Godsforsaken

Chapter 16: Dagon

After several more hours of travel we finally reached the final bridge. When Annabella had said there would be a fortified structure in front I had expected two big guard towers and some barricades, but instead it had a huge portcullis and the walls of it had high barricades to repel spells and arrows. On the walls stood five wizards, one of them an elite variant. In front of the gate stood a large group of mermen, maybe twelve or thirteen, with three of them elite variants. The gods only knew what would be waiting for us on the other side of the gate but thankfully they couldn't come and help without opening the gate for us.

I spent a while to come up with a viable strategy and then I had it.

The first our enemies knew of our attack was when Annabella's arrow struck the elite wizard in the eye. Before he could summon a water wall she followed it up with a second, which was enough to drop him. By that point Selene had stepped forward and began casting her ice storm miracle on the melee horde while Alisha kept her safe with her Protective Warmth miracle, which surrounded the target in a warm barrier that drove off the chill and held off attacks. I didn't know just how strong it was, but given that this miracle had managed to fend off the vile flames laced with Darklight that Jabberwocks could breathe I knew that if it wasn't impenetrable then it was definitely the next best thing to it. Nothing in this world was as destructive as Darklight because Darklight was literally out of this world. Even worse, while Darklight could usually be defended against by armor or cloth blessed by a cleric, the actual fire aspect of a Jabberwock's breath was enough to penetrate most defenses that Darklight struggled against, so the fact that the miracle protected even from that vile substance was a testament to its effectiveness.

True enough, though all four of the wizards and a few of the closest mermen struck at the circle surrounding Selene, none of them could penetrate it. And a moment later it didn't matter anymore.

Yume and I had used the distraction to climb on top of the walls. Both of us had, under cover of her inconspicuousness spell, thrown grappling hooks up on top of the walls and then used Qi Bursts to simultaneously push off the ground and pull up the ropes to land on the walls in a single bound and began cutting down the wizards. By the time we were done Selene's miracle had run its course, leaving the normal mermen either dead or so frostbitten that they would be dead in short order and even the elite variants looked worse for wear. The wizards might have healed them, but we'd taken care of those. Selene, Annabella and Alisha advanced on the elite mermen from the front and I decided to grab a loose rock off the walls and used a Qi Burst to hit one of the three right in the head.

His skull exploded the way a tomato does if you stomp on it and Yume jumped off the wall, held her sword downward and pierced through the back of a second merman, stabbing him right through the heart. And by the time I'd made it down the third merman was dead of a barrage of air lances and sapphire shards as well as a sword wound to his chest.

After learning from Yume for a few days Annabella could now summon both her sword and her wing faster and had picked up a few other skills, like summoning a second blade, more a parrying dagger than another sword, but it was a start, or unleashing a volley of crystal shards without first needing to summon her wing, which was what she had done just then. The crystal shards weren't as precise or as powerful as the arrows fired from her longbow but they did spread over a much larger area, which would be very useful if we ever had to fight many weak creatures like goblins with her in tow.

As that thought passed through my head I suddenly realized I wouldn't mind having Annabella around after this was over. She was smart, competent, not stuck up in the least, fun to be around and a sight for sore eyes.

“Any more on the other side?" Selene asked.

“A bunch," I replied. “We didn't want to open the gate before the ones here were done, though.”

“What do you want to do about them?" she asked.

“Yume will open the portcullis and then jump behind them and herd them toward us," I said.

“Sounds good.”

**

So that's what we did. Annabella had summoned her sword and stood with Selene and me, two feet between each of us so that we had room to maneuver, while Alisha stood behind us, ready to attack, defend or heal as the situation required.

Next I saw the portcullis open and then my little fox landed behind the rest of the group of mermen and began cutting them down. They thought they could stand against the tiny woman but after the third one died without being able to do a damn thing about it they ran toward us and we charged at them.

I dragged Helios Edge through a diagonal slash from my lower right that slashed one merman across the chest and then let the motion carry me through a spin that ended with a downward slash at a second merman. There was the clang of metal on metal and I knew Selene had taken one of the harpoons on her shield, but I didn't have time to watch. Selene knew how to look out for herself, after all.

Instead I began a thrusting attack that would have fallen short of the target by about three feet, except the four foot lance of fire that came out of my sword more than made up for that. After that I charged up a Qi Projection with a horizontal slash that cut through another two mermen and filled up Helios Edge's reserves of power at the same time and with that I was past the horde, face to face with Yume. Which was why I managed to save her life at all.

Yume stood on the bridge, close to one of the eroded side walls Annabella had mentioned, and a giant pair of jaws suddenly appeared behind her. I used a Qi Dash to slam into her and carry us past the monster fish that had just tried to eat her. The thing did indeed have a long triangular jaw while the rest of the body reminded me of a whale, bulky and oval in shape. It had four huge flippers that serves as its limbs and that were all but useless out of the water as well as a horizontal tail fin that would be a formidable bludgeoning weapon if it didn't need to constantly flap the thing to stay up on the bridge without sliding back into the water.

“Thank you," Yume breathed as she saw what I had just protected her from and then she narrowed her eyes. “Allow me," she said and placed a hand on my weapon's hilt.

It took me a moment to realize what she wanted but then I got it. I wound up a mighty thrust and Yume kept her hand on the pommel, following the motion and, more importantly, channeling rivers of Qi into the blade that I couldn't match. When we thrust forward, the fire enchantment created something that hardly even looked like a lance of fire anymore. It looked more like the searing beams of sunlight that master light wizards could conjure up, a beam of almost golden heat that hurt to look at and that burned a hole a foot across through the fish's upper jaw and skull.

And then we had to scramble to use Qi Bursts to yank the dead fish onto the bridge before its lifeless body could slide back into the water below. As a side note, while yanking heavy things with Qi was totally possible, it was also easily the most unpleasant use for it I had yet discovered. It gave you the burst of strength necessary to accomplish it but that just meant it forced your body to pull an impossible weight despite its limitations. Meaning that, after we turned around and saw that the others had taken care of the rest of the mermen, we needed Alisha to use her Heal miracle to fix our torn muscles. On the plus side, tearing muscles through heavy exertion and then having them healed by a cleric was about as effective as hours of brutal strength training but without the pain to go along with it. Which, as another aside, was the main reason the warriors of Sparta kept clerics within their ranks: To help them with strength training.

**

We ended up dragging the monster fish onto dry land before carving it. We'd tried to just go for it but another one had noticed the bounty of fresh flesh and had tried tearing into it so we needed to bring it to safety first.

As always, most of the carving fell to Selene and me, though Annabella helped us out quite a bit. Yume sheepishly admitted that while her culture ate a lot of raw fish that didn't mean she knew much about how to actually carve it. She did always help with land-based animals, though, because she absolutely loved any type of meat, though she was a bit more lukewarm about fish and I wondered whether that had something to do with her being part fox. I had heard about were-bears and their slight obsession with honey and salmon, for example. Though it did make me wonder where Alisha got her obsessions. Was that an elf thing or just an Alisha thing?

Either way, after gathering several hundred pounds of viable meat, I also took some other materials off of the body. The teeth were nice and sharp, but the real prize was the skin.

To say its skin was rough would have been an understatement. It was abrasive, as if it consisted of thousands of tiny little overlapping razor blades, and it was really tough as well. I was sure that, if turned into leather armor, it would offer excellent protection. Annabella told me that the royal guard had no use for leather armor so they always sold the skins if they kept them at all and that there were a few tanners in the capital who would pay top coin for it.

We weren't even through the first floor and I was already glad I'd bought a couple of bags of holding because that huge fish sure had a lot of skin. But then again, we were apparently able to leave the dungeon after each floor, so storage space wouldn't be an issue so long as the merchants of the capital still had coin to offer us for our wares. And given the sheer size of the capital, that was almost guaranteed.

So, once we were done with the monster fish we crossed the bridge. After the third monster fish attack we decided to use Yume's inconspicuousness spell after all. We had more than enough meat already and would only put ourselves in danger if we didn't.

After passing the bridge it only took us an hour's walk and some minor encounters to reach the rest spot. The final rest spot of this dungeon's mandatory route, in fact. After that there was about an hour's trudge through the shrubs and then we'd be at the huge temple structure.

Dinner that night was just a basic turtle stew. We'd all been curious about the fish, but we knew we had to bring back as much of it as possible so we didn't try it. Well, Yume snuck a piece of it with some of her dark brown sauce, but it was only a tiny sliver.

**

The next morning found us advancing towards the temple.

“It's hard to believe that this is just sitting here," Alisha said. “Makes you wonder if this is part of some ancient civilization.”

“You stop wondering after a while," I said. “There's bits of architecture in almost every dungeon but they're all different. So either there's hundreds of civilizations we don't know about stuck inside the dungeons or, more likely, the dungeons are just playing pretend with us.”

“Is it really so unlikely that bits and pieces of other worlds randomly end up here?" Selene asked.

I considered. “I guess I just don't want to think about that," I finally said. “Because if all of these ruins inside dungeons were part of other worlds then what happened to those worlds and to their peoples? All of these ruins are lifeless. The only things that live in them are monsters.”

“Maybe they're worlds that ended," Selene suggested.

I considered for a while and then said: “Maybe bits and pieces of all the worlds destroyed by the Outsiders end up here as dungeons.”

I kept walking for a few steps until I noticed that everyone else had stopped.

“You mean that every time a new dungeon appears somewhere that means the Outsiders destroyed another world?" Selene asked.

“That's a very bleak thought," Alisha said.

“I told you Outsiders are the worst, didn't I?" I asked. “Besides, it's just a theory and not a very developed one. For example, what about dungeons with multiple floors?” I turned to Annabella. “Is the architecture of the ruins consistent within this dungeon?”

She shook her head. “No. The architecture of the different floors is very distinctive and definitely not the same between floors. Well, except floors two and three.”

“There," I said.

“It could still be the same world," Selene insisted. “Our realm has different architectural styles and those are all different from that of the other realms, right?”

Yume nodded.

“Alright, fair," I said. “But still, this is way too bleak to even think about.”

We kept going for a while and I asked in my head:

Syr, did the Holy Maiden ever mention anything like this?

Sort of, Syr replied. She made some comments that... well, let's just say that they don't contradict your theory. But all of that assumes that she can be trusted.

Yeah, I'm not making that mistake.

**

Finally we reached the temple itself. I had been worried about it being difficult to find a path, but thanks to Annabella that wasn't an issue. She knew the way but even if she hadn't, some helpful souls had placed markings on the wall to show which ways led to dead ends and which ones led to ridiculously hard encounters in trapped hallways. And so, between the signs and our guide, we were able to avoid everything. Finally we found what we'd been looking for, the door to the boss room.

It was a huge black iron door, tall enough that a cyclops could have walked through it without needing to duck, and carved into it were more of the strange runes. But there was something different about these. Namely, someone had scrawled what I assumed to be a translation underneath them.

Dagon, the Abyssal Scourge, it read.

“Quite the name for a first floor boss," I said out loud and then I pushed the door open.

It looked as though it should have been stuck but it glided open supernaturally smoothly and as we stepped through we found ourselves in a circular arena. The space was open, with a clear view of the crystal ceiling, and the ground underneath us was sand.

“In case you were wondering, yes, this is the very center of the temple ruin," Annabella said as she stepped through.

It was interesting but it wasn't what I was focused on. Instead, my gaze could barely leave the positively gargantuan crustacean in front of us. It had been resting but the moment we had all stepped into the arena it peeled itself up off the floor. As Annabella had said, it wasn't a lobster. It had the general build of a shrimp but with two pincers. The left pincer looked to be perfectly sized for its body while the right one was enormous even considering how big the thing was.

Dagon, the Abyssal Scourge, stood at easily fifteen feet height and with its long body I guessed that it was roughly thirty or forty feet long.

“The first boss isn't that bad," Annabella had told us the night before. “Its shell is tough but most of its attacks are swipes, slashes and a high-pressure water breath. The one thing to truly watch out for is its strongest attack.”

And that strong attack was exactly why I was so wary. I knew what that oversize pincer could do and I wanted to be absolutely certain I was ready to defend against it.

Thankfully, though the thing was huge, it was still just a shrimp. If you've ever peeled your own seafood you should know full well how much thinner their shell is than that of a lobster or a crab and thus how much easier it is to hurt them.

Of course, real shrimp weren't the size of an elephant so even their thinner shell would be tough to get through at this scale, but tough was still better than impossible.

At the start of the fight I had Yume cast Phantom Step on us to shift our silhouettes around. I wasn't taking any chances with the bosses. After that Selene advanced on the boss, assisted by Alisha's enhancement miracle. The enhancement miracle improved the target greatly, which we usually used to be faster and stronger, though along the way we'd found out that it also gave the target nearly bottomless stamina to use Qi abilities with, but this time we were using it so Selene had the fortitude to block the boss' attacks. Her dinky little buckler wouldn't do much against such a huge monster, even if it was enchanted to be tougher than it should be, so instead she was holding one of my kite shields. After she got done with Phantom Step Yume then focused on twisting the boss' mind so that it would actually attack Selene instead of one of the squishy targets behind her. A boss' mind was too tough to just immobilize it with her Stupor spell, but focusing its natural aggression on a specific target wasn't hard. She wasn't changing its nature, she was just nudging it a little to shift its focus.

Her spell clearly went off without a hitch because the huge beast charged straight at Selene and tried to smash her with its claw. She blocked with her shield and held and while the impact clearly hurt her it wasn't something Alisha's minor healing miracle couldn't fix.

On the rebound Yume sent a fire snake, I sent a fire lance and Annabella tried to shoot one of its beady black eyes. She missed the eye but it was gratifying to see her arrow sink into its shell instead of glancing off it. Meanwhile our fire attacks made the beast reel but didn't cause it any real harm.

It reacted by going for a spinning sweep with its tail but again Yume nudged it to focus on Selene, who blocked the strike, though it did send her sprawling. Yume and I harassed the boss while Annabella righted Selene and Alisha healed her and soon we were back in formation.

The only thing I was truly worried about was that special attack but it was also what I was hoping would happen. Right now we couldn't do proper damage to it because it kept attacking too fast to get many hits in but its special attack apparently left it vulnerable for quite a bit afterward, so all we had to do was bait its most dangerous attack, survive it and then deal a finishing blow. And the best way to bait that special attack was to show it that its normal attacks wouldn't faze us.

So we kept going, blocking, healing and retaliating. I'd been worried about the water attack but it turned out that Selene, with the enhancement miracle on her, was able to deflect that one without even rocking back. When the boss saw that it got really angry.

It jumped back with more force than it had exhibited during the entire fight and thrust its huge pincer forward and stared as if aiming for us. This was it.

“The issue isn't so much how strong the attack is," Annabella had explained. “The issue is how fast it happens. Normally special attacks like this have a long wind-up but this one happens very fast. In exchange it leaves the boss exhausted afterwards.”

Selene, Yume and I all knew how to use the Qi Dash, so we had a way to escape it but Alisha and Annabella didn't so I picked up Alisha and Selene picked up Annabella.

Dagon's pincer snapped shut and a massive torrent of super-heated air rushed towards us as Yume, Selene and I all Qi Dashed out of the way. The attack turned the sand it hit to glass and even yards away from it the heat reached me. I actually felt as if those three seconds the attack had lasted might have given me something akin to a sunburn. But then, when the attack ended, the boss collapsed onto the sand, just as Annabella had promised.

Selene began casting her ice storm miracle while Alisha and Yume both summoned forth their magic and pumped it full of Qi. I, meanwhile, finally had an opportunity to use the technique I'd been fiddling with.

It was a complex working of Qi, combining a Qi Burst layered atop another Qi Burst followed by four simultaneous uses of Qi Projection, but it was devastating if I had time to pull it off.

“Prominence Nova!" I called out, then wrapped a double Qi Burst around a thrusting attack, which created a white-hot lance of fire while four Qi Projections summoned copies of that flame lance to sear into the boss from above, spinning around to carve heated furrows through its shell and flesh.

Somewhere between the tornado lance, the fire snake, the ice storm and my Qi technique the boss died, its body giving up the fight. It didn't strike me as a particularly impressive death, having us gang up on it after it exhausted itself, but I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. If the dungeon wanted to hand us an easy victory I wouldn't question it.

“What was that?!" Alisha demanded as she stared at me.

“Just a Qi technique I've been tinkering with," I said, a little smugly.

“That was way more than 'just a Qi technique'," she countered.

“I'm glad you finally got to use it," Yume said.

“You knew about that?" Alisha asked.

“Before he let me help him he nearly collapsed when he tried to use it," Yume replied. “But it would appear he has it under control now.”

“I do," I said. “I still need to work to make it faster, though.”

“But why are you using something so brutal at all?" Alisha asked.

“If I can't use magic I just need to make do with what I have," I replied. “And what I have is a sword with a powerful fire enchantment.”

**

“We'll be here all day carving this thing up," Selene whined a while later.

“No, we won't," I said and pulled out one of the dismantling gems I'd bought.

Even someone like me, with no talent for magic, could use these canned spells. I hefted the gem and lobbed it at the boss' body and immediately the spell began taking it apart into pieces that were convenient to transport.

Everyone who watched that spell immediately got worried about having one of these gems thrown at them and Alisha, Selene and Yume were no exception, but as I explained to them, this spell was specifically designed to carve into dead bodies and wouldn't even touch a living creature.

Now, if a reanimated creature was hit by it, though...

When the spell had run its course there were neat piles of shrimp meat, shell, legs and other components lying on the ground. Even better, though we'd scorched quite a bit of meat while killing the shrimp, all of what was laying there was raw. If used quickly enough the gem would revert a monster's meat back to its raw form. I stored the meat alongside the monster fish meat in one bag of holding and the other materials in another.

When nothing of the giant shrimp was left the sand began sinking into the ground, revealing a spiral staircase in the center of the arena, which we descended. That was another bit of dungeon magic, because the room beneath was clean, with not a grain of sand to be found.

That room, impossibly, held a small grove of trees, with crystals in the ceiling providing them with light. It also held some other interesting things. First of all were a barrel of rings and several weapons racks. Not quite a barrel full of swords, but close enough. The next was a pile of gemstones. And finally there was a lectern that held an open book.

“I'm guessing the rings and weapons are one of your mother's projects, right?" I asked.

“Exactly," Annabella said. “You can take everything here except those. Well, everything within reason. Please don't unearth the trees, but feel free to take the fruit off them.”

“What are we looking at here?" Selene asked as she looked around.

“Right," Annabella said. “The fruits of these trees are special. They give mages a dual affinity.”

I felt my eyebrows rise. Most mages had affinity for a single element, like Alisha's air magic. Some rare mages had a dual affinity instead, usually with one element being dominant over the other, like Yume, who was an illusionist who also had a minor fire affinity. And these trees were a very good explanation for why most mages who served in the royal guard had one of these otherwise rare dual affinities.

“How does that work, exactly?" Alisha asked. “I eat one of these and suddenly I unlock another element?”

“Not quite," Annabella said. “If you have even the slightest shred of potential for another element, yes, you unlock that. If you have no other potential at all, you can eat one of these and then meditate in an area rich with one type of mana and take it into yourself. There was a member of the royal guard who picked one of these fruits and then scoured the kingdom trying to find a place rich enough with time-elemental mana to gain a time affinity off it.”

“Are you considering eating one?" I asked and Alisha shook her head.

“If the gods had wanted me to have another element I would have another element. Besides, I inherited my wind affinity from my mother and my father has a water affinity, so I'd likely gain his affinity if I ate these and I really don't like water magic. It would also probably dilute my wind affinity, so no. It's just a shame I won't be able to taste them.”

“If it's any consolation they allegedly taste horrible," Annabella said. “Bitter and fibrous and with a horrid aftertaste.”

“Yeah, I'll stick with the bananas then," Alisha said.

“So what if someone else eats these?" I asked.

“Right," Annabella said. “If someone who already holds a dual affinity eats them their elements even out.”

Yume had been looking at the fruits with interest but when she heard that she took a very deliberate step back. “No way I'll weaken my illusion magic," she said.

“And if someone with no magic potential eats them," Annabella continued, “well, sometimes it unlocks magic for them, sometimes it doesn't. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it.”

I bit my lip and then shrugged and plucked three of the fruits. Maybe I'd find a place rich in some interesting mana and try them, maybe I'd just sell them.

“And what about that lectern?" Selene asked.

“Right," Annabella said. “It contains an incredibly advanced technique for channeling mana. Any mage who comes here is free to read it.”

Alisha and Yume rushed over to the lectern and began scanning the open pages while I began examining the pile of gemstones.

“These respawn, right?" I asked.

“Yes," Annabella said. “Every time the boss dies, that pile respawns.”

I nodded and scooped them all up. At a very conservative estimate I put that pile of gemstones at about a hundred thousand mun. Even split five ways this would be a huge windfall.

When the last gemstone had vanished into my bag of holding I looked up to see Alisha and Yume excitedly poring over the contents of the book. They were muttering to each other.

“It's so simple," Alisha said. “And yet there's so much to it.”

“I feel stupid for not realizing this myself," Yume said. “I'll be up all night thinking about this.”

“Me too," Alisha said.

**

When the two of them had finally finished reading the book and jotting down notes we found the final item in the room, the teleporter. Just one touch of my hand and a message flashed before my eyes.

Instead of saying it out loud I thought 'Yes' the same way I did when talking to Syr and immediately a flash of light blinded me. When it was gone I was on the first island, right next to the teleporter and only a few steps away from the entrance. Moments later the women appeared next to me.

Just to make sure I placed my hand on the teleporter again and the menu showed up again.

I thought 'No' and stepped back from the device, relieved that everything worked as promised.