Chương 155: Chapter 151 - Interlude 14.2

2 David glanced around the meeting happening in the tent they had set up near the new fracture and had to work really hard to swallow his frown. The room was full of people that his father brought on, most of the security and 'security' professionals he poached or hired, here to provide their expertise, while the rest were pro gamers hired for no doubt an obscene amount of money. The original players he collected for his guild were nowhere to be seen, forced out by his father's men.

David could only be present because he was actually related to the big boss. As he wasn't a pro gamer and neither had credentials in the security business, he could stay, but he had no voice in deciding what would happen. It was incredibly frustrating. When this began to happen, he already decided to leave the guild, to hell with his father. But when Katie came to him with her crazy plan, he chose to stay to see it to the end. Plus, he didn't really want his father to suspect he had anything to do with it.

Even so, David was pretty sure that the man would blame him and Katie for the travesty that was about to happen. Katie wasn't exactly forthcoming with what she and her 'boss' planned, but he knew his sister. And while to others she may seem like the perfect princess, he knew she was a chaotic gremlin, taking delight in causing chaos and devastation wherever she went.

"How much time left?" came the gruff voice of a man he didn't even bother to learn the name of. He worked for his father, and that was enough for David.

"An hour, sir."

"Good. How are the defenses?"

"Ready for anything to happen!"

"The stocks of antidote?"

"Enough for a dozen parties."

"Healers learned enough cure spells?"

"Yes, sir. We bought all the highest-leveled spells we could find and made them learn it. Nothing will be able to hurt us in there." David resisted the urge to point out how stupid that was. It might have worked in other games, but in Magic Unbound, just learning the highest-leveled skills and spells wasn't enough. They would need the supporting skills, have time to acquire enough subskills, and get enough experience with using the actual skills.

Just shoving expensive skill books down the throats of healers would lead only to death.

"Good." Naturally, the man his father hired knew nothing substantial about the game. David hoped that the pro gamers would speak up but most of them just nodded along, dashing all his hopes. He didn't even dare to imagine what went through their heads.

'They probably think they could carry the raiding party with their own power,' he mused.

"Any indication that someone would interfere?" Another man, dressed as a bona fide ninja, spoke up, his voice soft but carrying an underlying danger.

"We made sure to sabotage the other guilds' efforts to set up anything competent. Our biggest competitor at this point is Eternal Light locally. Internationally, however…" the guy trailed off as the people around the table scowled.

"I know. There are a lot of other guilds trying to get the first clear on their local fracture, but we need to concentrate on the here and now." His father's stand-in declared.

"Is the first party ready?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Good, I managed to negotiate with the government and each guild gets to send in one party at the same time."

"No more?"

"They are careful, as they want to make sure nobody brings out something infectious." There was some nodding around the room after hearing that.

"Any other question?" Silence enveloped the room. The man stood up and nodded.

"Excellent. Then those who're in the first party go and prepare. We need to make sure that we get the first place. I don't tolerate failure. Understand?" He finished the small speech with a glare directed around the room. Most of the people who were also security professionals sat up straighter, but the pro gamers just scoffed at the declaration. David once again resisted the urge to sigh.

He checked his sword, making sure that the edge was without any chips, as the rest of his team did the same, checking their gear. They stood around the entrance of the fracture, at a safe distance from the other guild groups, who were doing the same thing. Several officials from the kingdom were standing and walking around while high-leveled soldiers in enchanted armor who were the envy of every player present were standing in front of the building that was housing the portal leading to the fracture.

The Vipers were their unruly selves, clowning around, trying to intimidate the guilds near them, the black blood showing under their skin. Eternal Light was much better, showing discipline and training with all their shiny gear that tried to blind people who looked at them. David saw several dark guilds also preparing, the players belonging to them trying to avoid attention from anybody, yet at the same time, he could see the excitement in them.

A brief trumpet sound coming from nowhere broke his silent observation. All the heads snapped up and fixated on the kingdom official who stepped in front of the building built recently. By David's guess, it was big enough to hold all the present guilds. The official coughed into his fist and then looked around impassively.

"It's time. Please, follow me," he said, then turned around and began walking toward the doors of the building. The leader of their party raised their longsword and called out.

"STEEL LIONS! TO VICTORY!" People banged their weapons on their armor and joined it with their own cries.

"RAAAAH!" The rest of the guilds did the same, some with more enthusiasm, some with less, but in a second the area was just a cacophony of noise. The room was empty aside from the poisonous green portal that merrily whirled at the back of the room. However, David could see all the enchantments around the room, there to prevent anything escaping from it. The official stopped a little before the portal, cleared his throat again, and began speaking.

"Party leaders, step forward." Several people stepped forward, including David's team's leader. In the next second, a screen appeared in front of him. [Your team is entering a new fracture!] [Fracture: Poisonous Hot Springs, Where Relaxation Goes to Die] [Old hot springs that were abandoned after the healing waters turned noxious. This noxious water merged with the dimensional energies and created something so poisonous that most people would die with one second of contact. Aren't you glad you prepared? Or did you? The government wants to know everything about it. Your job is to go in, reach the end, and come back alive.] [Time Limit: None] [Charges: Unlimited] [Current Best Clear Time: N/n]'Well, that didn't sound ominous at all…' David thought before his vision was swallowed by the usual rainbow light that signaled that they had entered a fracture. They found themselves on a stone path, surrounded by small and carefully taken care of bushes and trees, leading up to the gates of typical hot springs.

That's where the normality ended. Behind the only wall visible, they could only see clouds illuminated with green light, and the building that was once an inn exploded into the air, the pieces hanging up in the air as if time had stopped happening for them.

"Gear check!" came the call from the team leader and instantly everybody was busy doing it. They were allowed to bring twenty people, most of them basically strangers to David, but all of them paid for by his dad to make sure that his name and the family's name would be next to the first clear of the fracture.

"How is the stream quality?"

"Base says they're getting everything clear, no issues," he received the report instantly from the designated contact guy. They couldn't see the streams of other groups, or receive info from the team back at the base, and the system added randomized delay to the outgoing video, thus it would be probably useless.

"Everybody ready?" Hearing the agreement from everybody, they began heading for the door on the lone standing wall, David at the head of the spearhead, his shield ready to protect him and the team from whatever the dungeon would throw at them.

"Antidote everybody!" Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! As one, they uncorked the antidote bottles and downed them. David could instantly see the antidote appear on his HUD, a small countdown next to it.

'Well, sister, let's see what you have planned…' With a deft motion, he reached for the doorknob and turned it. Behind the standing wall was devastation. The first thing he saw was a series of craters that dotted the land, among several bigger craters that let out continuous green smoke that pooled around the craters, looking like weird green lakes. The smaller craters only had rubble and a few small pools of green water. He took a step forward and instantly had to cough as he took a breath.

When he recovered, he noticed that his antidote countdown had started to speed up.

"Air is poisonous!" he yelled before reaching for another antidote and downing it. To his surprise, the countdown reset, but the speed of it didn't slow down. After half a minute as the rest of the team entered the area and one of the mages who knew about air magic set up a bubble of clear air, the countdown reached the halfway point before returning to the usual speed. However, not before a few more people also breathed in the dangerous air. They also chugged a new bottle of antidote down.

The team leader looked around with a scowl and turned to the mage.

"Can you keep up the bubble?" The mage looked affronted that the man even dared to ask.

"Hell yeah! This is nothing!"

"Good. He is in the middle. We stay around it."""" Roger!""" David scowled, suspecting that there was something else happening with the poison and that a simple air bubble wouldn't be enough to protect them. Alas, he had no say, and at this point, he didn't want to do anything that would call attention to himself. Instead, he waited as the group situated themselves around the proud-looking mage. Organized, they began marching slowly but surely.

They stepped off the wooden remains of the inn onto the cratered ground, illuminated by a green light coming from nowhere. The exploded pieces of the hot spring casting odd shadows on the ground on them, while the entire area was eerily silent. A few hisses and odd noises could be heard, but otherwise, there was nothing aside from the sounds their gear made. They didn't have to wait long.

As soon as they reached the first crater's middle part, one of the bubbles began to sizzle, and then erupted like a geyser, showering them in a green liquid that was no doubt poisonous. The countdown on his antidote speeding up proved it true not even a half second later. Before they could react, the geyser vanished, leaving behind a monster that looked like a water elemental, but the blue water instead was green and oddly viscous.

It reminded David of the experiments they made with starches in chemistry class in elementary school. It had black eyes on it, cartoony, but nonetheless, it was rather threatening. It 'opened' its mouth, which was just a gaping black hole, and released a gurgling and bubbling roar. The nearest knight instantly swatted it with their greatsword. It let out a shriek, sounding like somebody was being waterboarded, and exploded into a tidal wave of green liquid, soaking the entire team in it.

Naturally, the air barrier did nothing to prevent the liquid from reaching them. However, none of them had time to complain, as the antidote countdown sped up and they had to chug more to keep the defenses up. The speeding countdown stopped for David after his second bottle of antidote, allowing him to exhale in relief and take a look at the rest of the team.

The leader was being bathed in healing light, as he had forgone chugging down the antidote for the opportunity to tear a new one to the knight who destroyed the poison elemental. A few minutes later they were moving once again, the air bubble still staying up and several mages ready with shields to prevent any liquid from reaching them. Then it began to rain, and the icon of his antidote vanished from his HUD within seconds.

'Oh boy…' David thought while reaching for his antidote while the mages tried to conjure up a shield to protect them and the healers tried to expunge the poison afflicting them.

'I hope we…have…enough… THAT BASTARD!' As the realization hit him, David couldn't help but feel some level of admiration for his sister's boss. It was the perfect setup. Before they could get comfortable and figure out how to proceed, the puddles left behind by the noxious rain began to explode into geysers, spewing even more liquid into the air, and turning into very angry poison elementals. Soon, they were surrounded by slowly advancing elementals, all of them filled with poison.

"THEY ARE COMING AGAIN!"

"AAARGH! It got me in the leg!"

"Heal it dammit! HEAL IT!"

"I'm healing as fast as I can, but the damn rain!"

"Earth Mages! COVER!" Instantly, several slabs of stone rose, enveloping the party. As the healer acted to rid them of the poison, and the elementals started to pound at the slabs, trying to get them, the few people remaining of the twenty people that came in with them looked at each other, exhausted.

By their estimation, and from what they saw, they reached around halfway on the crater highway as they called it, but the constant attacks of the elementals, the noxious rain and everything else had slowly whittled down the twenty people into eight. Not to mention the lack of enough antidotes. They brought enough that by their calculations it would have lasted for hours, yet they had almost used up all of them.

"How many bottles do we have?"

"I have three…"

"Two."

"Ten," said the healer, exhaustion clearly visible on his face. And so it went, people declaring the meager number of antidotes they had on hand. They all knew what this meant.

"We don't have enough…" Nobody answered. They just hung their heads in shame. Sadly, there was no exit mechanic for the fractures. You either conquered it or died. He looked around and took in the defeated aura of the remaining people. Leaning forward he slapped his fist into his palm and exclaimed.

"Alright, people! We may not conquer the fracture fully, but that doesn't mean we can't try!" People looked up, and he saw several small smiles.

"Yeah!"

"We can at least try!"

"Good! Now-" However, a giant roar interrupted his planned heroic inspirational speech as something ripped away the top slab protecting them. Before their eyes was a giant elemental, its body dotted with rocks emitting dark green puffs of gases where the joints should have been, creating an illusion of the elemental wearing some kind of armor made of noxious gases.

It roared with the same gurgling sound that the smaller elementals did, and to their horror, opened its maw and vomited an unending tide of green poison on top of them. The created defenses worked as a bowl and soon, all of them were sent back to the respawn point, slightly traumatized.

"HAHAHAHA!"

"This fracture was made for us!"

"Fuck yeah!" They ran around, enjoying the cool rain as poisonous water fell on them, their black veins bulging as they processed and dealt with the affliction. This was just what the doctor ordered for them after that public humiliation with the health potion. The leader of the Abyss Viper team watched as his guild mates ran around like excited children, occasionally killing the few elementals that spawned but otherwise unbothered.

Then he saw one of the idiots lean down and take a cup, fill it with the acid-green liquid in the ground, add a little alcohol from his inventory and a small paper umbrella that was almost instantly consumed by the water, and then chug it to the cheers of his peers. The guy raised the empty cup in the air and let out a proud belch while the rest continued to cheer and were reaching for their own cups.

He was standing a little away, so he could see exactly as the guy frowned, his eyes moved frantically around, and then… BAAAAAAMMMM Exploded into a mist of blackish-green liquid, drenching everyone. Apparently, there was such a thing as too much poison… The cups vanished very quickly after that. However, with the people calmed down, he could finally start on this stupid fracture.

"Form up people! And remember! Don't drink the obviously magical water! Alright?" The first half was child's play thanks to their black blood. They only lost one other person, and that was thanks to the giant elemental that appeared, which was filled with giant rocky joints. Being slammed to death wasn't the nicest way to go. However, as they began walking away from the giant elemental's corpse, naturally after thoroughly looting it and storing some of its body for later experimentations, the local weather changed.

The gentle rain of deadly water changed into a typhoon. The wind howled and brought the poison from every direction, covering them in liquid from head to toe. And this time, the poison changed. For the first time, their black blood wasn't enough to protect them from the deadly material.

"Healers!" he called out as the icon of the poison appeared on his HUD while he took out the prepared antidote. Thankfully, they had the forethought to test if their black blood conflicted with it, and to their relief, drinking it didn't cause any trouble. Thus, just in case, they prepared a few of them for the fracture. Naturally, stolen from other guilds. Downing the vial, he threw it away, wiped at his mouth, and called out, pointing his dagger forward.

"Let's go!" Navigating the area with the typhoon was insanely hard, and then the ground began to rise, breaking into chunks that hovered above a sea of green gas that turned insanely acidic as they learned when one of them fell into it. Watching someone turn into a skeleton within seconds was rather gruesome…

"Don't falter! THE LIGHT PROTECTS US!" He called out, using his light-based spell to renew one of the countless shields they used to keep at least part of the poison at bay. As he looked around, watching as his guild members dealt with the swarming poison elementals, he couldn't help but internally scoff at Isabella. The girl might have had the looks, but she clearly lacked in the brain department. Why the hell had she thought this would be a waste of time?

The loot they gained so far was enough to recoup the loss that the antidotes caused. Suddenly, he heard a plink sound. Looking over, he watched as the armor covering one of their tanks fell to the ground, bouncing a few times before falling apart into irregular shards, the edges visibly decaying.

"What the hell?" The tank looked back at him with wide eyes.

"Sir! I just got a message that the durability of the armor reached zero…" Instantly, everybody was checking their gear. Even he wasn't immune, noticing that the metal of his sword had developed a dark-colored patina in a few spots. Cursing like a sailor, he turned to the others.

"What's the damage?"

"It's bad, captain," came the not-so-calm report.

"Most tanks still have some time left on their armor but if we don't find a way to protect ourselves, we won't reach the end."

"The light?"

"It slows it down, but we need an actual repair skill that can undo the damage that the acid causes."

"Do we have anything like that?"

"No, sir."

"Fuck!" He looked around, and after a few seconds, he spoke up.

"Double the light shields and double the speed. And get the backup armor on, soldier!"""" Yes, sir!""" With renewed vigor, the light covering all their bodies, the rains almost uselessly splashing against it, they continued their march from one floating platform to another, hoping that they would beat the other guilds. David, at the moment, really hated Katie and her damnable boss. And he did not doubt that after this day, his father would do everything to bring the guy down.

Just the amount of antidotes they consumed was enough to bankrupt several guilds. Following that, the acidic rain and elementals destroyed enough equipment that the pro gamers looked ready to log out. Only by reminding them of the contracts they signed and the remuneration they would get later did they manage to keep their hands from clicking on the logout button. Damn the penalties.

Even he had to take out a backup shield, as his first one was consumed by the countless elementals that found themselves crashing into it. Thankfully, he didn't bring his nice enchanted shield, as he didn't know how the death penalty would work in this special fracture. Luckily for him, the shield he brought with him looked just like his enchanted one, so nobody realized the switch. He was very happy that he made that decision. But, it seemed they were reaching the end of this damnable fracture.

The floating platforms gave way to a giant platform, surrounded by clouds of acid, buffeted by hurricane-level winds, and drenched by constantly falling poisonous and acidic rain. His taste buds were already gone, the amount of antidote he chugged killing all of them. A quick check of his inventory showed that he still had a few health potions and a stack of antidotes. Probably enough for the last fight.

The team trudged forward, with David still in the lead, their numbers diminished, but not so much as to make the fight impossible. Hopefully. As they reached an arbitrary line, the slight fog of war obscuring their vision, despite the wind, cleared away and they could only see a pile of rocks.

"It's going to be a golem!" he called out and raised his shield in front of him. Not a moment later, the pile of rocks shivered, and the golem unfolded in front of them. It was gigantic, easily towering over them. Most of it was rock, lined with glowing veins of green light, but between the stone was the now familiar viscous liquid connecting them, giving the golem a rather menacing air. The head, instead of rock, was made of liquid, with only the eyes made of the same rock, almost consumed by the green light.

It moved a little in place, then its attention snapped to their group. David braced himself for the incoming attack, and he could hear the instruction being issued behind him as everybody prepared. The giant black maw on the liquid head opened into a mockery of a smile and the monster let out a gurgling roar that was loud enough that for a short moment, no rain fell in front of the gigantic monster. Then it returned with renewed vigor and David could practically hear as his armor began to break down.

The golem lowered its head a little, and its maw opened to impossible proportions, but instead of a roar what came out was an insanely fast and turbulent river of poison. David just let out a tired sigh and hid behind his poor shield while the rest of the team began casting magics to hopefully survive the tide of death and misery heading for them.

'Katie, if we don't get the first clear, I'm going to fucking steal your dessert…' was his last thought before the only thing that dominated his mind was survival.