Beckoning Fates, page 20
In a single-file line, we all began making our way down the stairs. The temperature dropped noticeably with every step we took.
“W-W-What the hell? I d-d-didn’t think it-it’d be this c-c-cold!” Roland managed to say through chattering teeth.
“Augment yourself, you dolt,” I heard Clive say from behind. It was too dark to see anything more than the vague outline of each person.
As we walked down the stairs, I felt something grip my wrist. I was about to pull away, but then I realized what it was. Looking back, just a step behind me, I could see the vague outline of Tess’s head. I assumed she was scared, but I didn’t say anything. We just walked silently down the seemingly endless flight of stairs, her warm hand on my arm the entire way.
Even without augmenting myself, the frigid temperature of the dungeon was bearable due to my assimilated body, but as the dungeon got brighter, that soon changed. A gust of piercingly cold air blew through the opening at the end of the tunnel, forcing me to shield myself with the shawl. My eyes adjusted to the change in lighting and I was able to see the first floor of the Widow’s Crypt. Although I’d been in dungeons before, it was still exciting.
The cavern stretched out for hundreds of yards, making me wonder how it even supported itself. The stone that made up the large cavern sparkled with a dim blue light. Icicles glinted on the ceiling and a thin layer of ice covered the floor. Looking closely, I could see a nearly transparent layer of moss that covered the cavern walls and ceiling, enveloping this floor in a serene light.
“That’s odd. Usually we’d see a fair amount of snarlers already. Why don’t I—”
All of a sudden, hideous noises began echoing all around us. Peeking out from behind the numerous boulders and from small caverns dotting the walls of the cave were innumerable beady red eyes.
“That… that’s a lot of snarlers.” I could hear Roland gulp as his eyes widened. He wasn’t the only one who was shocked at the sight—everyone in the class was. Even Curtis and Claire looked nervous. I glanced at Professor Glory and, by her expression, I didn’t think she had anticipated seeing this many snarlers either.
65
Widow’s Crypt II
Even amongst mana beasts, snarlers were hideous creatures. With a thick gray coat of fur, their muscular, four-foot-tall bodies looked like mini gorillas. Their faces, though, blended a boar’s snout and tusks with beady red eyes and long ears. With their thick, powerful, protruding jaws, at first glance you wouldn’t think they were only E-class mana beasts.
The snarlers were coming out from their hiding places by the dozens, snapping their jaws while letting out low growls.
“P-Professor… are there supposed to be this many?” an upperclassman girl from another group stammered.
“This is so odd. Even on the lower floors, there are never this many snarlers bunched together.” Professor Glory braced herself and stayed firm. Our class’s morale was already low, and if even our professor was unsettled enough to hesitate, everyone would panic.
“There are a lot of them but they aren’t impossible to handle. However, since this is just a class excursion, I think it’s best to go back up, just in case. Safety is our priority.” But as Professor Glory started slowly ushering everyone back toward the stairs, a fireball flew past her.
The fireball exploded and six snarlers were flung in different directions and lay motionless.
“See? These nasty little beasts are weak. Professor, don’t tell me you brought us all here just to go back. Even a small fire spell was enough to kill six of them,” Lucas scoffed as he lowered his staff.
I could tell Professor Glory was still hesitant.
“I think we should try and train here, Professor.” Curtis had a determined look on his face, and Lucas’s display seemed to have instilled confidence in several other students as well.
The snarlers warily kept their distance, studying us with their unintelligent eyes.
“Okay, but if I feel that something isn’t right, we’re immediately out of here, understood?” Professor Glory waited for the class to agree to her condition.
When she received a round of nods, she said, “Good. Split into your teams and take different parts of the floor. We don’t want any friendly fire happening in here. And Lucas, if you do something like that again, there will be consequences.” Professor Glory shot a menacing look at the cocky blond, and he nodded reluctantly.
“Prince Curtis, take your team and make your way toward the left side of the cave. Princess Tessia, take your team to the right of the cave and hold your ground. The last team, with me. I’ll be keeping an eye on you at all times, but stay vigilant and don’t underestimate the snarlers, especially in these numbers.” With that, Professor Glory motioned for the teams to move forward.
As soon as we headed toward the miniature army of snarlers, Tess’s shy self all but disappeared as her student president side took over. “Arthur, I want you to be the vanguard, since you’re the best at close range. Clive and Roland, you guys take positions behind him to his left and right and make sure he’s covered. Lucas, stay in the center, behind Arthur and between Clive and Roland; I’ll cover your back. We’re going in the diamond position we learned in class.”
Wet snarls suddenly sounded all around us, sending chills down my spine.
“Oh crap, crap, crap.” Obviously intimidated by the fifty-odd snarlers all snapping their jaws at us, Roland took out his weapon, which looked like a sword handle.
Clive also took out his metal short bow from his dimension ring, and drew it back. Where the arrow should have been there was a long metal needle wrapped in gusts of wind.
I took out Dawn’s Ballad as well, which was still wrapped in white cloth. I left it sheathed and lowered myself into a fighting stance, ready in case any of them suddenly jumped.
“Spread and destroy! Ember wisp!” As we approached the horde of snarlers, Lucas released one of his favorite spells, which was soon floating around us.
A startlingly loud, throaty shriek pierced my ears.
I slowed my pace just a dozen feet from the horde. Gripping my sword firmly, I prepared to draw—then more than ten of them jumped toward us.
My instincts urged me to draw my sword as fast as possible, but I waited. I waited until the snarlers all jumped, trying to pile on top of me, before releasing the wind that I had condensed inside the scabbard of my sword. Like a loaded spring, my sword burst out from inside its sheath, breaking the sound barrier with a deafening boom.
I immediately winced in pain at the recoil of the attack. Dread filled me as I realized that my shoulder had dislocated. That technique worked a lot better than I’d thought it would, but I made a mental note: I really shouldn’t experiment in actual battles.
The snarlers closest to me were either knocked back or sliced in half, but I couldn’t follow up with anything. My right arm dangled and I dropped my sword.
With a chorus of enraged howls, several more snarlers took the place of the fallen. They dropped down on all fours and began charging toward me.
Several arrows whizzed by me and promptly impaled some of the snarlers that had almost reached me.
I looked back and gave Clive a nod, then picked up my sword with my left hand. On my other side, Roland’s empty handle had become a whip made of water, which whirled erratically. Some attacks missed their targets by a large margin, making me think that Roland was still learning his family’s art.
Arrays of spells fired by our side colored the cave in flashes of red and blue. The snarlers reacted by attempting to surround us—but judging by the distance they kept between us, they were wary. The ember wisps Lucas had summoned were still shooting off small streams of fire, but the snarlers were getting crafty, picking up chunks of ice from the ground and throwing them at the wisps in an attempt to extinguish them.
Tess spotted me clutching my arm as she fought off two snarlers. “Arthur, are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine.” I gritted my teeth and positioned my right arm between my legs, preparing to put the shoulder back in. I shouted with pain when my arm popped back into place.
The spell—I hadn’t even named it yet—worked a lot better than I’d thought it would; I’d managed to kill more than fifteen snarlers at once. Too bad my body wasn’t able to withstand the force just yet.
The snarlers weren’t very strong, but before long the seemingly endless numbers were taking their toll. Clive and Roland were sweating profusely, and Tess had turned a bit pale. Even Lucas’s spells were becoming a lot less flamboyant—he had to keep in mind the limit of his mana pool.
“Is it just me or are there more snarlers now than there were in the beginning?” Roland shouted, managing to kill three snarlers with Clive’s help.
“I think you’re right. The numbers aren’t adding up,” Clive responded as he looked at Tess for further instructions.
Over a hundred corpses carpeted the icy floor, and many snarlers still stalked around us—and that was just on our side of the cave.
“I think we should head back over to Professor Glory. We’re not going to be able to keep fighting like this for much longer,” Tess announced. We made our way slowly back to the entrance of the dungeon, and we saw that the other team had apparently had the same idea.
When Professor Glory saw all the teams coming toward her, she made her way to us, cleaving snarlers left and right with her sword.
“Professor, I don’t think we can keep going like this. The snarlers keep coming!” Tess shouted.
“Teams! Follow your leaders. We’re going back up.” Without hesitation, Professor Glory motioned for us to head back up the stairs, but just then we heard a loud crash.
Icicles and stalactites, along with other rubble from the roof of the cave, came crashing to the ground as two figures came floating down, flapping their large wings to hold themselves steady.
“Are you kidding me? What are the queen snarlers doing on this floor?” Professor Glory didn’t bother trying to hide her rage as she drew another giant sword from her dimension ring.
“Class, don’t let any of the minion snarlers get in my way. I’ll handle the two queens. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m getting you guys out of here if it’s the last thing I do.” With a click of her tongue, she pulled something from around her neck and threw it on the ground. As the necklace shimmered and then turned gray, the mana fluctuating around Professor Glory changed.
She was using a seal!
“Prepare to back up Professor Glory. Don’t let any of the snarlers get past us,” Tess commanded, holding her bladed staff out in front of her.
“Aye! Vanguards, protect the conjurers.” Curtis stepped up, brandishing his sword and shield.
I took a step forward too, gripping my sword with both hands to ease the strain on my throbbing shoulder. There were ten of us in the front, and Lucas, Tess, and three other girls started chanting spells from the rear. My eyes were drawn to Professor Glory as she wielded two giant swords, one in each hand. Fire and something that looked like sand rapidly circled around the swords as she chanted inaudibly, then they began intertwining.
The two queen snarlers—who were in the upper level of B-class bosses, and easily twice as large and nasty as the minions in addition to having wings—began cautiously flanking Professor Glory. The queen snarlers’ front two limbs had four long, sharp claws that glistened with a coating I assumed was poison.
Professor Glory, her giant swords ablaze with fire and sand, charged toward the smaller queen snarler, beginning the battle.
I refrained from using any spells, choosing to simply hack and slash my way through the snarlers by augmenting my sword. Their thick coats offered them a little resistance against spells and attacks, but it didn’t take much to kill them. Their corpses, however, were becoming a problem. The dead bodies began piling higher and higher around us, getting in the way of our attacks. Looking around, I was relieved to see that the vanguards were still holding up. Both Curtis and Claire had minor scratches and bruises, but they were in much better shape compared to the other students.
I took a glance back and what I saw caught me by surprise. Professor Glory was pushing the queens back by herself, but what was most surprising was the way she was doing it. She was obviously a dual elemental augmenter in earth and fire, but she was producing projectiles that looked like ice shards—
I looked carefully. No, it wasn’t ice. It was glass!
A small scratch on my arm brought my attention back to the fight in front of me but I couldn’t stop wondering how Professor Glory was able to do that. I knew about superheating sand, but producing that amount of heat while still battling—
An ear-splitting cry made us all turn to look. Professor Glory had just managed to land the final blow on the smaller queen, but she wasn’t in the best of shape—her armor was scratched and dented in various places and blood trickled down her cheeks.
“All right!”
“Nice!”
“Go Professor!”
The defeat of one of the queens dramatically boosted the morale of the class, and the students’ renewed vigor allowed us to fight back harder against the snarlers, which seemed to generate spontaneously.
I heard a loud crash, and a second later Professor Glory flew past the front line and landed hard against a wave of minion snarlers.
I allowed myself an instant to look toward the remaining queen, and a wave of nausea hit me at the sight of the second queen snarler gorging on the corpse of the fallen queen.
66
Widow’s Crypt III
I watched the larger queen devouring the smaller one, perplexed by what was happening in this dungeon. There were more than ten floors here, with minion snarlers inhabiting all but the tenth floor where the queen snarlers dwelled. This dungeon was considered a beginner dungeon because the queen never left the tenth floor, allowing for easy training up until the very last floor.
Although the queen snarler was a B-class mana beast, a large party of E-class adventurers was still capable of defeating it.
Which brought another question to mind: Was it normal to have more than one queen in the dungeon? From what I had read, queen species were very territorial and aggressive to any potential competitors or any threat to their den.
Professor Glory appeared unfazed, but it bothered me. This brought me to my last inquiry: Those queens were supposed to be B-class beasts, so how were they beating Professor Glory? An A-class adventurer should be able to easily dispose of the kind of queen snarler I had read about.
“That thing is strong,” Professor Glory groaned as she got up, cleaving a few minions out of her way.
I fended off waves of snarlers, but my thoughts kept returning to the queen snarler eating its former ally.
“Professor, does this usually happen?” I asked.
“Some species of mana beasts do indulge in cannibalism, but not like this.” Shaking her head, she picked up her other sword and approached her opponent.
As the queen snarler finished consuming its fallen comrade, a bizarre change occurred. Its once gray fur turned jet black, and the small horn on its forehead—which I had failed to notice at first—curved upward, growing substantially. The beady red eyes turned sharp and menacing, looking almost psychotic, and it began foaming from its mouth.
Professor Glory didn’t say anything but she slowly stepped away as the beast charged at her. Until now, getting back home safely had been just a matter of time, but a growing sense of worry culminated in my mind from the murderous intent the queen exuded.
“Professor! We can’t keep this up!” Tess shouted hoarsely over the growls and hisses of the enemy.
She didn’t look too good, and I realized we were now facing a serious problem, which should have been obvious.
“Everyone! No more fire spells! The entrance of the cave is blocked so our supply of oxygen is limited!” I roared.
The air was becoming thick with the smoke and fumes from the piles of scorched snarler corpses, and some of the weaker students were coughing uncontrollably.
The queen and Professor Glory were at a stalemate, with our professor drifting toward the losing side. I focused on the main battle and could see that the fighting style of the queen snarler had completely changed. There was no trace of hesitation or sense of self-preservation; each attack carried the intent to kill, with no concern for its own body. That should have been its downfall, but the queen snarler’s black fur seemed able to absorb most of the damage from Professor Glory’s attacks, while she had to work even harder than usual to keep up with the queen, since she couldn’t use any fire techniques.
“Arthur… I think… my mana core is… acting up.” Tess, who was a few yards behind me, fell to her knees, clutching her abdomen.
Damn it.
‘Papa! What’s wrong? Are you okay?’ Sylvie’s voice popped in my head. She must have sensed my agitation.
We ran into a problem. Get here as fast as you can and head down the stairs, I responded before returning my focus to the situation at hand.
Several factors weighed on my mind, and I began to feel a sense of déjà vu. I thought about my trip to the Dire Tombs. Did I have the power to clear the mountain of rubble blocking the front entrance to the stairs? And if I did, should I just take Tess and escape by ourselves?
No. Tess would never forgive me if she knew I had escaped with her and left everyone else in here. After opening a way back up, should I stay behind and help Professor Glory kill the mutated queen snarler, then?
Whatever decision I made, the first thing I had to do was remove this rubble. It was important that I cleared a path back up in one try, since it was obvious the queen wasn’t going to just stand by and let us all escape.
“Professor, keep the queen busy. I’ll try to make us a way out of here.” She gave me a nod and I got to work. Tess wasn’t in any state to help, and everyone else was too busy fending off the army of minion snarlers. Lucas had resorted to using heat spells to try and deter the snarlers since oxygen was becoming more and more scarce.
