Chapter 22
He moved through memories as much as reality. Saw himself with the Throne Hunters crew once more, recalled the fear, the nervousness, the excitement. Relived the first fights. How fraught everything had felt. How vital. How raw.
Now his footsteps echoed ominously through the dungeon. Now he was the predator. Now it was him that brought terror and death to the unwitting denizens.
He came upon a group of ashen walkers. They’d been standing frozen in the dark, withered and awful to gaze upon, their heads like desiccated wasps’ nests, their claws gleaming in his scale light.
This time he didn’t activate his aura. This time he strode purposefully toward them, Abyssal Attunement sheathing his blade in purest abyssal void.
The walkers came to life, oriented on him, and attacked.
Nessa’s old lessons came flooding back. For too long, he’d been protected by the Scourge, by all his manifold powers.
Now it was just him and the blade again. Him and the leading edge.
It came back to him like he’d trained yesterday.
If his body hadn’t been crippled by regression, he’d have passed through them like a summer breeze.
Instead, he was forced into caution, observing the forms, flowing as best he could from one to the next. Recalling his footwork, how to weave blows together, how to remain balanced, how to not cross his feet as he progressed.
He needn’t have worried.
The Dawnblade sheared through limbs, torsos, and heads as if they were dreams, illusions, mist. His first blow passed so cleanly through the outstretched arms of his charging foe that Harald nearly tripped, having expected some form of resistance.
But no; both limbs were lopped off, the remaining upper arms immediately blackening with a void rot that flooded up to the shoulders, then sent great roots of blackness across the walker’s chest, tendrils rising to wrap around the great papery head, to sink deep their ink like poured onto parchment.
Even as Harald recovered, his first foe simply collapsed, undone by the abyss.
Then the others were upon him.
Harald brought the blade sweeping up from below, unseaming the next walker’s chest, sidestepping to cut down through more arms, his body clumsy but obedient to his will, his breath tight, sweat prickling his brow.
He ignored his discomfort. Mastered his flesh. And butchered the walkers.
A few moments later, he emerged on the far side of the crowd, untouched, unscathed, to turn and gaze at his brutal wake.
Monsters lay twisted and toppled atop each other, Copper Crescents glittering above each, their bodies dappled with black, shriveled as if mummified for eons, and from each he’d derived a mild shot of stolen vitality.
The sound of metallic stars ringing out against the void filled his mind.
The Demon Seed Has Stirred
Your Strength has risen from 6 to 7
Your Dexterity has risen from 6 to 7
Your Constitution has risen from 5 to 6
There it was.
His body felt refreshed. His breathing deepened just a fraction. He felt his musculature tighten, grow ever so slightly more compact and dense.
Pleased, Harald inclined a mocking nod to wherever the Fallen Angel might be, or perhaps Vorakhar, and pressed on.
Six more scenes of butchery ensued. Four patrols, two nests.
Harald eschewed using his aura each time, relearning his sword forms, finding that his body, weakened as it was, yet retained the skills he’d learned, the memory of how to flow, to move, to not remain trapped in any one stance, to unleash blows smoothly from all quadrants in the Dungeon Square.
When he found the next well, he didn’t hesitate, but hopped up onto the broad lip and dropped into the void.
Level 5.
He’d never visited this level before. Hallways were replaced by natural tunnels that wound back and forth with insidious intent. There was enough clearance for him to walk without needing to bow his head and room for him to swing the Verdant Dawnblade, and that was all that mattered.
The 5th Level boasted solitary hunters, gaunt, pale humanoids in wispy white robes, faceless, and who moved in perfect silence, their bodies reinforced with plates of bone.
Harald destroyed them with ease, alternating between his Aching Depths, which mired their movements as if they waded in waist-deep mud, and cutting them down with his blade, which again passed through even their armored plating with ease.
After his tenth would-be ambusher fell to his powers, he heard the sound of metallic stars ringing out against the void.
The Demon Seed Has Stirred
Your Dexterity has risen from 7 to 8
He flourished the Dawnblade in a circle, and felt the sword respond more nimbly to his intent.
Good.
Another well. Each had been a variation upon the first: stone rim, set in a crossroads or central chamber, unremarkable but for the swirling abyss down its throat.
6th Level.
Harald decided to push his stamina, and took his next set of foes at a jog.
All too soon he was winded, but he pushed himself on with merciless intent.
This level was verdant, cracks in the ceiling allowing rays of golden light to pour down and nurture islands of vibrant greenery from which bulbous plant creatures emerged, their torsos rotund and shaped from flower bulbs, their limbs thorned vines.
The Aching Depths was particularly effective against them. Their petal bodies blackened swiftly, their vines lost vitality even as they sailed toward Harald, no doubt attempting to ensnare his limbs, their mindless charge dooming them to collapse.
More Copper Crescents.
Still no level.
Finally, Harald found a large cavern filled with vibrant undergrowth and towering trees, the sound of birdcalls making it feel like a lost pocket world. This felt… different. Unexpected. Was the Fallen Angel reacting to his butchery?
No matter.
Harald invoked the abyss and strode into the small jungle. Around him, trunks blackened, the fallen leaves underfoot cindered, while leaves overhead curled and grayed.
The bulb monsters converged on him with a fury.
But they were still no match for his Aching Depths.
Harald strode amongst them, detached, curious, sweeping his blade through their bodies as they stumbled and fell. He must have killed some fifty of them before their attacks ceased.
No stat gains resulted, however.
One body released a black Servitor Crystal.
He ignored it.
In the center of the cavern, he found a new well, engulfed in vines. He simply strode up to it, leaped over the rim, and dropped to the 7th.
There, he fought his way through massed ranks of human skeletons, which—at first—were unnerving, but they were as mindless as the ashen walkers, if slightly tougher. Their bones turned ashen within his aura, their movements, already jerky, almost erratic.
His abyssal blade cut them down.
Harald forced himself to try to keep up a jog, and it was this more than anything that presented him with a challenge.
Finally, just as he cut his way through a final group of skeletons, he received his reward.
The Demon Seed Has Stirred
Your Constitution has risen from 6 to 7
Another well.
Harald hopped over, dropped, and entered the 8th Level.
This one he recalled. The Gloom Maws.
He’d emerged into a dripping hall whose length was ribbed by receding arches. Stout columns lined the walls. The air was damp, the smell earthy and acrid, and the floor of the central hall glimmered wetly, reflecting the light of his scale lamp in liquid smears.
“Damn, I’ve missed this place,” he heard Vic say in some half-forgotten memory.
Harald flourished his blade and got to work.
A giant Gloomie was lurking at the back of the hall.
Almost spherical, tapering toward the back, its skin glistened oil-black under a layer of slime.
Its eyes were tiny motes of burning crimson, and its maw was huge enough to nearly part its body in two.
A huge tongue wriggled about like an eager hound behind its glassine fangs, and it shuffled about to orient on Harald, slobbering and grunting as it prepared to leap.
“Die,” whispered Harald, and activated the Aching Depths. The abyss flowed forth, dimming his Copper light, and washed over the huge Gloomie, who shuddered, hide immediately beginning to gray, its tongue flopping down to lie lifeless in its vast maw.
But it didn’t immediately slow and wither like his previous foes. Perhaps it was its sheer bulk. Perhaps by Level 8 the dungeon monsters were now tough enough to retain some capacity for movement. The Gloomie gathered itself, gasping and grunting in pain, and leaped.
It was a feeble surge forward, covering most of the ground between them—but not enough. Harald closed the distance as the monster rolled onto its side, laboring for breath, and slashed his black blade clear through its corpus.
A Silver Starburst appeared above it.
Angry, wanting greater resistance, a real fight, Harald swiped the scale and plunged into a side hall.
Impatience had him by the throat now. His aura flooded out ahead of him, not because he desired its protection, but because he wanted to clear the way to the next well as quickly as possible.
He slaughtered the Gloom Maws.
After carving his way through the fifteenth massive foe, and earning what felt like a reluctant bump in Strength as a result, he found the next well.
Down to the ninth.
There he was met with slightly more resistance from floating skulls wreathed in flame that flew toward him while screaming with such volume that had it not been for the muffling effects of the Aching Depths, Harald might have been left flat-footed.
But the skulls succumbed to his aura like all the others, losing speed, their flames dying down to a faint corona, and Harald simply swatted them from the air as he ran past them.
He found a black well, and there paused, nonplussed.
He was about to hit the 10th Level as a Level 1. If anything, this just confirmed the insane advantage that having five Thrones conferred upon him.
Below lay the Crypt Keepers.