Chương 480: B7—Chapter 56: Warm-Up

After our spontaneous vacation, we drifted for another two days looking for dungeons or portals. We didn't exactly fly in a zigzag pattern, nor in a straight line. I didn't understand Mahya's reasoning when she changed course, but since I'd told her to decide, I didn't offer my two cents. The first night we landed near a small lake, and in the morning, there were lizards all over my porch. Live lizards. I activated only the protection, not the defenses, and they ran off the moment I stepped outside with my coffee.

The second night, we landed near a forest, and based on the previous one we flew above, I activated the defenses, but nothing came calling during the night. In the morning on day three, I got a ping to the left of us, quite far away.

"Fly that way. There's something there," I told Mahya. She nodded and moved her gizmo to blow on the balloon in the new direction. After ten minutes of flying, I saw a dark spot on the horizon. We were too far away to see clearly, but the closer we got, the more obvious it became that it wasn't what we were looking for. There were two pale yellow portals and a city of tents and strange metal constructions built around them with a lot of gnomes, and not only stretchlings.

"Want to check the portals?" I asked Mahya. She waved me off.

"Nah. Those are probably two of their blessings. They won't let us in anyway." She changed direction, but by that time, some gnomes had noticed us. A group of them mounted strange motorcycles and shot after us across the ground. The motorcycles looked like someone had taken a regular bike and glued extra pipes, fans, bells, and entire boxes of parts all over the frame. Half of the attachments shook with every bump, and they kept whistling and honking. The engines sputtered and coughed, releasing plumes of smoke.

The whole lineup looked more confused than dangerous. Sadly for them, the balloon flew faster than their confused creations, and the terrain was pretty hilly, so we lost them fast. In the early afternoon, Mahya squinted into space.

"We're close to two cities. Want to check them out?" She asked.

"If you want to," I said, opening the Map to orient. Al let out a long sigh and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Is this required?"

"We can skip them if you insist. Or we can take a quick look and continue," Mahya said in a suggestive tone. Al nodded, shoulders sinking in defeat. About a kilometer from the first city, a nasty smell blew our way with every gust of wind. It reminded me of spoiled milk, but harsher. Rue started sneezing up a storm, and I scrunched my nose in disgust. Mahya and Al leaned over the rim, their eyes fixed on something ahead.

"I think they're fighting over there," Mahya said and pointed. Al hummed in agreement. I pushed myself to my feet and leaned over the rim to see what had caught their attention. Below us, the city came into view, and the picture was on a whole new level of bizarre, even for gnomes. Two groups fought along the walls, and both sides were hurling green blobs the size of pumpkins at each other.

The blobs hit the ground and burst, spewing greasy yellow clouds that drifted upward and covered us with another wave of spoiled-milk odor. Rue buried his face in my hip and groaned.

"Bad. Very bad. Rue nose hurt." Tiny figures ran back and forth, tripping over their own gear and sometimes over each other. Every few seconds, another blob exploded with a wet splat, followed by angry screeches from all the gnomes involved on both sides, and another wave of stink that floated up to us. Mahya let out a baffled laugh.

"What in the world…" Their catapults were the real show. One machine used a spinning wheel that turned a crank, which shook a box of marbles that rolled down a chute and smacked a mallet, finally launching a stink bomb into the air. Another had a bicycle frame welded to a spring-loaded spoon. A gnome pedaled like his life depended on it, building tension until the spoon snapped forward and flung a bomb halfway across the city. Al stared with his mouth slightly open.

"Are they fighting with stink bombs?" Below us, two gnomes worked together on a third contraption. One pumped a bellows, sending air through a maze of pipes, while the other held a lever with both hands. When the pressure built enough, the whole machine coughed like a dying dragon and spat a bomb that flew in a wobbly arc before bouncing off a rooftop and exploding in a cloud of greenish mist. The smell drifted up again. I gagged.

"Why are they even fighting?"

"Does it really matter?" Mahya asked, leaning back from the rim. Another bomb went off, this one even brighter green. A chorus of furious gnome shrieks followed, and the two groups shouted and waved extra-long forks at each other. Most of them carried Mana Lobbers like the ones we "confiscated," but they didn't use them. Only waved around those strange, long forks.

"I vote we keep going," Al said, stepping away from the smell as if that would help. Rue sneezed three more times.

"Yes. Leave. Now." We drifted closer to the other city, and a line of gnomes stretched from it to the besieged city. Three groups also pushed more strange catapults. I was curious to see what crazy mechanism activated those, but I didn't suggest that we fly back to the fight. My aversion to the stink outweighed my curiosity in this case. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Past the fighting cities, we flew over a mountain range, and I got several pings to the northeast of us.

"Fly that way," I told Mahya, pointing.

"More than one. I'm not sure yet if those are dungeons or portals." It took us almost the rest of the day to reach the location. The wind was giving me pings in a much wider range than before. I wasn't sure if it had to do with the rise in my elemental abilities, or because the wind here was in a higher mana world, and made a mental note to check this point in various mana levels to get a concrete answer. Either way, the location was a winner.

The area was quite hilly, with a couple of mountains thrown in, but most importantly, it had more than one vent, and two of them were spewing concentrated polluted mana. It was the first time since my upgrade in mana vision that I was around vents in an open space. I was not counting the crazy big vent in the red zone in Quassior. The difference in perception was clear the moment we approached. I saw the vent from afar and the mana shooting up into the sky.

It looked like concentrated colors rising in a geyser, then breaking apart halfway up into large masses of mana that scattered into the familiar eddies. The polluted vents were even easier to spot. Black fumes clung to the masses as they formed, and once they broke into eddies, the black became the dominant color swirling through everything. Mahya spotted the first dungeon portal embedded in a hillside.

"There it is," she said, pointing with a radiant smile.

"You mentioned more than one," Al said. I connected to the wind again and pointed in various directions.

"There, there, there and there." Turning to Mahya, I asked, "Want to do a fly by to see them, or start working on them one by one?" She hummed and tapped her fingers on the rim, then leaned over it and looked down.

"This area looks clear of monsters, but the others might not be. Better to check what we're getting into." We did a fly-by over two of the locations, but couldn't continue because it got dark. One location had a yellow portal with nothing around it, just an empty patch of ground that looked quiet. The other location was another dungeon, much harder to spot from the air. I actually had to fly out of the basket to locate it.

The portal of doom was embedded in a huge boulder that rose from the earth at an angle, which hid the opening completely when viewed from above. The surrounding area held many large black balls scattered among the rocks. When my mana sense brushed them, they "tasted" like polluted mana. I threw a small stone at one ball. It unrolled into an insect with twelve legs and four eyes that clicked open in unison. It gave off sharp chittering noises and skittered in the direction of the throw.

I was, of course, no longer there. When it couldn't find the offender, it curled itself back into a tight black ball and went still. The next day, we checked the last two locations. One was a white mana portal, which Mahya wasn't sure she even wanted to enter, and the other was another dungeon. This one was odd. There were no monsters outside, but all the surrounding area looked dead. A radius of five hundred meters around the dungeon didn't have anything except dry, cracked earth.

There was a clear demarcation line of the circle, as if it were cut with a drafting compass. Inside the circle—dead ground. Outside, right at the edge, green grass and a few shrubs grew as if nothing were wrong.

"I remember that Lis once said that dead dungeons or something like that kill everything outside," I said, watching the barren circle beneath us.

"Yes, dungeons with the death element, like with zombies or skeletons," Mahya said. She shifted her weight and squinted at the ground.

"But that's not it. Outside of dead dungeons, everything is rotting, not just barren ground, and you actually see zombies or skeletons wandering outside. I don't know what that is."

"I believe I know," Al said.

"I read about it in my family's archive. This is a curse dungeon."

"I'm not sure I want to explore a cursed dungeon," I said. My fingers tightened on the rim as I looked down at the dead ground.

"What's the issue?" Mahya asked. She tilted her head and gave me a puzzled look.

"You have a spell for curses, and curse dungeons rarely involve killing. That's perfect for you." I scrunched up my nose in distaste.

"I'm still not sure I want to go in there." She examined me for a beat and sighed.

"We'll leave it for last, and then see." I nodded, accepting the terms. It was probably the best I could get.

"We should start with the white portal," Al said. Mahya looked at him as if he'd lost his mind.

"Why?!" She threw her hands up in dismay.

"It's gonna have shit loot." Al folded his arms and straightened to his full height.

"It serves as the ideal prelude to prepare for combat." She looked at me. I pointed at Al.

"What he said." She gave me a suspicious look.

"Did you visit the Archive lately?" I stared at her, utterly confused.

"Huh?" She waved me off.

"Never mind." Inside was a grassy clearing with some frail trees scattered around it. It looked pretty standard at first glance, except the grass and leaves were such a pale green they were almost white, and the trees looked like a stiff breeze could snap them in half. The moment we stepped through, a pack of pale, spindly creatures rushed us. They looked as if someone had taken the idea of a monster but quit halfway through, leaving the details unfinished. Blank beige skin, long arms, no mouths.

The only thing going for them was the long claws. Al lifted his hand and cast his freezing spell across the front line. The creatures staggered and slowed almost to a crawl. The back lines pushed into them, crumpling the formation and sending the whole wave collapsing forward like an avalanche of unfinished monsters. Mahya sprinted ahead with her sword already raised, her boots kicking up loose stones.

She took the first creature at the neck, spun, and cut down another with the same smooth motion, her braids swinging behind her. In less than a minute, she went through more than ten of them like a scythe through wheat. I stayed a step back and shot a bolt of lightning into the cluster forming on our left. The flash lit up the space, and the creatures convulsed before collapsing in a heap. Rue barreled through the right flank with happy barks.

His body slammed into two of them at once, and he chomped down on the nearest one with the enthusiasm of a dog discovering a new chew toy. Another tried to climb onto his back, so he simply shook himself and sent it flying. More creatures poured in, but the fight felt almost routine. Al shifted position and fired a round of wind blades, slicing through anything that tried to flank us. Mahya moved like she was in training mode, each strike precise and almost annoyed by how boring the enemies were.

I shot two more lightning bolts into the densest groups, clearing them before they could reach us. Rue happily cleaned up whatever remained. Within minutes, the last creature dropped, twitching once before going still. I glanced around.

"Doesn't this portal feel kind of unfinished to you?" Mahya took a cloth out to clean her sword, looked around, and shrugged.

"Sort of."

"Isn't it weird?" I asked. Al patted my back.

"I believe we discussed the topic already. Please stop expecting logic or the laws of physics you are familiar with from your world in dungeons and portals. It does not work that way." I shot him an annoyed glance.

"I understood that. But here," I waved around, "they weren't doing something that violates the natural order of things, or whatever. They're half-cooked. I mean, they don't even have mouths for Spirits' sake."

"You're looking at the wrong thing," Mahya said.

"The thing that should concern you is that there's no loot in this portal." I looked around and had to agree with her. The spawnies definitely looked inedible, and the trees just looked sad.

"We are yet to meet the final guardian and break the crystal," Al said.

"It might surprise you." She looked at him with a piercing gaze through narrow slitted eyes.

"Do you really believe it?" Al's shoulders slumped, and he mumbled, "No." Well, they were right. The big boss waited just past the trees and was the final version of the monsters. He had a big mouth with sharp teeth and a greenish tint, instead of the beige. That didn't help him survive for more than a second once Mahya jumped beside him. Yep, the portal was a bust as far as resources go, but it was indeed a good prelude, as Al put it. It's always better to start a workout with a warm-up.