Chương 177: A Way Up

I had no idea how to get out. How were we just supposed to scale the walls of a chasm without any climbing gear, and worse, do it in a reasonable amount of time. But then, the people of the old empire couldn't have just locked themselves in a massive cavern with no way out, could they? They weren't all rock climbers. We needed another vantage point. One that, preferably, wouldn't be destroyed by an angry flaming gorilla. I picked the nearest tower, pointed to it, then set off.

Anchor, Brawl, and Sage followed close behind. When we arrived, we scaled a spiral staircase inside it. I had to duck to make it up the stairs, and it was probably true that the ceiling was a little lower than I was used to, but I was pretty sure I'd also gotten slightly taller as my Vitality increased. As we climbed, I asked Sage if that was possible. She replied, "Perhaps. It is common for Path-walkers to refine their physical form as they grow.

Body enhancements and other refinements often make a Path-walker more attractive. And it seems that Dupes grow more unique the stronger they get. As evidenced by you."

"What about Brawl? He started off unique." Sage gave a small smile and looked away.

"A little bit. But he's been getting even taller, too." I looked back as we climbed. Brawl had to hunch over even more to fit through the stairway.

"Pleased about that, are you?" I teased her. She cleared her throat.

"I appreciate having him on our team."

"If only I could shrink down to the size of a stool like Morph," Brawl complained as he climbed the cramped stairway.

"It is not fair that the golem gets to shrink." Soon, we reached the top, and I rushed to the tower's railing. I looked over the city. We'd gotten a few streets away from the canal, which divided up this slice of the city. Six different pizza slices of the city converged, like we'd seen before, each with their own plaza, but in this quadrant's plaza, a flash of orange light burst out. Two dragons the size of houses fought each other.

Both were made of flame and smoke, but one had orange flame, and the other was blue. They fluttered, blasting each other with flame and smoke as they tussled like feral cats.

"Dragons…" I breathed.

"You remember the bone dragon from our first ever delve?" Anchor asked.

"I guess there are more of them in here."

"Yeah."

"Those are both Golds," Sage replied.

"I thought the plazas were supposed to be empty," Brawl muttered.

"They make excellent gathering places, and there's an uninterrupted flow of ambient maegen that's as attractive to monsters as it is to regular Path-walkers," Sage explained.

"Those monsters constantly fight each other over the right to absorb the plazas' ambient maegen."

"If these caverns aren't stocked, then where do all the monsters come from?" I asked.

"Over the centuries, they dig through the walls, or find other maintenance tunnels to dig down from the surface," she explained.

"The deeper they make it, the richer the natural maegen fields are. The air is thick with it. It makes the monsters stronger, and only the strongest can delve down here. There is a hint of death-aspect maegen, too. The Labyrinth can resurrect stronger soldiers and send them against us as skeletons."

"So if there are maintenance tunnels, we should be able to use them to get out?" I theorized.

"As a last resort," Anchor told me, though it felt more like he was begging.

"There will still be monsters packed into those halls, and the more we fight, the more Presence we'll need to save. Which means we can't kill as much down here and claim the good loot." I grimaced. Not ideal at all. Still, there had to be another way. I stared up at the hole in the ceiling we'd fallen through. Although this city's cavern was nearly twice as tall as the upper city level, the hole we'd fallen through and its dish was still large enough to see.

I followed a route through the air, where we would've fallen had I not used an Art to pull us aside, and tracked the route to the floor. Well, it wasn't exactly the floor. A complex of marble towers and arches stood right below where the dish would've landed, taller than even the tower we stood on—though it didn't look as massive, given how far away it was. (I didn't realize how far I'd pulled us with that sideways Art, but it had pulled us farther off-course than I expected a single Art to be capable of. Then again, it was an Advanced-tier Skill.) If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Would they have built such a massive hub to welcome the descending elevator disks if all they needed to do was let people off?" I asked, pointing at the complex.

"What are you suggesting, brother?" Brawl tilted his head.

"Near the arrivals hub, or in it, there's a way to get back up," I said.

"Just a gut feeling, but I say we give it a shot."

"I've got no better ideas," Anchor said with a shrug.

"We can check it out," Sage said.

"The mechanisms may not work anymore." I gave them a grin.

"Only one way to find out." ~ ~ ~ We descended the tower again and set off toward the complex of towers meant to accept the falling dish. As we walked through the city streets, we stayed away from open areas and tried to stick to the edge of the roadways as much as we could. The bricks beneath our feet were rough and black, as if made of compressed ash, though there were streaks of lighter stone where monsters had damaged it and the Labyrinth keepers had repaired it.

Every so often, a whiff of sulfuric wind blew down the streets, which couldn't have been good for us. But given that regular civilians had lived here once upon a time, it couldn't be too toxic. Besides, with how much Vitality we had, it shouldn't have been a problem. Halfway to the tower complex, we encountered a troop of skeletons. I paused at the street corner, about to let them pass, but they locked onto us, as if sensing us through the walls.

Their heads rattled, and they tilted their nostrils back, like they were tasting the air. These skeletons were black and gray, and glowing orange patterns marbled their bones. Their armour wasn't exactly rusty—it had been ages since there had been any water down here, not even as vapour in the air—but it was patinated with ash and dust. What had once been shiny bronze armour was now practically black.

They had plumed helmets (though the feathers had burnt away long ago) and chestpieces that reminded me of a Roman legionnaire. None of them wore Imperial Steel, though. It didn't have the same marbling as the stones we'd recovered from the gorilla.

"They're all Titaniums," Anchor whispered.

"Take a regular formation," I replied.

"If they're just the equivalent of regular Titaniums, we should be able to handle them."

"We're killing them?" Sage asked.

"No. We just have to get around them. Destroy what we need to to get past, then run." I hoisted my spear and shield into a ready position, then rounded the corner, rushing toward the skeletons as they charged us. There had to be about ten of them, and they all wielded spears and tower shields. Their shields were weaker than ours. Maybe they would've been stronger had these soldiers been in their prime, but it was just a few layers of wood stacked atop each other, then laminated with leather.

Most of the wood had weakened and decayed in the head, and my spear punched straight through without a resonance Skill. With skeletons, though, you had to break enough of their bones that they couldn't move. With a resonance Skill, I bashed its skull, then slammed its body into the ground with my Art. Its bones cracked, and it didn't get up. The Art was Advanced-tier, which was about the correct strength for a Silver's Art. It was overkill on a Titanium. There wasn't time to harvest Presence from it.

We had to keep moving. Brawl swept his flail through a trio of skeletons. It didn't destroy them completely, not in a single hit, but it got enough of them out of the way for us to keep running. As we passed, Anchor blasted two of them with arrows, piercing their armour and shields and creating an explosion of shrapnel that did more damage than the arrow itself did. We increased our pace to a sprint and rounded corners, aiming directly for the tower complex.

All of us were strong enough to handle a full-out sprint for a few minutes now—even Morph, though he made chittering complaints by rattling something wooden inside his throat.

"I'm working on it!" Sage complained, talking directly to him.

"Soon, I'll be able to run on my own! I just need more Presence, and these dustbrains keep getting hurt, draining my Presence to heal them!" The skeletons tried to keep up, but with their heavy shields, they couldn't match our pace. When we arrived at the tower complex, there were no skeletons following us.

"How much loot do you think is still inside these houses?" Anchor asked.

"Probably quite a bit, don't you think?"

"Probably," I replied.

"But it would take ages to search every single one of them."

"Well, it's not like it's just laying about on the streets. You might have to go looking for some fancy weapons."

"We can think about it for next week and strategize a bit better before," I said.

"That's a problem for future us, though." We raced through an archway at the base of the tower complex, then passed through a long hallway. I checked once more to make sure that no skeletons were following us, then continued on to the central atrium in the middle of the complex. It was a round field of marble bricks. In the very middle, there was an indent where it would've received the dish, as well as holes and marble capstans to operate the winches.

"No way up," Anchor muttered.

"Sage, do you sense anything? How are your senses?"

"My arcane senses are getting slightly better," she said.

"But I cannot penetrate solid objects yet." I narrowed my eyes and circled around the edge of the atrium, tapping my foot on the floor. There were ridges in the stone, tiny gaps, which were similar to the traps I'd gotten used to seeing in the upper levels. Just these didn't seem like traps. They made a ring around the central indent, and each was wide enough for a few people to stand on. Besides, they had a rune carved in the ground in front of them. That would be too obvious for a trap.

I stepped onto one, and nothing happened.

"Sage," I said.

"What happens if these runes activate?"

"Step off, and I will test it." I stepped back, and she pressed her hand flat against the rune—Morph lowered her down so she could reach. Green maegen poured out of her hand, filling the shape of the rune with glowing light. As soon as her energy reached the very edges of the rune, the ground rumbled beneath my feet. A column of stone blasted out of the ground right in front of my face, rushing up toward the ceiling. It moved fast enough to create a gust of wind, and I staggered back.

Raising my voice over the rushing air, I shouted, "I think we found our way back up!"