Somnus V - Chapter 30

Kat floated upward, her hand resting gently on the side of the tower that marked the stairwell to the next floor. Below her, a giant snake lay curled around the building, sleeping quietly as it waited for a challenger to ascend.

 In the darkness below, Kaleek chattered away silently, once again abusing the power of Mass Telepathy to force Dorrik and her to pay attention to his every passing thought.

 “I’m pretty sure the deep sea krill harvest is going to be especially tasty this year. Cousin Sheera found that there were more sath fish in the depths. They have a tendency to thin the krills’ numbers, but the survivors are usually leaner and juicier from all of the swimming they need to stay ahead of predators.”

 Kat rolled her eyes. The sun could go out and the oceans could dry up, but Kaleek would always be Kaleek.

 “I’m in position,” she thought back, trying to brush her amusement from her mind. “We can talk about Kaleek’s dinner once we reach the fourteenth floor.”

 “It’s much more than dinner!” Kaleek protested. “I’m talking about the entire deep sea krill crop. That’s going to impact almost every meal during the dry season. This is fantastic news and I am flabbergasted that neither of you seem to care.”

 Kat withdrew her crossbow, checking the bolt she’d loaded inside it to make sure that it was ready to fire. The stone bricks of the massive catacombs that hid under the entire thirteenth floor loomed above her, silently restricting her ability to dodge and flee if the floor guardian were to target her. Luckily, with her control over gravity, Kat would have the option of pulling herself around to the other side of stairwell, but-

 She ran her hand over the tower again. The rock was smooth. There wasn’t any room for her to dig her fingernails in, let alone get a proper grip. Even if Kat was weightless, she wouldn’t be able to find any purchase. She could still dodge, but her speed would be restricted to the pull of gravity provided by her domain. It wasn’t exactly slow, but compared to her well-trained muscles and razor sharp reflexes, it would be like moving in slow motion.

 That left Pseudopod. The spell could stretch far enough to wrap around part of the wall and pull her, but like all magic it used mana, and mana would wake up the iron wyrm.

 Kat glanced downward at the sleeping serpent. Its body was only about as big around as hers, but it stretched almost ten times her height. She couldn’t see inside its muzzle, but Dorrik assured the both of them that its maw was lined with venomous fangs.

 It could sense anyone using mana or psi powers nearby. That made sneaking up on it almost possible.

 She smiled. Of course, it was only impossible if someone’s stealth relied on either stamina or mana. Once again, she thanked her class evolution for the gravity domain. It wasn’t as quick as the Flight spell, but not using up a spell slot or consuming mana more than made up for it.

 “-if you’ve ever had a kelp and seawater brine for some krill, you wouldn’t be dismissing them so flippantly.” Apparently Kaleek’s thoughts had been rattling away at full speed the entire time Kat assessed her position.

 “I’m in position,” she thought dryly, fitting her crossbow against her shoulder. “Let me know when to start.”

 “-oooooh time to fight?” Kaleek’s entire tone shifted in the blink of an eye. “Thank the architects. I was about to go completely mad. I’ve needed to kill something for HOURS.”

 Despite herself, Kat felt the sides of her mouth quirk upward in the darkness. Kaleek would always be Kaleek.

 “We are ready Miss Kat,” Dorrik replied, his thoughts calm and fully in control of themselves. “Give the signal and we will attack.”

 She took a deep breath and pushed her mana into her crossbow with imbue. The second her power shifted the wyrm snapped awake, its head coiling around to stare up into the darkness where Kat was lurking near where the ceiling and the staircase met.

 Her crossbow bolt hit it in the face. She didn’t manage to shoot one of the monster’s eyes like she intended so the bolt didn’t manage to penetrate its thick, metallic armor. The guardian’s tough hide did nothing to stop the spell invested in the quarrel.

 Dazzle burst into existence, sending a blast of flashing light directly into the creature’s eyes.

 Even at the top of the catacombs, the burst of light assaulted Kat. Without Sensory Dampening, Kat would’ve been blinded by the attack. The iron wyrm jerked backward, its lidless and dilated eyes useless.

 Quickly, Kat cast Pseudopod, letting the tentacle of water snake around the other side of the staircase and begin pulling her to cover. A minor tweak of gravity shifted its pull, accelerating her in a tight arc around the pillar of stone bricks.

 And not a second too soon. The wyrm let out a thunderous sound, somewhere between a car crash and a dog barking, and exhaled a blast of tightly compressed gas at stupendous speed.

 The smoky substance crashed into the ceiling of the chamber, about five paces away from where Kat had been overing, and exploded outward. Bricks shattered and rained down on the floor guardian.

 Before they could hit, the heavy stone dissolved into sludge that hissed and popped as it splattered over the battlefield. A quick glance at the dark ceiling of the chamber confirmed Kat’s fears. Rather than the jagged edges of broken rock that she would have expected after the explosion of overpressurized gas, the blast had left a lumpy crater that dripped globs of stone, like wax from a candle that had been left burning too long.

 “Watch out,” Kat thought at her companions. “It looks like this one’s breath weapon is acidic gas so we can rule out molten metal and telekinetic shocks.”

 “Excellent,” Dorrik replied, darting into the open and unleashing an arc of purple energy with each swing of his sword. “Acid is the easiest ability to resist. Cast your combat spell and then begin defensive preparations.”

 Dorrik’s attacks were partially deflected by the wyrm’s armor. Not enough to stop them entirely, but the layers of iron seemed to absorb some of the Psi energy from the blade arcs. The floor guardian, still blinded by Kat’s spell, jerked away from the attack, wrapping its body around the stairwell.

 Kat took a deep breath, and began casting Gravity Spike. The wyrm twitched the moment she began accumulating mana, a sure sign that it had sensed her actions, but Kaleek’s arrival prevented it from capitalizing on its delicate mana sense.

 Kaleek’s sword smashed into the serpent’s underside, sending sparks flying as his weapon tore a hole through the wyrm’s armor. Ichor spattered the floor and the floor guardian fired another blast of condensed acidic gas flying wildly.

 Its head jerked back around, trying to find Kaleek as its eyes dilated and contracted wildly. Dorrik rushed in from the other side, his entire body glowing purple as his swords slipped underneath one of the wyrm’s metal scales, scissoring back and forth as they cut the chunk of armor free in a splash of dull yellow blood.

 Gravity Spike blossomed near the center of the serpent. Gravity pulsed and writhed, sending planes of force slicing through the inside of its body.

 Armor bent and twisted, the forces of the spell using the weight of the wyrm’s armor against itself as they warped its scales, pulling them deep into the monster’s flesh. Dorrik darted in close, cutting around the damaged armor to slash deep gashes into the monster’s damaged body.

 Kat pulled herself tight to the stairwell with her Pseudopod. She began voicing the words to Resist Acid. Below her Kaleek and Dorrik slashed away at the wyrm. Their swords didn’t deal much damage to the creature. Even though they could penetrate the floor guardian’s armor, the iron blunted their attacks enough to prevent the two of them from landing a critical blow.

 Her first protective spell landed on Kaleek just as the initial Dazzle wore off. The serpent’s tail swung through the air like a wrecking ball, hitting the desoph with an audible crunch and sending him flying into the far wall.

Kaleek’s body flashed red in the air as he prepared himself for impact, tripling his physical resilience with a skill right before he smashed a crater in the catacomb’s stone bricks. Before he could extricate himself, the giant snake reared back, making a barking noise as it fired another blast of high pressure acid vapor.

Kat winced, rapidly casting Resist Acid a second time. Even with her spell, Kaleek’s armor, and the skill he had used at the last second, that tail slap was going to sting. Still, the desoph was the toughest one in their party and he had plenty of hit points to spare. She would just have to make sure to heal him after the battle.

The iron wyrm snapped its attention back to Dorrik, the overlapping metal plates on its back glittering in the dim light put off by the combatants’ skills. Gravity Spike had done more damage than normal. Another benefit of her class upgrade.

She wasn’t entirely sure how much her evolution into an elite gravity adept had boosted her gravity magic, but the effects were stark. The area twisted by the spell was almost thirty percent larger, and Kat was sure that the actual damage dealt internally to the serpent was significantly higher.

All the more reason to use it again.

The wyrm wasn’t moving much from its place by the stairwell. Evidently, it was more concerned with trying to stop the party from sneaking through to the fourteenth floor in the darkness than actively pursuing Kaleek while he recovered from his injuries.

That made it the perfect target for her spell. Dorrik easily distracted the monster, darting in and out. With each smooth movement his swords flashed, their eerie purple glow sending shadows skittering around the entire chamber.

His first attack drew nothing but sparks as the wyrm tensed itself in time. His second was stalled out by the monster’s fanged maw snapping at him, forcing Dorrik into an acrobatic dive to avoid being impaled.

The wyrm was a fraction of a second late in retracting its head, and Dorrik’s third attack struck home. Blades flashed in the violet glow and a single scale, about the size of a hubcap, went flying free.

 Then Kat’s mana flooded the spell structure of Gravity Spike, casting it a second time near the back of the wyrm. This time, the effects of the spell were more visible. Scales peeled back, revealing yellowish flesh underneath that rippled under the strain from competing gravitational forces.

 With a shudder, the creature’s spine snapped and the lower quarter of its body went limp. It flinched backward, eyes dilating in pain. Before it could react, Kaleek quite literally exploded out of the crater he had left in the wall.

 The harsh white glare of mana filled the chamber as Kaleek rocketed into view, whooping wildly as the back of his armor spat magical fire. Dorrik raised one of his arms to shield his eyes, but the floor guardian wasn’t so lucky. It hissed angrily, jerking its head back as Kaleek’s attack assaulted both its magical and mundane senses simultaneously.

 Before it could recover, the desoph slammed into its chest, sword leading the way. This time, the monster’s thick armor didn’t put up much of a fight. With the full force of Kaleek’s armored weight behind it, his blade’s point punched straight through the floor guardian’s scales, sinking in almost up to the hilt.

 Dorrik recovered more quickly than the serpent, darting in to cut the floor guardian from the other side. Above him, a cloud of purple energy coalesced into a dozen or so balls that accelerated toward the side of the monster’s neck.

 The serpent froze as the Psi energy beat against it like hail, giving Kaleek enough time to rip his sword free. He took a step back, his entire body glowing the brilliant red of burning stamina as he thrust forward with his sword a second time, shoving his weapon almost a pace deep into its upper chest.

 Kat slipped around the side of the stairwell, one hand reaching up to touch the ceiling for balance as she focused on the monster yet again. Mana swelled inside her chest as she cast Overpressure, triggering a river of dark yellow blood that spilled out the wound Kaleek had just inflicted on the creature.

 It dove forward, trying to crush Kaleek under its weight, but a flash of red light granted the desoph uncharacteristic grace as he slid to the side, digging his sword into the guardian’s flank and using the momentum from its fall to rip through its tough hide.

 The guardian slammed into the ground splashing yellow ichor everywhere. It tried to lever itself back upward, but Dorrik took advantage of the moment to leap onto the creature’s back, digging both of his swords in underneath its scales.

 It rolled to the side, trying to crush the lokkel warrior. Almost by instinct, Kat cast Flight on him, the spell seizing a chunk of mana from her and snapping into place in a heartbeat. Dorrik jumped free, hovering in the air and slashing both of his swords and landing a pair of violet arcs on the monster’s back.

Kaleek slid back into place, thrusting upward with his sword toward the floor guardian’s chin. It weakly shifted its head to the side, but the onslaught of damage and bloodloss that their team had inflicted on the beast left it disoriented and confused.

The sword punched through the bottom of the serpent’s mouth, pinning its jaws shut as it lodged itself into the monster’s palate. There wasn’t enough force behind the blow to push through and into the floor guardian’s brain, but it was more than enough.

With its mouth sealed shut, the floor guardian’s yelping bark as it tried to expel more acid was muffled. Rather than firing a deadly pillar of gas, the creature’s jaw broke under the strain, engulfing its entire face in a growing cloud of deadly vapor.

Kaleek didn’t slow down. He dove through the bank of gas, Kat’s protective spell and his armor sparking as they struggled against the strength of the acid.

He landed on the serpent’s face, grabbing hold of one of its scales with his left arm while ramming his right shoulder deep into the monster’s eye. It flopped bonelessly on the ground, nerves firing wildly without any higher intelligence to control them and sending senseless spasms through the creature’s body.

With one final spasm, the floor guardian went limp, and Kat found herself exhaling a breath that she didn’t know that she had been holding. Fighting a battle this important from a supporting role was a strange feeling. She was more used to wading into the fray with a knife in hand and doing her part to disable an opponent.

Still, for this particular battle it made sense. Dazzle to distract the opponent long enough for the rest of her team to surprise it followed by defensive magic and Gravity Spike where it could do the most damage. Intellectually, she could even understand why she was put into the standby position. Blade Burst increased her damage output, but it didn’t change the fact that Kat’s primary weapon was a knife. Against a monster the size of the iron wyrm, there was only so much she could do without falling back on her magic.

Kaleek hopped out of the cloud of acidic mist with a grunt. A couple patches of his fur were sloughing off, but other than that he wasn’t suffering all that much from his two encounters with the monster’s breath weapon. He planted a foot on the monster’s neck, pulling his greatsword free. Yellow blood splashed over his armor and the stone bricks of the catacomb floor around him, but the desoph didn’t seem to notice, instead nodding in satisfaction at his kill.

“That burned a bit, but it was a fun foe,” he thought happily to Dorrik and Kat. “It’s been a while since something managed to hit me that hard.”

“You’re just excited because you got another chance to use that improvised magical rocket thruster that you’ve installed in the back of your armor,” Kat replied normally, willing gravity to shift so that she could float lower toward the rest of the group. “I swear, you’re enjoying that armor mod a little bit too much.”

“It’s a lot of fun,” Kaleek said with a grin. “It hurt more than surgery without anesthetic to get that hole burned into my armor, but now that I have it, well-”

He spun in a circle, pointing his greatsword at the downed serpent.

“Did you see the look on its face when I charged out of that crater it knocked me into?” He asked excitedly. “Its eyes dilated until they were big enough to eat dinner off of. However much it hurt, it was worth it for that moment alone.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the level notification from the tower.

----

Congratulations Adventurer!

You have defeated the Iron Wyrm and ascended past the Thirteenth floor!

For achieving this feat with three or fewer players, a bonus attribute point has been awarded. Assign it wisely!

For ascending a level as an Elite Gravity Adept, you gain the following benefits:

Gravity Domain + 1

Gravity Enhancement + 1

Do not grow complacent. Ordinary people produce ordinary results. You are not ordinary Katherine.

----

 “More gravity control,” Kat mumbled to herself. “I guess it makes sense from the name of the new class, but it looks like that’s what I’ll be getting for most of my level ups from here on out. Still, that’s honestly better than just getting a couple of attribute points. I bet Gravity Spike could tear a hole in a brick wall at this point.”

 She nodded once only for the happiness to evaporate as unwanted thoughts intruded.

 “Now I just need to wake up and talk with Belle about the arbitration,” She muttered with a wince. “There’s no way we’ll be ready for the first session in three weeks.”

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