Even with closed eyes, he can feel her presence. The thick streams of meaning and information flowing from the lounging figure betray her seemingly relaxed posture. Bassik wished he had a hat to nervously hold in front of himself. Swallowing once again, he approaches the gorgeous woman.
“M-miss Re-Haan? I might have something important to report...” He suddenly forgets what to do with his hands. The way they awkwardly hang at his sides seems stupid all of a sudden.
Her pale eyes open and Bassik sees her slitted pupils turn into round ones as soon as her gaze lands on him. White hair frames her delicate face, sharp angles forming an interplay of hard and soft lines that briefly takes his breath away. He never had these problems as a heartcore, sea take him! He should not have stuffed everything in his eyes after all.
“Bassik, what’s wrong? You’re free right now.” Her small smile and slightly raised eyebrow snap Bassik out of his daze and he immediately stands straighter.
“Do you see that, miss?” He points upwards, using the lifted hand to shield his eyes.
“The moon?”
Bassik glances upwards quickly and immediately regrets it. The moon is shining with blinding light again. Hunching down and rubbing his eyes, he starts talking, telling her of his recultivation, his eyecore and the weird things he is seeing.
Bassik finished his story by comparing Re-Haan’s aura and the moons intensifying glow. Like a candle and a burning village, he tells her. He looks up only after his eyes stop burning, if only to do something about the lengthening silence. He sees a grim frowning face when he looks up.
“Fuck,” is all the mighty dragoness replies.
⁂
“Come on ya lame-ass ninnies! No student of mine quits unless they’re dead. Hey, big guy, I see you’re still breathing, so how bad can it be?” I kick Rodrick, more to check whether or not he has succumbed to his wounds than to irritate him. He really is one lucky guy, the only reason he is still alive are his incredibly sturdy bones.
“Leave him be, Teach, I’ve just managed to gather enough qi to stop his bleeding, don't damage the goods any further.” Vox is sucking on his teeth while kneeled down next to Rodrick. He is still shivering and the thick layer of ice in his hair and on his shoulders is slowly melting.
The last few levels have been rather tough, but all my students have persevered so far. We are in the small room between every ten levels, the stairway down and swirling darkness door places opposite the entrance.
I walk over to Selis and see her rocking back and forth, her arms wrapped around her torso, whispering to herself. “..fire ever and then I will get all the blankets ever and never leave the warmth again. Then I will order everyone to set the entire world on fire, making it warm everywhere, always. Never cold anymore...”
The previous level - level one hundred and fifty - was a rather difficult-to-traverse room made up of vertical ice caves. Selis tried to mould the walls into inset walkways but ran out of qi halfway through. Her half-conscious form was then tossed back and forth by Vox and Tess as they traversed the vertical walls, holding on to handholds made by an industriously chopping Rodrick, while under attack by a constant stream of ice monsters, and while needing to keep warm in temperatures many tens of degrees below zero.
Rodrick actually managed to keep up with the rest, to my mild surprise. I'm not sure whether I should be impressed with the large beastkin or disappointed with the five original students. Bord was too busy with keeping the large variety of ice monsters at bay for him to give his teammates a gravity boost and Vox was busy with keeping everyone in minimum-functioning condition.
The level before that was a never ending maze of interwoven tree branches. They were still regaining their breath from all the scaled monkeys that had been chasing them when they had to fight off these two new enemies - monsters and extremely cold temperatures.
The main problem my students are facing is their lacking reserves. There is just a single element of mana in these levels, and fusing one type of mana into qi is not efficient at all. It explains why Bord and Rodrick - both less dependent on burning qi to attack - are doing so great.
I really shouldn’t be too hard on them. A comparable cultivator team from the cultivation world would have burned through their qi in the first fifty floors. They then would have pulled out their emergency teleportation slips when they discovered their precious breathing techniques were useless in a qi-less environment.
I gingerly pat the shivering blue haired girl’s wet head, wipe my hand and walk on. Tess has snatched up Lola and is trying to wrap herself around the small rabbit. She actually growls at Ket when he comes near her. I stand next to the bedraggled boy and join him in staring down at the bundle of wet cloth and black hair.
“H-how far did you get last time? How did you make it look so easy back then?”
“Heartcore. Bord and Rodrick are doing great.” I look at the unconscious heap of wounds and blood-covered rags that still vaguely resembles a certain lumberjack. “Relatively great.” I look a bit further and see Bord is also lying in a large heap. He keeps rubbing his stomach and is softly whining. He demanded everyone’s food after each level, explaining how he had continued to save everyone until he had eaten every single scrap they were carrying.
“Still does not make sense. You were a dual solid core cultivator back then but the way you, wait. No, all movements I observed were within parameters… how...”
“Basically, experience. These dungeons are amazing training grounds. The cultivation world had all of these aspects but less so. For example. there was an area where an immortal ice dragon died, and its influence formed enormous swathes of magical ice. The previous level is the perfect training ground to prepare for something like that.”
Ket frowns and the sluggish metal contraption around his head speeds up some as his body slowly warms up.
“The nature level before that one was perfect training for adventuring inside a sentient jungle or forest. The level before that dealt with sensory deprivation, ideal for training against nearly all forms of illusion magic and formations. This place is a massive training ground.”
“Why are the first levels so normal then? They are just corridors or rooms with spawning monsters...” Ket still has a difficult expression on his face.
“Because these kinds of specialized training courses build upon the basics. There is no need to teach advanced combat and survival techniques to someone who doesn’t even know how to throw a punch.” I wonder why it took me so long to realize this fact. Maybe it’s because I’m seeing the effects on my students instead of experiencing these things myself?
“But ,Teach, we came in totally unprepared and undersupplied. We are totally screwed if we need to go on without resupplying.” I look down at Tess, who seems to be partially recovered.
“Sure, if you keep going through these levels the dumb brute force way that you have been going. Why do you guys keep choosing these dumbass ways of crossing levels anyway?”
“Hey, you try it. Wait, you already did.” Selis’ furious indignation melts as she recalls my and Lola’s delve that they spied on.
“Selis, why did you carve away such a large volume of ice when a simple walkway would have sufficed? Rodrick, why did you insist on chopping down that large section of trees in the level before? It didn’t really do anything and it wasted fifteen minutes. Ket, why didn’t you use metal sand to make a sensor net in the level before? Bord, why did you exhaust yourself by making everyone weightless when a simple gravity reversal would have sufficed? Tess, why did you keep pulling those massive monsters inside the shadow, knowingly wasting all that qi for little gain? Vox, why do you insist on healing at a distance when touch healing is much more efficient? None of the remote heals were for fatal injuries. And all of you, what are you hurrying so much for?”
I had lost myself a bit there, recounting a few of the glaringly obvious faults. To be totally honest, the short-sighted way in which they were solving the problems right in f
ront of them without any long-term planning was getting on my nerves. I look at the small group and see them all looking away from my gaze while also avoiding each other's eyes.
“Um, I did it because that seemed the best? I don’t really know how strong ice is...” Selis speaks up first.
“Ket, what would the minimum thickness for a material-efficient walkway made from that ice need to be?” I turn to Ket.
“Ten centimetres with triangular supporting beams every meter or so,” Ket replies as the calculator around his head slows back down. Bord’s eyes light up for a second, but he continues scratching his ass when no more triangles are mentioned.
“Rodrick, did you need that heal in the jungle level or could you have waited a minute?”
“I was closing that gash myself. I appreciated the heal, believe me, but I could have kept going at least a half an hour.”
“But I could see your bone through the cut!” is Vox’s indignant reply.
The group starts chatting amongst themselves, going over a large series of events and what they could have done better. I see a lot of “ah, of course!” moments as a different perspective leads them to a much more efficient solution.
“Okay, take your time. You guys should be able to get to level one hundred and sixty without any issues if you all work together. I am going on ahead.” We’ve been down here for at least four days now. I’ve got this weird feeling that I need to hurry. I can’t find anything wrong, not even when querying Database, so I suspect that my heartcore is picking up on some danger that I’m not seeing.
Before they can even protest, I hurry down the stairwell, a chorus of complaining shouts following me down.
chapter forty-three
Lambasting
I remember the previous levels clearly, having run through them up to the hundred and sixtieth level. I had two solid cores back then, both filled with liquified potential that crystallized into a higher and more potent concentration. I stopped back then because I was not having any fun, the dense mana basically blinding me.
I can’t help but frown as I look over this level. I feel anger and compassion in the air, cementing this one as one of the nature-themed levels. The crystals here are present but are in odd places. The mana levels are also lower. This has led me to suspect that some levels have their mana in the air while others store it in crystals.
I then realize that those levels are meant for pressure resistance training. Spiritual pressure is a very real thing; people can faint or die from being exposed to a large amount of loose power. That mystery solved, I look around again.
It’s basically shrooms everywhere. The floor looks like deceptively-normal soil. Large pale-preen trunks of matte material sprout from the dark ground at random intervals. Green gems of a near white lustre are embedded inside the rather large forms at regular intervals. The nearly white glow coming from them lights up the large hoods stretching above me. I’m inside a massive mushroom forest.
I’m very tempted to go and pull the crystals from the stems - their energy density is rather high - but doing so will set a transformation process in motion that I’m not a fan of.
“Really, Lola? Again? Didn't the last fifteen teach you any lessons?” Lola is once again sniffing one of the silent giants, and there she goes again, taking a big bite out of the thick trunk. The entire mushroom trembles, bending and twisting as it contorts. It then pulls its thin roots free from the soil as its stem splits into arms and legs. Lola hops away, chewing happily as a pissed-off mushroom man starts running after her.
She swallows and jumps at her pursuer, taking another sizable bite and exposing one of its shining gems. Large, rough arms made from translucent fungus smash her previous location, Lola having disappeared a fraction of a second earlier.
“Stop taunting the poor sod and finish it.” She is now sitting on its crown, taking big bites out of its shiny cap. Blue fog starts swirling around the critter, and I stop myself from grinning, a rather large nail made from ice forms next to her as she condenses the water in the air. The mushroom’s hand smashes down on her, driving the four-meter long spike into the dumb fungus' control centre. It falls down with a slow crash, mana crystals falling out of its disintegrating limbs.
Lola then hops my way and stands on her hind legs, tilting her head as if asking for praise. “Yeah, okay, that one was pretty cool.”
I happily oblige her as I pick her up. She has been making great progress in her fine control. She was a bundle of unstable fire and ice when she somehow formed her foundation. I’ve been helping her gain fine control of the large sources of hot and cold inside her and my sword as we delve deeper.
“Wanna race again?” I ask her.
Her ears shoot upwards and wiggle back and forth.
“3…” I lower myself in a sprinter pose while grabbing the handle of my sword.
“2...” and I shoot towards the closest mushroom, slicing it in half with a casual swing. I ignore Lola’s indignant screech at my false start and form a new mental process. I let it take up a large portion of my braincore, telling it to figure out the most efficient way to chop these mushrooms down with just my physical strength. I then tell it to time-dilate as needed while letting it send a stream of instruction towards my heartcore.
It feels pretty surreal to have an unconscious part of my brain suddenly work a hundred times faster than my conscious mind, like a piece of music just out of audible range changing its rhythm. My hand swings automatically, efficiently chopping two more mushrooms in half. The slumbering giants around us have started noticing that they’re under attack and start moving preemptively.
Great, I love it when my prey comes to me! The process speeds up a bit more as it handles these new developments but calms down after it has run through all the most likely scenarios. My heartcore acts on instinct, moving my body through pure reflexes.
It feels like I was driving with a shift stick moments before but am now suddenly in an automatic. I can steer in the general direction and tell my cooperating heart- and braincore what to do, but the fine details and precise movements are all being handled without any conscious input.
The two-meter slab of metal turns into a blue and red blur around me and I speed through the waking forest of mushrooms. Pale stems are split in two as scaled mushroom caps in a myriad of colours fall behind me, chopped into bits. Some of the fungi leave behind a thick cloud of spores as soon as they move, so I make another process in order to form a flame filter in front of my mouth. I’m not a fan of potential parasitic spores, after all.
Then the fire slips from my grasp, and I’m nearly knocked over by a wall of superheated wind. I look back and see Lola flopping to the ground. She starts licking her fur like she isn't sitting in the middle of a massive crater, secretly glancing in my direction.
“Did you keep count?” I ask. She sits a bit straighter and we have a small staring contest. This tense moment ends when she flicks her ears at me and starts licking her butthole.
Gods, rabbits are such uncivilized creatures…
I see that the majority of the remaining mush-men were wiped out just now, the only remaining ones running around with their caps on fire. Deciding to release them from their suffering, I pick up a few mana crystals from the ground and toss them through the flaming figures with Mach one speeds.
I start gathering the rich bounty of power while walking towards the exit, the mushrooms themselves crumbling into dust and soil as they leave the embedded crystals laying on the earth. The stream of tinkling power flowing into my ring shines prettily as I walk down the stairs.
The blinding light coming from further down clues me in on the theme of the next level. I find no recognizable pattern in the way these elemental floors are ordered. The only rule seems to be that no two floors of the same element may be within three levels of each other. It’s seemingly total random chaos other than that.
Sighing, I step into another one of these annoyingly mana-dense floors. The floors that have these cho
king levels of power hanging around don't contain any enemies or difficult obstacles. The light levels are especially annoying as the inherently radioactive emissions tear away at my qi senses. The only useful sense is touch, but this floor could be many square kilometres for all I know. Finding the exit through sheer stumbling luck is going to take ages. And that is assuming the exit is located somewhere I can walk to…
I try spreading some qi around myself, but it’s eaten away at an astonishing pace. “Isn’t light supposed to heal? Since when is this element all about destructive radiation...”
Lola nudges my foot in a certain direction and I start following her. Her instincts are developed to the point of it being scary. All the mental power she would normally get seems to get turned into a near prescient sixth sense.
No, spiritual sense would be a sixth sense. So it’s a seventh sense, then?
I walk some more when I suddenly stop. I’m using Lola as a crutch here. Have I grown so conceited I can't even see such a glaringly obvious fault? I keep spouting about not using tools, to rely on your own skills instead. And here I am, being led around by a fucking bunny.
I sit down. Lola starts biting me and trying to pull me along, so I grab her and start petting her between the ears. She fidgets at first but quickly calms down.
Let’s start with the basics here. My qi is being eaten away by a mana powered form of radiation. A quick check with augur in a random sampling of my cells tell me that my DNA is not being damaged more than usual, so it’s not made up of ionizing radiation.
I concentrate my attention on a strand of augur outside my body and scan for any oddities. Other than an overload of electromagnetic radiation around one-a micrometre in wavelength and known as the visible spectrum - there is very little other radiation. I fill the pinprick of augur floating in front of my head with qi. My power is worn away, broken down into its constituent parts, until nothing remains.
The Dao of Magic: Book 3: A Western Cultivation Series Page 37