annoying. On my world, they spread a pretty lethal disease. Just hope it isn’t true here.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Imelda said. “There was an entire civilisation here at one point, I can’t imagine a lethal disease would have allowed for that.”
“Unless they could cure it.” It was all academic regardless. Gareth knew they didn’t have a doctor amongst the refugees, and nobody seemed to have any kind of healing magic. He wondered how that would even work with the way decks were set up. It would probably have to be a runic item of some kind.
“Guess we’ll find out one way or the other,” Imelda said with a shrug. “They don’t seem to bite me, maybe these things don’t like wyrmkin blood?”
“We’ll simply cover ourselves in wyrmkin blood then,” Sarkuran said. He had a wicked grin across his face as he began to walk slowly forward into the darkness, his sunstone pushing back the shadows. “Problem solved.”
“Yeah, that feels like a pretty you solution. Maybe we should seal you back up in crystal, that would solve the problem as well.”
“Point taken,” Sarkuran said, recognising the threat. He knew Imelda couldn’t make good on it, he had no idea how he had been sealed away, to begin with, but she would find some other creative punishment, that he was certain of. If Sarkuran was being honest with himself, he had a certain fondness for his jailer. In another lifetime she would have made an excellent member of his court. “Hmm, that’s interesting.”
“What is it?” Gareth said. He had followed Sarkuran as the demon king had moved forwards but hadn’t gotten as far into the chamber. It took a few moments for Gareth to catch up and see what had caught Sarkuran’s interest.
The room didn’t end. Instead, it became an enormous staircase descending into the ground, a great well of darkness sitting at the base. It was impossible to tell how deep it went, the staircase stretching far past the limits of the light.
“So, we’re going down then,” Gareth said. “What is it with these people and building stuff underground? The teleporter temple in Wildermount was in a cavern.”
“The Thot-Ankor one is atop a mountain,” Magda said, offering a valid counterpoint. “Maybe it’s just about making things hard to get to. If you’ve got powerful magic to lock away, why not underground?”
“It’s where the wyrmkin put me,” Sarkuran added. “It’s also where I put most of my valuable treasure. It makes the most sense from a security perspective.”
“Great, so we came here thinking it would be a vault and instead it’s a dungeon.” Gareth let out a long groan. Nothing was ever as easy as it seemed. “On the upside, if they felt the need to protect it like this, to bury it in a mountain on top of whatever magic they had in place, what’s in here has to be valuable, right?”
“Seems like it,” Imelda said, letting Gareth’s calling of the repository a dungeon go uncommented on. It was something he did often, calling any kind of catacomb, tomb or tunnel the same thing. She wrote it off as an odd quirk of his world. Gareth was mostly tolerable, but occasionally he veered onto a weird tangent about Earth Imelda barely understood. “Hopefully it’s worth all the effort.”
“Keep close,” Gareth said, gesturing for the others to walk towards the stairs. “We don’t want to get separated. Remember what happened in the tower? I would rather that not happen again.”
“Why?” Krunk asked nervously. “What happened.”
“We all ended up in different rooms, at one point,” Magda said. “Our own personal little trials. Nothing we couldn’t handle, or well, those of us with decks anyway. You two might be in a bit more danger.”
“Got it.” Krunk gave an awkward salute. “We’ll stay close, your most godliness.”
