Chương 41: Chapter 37 - Burn it all down

Ashy wheezed.

"That wasn't great. But we will catch them!" I glared at her. She flew to hide behind Astarielle. Peace and Sarah were gone. All that remained were scorch marks and droplets of Sarah's blood. They moved up to upper floors to work on whatever goddess-bringing ritual Peace had prepared. I had to catch up to them. I turned, and summoned a hundred tentacle worms. Astarielle dug a hole up through the building. The worms could swing me up just fine. With a focused thought, I unsummoned Astarielle.

The worms started working on the swings. More like slings, actually. I remembered the part of the pamphlet about Mefista's summoning.

'As four suns lose light, when the grand fall turns dry, out of the vessel of true faith, with blood of the slayer, from the death of the devout, imbued with the shard of eternity, shall rise Mefista.' The sun losing light and the grand falls turning dry had no meaning to me. Vessel of true faith could most likely be Sarah. They could always find devout to die. The shard of eternity was most likely some artifact inside the tower. Which left the blood of the slayer. Inconveniently enough, that was me.

My father killed Daelus, the god of the tower. That undoubtedly qualified him to be the slayer. As his direct offspring, I was going to pass as the blood of the slayer. So, all I had to do was to stop climbing the tower. The worms finished the swing. I stepped into it. They swung me up and down, and then threw me up, so the worms forming the upper swing could catch me. I summoned four hundred more worms up above to make the swings needed to get me all the way up.

If I never entered the tower, then Peace wasn't getting her blood. But nobody was also rescuing Sarah. Plus, what was I going to do? The only thing I had outside the tower was debts. Debts so large I couldn't pay them in any other reasonable way than through the Secret Societies. And they were focused on the tower right now. Plus, even if I could handle the debt, I wasn't stopping the climb. I had to see what was on the top, and I was going to rescue Sarah myself.

That Peace needed my blood made a natural bait for her. The worms got me to the top of the hole. I unsummoned them all and walked to the staircase. I could walk the rest of the way. Ashy flew behind me, silent. Shadow guards materialized on the next landing. Four of them, solidified darkness, white-glowing faceplates, halberds raised. I summoned a hundred tentacle worms all over the platform. Detonate. The explosion thundered through the building, pressing against my shields, deleting the shadowguards.

[ENEMY DEFEATED — ELITE SHADOWGUARD (x4)] [Drops: Shadowguard core (Common) (x4), Dark essence fragment (Common) (x1), Solidified shadow plate (Uncommon) (x1), 1 silver, 97 copper] I continued walking. The stairwell ended at a rooftop access door. Steel, reinforced, shadows pooling thick around its frame. Astarielle. She appeared in a burst of crimson flame. I pointed at the door. She raised her palms, formed bright motes of crimson flames, and released the spell. The explosion tore the door apart.

[ENEMY DEFEATED — SHADOW MIMIC DOOR (x1)] [Drops: Shadow mimic fragments (Uncommon) (x6), 2 silver] I walked through. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. Wind hit me first. The amber sky stretched everywhere, the city sprawling below in glass and steel. The roof was a flat expanse of dark concrete, two hundred feet across, ringed by a low parapet. In the center stood the boss. Shadow, like everything else on this floor, but bigger.

Thirty feet tall, vaguely humanoid, with a torso that tapered into a whirlpool of compressed darkness at its base. Four arms, each ending in claws longer than I was tall. Its head was a featureless oval of shadow, with two burning white slits for eyes. Six larger shadow guards flanked it in a semicircle. Each had roughly the same shape as the boss, just smaller, like the one we met at the original street. I stepped forward, motioning Astarielle to start casting.

The third eye formed on her forehead, and crimson motes of power lit up all around her. The shadows stretched, covering the whole roof. I pulled on my storage and summoned five hundred tentacle worms. They erupted across the rooftop in a tide of slime and writhing tails, burying the guards, piling onto the boss, wrapping around its legs and arms and torso. The boss swung its claws. Worms flew apart in sprays of viscera. The guards hacked and slashed, cutting through the mass. Detonate.

The chains exploded all at once. The smaller shadows vanished, two of the major ones did too, and the main shadow boss covered his head, one arm shattering. Astarielle finished casting. A dozen crimson bolts landed on the boss and shadows, creating another series of explosions. Two more large shadows blew apart, the boss destabilizing. I summoned another five hundred tentacle worms all over the shadows. They swirled, trying to swat them away. Detonate. The explosion erased the remaining larger shadows.

Only the boss remained, form half shattered, black shadow bleeding out from all over him. Astarielle cast the next spell. A barrage of crimson lightning hit the boss. His entire form shook, burned from inside with the energy. Ashy flew in, spun, and cut his head off.

"Ha! Got him!" Astarielle drew a sharp breath.

"May I blast her too? Pretty please…"

"No." I headed toward the remains. [BOSS DEFEATED — SHADOW SOVEREIGN] [Drops: Sovereign's Shadow Core (Rare) (x1), Concentrated Dark Essence (Uncommon) (x8), Shadow Plate Fragment (Uncommon) (x4), Abyssal Thread (Rare) (x1), 12 silver, 340 copper] [ENEMY DEFEATED — MAJOR SHADOWSPAWN (x6)] [Drops: Large shadowspawn residue (Uncommon) (x6), Shadowspawn claw fragments (Uncommon) (x18), 8 silver, 157 copper] [ENEMY DEFEATED — SHADOWSPAWN (x21)] [Drops: Shadowspawn residue (Common) (x21), 1 silver, 91 copper] Two rares.

I motioned at Ashy. She flew on the loot pile, turned into herself, and landed spread all over it, grabbing all she could. I unsummoned her. I walked to the center of the roof. Behind where the boss had stood, a pillar of pale stone rose from the concrete. Smooth, featureless, glowing with quiet energy. The waystone. I pressed my palm against it. The surface was warm. Energy surged through me, scanning, cataloging. Golden text appeared. [FLOOR CLEARED — FLOOR 22] [Next floor: 25] [14/25] How many? I stared at it.

Fourteen out of twenty-five. What the hell was on floor twenty-five that it had so many people required to attempt it? The number of people, so far, matched the size of the floor. Floor six was solo, and it was a small valley and a village. Floor eleven had five people, and was an industrial complex, a wasteland, and a tower. Floor eighteen had three people, and it was just a library tower. Now on floor twenty-two, we were six, and the floor was the size of a city.

Twenty-five people were more than four times more than six. I looked over the city. By the rough design, I found the mall with Paradise offices. I pointed in the direction.

"Astarielle, see the mall over there?" She walked to me, heels clapping on the roof.

"You don't use my name unless it's serious." She stepped so close to me that our shoulders touched.

"Yes, I can see the mall."

"I need that one untouched. Burn down everything else." A grin spread over her face, her three eyes lighting up. She stepped away and started summoning crimson flame. I called out the Lantern of Endless Suffering. It drew in the souls from the building, dozens of small shadow spawns, but also the larger ones and the boss. Large teal flames lit up inside the lantern. Astarielle raised both hands above her head, palms to the sky.

Her lips moved in the liturgical tongue of Hell, the words impossible to hear with my ears. The third eye blazed open, pure crimson. I poured mana into her, keeping her topped off. A vortex of energy formed above her. The tornado lit up into a whirlwind of crimson flame.

"Hell Vortex," Astarielle said, finishing the spell. Gloves of flame started shooting from the tornado, each one the size of a small car, trailing tails of black-red flame. In an indiscriminate barrage, they descended on the city. Explosions shook the buildings. Sirens wailed. The fire spread. And souls started drawing into my lantern, together with blood. Perfect. For as long as I didn't leave the floor, it counted as a run, so I could gather resources. The building underneath us shifted.

The skyscraper's surface bulged. Black glass panels swelled outward, warping. Steel beams visible through the cracks bent and reformed, knitting into patterns that didn't belong to architecture. The organic pulse that had been a background hum all floor now thundered, each beat shaking the rooftop hard enough to rattle my teeth. A section of the building about twenty floors below, separated from the main structure. Glass and steel peeled away in long strips, then fused together.

The strips wove into scales, interlocking, compressing. A head formed first, massive, angular, with eyes that blazed white-hot, the same light as the shadow spawns but magnified a thousandfold. The overseer. The massive steel snake coiled around the building, growing as it absorbed it. It bit up through the rooftop, devouring a section of the roof, catching Astarielle. The whole building shook, Astarielle unsummoning due to sustained damage.

The snake shot up into the sky, destroying the vortex with its own massive size. I kept the lantern going and triggered the extraction. The overseer bent in the air and bolted at me. I sprinted to the roof's edge and jumped off. His jaws snapped after me, devouring a part of the building, pushing me to the side. I fell into a wide arch. The overseer shot after me, almost the entire skyscraper now remade into its body. But the extraction was about to finish. I unsummoned the lantern.

I extracted before the snake got to me. Darkness returned me to the pod. Time was already stopped, naturally. Except this time, Elsha towered above me, the top of the pod gone. She stood straight, arms at her sides, goat-like horns sharp and polished to a shine underneath the frozen dome lights, violet eyes flat and hard. She glowered at me.

"Well?"