SB: Chapter 255 – A Herculean Effort (Patreon)

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I had Ozy come back and make a small resting ledge every half kilometer down in the vertical shaft. Enough room for the case and Boris. He could descend with it, but the problem was his stamina. He needed spots along the way, to safely leave the case so he could recover and do another kilometer the next day.

I had two parts as well, the first was that I had to wait on the ledge to maneuver the case off to the side once he reached the ledge. He couldn’t move the case at all, since he was supporting its weight through several ropes tied around his body.

I noted there were slight dents in the compressed rocky ridges he had gripped during his descent. That was due to how tightly he was gripping as he descended. We had tested this beforehand and while the rock deformed slightly, it didn’t break, which was the important thing.

My second part was a lot scarier. I had to ensure the case passed over the ridges in the angled tunnel. Making it purely vertical would have been better for getting the case all the way to the bottom, but I had to live with my decision. That meant I had to remain right below the sword case and leverage it over each hand holding ridge in the tunnel.

As for scraping against the wall, it was wrapped in a blanket and that one corner got extra padding with metal inserts. We went through a blanket a day, but I had more than enough blankets.

It took five grueling days to move the sword case from the main resting chamber to the bottom of the vertical shaft. Boris never uttered one word of complaint during the entire operation. Once the sword case was at the bottom, I put together the wood sled I had purchased at the College.

The key joints and rails were reinforced with lightweight metal. The entire thing barely held once the case was put onto it, but it held, which was the important thing. As for moving it into the horizontal tunnel, I held off on that until Ozy reached the main chamber where the sword was hidden. I had thought of coming up from underneath, but the snowfall had made me change my mind.

We were at the right elevation based on my calculations and memory. I was glad I had made a point of remembering this information. Being off vertically would be a huge nightmare and make the location impossible to find unless I came from the top down like the demon had been trying to do.

Even with the vertical height mostly solved, hitting the exact location would be a bit more hit or miss. I had a general idea of where it could be based on how the Mana was dispersed. Once Ozy got to the general area, he would set up another chamber and then start checking with smaller tunnels that only he could move through in multiple directions. That way he had less work, and we could locate the hidden chamber more quickly.

I had done too good a job of hiding the chamber and dispersing the Mana coming off the sword. But without that defense in place or any kind of markers on the terrain locating the sword was just as hard for me as it was the demon. I just had more information about the exact depth, and a bit better idea about where it could be located in the horizontal plane.

But even being off by 10 meters could cause Ozy to miss the chamber. While it wasn’t as headache inducing as finding a needle in a haystack, it would be a challenge. That was why I had Ozy use a faster strategy to find the chamber, rather than make a single human sized tunnel.

The smaller tunnel would allow him to cover more area in a shorter period of time. While the demon might not have been able to keep the monsters digging, I didn’t want to wait around here forever.

Once the case was lowered, it was back to constantly training. My Cold Resistance had gone to Cold Immunity. The skill quickly broke out in the cold and it was trained under the pressure of the extreme environmental effect. Breaking an immunity skill was useful for leveling, but only if it was given enough time to fully recover.

Rushing in and out of the chamber I had set up for us to stay in, wasn’t as impactful for leveling as just remaining out in the cold and coming in to sleep and warm up. That would allow the skill to fully recover for the next day and to repeat the process.

While some people might have thought this would lead to extreme leveling speed, Cold Immunity was a Tier 4 skill. I would probably get anywhere from 10 to 15 levels in the skill before I checked my status again. Higher tier skills just took that long to level, even with near daily training in the perfect environment to improve the skill.

While it was boring working on this certain set of skills, I was also happy they were improving and progress was being made. If I couldn’t have improved my skills, then I would have definitely gone mad.

During this time, I sensed another round of heavy snowfall. Now we were 50 meters under the snow. If we did ever manage to get out, the clouds might actually be gone, which could actually help the beastkin closer to the coast.

With less clouds, more sunlight would hit the ground and warm things up. Based on my knowledge of demons they didn’t like the sun, which would make life more difficult for them. I hadn’t thought about this benefit before, but it would be a huge advantage once the dark season ended.

Even buried under the snow, the runic arrays created a weak weather ward, decreasing the temperature. Thinking about how air moved, this would cause the cold air to push outwards along the ground, drawing in air and clouds from up above. Hence the huge snowstorms as the moisture was pulled down and then cooled, turning into snow.

This would end once the runic arrays ran out. They might even be struggling now with that much snow. While the weather wards were quite large, snow was burying everything. Only the very tops of the weather wards would be impactful on the air. The snow near them would cool down more, but that would only do so much to impact the larger climate.

The big challenge would be traversing across that much snow and cold without being detected. The problem was that there was so much snow, that the mountains would start becoming hills. While we were fairly high up, it was still a risk breaking out of the snow, since any disturbance would be easily seen. I had no doubt the demon had night vision and possibly heat vision.

As I was working on my skills, the ground shook and chunks of snow fell down on me in my little space outside our cave. I quickly got up and opened up the cave entrance and entered as the ground continued to shake. I had mentally ordered Ozy to return. I didn’t receive anything back from him, but I knew he had to obey.

The ground shook violently again and I felt a massive surge of Mana. For one moment I thought it was the demon, but I didn’t instantly drop dead. It was something else. No, not one Mana, two types of Mana. My eyes went wide in shock as I realized what was happening.

The demon was fighting with something. Boris had taken a seat, as did I, as we waited for the shaking to stop. The fight wasn’t stopping or massively changing locations after a few minutes, which meant it was a fight to the death. The fight was occurring above where the sword had been hidden.

The demon had probably started working on finding the sword itself, while something else had shown up. The fight kept continuing and Ozy showed up.

“Did you find anything?” I focused on the question and how he should answer. Ozy tapped his tail on the ground three times. “A chamber?” I asked and I got another confirmation. We had found the location of the sword. “Is the tunnel intact?” Another confirmation and I smiled. Now was the perfect time to act.

“Get to work expanding the tunnel towards it. We need to get it before the battle is finished,” I ordered. While it would be risky, getting the sword was the most important priority.

“Boris, we need to start moving the case to the next chamber on the sled,” I said.

“I understand,” he replied. We quickly began to descend down the very long vertical tunnel. I had traversed it enough, that I would let go, slide, and use my hands and feet to create friction against the wall and hand holds to slow myself down.

Boris was more methodical and much slower but that was fine. The ground shook again, but the tunnel held together thanks to Ozy’s reinforcements. Whatever battle was happening outside had to be titanic with how large the bursts of Mana were. I was really glad I wasn’t involved in that conflict.

I was also glad I had prepared so much and taken a stealth approach to this Seraphim Quest. I would have needed the strength of a legend to have even considered a more combat oriented approach.

I reached the bottom of the shaft and looked up and couldn’t even see Boris. There was nothing to do but wait until he got down here. I was regretting that we hadn’t moved the sword case to the next chamber, but it hadn’t seemed too urgent at the time. The fact that Ozy found the sword chamber so quickly and had tunneled so quickly was a testament to his skill and how well I was able to pinpoint the previous position.

After an hour Boris finally reached me. “Your stamina good?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Then we need to push the sled with the sword case on it through the tunnel to the end,” I replied and he nodded. It was incredibly awkward for him to push while having to crawl on his hands and knees, but he just pushed it with his head and kept crawling forward.

Every time I thought the battle had stopped, the ground shook again and there was another burst of Mana. I followed behind Boris, crawling along. Thankfully, I had enough repair materials to make us kneepads for crawling, otherwise it would have been truly miserable.

After about a kilometer Boris stopped. “Break, my head is tired,” he said.

“Sure,” I replied as we both adjusted to seated positions to get more comfortable. I passed him some food and a stamina potion. I wanted to get that sword before the battle ended no matter what. If that wasn’t possible, I needed to get the sword while the victorious side was exhausted.

For a moment, I considered trying to snipe the winner, before discarding that nonsensical idea. Even a weak powerhouse could exert their full strength up until the moment of their death unless heavily wounded or they had dug into their point reserves beyond what they should have. It was too risky and that wasn’t my mission.

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UPDATE: Thank you everyone for coming back. Yeah!The first is that I have to confess. Confess that I have used AI.....to do admin work! And the math problems in this story. If anyone thinks I still remember a lick of calculus from school and can figure out a derivative, you have a much higher opinion of my math skills than I do. Before it was a massive pain in the rear and soul death for me to make a correction, update all versions on RR and Patreon and my computer. While it might not seem like much, when you multiply that by 100s of chapters and 100s of mistakes (proving I didn't write with AI), then it is soul crushing and takes hours upon hours. Well thanks to the power of Grok Bots, I have done a mass editing, updating, and even scheduling. Heck in Patreon there are now links to the next/previous chapter of Spellblade for each chapter. The editing I had to go through over 200+ things myself and check the edits made sense (about 90% of them did, and 10% the AI was sniffing some Pic), but I can't believe how many minor errors I still missed. What that means for you people is that chapters are scheduled far in advance and even more edited even after I do a second pass, but also that I am more willing to adjust that schedule in the future, since it just takes a single order to make the bots slave away, while I look at them as an elite bourgeoisie and can focus more time on writing. I have a bot now tracking my writing speed and progress since tracking it myself wastes too much time, who is truly the master, who is truly the slave?I have looked at AI for writing and all I can say is that, the silence of its capabilities sits. For those who know, you know. For those who don't, silence sitting is a common term to detect AI writing. SILENCE DOESN'T SIT! The new rallying cry against AI writing. This proves it still has a lot of issues. I looked at it for replying to comments as well....it is completely hopeless. Good news is that up to chapter 298 both on Patreon and RR have been scheduled and I have written up to around chapter 341. I lost 2 chapters, since I skipped two numbers later on, which the AI caught. Another common and classic MisterVii mistake.I decided to share this, since AI is everywhere nowadays, like a cancer. I wanted to give you an update from the front lines. I look at AI because I am not my grandfather, love the man massively, but he grew up during the Great Depression and doesn't know/doesn't want to use smart phones. I might be slow to adjust, but I will adjust with new technologies. To break the lightspeed writing barrier and ascend. Now there is a hilarious story idea, The Cultivator Who Writes Once The Apocalypse Hits Earth. They fight by typing on their soul keyboard. It would be a very meta type story. Also enjoy this banger AI music track.