Chương 478: B7—Chapter 54: Well… Sometimes It Goes Like That

In the morning, Al and Mahya waited for me in the living room when I came down from my bedroom. Both of them looked excited.

"You look perky this morning," I said as I stepped off the last step. Mahya beamed.

"Dungeons." Al gave me a darker look, his posture stiff.

"I had reached my limit with this city and the gnomes." Rue trotted down after me, jaws stretching in an enormous yawn, and his tail wagging like crazy.

"Adventure!" Yeah, everybody was ready for a relocation.

"We should go pick up the boat," I said.

"It's okay," Mahya said.

"I picked it up in the middle of the night." I pointed at her with a smile.

"Smart." She lifted one shoulder in a smug little shrug, her chin tilting up.

"Of course. I am a genius." I laughed and went to make breakfast. We headed out of the city through the south gate since we were going inland. It was in the opposite direction from the Gate we originally planned to visit, but Mahya was in a dungeon mood, so it didn't matter. The trees reached almost up to the walls, so we had to walk a good distance before finding a wide enough spot to fill the balloon. Once we were in the air, Mahya steered us toward the new target.

The flight took the whole day and was almost uneventful. I leaned on my elbows on the basket rim and watched the ground roll by under us. At first, it was the usual mix of fields and green patches. Nothing special, but still nice to look at. The farther we flew, the more the color shifted. Greens faded into pale yellows, then into dry stretches where only stubborn bushes held on. Even the air felt warmer and drier, as if the land below were exhaling heat. By late afternoon, the greenery was gone entirely.

The ground opened into wide plates of reddish earth split by low ridges. A little farther in, the land dropped into a massive canyon system. Towering cliffs rose on both sides, carved into blunt spires and sheer walls that caught the sunlight and glowed like heated metal. The sand between them looked soft and untouched, dotted with thorny shrubs growing in loose clusters. We drifted deeper into the canyon, the stone walls rising higher around us, warm light sliding over their ridges.

The whole place looked wild and ancient, like it hadn't seen people for a very long time. I leaned over the rim to take pictures. The emptiness had a beauty of its own. During the flight, I kept asking the wind about dungeons or portals, and got my first ping in the canyon. By that point, the ping was unnecessary. We already figured out something was around. Our hint was the strange creatures that attacked us. We'd dealt with flying nasties before, but this time was different.

These things had sharp mana senses and came in fast, arrowing straight at the basket like someone had painted targets on our foreheads. They ignored the giant balloon above and focused only on us. The creatures looked like a cross between a bird and an insect. They had feathered wings, though the feathers looked chitinous, beaks, and pure bug bodies with six legs. They also spat green, stinky blobs. Before I had time to think, the first wave came in low.

A sharp hiss cut through the air, and a blob splattered against the Protective Shield I threw up in the last second. Al braced his feet and raised his hand, shooting fireballs at them.

"Please cast your new enhancement on me," he called out to me. I hummed and cast Fortify on him, and he raised his other hand and shot the lightning spell from it. For a minute, it reminded me of old gangster movies with them shooting from two rifles, and I snickered quietly. The image fit a little too well. Al stood planted in the middle of the basket, feet wide, one arm hurling fireballs that streaked across the air like exploding bullets, the other hand snapping with bright blue lightning.

Each shot lit up his face in flickers of orange and electric blue. If he had worn a long coat and a fedora, he could have stepped right out of a black-and-white shootout scene, only with magic instead of guns. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing outright. Mahya planted herself on the opposite side of the basket, rifle in hand. She tried to shoot the first couple, but the bullets did nothing. She cursed, stored the rifle, and switched to the lightning spell. The creatures dove.

Wind roared around me as I shoved a blast outward. Three bugs flipped midair and tumbled away, screeching. Another shot up from below, six legs reaching for the basket rim. Mahya snapped her hand forward, and a line of lightning punched straight through its head. The body twitched once and fell. More came from every direction. One broke away from the group and spat another green blob straight at my face. I twisted aside and shot a lightning bolt through its chest.

It exploded midair, showering sparks and bug pieces. The blob smacked into the basket, and a stinky vapor curled up from it. For a second, I worried it would eat through the wood, but everything held. The green stuff evaporated without a trace. It was good to have a core-powered balloon. Al growled as one grazed past him, wings buzzing like saw blades. He caught it with a lightning spell and knocked it out of the sky. A larger cluster dove together. They had good coordination and were annoying as hell.

I swept another burst of lightning across the sky and blew apart over twenty of the bug-birds in one go. Mahya picked off another one. Al landed a solid hit of his own. Their spells dropped one creature at a time, while mine took out whole clusters. At some point, I got a smug look on my face, and Mahya caught it and laughed. It was good to hear. When she was in one of her murderous moods, she gave me death glares, not laughter. The air reeked of ozone, burnt chitin, and whatever foul smell those blobs carried.

For a few minutes, everything blurred into movement, flashes of light, and the heavy flapping of wings. Suddenly, it was over. The quiet after the hectic fight came so fast that I kept turning my head from side to side, searching for more creatures. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. Mahya rested her hand on my shoulder.

"Relax. It's over." I exhaled and forced my body to relax.

"Those are not monsters," Al said, pointing down.

"They do not dissipate." I pointed farther into the canyon.

"I got a ping from the wind in that direction." Mahya steered us that way, and a few hundred meters out, we saw it. A big red portal.

"I hope this one won't take six months," I said. Mahya looked thoughtful.

"It might be a big one. Depends on how long it's been sitting here." She saw my expression, chuckled, and patted my shoulder.

"Don't worry. We don't have to clear it. If it's a big one, we can always leave." Once we landed, I opened the house. It was getting dark, and they both needed to regenerate. Mahya, especially, looked unsteady on her feet and kept rubbing her temples. The next morning, we entered the portal. And … like always, a surprise waited for me. The inside was almost the exact image of the outside. There were some minor differences, but not much. When I snapped a photo, Mahya raised an eyebrow at me and asked, "Why?

You took a picture outside." I waved her off.

"You don't understand art." She gave me an amused look.

"Ah-ha. Whatever you say, Van Gogh." The same bug-birds attacked us, but this time they were easier to handle. We could sidestep the blobs now that we had more space to move, and Mahya jumped straight into them with her sword, cutting through wings and bodies like she had been waiting for round two. I cast Fortify on Al again, and he went right back to his two-handed routine, fireballs in one hand and lightning in the other, looking exactly like the gangster scene that had made me snicker earlier.

All in all, it took less than twenty minutes to clear more than a hundred of the flying menaces. And they were menaces in more than one sense. Not only were they annoying to fight and capable of shooting disgusting green blobs, but they also left nothing valuable behind once they died. The chitin was hard enough while they were alive, but the second they died, it turned brittle and crumbled into tiny specks in Al's hand. On top of that, they didn't even have beast cores.

And worst of all, they seriously disappointed Rue. From his point of view, the fight had been a complete disaster. The best he could do was blow them away with his breath, and even that only worked when they got close. He tried biting a couple, but their chitin was so thick his teeth barely made a dent. By the end, he walked with his head low and his tail dragging behind him, radiating pure defeat. I scratched behind his ear.

"Come on, buddy, cheer up. I'm sure there are more spawnies ahead." Rue let out a long, miserable sigh that echoed both through the bond and out loud, flopped onto the ground, paws stretched forward. Another dramatic sigh escaped him, this one loud enough that Mahya glanced over with a worried expression. Like I said many times before: my dog, the drama queen. The portal was indeed big, but not as big as the one in Zindor. It stretched for about three kilometers between the cliffs.

We circled the whole thing and weren't attacked again. We also didn't see the primary guardian with the crystal. Mahya kept kicking stones and growling about the lack of collectible resources. Al didn't look too happy either. He examined a few of the shrubs, announced that they were useless, and didn't bother checking any more.

"Now what?" I asked. Mahya planted her hands on her hips and looked around the canyon walls.

"We should look for some cave or passage between the cliffs. No way those things warranted a red portal. I'm sure there's more to it." She was right. It took us almost five hours to find it, but find it we did. We trudged along the cliff base, checking every shadow and crack, while the heat bounced off the stone and baked us from both sides. Eventually, we found a narrow passage hidden between two cliffs, virtually invisible from every angle. If not for Rue's nose, we might have circled the portal for days.

Rue suddenly stopped, lifted his head, and sniffed on overdrive. His whole body leaned forward, tail wagging and nostrils working.

"What are you smelling?" Al asked, stepping closer.

"Yummy snakes." I made an inviting gesture.

"After you." Rue trotted ahead, nose working overtime, and we followed him into the narrow passage. The walls pressed close on both sides, twisting left and right. Loose gravel slid under our boots, and every turn scraped us against stone. The passage finally widened, and we stepped out into another canyon. It looked almost identical to the one we came from, same red walls and scattered shrubs, only this one was even bigger. I stared at it, blinking.

"That doesn't make any sense. How can a huge canyon sit inside a cliff?" Al snorted. Mahya burst out laughing and clapped her hands.

"I missed your 'it doesn't make any sense' exclamations. They always make my day." Before I could say something, Rue stiffened again.

"Yummy snakes?" I asked. He nodded vigorously. They showed up a moment later. Strange snakes slid out from behind rocks, each one made of three snakes twisted together like colorful ribbons. One green, one red, one black, tangled into a single creature that moved in one unsettling rhythm.

"Those are ugly," I muttered. They lunged. I shot a bolt of lightning at the closest one. The spell hit the red coil, sparked along its scales, and grounded harmlessly into the dirt. Al hurled a fireball. The flames roared across the canyon floor, crashed into the trio of snakes, and vanished like someone had blown out a candle.

"Why do they not burn?" Al snapped.

"No idea," I said, stepping back as two snakes whipped toward my legs. Al switched tactics. He threw out his freeze spell, and frost crept over the snakes' scales. Their movements slowed, just enough for Mahya to leap in. She sliced through one creature, cutting the three bodies at once. More surged toward her. She moved fast, carving through them as Al froze batches around her. I kept blasting with wind to shove them back, giving her space. Rue tried to help. He lunged at a half-frozen snake, jaws wide.

"Stop! Remember your tongue!" I yelled. He froze in mid-leap, eyes going wide at the traumatic memory. The last time he bit something after Al's spell, he'd spent the whole dungeon whining about his frozen tongue. Rue hopped back with a startled yelp and planted himself behind me. The last snake lunged at Al. He hit it with another freeze spell, and Mahya finished it with a sharp downward cut. Rue lowered his head, tail drooping even lower. He looked like the world's saddest dog.

I reached over and gave him ear scratches.

"You did great. Really. More spawnies ahead, I promise." He sighed dramatically. To cheer him up, I pulled a big, juicy steak from storage and held it out. That perked him up fast. He wolfed it down in two bites, mood restored. For all of thirty seconds. Mahya crouched beside the remains.

"These are inedible," she announced. Rue deflated. His tail sagged even lower, and his ears drooped too. He shuffled a few steps away and flopped onto the ground, legs stretched in all directions like a starfish, the picture of disappointment. My poor boy was having a bad day. I used Identify on one of the bodies. Dead Tainted Tristriper The only thing we could harvest from the strange snakes was the beast cores; everything else came up as "tainted" in Identify, even the skin and scales.

The cores were tainted too, but at least I knew how to clear those. The rest, not a chance. We combed through the whole canyon and fought a few more groups of the tri-color snakes, but nothing changed. Same monsters, same useless materials. Mahya grew more certain that something else had to be hidden here. According to her, the hardship so far didn't come close to warranting a red portal. But this time, Rue's nose didn't help us.

He sniffed until he got dizzy, circling rocks, climbing boulders, burying half his face in shrubs, and still came up empty every time. With every failed attempt, he looked more miserable. Eventually, we called it a day, and I opened my house right inside the portal. Rue was the most disappointed, but he wasn't the only one. Al grumbled about the lack of herbs, and Mahya muttered nonstop about the lack of resources, kicking stones and growling under her breath. I was the only one who didn't really care.

To lift everyone's mood, I cooked a nice dinner, made popcorn, and we watched a movie. The food helped a little. The movie helped more. Rue sprawled across the rug, chewing loudly on a steak bone I gave him as emotional support. So far, this portal adventure was a bust.