Chương 515: B8—Chapter 21: So That’s What This Is (Cont.)

When we finished reading the article, we just sat there quietly, all of us lost in thought. Mahya slapped her knees, making Al and me jump.

"What do you want to do?"

"Run like all the denizens of hell are on our heels," I said, looking at her, uncomprehending. Wasn't it obvious? She didn't look convinced.

"Do I need to remind you about the scary tree with the eyes in Tatob?" I asked. She shuddered. That was more like it.

"I am in agreement with John," Al said, folding his hands.

"We do not have sufficient power to deal with a sentient guardian that broke the confinement of the space pocket." She threw us a challenging look.

"We killed one before."

"Indeed," Al said.

"But John almost died and required a lengthy rehabilitation afterward. And need I remind you that our victory then relied on a considerable amount of luck?" She slumped back in her chair.

"Yes, I know you're right. I just got excited for a moment about the idea of an advanced core like John's." She rubbed her face.

"I hate it when I have to give up on a good thing." While we were reading the article, monsters kept throwing themselves against the house almost nonstop. Mahya's sword appeared in her hand, and she marched toward the door like a woman on a mission. Al got up to follow her, but I caught his arm and shook my head.

"Let her vent." Rue nudged my leg with his nose.

"Lunch?" I got up to feed the bottomless pit, and while I was making the food, Mahya came back.

"Feel better?" I asked.

"No." I slid a plate toward her and said nothing. Once we ate and I made coffee, Mahya looked more relaxed.

"It's getting dark. We should spend the night here and head back in the morning." Al tapped a finger on the bar.

"I suggest we remain in this specific ring for a while longer." I stared at him like he had lost his mind. I expected that from Mahya, not from him.

"Do not look at me like that," he said calmly.

"I am not suggesting we go further into the dungeon. However, we are capable of handling this ring, and it contains a wide variety of rare herbs." The following morning, once we dealt with the sluggish monsters around the house, we changed direction, moving sideways rather than pushing deeper. Sadly, the terrain didn't get any friendlier for it. For a few hours, we worked our way through thick underbrush.

Al focused on harvesting herbs whenever he spotted something worthwhile, while Mahya and I handled the root and snake monsters that kept ambushing us. It got easier with every fight as we learned their attack patterns, but that didn't make it any less unpleasant. The snakes were fast and aggressive. They lunged straight for our heads, jaws snapping wide, but that part was manageable. Mahya simply jumped back out of reach, and my Protective Shield took the brunt of the first strike with little trouble.

The real problem came afterward. Their tails lashed out with brutal force. Mahya could still rely on her mobility, jumping clear most of the time and only taking the occasional glancing hit. I wasn't nearly as lucky. Even with my shield up, the impacts were strong enough to send me crashing into nearby trees, bark splintering as I slammed into the trunks. Unfortunately for me, flying wasn't really an option with how low and dense the foliage was.

I did manage to avoid some of the more serious lashes by flying parallel to the ground, but it didn't always help. Their tails were so damn long that sometimes they reached me anyway. Stupid root snakes. The root monsters were a different kind of miserable. My armor and shield handled most of the stabbing roots well enough, but the whipping ones were another story. My shield formed a flat disc of energy that covered everything in front of me, which worked fine against straight attacks.

The whip roots simply curved around it. I took lash after lash until my skin felt like it was on fire. They weren't terribly dangerous. None of the strikes broke skin or caused real damage. Spirits, though, they hurt. And since the only way to deal with those monsters was to get in close and chop them apart, there was no clever workaround. You braced yourself, pushed forward through the lashes, and endured until the thing finally went down. In the early afternoon, it went bad fast.

The underbrush exploded around us as snakes burst out from all sides, roots and branches tearing free of the ground. A whole swarm of them surrounded us in under a minute. Coiling bodies slid over each other, hoods flaring as they lunged in a tightening circle. It was hard to tell them apart from all the plants around, but there were more than twenty of them. Mahya reacted first. Her axe came up in an arc, biting deep into the nearest snake's body.

Wood and roots flew apart as she followed through, stepping into the next swing. Three chops and a snake went down. I mirrored her, my own axe chopping down hard, splitting a body before it could coil around my legs.

"Fortify," Al called out. I hummed and poured mana into the spell. Frost bloomed around his hands as he hurled freezing spells into the mass of snakes. They slowed a little, but not enough. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. Kraethcoil level 65 Shit! With this level, no wonder the spell had little effect. My distraction cost me, and a tail lash sent me flying. I stopped my flight before reaching a tree with wind magic and got back into the fray.

Al chopped a snake with an axe, turned it into a crystal, and drew a massive sword. It took me half a second to recognize it. Lumis, the dungeon with my core. We pushed together, freezing and chopping. Mahya and Al hacked and jumped to avoid the lunging heads and lashing tails. I stayed close, using the shield to keep space, and hitting with the axe whenever an opening appeared. Rue darted around us, barking and throwing wind blades as fast as he could manage.

The spells tore leaves and bark loose, stripping the snakes raw in places, but they barely slowed them down. He kept at it anyway, growling between casts, refusing to stop. Then something slammed into me from behind. A snake wrapped around my torso, roots tightening like iron cables. My arms were pinned to my sides, axe trapped uselessly between us. I tried to wrench free, shoved mana into my muscles, twisted hard enough to feel my armor creak. Nothing gave. The coils tightened, crushing the breath out of me.

"John!" Mahya shouted. Rue's worry slammed into me. It was so thick it shocked me for a moment, costing me precious time. I snapped out of it and fought harder, trying to break free, but the snake only coiled tighter. With every second, it became harder to draw breath. My ribs cracked, and I nearly choked on the pain. A Blazing Orb flew from my hand. It singed my armor and leg, but I didn't care. When the fire touched the branches, I tried to fuel it with fire magic, but my concentration slipped.

I could feel myself fading, and that gave me one last-ditch idea. I channeled Anesthesia into the snake. The coils loosened. I gulped air. The snake unraveled, and I fell to the ground, heaving. Mahya jumped beside me.

"I'm good," I croaked, and cast healing spells on my ribs. A snake hood appeared above Mahya's head. I split my mind and cast Ranged Anesthesia into it. It dropped. The snake that almost killed me woke up. I stopped healing and cast Anesthesia on it again.

"I need help," Al shouted.

"Go," I said to Mahya.

"I've got this." The other snake began moving. Before it woke up fully, I chopped it with all the anger at my near-death experience, then dealt with the first and rushed to the others. Al was bloody and moved sluggishly. I cast Ranged Life Weaving on him with one hand and Anesthesia on the snake he was fighting with the other. Mahya jumped on it and finished it. From that point, it became a mop-up job. Mahya and Al jumped out of the way of the snakes' lunges.

I put two snakes to sleep, and they jumped in to chop them. Once the last snake was dead and turned into a crystal, all of us dropped to the ground.

"That was close," I said, dragging in a long breath as I stared up through the torn canopy. Al straightened, wiping blood from his cheek.

"I sincerely apologize."

"Why?" I asked.

"We remained in this dungeon for my benefit," he said, voice tight.

"And it almost cost you your life." I reached over and squeezed his arm, giving it a brief, reassuring squeeze.

"I'm not that easy to kill, but I still say let's get the hell out of here." Once we rested, we started making our way back out, but the dungeon clearly didn't want to let us go. Before, the attacks had come in a steady but manageable rhythm. Two or three snakes at a time, or maybe three to five root monsters. Now we had to deal with bigger numbers that attacked us from all sides, but mostly from the front, trying to block our way out and force us back in. Anesthesia against the snakes was a godsend.

I leaned on it hard, dropping them whenever I could and buying us breathing room. For some reason, though, it didn't work on the root tangles at all. Not even a flicker of effect. This didn't make any damn sense. I could understand why the spell didn't affect the root monsters. Roots couldn't sleep. But the snakes were made of roots and branches too, so where was the line? What decided that one could be put to sleep while the other just kept whipping away as if nothing had happened?

Okay, I'd already learned that magic had its own laws and rules, but this was too damn much! At least my grumbling helped. Complaints and muttering kept the group entertained, despite all of us getting lashed almost nonstop. After a few hours of fighting our way out, I was so tired I had trouble lifting the axe. Mahya and Al didn't look any better. Between the thick underbrush and the dense trees, our Light Balls barely gave us a wide enough circle of light to see what was coming at us.

With a tired sigh, I dropped the core onto the ground and told it to open the house. While it worked, I kept hacking at root tangles out of pure stubbornness, chopping until the house finally unfolded and gave us the badly needed shelter. We looked awful. All our armor was a collection of holes and hanging strips, and we were covered in bruises. I did cast healing spells while we fought, but most of my casting went into putting snakes to sleep.

I healed just enough to keep us functional and never had the chance to do more than that. Once we were inside, the first thing I did was heal all of us properly. After that, I just dropped onto the couch, too tired to move. They could feed themselves for a change. I was too tired to even make coffee. It took us three days to reach the border between the rings, fighting almost nonstop. There was no real rhythm to it either. Every time we thought we had a bit of breathing room, something else came crashing in.

By the end of it, everything blurred together into one long stretch of hacking, freezing, sleeping in short bursts with all the banging against the house, and doing it all over again. The only good things I can say about the experience are the crazy number of crystals we collected and the levels we all gained along the way. I don't know how many levels Mahya and Al got, but I know they did. I could feel they got stronger.

Once I burned through the barrier and we finally made our way out of the forest and back to the city, none of us had the energy to talk much. We took rooms in the same inn, went our separate ways, and I dropped straight into bed. It was only then, with the fighting finally over and my head quiet for the first time in days, that I noticed the levels. I'd ignored the red light before, assuming it was just more monster notifications piling up. When I cleared those away, I realized I was wrong.

Level Up +3 Perception, +3 Vitality, +2 Creativity, +3 Free Points Bard Level 13 Free Points: 11 Level Up +3 Intelligence, +3 Wisdom, +2 Vitality, +3 Free Points Life Weaver Level 27 Free Points: 14 Level Up +3 to All Traits Wizard Battle Master Level 17 The spell Anesthesia has reached its maximum level [25]. You receive a new spell to level up: Biological Error Correction"Hey," I protested to the system.

"I always get a choice. How come now I only got one spell?" There was no answer. I blew it a raspberry and opened the spell description. BIOLOGICAL ERROR CORRECTION A corrective healing spell that identifies and fixes biological malfunctions and structural errors within a living body. Biological Error Correction restores proper alignment, function, and interaction between tissues, organs, and systems when they deviate from normal biological operation.

It does not regenerate lost tissue or accelerate healing, but corrects mistakes such as misfiring nerves, improper healing alignment, abnormal growth behavior, or internal dysfunction. Its effect improves slightly with each level. Oh well. Maybe not a choice, but at least the spell sounded awesome.