Crystalline plates jutted from the new lizard’s shoulders and spine like knives. Veins of yellow-white streaked through the mineral, pulsing faintly with stored light mana. Its eyes were pits beneath a crown of glass, and its tongue was a rope with a spike at the tip, flexing in wait.
It hissed, the sound echoing forebodingly in the cave.
“Careful,” Asteria warned from behind him.
“It’s fine,” Orion said, and lifted his hand.
[Infinite Laser] spun together in just half a second, and a pencil-thin line of radiance shot out, humming as it sliced through the air between them.
The lizard lunged into it.
The crystal plates absorbed most of the light, though not all, as the beam scorched the edges and left burning scars, but enough was absorbed to turn the deadly energy into a mere annoyance.
The light entered the quartz like rain soaking into dry soil, causing the earth to sprout thorns. These thorns thickened and shone brighter, while new facets spread like frost over flesh. The ray kept going, causing the plates to expand to make room, and Orion watched it all with more than a little glee as he fueled the growth.
Eventually, he had to cut the beam when it became too draining and beat a hasty retreat as the creature whipped that barbed tongue through the space where his chest had been.
Steam rose from its face. The beam had wounded it, there was no doubt about that, but it wasn't quick enough or strong enough to overpower its regeneration. The life-force in the light had provided more than the heat had taken.
“Usually,” Asteria observed idly, “people don’t use spells they know will make their enemies stronger.”
“Then they should try harder,” Orion said, already inputting new parameters into the Crystal.
Light was not just one thing, neither here nor in his old world. In the rank-up traces he examined, he saw the division even more clearly, and while incorporating more aspects created a versatile tool, separating them allowed for selective use.
He moved the formula across the CC’s lattice, removed the regenerative bands, retained the cutting ones, and dismantled the portions that enabled biophotonic repair. Then he adjusted the beam further, aiming for a sterile, surgical expression of light mana.
The Crystal took his intent and created something quite vicious from it.
The creature advanced, its spikes glowing with a dangerous light, its jaw open wide enough to reveal a second row of crystalline protrusions where teeth should have been. Clearly, its goal was to swallow the next beam and then feed on his flesh.
“Eat this,” Orion said and fired.
The new ray wasn’t brighter. Rather, it was dimmer, but no less lethal for it. When it hit the left foreleg, the crystal plates there failed to absorb it and parted. A chunk of growth fell away with a clatter, and the beam bit into muscle. Real flesh cooked and shrank, and the lizard screamed and stumbled back.
The glow along its spikes flickered as energy once aimed at offense pulled back inward. Quartz bubbled at the wound, crawling like fungus, and tissue pulsed underneath it, frantic. It would close up over time.
Orion didn’t give it any.
He aimed the next beam along the leg, across the shoulder, toward the base of the skull. The creature batted at the air with its chin, trying to deflect the ray onto the crystal and away from the soft tissue. He pivoted with it, the CC shaving micro-inefficiencies with every passing second, reflecting his will into reality and finally carving out a good chunk of its tail before allowing the beam to dim.
The lizard seemed to realize it would die if it did nothing, so it charged. Pain drove it to move quickly in a straight line, but before it could reach him, it was hit by a kinetic blast he aimed at its chest, then skidded sideways into a stalagmite, cracking the pillar. It turned and charged again.
“So stubborn,” Orion muttered. He shot two additional beams into the shoulder, tearing out pieces of the mineral that was festering there. When its crystalline tendons snapped, the limb fell off, causing the beast’s head to drop as it growled in pain. Seizing the moment, he raked the ray across its throat.
Quartz swelled across the wound in desperation, almost bubbling from the heat forced through it. The creature was smart enough to protect its blood vessels with stone.
Orion disliked slow, painful deaths, even for monsters. It’s simply too inefficient.
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He aimed at the gap behind the jaw, where the crystal plates connected, and let light bloom, piercing into it and cutting through until its head rolled.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION
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Orion looked at the fallen monster and let [Verification Principle] scan over what remained of its plates. Now inert, the lattice appeared clearer—it was quartz, yes, but doped. There were seemingly random inclusions, patterned impurities in thin layers, alternating bands that, if stimulated with the right frequencies, could enable positive mana refraction.
It was essentially a biological photonic crystal. Possibly very useful for certain spells, but mostly ineffective for general magic.
He hummed, making a mental note to play with crystal configurations, and walked past it.
The tunnel’s ceiling disappeared into darkness. Crystals grew from the pillars, walls, and floor, while rivulets flowed along the path, shimmering under [Torchlight]’s shine, too viscous to be water, yet too thin to be metal. Orion felt a deep chill from it, even without getting too close. Mercury? No, but similar.
The growths emitted their own light, though it was faint and deceptive. Just bright enough to ruin night vision, yet too weak to function like a torch.
Without the ability to summon fire or light through magic, Orion had no doubt he would have been completely lost.
They encountered more lizards the deeper they went, and each iteration carried more crystals. One had plates that nearly overtook its eyes; another’s tail was a club of translucent spikes, dragging a groove in the floor.
Orion played with them, trying to understand their bizarre biology. He broke off plates during the fights and shone light through them as lenses to see how it changed.
Some bent the beam into a slow arc that warmed more than it cut; others made his victims scream in pain more intensely than they should have. He recorded everything he learned in the back of the CC, and when the experiments let a monster grow too bold, believing it was actually pushing him back, he ended it with altered [Infinite Lasers].
Once, he channeled healing light mana through a shard into a lizard’s shoulder to observe the crystal’s reaction. The plate bloomed so quickly that it cracked under its own expansion, and the beast lunged at him instantly, mouth suddenly wide enough to swallow his head.
Asteria flicked her hand, and the creature’s body hit the floor, its head vaporized in a silver flash.
“Do not,” she said softly, without raising her voice, “play with your food, Orion. I’ve taught you better than that.”
“Yes, mother,” Orion replied, chastened.
He toned down his curiosity a bit and kept moving forward. The bodies behind him grew, as did the numbers from the System, but it would still take him several more hours to reach level fifty, and he sensed that things were about to reach a head sooner than that.
The cave suddenly narrowed, then expanded again, and they stepped into a chamber. The ceiling rose beyond his light’s reach. A lake filled the center, made of liquid silver, with crystals as tall as men rising from it.
He took a breath and felt the [Mana Field] shift. It wasn’t Valderun’s blue, changeable hum, but something he remembered from late nights on a mountainside, from the Sanctum’s chapel when he was forced in during holy days.
He turned to tell his mother, but found only empty air. The same was true for Pauline.
He didn’t panic. He doubted anything in this cave could defeat his mother, let alone do so that fast.
“Splendid,” he said to himself, and began preparing for the final confrontation he knew was coming, especially since the more he waited, the less the Mana Field would allow him to draw different kinds of mana, as it was clearly moving toward a uniformity of the light.
The CC spun up several kinetic pulses and kept them on a hair trigger. [Haunted Night] lingered at the back of his mind, and he set two antigravity profiles while keeping a handful of altered [Infinite Lasers] coiled and ready. He wasn’t going to get caught with only one option.
The lizards in the chamber watched with the indifference of cats. One basked along a crystal, tongue hanging out and eyes half-closed. Another licked the silver water's edge with an expression that could be interpreted as bliss, with a little imagination.
Orion slowly walked the perimeter, letting the changes in the Field wash over him. He could feel how easily light moved here and how weak everything else was.
Elemental magic is a no-go here. I could try to force my personalized spells, but it’s smarter to stick with what I’ve already prepared so I don't tire myself out.
He came around the lake and saw her.
The veiled woman stood where the rock met the water, carved from the same crystal that was everywhere else, and yet not. The veil hid a face he knew he would recognize, especially since her hands rested on a crescent at her waist.
He knew why the Field felt like the Sanctum then.
“The Moon Mother,” he said, and the chamber hummed at his acknowledgment.
A rumble echoed. Above, a seam broke through the dense stone, and the sky peeked through in a slit no wider than a plate.
It should have looked blue, but instead, moonlight spilled in. The statue absorbed the light and glowed from inside, with beams of light flowing through veins that hadn’t been visible until a moment ago.
The Field twisted again. Light mana suffocated everything else, and Orion knew that summoning any spells other than the Sanctum’s would now be impossible.
The lake bulged and split open. Something enormous pushed its way through the metallic water—the mother of all the lizards he had fought so far, with plates like armor, spikes as long as spears, and a tongue like a harpoon. It moved faster than something that size should have been able to, lunging his way without hesitation.
Orion triggered the first kinetic pulse reflexively. It struck the beast under the chin and absorbed some of the charge's force, but it didn’t stop it.
He rolled sideways and felt the spike-tongue pass by his ribs by an inch, and delivered the second pulse into the side of its skull. The impact caused the crystals around the lake to ring like a chorus of bells as it crashed against them, but the beast merely shook its head and lunged again.
“Fine,” Orion snapped. “Light it is.”
Three altered [Infinite Lasers] slammed into the side of its neck. They bit, hissed, and cut, much to its bellowed surprise. Thick flesh smoked, and quartz swelled over the wounds, sealing them instantly, leaving the massive reptile free to lunge again, forcing Orion to waste another kinetic push to get out of its way.
If he’d been as limited as this test clearly aimed for him to be, he would have been in trouble right then and there. Luckily, he was way too paranoid.
[Haunted Night] surged out of him like a cold front, sweeping across the crystal plates and searching for the seams to get in. The soft glow of the Mana field fell silent, leaving them in frozen stillness.
The beast recoiled as if a vital part of its body had been ripped away, and the glow of its spikes flickered and faded.
“You should have told me,” Orion shouted to the empty air, “if you wanted me to only use light!”
He grabbed the first antigravity spell and hurled it beneath the beast’s chest. The lizard rose three feet, arms whirling in confusion from the sudden change. Orion then cut the lift and pushed down forcefully with more than a little spite.
It hit a crystal spike neck-first.
The crack was deafening. The beast’s legs kicked twice out of reflex, then stopped. Silver water lapped against the plates, and soon it vanished beneath it once more.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION
+11,450 Exp
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