Chapter 63-Shock and Awe (Patreon)

            When James and the four mages he was with were five hundred yards from the dungeon’s area of influence in the Great Black Tree Labyrinth, he turned to his compatriots and said, “Remember, I am leading this expedition, and we have to be very careful.”

            Lyla said, “Yeah, yeah, we know this dungeon is the most dangerous tier two dungeon, but we are well prepared for that.”

            James shook his head and said, “Don’t be so dismissive. I heard rumors that the essence humans taken from this labyrinth had something strange about them. Strange and valuable enough that they were moved to another moon.”

            Lyla tsked and said, “It’s a tier-two dungeon. We already have lightning cores, and although this labyrinth has been open for years and years, no mage has died here. Sure, every now and then, someone gets injured, but that just separates the good mages from the dregs. What are you even worried about? You already have all your tier-two cores and are just waiting for a time to go to the tier-three force labyrinth.”

            “That is what has me worried. They are sending me here to get more experience before going for my tier-three core. There are other tier-two labyrinths that are considered more dangerous, but those labyrinths have been around for thousands of years; some have even outlived tier-three mages. This labyrinth has only been around a few hundred years, and yet it's already making waves. I have to wonder what new danger awaits us inside, particularly with the essence humans getting moved to another moon.”

            Liam said, “There is nothing to worry about. Other mages have told us how to handle this labyrinth. We just used slurry to make our own tunnels to go around the dungeon made tunnels to avoid the traps it deployed around its labyrinth. We use soul sight to spot essence creatures through the walls and a spell that can go through the wall to kill the essence creatures before they ever spot us, and then we collect the essence creatures. We only have to get twelve lightning cores and an arm from the thing that shoots fast projectiles. We will even use a half a dozen spells to protect us just in case we are unlucky enough to stumble into a trap in the dungeon.”

            James said, “I am still a bit concerned, but you’re right; things should proceed normally. Everyone cast your spells.”

            As a team, they cast haste times 10, soul sight, and lightning immunity. From there, the team began individually casting spells to protect the team as a whole. These included water bubble, bend light, vacuum bubble, illusion, warp gravity, rain, and swirling ice crystals. Once the team had all their defenses up, James, as leader of the expedition, turned the ground in front of them into slurry, and they began moving forward through the newly made tunnel as it was created.

            Before they even entered the dungeon’s area of influence, they were able to spot essence creatures with soul sight. Depending on the attacker, they used shadow, vacuum, water, and even explosion magic to kill the essence creatures long before those creatures could react. The mages were no warriors; they were hunters, hunting very dangerous beasts. Every precaution was taken to ensure their safety both defensively and offensively. At least every precaution a tier-two mage could muster.

            It didn’t take the five mages long to reach one of the labyrinth's biomes, and before they breached it, they killed everything inside. James then stopped slurry and used magma to breach the incredibly resilient material.

            As soon as the breach was made, Lyla said, “We lucked out. One of those bears with the metal arm is already dead. I heard that they are only in about a quarter of the biomes in this labyrinth.”

            James said, “Give me a second; I need to make a familiar.” The other three watched as he spent a minute in haste time or a bit under six seconds in real time, drawing the pattern necessary to create a familiar. Once he was finished with the pattern a dog began to grow from the pattern and once it was fully grown, the group made their way over to the projectile bear. James swiftly cut both the bear and his familiar dog open before pulling out the lightning-core and putting it in his familiar, while the others kept watch for any new souls entering the area.

            As James was finishing, Liam shouted, “We have three souls coming in very fast! It's definitely something new.”

            When Liam said something was coming in fast, he meant fast at haste speeds. As far as they were concerned, everything was moving ten times slower than normal, and as James looked up, he could swear the three souls were moving at twenty or thirty miles an hour, but without haste, they would be moving at two or three hundred miles an hour, at least to the mages’ perspective. The problem was that something moving that fast was very difficult to hit with soul sight.

            James said, “Prepare your spells for when they enter the biome.”

            Lyla said, “How do you know they are coming here?”

            “We have to assume. Shut up and prepare your spell.”

            As James spoke he supercharged his rain spell so that rain filled the entirety of the biome and then turned it all to ice. Lyla overcharged an explosion spell, Liam continued trying to hit them with a shadow spell, and could swear he was hitting his target but couldn’t understand why it wasn’t working. Josh prepared a warped gravity spell, and Matt began imbuing the ground in the biome with his slurry spell.

            All five mages watched as the souls twisted and turned through the labyrinth until they came out of a nearby tunnel. When they came out of the tunnel, they showed their side to the mages and to James they looked to be fish with several arms stuck in the place where their forward fins should be, and had weird protrusions on their face that lacked eyes.

            As the flying fish came into the biome, they had to dodge the ice crystals swirling through the air in every direction, and the creatures were able to dance around the ice crystals that were moving in every direction, including ice crystals that were coming from impossible-to-see angles. This was surprising but not astonishing, as it wasn’t uncommon for essence creatures to have unique sensory organs.

            With the creatures in sight, the other mages did not hold back. Lyla launched her spell guided explosion. She launched the spell away from the creatures so they couldn’t see where it was launched from, so they couldn’t trace the trajectory back to them through invisibility. From there, she curved the spell through the illusions and launched it straight at the dancing flying fish. She made no effort to weave her spell around the swirling ice, instead, the nature of the spell was fire and so easily blew through the ice, and as it neared the fish and became obvious that it would miss, she blew the spell.

            This was a mistake as the flying fish were tough enough to handle the explosion, and this opened a hole for the flying fish to move through, which was shocking to the mages, as thanks to haste they could see and react to the flying fish being able to move effortlessly through vacuum. As they watched the flying fish shrug off the explosion and then swim through the vacuum it left behind, the mages knew they were in trouble.

            In response, Josh used warped gravity, and Matt used slurry. Josh’s warped gravity was intended to bounce the fish creatures off the walls, floor, and ceiling of the room, but he managed to use the luck of a lifetime and launch the spell a fraction of a second before the three fish creatures used their rail launchers.

            As the metal launched, the void dolphins burned up from the inside out. From the ‘face’ of the dolphin following each piece of metal was a ribbon of fire, but this ribbon did not follow a straight path as warped gravity made the metal, and the fire trailing it, move in a zig-zag pattern as the spell tried to force the projectile to bounce off the walls, floor, and ceiling. The projectile was just moving so fast that although it was affected by the spell, the spell couldn’t fully control it.

             Meanwhile, Matt’s slurry spell weakened the floors around them, so as the incredibly fast pieces of metal missed the mages, instead of making the ground around them explode, they went into the liquid earth before piercing through the carbon nanotubes that made up the shell of the biome.

            Layla said, “What was that?”

            James said, “I told you that it would be dangerous.”

            Josh said, “Shup up, we need to finish this mission as soon as possible before more of those things come out.”

            Matt said, “Yeah, if they didn’t die after one attack, we would have been in real trouble.”

            Within two hours, the mages had finished their mission, largely because the dungeon didn’t have more void dolphins to throw at them. That said, the dungeon was happy with the data he was given in this battle. With a few tweeks, it wouldn’t be long before he was consistently killing mages.