Book 6: Chapter 12: The Guardian

Book 6: Chapter 12: The Guardian

A paradoxically cold wind drifted through the tunnel, cutting through Elijah’s Cloak of the Iron Bear and seeping into his spirit. He shivered, but after many hours spent fighting through the labyrinth of a crypt, he’d grown accustomed to the discomfort. And crypt it was, as evidenced by the burial chambers dotting the network of underground corridors. Some were elaborate, displaying golden sarcophagi surrounded by lesser coffins. Others were more like mass graves. But unlike the tomb where Elijah had recovered the ring and the guide, there were no rewards for exploring the subterranean burial ground.

Just more zombies waiting to rip the intruders to pieces.

And troublingly, they’d grown more powerful with every step taken by Elijah and his companions as they made their way through the web of tunnels. The leap in strength hadn’t been dramatic, but it was definitely noticeable – especially when Dat revealed what he saw with Hex of Scrying. The first group the party had encountered had only been level sixty or so. Strong, but not overwhelming. However, after many hours and countless fights, their average level had risen by at least five.

That wasn’t enough to push Elijah or the others to their limits, but it did raise a question about what they would encounter moving forward.

Oddly, the tunnels themselves were entirely bare of decoration of any kind. No frescoes. No carvings. Just empty walls that weren’t nearly as eroded as he would have expected, given the state of the ruins he’d seen elsewhere in the Trial. That led him to believe the entire thing had been conjured by the system. Perhaps the rest of the challenges had been as well, though Elijah got the impression that explanation was only part of the story. Instead, his personal theory was that the system had taken inspiration from real events, populating the challenges with real people – or copies, perhaps – rather than building them from scratch.

Was that an energy-saving measure? Or was there another explanation? Maybe the system was trying to teach the Trial-takers a lesson by including the real history of a world that had gone so wrong that it had been excised by the World Tree.

There was no way to know for sure, and Elijah expected he wouldn’t discover the truth until the system chose to reveal it in its entirety. So, he endeavored to push those thoughts out of his mind as he focused on his surroundings – as well as the onslaught of undead plaguing every step.

Every now and again, the group paused for a short break, but as they’d discovered a couple of hours after entering the crypts, they couldn’t afford to wait long. Thinking that the appearance of the zombies was tied to a location, they’d thought they were safe enough to rest and recover. However, that assumption was quickly proved false when the waves of zombies continued to assail them. The implications were clear. Like the persistent rot of the increasingly destructive death-attuned ethera, the threat of the zombies was just something that would accompany them throughout their entire time within the tunnels.

On top of that, neither Elijah’s nor Dat’s stealth abilities worked properly. The damage caused by the deathly ethera broke their concealing skills, rendering them entirely ineffective. So, they couldn’t even scout the way effectively.

But now that they were down there, they were committed. Perhaps that had been the case from the moment they’d accepted the invite into the Trial. There was no backing down now.

So, on they went, pushing through the tunnels and laying waste to the endless hordes of zombies. Along the way, Elijah got a good look at just how efficiently Dat and Sadie could handle the undead. Their abilities seemed to do more damage, their defenses were sturdier, and their tactics more effective. In short, their experiences in Hong Kong had prepared them well for the current task, and for the first time since grouping up with the pair, Elijah felt that they were better suited to overcoming the challenge than him.

Of course, he didn’t like that one little bit, so he endeavored to mimic their strategies while pushing himself harder than ever before. Gradually, he adjusted to the enemy type, and after a while, he began to truly incorporate his full suite of abilities. As they fought, he learned that Nature’s Rebuke wasn’t strong enough to finish the monsters off on its own. To fill that gap, he alternated between using his staff and shifting into his various forms. The only limiting factor for that strategy was that each transformation took a second or two to complete, which meant that he was vulnerable during that brief window of time.

It was just further evidence that he needed to work on his Soul cultivation sooner rather than later. While his Mind was tied to the ability to regenerate ethera, his Soul determined how quickly he could funnel the energy from his Core and into his spells. So, his casting speed – as well as the time needed for his transformations – could be reduced by advancing his Soul to the next grade.

Still, Elijah had yet to find an area with dense enough ethera to fuel advances in his cultivation. On top of that, there were two other issues he needed to surmount. First, while he was familiar with the pattern necessary to refine his channels, he would need to learn it far better if he was going to start carving it. At the very least, that would take weeks of constant study before he was comfortable making any major changes.

The second problem was that he wasn’t entirely certain that would be his next focus. He still hadn’t forgotten just how outclassed he’d been by Halima – or rather, the monster she had become – and while he knew he couldn’t compete with physical-based classes, he did believe that he could bridge that gap with cultivation. Advancing to the next stage of his Body would go a long way toward accomplishing that goal.

Stolen story; please report.

And what’s more, he had a good idea of how to accomplish it. So, as he and his group continued to progress through the tunnels, Elijah kept his Body cultivation in the back of one facet of his Jade Mind.

“We move on, right? Nothing has really changed,” Sadie said.

“I could go ahead and scout it out. I know Guise of the Unseen won’t work, but I’m still the fastest person in the group,” Elijah pointed out.

“No. Without you protecting the rear, we’ll be vulnerable,” she said. “Plus, you’re not that much faster than us. We move together.”

“Is that an order? Or a suggestion?”

“Please don’t do that. I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, but someone has to take charge,” she said.

“And it should be you?”

“Unless you want that burden, yes,” Sadie answered. “I’ll follow you if you want to lead, but –”

“No thanks. But if you expect me to just blindly follow you, you’ve got another thing coming. If you lead us in the wrong direction, I’ll say something.”

“Obviously,” Sadie said. “This isn’t the military. There’s no court martial waiting for you if you disobey orders. This is merely organizational in nature.”

“Can’t have too many cooks in the kitchen, bro.”

Elijah understood that reasoning, even if he didn’t like the notion of taking orders from anyone. He hadn’t always had such an independent streak, but spending years with no one to answer to but himself had shaped him in ways that decades of civilized living hadn’t.

“Like I said, we’re following you.”

With that, they continued on, and with every step, the level of vitality in the ambient ethera continued to increase. Then, at last, they reached their first destination, which was one of the chambers directly beneath a sealed tower.

But the interior was not what any of them expected.

Indeed, Elijah didn’t know what sort of setting he’d imagined. Perhaps another crystal, except white instead of black. Or some sort of enchanted circle, maybe. Or some other stationary and powerful object.

Whatever the case, he did not expect to find himself staring at a twenty-foot-tall skeleton. And the moment they came into the thing’s line of sight, it tilted its head back as if roaring, but no sound escaped its jaws.

Then, it charged.