Chapter 15 #3
She found two more traps, a slab that would have sealed the corridor behind them, and a section of wall rigged to shoot stone darts at chest height.
Alsen walked and thought. He reached level ten, so he had a choice to make.
The shockwave from the Twin Dawn had thrown everyone backward. Everyone except Luna, who’d pressed herself to the wall in the exact spot where the wave didn’t throw any rocks. She reacted before the spell landed, before the explosion even happened.
No matter how he thought of that, that was absurd. This wasn’t some instinct or luck or experience. It was all of it and more.
Luna wasn’t working on making an evasion build. She was an evasion build from her original life and used the System to further enhance her strongest skills.
Garrett and Theron had taken the shockwave full in the chest and gotten up without a scratch. High endurance, apparently. Their bodies just absorbed the impact like it was a strong wind.
Marena had barely stumbled. Alsen had caught the faint shimmer of a shield around her, reactive, automatic. Her willpower was high enough to generate passive barriers without conscious effort. That was a function of the willpower stat he’d read about and promptly ignored.
And Sonja had rolled with the blast and played possum to try to get Luna. Endurance, too, for the most part.
Everyone in the party had an answer to the shockwave. Except him.
Conveniently enough, he had just reached the level to take the mana barrier. Sure, he would have wasted a few skill points pathing to the passive stats node, or he could take both level ten skills from the archmage specialization.
But that would be horribly long-term. He needed to save skill points for later levels, to branch out there, not spend them early. Plus, he was going to invent his own shielding, one better than any other that existed.
He just needed to get to it.
He glanced at Luna. She played the system to her strengths. Somehow, he couldn’t shake the feeling she knew exactly what she was doing.
Balanced builds were for people who needed the system to get off the ground. With enough out-of-system abilities, using it for extreme specialization was bound to end up being stronger.
The corridor opened into another chamber, larger than the last. This one had pillars, thick and squat, arranged in two rows that created a central aisle. At the far end, a set of wide, shallow stairs led up to a raised platform.
On the platform, five constructs waited.
These were different from the last set. Taller, broader, with thicker limbs. Stone arms ending in blunt fists, larger than helmets. Their torsos bore carvings, the geometric spiral pattern, etched into their chests like a brand.
Garrett stopped at the edge of the room. “This place sure is well guarded.”
“Oh, yeah,” Theron said, grabbing his axe. “Five bigger statues. We’re going to have to rest after this one.”
“It’s getting late, anyway.” Garrett drew his sword.
Sonja took her bow. “Be careful, Kitten. Stone’ll fly from these, so make sure you don’t get hit. You should stand behind Alsen, just in case.”
She rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest. “You’re overdoing it. You probably don’t need help in the fight against these, but really, stop mispositioning yourself to protect me. I don’t need protection.”
“Aww, Kitten is worried about me. That’s so sweet!” Sonja stepped toward the room. “We’ll celebrate with a kiss!”
Marena gripped her staff, holding it high up in front of herself. She whispered something in a language Alsen didn’t understand. Motes of bright lights floated from her. They swarmed over Garrett, Theron, and Sonja. The light absorbed into them, giving them a radiant aura.
Alsen focused, releasing the M2 magical scan. The base level one skimmed off the surface of beings. The second tier went deeper, through the statues’ stone shells, detecting their cores under their chests. “Their cores are where a liver would be, again.”
“Save your strength,” Garrett snapped. “We’ve got this.”
“Thanks for the spell,” Marena added, smiling. “It helps.”
Sonja took a wide stance, pulling her bow all the way without an arrow. Power gathered to her from the surrounding air. It gathered into an arrow of green light. She released the arrow. It cleaved the air, piercing the central statue through the chest.
The statue collapsed. The other four rumbled to motion. Garrett and Theron charged in.
The statues converged on them, two on each. Sonja started charging another arrow, gathering power within herself. Marena kept shooting out misty notes from the staff. When these reached Garrett or Theron, they formed a shielding layer around them, which absorbed one hit each.
Not that Theron and Garrett were getting hit all that much. They both kept up with two statues, blocking, parrying, and dodging their punches while getting in hits of their own. They aimed for the knees.
They each got a knee of one statue before Sonja released her arrow. Again, the arrow flew through a statue, instantly turning it off. “Charging the last one,” she shouted.
Garrett and Theron pulled the three remaining statues together. When they got close, they filled their gaps in defense and used Marena’s protection motes to exchange blows. They fully kneecapped two statues.
Sonja fired the third arrow, destroying the undamaged statue. Theron and Garrett converged on one statue. Theron shattered its chest stone plate. Garrett stepped in and stabbed the crystal that made it move.
The final statue met the same fate, torn asunder by Garrett and Theron.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: ENEMIES DEFEATED – LARGE GEMBOUND GUARDIAN STATUES (5)]
[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 1500]
[LEVEL UP!]
[LEVEL: 11]
Damn. Alsen had to resist the urge to clap. Garrett, Theron, Sonja, and Marena all breathed heavily, bracing themselves with their weapons. But the statues were destroyed.
“All right,” Garrett said, sheathing his sword. “Let’s see if there isn’t a decent place to rest somewhere ahead. If we find more statues, we will at least know what tomorrow’s enemies are.”
They trudged ahead.
They passed through two more corridors, both with traps, each of which Luna spotted and disarmed.
One had a clever mechanism that shifted the walls inward when a certain tile was stepped on, a slow crush that would have pinned anyone caught between them.
The other was a simple blade trap, just like the one they saw in the first destroyed temple in the forest.
The dungeon no longer had any sounds to it, only their own heartbeats and steps. That became painfully noticeable whenever Luna worked, as she stopped humming.
The air carried a metallic taste, thin and sharp, like licking a coin.
The carvings on the walls grew more complex, the spirals tighter, the geometric patterns more layered.
In places, the stone seemed to glow faintly, a luminescence that existed at the edge of perception, gone when looked at directly.
Alsen dragged his fingers across a carved wall as they walked. The patterns felt warm under his touch, even through the cold of the stone. Not detectable magic, but something woven into the stone itself.
They emerged into a wide space, the broadest they’d encountered. The ceiling soared upward, lost in darkness beyond his orb’s reach. The room’s floor descended in wide, shallow steps toward a central platform, like a lecture hall built for giants.
At the far end, set into the wall, stood a gate.
This one was a single slab at least fifteen feet tall and ten across, fitted into the wall with the same precision as the dungeon’s architecture. No hinges, no handles, no visible mechanism for opening.
Carvings covered the gate’s surface.