NOVEL NEXT Chapter 105 - Denied
[ Ascendance System Quest updated. ]
[ Ascendance system quest: Escape through the Dungeon.
-Become the Dungeon Boss - Completed
-Survive as the Dungeon Boss - Completed
-The Ascendant's information is blocked from appraisal; appraisal will fail.
-The Ascendant's appearance is not altered.
-Emergency exit for Players is (#&`#Q/&
Reward
-Skill: Appraisal blocker (S)
-Upgrade to a class skill
Note
-Time remaining: #%")! ]
The room was silent. Mercer remained hidden even though he had some gold-streaked glowing purple blood over him. The winged creature looked confused between them, seemingly wondering what to do. Any gore that hit Sam just slid off due to his armour trait, as he was more interested in the wall.
Walking over to it, he touched it with his bare hand, trying to find anything weird about it, but he couldn't. It was stone, hard, with no hollow sounds or anything when knocking on it. There wasn't even a mark from where he accidentally attacked it before, which was surprisingly suspicious.
As his back was turned to the others, the creature seemed to take the opportunity and attack him. Sam had the Aura Radar active; he couldn't sense specifics through it, but combining with the aggression detection through Sentinel's Watch, it was almost impossible not to notice.
Briefly turning around, he saw her holding one of her right arms behind, like she was grabbing something or was ready to throw something. A purple and pink field of energy gathered around her hand and elongated as she moved it forward in an attacking manner.
Not wanting to bother with all of this, Sam did as he normally did: manifesting his swarm.
He saw a moment of hesitation in her eyes, but it didn't matter; she had no chance against his combined weapons' almost full damage output.
Like before, Mercer got more caked in gore, and anything that hit Sam slid off like he was covered in a hydrophobic coating.
"Fucking hell!" Mercer commented as his invisibility deactivated, not doing anything to clean him up. "Why did you do that?!"
"She attacked me, and why do you think I need to validate anything I do to you, of all people?" Sam briefly considered what to do with Mercer.
Mercer was an unapologetic PvP-focused man, even though his mentality had shifted dramatically when he was no longer in power, that didn't change the effect. And though Sam briefly considered the irony of Player killing between them, as Sam himself might have more kills than Mercer, the main difference in the moment was motivation.
Ignoring his captive, Sam returned to the wall in question. There was nothing there, but he knew what he saw. Gathering his swarm, sans the parts needed to keep Mercer chained up, he aimed at the same spot. The familiar pull of Clustered Strike pulled everything together as it hit the same place as before. There was a weird, electrical pulse as the attack landed. Not the snap from his Electrical damage or Static Shock, but a sharper, tearing screech of electricity.
Pulling his weapons back, he did it again, and again. On the fourth attack, he saw a crack forming in the stone wall. It didn't look like a crack in stone, but like a cracked monitor, a rainbow of scintillating colours trying to mend itself along the seam.
"What..." Mercer chimed in behind with a surprising, unbelieving voice.
Sam ignored him and kept attacking. Each landing hit widened the crack more and more. Looking through it, there was darkness, but after more hits, there was a light, faded, blurry. He kept attacking until something snapped.
A shattering digital sound pulsed through the room as the blurry field cracked and fell apart like frosted glass. The crack was large enough to comfortably walk through, and the other side of the new hole in the blurred field exited into a hallway. It had the same stone wall as the boss room, lit by blue torches on the wall.
Instinctively, Sam moved all Aura Points into the Barrier, but when he was going to take a better look.
"What's going on? What can you see in there?" Mercer asked, from his angle, chained to the throne, he couldn't see through the hole.
Sam turned around to answer, but felt something weird, like a warm blanket around his mind. He lifted his hand towards Mercer, and Sam dismissed the chain that kept Mercer stuck, but also manifested his entire swarm. Mercer, without his gear, had no chance.
As Mercer's remains were spread across the throne, floor and wall, Sam came to. Like being snapped out of zoning out, he realised what he had done. He didn't feel sad for Mercer; he deserved this, but Sam didn't intend for this to happen, at least not yet.
Wondering for a second what happened, he remembered this feeling from the cloudhorn Taunting ability, something affected him.
Dismissing his swarm and assigning 10 Energy to Invisibility, he took a few steps to the side, hiding around the corner of the new opening. Standing there for quite a while, nothing happened; nobody came in, and nothing happened.
Reallocating the Aura Points into the Radar, he crept towards the opening, looking around the corner slowly. He didn't know if whatever was doing this could see through his invisibility or not.
As he looked into the hallway, he got a better look at what was there. The hallway went left and right, both ways bent again a bit further down. He couldn't see anyone or anything, but the radar told him that there was something around the corner to his right. Taking his time to tread lightly and not disturb any debris, he soon found himself in the hallway.
Sneaking towards the hiding creature, he rounded the corner carefully, which seemed to work fine as when he rounded the corner, he saw a hiding matte-black skinned creature like the duo that came into the boss room. She seemed smaller than the others, taking a moment to Appraise her.
[ Veyrathi Mindweaver
Level: 65
STR: 8
DEX: 7
VIT: 18
SPT: 68
HP: 825 / 825
Damage: Aether Javelin 292
Defence: 150
Abilities: SPT Boon, Aether Javelin, Mind Warp. ]
[ Mind Warp: Makes the target turn on allies for a few seconds. If there are no friendlies, the target attacks itself once. It can only affect the same target once per hour. ]
It explained why he lost control and killed Mercer. It did feel similar to the Taunt that the Cloudhorn used, and it just showed how powerful mind control abilities were. He didn't feel entirely confident about going up against these effects, but the fact that it only worked once per hour was slightly comforting. However, if there were more than one of them in the area... Sam's defences were not close to being able to handle one of his attacks, so this was the worst thing that could happen to him. He counted himself lucky that Mercer was in the room with him.
The monster in front of him had surprisingly low stats, no HP boon or that much in the sense of damage output or defences. It seemed to rely heavily on the Mind Warp ability. The Veyrathi was handled easily, and the same powerful pulse of gold and purple spread across the walls marked the end of this threat. He kept his Invisibility going and had to pick a direction. Since he was already going this way, he decided to continue.
Walking down the hallways, he couldn't help to inspect the walls. Could he just open up new holes anywhere? Or did it only work if something was behind it, did it follow the physical logic of locations, or was it somehow tied together spatially? There were plenty of questions on how the Tower System worked. The classic teleportation question, Are you still you, had been a debate at the start, but was put aside after the System became as integrated into the world as it was. Which, frankly, raised more questions about acceptance.
Sam mused about these things, walking down the blue-lit stone hallways until he stopped and looked at a nearby wall.
Manifesting his swarm, he repeated the attack, again and again, a crack eventually forming. He kept attacking like before, using considerably longer to get through, but eventually, the glitching damaged surface of the cave wall opened up into darkness. Using his flashlight, he looked through it, but couldn't see anything. Extending a Psyhand in, even at full range, he couldn't feel anything. Not even if he tried to touch the other side of the wall he was reaching through, he felt nothing.
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As a last test, he gambled on his phone. Starting a video recording, he used a Psyhand to lift it in and turn it around. He could see it fine in the void, its flashlight lighting back at him as he moved it a bit back and forth before pulling it back. Reviewing the video, it looked like an empty void, save for the floating window-like portal, into the room he was in. Since he was invisible at the moment, he only saw the room around him.
"Hmm," he muttered to himself, considering that he had to test more later, right now, that his initial curiosity was... not sated, but got the barest minimum of answers, he pushed on.
As he walked down the hallway, considering how empty it was, he wondered if this was going to be a challenge at all. At this exact moment, the floor opened up beneath him, his mind registered the sound of a click as he stepped on something he couldn't even see, and he was now in freefall.
A simple fix, manifesting and grabbing onto himself with enough Psyhands let him fly, after all. He fell slightly, but far from enough to cause any problems.
Looking into the open pit, he saw a collection of dirty spikes sticking up from what smelled like extremely stagnant water.
This was both horrible and interesting. There weren't that many traps in Dungeons, at least not in the starter and ending ones they had been farming so far, but a problem was that Sam didn't have many damage-mitigating abilities. For example, he might be able to resist most, if not all, damage from things, but his Vitality was horrible, so... getting infected was most likely the end of him...
Floating over, he immediately heard the sound of someone approaching. Multiple voices spoke around the corner, further down the hallway. Sam lifted himself higher so they could walk beneath him.
He just hoped they couldn't see through his invisibility.
The voices came closer and finally rounded the corner. It was a group of four winged creatures, two males and two females. One of the males had much smaller wings than the others, but he was built like a bodybuilder.
Taking a gander at their stats, the three non-bodybuilder ones had the same name and stats.
[ Veyrathi Dreadweaver
Level: 70
STR: 14
DEX: 16
VIT: 26
SPT: 68
HP: 2198 / 2198
Damage: Aether Javelin 130 / Phantasmal Shred 105 / Lash of Woe 584 / Collapse Vein 187
Defence: 250
Abilities: HP Boon, VIT Boon, DEX Boon, Aether Javelin, Phantasmal Shred, Lash of Woe, Collapse Vein. ]
But, having a look at the bodybuilder, Sam was surprised at what he saw.
[ Veyrathi Bonecrusher
Level: 73
STR: 78
DEX: 52
VIT: 66
SPT: 10
HP: 4964 / 4964
Damage: Rending Maul 730 / Groundsplitter 664 / Skullrack Smash 763 / Terror Howl 498.
Defence: 300
Abilities: HP Boon, STR Boon, VIT boon, Rending Maul, Groundsplitter, Skullrack Smash, Terror Howl. ]
The comparative damage output, health and defence were massive. Its stats were also insane. Most creatures had a rough logical scaling from level and combined stat numbers, but the Bonecrusher didn't seem to follow this at all. The damage it could do on some of its attacks was surprising; almost all of its attacks did more damage than the others, and it didn't have much in the sense of cooldowns either.
It was a terrifying foe, if you considered normal combat, that was. You'd need to be able to pump out almost 5000 damage fast enough that it didn't get you, or somehow mitigate just shy of 800 damage per attack. In Sam's case, even with 260 Defence, 503 damage would come through. Not considering a critical hit, that would leave him on 67 HP if he starts at full.
Though the Aura Barrier would aid considerably, he was using it as a radar at the moment but even with it he'd be screwed. These Veyrathi creatures were dangerous, and that was without considering the mind-controlling one.
Keeping himself lifted, Sam remained silent to see what they were doing. They had walked to the pit and were inspecting it, saying something in their unknown language. A dialogue back and forth where the Bonecrusher was pointing into the pit before sounding agitated. The others looked defensive as they responded.
Sam assumed he was asking why it triggered without anyone or anything in it, which was a logical question to pose, considering that a trap doesn't trigger itself. At least not if it's made decently.
Briefly considering if he should attack them or not, he could just fly away and ignore them. He had no quests to kill things, and he didn't seem to get XP from the earlier kill either. But, leaving them could become a danger later...
Landing as silently as he could, a short distance away, he split his swarm into four. He sent the collection of blades towards the group. More than enough attacks hit, toppled with the pulse of Static Shock overlapping them, and handled the group in a split second. Though he had gotten used to the gore of fighting in the dungeons, he realised that he still felt surprised at the amount when everything landed at the same time like this.
Again, no XP, there was no loot as they didn't use weapons, and he didn't feel like digging for the core at the moment. Keeping invisibility active and deciding to lift himself rather than walking, he pushed on.
He kept flying through the hallways, they all looked the same, and there was a network of them. Some look manufactured with stacked stones or bricks, but most look like naturally formed or tunnels dug out of rock. On the way, he met the odd black skinned creature, Veyrathi, as the appraisal defined them as. Some were melee-focused, others were more magically inclined. A very few had the mind control ability, making it seem like a relatively rare ability.
They all met the same fate.
For some, it was enough to keep floating and using spare Psyhands to attack; the named weapons and a few Thoughtform blades did considerable damage, after all. But for groups, he landed to be able to maintain his invisibility.
This became almost routine for what felt like hours; it was just hallway after hallway, target after target. Some dead ends forced him to go back and pick another path, and other paths that opened up into larger rooms without anything in them.
All of this changed as he found a more well traveled tunnel, it was more worn down along the stone floor than the others, continuing down that path it opened up into a gargantuan cave.
The uneven ceiling of the cave was easily 50 or 60 floors high, being vaguely dome-shaped, the peak of the shape led to an opening of bright light, looking like sunlight. It was large enough that a haze in the air stopped him from seeing the other side, but based on the rough curvature of the entrance, it'd be city-sized. The air was surprisingly stagnant, breathable, but it didn't feel entirely right.
Inside this cave were many collapsed buildings made of stone, remains of building frameworks, made of stone bricks which had once held something, were dotted around the area. Most building remains were just the rough framework of a one-story construction, but many had a higher frame, some even having internal stairs and floors that could be seen through several collapsed walls.
All in all, it looked like a ruined city that had fallen quite some time ago.
Sam flew into the cave, but as soon as he passed the threshold, he fell onto the sand-covered floor.
Using a moment to recompose himself, spitting out the sand that made its way into his mouth during his fall, he looked around. Nothing had reacted to his fall, and even if it did, he was invisible. Taking a moment to manifest a Psyhand, he could float it around as it should, likewise with weapons and lifting bricks and items, but as soon as he tried lifting himself, it failed.
[ Flying is not possible in this area.
Source: Local influence. ]
"Well... that's just..." Sam commented to himself in a sour tone.
There was apparently something around here that caused these problems, he needed to find it as he assumed the exit was through the top.
As he looked around for the next step, he first now realised there was a strange haze in front of the cave entrance he came in through, going over to it, he found that he couldn't pass through it, nor could he throw anything or push a Psyhand through.
"Ah... figures."