Fate Alchemist - A Regression Academy LitRPG

The fiend with the crescent-sword was smarter than its friend. It circled the edge of the shaft and charged, without putting itself over the empty air.

Wulf ducked to the side, dodging a swipe, then jumped back to dodge another. The fiend's blade wasn't hot enough to melt stone, but it didn't matter with how strong each blow was when it fell. The ground cracked, and shockwaves travelled through the bricks. One hit from that, and they were gone.

The fiend swung underhand, and with the length of its blade, it tried to push Wulf into the wall. He reversed his grip on the short sword and blocked the crescent. Despite his wide stance and firm preparation, the blade sent him stumbling. His shoulder smashed into the dungeon wall.

He didn't have time. He'd have to commit to a strike. The other fiend would crawl its way back up, and their trick would only work once.

Irmond fired arrows at its eyes, but it turned its head down, and most bounced off its sharp horns and protective outer skull—no matter how powerful they seemed.

Wulf shuddered, took a deep breath, then dove, ducking under the crescent blade. He drove Wraith's shoulder into the demon's stomach, then stabbed it in the ribs, where two of its carapace plates met. If it bent back the other way, it'd trap the blade, so he pulled it out quickly and spun to the side.

Any second, now, the poison would work. The demon would fall still.

It kept prowling forward, unfazed. It whirled its blade up and swatted Wulf from the side. He raised his forearms just in time. The blade bit into the stone of one arm, threatening to cut through, but caught on the hardened carapace of the obsidian wrist.

It was strong enough to block that?

But Wulf himself wasn't strong enough to stay standing, and Wraith wasn't heavy enough. The blow flung him back across the room. He slid to the hole on his back. His shoulder bounced off the ground, and before he could dig his heels in, he plummeted down the shaft to the third level.

Kalee used a directional wedge of gravity to right them, and Wulf landed on his feet. Immediately, he sprang backward, dodging away from the shaft. He spun around, looking for the fat fiend, until he realized it had climbed halfway up the shaft, and he'd fallen past it.

"The poison didn't work!" Irmond shouted.

"I know!" Wulf replied. "It's not strong enough. We need a way out!"

"Collapse the roof again?" Kalee suggested.

Wulf tried to trigger the same pulse from the hardvellar armour, but it wasn't strong enough. It let out a mild shockwave, but they hadn't taken enough hits for it to be worthwhile.

"Not good enough either," he replied. "I have an idea. We need to hide and ambush them."

Over the past few weeks, he'd been gathering and refilling his scissors with chaos and order. It meant he'd been creating a lot of primal material, and better yet, xerion. He disconnected from Wraith, withdrew his jar from his storage pendant. It was filled with red-black pebbles of xerion, just like his scissors had been.

Then, climbing up on top of the cockpit, he yelled, "Kalee, Irmond! Slow them down and distract them as much as you can!"

Irmond and Speckles took off with a blast of wind, hurtling toward the approaching fiends. The fat one dropped down first, making the floor shudder with the impact. The sword fiend jumped down a moment later, slamming its blade into the ground.

Standing on the top of Wraith's head, Wulf jabbed his scissors into the jar and injected a pulse of both chaos and order. The xerion trembled and shook, threatening to burst. He consumed his strength and resistance potions in a single gulp, then triggered [Slither].

With all his strength, he tossed the jar. "Irmond, get back!"

He didn't watch to see how far it travelled. It would have to be enough. He swung back into the cockpit, still, using his golem, and sprinted over to the harness. "Hold on tight! I used nearly five hundred units of chaos and order each!"

"What does that mean?" Kalee shouted.

"Clench your teeth."

A moment later, an enormous explosion tore through the center of the room. It ripped up black bricks and filled the air with dust. A tornado of flame burned in the epicenter, and both demons were flung back, before a wave of dust and smoke clouded everything.

The explosion flung Wraith back as well, but Wulf was expecting it. He spun, fluttering his cloak up and protecting Irmond and Seith from the blast, before letting the shockwave carry him down the hall. He kept running, letting the blast push him from behind until the smoke faded.

Stolen story; please report.

He rounded corners and took stairways. There were no plants down here, but the waterfalls of magma pouring from the walls were enough to light the way. They ran in channels along the edges of the halls and the rooms.

The rooms themselves were empty, but Wulf didn't care about them. He aimed for the center of the dungeon.

Maybe it was a minute, and maybe it was a half hour. His progress was faster than it should've been, since there were no fiends to stand in his way, and he reached the central room of the dungeon much faster than he should've as a Bronze.

As a Bronze, he shouldn't have made it this deep at all, but the demons cleared the way, and Wraith was stronger and better-equipped than most.

The central room was a tall, cylindrical hall with black brick walls and a lava lake around the outer edge. In the very center, an enormous sphere of white marble floated above the ground, nearly twice the height of Wraith. Runes wrapped around it, weak but still glowing.

That had to be the dungeon's core.

The demons hadn't destroyed the dungeon completely yet. There was still a chance it regenerated.

At first, Wulf feared there was nowhere to hide. Footsteps thundered in the hallways outside, and the demons were closing in.

He ran to the edge of the room. Beneath the lava lake, there were small cocoons of metal, much like the demons spheres that descended from the atmosphere, only much, much smaller—only large enough to hold a single fiend.

"That's how they hid the demons all this time…" Wulf muttered. "In the only room that doesn't change and get regenerated."

There were about twenty cocoons scattered around the outer ring, and they hadn't decayed in the heat of the lava.

If they were good enough for the fiends, they were good enough for him. He jumped inside one, bounding over the lava lake and ducking into the pod. It bobbed up and down, threatening to sink. A heavier Oronith might very well have drowned itself in lava, but not Wraith.

Then Wulf waited. He didn't have to wait long. Both of the fiends that had been chasing him ran into the hall. Their chest shells were cracked and damaged from the explosion, and the fat fiend limped.

The fiends ran to the center of the room and glanced around. One bellowed, and the other shrieked.

Then, their heads twisted, as if someone had pulled a string, diverting their attention. They glanced up at the dungeon's core, eyes fixed on it. They both screeched.

"No…" Wulf breathed.

"What are they doing?" Seith asked. "I can't see. Elf, what are they doing?"

"They're like…really mad at the dungeon's core," Irmond said.

"Real scientific…"

"Something—someone—just refocused their attention," Wulf said.

"Pyek…" Kalee growled. "He's here. He's trying to destroy the dungeon, too."

"He wants to draw us out," Wulf warned.

"He'll find us eventually," she countered. "We go now and face them on our terms, or we wait and face them on their terms."

"Pyek won't expect us to play right into the trap," Wulf agreed. "He thinks everyone's like him. But some problems can be solved charging at them headlong."

The fiend with the crescent sword reached up and smashed the core with its blade. It didn't cut all the way through, but it did crack the sphere. The runes dimmed more. If that core faded, the rest of the dungeon wouldn't be long. The deepest levels, maintained only by magic, would begin collapsing.

His crew would be trapped. They would die, along with some of humanity's best hopes for the future and most important resources.

Shouting, he sprang out of the cocoon and landed on the edge of the lava lake. He sprinted forward, racing across the central plane of the dungeon, then jumped onto the fat fiend's back. They might be able to resist some of the poison, but it'd have to start adding up. He needed enough blows.

He jumped onto the fat fiend's shoulders and jabbed the blade in again and again, plunging it into the side of the beast's neck. It roared, then ran backward, slamming his back into a pillar. The stones constricted around his chest, knocking the wind out of his lungs. He slumped forward, and the fiend caught him by the shoulders, then threw him into the center of the room—right at the feet of the second fiend.

It raised its sword, ready to slice Wraith in half.

He couldn't let this be it. There was so much to do. He had promised the Field he'd do his best, that he'd try, that he'd fight for humanity.

He couldn't let Irmond or Seith or…Field forbid, Kalee die. His gut clenched, and he shouted with a determined, angry, but striving rage.

Something at the back of his neck twanged. It was like someone struck a harpstring in his dream socket. The resonance travelled through his body, but also out through the dream-link.

In his last life, he didn't have anything worth fighting for. Not really. His team was dead, but they weren't…they weren't the same. He didn't want any of his friends to die here. He wanted young Athllas to go on, or Captain Basil and the Academy guards. He wanted the city to survive too.

This world had people in it worth saving and living for. No way was he letting that go.

[Who…] came a voice.

It wasn't exactly in his head, but the others couldn't hear it. He just knew. It was like the Field was resonating in his bones. Something deeper was speaking to him.

[It has been many years, but…never have I felt this alive. Awake! I am awake!]

The voice was soft, barely audible. It was a man's voice, deep with age, but not weak and elderly. There was an accent that he couldn't name.

[Who wakes me?] the voice continued.

Are you…are you Silent Wraith? Wulf thought. It was all happening in a split second. His mind felt like it was going to explode.

[That is…my name.]

Suddenly, feeling erupted in his obsidian hand. The golem's control snapped outward, and the hand moved. Wulf flexed his fingers, then reached for his second blade. The Field let out a spiritual chime, and the hand was finished. Wulf reached for his second sword and snatched it from its sheath, then drew it in an arc.

He held both up as the Fiend's blade fell, and he blocked it.