Chapter 229: Advanced Shield Mastery Pt.1

Chapter 229: Advanced Shield Mastery Pt.1

Quest: Close the Voidrift within 15 minutes.

Objective: 0/1 Voidrift closedThis chapter was first shared on the Ñøv€lß1n platform.

Quest Giver: Advanced Mastery Dungeon

Reward: Shield Mastery(Advanced)

Difficulty: Extreme (III)

Restrictions: Shield Mastery(Intermediate): 150

Entering Unique Dungeon:Altar of the Maelstrom

Dungeon Option 1: Dying in this dungeon will reset the dungeon and eject you. Re-entry is possible after 1 minute.

Dungeon Option 2: Your equipment and available skills are altered while within this dungeon. Only Shield Mastery related skills, items, and abilities will be usable.

Dungeon Option 3: Pain threshold is set to and locked at 10 for the duration of this dungeon.

Dungeon Option 4: Attacks that hit your shields or guards will deal no damage.

Aegis quickly read the messages, then looked downward to confirm his claws had been removed from his hands. In addition, his red, salamander scaled leather armor was replaced by plain simple leather armor, and his mithral shield was replaced by a plain iron shield. A second later, the black darkness that surrounded him disappeared, and he appeared in the middle of a ruined street.

Everything around him was frozen and unmoving, but a countdown timer appeared in his peripheral vision.

Dungeon Will begin in 10... 9...

It was counting down the start of the scenario. Aegis had 10 seconds to take in his surroundings before everything would unfreeze and go into motion. In front of him, he saw 3 soldiers wearing equipment identical to his own, though unlike him they had spears. In the middle of the three, an elven priestess with long shining silver hair and pointed ears protruding out from under it was standing. All four of the NPCs were tagged as Elite and were frozen in poses that implied they were rushing toward down the streets in front of them.

Aegis looked down the street to get a sense of where they were heading - the ruins reminded him heavily of Belmiure in terms of the structures that lined the streets. Made of obsidian blocks, most of the buildings were crumbling to pieces, but unlike in Belmiure, the destruction appeared recent. The furniture within the buildings was not decaying or decrepit, and several of the buildings were on fire. Smoke was rising up in pillars all over the city, but it had nowhere to go as they were in a deep underground cavern - somewhere in the underrealm.

Despite all of these similarities though, with a few quick glances Aegis could tell that this wasn’t Belmiure exactly, but instead a city of possibly the same civilization in ancient times.

More distressing was that threats that Aegis was able to quickly perceive. The streets ahead of them on which the NPCS appeared to be running lead right up to a giant obsidian block chapel, of which the roof had been torn off and gigantic creatures were pouring out of it into the skies above the burning city. Aegis hadn’t countered many void creatures thus far, aside from Mosmir. There were Mosmir’s present, he saw them frozen in place as they scurried out of the destroyed chapel, but they were a minority and barely seemed to be a threat compared to the size of the other gigantic creatures climbing out of the building.

“Close the voidrift.” Aegis said to himself, taking a deep breath as his eyes glanced between the elven priestess, and the chapel. “She’s the closer. Gotta keep her alive.”

Dungeon will begin in 3... 2...

He fastened the straps on his ironshield onto his left arm tightly.

They were closing in on the chapel now, and thankfully after a few meters more of running, Aegis’ managed to cut off line of sight with the voidreaver that had been aiming its beam at him. Furthermore, the voidreaver had seemed to lose interest and didn’t teleport to get closer and attack again but rather teleported deeper into the city, leaving Aegis with just the two pursuing Mosmir soldiers.

But just as they came up onto the small staircase leading into the front entrance of the destroyed chapel, a flood of black liquid came pouring out of it, splashing down the stairs towards them. The moment the liquid appeared, both Mosmir soldiers screeched in terror and stopped pursing Aegis. Instead, they both turned tail and fled from the liquid as Aegis looked forward and saw it spilling out over the streets towards the final guard and the priestess.

“Watch out, Priestess Ysilda!” The guard shouted, moving to stand in front of her and putting his shield down to block the liquid from touching her.

“No, do not touch it!” The priestess cried out, backing away frantically towards Aegis who stood behind her. The guard heard her warning too late, and the moment the black liquid came into contact with him, tiny oily tendrils shot up out of the liquid and grappled him on multiple parts of his body, yanking him down into the liquid where his body and equipment were quickly dissolved.

Aegis looked forward and saw that the liquid still kept coming - it was flowing out of the chapel like an endless wave, but at the same time knew they needed to somehow continue forward.

“Guard.” Aegis projected his shield vertically in front of them, like a platform. “Get on!” Aegis called out to the Priestess, jumping up onto the shield projection as it hovered a meter above the ground. Aegis jumped up first, then held his hand out for her to take. She listened, taking his hand, and he pulled her up onto the shield to stand on it with him, holding her tight so that neither would fall off as the black liquid flowed over the obsidian streets that they’d been standing on.

“I’m going to hold you and jump, don’t resist.” Aegis explained, and she nodded understandingly. He held her tightly in his arms and jumped off of his shield projection as its 2 second duration was up, then quickly recast a new projection below them, slightly higher than the previous one.

In the small moment that there was no projection of his shield beneath their feet, the black liquid attempted to shoot out oily tendrils up at them, but his new projection had been formed quick enough to block them.

“Wait for it to pass.” Aegis explained, and she nodded, but her eyes then suddenly went wide.

“Behind you!” She called out, causing Aegis to spin around on his small platform of footing where he saw a voidreaver had teleported to the roof of a nearby building and was aiming at them.

“Of course.” Aegis sighed in frustration. A second later, the beam finished charging and shot out towards them. Aegis quickly lifted the light elven priestess up off her feet, holding her cradled in his arms as she allowed it to happen, then jumped to the side out of the path of the void beam while simultaneously recasting his shield projection beneath his feet at a new location.

The voidbeam missed, but the reaver continued to angle it to pursue Aegis, curving it through the air. He was limited in directions he could jump to avoid it, as the tall walls of the ruined chapel were on his right, and his left was the voidbeam. He bent his knees as the beam closed in, then used all of his character's strength stat to launch himself high into the air, several meters up above the beam. Once high, he recast his shield projection and watched the voidreaver curve the beam upwards in pursuit.

To his right, he saw the possibility of jumping into the chapel through its broken roof after another leap, so did exactly that. He jumped up with great strength onto a fourth shield projection, which gave him a view into the chapel over the top of its destroyed front wall.

From here, the void rift in question came into view. A black mass of swirling wild magical energy of which the void creatures were spilling out of en-masse. Some of the creatures were somehow, luckily, destroying each other as they squeezed out of the rift, but this resulted in absolute chaos within the chapel itself.

“How close to you need to be to close the rift?” Aegis asked her as the pair looked down into the chapel with wide eyes.

“Within 5 meters.” The priestess explained.

“Right.” Aegis rolled his eyes, glancing between the rift and the voidbeam still being angled towards him. He took a deep breath, then jumped off of his shield projection onto the top of the ruined walls of the chapel. As the voidreaver curved its beam towards him this time, it crashed into the outside wall of the chapel and began disintegrating it, but Aegis didn’t stick around and quickly jumped down into the chapel, falling 8 meters to the floor in a spot he saw the black liquid had vacated.

The voidreaver’s beam canceled on Aegis once he jumped down, as he’d broken line of sight with the voidreaver, while simultaneously the last of the black liquid creature had finished seeping out of the chapel through the door. The moment Aegis landed on the stone floor of the chapel, several meters away from the rift, he saw three Mosmir’ soldiers hiss and chitter in his direction, scurrying out of the rift. Aegis raised his shield and prepared to block their attacks, but before they got close enough to him to strike, suddenly three gigantic reptilian heads shot out of the rift behind the Mosmir and snapped their gigantic fangs around the Mosmir, crunching into their hard chitinous bodies and killing them instantly. Only one of the three heads had a red name floating above them, labeled [Void Hydra(ELITE) - Level 180)]

“Don’t move.” The priestess quickly whispered. Aegis understood and complied immediately as they watched the rest of the Void Hydra’s gigantic body stomp out of the rift, gulping down the bodies of the Mosmir soldiers in a single bite. Aegis could see the lumps in the hydra’s three throats as it swallowed their corpses, simultaneously raising its three heads up above the walls of the chapel. Once it had, the center head let out a violent roar that was amplified by the other heads joining in. Aegis and the priestess remained completely still, as Aegis recalled many void and underrealm creatures lived in pitch darkness and therefore likely had strangely adapted methods of perception.

“He made it to the chapel on his first try.” Baffo commented, as he and Uggard sat side by side on the bench outside, elbows on their knees and chins on their hands. Both had Aegis’ livestream open in their livestream viewers, watching intensely with serious expressions on their face.

“That kid’s something else. But, that was just the easy part.” Uggard took a deep breath.