Chapter Five
At first he thought they were spiders.
Flat, three-section bodies, numerous legs, too many eyes, and webbing spraying from their mandibles—all the features screamed arachnids. But spiders didn’t have segmented tails with ichor-dripping spikes, and he didn’t think they had crab-like claws large enough to snap a man in half.
Vester put his dexterity to work yanking his team up and back onto their feet.
Reve threw out a telekinetic barrier that caught the descending monsters with a series of dull thuds.
Each beast was about the size of a Saint Bernard, provided he didn’t count their legs, claws, or tails.
When the extra bits got factored in, the things were huge.
A stone bubble grew up from the ledge beneath them and swept beneath Reve’s shield to block the sky over their heads from sight. Reve released her magic once Kora had the Elemental wall going, and they all grimaced at the clicks and scratching that sounded above them.
“Anyone spot a way down?” Vester asked. He ran his eyes to the left, then the right, and while he saw a stone path they could take, the walls were literally crawling with monsters. “Path to either side looks like suicide by attrition.”
A scorpion-thing crawled past the edge of Kora’s wall and received a green bolt of energy from Li Ra’s pistol.
The hiss-crack of the energy weapon discharging was deafening in the small space, but they endured it, especially since her shot cratered the monster’s head and dissolved its eyes.
The acid mana she’d charged into her weapon did a great job against the chitinous beast.
“I could fly down with Skylar… and Krysta, if she shifted,” Reve offered. “I’d have to fly out and away from the wall to avoid the beasts. I couldn’t provide assistance to any of you. If they’re leaping spiders they might jump for me, and I think I saw at least one or two spraying webs.”
“They’re definitely spraying webs,” Skylar agreed with a grimace.
She was peeling a sticky white film out of her braid, her eyes smoldering with annoyance.
The ledge was too small for her to summon her golems, which left her handicapped.
Woody and Ripper could likely cling to the rocks without a problem, but Dent had no chance.
“I can’t summon Sanctuary here,” Krysta said. She sounded scared. “I get a message saying there are too many hostile creatures nearby. That’s never happened before.”
“We’re in the middle of a swarm,” Kora said. “Records from the eleventh floor said that swarms roamed the walls but generally avoid the floor entrances.”
“Probably doesn’t apply to us,” Vester replied.
“Since the Great Dungeon decided we had to be fast tracked down here, I’m not even sure we’re at an official floor entrance.
Did anyone see stairs going up?” Vester was frustrated, though he wasn’t overly surprised.
He’d caught a glimpse of a city carved around one of the huge pillars, so he was fairly certain they were on the eleventh floor.
But they were also out of position and in the middle of a horde of beasts.
“No stairs. Just the ledge we’re on,” Li said.
“We got teleported.” She fired at two more creatures trying to get over the lip of Kora’s wall, and Vester knew they were running out of time.
“I say we have Reve fly Skylar and Krysta down, and Vester shapes the rest of us a ramp. With luck, Krysta has her Sanctuary running when we hit the bottom and we all reset and refill our mana.”
Fantastic Reality and Inconvenient Illusions would let Vester forge a pathway for Kora, Li Ra, and himself, but it was going to drain nearly all his energy. He wouldn’t have been able to do it at all if Trickster’s Cane didn’t give him such a large discount on his magic.
“Sounds like the best plan we have,” he said.
Krysta rippled and shrank down into her red panda form so she could leap into Skylar’s arms. Skylar cradled the pandali to her chest, then looped her free arm around Reve’s neck.
When the Avatar of Life straightened to her full height, Skylar hooked her legs to grip Reve’s thighs.
“Good luck,” Reve offered in a solemn tone, then she hurled herself out from under Kora’s protection.
The sheer speed with which she blasted away from the ledge implied she’d used her telekinesis to give herself a boost—which was good, because Vester saw at least five scorpions go flying through the air in an attempt to catch her.
“My turn,” he said. He moved to the edge of the ledge and pictured a tube maze.
Fantastic Reality created a solid stone bottom, while illusions formed the walls and ceiling.
Vester was basing it entirely on the old jungle gyms he’d played in at McDonalds, though he avoided the bright orange coloring.
“Stay close to me. Remember, Fantastic Reality can’t maintain solid material outside my aura. ”
That gave them sixty-two cubic feet of mana-created matter.
Vester was going to have to shape it in front of them while they slid down it.
If he didn’t have the reflexes he did, this entire maneuver would have been suicide.
He sat down on the stone and felt Li Ra put her legs to either side of his, then she crossed her ankles over his waist. Her arms went to either side of him, and he realized she had her guns in hand.
“I’ll be going backward,” Kora announced. “We’ll need to ensure the beasts don’t follow us in.”
Vester twisted and saw that the kitsune had put her back to Li’s, and Kora’s kite shield was braced against her knees. The Elemental Knight was using her tails like seatbelts to lock her to the oni. This is insane, he thought.
Then Kora kicked off the ledge and they started sliding.
Vester wasn’t entirely sure how far down the ground was, except that it was very far away, which meant he couldn’t slide them straight down—they’d build up too much speed and splatter on the ground.
He also couldn’t completely enclose the path ahead, or else he wouldn’t be able to see the approaching floor.
That left him trying to balance visibility, stability, reality, and focus—all while rapidly picking up speed. The stone beneath them was as slick as he could make it, because he couldn’t afford for them to get hung up on anything that might disrupt their momentum.
Then none of them were touching anything solid and the mana demands of Freeform Illusion skyrocketed.
The illusory tube he was forming dissolved behind him, and the monsters crawling along it let out shrieks, screams, and calls he couldn’t identify when the material beneath their feet came apart.
Some of them were shooting webs, trying to get ahead of the sliding Party, which prevented Vester from sealing the tunnel—he couldn’t create illusions when something solid was filling the space.
Li Ra had her head on his shoulder, her hat flapping against his ear, and was firing her pistols at anything that started to block their path. The sharp discharges and blinding flashes of colored light did not make Vester’s job easier.
He’d originally intended to fill in the slide behind them with illusory spikes in the hopes that Inconvenient Illusions would get triggered by the bugs trying to charge down the slide, but he simply didn’t have the energy to spare.
This is worse than creating cool air and stable ground in that damned desert on the fourth floor, he thought with a grunt. I’ve never had to use this much mana so fast.
The drain was significant enough that he steepened the curve he was creating into a tighter spiral, which meant their speed picked up. The wind whipping across his face made his eyes sting, making him wonder how bad it would have been if his constitution hadn’t been in the thirties.
“Woooooooo!” Li Ra screamed in his ear. “This is so much fun!” He was tempted to check and make sure Li hadn’t been stung, just in case her excitement stemmed from being poisoned, but they’d die or get tossed into the open sky if he took his eyes off the path he was forging for even a moment.
“You’re insane!” Kora Dol shouted. “Vester, we’re only halfway down. How is your mana doing?”
“You don’t want to know,” he called back. Even he didn’t want to know. The idea their lives were hanging on his ability to process information at this speed and create a fake slide that defied every law of physics he knew about. He was just thankful for magic making it all work.
Because I really wouldn’t want to be inside a spiral of stone that smashed into the ground at terminal velocity, which is what my science teacher would be screaming should happen right now, he thought with a hint of hysteria he was trying to pack away.
“At least we lost the bugs,” Li offered. She almost sounded like she was trying to comfort him, and once again he found himself questioning her sanity.
“Silver linings,” he muttered, then let out a yelp when a huge bat-like shape flew past him and momentarily prevented him from creating a section of path.
The thing’s wing shattered the stone ahead of them, which temporarily launched all of them into the gap.
Vester managed to create a funnel with Fantastic Reality and catch them, but it shortened his ability to see significantly.
The shriek of terror that emerged from Kora left him hoping she didn’t blame him for that undignified noise. He was doing his best, and things had just gotten more complicated now that their path had been broken.
Vester didn’t have a name for the shape he had to form, but he twisted the stone he created into a tube with a sloping inner-spiral, and it was speed alone that kept them glued to the walls while they spun down toward the ground.
Then Li Ra threw up on him.
“Fuck!” he shouted in surprise, momentarily blinded—he just kept crafting the tube and hoping for the best. The oni scrambled to wipe his face clean, and while she did, she gave him a rapid description of the approaching ground, talking so fast it was almost incomprehensible.
“What is happening up there?!” Kora screamed.
Vester had never heard her sound so rattled, and it briefly occurred to him that he could never appreciate how much faith it took a blind woman to do this.
Because clearly being unable to see the world outside his illusions was not making this trip less terrifying.
“Everything is fine!” Li yelled back while finally splashing water across his face and clearing his eyes. Vester blinked rapidly, taking in the sight of the oncoming floor, then twisted the tube into an arc that looped around.
He wasn’t sure how the physics worked, but for a disturbing portion of that corner turn they were glued to the ceiling—then every last drop of his mana ran out and everything he’d been creating just came apart in a shower of sparkles.
On the plus side, they were over a river, but they were still twenty feet up and moving faster than he’d ever moved before.
Without the false stone cradling them, they had no choice but to cling to each other while they flew over the water.
Kora channeled an Elemental Wall of wind around them, which acted like a huge airbag to blow water skyward.
Vester felt himself skid, bounce, skid again, then they rolled a few times before crashing to the ground in a heap.
“Well… we made it,” he moaned. Water was seeping into his clothes, but he wasn’t drowning. It took a second, but he gathered his wits enough to register they’d somehow landed on the bank of the river—several hundred feet from where his spells had faded.
“I never want to do that again,” Kora rasped.
She had the highest constitution, so it wasn’t a surprise that she recovered first. She climbed to her feet, then helped Li Ra, and finally Vester up.
There was a distinct green cast to her features, and it got worse when she glanced at his face.
“You have jogo fruit in your hair, Vester.”
“I’m so sorry,” Li Ra whispered. The oni materialized a cloth from her inventory, dunked it in the river, and started trying to wash Vester’s face. “It was the spinning. I just suddenly got dizzy and—”
“It’s fine,” he interrupted gently. Vester produced a ball of soap from Chaos Thief and rubbed it all over his face.
Between that and Li Ra’s assistance, he managed to get the worst of it off.
He also gave silent thanks for the fact that he could use Chaos Thief without needing mana.
His energy was gone, and the sensation was like a spike driven straight into his brain. “Any sign of Reve?”
Kora’s milky gaze locked with his for a moment, then the blind woman gave Li Ra a side eye. Since the Frontier Duelist was still trying to wash his hair, Vester was the only one who could really look around. He flushed, then started scanning the sky.
Li calmed down and seemed to remember she was their scout. She spun, tipping her hat back to clear her vision. “I see them,” she called. “They’re several hundred feet in that direction… We actually beat them down.” She pointed to their left, and the group started walking.
“Vester,” Kora asked, her tone cautious, “how did you know you could anchor Fantastic Reality on yourself and use it to slow your fall?”
“I… well, I didn’t,” he admitted. “I mean, we’ve tested it a little, and we knew I could make things in midair.
But I have no idea how that worked exactly…
and I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t have. My mana drained so fast that I’ve got nothing left.
If we’d been any higher up, or a bug had knocked Trickster’s Cane out of my hand, we’d probably be dead. ”
It was a sobering admission, but Vester didn’t want to lie to the worried kitsune.
“It worked,” Li Ra said. “That is what matters. Those bugs were level 42, according to the notifications I got while shooting them. We are strong, but without preparation I don’t see how we could have survived an entire swarm of the things.”
“It did work,” Kora admitted. She couldn’t have sounded less enthused if she tried. “And those bugs were able to jump quite far. I am not sure a glider or one of those fabric devices your Earth pilots used would have been safe from their leaps… but that was most unpleasant.”
Vester almost stumbled when he realized she meant parachutes, but his high dexterity allowed him to cover it up.
Okay, self, we’re making a promise right now. We are never going to confess to Kora that the idea of a parachute for that jump never even crossed our mind. If she realizes we could have done a big hanglide or something simpler like that, she might kill us.
“Don’t worry, Kora, I have no intention of making it a habit of leaping to our deaths with nothing but my magic to catch us,” he promised.