Chương 137: Chapter 135: Pillars

The air past the Sun Door was different, and even now, three weeks after I first entered the world of Godsrealm, I was impressed by how authentically NWE had pulled off the sensory perception. Whenever I walked into a cellar in the real world, the cold, damp aroma of the room hit me almost instantly. It was similar now, but even deeper, the scent even richer. Just by smell alone, I knew that the place we entered was not just old, but sealed away from the rest of the cave for who knew how long.

The corridor sloped down for a while before it ended at a stone balcony; a flat shelf of carved rock with a low railing of weathered serpentines, and beyond the railing there was nothing but the black void.

"Lune," I said, and my companion materialized.

"Foxfire." For a while, nothing happened, and I glanced at my friend with a raised eyebrow. Then her pupils narrowed, and instead of the pale orb of fire appearing, her fur started glowing gold, the iridescent light making its way straight up into her eyes, covering her eye sockets. Foxfire materialized, but instead of flame, it started gathering the golden aura, and the result was a floating, miniature sun, painting the walls in all shades of yellow. Pet: Lune has leveled up!

Level 2 Foxfire: level 1 → level 2"What," Alice started, "was that?" I wasn't sure. I kept looking at Lune as if she was going to give me answers, but she started licking her hind paw without a care in the world. I honestly wasn't even sure she was aware something had changed. What could have triggered her level up? I used no consumables, fought no enemies, completed no quests. All I did was ask her to use her skill to create a light source.

"I don't know," I admitted.

"Lune leveled up." Somnus looked up at me while stroking the fox's fur.

"Maybe they level up by using their skills?" It was the most reasonable explanation. I talked to Gaul briefly, after the battle in the quarry, but he told me his pet was just that — a pet dog. It had no skills and no practical use whatsoever. It was cute, though. Pets have started appearing in larger numbers these last few days, at least according to the forums, but from what I saw, most were simple domestic animals.

Sure, they appeared when summoned, but other than that, they had no magical properties, at least at level 1. Lune was different in that regard. She came with the Foxfire skill, and she was smart enough to get me out of the puzzle back in the catacombs.

"Could be," I said.

"Although most pets have no skills, yet still have a level."

"If they have no skills to use, how would they level up?" Denxy pointed the paradox out.

"Exactly." I nodded.

"You can figure it out later," Desirae said.

"Time's ticking."

"You're right. Let's move." Upon further inspection, we realized that Foxfire's light stopped abruptly about four meters into the darkness. It hit a wall of nothingness and went no further.

"Candlelight," Desirae tried, and her spell met the same edge. The two lights sat side by side in a small, bright bubble, and the darkness pressed against their rim without giving an inch.

"That's interesting," Alice said.

"It is," I agreed. I leaned over the railing and let Twilight Hunter do the work. The passive cut through the murk, peeling the black back into shapes of gray.

"The darkness blocks out light," I said, "but night vision skills work."

"Oh," Somnus raised an eyebrow slightly.

"I have one of those." He activated Night Vision, which I reckoned was the same ability that the Shademere Wargs had dropped back in Shadowreach. The others had no similar skills, so the two of us went first, starting our descent. The serpentine had no traps or enemies, and other than a couple of narrow parts where Denxy had to turn sideways, we had no difficulty getting through. Night vision or not, what awaited us down below only became clear once we reached the bottom.

"Is that...?" Somnus started.

"A maze." I nodded, instinctively checking the time.

"The one thing I'd have loved to avoid." Walls of fitted stone rose six meters high, running in long, straight lines broken by junctions, branching across the whole room. It was enormous, with only one entrance as far as I could see.

"We could just climb it," Redcap pointed it out.

"Walk on the top of the wall."

"It's worth a try," I agreed. I doubted it was that easy, but maybe the designers didn't take vertical movement into consideration. And it would definitely save us some much needed time. I switched to the Threadweaver, aiming at the top of the closest wall.

"Silk Shot!" The skill anchored on top of the stone, and I yanked myself up. I landed with elegance, surprised that it worked, and turned back to the others to tell them to line up. I saw nothing. At first it wasn't obvious, since Lune stayed on the ground with Foxfire active, and visibility was pretty bad regardless, but the more I tried to focus, the more… darkness I was surrounded by. There was nothing around me. No walls, no maze, no party. Absolutely nothing.

"Guys?" I shouted in surprise, but I couldn't even hear my own voice.

"What the hell," I murmured, again, without hearing myself. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. I tried to step forward. The wall was definitely there, under my soles. I crouched, felt the edges with my hands, then slowly let myself down. Suddenly, everything was clear again. Foxfire and Candlelight were still lit, the others still there, waiting for me.

"What?" Alice asked.

"Did you hear me from up there?"

"No," she shook her head.

"And we couldn't see you, either. The same dark veil that blocked out the light had covered you, and you disappeared." Interesting, I thought.

"So," I started slowly.

"We have two options." The others gathered around me, waiting.

"The wall is scalable," I said.

"And from what I felt, it is stable enough to walk on."

"So, what are we waiting for?" Redcap asked.

"Let's speed past this labyrinth and get to the boss room before we run out of time."

"Up there, you can't see anything. You can't hear anything. It's pretty disorienting." Everyone fell silent, contemplating.

"I don't think I could move through that," Denxy said first.

"You guys have a myriad of movement skills that could save you, but I'd fall every time the wall turned."

"We'll just get you up again," Somnus said.

"We won't even know he fell," Alice pointed out.

"And honestly, navigating without senses is much harder than it sounds. We'd probably all fall at least once. At that point, we would have to stop at every turn, go down to check if we'd lost someone, wait for Spider-Man to get ready again, then start over."

"Spider-Man?" I grinned.

"But yeah, what she said. Also, I have a feeling that the darkness up there is much more than meets the eye."

"Pun intended." Somnus added, earning an eye roll from Desirae.

"So," the healer stretched, raising her staff above her head.

"We tackle the maze, right?"

"I think it's both safer and faster," I nodded.

"We just have to figure out if there are any mechanics involved."

"No time like the present," Redcap grinned.

"Time?"

"Fifty-six minutes remaining," Denxy said.

"We can make it if the other side is the boss room. If not…"

"It will be. Both other caves could be cleared in roughly the same time. Unless the developers had deliberately made this one out of sync, we should be good," I deduced. Truth be told, that very well might have been the case. If one cave was made to be much longer than the other two, it would add even more complexity to the time-puzzle, but I decided not to mention that.

"Let's go," Alice took the lead.

By all means, the whole thing looked like an ordinary maze, except for the suffocating darkness above. There were no indicators which way to go, no markings on the walls, no mechanics to find the right path, so we tracked our progress the old fashioned way.

"Movement ahead!" Alice called. The shadows peeled themselves out of the corners where Foxfire and Candlelight failed to reach, forming into humanoid shapes with clawed hands and faceless heads. Umbral Level 24"Let's do it fast!" Alice said, already moving. The first Umbral lunged at Denxy, his shield stopping it effortlessly. Its body bent around the impact like smoke, then snapped back together. I fired into its chest, and the arrow punched through, dragging a strand of darkness behind it. -452!

Redcap stepped around Denxy and skewered another one through the throat, pinning it to the wall long enough for Alice to cut it apart. Desirae's Holy Bolts were especially effective.

"They don't like light," she said.

"Good," I replied.

"Keep doing that." We moved as we fought. The shadows weren't strong enough to threaten us in a fair fight, but they kept coming, one or two at a time, always from corners and side paths, always trying to pull our attention away from the route. The next junction we reached had a stone pillar in the middle, a tiny bit taller than the walls. Upon closer inspection, it looked eerily ordinary.

It stood in a small, circular alcove, made of the same black stone as the surrounding walls, and it had no symbols or visible mechanism on it. Alice touched it with the flat of her blade, but nothing happened. We spent about two minutes looking at the pillar, but if they were good for something, we couldn't say what.

"Noted for later?" Somnus asked.

"Noted for later," I said. We kept going. The second pillar appeared eight turns later, identical to the first, same refusal to explain itself. Then we found the third not long after that, tucked beside a dead end where three Umbrals tried to ambush Desirae from behind. All they got, however, was a quick introduction to Alice's Lightning Blade.

"Three pillars," Somnus said.

"No function."

"Yet," I answered. A few minutes later, we found the exit, and it surprised us more than it should have. There was a sealed stone door built into the far wall of the labyrinth chamber, marked by a circular frame and three shallow cracks above it.

"That was fast," Redcap said.

"That's it?" Denxy asked. Probably not, I thought, but I didn't want to paint the devil on the wall. Alice put a hand against the door, and the stone above it, where the cracks had been, crumbled instantly. Three chunks broke away, one after another, falling to the floor and shattering at our feet. Behind them, set into the wall above the door, were three small mirrors angled outward toward the maze. I stared at them, then I looked back the way we came as the realization hit me. I wasn't alone.

"Pillar time?" Redcap asked.

"Sure looks like it," I nodded.

"If there's a mirror mechanism, we likely have to light them somehow."

"Less than nineteen minutes left," Denxy chimed in.

"Move," Alice said. We ran. There were even more Umbrals now, as if the maze knew we had figured out the trick. Denxy took point and slammed through the first one before it fully formed. Redcap stayed close to Desirae, spear flashing every time a shadow reached for her. Somnus slowed anything that came from side corridors, although by the looks of it, his magic types weren't really suited for dealing with shadow-creatures.

His bolts had basically dealt no damage, and most debuffs were shaken off without much effect.

"I'm of no use now," he said nonchalantly.

"Carry me, people." Alice's sword and my arrows carved a path through the enemy lines until we reached the nearest pillar. Desirae stepped toward it and used Candlelight instantly. The stone drank the light with uncanny speed, and a thin beam shot out of the pillar, straight over the maze wall, toward the direction of the door. Ten seconds later, it vanished.

"Well," Redcap said.

"That answers that."

"All three at once," I said.

"Desirae, stay here. Redcap, protect her." He nodded.

"Done." I looked at Desirae.

"The moment you see light from another pillar, light yours again. Don't wait for confirmation."

"Understood." The rest of us sprinted back into the maze. The second and third pillars were closer to each other, which was handy because I was already doing the calculations in my head. When we reached the second, I could see the top of the third thanks to Twilight Hunter. Alice stopped dead in her tracks.

"Do we," she looked around, "even have any more light spells?"

"Don't look at me," Somnus said.

"That would ruin my whole vibe."

"I have a torch," Denxy said, but unfortunately, it was highly ineffective.

"Lune," I said.

"Foxfire." The fox looked up at me foir a second, then the miniature sun drifted forward and touched the pillar. A beam of golden light fired toward the door. Far behind us, Desirae's pillar answered a heartbeat later, another ray cutting through the darkness. Two.

"Now what?" Alice asked, but I was already drawing. The shadows rushed us from both sides as Denxy and Alice got into position to deal with them. It was a tricky shot, especially because of all the darkness, but I wasn't worried. I aimed at the top of the last pillar.

"Withering Light." The arrow left the string wrapped in radiance and hit the target moments later. The third beam ignited, and f or a second, the whole labyrinth lit up. Then the sound of the massive stone door opening reached us.

"Time?" I asked.

"Four minutes."

"Run!" Alice ordered. She didn't need to tell us twice.