Chapter 24: Castles and Caverns

Weeks after crawling the White Spider Dungeon, Zarian and his party saw daylight for the first time since coming to Infinita. They were following the bend of a tunnel when a crack of light illuminated a rock wall in front of them.

The entire party stopped to stare at the light. Bianca barely held back a sob.

Zarian let out a disagreeable growl. He fled back into the dark embrace of the tunnel, almost like a vampire.

Bianca tried to coax him out into the accursed light. Progress was slow since she couldn’t help from teasing him a little.

Naomi took the direct approach and tossed Zarian over her shoulder. She stopped while he was fussing and wriggling about, giving him a chance to break away if he truly wanted to. When he went still and accepted his fate, she walked him out onto the surface before putting him down. The betrayal hurt, but not as much as being outside and under the sun.

It burns.

Zarian had never known such misery until now. He couldn’t even see because the light was so bright and painful for his eyes.

It burns, and I hate it. But fine, I’ll endure.nÊw stories at no/vel/b/i/n(.)com

It took a while for Zarian’s vision to adjust, and for him to get used to the touch of the alien suns. His skin prickled and itched for minutes even while under the Parasite Cloak.

Gilbert’s Healing Force reached out and helped him with the irritation of being sunburnt. In return, Zarian thanked him, even if the words came out disgruntled.

Eventually, the initial shock faded. The bright sunlight became a little more bearable. His Dark Affinity adjusted, even if it felt heavily oppressed.

The view was actually worth seeing once Zarian’s vision improved. He needed his hood up with darkness gathered around his face and the rest of his body, but he still came around to thinking positively from the sight.

The inhabitants of Corma weren’t lying when they called their home the World of Castles and Caverns. The cavern part was evident after so much time spent underground. The castle part, however, was unbelievable, breathtaking, and beyond simple imagination.

The lands were fused with parts of many castles. Or the parts of many castles were fused with the lands.

Parapet walls rose and dipped along the natural curves of the landscape. Lush, viridian trees sprouted from within vine covered towers with gaps between the ancient stone structures. There were gate walls, curtain walls, and even earthy bridges arching over winding creeks flowing from valley to valley, sometimes in circles like moats.

Every direction Zarian looked, he saw the parts of various castles fused with the land. Hell, he even saw it looking back at the hillside with the cave they came out of. The rising hills looked like a row of vine-tangled, bush-covered, verdant fortresses dropped onto each other.

The loose rocks that had fallen free were rectangular stone blocks a castle or fortress would normally be made of. Zarian shuffled to the side and crouched over one block, trying to discern if it was man-made or if it was naturally occurring per the rules of the world.

Zarian couldn’t tell. But he saw a microcosm of life on the stone block that lived in the moist and shaded parts away from the sun. It was like how small creatures and lifeforms would live back in the old world.

He spotted something a little bigger scrambling close. It was a lizard-like beast with hard, stone skin. The creature looked like a grounded dragon, honestly.

Zarian used Identify.

The little stone drake tilted its head and watched Zarian carefully. One of Para’s fleshy strands reached for it, scaring off the lizard before she could catch it.

Zarian shook his head under the dense darkness of his hood. When he turned, the motion was slow and careful while his body was covered under the Parasite Cloak.

“Jesus, chief, you don’t fit the setting!” Gilbert shouted in surprise.

“You look like an eldritch horror, if I’m to be honest with you,” Hannah said.

“I see nothing different other than you hiding your face and body.” Bianca pouted.

“The clouds are blocky.” Naomi pointed up.

Zarian looked up along with the others, putting aside his appearance and gazing far out into the expanse of another world’s sky.

Indeed, the clouds were blocky. Some were fused together, almost like white, fluffy tetris pieces.

The blocky clouds drifted slowly, like any cloud from their old world. But instead of taking random shapes, they purposely conformed to Corma’s surface aesthetics.

“The World of Castles and Caverns,” Zarian said, amazed. “How do people live when their world is like this?”

“Let’s assume that through the happenstance of magic, Corma has always been this way,” Hannah said in a scholarly tone with a slight Alabamian accent. “We can assume that if the humans of the surface prefer to live on the surface, they could mine for stone from the present castles or renovate what’s set for them already.”

“They would have to knock some of these walls down. Flatten a few these hills of stone and earth there. That’s a lot of labor.” Gilbert pointed about as he spoke.

“Why?” Bianca asked.

“For agriculture,” Gilbert answered.

“We don’t know how they conduct their agriculture,” Hannah said. “They might grow them straight out of stone and eat the fruits after a week’s time. They have magic, and magic changes everything we’ve learned from our old world.”

Gilbert was stumped after hearing that. They had no idea how anything worked in a world where the land was fused or made of various castle sections.

Zarian wondered if living in the caverns was simpler. Then again, the city nation up north where Ekri the Tailor lived was probably grandiose and far out of touch with what Zarian and his fellow outsiders would know.

“Other than the fact that they really have two suns, I like it,” Zarian said.

“Two suns?” Gilbert shaded his eyes with a hand to look.

“Si, dos soles. Foodie said one is the Corma Star and the other is the Star Core. Two suns,” Bianca said, staring directly into the light.

Naomi sighed. “Can’t say if I’m surprised or not. All this magic business is a doozy when trying to make sense of it.”

Bianca drew her Lighthouse Falchion with a flourish and conjured beads of light around her. They appeared much faster under the sun than they had while in the caves.

Naomi stepped forward with nothing in hand and asked, “Who’s looking to get smashed into the dirt?”

The statue Zarian couldn’t Identify shifted with a loud crack. Then it shifted again with another loud crack. It shifted faster and became more mobile through a series of cracks that loosened up the joints of its hard body.

The statue snapped free of the vines and plant life that had grown over its body from years of stillness. Then its stone gauntlets raised a large sword before turning to face them with a helmet-covered face.

Sparks of pale blue appeared in the visor where the eyes should be.

“I don’t know what level it is or what its best alpha skill would be,” Zarian said. “I can’t use Identify on it.”

Naomi lost some steam from hearing that. Anything Zarian couldn’t identify was likely stronger than him.

Is it stronger than Foodie? Zarian’s cloak fanned out without revealing much of his body. The darkness under the cloak was deep, dense, and unwilling to give way to the sunlight.

Making a snap judgment call, Zarian fired a beta dark bolt at the knight’s head. The projectile struck, barely affecting the stone creature.

It did, however, leave a considerable scar on its helmet. Stone chips fell in front of the stone knight’s boots as it began an intimidating march toward Zarian’s party.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Gilbert said, looking over his shield. “I can’t recall when a nasty monster didn’t fall to a single solid strike from you, chief.”

“Did you notice the damage?” Zarian asked.

“Barely much of that from what I saw.”

“It’s still beatable.”

Other than Naomi, the rest of the party seemed doubtful. To give them some more confidence, Zarian summoned his Grimoire of Black Magic 101.

The cover flipped open, pages flipping quickly, and a ghastly green light shone forth. From under his cloak, piles of bones fell with a clatter before Zarian used the Raise Advancing Skeletons spell.

Loner and the boys, now Level 24, assembled their skeletal frames quickly. Without having to ask them, Zarian watched his seven goblin skeletons charge at the knight with reckless abandon.

The stone knight’s eyes flashed a bright blue. A blue aura covered the large stone sword. With one wide swing, the stone knight swept through the goblin skeletons. The sword’s magic reached further than the physical object and struck with a dynamic force that kicked up a strong gale-force wind.

Loner and two other skeletons ducked under the quick and powerful swing just in time. The other four flew off in scattered pieces, too late to dodge.

The stone knight’s body emitted a blue flash before it lunged with an explosive step, blue energy blasting out from behind its body fot extra propulsion. With the stone knight surpassing eight feet in height, seeing something so large and heavy move so fast was intimidating for most of Zarian’s party members.

Fortunately and unfortunately, the stone knight targeted Loner alone with a forward stomp.

Zarian intervened with a barrage of dark bolts smashing into the knight’s front. He chipped the surface and slowed its attack enough for Loner to roll out of the way.

The stone knight crashed down with a heavy force that would’ve splattered a human. The ground buckled and groaned. Blocks from a nearby wall fell loose in a clatter.

Loner circled around with the other two upright skeletons. Meanwhile, the four skeletons that suffered the knight’s first attack finished reassembling themselves. They returned to the fight.

Zarian’s party watched for a little while as the skeletons struggled and suffered a bone-cracking beating. Then Zarian felt satisfied by what he saw. He asked with a slightly dark voice resounding from the darkness under his hood, “Ready?”

“Mind Spike is useless against it, but I’ll go,” Naomi grunted. The dark skinned military woman glared at the knight like she wanted to hit it with a bomb.

“I don’t know,” Gilbert grumbled with a drawl. The big blue-eyed man stood ready with his shield raised.

“I’ll do my best!” Bianca raised her shining sword. The Latina tried to hide the fear in her amber eyes.

“If you can slow it down or stop it from moving, I can bring it down,” Hannah declared. The mousy Alabamian maintained her scholarly bearing even while up against a tough enemy. “I’ve seen enough with my Weakness Scanner and Rune Scan.”

The Weakness Scanner was Hannah’s uncommon trait, great for noticing the faults in others or in the environment. Rune Scan was a skill that allowed Hannah to see into other enchantments and understand runes better.

Hearing her confidence, Zarian figured the stone statue was a creature that Hannah’s abilities were best suited for.

“I’ve already started slowing it down for you,” Zarian said, smiling under the dense darkness of his hood. “The spectral spiders are on the case.”

As if to prove his point, Zarian’s spiders revealed themselves while crawling around the stone knight’s body. Like little spider ghosts, they were mainly translucent and hard to observe unless the spiders made themselves noticeable.

Each spider was Level 19 and physically weak. They made up for their fragility with numbers and tactics.

The spiders covered the statue in numerous webbing strands. The webbing didn’t seem to have an effect at first, then after a few minutes, the statue struggled to move while covered in thick strands of spider webbing. As another bonus, the spiders dove their ghostly fangs into the statue’s flesh to poison its aura and weaken it. That didn’t seem as effective, but the spiders were doing all they could.

“You know how to take down a tall as heck bully?” Zarian asked.

“Call the cops?” Gilbert asked sarcastically.

“Go for the legs,” Naomi led the way first

“Vamos! Let’s hit the baddie low!” Bianca cheered, shaking off her fear. She fell in behind Naomi and Gilbert, the three heading first.

Zarian walked after them, Hannah by his side.