Chương 176: The Life Of A Hamster

"The ice! It… it's changing!" Knight Macmillan shouted when he saw Damion's ice igloo start to morph in front of him.

"What the hell is he doing?" The Fontane brothers asked in unison. Unfortunately for them, none of their teammates had an answer. Damion's Ice Wall before had been shaped like a dome, but now it had risen slightly and grown, but what was confusing was that the walls at the bottom seemed to be curving inward.

Just as the group of attackers were realizing the dome had turned into a sphere, the ice sphere was pushed up by a pillar of ice out of the hole it was in, due to half of it having been formed underground, and it suddenly started rolling.

"Get in front of it you nitwits," Mage Grier called to the others who were watching the strange ice orb roll past them. Inside the orb, Damion was having a new appreciation for hamster balls. He and Blythe were running with their hands braced in front of them on the interior of the ice ball as they rolled it, hoping to get to close enough to the floor safe area that they could make a break for the fifteenth floor.

Once down a floor, Damion could block off the passageway with Ice Wall to delay his assailants long enough for him and Mage Blythe to make it out of the dungeon or at least make it back to a floor where other people were. The problem was that Damion had no way to tell in which direction they were going.

He and Mage Blythe had made a rough guess and since their journey was going relatively smoothly, Damion had expected to bounce off trees and get slowed down by underbrush, they thought they were going in the right direction. What he did not know, was that since his attackers had largely cleared the area using their Fire magic there was considerably less resistance for their snowball to get stuck on. All the underbrush had been burned away.

While this let Damion and Mage Blythe make better time, they were not making it in the right direction. Going in the wrong direction was not of great concern for Damion. The chances of them actually getting to the safe area this way was minuscule. What he was hoping for was to get distance from his attackers. Space them out and maybe, just maybe, he would be able to take one or two of them out before hiding in his ice ball again.

What Damion had not taken into account was where else he might end up on his blind escape. The burnt and fallen trees had slowly forced his ice ball towards the center of the floor, where the B Rank guardian waited. After a good while of rolling, Damion and Mage Blythe managed to get the ice ball to stop rolling and Damion willed open a door for them. Sticking his head out, he found the sixteenth floor of the labyrinth now looked more like the tenth. Small fires were burning everywhere.

The once lush and vibrant forest had been turned to ash. What few trees remained standing were charred and leafless. When Damion looked at his ice ball the outer surface was fairly well intact. Not just because he had been channeling mana into it to keep the construct strong, but Damion realized his EX Rank magic affinity was not easily overcome by the weaker Fire affinities of his attackers. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"Where are we?" Mage Blythe said as he stuck his head out of the ice sphere.

"No idea. Let's get moving. They probably aren't far behind." Damion pulled his mana from the ice ball and as he did so he willed it to collapse. After a few seconds the sphere of ice turned into nothing but a puddle seeping into the thirsty ground.

"What did you do that for?" Mage Blythe questioned. As much as he disliked being inside the hamster ball, it had at least proven to keep them safe.

"I have a new plan," Damion said as he cast Ice Sword in its flying sword configuration and climbed on.

"Get on and hold on to me. Try not to move around too much." Despite his reservations, Mage Blythe climbed onto the Ice Sword with Damion. Once on, Damion encrusted the healer's feet in ice to secure him and then flew off in the direction their ice ball had been rolling. He wanted to get more distance between him and his attackers before climbing into the sky.

Damion hoped that his pursuers would keep searching for the ice ball giving him a chance to locate the passageway back to fifteen so he and Mage Blythe could escape the labyrinth. What he did not realize was that his pursuers had stopped shortly after Damion had started his roll because of the direction they were rolling.

"Why the hell aren't you all going after him?!" Mage Blanche shouted at the group of people who were supposed to be dealing with the ice ball but had somehow let it roll away.

"It headed towards the meadow." Mage Sooter replied.

"If that thing rolls into the meadow he's as good as dead," Knight Macmillan answered.

"Good as dead is not dead," Lucas Fontane said.

"Agreed, we have to be sure," Tray Fontane added.

"Let's regroup and go together. We can get proof of his death and take on the B Rank guardian," Mage Blanche said as he cast his own Ice Sword.

"There are eight of us, the guardian should not be too much of a challenge. Goblins always fall to misdirection." As Damion sped along on his Ice Sword a meter above the ground he quickly realized they were going in the wrong direction. When he and Mage Blythe escaped the burnt area of the forest, none of the surrounding area looked familiar. There were plenty of Demonic Beasts around, most had fled this way due to the fires.

Now that the fires had burned themselves out and the Demonic Beasts did not need to flee further, they were vying for control of territory and largely ignored Damion and Mage Blythe. When Damion sped into a large clearing in the forest and saw goblins roaming about collecting magical plants, Damion realized he had made a horrible mistake in the direction he was heading. As quickly as he could Damion stopped his flying sword, but it was too late. He had encroached on the domain of the floor guardian.

The goblin was the largest one he had ever seen. Damion did not need True Sight to tell him it was B Rank, just the guardian standing in the midst of several C Rank and seeing the size difference was enough to tell him that. The floor guardian was a goblin warrior close to two meters tall, while the C Rank goblins barely reached a meter and a half. As soon as Damion flew into the guardian's domain it let out a shout and all the goblins in the meadow turned their attention to him and Mage Blythe.

"I think we better get out of here," Mage Blythe urged.

"Working on it," Damion willed his Ice Sword to turn around then he shot off in the direction they had come.

"Isn't this the same direction we came from?" Mage Blythe shouted into Damion's ear over the sound of the wind whipping past.

"Won't we run into those traitors?"

"No matter where we go, the guardian is going to chase us. Might as well lead it to our former friends."