My Healing Aura still bathed the area, giving them the benefit of not having to rest.
I had never really been a fan of playing a support character, but knowing I could join the men up front, or stay back here and fling a number of different spells left me satisfied. Knowing that I had survived the Belly when it was out in force over a period of hours also gave me great relief. How could I complain?
When our mages were ready, they lined up behind me. Holding up my hand, I halted their questions. I removed the Rejuvenation Aura now that they were recovered.
With our bashers still in the heat of battle, I lifted my scepter and flooded it with mana. I released an Alpha Bomb with 2,000 mana. As it peaked over our front line, I had it dive down into the mobs before us about twenty meters out. Like an egg falling to the floor, it burst and besieged everything with its yoke. Bodies flew.
Skyler took it upon himself when he saw the large gap in their defense to unleash a battle cry. It was then that it became very obvious that the slow push of the monster line had been easy for our bashers. As they moved forward, they crushed every creature that got in their path.
With my hand still raised, halting our casters, I limited my next Alpha Bomb to 1,000 mana but started to lob a bunch of them like a madman, carpet bombing everything in sight. Some of the strongest enemies survived, but before I was done I had cast 25 of them and cleared the immediate area and then some.
I started forward.
Aeris’s legs settled down over my shoulders. The others followed behind.
I didn’t join our bashers as they swarmed everything left standing but drew back the Rejuvenation spell I had cast on Travis. It had been based on Advanced Heal, so when I recast it, it was the Intermediate version. Without my Rejuvenation Aura going I made sure each of the bashers had their own individual cast of it.
As we stepped over and around the mob corpses I waited until everyone had passed before casting Intermediate Blood Drain on the bodies behind us. I continued walking and let it fill me as we went.
Even after reaching the Intermediate level of the spell it looked like I had hit a wall. The creatures didn’t give me any new stats.
With over 160k MP still left at my disposal and still over 3k mana per minute filling me with more mana every second, we headed for the next stage of our escape.
Chapter 20 – Clearing the Way
Even though Xaphan had returned to his cave, I still worried about trying to leave without finishing every mob in sight. After surviving long enough for my friends to relieve me, it would be ridiculous to die just because we hadn’t finished the job. I mentioned this in group chat.
“So we can’t leave until we kill every last creature in here?” Olivia said, exasperated.
“Stupid human,” Zorik huffed. “That could take days.”
“We don’t have that much time,” Aeris reflected.
“Zorik. Thousands have already died. Is there no way to make this go quicker? Maybe scare them away for a time?” I asked.
Zorik scratched at his temple as he thought. It was over a minute before he responded. “It could be possible, but we will have to kill hundreds of them all at once.”
“Aeris already created a tornado and kill hundreds of them. Before that I killed thousands…”
“If that wasn’t enough, then Xaphan’s presence has probably emboldened them beyond what is normal. We will have to hit them with an extremely powerful attack, all at once. Let’s get to the Crystalis. There is a good place to set up a fortification. If we do it there we will have a place to recover if it doesn’t work. That is if that is what New Master wants.”
“Sounds good to me,” I replied, encouraging him.
“Same here,” Aeris added.
“Fine,” Oliva said, sulking.
With Mel bringing up the rear and his skeletons having to fight as they retreated, it was a slow process, but no one complained about the experience they were getting. Those who were still waiting to reach 1,000 in their main stat would reach it in a matter of minutes if they hadn’t already.
Mel’s skeletons were the only members of our group without Invisibility, which I kept from them purposely. He had offered to let us use them as disposable more than once, so they became the main target for the incoming monsters.
Skyler’s bashers carved our way forward, although they had widened their line and were extending themselves to kill as many mobs as possible.
Most of the magic users saved their mana and only used basic spells to kill the mobs that ran at us from either flank, in between the gaps between our lead bashers and the skeletons at our rear. With Invisibility, we saw little action.
I remained more active, launching 1,000 mana Alpha Bombs as my MP rejuvenated, not letting my MP drop below 160k.
It took us no more than half an hour to reach the Crystalis even at our slow pace. We stood upon a cliff with numerous dirt paths running down to a forest of blue crystal. The crystals were as big as trees and jutted up from the ground at different angles, often intersecting, creating arches. The most interesting feature of the crystals themselves was their high density of mana. At the core of the crystals was a high concentration of the different prime elements of mana: fire, earth, wind, and water. They weren’t as concentrated as the Lesser Fire Orb the Hell Hound had dropped, but perhaps three to five times more than normal rock.
“Are there any uses for these crystals, Zorik?” I asked.
“They are often mined to make jewelry and some creatures eat them. I’m not sure they will help us any,” he replied.
“This way,” he said a moment later.
There were only a few creatures coming up from the crystal forest to attack us. Mel’s skeletons began taking the brunt of the attack as we shifted directions. Our casters began adding their might to fight off the assault and back up Mel’s minions
Looking to him, I saw that Mel’s focus didn’t change as he walked along beside them. I was keeping an eye on him just in case he got into trouble.
It was another fifteen minutes before we reached a large overgrowth of crystals that reached out of the Crystalis and formed a crystal wall that extended up and over our heads a good thirty feet.
Olivia immediately went to work with the help of Clarissa. It was the same kind of structure they had made before with stone pillars wrapped in great cords of vine.
Our bashers made their way around to the front of the barrier. Mel pulled his skeletons back to let our men take the line.
No longer bothering to use group chat, I spoke so that all of our mages would hear. “Does anyone need to recover mana before we go all out?”
A few took a seat, so I sat with them. It was only a few minutes more before we were all ready. Getting back to my feet, I looked at each of our casters in turn. Mel joined us, bringing our number of casters to seven including Zorik.
Zorik looked up at me with a humble gaze, then dared to say, “The goal isn’t to kill as many of them as we can. It’s to get them to feel our presence. The more mana we use the more of a chance it will work.”
I gave him a nod.
With a cue to Skyler, our bashers pushed past the entrance to our barricade, opening a gap behind them where we could fire off our spells over their heads. We took our positions.
Mel’s skeleton troops filed in and would watch our backs in case any mobs climbed over the barricade and came at us from behind.
We stood in a semicircle behind a line of men who were cutting down monsters by the dozens.
I began first. Holding my morningstar out toward the base of the plateaus where I had begun my war against the Belly, I let my mana build.
Trevon had surprised us all when he said he had 153,000 MP. Instead of aiming for 1,000 Wisdom, he had decided on Intelligence. With only a little over 100 Wisdom, his mana regen took forever for him to recover, even Meditation took him many times longer, but now his massive amount of mana would come in handy for a large channeled attack. He started to build his mana next.<
br />
Aeris, Olivia, Mel, Audrey, and Clarissa, followed by Zorik, did the same. Each of us took a different area of the Belly and took aim.
I had considered trying Magma for the first time or using Alpha Bomb because I knew it would harm everything it touched, but if our goal was really just to put on the best show of strength possible, my go-to was Health Bomb. I knew every point of mana would go that much further than any other spell I used.
No one spoke of how dangerous it was for us all to be using all of our mana at once. I had been in this position before they arrived and wanted nothing less than to do it all over again. A good group of Imp spellcasters could wipe us out if they attacked too soon after our attack.
Even with that in mind, I only held back 10,000 MP. This was to keep everyone’s buffs going and to have a small healing reservoir.
Today had been a day of many firsts. This would be the third time I cast a spell with more mana in it than I ever had before. Although, this time I was using almost twice the mana that I had with my attack against Xaphan.
As my Advanced Health Bomb reached 100,000 mana high overhead, I had to push it further up in the air until it was 100 feet up so that we would not be pummeled by energy radiating off of it. Already it was the size of a small blimp and was only growing.
In his monk garb and without a weapon of any kind, Trevon had the same idea, except instead of a giant Health Bomb, he was creating a glacier. It was the size of a house. Both of his hands were raised up high in the air as if he was holding the gigantic mass in place and it would fall, crushing us.
The others formed their spells between ours at a lower elevation. Audrey was creating a giant fireball and Clarissa was gathering rock into one mass from the surrounding area mixed with crystal as opposed to creating the rock itself. I wondered if it saved her mana and allowed her to cast a more powerful spell. Aeris just focused her mana as she prepared to cast. She couldn’t let the spell build like the rest of us otherwise the twister would already start to wreak havoc. Olivia had something similar in mind and was letting her mana build as well. Mel created a black orb. Instead of growing in size, sparks of dark light escaped in all directions. Its charge seemed to be growing more and more as mana was gathered. Zorik summoned a massive ball of water that seemed unstable as it wobbled overhead. It looked like he was about to dump a whole swimming pool on the top of some unexpecting mob’s head.
The energy that accumulated in the space above us started a rumbling in my ears. It was as if the air was trembling.
“Say ‘Ready’ when you reach max mana!” Richard, our communications expert, said.
I was the first to reply, quickly followed by all the others.
“Okay. Here we go. Three. Two. One. Now!” he cried.
My Health Bomb was so large that all I could do was direct it in the general direction of the area I was aiming for.
Wind swept over us in tumultuous waves as our spells fell from above and sped to their targets.
Aeris’s Twister started to form close to where my own spell was flying.
At Olivia’s command, vines sprang out of our own fortification and dived into the group of mobs all around. There were hundreds of them snaking their way throughout the sea of monsters.
As if his bubble had popped, Zorik’s mass of water fell like an avalanche.
Then, Audrey’s Fire Bomb went off. It coated the area in the direction we had come from with rock fragments and death.
Another explosion came from the direction of the stalagmite mountains. Mel’s Dark Energy had struck the ground and sent a wave of black electricity arcing out, frying dozens of monsters where they stood.
Trevon’s glacier of ice struck the grand stalagmites themselves. The one most directly hit started to fall. Like dominos others crumbled in the wake of such a mighty projectile.
My attack was the last to hit. 173,000 mana in an Advanced Health Bomb was something I didn’t yet truly fathom. There was a flash of light that, once started, didn’t seem to have an end. A moment after it started we were driven from our feet from the impact of numerous shockwaves from each of our spells. The ground shook beneath us and continued to rumble like the Belly had started to growl.
The world came back to me and I saw through Mana Sight well before my eyes had recovered.
Only Skyler and Russ still stood but they were dozens of feet away. They walked from monster to monster that had was stunned from the fallout and ended them.
Aeris’s Twister was the only spell still wreaking havoc, but there were no creatures I could see left alive.
As my eyesight returned and the others started to stir, we saw that the Belly was different. It had been altered.
Many of the hills of stalagmite were now piles of rubble. There was a deep crater where Audrey’s Fire Bomb had hit. Another crater competed with it caused by Clarissa’s boulder. But when I saw the area where my Health Bomb had exploded, I found it hard to breath. All but the highest plateau was left in rubble. Would Xaphan take offense?
I found the giant cat quickly enough and almost fell over in relief when I saw he was still curled up like a kitten, taking his nap.
Not only were the plateaus gone, but most of the ground level in that area had collapsed.
Immediately, I sat down and started to Meditate.
The others took in what we had done as they recovered, and our bashers found they had nothing left to kill when they got back to their feet.
I placed 9 more levels worth of stats into Wisdom and waited to see what would happen next. Was it finally over?
Chapter 21 – Cornered
An uncomfortable fear resonated among us as we waited to recover. No one spoke. Our bashers started to pick through the bodies of the creatures they had killed, looting them of anything they found useful. There was no telling when we would have access to trade again, so they passed over things they normally wouldn’t, but collected things like alchemy ingredients that they would usually pass over.
“Lydia!” Chris called, breaking the silence. His curly blond hair was completely hidden under his skullcap, but there was no mistaking the cheery expression behind those eyes. He was wading through the mobs looking for loot with the other bashers and calling for Lydia to join him.
He was one of the sword and shield wielders, but I knew he was more of Dexterity build.
Now that things were safe, Lydia started greedily going from creature to creature with a razor-sharp Bowie knife and filling her inventory with all kinds of nasty things.
She wasn’t the only person collecting materials. Mel took the heads of two Imps and a Werewolf. I would have directed him to the Pack Leader, but that was a couple hundred meters away. The rest of the group collected any items they could find, but unlike most games, were-creatures and giant insects didn’t drop random rare swords. All that they possessed was what they actually possessed in life.
When I had recovered a sufficient amount of mana, I left the barricade and found a good open space before I started to cast Intermediate Blood Drain. In hope of getting more stats, I cast it less times than before but upped the mana used to 5,000.
As I had hoped, the more mana I used to cast the spell the more tentacles reached out to collect blood. The blood ballooned into a much bigger sphere as well. As the first wave of blood filled me, I feel new strength enter me, but it just didn’t compare.
I used all of my mana except for my backup supply of 10,000 and drained every corpse I could find. The take didn’t compare to the first time I had drained from the creatures of the Belly, but at least this time I got something.
+47 Strength
+58 Dexterity
So much blood for so little return. Oh well. In the long run, I needed every stat I could get.
Not because I had heard her, but because I had expected her approach, I asked, “Trevon?”
“He still has a few minutes to recover,” Aeris replied.
Turning, I saw her hovering a few feet away just a meter off the ground.
She was looking around, contemplating what had just happened.
“Do you think we pulled it off?” she asked. “Scaring the rest of the mobs away?”
“I’m not sure. I do think we should change to a stealth approach though,” I replied.
She nodded at my answer.
“I better recover the rest of my mana, so everyone isn’t waiting on me,” I said, giving her a grin that didn’t reach my eyes.
As I passed, her hand grabbed my wrist. I couldn’t feel it through my bone bracer, but I knew she squeezed it in an attempt to comfort me.
I stopped.
“Thanks,” I said. “For a minute there I didn’t believe it, but now… I think we are going to make it.”
She held on for a moment longer before letting go.
***
We started to descend into the Crystalis soon after. Even Mel’s skeletons had been shrouded in Invisibility. Our pace was slow so that we never fully lost our ethereal appearance, but that did little to give us any reassurance that we were finally in the clear.
The one thing that helped take our minds off of our anxiety was the Crystalis itself. We had walked through dungeons and caverns since we arrived in the Underworld. The gloom and the shadow of danger that had characterized those places could not be applied to this forest of crystal. It was unlike anything I had ever seen.
A great pillar of red glowed with its own light to our left as we passed under a silver crystal, half as thick, that leaned over and rested against it forty feet up. A blue crystal leaned away from us on the other side of the pillar we passed under now but was much brighter than the average and had a number of smaller crystals branching out. A crop of deep brown crystals was off to the right, sprouting out from a single root, just like a bunch of grass.
The stone that made up the ground was the same blue-grey rock that made up what was left of the ground floor of the rest of the Belly. It glowed dully in the light of the crystals growing closest to it.
Underworld - Through the Belly of the Beast: A LitRPG Series Page 22