The electric wall dropped. Blazing pushed down the hall without any hesitation, hefting her heavy greatsword into several massive swings. Fire arced from her blade, creating ranged slashes akin to Ether Slash. Said slashes wiped out whole groups of mummies, and cleared the way forward.
Just behind her, Bruce didn’t let up for a single moment. His LMG tore down the hall, suppressing and slaughtering the undead creatures wrapped in blue cloth. It kept them staggered back enough that Blazing could easily move forward through the mass of undead.
As for me? I had no issues. At first, there wasn’t anything behind us in the first place. That changed when we got partly down the hall. Blue cloth surged from cracks in the sandstone and wrapped around corpses. It reanimated the mummies just after we passed through the place. Still, I wasn’t worried.
Thorn Weave shots from Thorn’s Defiance scattered behind us, creating nets to catch most of the mummies. Those that closed in closer caught the blade of a scythe. It’d been a while since I used scythes, but using one during my fight with Temoc reminded me just how fun they were. They weren’t the most effective if I really wanted to min-max my weapon choice, but they were a nice mix up.
Here? With shambling mummies that moved quite slow? I was literally culling through their ranks like a peasant with their crops. Ether Physique boosting my strength and Ether Reinforcement strengthening the scythe’s edge made the blade cut through the mummies and even the sandstone like they weren’t even there.
Each flash of my scythe brought down… only one or two at most. Nothing really got past the green electricity brambles of Thorn Weave in the first place. Rearguard was practically a breeze all the way down the tunnel.
”Look out!” Bruce shouted from behind me.
I’d been walking backward most of the way, keeping entirely focused on our back. At his shout, I flicked around just in time to catch the blue shimmering flames of a fireball lancing toward me. I reacted on pure muscle memory, reaching for the weave to cast the fifth-string Counterspell-
I threw myself to the side, crouching low to the ground with my scythe spiked into a mummy’s head. The fireball whizzed just past my ear and exploded into a mummy staggering toward me. Said mummy scattered into dozens of pieces, blown across the entire area.
Right- right… I couldn't cast it quite yet. A deeply uncomfortable feeling settled through me for a moment, only made worse by the dozens of other fireballs whizzing toward us. Their source? Staff holding mummies far down the hall.
I slapped my hand into the ground, sending white Ebonshroud flowing forward to make a shield in front of me. Etheric Reinforcement channeled down through the tendril of Ebonshroud on the floor connecting me to the shield, reinforcing the substance.
It didn’t matter in the first place though. After the first fireball sent down the hall, Blazing was ready. The fireballs surged as if they were magnetically drawn to her. All fire throughout the hall, in fact, was drawn to her. It coalesced, turning into an incredibly bright ball in her hand.
Wooonggg~!
The bright ball blasted out into a brilliant beam. The sandstone flashed with fiery red illumination, banishing even a hint of a shadow. The beam traveled down the entire hall, incinerating the length of it and the spellcasting mummies down at the end in one smooth motion.
The hall itself changed. Instead of the squarish shape that it’d been, it melted out into a perfect cylinder following the length of her fire beam. It was glossy smooth too, like some kind of glass. Literally nothing in the area remained after the fire beam.
The ambient heat inside of the pyramid, already intensely hot and made worse by recent exercise, spiked even further. Sweat beaded up on my brow. I diverted a small flow of Ebonshroud up, wicking away the sweat before it could drop into my eyes. A moment passed, and then a torrent of cooler air flooded into the pyramid to fill the void.
I stood up, flicking my scythe to cleave through two more mummies before they could approach me. With practised ease, I tossed the scythe to the side. A white tendril shot out from my jacket, holding it in place while I summoned out the heavy sniper. A single shot of Thorn Weave cleared our back entirely.
“The path’s clear!” Blazing shouted. She hefted her greatsword once more, though her movements lagged slightly after the flaming beam. “Let’s move!”
The two wasted no time. I followed at a quick pace, absorbing my useless shield in passing. I slowed every so often to fire a shot of my freshly reloaded Thorn’s Defiance down the hall. After a time, no more mummies rose to contest us. The blue cloth drifted, fading back into the sandstone all throughout the hall.
“Is that… it?” Bruce asked from the middle of the group. At his words, we slowed down to a casual walk with our guards raised.
”Saving. Itself,” I offered. If the boss monster saw that we were unaffected by its mummy waves, maybe it was keeping the rest of its power for the final confrontation? It would suggest this necromancer had some level of intelligence to it. And that it was wary of our strength.
Was it even a necromancer in the first place though? I glanced back down the path. It wasn’t technically reanimating the dead. It was closer to some kind of cloth golem using the corpses as a conduit rather then a true undead.
”Maybe. Keep your guards up.” Blazing ordered, hefting her greatsword. “So far you two have been doing fine, but there’s a chance I take over if the rift difficulty spikes much more than this.”
”Will that affect our grades?” Bruce got to the crux of the matter.
”No… as long as you survive, you’ve both passed in my eyes. In terms of judgement, combat sense, and teamwork, at least. Might want to look at some firepower improvements though, Bruce.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
His chrome shifted slightly, pulling apart to show the internal workings. He had dozens of different mechanisms and weapons built into his body. ”This isn’t even my final form.”
[Nighteye covers her ears with her paws. Why is it that you attract all of the crazies?]
I’m sure I don’t know what you mean… besides, that was kind of a sick line, wasn’t it? Maybe I should steal-
[Nighteye’s eyes narrow into a glare. If you say that, she’ll disown you, kitten.]
Fine, fine… have it your way. That was too embarrassing, but Sigma Grindset wasn’t? Stop moving the bar, cat. It’s getting really confusing to keep track of.
We walked down the burned out tunnel, going deeper and deeper into the pyramid. It exited out below us and opened out into some kind of cavernous room. The room was oppressively dark even to my eyes.
I followed after the fireteam, getting my first real look at it. The massive space was some kind of ritual chamber by the looks of things. That wasn’t what drew my attention though. No, that honor belonged to the massive entity wrapped around the walls of the space.
A snake, titanic and intimidating, entwined through pillars along the gargantuan chamber. It snaked over itself several dozen times, wrapping and rewrapping till the sandstone walls were completely obscured by its scales. Said scales seemed to absorb the ambient light like miniature black holes.
Surprisingly, there was still light down here. Warriors, skeletal husks of them at least, lay in the center of the room. They were protected by a golden divine light shining across the space. It emanated from a lantern tightly grasped by a dead warrior. The pressing darkness receded where the divine light radiated from it.
A glint from the snake’s head caught the light. It was a massive dagger, sliced clean through the snake’s neck in a decapitory strike. The snake’s tongue lulled out of its mouth, and dark blood stained the sandstone underneath it. Its eyes, a twisted purple, lay popped open in shock. Rather, eye. Its other one was gone as if torn from its socket.
The entire coiled body of the gargantuan serpent radiated an awful feeling. Somewhere in between contamination and pure, unadulterated hatred. It was definitely dead though. There were six more knives stabbed into its body, pinning it to the walls of the ritual chamber.
What wasn’t dead, however, was an orb floating just in the middle of the space. It was made of the same blue cloth that the mummies had wrapped around them. The blue cloth flowed around the orb, wrapping and twisting like thousands of small snakes.
The blue cloth separated, revealing the missing eye of the serpent. Malevolent red light started to seep out of the cracks in the sandstone like blood welling up from a subterranean level. An ancient voice called out, radiating not through the space, but through my very head. “New blood, free me of thisss eternal night!”
Its vile voice pulsed through me. It had a faintly seductive property, one that lost its hold on me almost immediately. The others, although they likely couldn’t understand the voice, were also affected by the seductive property. They froze up, and their eyes twisted and zoned out.
The eye stared down with an eerie purple glow. I met it for just a moment, feeling my body harden and tense up. The sensation faded when I looked away from its gaze. My companion, Bruce, wasn’t so lucky. His skin and metal began to transform into stone-
I lightly smacked him over the head with the butt of my scythe, knocking his head to the side. “Don’t look.”
As soon as his eyes shifted away from the petrifying gaze, his flesh and chrome returned to normal. “Thanks.”
Blazing made the first move while I was saving Bruce. Fire erupted all around her, and wrapped her in a pair of flaming wings. They flapped, sending her up into the air. Bits of fire dripped off of her like a liquid. It flowed down to encase her in a flaming set of armor. Guess that was why she was called Blazing?
”Moon! Watch our backs. Don’t forget this guy’s a summoner! Bruce, with me! Heaviest guns you can!” Blazing took charge in an instant. Guess it passed her bottom line.
She didn’t fly toward the snake eye with her wings. Instead, she dipped down toward the golden lantern shining through the space. It obviously had some kind of deterrent effect against the snake to keep the warriors from reanimiating.
Bruce’s entire body began to shift, bulking up and growing at a rapid rate. The chrome merged and melted with dozens of fine components, turning him into a micro tank. His LMG and all its ammo dropped off to the side. His arms were too busy shifting to hold onto them.
One arm turned into some kind of plasma weapon that started to glow an ominous blue. The other was a full-fledged rocket launcher, which immediately fired off a rocket into the blue cloth. The cloth took the explosion, protecting the eye in the middle.
“Ah-hahahaha!” Several guns popped up from his shoulders and unloaded into the cloth. They were arcanite rounds based on the faint trails of ether left through the air.
“…” I watched the guy go berserk with firepower for a moment and then adjusted my earbuds, blocking out more of the racket. I turned back the way we came—already there were hundreds of mummies starting to pile up. They were enhanced, too. The bones seemed to absorb the faint red light seeping out of the pyramid.
Wumph!
A heavy shot from Thorn’s defiance cleared out a path for a moment, giving me time to adjust. An Ebonshroud tendril snaked out toward Bruce’s discarded LMG and all its ammo, pulling them to my side. The white substance flowed through the gaps in the gun a I used it like a scanner.
I’d already been doing research on firearms in my free time. Add in the deep scan with Ebonshroud? I used that information to create a pure white model of the LMG just to my side. A dangling tendril held it aloft.
I followed the reload method of Bruce from memory, slapping new belts of ammo into both LMGs. One grey, one white, both dangled from Ebonshroud tendrils. I used Brace, manipulating the ability not only to brace my body, but to brace the Ebonshroud ‘turrets’. Etheric Reinforcement likewise flowed and ensured they were strong enough to hold through the kick.
Rat-tat-tat-tat~!
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
Both opened fire on either side of my like wings, firing away into the approaching mummies. The small caliber bullets weren’t nearly as effective against the enhanced mummies, though still did their job with concentrated fire. This wouldn’t be as easy as I hoped it would.
My scythe flicked forward and buried itself into the wall. Will Wire followed out a moment later, grabbing onto the weapon and flicking it around like a phantom hand. With each passing moment, I strengthened my net of wire, creating a perfect defensive line they’d never hope to pass through.
As for me… I just sat back and watched the mayhem. It took quite a bit of brainpower to control everything manually. The LMGs were just point and hold. They only took more focus when I needed to reload. The scythe flicking down the hall was the real draw though.
I summoned out Thorn’s Defiance once more and fired a Thorn Weave down the hall. I almost enhanced it with Frost Fang, but I was starting to feel the draw of ether with everything active all at one. It was fine though. The basic electric bramble did its job perfectly. It stalled the mummies even further than my newly acquired arsenal already did.
Now I just needed to hold out until they took down the boss.
[Nighteye watches the two fight. Or you could step in yourself?]
I eyed Bruce’s Mascot buzzing around the room. Best let them have their time to shine. Nobody liked a stage hog. I was more than content with my role here.
— - —
AN: It’s finally happening. I’m a nervous wreck about it, but my first published book, Outrun - Neon Divide, is live on amazon! It has a KU and Audible. If you want to check it out, I’d greatly appreciate it.
