FVN [337] 4.58 Ancient Lake VII
[337] 4.58 Ancient Lake VII
“Well, that flashy little display of yours is certainly a… way to deal with the problem,” Hank says. “Although it would behoove me to mention that skipping those towers means forgoing the potential Experience that we would acquire. And the potential treasure.”“No one said that we couldn’t scour the halls for treasure later,” I say. I continue before Hank can get a word in. “After this boss is taken care of and we get the levels from it. Now, before you say anything, maybe those items we find help us in boss monster eradication. If they exist. However, we’re all getting fatigued, you’re dealing with early-stage light intoxication, for lack of a better term, and the goddesses only know how badly we’ll get roughed up while we’re fighting in there. No, we should fight the boss now, while we’re relatively healthy. Either that, or we turn tail and head back to your lab without clearing the dungeon.”
Hank pauses for two seconds, then shrugs. “Much as I don’t appreciate the tone, I can’t find any fault in your words. Anyway, let’s be on our way.”
We don’t make it more than a few steps inside before the door snaps back on us. Maybe I could teleport the three of us out if it really came to it, but considering that my body reflexively recoils at the mere thought, I’m filing this under ‘do not open except as an absolute last resort’. Pushing the door yields no purchase. It seems that we won’t be leaving except by paying the boss a beating, and from Hank’s and Chloe’s reactions, they’ve reached the same conclusion.
The antechamber is quiet. Far too quiet. Other than footsteps, breaths, and heartbeats, the only other sounds in the room are those of a few large bats flying around near the ceiling. I’d not realized until just now how loud the caverns outside were, with the roiling lava punctuated by the footsteps of those stone beasts that seemed oddly familiar.
In fact, in a strange sense of déjà vu, this entire place feels oddly familiar. I’ve definitely never been here before— I wouldn’t have even thought to explore a volcanic cavern in my wildest nightmares. And yet, with each step I take, it all seems like something I once dreamed, or maybe out of a cartoon? Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough of a grasp on those errant memories to piece them together into anything coherent.
In a welcome change of pace from the outside world, the environment is cool and comfortable, at least relatively speaking. Hank looks visibly relieved. Though Chloe is doing her best not to show it, even going so far as to obfuscate her feelings through our bond, I can tell she’s grateful for the chance to catch her breath in an environment less sticky and far closer to room temperature. I remain unaffected, but the calm before the storm gives me a welcome chance to calm my mind and mentally prepare myself for the battle that surely awaits us.
We head up a short flight of stairs and, after a bit of discussion, make our way to the left. No particular reason to go that way other than vague feelings and– Welp, out of the cooling rack and back into the fire. Hank recoils as we step into the room with numerous columns jutting out of a sea of lava that radiates a powerful incandescent glow.
“I’m…” He shakes his head. “I won’t lie to you and say that I’m fine. Just that I won’t be too effective in the next fight as I am now. But I will still assist with all the power I can muster.”
On the opposite side of the chamber is a larger door that looks terribly ornate. It’s locked, of course, and then it hits me exactly where I’ve seen something like this. A lot less chanting than in my memories. Just the quiet din of bubbling magma to fill the air. Normally, it would again require going through a lot more of this temple— and I’m now quite sure it is a temple— and solving a lot of puzzles and just overall eating up a lot of time.
Thankfully, locked doors pose less of a blockade and more a slight inconvenience. And this time, just the far easier to cast and less [Ether] intensive [Unlock] spell is sufficient to bust open the half-ton padlock and enable our entrance into the chamber where I was quite certain at this point we’d find a certain slithering beast waiting for us.
“Nothing?” Hank asks as we enter the boss’s chamber
“Oh, no,” I say. “Definitely not nothing. The keeper is just sleeping. Shall we pay her a visit.”
“Her?” Chloe asks. “How are you so sure it’s a her?”
“Well…” I stammer. Truth be told, I don’t know for sure its gender, but I’m pretty sure we’re about to fight a dragon.”
“A dragon,” Hank and Chloe both say in unison. “An actual, honest to goodness dragon?” Hank continues. “I pray to every deity that you are wrong; if you are right, we are fucked.”
“Do you know something special about dragons that we don’t?” Chloe asks. “We’ve already put down one wyvern, and that was… what, thirty-five levels ago?”
“About that, yeah,” I say.
“A wyvern, yes. And a lesser wyvern at that,” Hank says. “But even comparing a greater wyvern to a true dragon is an insult to the latter. Let us hope, for all our sakes, that we are dealing with one of the lesser kin of such creatures. If we are so fortunate, we just might find a way to survive this fight.”
“It comes,” Chloe says.
Her hand presses upon me, filling me in the light of [Saintess’s Cloister]. Fully healed on top of that, I can now tank a frankly-absurd thirty-thousand points of damage, plus a trivial but non-zero amount thanks to the accelerated regeneration brought about by [Valkyrion’s Body]. Quite frankly, and at the risk of tempting the Fates, I was absurdly hard to kill even without my two currently inactive Skill and Trait.
Right on cue, with a screeching hiss, the serpentine creature, a fifty-foot long and slender-bodied eastern dragon, rises out of one of the crevices in the chamber. It flies around and begins breathing fire as seemingly all dragons must. I counter it with a watery [Elemental Ether Strike], and while we are all spared both the heat and the flames, Hank does not emerge from the onslaught unscathed. Even curled up and cloaked in his umbral mantle, his narrowed eyes and gritted teeth show the full extent of the anguish he experienced just from the flames’ scarlet blaze.
The dragon sinks back into the lava below, biding its time to strike. But from where will it attack? The thick layer of lava obfuscates my [Valkyrion’s Perception], forcing my eyes to flutter back and forth for any signs of movement rippling upon the surface. Chloe stands at my back, the two of us hovering in midair. Part of my gaze is on Hank; he’s definitely not going to have a fun rest of the day after we get done here.
“We need to finish this fight quickly,” I tell Chloe telepathically. “No time to drag this out. If we don’t want your father to be permanently crippled by the light here.”
“Any ideas on how to fight this serpent-dragon?”
“Well, if I had to guess, we need to smash the creature’s armored head, then pelt it with our strongest attacks once it does. Sadly, we both have slashing weapons–”
“Sera.” Chloe gives me a flat look. “Just use the butt end of your swordstaff. That is the whole reason why you went with a swordstaff, is it not?”
“That and the greater attack range, but, yes.” I sigh. “I’m not confident that it has enough weight behind it to deal the sort of crushing blow we need, but it’s the best we have right now.”
“There!” Chloe says. In the span of half a second, I turn toward where Chloe is pointing and notice the bulge of lava. But it’s just a bubble of trapped gas, popping to the surface with no dragon to follow.
“Damn…” Chloe takes a short breath. “Do you think it’s just trying to bide its time, knowing that we have to go on the offensive sooner rather than later?”
“Maybe. But I think I can come up with a way that will buy Hank a little more time.”
“Do it.”
I fly closer to the surface, to the place where Hank is currently curled up, trying to cover his exposed face and hands from the magmatic light. I summon [Watery Sphere] and drop it down onto the lava’s surface. I wait for seconds with bated breath, watching as a cloud of superheated steam rises to cover my face with a pleasant sensation. And then, to my great relief, it actually works. The magma near Hank cools and hardens, forming a shell that won’t stay solid forever, but will buy him… I don’t know, minutes, maybe, for us to take the dragon down.
“Behind you!” Chloe shouts.
It seems that our scaled friend has taken the bait. For an instant, the serpentine monster rears its ugly armored head out of the ground. I charge toward it, but as expected, it’s just a feint. It slips back underground before I can get within half a dozen feet. Behind? No, too obvious. My eyes flicker right, then I dart left, just in time to catch the monster as it rises once again… Another ruse, and it’s back underground yet again.
Perhaps, though, I can use the threat of destroying its home to bait it out. Another [Watery Sphere], another six hundred points of [Ether], and I create another large mass of solid rock on which to stand. Better still, the entire room is dimming just a bit from the slightly lowered overall temperature of the room, turning from a powerful orange to a slightly-less bright orange-red.
Then another [Watery Sphere], then another. I can only do this another ten times, but I don’t have to inform our opponent of this limitation. And thanks to [Defiant Spirit] continuing to grant me complete immunity to [Ether Strain], it won’t be able to judge my weakness and intuit my total [Ether] capacity, either.
It works, and perhaps a little too well for comfort. With another shriek straight out of a horror novel, the lava dragon rises out of the rapidly cooling ground right behind me. Chloe is the first to reach it, diving down at top speed and delivering a pair of stabbing blows right to the small slits the creature has for eyes.
That buys me a crucial moment to wind up my own attack. While Filia lacks the sheer mass to truly deliver the crushing blow I need, I can substitute more velocity to get the momentum I seek. I charge my [Impulse] glyph and target my arms, waiting until the instant I let loose to send my attack surging forward.
To my relief and horror and equal measure, I don’t merely smash the metallic carapace on its head. I shatter right through it as though the thing never existed at all, cleave right through its gray matter, and emerge out the other side without so much as slowing down. Chloe attacks once more, and together, the two of us begin unleashing attack after attack toward the beast, dodging every attempt as it tries to bite and thrash and breathe flames upon us.
It’s not nearly as physically strong as I would have imagined, and it doesn’t take long to figure out why. It seemed content earlier to simply wait us out after its initial emergence and flaming breath failed to subdue us. Perhaps it simply uses the hundreds of degrees to cook its food alive, relying on [Fire Immunity] to wear its meals down before helping itself to dinner.
If only we didn’t have me, and my ability to use every element, including [Water], I suspect we too would have fallen victim to that simple but deadly tactic. I should have seen it earlier, long before we had entered the room, but I was too transfixed on what I knew, what I believed would carry over from my… memories, so to speak. I couldn’t think of any other possibility, and for my hubris, Hank had to suffer so much.
I’m going to owe him and Chloe both multiple apologies before this is all said and done.
A door behind me opens, leading into the core room. But first, three treasure chests await. Seems we might just get some reward for our trouble after all.
[You have slain Lava Dragon Golwyr (Level 71). You have gained a boosted 280,000 Experience]
[You have gained enough Experience to reach Level 75. [Strength] +1, [Vitality] +1. Please assign free stat points (Remaining: 11).]
[Maximum Health increases by [Vitality] x 2 + Current Level + Rand[1,3] = 419]
[Maximum Ether increases by [Mind] + Current Level + Rand[0,2] = 294]
[Level: 75; Experience: 9,027,877; To Next: 169,193]
[Current Stats: [Health]: 14,957 / 15,898; [Ether]: 4,795 / 11,829]
[Current Stats: [Strength]: 342 (Base: 140); [Speed]: 349 (Base: 143); [Vitality]: 417 (Base: 171); [Mind]: 534 (Base: 219)]
[Your [Elemental Ether Strike (Rank IX)] has upgraded to [Elemental Ether Strike (Rank X)].]
[Your [Reconfiguration (Rank XII)] has upgraded to [Reconfiguration (Rank XIII)].]