Chương 384: Chapter 367

"Demons?" Isabella asked with a frown.

"Here?"

"Why not here?" Sam asked with a shrug.

"It's out of the way and isolated. Perfect place to grow your forces or power."

"Volcanoes are very important in certain fire rituals," Dan commented.

"I looked into a few, but most of them end with the volcano erupting, or worse, exploding."

"Yeah, we wouldn't want that…" Katie chuckled.

"Plus, it's really hard to find a volcano that is out of the way and not occupied," Dan continued seriously. Then he turned to Sam.

"If you actually plan to occupy the island for the guild, I have a few long-term, low-effort rituals that should boost things." Sam eyed the muscle-bound wizard.

"No explosions, right?"

"None."

"Good. Pass them along to Lucy, and she can prepare the materials," Sam said, turning back to the shards to see if he could figure something out from them.

"Will do, boss," Dan said. He crouched down next to Sam.

"Any idea what kind?"

"Demons? Probably one of those planning types. Always watching… then monologuing about their grand plan," Sam commented.

"I'm sure if we look around, we're going to find a bunch of other low-level fractures with one of these eyes in them."

"Can't we just rush up to the top of the mountain and deal with the head honcho?" Katie asked. Isabella and Dan nodded as well. Sam shook his head ruefully.

"Sure, we could do that. But I would bet a lot of money that the last boss has some kind of spell set up that gets stronger the more fractures remain intact."

"Booo!" Katie booed while giving a double thumbs down. Isabella just sighed and shook her head.

"I assume this is where we start the grind?" Sam stood up and held most of the shards in his palms. He swept them into a small bag and put it into his inventory. He had a feeling they would be useful for something. Or at least somebody back at the guild could use them if not…

"The guild scouts found three fractures, but they had gone up in a straight line. I think there are at least four or more fractures at the same level as this one."

"I see!" Dan exclaimed.

"Then we go up and find the next level of fractures. Stronger monsters, but fewer fractures."

"Exactly," Sam nodded.

"At least that's my hypothesis." Isabella smirked.

"Yeah, and as we know, a Solar hypothesis is worth at least three facts from somebody else…" Sam bravely ignored her.

"Let's go and check them out…" They left the fracture, the portal dissolving behind them. Instantly, the surrounding area began to change and transform. The lava slowed, and even the volume of lava spilling out decreased as the local temperature dropped. A little farther from where the portal had been, the ground began to solidify further, while the mana in the air sang with exultation. Small cracks appeared in the obsidian, and new life began to sprout, expanding the lush jungle at the island's edges.

It wasn't as if the entire landscape had changed as far as the eye could see, but a sizeable portion of the land had begun to grow and expand, telling Sam that something was definitely afoot on this island. Looking at the others, he jerked his head toward the desolate area where lava and obsidian reigned, and greenery was little more than an afterthought. They started by walking along the edge of the island, using the first fracture as a starting point to find the next one.

It was embedded between two gigantic rocks, swirling with the same heat and color as the first – hot red at the edges, smoldering into searing white at the center. Beneath it, just like the other, was a spring of lava, spewing copious amounts of molten rock into the air and the surrounding area. Sam calmly walked up to the portal and touched it. [You entered a new fracture!] [Fracture: Lava Fount] [Another source of seemingly limitless lava. You already have an inkling about the cause. Enter and investigate. Be sure to hydrate!] [Time Limit: No limit] [Charges: 1/7] They appeared in a similar location to the first fracture. An enormous, fast-flowing lava river and obsidian fields as far as the eye could see. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. They began walking forward, but instead of the expected spider, the sky darkened – and with blackened wings, the birds descended. Each bird may have been only a foot long, but there were an immeasurable number of them.

They moved as one, like a giant, weightless serpent, eyes red as the cooling lava, claws dripping with crimson fluid. The team, as one, looked at Clarissa, who was already eyeing her staff.

"I don't think I can laser those birds…" she muttered in disappointment. Dan stepped forward.

"No worries. I have a plan." He raised his club and began to murmur. Mana rose in the air from him, at first as hot and searing as the lava they were trying not to be hit by. Then it slowly began to drop until they could see their breath in small white clouds. The ground around him was suddenly covered in hoarfrost, and his club was wrapped in translucent ice-blue mana, glittering like frozen crystal.

He slowly raised the club overhead, gripping it with both hands, seemingly unbothered by the creeping cold that forced the others to take a step back. The birds continued to descend, beaks sharp and glinting. Dan took a step forward, raised the club behind his head, then whipped it forward with a mighty swish.

"FROZEN WORLD!" he shouted, his voice echoing and somehow carrying the weight of absolute zero. Sam and the team watched as magic left the club, instantly transitioning from a translucent mana projection into solid ice – ice that grew forward in a fractal pattern, seemingly ignoring gravity as it surged toward the incoming cloud of birds. There were so many that Sam refused to call it a flock. It only took a moment for the edge of the expanding ice structure to reach the lead bird, and then… Mana exploded.

A white pulse erupted, and Sam felt himself buffeted by a freezing wind. The local temperature dropped so quickly that he couldn't even properly feel the cold anymore. When he blinked the spots from his eyes, he saw a spectacular sight. In the air, the birds were all encased in crystalline ice. For a moment, they hung there, motionless, as if even gravity had been surprised by what had happened. Then, as one, they began to fall. THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD.

The sound of motionless birds hitting the ground filled the air. Dan turned around, sweating despite the freezing temperature. He looked rather proud.

"I'm working on stopping even molecular motion. This is a nice halfway spell. What do you guys think?" Sam stepped forward and slapped him on the shoulder.

"Pretty good. Pretty good. What's the cooldown on it?"

"About an hour, sadly."

"Well, still cool." THUD. The last bird fell. SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEACH. A word-shattering scream echoed out, cracking even the ice encasing the birds. In the distance, something flapped its wings, and the wind began buffeting them, even rolling the frozen birds across the ground like tumbleweeds.

"That's a big birdy…" Sam muttered as they watched a shadow rise over the obsidian plains.

"I wonder if it is resistant to plasma?" Dan asked idly. It wasn't. They found another crystal embedded in the chest of the giant bird – the boss of the fracture – driven deep into its body like a third eye, its surface marked by a vertical pupil-like slit that seemed to stare back at them. Sam simply shattered it, collected the shards, and stepped out of the fracture after gathering the loot.

Most of it consisted of fire- and bird-related reagents, but there were also a number of eggs belonging to the creatures, apparently called Vampiric Obsidian Finches. A few wind-related spellbooks were among the spoils, but unfortunately, nothing caught Sam's interest. Once again, as the portal vanished, the surrounding area calmed. The slowly spreading greenery began to push outward toward them, the ground cracking and softening as the temperature steadily dropped.

They walked further around the volcano, following the island's coastline until they found the next fracture. Then another. And another. In total, they passed through five smaller fractures, each time finding the same thing: crystals with the eye-like vertical pupils embedded in the bosses' bodies. The third fracture was also centered around lava emerging from underground. This time, the area was filled with lizards. Each had sagging, thick skin, crawling over obsidian and spitting acid at anything that moved.

The boss was a three-headed variant. One head spewed aerosolized acid, another expelled it in liquid form, and the third breathed out shards of electric-green crystal that exploded into acid on contact. Isabella was dared by her girlfriend to take all of them on while dancing to a stupid song. Sam watched it happen, and he still couldn't believe an acid-spewing lizard could be defeated by flossing. Or twerking.

The fourth fracture was filled with actual lava golems, each one embedded with a small amber-like crystal in its heart. The material was identical to the one surrounding the mysterious eye that had been observing them from every boss's body. The main golem had the eye set directly into its core. Katie took this one for herself. She used a skill with a long cooldown that allowed her to grow to the size of a giant, and simply began kicking poor golems around.

Watching the towering woman, clad in spiky armor and madly laughing, bouncing a lava golem on her foot like an oddly shaped ball, Sam scratched his head.

"You know, I'm sure there's something wrong with this, but for the life of me, I can't say what…" he said as the others watched as well. Then Puffball decided to grow to the same size and try to swallow one of the golems. The entire thing became a giant game of keepaway between the young woman and the eldritch cat. The last one was on the far side of the small jungle they had landed in, opposite the direction where they had started.

Behind them, a thin line of greenery followed their path as it slowly reclaimed the island's coastal regions. There were still patches of obsidian and the occasional lava waterfall spilling into the ocean, but they were steadily becoming rarer. Surprisingly, this fracture was filled with rabbits. Granted, the rabbits were on fire. And so were their burrows. The entire fracture was on fire. This time, it was Dan who shone again. All Sam had to do was stay back and let the plasma mage do his thing.

Instead of trying to freeze the entire universe this time, Dan raised his club and took control of the fire emanating from the small, deceptively adorable rabbits. Then, as the rabbits looked around with wide, searching eyes for their stolen flames, Dan swirled the mass of magic in the air, reshaping it into an inferno of plasma before sending it raining down. The apocalyptic destruction drew out the boss monster: a large, bipedal rabbit with a shawl made of liquid fire and a physique that matched Dan's own.

It cracked its knuckles, muscles bulging, pointed at Dan in challenge, and launched itself forward. Dan was momentarily surprised, but he quickly stowed his club into his inventory, wrapped his fists in magic, and prepared to throw down. As the girls cheered him on, Sam found a good vantage point for recording. He was sure Lara would appreciate it.

The team walked away with a bunch of baby rabbits, somehow frozen in crystalline form and ready to turn into familiars, along with enough reagents to fill warehouses and a handful of speed-related skill books. Sam had a feeling the guild was soon going to be overrun with new familiars. Finished with the outer ring, they took a short break, checked in with the sailors – who looked at them oddly as they summarized their experiences – before, with Sam leading, the team headed higher up the volcano.

"Hopefully the next few fractures are going to be harder…" Katie complained as they trekked up the mountainside.

"You'd give up your stupid golem juggling?" Isabella asked, rolling her eyes.

"Come on! It was fun!" Sam shook his head, smiling faintly.

"No doubt our secretive demon now knows we're here. So I'm sure there's going to be something waiting for us."

"There better be!"