Chapter 13-356: A Polite Trail of Ruin

They were pretty certain that some sort of alarm went off as they chewed through the stone golems outside and the bone golems inside. Oddly enough, there were no undead. The Illuminati must have figured that anything that could get past the undead outside would not be stopped by any inside... and that probably included themselves, because nothing showed up throwing spells at them, either.

They still had Traveler’s Spell Resistance on them, so direct attacks would not have been very effective, and direct energy attacks were going to be difficult, too. They had the full Fire and Cold treatments from the Zones, popping over to the Firelands with Traveler during one of their down periods in India, making them immune to Fire and Cold.

That meant they could move their Warlock Resistances around. On top of that, being able to draw on the nature of a lilitu meant they were also functionally immune to lightning. That meant of the primary Elements, they only had to be concerned with Thunder and Acid.

Thunder and Acid Resistance were both choices, along with Cold and Lightning, for Heaven. Acid, Fire, and Cold were choices for Hell. Thunder, Lightning and Cold Resistance were the choices for Storm, naturally, and Acid and Cold were the choices for Water.

A Warlock generally had two Resistances per Pact, and they stacked. So, they had doubled up on Acid and Lightning Resistance, and had supplemental single Resistances to back up their immunities, just in case an enemy had access to Divine or Primal energies.

Like, oh, Traveler did. Watching her burn down Fire Elementals had been instructive...

They really, really liked being this strong and fast. Uniting their understandings on how to fight under Master Fred, throwing things weighing tons around or hacking right through them, crushing and breaking them... how could anyone not enjoy it?

Well, Master Fred just considered it all a tool for the job, refusing to be impressed by it, especially at the cost it came by. Despite themselves, they could only agree with that... which still didn’t stop them from enjoying it.

The stone wall in front of them right now had been lowered to stop or delay them. Idiot kindly Morphed into a Pick, and they went to it with a will. Wrath crashed into the reinforced stone with every blow, tearing at the magical reinforcement and the structure of the granite, sending shards exploding in every direction with every slamming impact.

Their hooves were anchored with heavyfoot, and they were driving a foot deep into the stone with every crashing blow, strong enough to lever Idiot’s unbending pick right through the rock as eldritch energies tore into it. The Pick slammed into the door impossibly fast, pounding a path right through three feet of stone with enough speed that a drilling machine might have been envious of them.

Cracks spread through the stone, and they began to alternate Pick and crashing Hammer, their Wrath blowing out any rubble so they were not impeded.

It took them thirty seconds to pound a hole to the other side, and then thirty seconds more to smash the opening big enough to get through. Head-sized and larger chunks of stone were scattered behind them, rent and torn off the protesting wall.

Idiot returned to Dagger form as they jumped through, not touching any of the sides, rolling and back on their feet, tail switching as they looked over the chamber.

Their hooved feet were noiseless as they glided across the stone within, Mask of Clarity up and studying everything.

Especially the pit in the middle of the floor.

There were three other tunnels leading out of here, all of them currently sealed. They considered the closed halls for a moment thoughtfully, wondering where they had been lowered from, and being wholly unwilling to leave something behind themselves.

The pit was indeed directly over the tunnel leading down, but they obviously weren’t going to throw themselves into it. That was a hugely inefficient way to get down to the Hollow World, possibly even lethal if it was cut off part way.

Indeed, what if they had to fall a hundred miles, or a thousand, to get to the destination? A total waste of time. There had to be a better way, and the Illuminati probably had one.

Behind one of these lowered walls.

Smiling in anticipation of wrecking things belonging to the necromancers, they started for the one to the right, Idiot going back into Pick form.

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The right side was some personal quarters and what seemed like storage areas for necromantic components and some basic magical supplies and reference books with an unsurprising focus on necromancy. The furniture and knick-knacks were very obviously hundreds of years old, and might have some antiques value. They certainly didn’t get used much, and they had been treated with necromantic processes to totally kill them and so make them immune to natural decay.

Legion really wanted to try lifting the left side barrier, but the screw-style pistons stopped that idea, and given they could be raised from the other side, there was no incentive to wreck the mechanism once they pounded their way through it.

Now this area was more macabre, with definite labs for experiments, a very pricey Summoning Circle, undead servants of various kinds, Animated Construct helpers, and raw materials for building more golems of various types.

They calmly annihilated everything that had a semblance of life, as well as the standing magical spells and phantasmal Servants standing around, and they wrecked most of the chambers, too. If any of the Illuminati came back in after this, they were going to be twitching their lack of eyebrows at everything Legion had done. The spell-resistant rooms and their expensive magical reinforcements were thoroughly ruined, goldweight values ticking past them with every swing of Idiot’s Pick.

That naturally left the last barrier, the one opposite the way they’d come in.

There were actually two dropped barriers here, which is why they’d left it for last. The near side was still elevated, and the lever to do so was right next to the hallway. The far one was activated from the other side, which meant this route was made to be sealed from either side as needed. The only reason to do so was if something unwanted would come from that direction. There was a similar barrier on the Summoning Room, and a couple that could be dropped in the hallways of the left section, to buy time to vacate the area.

They probably just commanded the Phantom Servants inside to raise the barrier from out here as needed.

Well, now those barriers had nice big holes in them.

Legion dove cleanly through the newest jagged hole, took two steps, and lifted the lever there. There was a crackling discharge of electricity, to their lack of surprise, and the barrier rose cleanly behind them, dust and a few chips of stone falling down to join the scattered debris on the floor.

They were amused when they thought about animals from outside entering, but the aura of death about the place was probably more effective than anything else in keeping them away.

Most amusingly, this hallway led away... and down.

It only took one step to suddenly be aware of the spatial fluctuations. Tail twitching, they paused to make sure there were no sudden surprises and collapsing spells, and continued down the stairs there.

Every step seemed to be doubling in spatial length. They were still inside Traveler’s Commune with Nature, and a Warlock Grandmaster stood out like a bright spot of light in such a thing once the Astral Ward was bypassed. Traveler could easily tell where they were, and they were heading down at great speed as they danced down the steps.

A hundred steps, and suddenly they were beyond Traveler’s range, curving around and down the side of something very large. The greatly stretched space suddenly arched in a half-circle, gravity bending in a non-Euclidean space, and without really changing orientation, suddenly going down was now going up.

They looked at the steps curving up now, following the same diagonal as before, but the orientation had reversed.

A Hollow World...

They circulated a greater amount of the Hotfoot Ki, and as they started moving upwards, their speed started to increase, rising like heated air with speed and energy.

They came to a halt very suddenly when the gleam of magic was revealed ahead of them.

Glyphs, written into the walls, and something embedded into the walls to take advantage of something stunned or damaged or blinded on the landing.

Well, that was what the Sun Saves were for. They were absolutely certain they were far beyond the threat range of those Symbols, but that was what Mastery/5 in Devour Magic plus Purity was all about.

The Casters of the Symbols weren’t weak, but they were dealing with a Warlock who could keep up the Dispelling effect all day.

The stone golems fit into the walls folded out one by one as their Symbols were attacked, and Legion was perfectly happy to disassemble them violently. The healing power of Wrath plus Fast Healing got rid of their bruises within moments, and they kicked the rubble out of the way and headed upwards.

They smirked as the goldweight costs of each of those golems floated past them, and reflected that someone was going to be very irritated with them.

They stepped up to the top of the stairs, and looked down the long hall there.

Clacking, clinking, and clunking, more bone and stone golems shifted to face Legion. The former were in a rather eclectic state beyond the normal four-armed skeleton murderer, having some saurid and saurial forms with rather too many teeth, over-sized claws, and spiked tails.

Something like a horned allosaur clattered down the hall towards them with disconcerting speed and lightness, opening gaping bony jaws in a soundless run as it raced for them.

They hadn’t stopped walking, and simply counter-charged, flicking out a finger.

The Ward Wall snapped up in front of its left leg, caught it in mid-stride, and the dinobone golem crashed directly to the floor as it overbalanced, skidding towards them.

Idiot’s damage manifested as bludgeoning, the carving tip of the Sword’s One Strike hitting like a Hammer, not a Sword. The gaping horned skull of the dinobone golem shattered and was torn clear off its spine, its neck vertebra exploding like chaff.

They set down just after one sweep of its bony tail as it continued after them, reaching down to grab the spikes and jerk the weighty mass of bones to a halt as their Crystalfoot locked them in place as if they were nailed to the stone floor.

With one whipping heave, the dinobone golem’s motionless remains were hurled back around and past them, hurtling back towards the other advancing golems, and Legion sprinted after them, Idiot raised in praise of a profoundly stratospheric Stupidity Stat.

What followed next was very loud, violent, and involved a lot of weighty things getting smashed and thrown around by something far stronger than they were.

Legion enjoyed it immensely. There was never any need to hold back on Constructs, so they didn’t, and the things were big enough that they never had to worry about more than two at a time.

Bone shattered, stone crunched and crumbled. Gouges tore out of the stone walls and floor, and golems weighing thousands of pounds were sometimes hurled about like dolls, clearing up some space. Golems broke into many, many pieces as the Warlock Grandmaster worked on breaking someone’s bank account...