by Aaron Oster
By the two and a half minute mark, they were both swimming, kicking their feet and ejecting small puffs of Qi. At three minutes, no more power would leave their Cores.
Roy saw no end to the tunnel, yet he swam on, feeling his lungs beginning to burn as they passed the five-minute mark. To him, it seemed as though they were crawling along, barely moving as they fought to reach the other end. It was too late to turn back now. If they’d wanted to do so, they would have had to have done it nearly two minutes ago, and even then, they would have scarcely made it.
At eight minutes, Roy began to flag, his muscles beginning to weaken because of the lack of oxygen. Aika was still faring better, but at this point, it wasn’t by much.
“Move faster!” Geon yelled in his head. “Humans can’t breathe water!”
The very last thing Roy needed right now was an overzealous former Dungeon Core yelling at him that he was going to drown, but he simply didn’t have the strength to tell him off.
Once they reached the ten-minute mark, Roy began to see stars. His lungs were on fire, and every stroke pained him. The tunnel walls were swimming in and out of focus, and Roy knew that if he didn’t speed up, death was a near-certainty.
He tapped Aika as they passed ten and a half minutes, then pointed to his chest. In all honesty, it hadn’t been necessary, but he wanted her to know what he was about to do.
Aika shook her head several times, but Roy was committed. He breathed out, feeling the flow of his Qi return. There was an explosion of bubbles around him as he kicked, golden Power Qi sending him streaking through the tunnel at speed. He held his breath again and kicked, but since he hadn’t inhaled, it barely did anything.
His vision was growing cloudy and he was dimly aware of Aika passing him in a flash of light. That brief flash, though, showed him something he’d been desperately hoping to see, the end of the tunnel.
Going for broke, Roy breathed out, kicking for all he was worth and streaking out of the tunnel and into an open body of water. Immediately, he began kicking for the surface, bubbles streaming behind him as he swam. Aika passed him again, flashing through the water and leaving a trail of bubbles in her wake.
The water began to lighten, even as consciousness began slipping away. Just as Roy felt on the verge of passing out, he finally broke the surface.
With a great, shuddering gasp, Roy inhaled, feeling sweet oxygen enter his lungs for the first time in more than twelve minutes. It was all he could do to keep his feet moving, making sure he wouldn’t slip back beneath the water.
He inhaled several more times before thinking to look around for Aika. He found her, just a few feet away, floating on her back, her chest heaving. Once his breathing had calmed down a bit, Roy finally took stock of their surroundings.
This appeared to be a safe zone, though there was no waterfall. They were inside a cave – presumably underwater – as cavern walls rose up all around them. Just twenty feet away was the shoreline, and Roy quickly struck out for it.
Feeling the solid stone beneath his feet was just about the sweetest thing Roy had ever felt. However, he’d only just managed to get to the shore when he felt something, a strong, almost irresistible tugging in his chest.
He looked up, seeing an opening on the other side of the room. It glowed a bright blue, shadows flickering against the walls.
“Is something wrong?” Aika asked as she crawled ashore.
She looked as exhausted as he felt, but Roy knew that he could not wait here. He had to keep going.
“Something is calling me,” he said, feeling the tugging in his chest intensify. “We need to go. Now.”
“Now?” Aika asked. “But we’re both exhausted. Who knows what’s waiting for us through that tunnel?”
“I don’t think I have a choice,” Roy said, already beginning to walk to the far side of the room. “I need to go.”
He could feel it. The answers he’d been searching for. They were just through that tunnel, and he simply could not wait.
Exhausted or not, they were going through.
47
The tunnel wasn’t all that long, perhaps ten yards. But from when Roy and Aika entered, until the point where they exited out the other side, the temperature went up by some twenty degrees, thoroughly warming them, despite the freezing water dripping from their bodies.
The vast cavern they walked into was nothing like either of them had ever seen before. The entire room seemed to be bathed in blue and purple light, cast by the thousands upon thousands of crystals growing from the floor, walls, and ceiling.
It was as though they were looking at a sparkling field or the inside of a toothy maw filled to the brim with glittering teeth.
At the very center of the room was a platform made of solid crystal. A dozen torches burned around its perimeter, and floating on a pedestal at its center was a gleaming silver box, encased around a blood-red sphere.
The instant Roy’s eyes fell on that sphere, he knew it was his Core. He could feel it calling to him, straining to break free of the box holding it in place and rejoin him. There were small cracks in the casing around it already, and red mist floated around it as though trying to dissolve the box to free itself fully.
“Roy, look,” Aika said, nudging his shoulder.
It was difficult to look away from the Core, but when he did, Roy felt his heart skip a beat. There, standing on the other side of the room, half-buried in crystal, was a statue of a woman. Instantly, Roy recognized her.
Roy took a step forward, feeling his head in his throat as her cold, dead eyes stared back at him.
No. She can’t be dead. Mordio’s curse would have been dropped if she’s really dead. No.
Roy was tempted to reach out and see if he could sense any signs of life from the statue. But before he could move any further, the cave began to rumble.
The torches that flanked the center platform flared higher and higher, until they reached the ceiling. Pieces of crystal began ripping themselves from where the flames touched, dying them blue. Flames shot out in five directions, taking on a very distinct humanoid shape, as more crystal cracked and flew from the floor and walls, joining with the rising golem and causing it to grow ever taller.
The monster’s head formed last, a humanoid skull with twin blue fires blazing in its sockets. A gleaming Core, visible for only a second, appeared at the center of its chest before it was covered by more crystal, sealing its power source behind a wall of power.
Fire Qi blazed from around the creature, painting the walls and ceiling in blue flames. It was lit, both from within and outwardly by that same blue fire, glittering and reflecting off the crystal that made up most of its body.
The power blazing forth from its Core was unmistakably that of a Peak Purple-Belt, one on the verge of advancing to Red. Worse, it stepped forward, putting itself squarely between them and Roy’s Core.
The construct opened its mouth, unleashing a bellow that sounded like tinkling crystal and crackling fire all mixed into one. While it might have seemed like it would be pleasant to hear, in reality, it was bone-chilling, making Roy’s legs tremble uncontrollably.
But no matter the challenge, even if this monster was nearly two full Belts stronger than him, there was no way he was going to be backing down. Not after all he’d gone through to reach this point. Roy had battled his fears, confronted the Shah clan, hunted down the man with his answers, and then come in here. He’d spent weeks in here already, fighting off Beasts in narrow tunnels, battling the extreme heat, and a dragon. He’d nearly been killed by a fish Beast and lived, then went back and fought his way through that floor as well.
Both he and Aika had very nearly drowned just minutes ago, but they had survived. They’d made it all the way here, against all odds.
Now, just a single golem stood in their way. It was monstrously strong, but he had faced a Scion and lived to tell the tale. What was this puny golem compared to a monster like that?
“We can take this thing!” Roy
yelled, feeling the Core on the pedestal reach out to him.
“Are you crazy?” Aika exclaimed. “That thing will rip us to pieces! We need to retreat into the other room, take a few months, and only then try to fight this thing.”
“We don’t have months,” Roy said, eyeing the golem.
It hadn’t moved from its spot in front of the pedestal, which likely meant that it wouldn’t act until they did. After all, it was a Guardian, and if his Core was the prize it was guarding, it wasn’t just going to recklessly charge them and leave an opening.
“Roy,” Aika said, grabbing him by his face. “Look at me.”
Roy focused as Aika pulled his face close to hers, making sure to meet his eyes.
“If we try and fight that thing, we are both going to die. Do you understand?”
She annunciated each word, making sure to drill them into his tired mind.
“We don’t need to kill it,” Roy said. “All we have to do is distract it long enough for me to get my Core. Once I have it, I’ll be strong enough to beat it.”
“Stopping us from getting the Core is that thing’s one and only job,” Aika said, still not letting him go. “I’ve never shied away from a fight, even against impossible odds, and you know that. But there is no way we can take that thing on as we are now. We need a few days to recover and recuperate after our run through the last floor.”
Roy tried to look away, but Aika pulled his face back.
“Listen. I understand how hard this must be for you. To be so close with only a single obstacle in your way. Now, I realize that you won’t wait months, but will you at least give yourself a couple of days? It can be the difference between life and death.”
“Listen to her,” Geon unexpectedly said. “That thing on the pedestal is trying to mess with that squishy thing you call a brain. I’m filtering out as much of it as I can, but you’re too tired to resist right now.”
Roy struggled for a few moments more before allowing his shoulders to slump. He nodded and Aika’s shoulders relaxed. Still, she didn’t let go of him as she steered him back into the safe zone and away from the monstrous golem.
It would still be there, waiting for them in two days.
As Roy got further away from the floating Core, his mind began to clear up. He could still feel it calling to him, but now, it seemed muted.
“Are you doing that?” he asked, directing the question at Geon.
“Yes. You can thank me now.”
“I think you’re getting that saying wrong,” Roy replied.
“No. I’m not. Though you can thank me later, as I’m going to have to basically kill myself to stop that Core on the pedestal from overwhelming your mind, you can also thank me now. You know, since I stopped you from charging that Guardian without so much as an idea of how you were going to get past it.”
“You’re right,” Roy admitted, though he hated doing so. “Thank you.”
“What was that? I didn’t hear you,” Geon said.
“You literally could not have missed it. I spoke into your mind. So, claiming not to have heard me won’t work.”
“What was that?” Geon said again. “I could have sworn I heard a lack of gratitude.”
Roy ignored him, instead focusing back on the real world.
Aika let him go once they got back into the safe zone, though she stayed close, just in case. She worried for nothing, though, as the compulsion to run recklessly into the cavern to try and get the Core was now well and truly gone.
In fact, the only thing he wanted to do right now was sleep, then eat — in that specific order. Roy didn’t even bother stripping out of his wet clothes, collapsing next to the wall and closing his eyes. He vaguely felt someone lay down next to him before he drifted off.
***
It was hard, so very, very hard to see them as anything more than what they were. Hermit stood in the center of a bare room, the Black Torii gate vanishing behind him. Around his waist sat a Belt the color of pure darkness. It seemed to suck in all light while radiating a presence all its own.
Before getting to this point, he’d never really understood. Now, the entire world was wide open to him as it had never been before. Seeing things from this perspective made all of the rest of their petty grievances seem so unimportant.
He could do so many things if only he left these weak and unimaginative children to their own devices. Always squabbling and fighting amongst one another, and for what? Some small shred of imagined power?
“We should go,” the Core said. “The supergiant volcano at the center of the Boiling Sea is the perfect place to start over.”
Hermit gave it a mental nod, already turning to leave the room, reaching for the fabric of space itself to tear open a gate to his destination. A knock came at his door, and the voice of a young girl floated through.
“Um,” said a voice, immediately pausing after the single word. “Hermit, sir? Are you done yet?”
Hermit hesitated, feeling a supreme sense of apathy overcome him. Why should he care about some little, insignificant bug when the world would benefit from his actions if only he were to leave?
However, another voice, this one coming from deep down, whispered to him that he couldn’t. Millions upon millions of people would die if he left, and the people he cared about most would be among them.
The faces of his students flashed into his mind, the ones he hadn’t wanted to take on in the first place. They had dragged him from his home in the forest and made him want to truly live again. He could sense them, even from here, struggling through the bottom-most floor of a Dungeon.
They were both fighting so hard and would undoubtedly want to help as soon as they returned. He could likewise see Ferry, struggling against a monumental weight, surrounded by pure darkness on all sides. She was fighting as hard as she could, having allowed herself to be separated from her family for the betterment of them all. What kind of person would he be if he just left them?
“We can’t leave,” he said, forcibly repressing the new voice in his mind, the one telling him that he needed to go and abandon these foolish mortals to their petty fighting and squabbling.
“Why now?” the Core asked.
Clearly it was not convinced.
“Because there won’t be a world left to improve if we abandon them now.”
The Core was silent for a few moments as it thought, but Hermit was already walking to the door. No matter what the Core wanted, it was his body, and while he might occasionally heed the Core’s council, Hermit made the ultimate decisions.
The door opened to reveal Marrie, the young girl looking so uncertain and afraid that it made Hermit’s heart twinge. While before he could read some of what this poor girl might have been thinking, now he could practically see it all. Her Core showed him everything he needed to know and more.
“Don’t be so afraid,” he said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Roy will make an excellent older brother. If anyone were to even think of putting you out or try to force you out of your position in the main family, he wouldn’t stand for it.”
Marrie jumped, having not at all expected him to say that.
“How did you…?” she began to ask, but stopped as Hermit tapped at his Belt.
“Roy has been my student for over a year now. You only spent a couple of weeks with him and it was in a bad spot. He is kind and fair, especially when Aika is around. So, stop worrying. You no longer need to keep looking over your shoulder, expecting some horror to befall you. You are truly safe and have a real family again.”
Marrie’s eyes began to grow misty and she quickly looked away.
“Thank you,” she said in a low voice as she rubbed at her eyes. “I needed to hear that.”
Hermit removed his hand from her shoulder and placed them both behind his back.
“Now, I’m assuming you’re here to tell me that Duncan has advanced and is awaiting our presence in the Inu capital?”
Marrie sniffed a couple of times, then nodded
quickly.
“He’s ready whenever you are.”
Hermit wasn’t surprised that Duncan had managed to resist the lure of greatness. That man had built his clan up from nothing and had kept them all together by sheer force of will. His very identity was tied to his clan, so nothing would be able to pull him away from it. His will would be all the more powerful now that he had heirs and family members to protect.
“Gather the others,” Hermit said, staring off through space and feeling the incredible power the other new Scion was giving off, even through the barrier, which would once have stumped him. “We leave in an hour.”
48
Roy let out a long, slow breath, cycling his Qi through the pattern surrounding his Core and looping it back to rejoin the sea of power he had at his center. Truthfully, it didn’t really do much for him, as the Qi was as pure it was going to get, but it helped still his nerves. Golden wisps of energy wafted off his skin as they moved to fill in the gaps of the Trace Hex, his Armorer technique.
Beside him, Aika’s body radiated pure light. A film of translucent rainbow-colored Qi shimmered across her skin in undulating patterns. In her hands, she clutched her staff, the edges pulsing and glowing as Qi buzzed along its surface.
Across the room, some twenty-five yards from them, stood the golem, his joints blazing with blue fire, and its crystalline body lit from within by the same fire.
Behind the Guardian stood the pedestal with Roy’s old Core, and, at the very back of the room stood a statue with the face of his mother.
So much hinged on the next few minutes that Roy had to actively work to keep himself relaxed and calm. The Guardian before them was many times stronger than he was, and a good deal more powerful than Aika as well. Its powers were unknown, though this would undoubtedly be the toughest fight of their lives.