She spun and leaped from table to table as if she was a child and gravity was her plaything.
It was a moment of silliness, but the fluidity of her movements sobered me. I watched her get faster and more creative with her mid-air tumbling. In time, as she leveled, she would become as elusive as the wind. Did she know that what she was doing was basically impossible? That was a dumb question. I knew that she had to have thought about it. Even before flooding her Wisdom and Intelligence stats there had been nothing stupid about her. And now, with increased Wisdom, it was probably something she couldn’t help but think about even if she didn’t want to. I seemed to be becoming even more introspective the more my mental stats increased, so I was pretty sure it was the same for her.
Then suddenly she bounded from the furthest table. Landing against the wall, her momentum kept her going. She launched herself back and flipped with a spin. Like a tumbling corkscrew, she floated back toward the table. As soon as she landed she pushed off again, flipping to the side to take advantage of the spin. She neared until she was a table away.
With a final jump, her spinning stopped, and she launched herself high in the air, skirting the ceiling. Her arms were out as she slowly flipped forward. I caught a glimpse of the look on her face. She was enjoying the feeling of soaring through the air.
At the last moment, I realized where her momentum was carrying her. It was too late to move. A rush of wind surged down against my hair and all around me. I felt a chill go down my spine.
Looking up, I saw Aeris had landed on my head. I felt her foot move to my shoulder and then to my other one. She had turned about and was bending down to look me in the eye. Her eyes were full of whimsical delight.
“You’re upside down,” I replied. At the same time, I marveled that it felt like she weighed almost nothing.
Reaching down, I dipped my bacon strip into the dressing once more.
“I don’t know,” she replied with a wink. “To me, every direction seems like it’s right side up.”
“I’m second-guessing whether this dressing is a good idea. If I have another bite, I fear I’ll start dancing on top of the lunchroom table or something,” I said sarcastically.
“Oh. That doesn’t sound so bad. Eat some more. I would really like to see you try.”
“You should have thought about that before you put on the greatest gymnastics routine in Underworld history. Now all I want to do is sit back and admire you.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere, mister.”
“I think it will,” I said, giving her my creepiest grin.
“Maybe,” she said, twisting her head to the side to mock-consider it.
Without another thought, I took a bite. The feeling of levity increased, but only slightly. It seemed the dressing wouldn’t have at cumulative effect. Still, I took a few more bites before standing up from my seat with Aeris still on my shoulders.
“Where are you going?” she asked mischievously.
“I really have a sudden urge to cause some trouble. Want to find Skyler’s group, go invisible, and steal their kills just to give them a hard time?”
“What? No! I mean, yes. But, not all of their kills.”
“Right. Just enough to make them think they’re going crazy. If we’re found out, we can give them some of our new magic sauce.”
“No to the sauce. I don’t want to share.”
I raised an eyebrow in question. Her mouth pursed as she shrugged.
Chapter 3 – Thievery
We knew Skyler and his party would be at the very end of the Mistress’s dungeon, so we had a good distance to trek before we got there. With the Muck-cow Sauce still in our systems, Aeris and I didn’t waste any time.
She had inventoried her armor and still wore her black pants and pink long-sleeve shirt. She bent over to stretch, placing both palms on the ground as if humans were supposed to be that flexible.
I cast Invisible on both of us after removing my plate mail. I had invested in some Umbro soccer shorts after everyone had given me a hard time with my other athletic shorts. They were still pretty short. My long-sleeved shirt was charcoal blue with Level Up written in yellow across the front. After going Advanced In The Buff, I turned to her.
She was already shaking her head. “No thank you. I never showed you everything I got from leveling when we defeated the vampire's minions,” she said.
Holding out her hand, she closed her eyes. The muscles of her temples flexed. A silver cloud seeped out of her palm and surrounded her ethereal form. It started to collapse as it filtered into her limbs. I was only able to see it because I was observing her with Mana Sight, but the small aura of silver had intensified. She now shone like a silver torch when I looked at her with Mana Sight. Invisible held back her aura from the rest of the world.
“Do try to keep up,” she challenged.
I felt the surge of magic echo off her as she shot out of the mess hall like a bolt.
With a chuckle, I sped after her. Turning into the hall, I saw that she had already covered the one hundred meters of the hall before it opened up to our new base.
I had only taken a few strides when she reached Russ. Instead of going around him, she jumped, floating over him and his entire forge with effortless grace.
All I could do was shake my head as I picked up speed. I might not have had any special talent for speed, but with the base stats of 130 Strength and 137 Dexterity, plus an additional +300 to each stat from In The Buff, I didn’t need it.
Reaching Russ, I dipped low and launched myself up into the air. As opposed to floating, I barreled over him and pounded into the ground nearly thirty feet away. My landing was loud enough that everyone in the room looked in my direction, but I was already off again and heading out of the room.
They would likely guess what was going on when my Skeleton minion came lumbering after us.
I lengthened my stride and set a steady flow of healing magic into my system to battle my exhaustion before it could take hold of me. Like a truck with the gas floored I plowed through anything that got in my way, speeding from room to room.
I had almost made it to the Skeleton Archers before I saw Aeris again. She wasn’t running in a straight line.
She swerved toward the closest skeleton, and cast a compressed Gust that blew it apart. Skidding under a flying femur she immediately jumped when she regained her footing to clear the mob’s skull before gravity could pull it to the stone floor.
A skeleton to her left was her next victim, but as soon as it was in pieces, she was already destroying another, then exiting to the next room.
Hundreds of bones drummed against the floor as I followed her from the room.
I charged forward, catching her, but only because she continued to weave about, killing skeletons and leaving a trail of bones in her wake.
The competitive side of me couldn’t help but see it as a challenge.
I let an Intermediate Health Bomb build in each hand. As she set her sights on entering the next room, I launched one forward. It shot by just ahead of her.
Just before we entered, a flare of light went off near the middle of the next room.
She was waiting for me with her arms crossed when I reached her. I saw that my Health Bomb had done the trick and taken out most of the Skeleton Archers.
She narrowed her gaze, accepting my challenge. Quicker than my eyes could follow, she turned and darted for the next room.
I tried to keep up, but without boosting my buffs even further there was just no way.
Like wading through rocky terrain, I had to watch my step as I ran from room to room to keep from tripping over the remains of the mobs she killed. Her speed and mobility were impressive, but I was sure she would soon slow. Then another full minute passed and she was still going, baffling me with how she had the endurance necessary to still be moving. As we got deeper into the dungeon, there were fewer skeleton bodies than before. The difficulty was getting higher, but she didn’t stop massacring them. Whe
n we reached the doorway to the Skeleton Sentinels, I found her waiting for me.
I heard the air fill her lungs as she took in a large pull of air. She let it slowly escape from her nose.
“That was fun,” she said, doing her best to disguise her breathing as I strolled up from behind.
Casting Heal on her, I heard no objections since it helped her recover.
“How did you do that?” I asked.
She met my eyes. The color had gone out of them in her see-through state, but her pupils were still visible.
“The Wind Magic buffs usually just make a person faster I’ve read, but my talent adds a weightless property to them. After we beat the Zombie Sergeant, I was able to unlock a few new spells.”
“Do you have some other surprises?”
She scrunched up her nose like I had asked her something inappropriate.
“A girl doesn’t tell,” she insisted.
I snorted, before changing the subject. “Are you ready for this?”
“What do you have in mind?”
***
The bones of the Skeleton Sentinels were mostly hidden because of their excess bone armor. The bone of their ribs was shielded by a thick breastplate of bone plates that fit together like joints. Their waist and pelvis were covered by this same extension of armor. Their legs were wrapped in similar plates and even their feet were encased in extra bone. Three of them stood shoulder to shoulder as one unit.
The sledge brothers didn’t flinch away from a one on one with the three of them. Skyler and the two guys mimicking his fighting style stood their ground to either side of him as the Sentinels marched toward them at a brisk pace.
The three guys were still using war hammers, but their gear had been greatly upgraded. They each wore plate mail, but it was not uniform. The smallest guy, George, was level 154 and had silver runes etched into his grey steel mail. The tallest guy’s name was Perry. He was level 155 and had brown runes in white steel mail. Unsurprisingly, Skyler was the highest level of the three at level 159. He also looked to be thirty percent bigger than the both of them even if he wasn’t the tallest among them. That was saying a lot considering they were all using Strength builds and likely had close to the same stats.
Skyler’s armor didn’t have any runes I could see, but his mail was streaked in black and red. There was no doubt that he beat them in cool points.
When the Sentinels were about fifteen feet out, Trevon, their level 152 Ice Mage, cast a sheet of ice across the floor.
The Sentinels slid forward with each step, crouching low to keep their footing.
Trevon still wore monk-like garb but had upgraded it. He wore teal from top to bottom except for his large bronze belt buckle and a round golden pendant with a red ruby hanging from his neck.
Holding out her hand, Clarissa readied her spell. She was hiding her blond hair under a visorless sallet helm. She was level 150 and wore a black cloak over her purple gown that had the typical mage flare to it. I intensified the magic to my vision to see the brown light seep from her hand and approach the backs of the sledge brothers like a low fog. The magic bypassed them entirely and entered the ground between Skyler’s men and the Sentinels.
A row of stone spikes shot out toward the incoming Sentinels, thrusting up as high as their waist.
When the Sentinels were only a few feet from colliding with the spikes, another hand shot up, causing the caster’s crimson cloak to snap with the sudden movement. The red light that left her hand flew high into the air before smoldering into life, igniting in flame. Fire raged above the battle like the leaves of a great oak, blowing overhead in a tumultuous wind. When the flames could no longer be held in check, they rained down on the Sentinels, engulfing them.
I watched as the fire blinded the skeletons momentarily, but it did more than that. It ate at the bone, greedily sucking all the moisture it could get from the marrow inside.
It was no wonder their Fire Mage, Audrey, was level 158, the second highest level among them. She was also the only caster to wear any armor. It was a smooth leather breastplate of deep red and black that hid under her cloak. She was tall, but petite with caramel skin and her short hair was curled up under her Corinthian bronze helm.
As the skeletons crashed into the stone spikes with flames still blocking their vision, three cold steel sledgehammers were thrust forward into the Sentinels’ shields. The creatures stumbled back, falling to the icy floor.
With their mobs positioned at their feet, the sledge brothers raised their hammers like woodcutters preparing to split wood. Their hammers fell.
It was too easy.
Before their hammers finished the three Sentinels, my healing spell reached the mobs, causing them to crumble into dust. The beautiful flames engulfing them were a perfect disguise for my spell.
Their hammers pounded into the ground.
Aeris threw her hand over her mouth to keep laughter from escaping.
I nudged her with my arm.
We stood a dozen feet behind the Skeleton’s remains. Keeping the mobs between us and the others, they were less likely to see us as we cast our spells.
“Eh,” Perry complained.
“You are getting too powerful, Audrey,” Skyler said, turning and giving her a flirty grin.
Aeris looked up at me wide-eyed.
I shrugged.
“That wasn’t me,” Audrey replied, squinting at the screen in front of her. “I don’t think we got any experience from them.”
“What?!” Skyler bellowed. “How’s that possible?”
“I don’t know…”
I held my finger to my mouth to shush Aeris.
She took a deep breath.
“I’ll pull the next group,” Audrey said.
With my hand on Aeris’s shoulder, I had her duck down slowly.
A fireball soared in our direction, but off to the side, hitting another trio of Sentinels. The skeletons immediately started this way. From the angle that they were coming, I could tell we were safe to stay where we were.
Leaning over, I whispered in her ear. “It’s your turn.”
Just like before, the sledge brothers lined up to face the Sentinels as they came.
Their strategy was one born of necessity to include the strengths of all their party members. They had a lot of variety, so there were so many things they could have done, but still, what they had decided on worked.
The ground froze under the skeletons’ feet and once again they started to slide. Stone spikes shot up to control the monster’s stopping position.
I watched Aeris all the while. Her eyes shifted from one thing to the next as she calculated what she was going to do.
As Audrey’s flame appeared above her prey, Aeris turned her head to the side. When the fire came, a grin turned up the corner of her mouth. Her hand shot out.
Fire funneled down and baked the Sentinels that had almost slid into the stone spikes.
As mana was focused into Aeris’s spell, I could feel waves of energy against my skin. Like a boomerang, her Wind Slash darted forwards and swept across the back of the Skeleton Sentinels’ necks.
Before the sledge brothers had made their first attack, they watched their enemy’s head fall from their shoulders.
“Steve!” Skyler cried. “Was that you?”
“Nope!” a voice called from the shadows.
Aeris and I both jumped up from our crouching positions as the voice came from directly behind us.
In one of my hands, a Health Bullet formed and an Alpha Bullet in the other.
“I found the experience thief!” the voice called again, but he was still invisible to me.
Throwing a couple hundred extra MP into my eyes, Mana Sight lit up the invisible guy like a snowman wrapped in Christmas lights. He had been standing behind me. Taking advantage of my enhanced perception of time, I examined the invisible person with Creature Observation. To my surprise, it worked on him now that I knew he was there.
It was Steve, th
eir dual knife wielder, who was level 161. He was at a higher level than Skyler?
I was able to see the sledge brothers moving in slow motion as they started to head around the stone spikes in our direction. Their mages were also craning their necks to get a better view in case they needed to attack.
In my panic, I foolishly jumped up, shredding most of the Invisibility ethereal properties and summoned my armor, Skeleton General’s Defense, that everyone was familiar with. Was there any way to get out of this? It would take a moment before Invisibility recovered.
I doubted Steve could see us while we were invisible. He had said thief and not thieves which was good evidence of this. He had probably just been watching after they didn’t get experience and saw Aeris appear in a haze when she cast her spell.
Then, I noticed that Aeris was gone. Not that she had already turned invisible but that she wasn’t there at all.
I scanned the room, seeing nothing, but when I finally looked up, I saw her close to the ceiling, moving faster than everyone else. I was about to be found out and all the blame would fall on me. What could I do? There was one thing that came to mind.
Dropping Skeleton General’s Defense, I cast Bat Form.
I didn’t take form immediately. The magic was flowing at its normal speed and couldn’t match the rate of my perceptions.
My skeletal armor dissolved into nonexistence, then my body started to change. My head seemed to stay the same size while my body rose from the floor. I became a giant bat at head level. Immediately, I flapped my wings and began to climb. I would do my best to follow Aeris. Wherever she had gone.
As I released Forced Learn, time sped back into place and I rose quickly, making it to the ceiling with only a few flaps of my wings.
Aeris had flipped upside down and landed on the ceiling, then lunged with her legs, off toward the rear of Skyler’s group.
I followed her by skirting along the ceiling.
“Who is it!” Skyler bellowed as he made it around the stone spikes.
Underworld - Through the Belly of the Beast: A LitRPG Series Page 3