Chương 63: 63 Loop 2, Part 17

My chair lay on its side about a foot away from me, still rocking gently a few inches off the ground. I sat up and took inventory. Other than my singed eyebrows, everything was fine. Well, that, and a little pain on my face.

"Laz." Finn was already crouched over me, his wand out, green light gathering in his hands before he'd even confirmed I'd been hurt.

"Are you burned? Let me see your hands."

"Check the chair first."

"I'm not checking your fucking chair, man."

"The chair took the same hit I did, and it's made of wood. Please tell me it's all right."

"Oh, it's warm," Flag said. He'd gone right up to the doorway and put his hands against the side. Finn ignored Flag and ran his light over me anyway, but he found nothing. When I complained about my chair again, he finally stopped doting on me. And then he went and righted my chair, just to get me to stop.

"A room that can throw a grown man from his throne has earned my respect. We should enter carefully." I climbed back into my chair, happy to see that my float enchantment was still active, and scowled. A plan was already forming in my mind, and I got to work testing if it would, indeed, function. An interesting design about this dungeon was that weird barrier at the center line. Does it stop everything, or just the things that met in the middle?

I angled my chair, floated down to grab a handful of dirt, and lobbed it over the center line. I'd been expecting a barrier to flare up and prevent the dirt from crossing. But apparently it was only a surface level enchantment. The dirt landed in the shallow water with a wet slap, sitting there in a little brown cloud on the surface.

"What are you doing?" Finn asked.

"Nothing much. Just littering." Finn rolled his eyes and gestured for me to continue, so I explained my theory to the others. Then we floated over to the doorway. Now that the door was open, I was hopefully not in danger of getting hurt again. With [Wideview], I could see everything all at once. The same poison-green sky glowed overhead. Roots as thick as my arm came down through the ceiling, and what had to be more than sixty trees grew straight up out of the ground.

There were dozens of them in a space twice as big as the entrance, but their trunks were all black and glossy. And about a third of them were on fire. The fire had formed a ring, maybe a hundred feet across. It moved outward towards the walls and chewed into the unburnt parts of the forest. But there was something odd about the fire. The tree in the very middle wasn't burning at all.

And unlike the black trees, this one was vibrant—brown, green, and full of life, entirely untouched by the fire consuming its friends.

"So, how do we cross a burning forest?" Finn asked, peering over my shoulder.

"We don't," I said.

"The golems do." He gave me a questioning look, as if he was unsure what I was trying to get at.

"Finn. C'mon, isn't it obvious?" I poked him on the shoulder.

"Cast a heatproof ward on the golems. So we can follow them into the room." I said this all very slowly, as if I was talking to an idiot. Which Finn wasn't, but man, did I have to say it out loud? His mouth made an O shape. And then he pressed his palm against one of his purple golems." [Hearth Ward]." The air over the golem shivered, and a faint mauve glow covered the whole thing. We lined up six golems into a sort of shield, and he expanded the ward to cover all six.

The ward shimmered as fire licked at its surface. The heat pressed and rippled, but got nowhere. On our side, the corridor stayed cool.

"Huh," I said.

"You could say good job or something."

"I could say a lot of things, but, you know, I don't wanna." We went in behind our makeshift wall. I almost had to abandon the chair. But after I crouched on it like it was a surfboard, I was able to follow behind. Flag, Axe, and our other golems—minus the three I'd lost in the lake—all followed close behind. The farther we went into the room, the better the look I got at the tree in the center. It had roots that came out of the ground in slow ripples, moving more like limbs than actual roots.

And I finally saw what was feeding the fire. Half of the roots were spraying some sort of green liquid—almost like fuel—into the flames, burning it higher and hotter. Meanwhile, the other half of the roots grabbed at the blaze and fed it into what had to be a mouth. I had no other words for it. Part of the tree was exposed and gaping, with slits like teeth, and roots were shoving the burning mass into its mouth.

"What the fuck is that?" Finn exclaimed. And then, without warning, the roots shot past our group and grabbed a golem. No one had time to react. Suddenly, those teeth, like slits, chomped down on its chest. And the golem went inert when its mana battery was swallowed. I could see the shock on Finn's face. He hadn't expected our golems to be attacked so quickly. And before I had time to stop him, his wand was out. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author.

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"Finn, don't."" [Fireball]." Because why wouldn't you cast fire at a tree? They're flammable. Except clearly, this one wasn't. But sure enough, a ball of flame hit the great tree dead-on. And the tree drank it like water. And then it grew wider, and it glowed brighter.

"It eats the fire," Axe said.

"The blaze is not a danger to it. No. It is how it is being fed." The ring was getting wider. The tree was able to grab our golems without even a moment's hesitation. And standing within its reach—and near the fire—were Flag and Axe. Both ankle-deep in moss. With exposed, flammable bits. Our stone golems could be replaced. They were made of rock, paint, and a little bit of mana. But Flag and Axe were not replaceable. At All. At least, not without fixing my little [Soul Tether] problem.

And then I moved quickly before things got out of hand." [Gust]. [Enlarge]." I really loved [Enlarge]. It made most weak spells better than the strong ones. In the right hands, alteration magic was a known force multiplier, as people often said. The wind hit them hard and fast. Flag was lifted off the ground, and Axe followed suit. The spell drifted them clear of the room entirely, out through the doorway, at a speed mirroring my abrupt exit from earlier.

"Oh. Thank you, I guess," Flag said from the corridor, entirely unbothered by the spell.

"That was fun. Can we do it again?"

"Later, Flag."

"Okay." Axe didn't react, but I was sure he wasn't happy. What was an axe without trees to chop? And I'd just removed him from a whole forest.

"The tree and I are not finished."

"The tree doesn't even know you exist, Axe."

"It will." I didn't bother to respond. It was clear that the tree ate fire. The more fire it ate, the bigger it got. And the bigger it got, the farther the flames spread into the rest of the forest. Who knew how long we had until the entire room was just an inferno?

"Finn, how much mana do you have?"

"Plenty. Why?"

"It's time." I parked my chair back at the edge of the room, outside the range of Finn's ward. It was damned hot. But I needed to be able to control the spell, and I was uncertain I'd have the finesse from inside the fire room." [Stream]." [Stream - Enchantment] Cost: 25 mana. Varies. Controls a continuous flow of water from an enchanted source. Variable flow rate. Duration: until dispelled. A rope of water as thick as my thumb lifted out of the river and arced toward the room. It was not very impressive.

But it moved fairly fast. It was a tiny bird in comparison to a giant lion. Almost nothing in the grand scheme of things. That was why I had Finn.

"Okay. Ready to make dreams come true?" He looked at the sad little rope of water. And cast [Enlarge]. The stream became a river. Quadrupled in size, and then again, a little. But kept moving at the same speed. The river water hit the burning moss and caused a ten-foot stretch of steam to rise into the air. The hiss drowned out the crackle of everything else. But the water kept coming, which was the entire point of the spell. God, I loved enchantment.

The flooded half of the entrance was, as far as I could tell, bottomless. And besides that, Finn was making it bigger. The water spread out through the roots, dousing the flames wherever it went. The roots sprayed the green fuel faster, whipping it into the flames, trying to fight back against the water. It was a race now. My water against their fuel.

"Make it bigger," I said. Finn cast [Enlarge] again. The room filled, which was probably going to cause problems at the end, because I hadn't fully gamed that out. The water had to go somewhere, after all. But in the end, that was how we won the battle. Slowly, the water rose, and the fire sputtered out. And then the tree began to drown. I hadn't known trees could drown, but I directed my spout into its bizarre mouth.

And its own roots kept shoveling more water into the same mouth, which just exacerbated the problem. The canopy dulled, the bark grayed from top-down, and all that vibrant green drained like a lamp running out of oil. The mouth sagged, the roots settled, and the tree died. I dispelled [Stream]. My mana was solidly in the yellow now. I didn't want to take a meditation break yet, but the time was drawing closer.

"Is it dead?" Finn said. As if in answer, a chest fell from the sky. It landed in four feet of standing water with a flat splash, right next to the tree. The chest was completely submerged. And I knew what we had to do, because despite the key dispelling the barrier, something was keeping the water in the room. I cast [Stream] and watched as the water slowly trickled out of the room. [Enlarge] wouldn't make the new lake disappear faster. It would just create more on the other end.

And we already had quite enough here. About ten minutes later, the room was dry and the water was gone. The spell sputtered out on its own.

"Laz, you're going to want to see this." He had opened the chest. Inside was a rolled-up bunch of paper. It was a map. Of the dungeon. The full floor was laid before us, drawn in clean, dark lines. It laid out the whole entrance with its divide—all eight rivers and the four key doors. And the master door, as it was labeled on the map. There was a legend on the top right, which had icons for items and room types we'd find throughout the map. All four keys were labeled, as well as an item called the boss key.

Then there were three types of colored dots indicating different types of rooms. Red seemed to be battle rooms, denoting the one we were standing in. Purple denoted unknown rooms. And then, finally, green. Which just said "room."

"Finn?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you understand what this is?"

"It's a map."

"Well, duh. But, I mean, do you understand what this means?"

"You know where the keys are?"

"It means this dungeon just got a lot easier. We can go straight for the keys, get that boss key, and leave. We don't have to explore anything. This is the greatest thing that's happened to me all day. It means I can take a nap and not worry about lost time."

"You seriously want to take a nap?"

"Yeah, aren't you beat?" I drifted back to the entrance to find a comfortable spot to float over.