NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 79: One Down, One To Go
Staring at the clean hole in the Hulking Behemoth, Hiral felt more than saw the massive arm on his right droop limply before the entire monstrosity toppled backwards. With his sword still out in front of him where he’d stabbed through the strange undead-baby creature, he took a step back, and a huge surge of solar energy flowed into him.
Thud. The Mid-Boss hit the ground while his solar energy capacity climbed back to a third, and the last of his injuries easily mended. No surprise on that last part, considering how much health that thing seemed to have.
“Is it dead?” Yanily asked as the others rushed over to join Hiral, their weapons all at the ready. “Dead again?”
The health bar was completely empty, but Nivian put this fist through what was left of the outside-body’s head for good measure.
“We’ve got an experience notification,” Seeyela said. “All we’re missing is…”
Dynamic Quest: Update
Seal Guardian defeated: 1/1
Seal Located: 0/1
“Looks like we need to find the seal to complete the quest,” Seena said.
“You did it!” Odi said, climbing through the hole in the building. He stopped and gaped at the utter devastation. “Quite the renovations…”
“Odi, how far from here to where the seal is?” Seena asked when she spotted the Lizardman.
“Hrm?” he said, his eyes running up the side of the completely split far wall, then across the open roof. “Oh, a few more blocks. There shouldn’t be any more undead in this area, though I’m sure some will come exploring within a few hours.”
“Then we have a few minutes,” Seeyela said. “Come on, everybody. Get out of the rain and get comfy. We’re about to feel terrible.”
“What’s wrong?” Odi asked. “Was somebody injured?”
“More like who wasn’t injured?” Wule said. “My solar energy is almost gone. I even had to use one of my lanterns.” He gestured to the single lantern over his shoulder, which now flickered like it was about to go out.
“Speaking of which,” Seena said, turning to Hiral as everybody moved closer together, while Left and Right went to opposite ends of the building to keep an eye out, “how are you feeling? We saw what that thing did to you. I’m surprised you’re walking.”
“Ask Wule,” Hiral said. “He fixed me right up.”
“Got an ability evolution,” Wule said. “I can do broken bones now.”
“How bad was it?” she asked the healer, though she thumbed at Hiral.
“Uh, you ever drop a melon from one island to the next below?” Wule asked, and Seena nodded. “His chest was like that inside.”
The whole Grower party winced.
“I got better,” Hiral said. “And getting the killing blow on the Mid-Boss triggered the healing effect of One-Many Army+. Practically like new now.”
Then Eloquent and Enraged faded, and the whole world dimmed around him. His brain slowed like somebody had poured syrup in his ears and… and… Could somebody do that? Would it really slow down his thinking? Maybe… a test? He could run a… run a…
Hiral shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, everybody had a kind of blank look on their faces, like they’d been slapped hard across the cheek.
“My spear is pretty,” Yanily said, showing it off to Nivian. “Not like your shield. It’s like… like a big face. A big, dead face.”
“What… what is going on?” Odi said.
“Debuff,” Left said, coming closer to watch over the group. “It’ll fade in a minute. Just don’t ask them any difficult questions.”
“I… Sure…” Odi said.
Hiral carefully put the Emperor’s Greatsword over his back, then tried not to move or think until the backlash of using the powerful buffs faded. After three minutes that felt more like thirty had finally passed, the world popped back into its usual sharpness.
“Finally.” Hiral breathed out in relief.
The others did the same, though Seeyela’s penalties had faded a few seconds earlier.
“Glad that’s over with,” Nivian said.
“Seriously,” Seena said. “Worth it, though. Let’s take a few minutes to Cycle, just to get some solar energy. I know, Odi, you said we shouldn’t run into any more undead until after we get the seal, but I don’t want to risk it.”
“Understood,” Odi said. “We can’t rule out Ur’Thul sending troops to check on what happened. I’m sure half the city heard that battle.”
“Yeah,” Seena said, but everybody sat down and began Cycling.
Hiral quickly hit his cap, so he absorbed Left and Right back into himself and kept going. When Seena called for them to move again just ten minutes later, a quick activation of Foundational Split released them each with twenty percent solar energy, and he still had almost fifty himself. The efficiency effects were really showing their value.
“We’ll take a longer rest when we have the seal,” Seena said. “Get back to full before moving on the second Mid-Boss.”
With that, the party exited the building to the street, and Odi pointed to the right. A shoulder tap from Seena, and Nivian jogged in that direction, the others close behind. True to Odi’s word, the streets were eerily quiet after the raging battle, and no undead bothered the group. It didn’t even take them another ten minutes before Odi pointed to what looked like a three-story home near the end of the current block.
“The seal’s in there,” Odi said.
“Doesn’t look like what I expected,” Wule said.
“I did the work on this seal myself, using clues left by the Ancestor, until that behemoth showed up,” Odi said.
As Hiral looked at the building, he both felt and saw the solar energy swirling around the structure. So much of it, in fact, the stuff was almost tangible. No wonder the Mid-Boss had been attracted.
“Why does it look like the building is Cycling?” Hiral asked Odi as they continued down the street.
“Part of the seal’s purpose is keeping power from getting into the Urn, so it uses something similar to the Cycling technique to instead draw the power into itself. Like I said before, it’s self-directing, and the constant pull of energy actually also powers the seal. Once we start it up, it’ll keep going unless somebody with the proper know-how stops it.”
“How many people have that particular know-how?” Seena asked.
“Just me,” Odi said. “And I don’t plan on stopping it.”
“Is it going now?” Yanily asked.
“Unfortunately,” Odi said. “I turned it on to test it, and it went beyond my expectations. Normally there is a focus in place to direct the cycle, so it isn’t attracting energy from everywhere. Without that focus, it’s creating this energy-rich environment, which was why that behemoth was here. Once we put the focus on, all the energy will only be pulled from one place—the Urn—and absorbed directly by the seal.
“There won’t be any spillover like we’re seeing here.”
“Can you turn it off before we move it?” Seena asked. “I don’t want to attract trouble, and this looks like a buffet.”
“Yes, I can do that,” Odi said.
“Thought you said you weren’t going to turn it off?” Yanily asked.
“Uh… after we attach it to the Urn,” Odi said.
“Well, you should’ve made that clear the first time,” Yanily said, and most of the others just shook their heads.
“Where inside is the seal?” Seeyela asked.
“First floor,” Odi said. “Once we round the corner, it’ll be hard to miss. That monster walked straight through a wall into the workshop I’d set up. Very rude, even for an undead, if you ask me.”
“No traps or trials or anything?” Seena asked.
“None,” Odi said.
“Is the seal going to try to suck the energy out of us?” Hiral asked.
Odi shook his head. “No, without the focus, the seal only Cycles ambient energy.”
“Okay, let’s get this locked up, then get ourselves back to full strength and move on to the other one,” Seena said.
Another block, around a corner, and then the party was staring at a large hole in the first-floor wall of the building. Just inside, on a thick table, spiraled what looked like a tornado of energy. Given that it didn’t emit any wind or sound, Hiral actually blinked a few times to make sure he wasn’t just seeing things, but the scene didn’t change.
The energy swirled all around the room, not even disturbing papers stuck to the walls or on the floor, and passed through the walls like they weren’t there. At the narrow bottom of the tornado, there was what looked to be some kind of… plate? A few inches above the surface of it, glowing symbols like runes floated in a tight circle, almost like a ribbon of light. It wasn’t just one, either—three rings of runes gently spun in the opposite direction of the whirling tornado, themselves shaped like a cone with the plate at the bottom.
“That’s the seal?” Seena asked.
“Yes,” Odi said. “It’ll only take me a minute to turn it off and then get the focus in place. After that, we can safely carry it with us.”
“What are you waiting for?” Seeyela asked. “Do your thing.”
“Right, of course,” Odi said, starting ahead with Nivian at his side.
When he arrived at the table, the Lizardman reached out and touched one circling rune after another in what seemed like a random order. Except, it probably wasn’t random. A code sequence? Or maybe something to do with it being a language, like he’d said.
Either way, true to his word, the Lizardman shut down the raging tornado of energy without a sound. One second, energy swirled all around, and the next it was simply gone. After a few more seconds of fiddling with the crystal plate, Odi turned and nodded at the group.
“It’s done,” the Lizardman said. “Who will carry it?”
Dynamic Quest Complete
Seal Guardian defeated: 1/1
Seal Located: 1/1
Congratulations! Achievement unlocked – Undead SMASH!
You defeated the guardian and retrieved the first seal.
Please access a Dungeon Interface to unlock class-specific reward.
Well, that’s one…
Dynamic Quest: Update
Secure the two seals.
Seals acquired (1/2)
Seal the Urn of Ur’Thul.
Urns sealed (0/1)
Bonus Objective: Defeat Ur’Thul the Undying
And there’s the other. Straightforward so far.
“Would it be safe to put in one of our Interspatial Rings?” Seena asked. “Probably the safest place we can put it, considering we’re still going to have to fight our way to the Urn.”
“You have one of those?” Odi asked, and then his blue-flame eyes narrowed. “Hold on, you said one of our. You have more than one?”
“They’re rare?” Yanily asked.
“Very,” Odi said. “But, how you got them doesn’t matter. Yes, it should be safe to put the seal inside.”
“Great, who wants to…?” Seena started, but Hiral raised his hand.
“I’d like to take a look at it while we’re resting anyway,” he said. “I can carry it after that.”
“Good enough,” Seena said, looking around the street one last time. With it clear as far as anybody could see, she ushered the group inside.
“Odi, which way is the next seal?” Hiral asked the Lizardman as he entered the building. “I’d like Left to do some scouting.”
“Due west from here,” Odi said. “The museum has a domed roof, the only one within the walls. Difficult to miss. Maybe fifteen minutes at the pace we we’re moving.”
“Museum?” Nivian asked. “The other seal is in a museum?”
“Part of the building is dedicated to researching unusual specimens, which the seal the humans provided us with qualifies as,” Odi said.
“And you said this seal would be used to trap the Fallen?” Hiral asked.
“That’s what we were led to believe, though I don’t know if they succeeded,” Odi said. “Things here went… poorly… and we lost contact with the outside world. Or maybe, they lost contact with us, would be more appropriate.”
“What do you know of the Fallen?” Hiral asked, pushing to see what the dungeon and PIMP would let Odi reveal.
“Not much, I’m afraid,” Odi said. “Only that they were the ones who opened the door to our world for the squids.”
The party moved deeper into the building—though Left headed off to scout—and gathered around the Lizardman, all of them obviously interested in what he was saying. Nivian stayed closer to the hole in the wall to keep an eye out, but he was well within earshot.
“What do you mean by to our world?” Wule asked. “They aren’t from here?”
“Definitely not,” Odi said. “Or, well, probably not. If they were, where were they the whole time? I don’t know. The humans wouldn’t share much about what exactly happened, or if they did, I was never told the finer details. What little I did learn was that the ones they called the Fallen dug too deep into something in the search of power.
“What they found were the squids.”
“Dug? Were the squids underground?” Seeyela asked.
Odi shook his head. “I doubt that, since the humans’ first plan was to build cities underground to hide from the squids, for what little good it did them. That worked for a while… but the squids found them eventually. It didn’t end well for the humans.”
“How long have the squids been around?” Hiral asked.
“At this point, I have no idea,” Odi said. “It’s been centuries, tens of centuries… or more… since the Urn turned my home into this. I’ve lost track of time over the endless years.”
“Then, how long were they around before this all happened?”
“Around two hundred years,” Odi said.
“Two… hundred? If the squids are so powerful, how did things go on for so long?”
“Again, I don’t know all the details, but the simplest answer is there weren’t many of them at the beginning,” Odi said. “The… the doorway to where they came from was just a crack. Only a few of the smallest ones could slip through. Over the years, the doorway got bigger and bigger until the real monsters made it through. Once that happened, it was pretty much over for everybody. At that point, we gambled with the Urn… and lost.”
“How big do they get?” Nivian asked. “Like that behemoth?”
Odi shook his head very slowly. “I read a report of one that was over a mile long.”
“A mile?” Wule asked.
“And the writer theorized they could still get bigger.”