Chapter 23 #2
The ranks before Harald quivered, fell apart. Shadowpaw flung himself about in a muscular, frenzied manner, his mass allowing him to bowl right through the light, slight foes. It was a glorious, berserker frenzy, and it was enough.
Harald laughed and broke forward, lurching and limping as he cut and cleared the rest of the path, ignoring Keepers who rushed in too late, cutting down those who got in the way.
He reached the base of the hill. How many had he slain?
No time to ponder. He dropped to all fours and like a beast climbed the slope, shallow at first, then steeper, until at the last it was nearly a vertical wall.
Bodies gave, fell away as he sought to use them as handholds.
Growling in frustration, Harald skittered around, cutting down a few more Keepers who climbed up alongside him, until he found a more solid section and up he flew, the mass of corpses ever shifting and giving, some of the Keepers not dead, just claimed by the abyss so that they could only hiss as he stomped his boot into their faces, and then he was up, he was up, to rise, turn, cut down and knock away a half-dozen Keepers who trailed after, to blink blood and sweat and exhaustion from his eyes and look out over the vast cavern to marvel.
There was no end to the Keepers.
Just an ocean of faces, glittering Copper Crescents.
Below, Shadowpaw was tossing Keepers around, pouncing, shredding, and looking like he was having the best time in the world.
A new message appeared before him in the hazy green air:
The abyss approves of your endless hunger.
Your appetite for destruction has curdled the depths.
By the decree of the Fallen Angel, you are granted the next echelon of your destiny.
Abyssal Acolyte 3
Active Ability Unlocked: Demonic Edge
Unleash the unholy fury of your blade. Let your strikes extend beyond the steel. Each slash carries the essence of darkness, rending space with your weapon’s almighty force.
Passive Ability Unlocked: Umbral Aegis
Cloak yourself in the shadows of the abyss. This malefic armor, woven from the darkest energies, grows with your command over the Thrones, guarding you against the ravages of both blade and sorcery.
Fierce elation raced through Harald like a forest fire. He was tempted to descend back into the fray, to test himself anew—but his exhaustion was only slightly abated, and the true danger now lay in the sheer volume of foes.
If he were to push much longer, the very well itself might get buried under corpses.
There would be new enemies to test himself against on Level 11.
“Sorry, Shadowpaw!” Harald felt a wave of dizziness pass over him. “We need to end the festivities.”
And even as more Keepers came rushing in, he half-slid, half-scrambled down the inside slope to leap at the last, land on the well’s brim, turn, and drop into the swirling darkness below.
Shadowpaw immediately returned to Harald’s Cosmos as the darkness consumed him, and for a glorious second, he was one with the abyss before the world came rushing back.
The 11th Level.
Baleful crimson light radiated up from exposed pools of blood-red liquid that oozed chunkily around rough gray walkways of broken stone.
Black chains hung from the fog overhead, and the air was thick and smoky with the stench of rust and sulfur.
He couldn’t see more than some twenty yards in any direction—the ambient haze was too thick—but he got the sense of standing in a vast, open cavern, its floor oozing and bleeding with noxious lava and interspersed with walkways.
“Lovely,” said Harald, blade resting over his shoulder. There were no immediate threats that he could see. Taking a deep breath, he dropped into a crouch and allowed his pulse to slow, his mind to center, his focus to return.
That had been madness on the 10th. He’d fair lost his sense of self amidst the bloodlust and violence.
Curious, wary, he twisted to look up and back.
Exeros’ mote of ivory light hung in the volcanic air, and somehow felt more baleful than even the hellish surroundings.
“Guess you don’t mind my going all out as long as I’m killing dungeon monsters or demons, right?”
No response.
“Right,” muttered Harald, turning back to scan the far reaches of the foggy cavern for movement. Nothing yet.
Still, he wasn’t worried. If anything, he was surprised at how invulnerable he’d felt on the 10th, surrounded as he’d been by thousands of Crypt Keepers. No need for Sam to come rescue him this time. If he’d had the means to clear away corpses, he probably could have kept going for a while longer.
What was on the 11th? They’d skipped this step and gone right for the 12th, which was the golem run. The 11th… Harald frowned. Sam would know.
But Sam wasn’t here.
Some of the joy leached out of his adventure. He thought of her stern, sad gaze as she’d watched him go. What had she been about to tell him before they’d launched the attack on the cathedral?
Harald worried at the problem fruitlessly, then gave up. He’d reconcile with her when he reached the 31st.
He unslung his pack, took out some dried rations, and devoured enough food to keep him going. Drank from his water flask, then rose again to his feet. Almost, he called for Shadowpaw, more for the company than anything else, but then restrained the impulse.
He was here to level as quickly as possible, which meant leveling alone.
As frightening as the level looked, it couldn’t be too bad. The 13th only had goblins, after all.
Harald stalked forward, Thrones quiet, Dawnblade green and resting on his shoulder. He had the Demonic Edge back, which meant ranged attacks, and Umbral Aegis would afford some incredible protection.
Nothing to worry about.
The lava to his left began to bubble violently.
Harald paused, considered, then turned to face it. He awoke his four Thrones and the Crown, and felt raw power flood into him. Out of curiosity, even as a great glowing red tentacle began to emerge sinuously from the blazing liquid, he activated Umbral Aegis.
The abyss responded.
Pure energy of the deepest jet flowed around him, a deluge that formed armored plates sculpted from hardened shadows.
A faint iridescence sheened their ridged surface, but the light that rippled across the armor was subtly purple, not crimson.
As always before, the Aegis cloaked him from heel to crown, a shadowy haze forming before his face as the helm manifested about his head.
But this time, the armor was more than just shadowed plates.
It was ridged in a manner that reminded him of his Demoniac Body, with spikes at the elbows, talons at the tips of his gauntlets, and flaring pauldrons.
He felt larger, faster, and infinitely more durable, and the sulfurous stench faded away to be replaced by clean air.
Fascinating.
Turning, he saw that there was no black cape extending from his shoulders to a crack in the abyss. It was simply gone. Perhaps because he now embodied the abyss so purely?
No matter.
The tentacle reached up some five yards in height before abruptly whipping toward him. Curious, Harald kept only the Aegis up and watched as the burning red appendage curled around his waist and squeezed.
He felt nothing.
The tentacle striated and tensed, worked itself tighter around him, and squeezed anew. He could feel some mild pressure—if he focused—but that was all.
Harald activated Abyssal Attunement and severed the tentacle with a sweep of the blade.
The stump flew back, releasing gobbets of hissing crimson that splattered over his armor and slid off harmlessly. The portion of tentacle that had been wrapped around him fell to the ground to writhe and spasm and then go still.
A Silver Starburst appeared in the air.
Harald palmed it, watched the stump retract into the lave, then shrugged. That could have been trouble once.
Now? Not very dangerous at all.
Not bothering to rush, Harald followed the gray walkways that wound between the large pools, slashing tentacles as they burst out of the lava to grasp at him.
The lack of challenge was obvious. The Fallen Angel rewarded him with nothing. Finally, he found an intersection large enough to boast a well, and with some relief he slid his legs over the rim, and dropped into the darkness.
12th Level.
He emerged into a light and airy tunnel, the ceiling a good thirty feet up, the width just as broad. The walls were of porous white chalk, the roof rough, stained and irregular.
Other huge tunnels intersected with it, large enough for carriages to be driven through, horses and all. White light radiated gently from these side tunnels and up ahead where the main tunnel curved out of sight.
The ground was gravelly and made of crushed white sand and pebbles. The air was dry and cool and tasted, predictably, of chalk.
Silence. An expectant hush.
This was the third time he’d visited this floor. Both other times he’d rushed through, trying to find a well, to descend to the 13th and its goblins. Each time there had been a sense of urgency, of concern, a fear of alerting the 12th’s denizens.
The golems who were said to be able to test even 16th Level Gold-rankers, in time.
For the tunnels went ever on, ever deeper, and the deeper a raider went, the more dangerous the golems became. It was said that in a sense, the 12th was its own self-contained dungeon, as dangerous at its far-flung edges as the 100th Level itself.
That if you fought far and deep and long enough, you could eventually reap a legendary Celestial Prismwing scale, worth a billion Coppers.
Harald shook out his shoulders. The chance of his fighting that deep were nil.
But he was very, very curious to see how far he could get this time.
“All right, little golems.” Harald awoke his Thrones, drank of their raw power, and activated his Aching Depths. “Let’s see how hard I can test you.”