Mountain of the Immortals

With every step we took deeper into dungeon, the temperature dropped and the humidity increased. The guards that nodded at us on every corner of the rows of cells seemed to become stronger, which made me glad that we'd been able to find a non-violent way in here.

Not that the guards would ordinarily have posed a significant problem to us, but the tight corridors would make it difficult to fight too many at once and might have bought them enough time to pull in more significant forces from outside. If those forces included my uncle and his personal guard, that could become even more problematic for our mission.

Eventually Eelos took out a key shaped like a human pelvic bone and inserted it into the gate that I knew belonged to the deepest dungeon level. The key turned and Alos moved in first, one arm extended fully forward with a torch in his grip, as if to scare away whatever terrors might lie in wait inside.

"Second on the right," I said, more to my companions than the two guards leading us through the door.

"He's here?" Ares asked.

Both of the guards turned to face him, and even though he still hadn't revealed his face, I could see them trying to scan him again.

"Yes," I confirmed.

Ares took out both of his swords and before Alos was able to make the slightest complaint, Ares crossed his blades and pushed them straight through the poor man's throat. The torch fell from his hand and his head off of his shoulders, but before either of them hit the floor, the red glow of Artemis's bow lit the room and an arrow pierced Eelos's head, traveling clean through it.

The bodies of the two guards crumpled to the ground, spurts of blood catapulting from their open wounds.

"How do you know he's here?" Ares asked as he cleaned his blades on the clothes of the fallen.

"I saw it," I said cryptically. "Look in his inventory bag for the keys to the cage."

Ares did so immediately, taking out all kinds of junk along with dozens of keys from the dead guard's extra-dimensional bag.

"We don't need a key," Artemis said, now standing outside the cell door.

"Who is that?" asked a voice that sounded both bass and shrill, as if two people were speaking instead of one. "Release me and you will be rewarded."

"Is it unlocked?" Ares asked, completely disregarding the voice of the prisoner we'd heard--who was most likely the demon called Astaroth.

"No," Artemis replied. "But there's no keyhole and no lock. It's a thick metal wall with only a small opening at the bottom, probably for food to go through."

That made sense to me now. This level was no longer really a jail at all. It was a place to store individuals my uncle couldn't kill because they would simply return to their home planes. So instead having them escape his grasp by dying, he put them in boxes and forgot about them. With that in mind, the dead celestial in the cell next door no longer felt like such a bad outcome after all.

"Then we break it down," I said.

More prisoners had heard us now and had started shouting or banging on the walls of their cells.

"Whatever it is, we need to break it down quickly," Aphrodite said. She pushed closed the door that led onto this floor of the prison. "Before they get too rowdy."

"Alright, move back." I pointed my spear at the gate behind which the god of the forge was imprisoned. I triggered Mana Stunning Pierce on the wall and watched the metal disintegrate almost instantly, shrapnel flying in all directions, some of it damaging me but most of it embedding in the body of the now freed Hephaestus.

"Heal him and let's go," I said to Aphrodite as I pulled the old man out of his miserable box.

I invited him into our party which he accepted almost instantly, then tried using my Instant Divine Teleport skill to take all of us out of there. Since I'd been able to use my other divine skill, I hoped that it might be possible to escape without having to do it the hard way.

But my hope was short-lived.

This place didn't allow for instantaneous teleportation at all, which meant we really needed to get back to our flying vessel and get as far away as we could before I tried it again.

"Who are you?" the frail god asked, his voice barely a rasp, evidence of his weakened state.

"We're here to save--" was as far as I got before a deafening siren sounded.

It was loud enough to completely drown out the voices of the protesting prisoners and certainly loud enough to warn the entire dungeon of the breach.

"Well, shit," Ares said. "Looks like we're going to have to fight our way out."

"We won't make it in time," I said, looking around me frantically.

"In time for what?" Aphrodite asked.

"If the guards know the dungeon is under attack," I explained, "then its owner will know by now as well."

"Fuck, that's not good," Ares said.

Then the door burst open and two heavy-armored warriors rushed in, tusks first.

* * *

Name: Deidos Ga

Race: Elephantaur

Class: Mastodon Templar

Level: 36

* * *

Name: Holden Ru

Race: Elephantaur

Class: Mastodon Templar

Level: 35

* * *

The two humanoid fighters looked incredibly strong in their metal armor as they trumpeted their charge toward us, their yellowing tusks as menacing as the two-handed swords they wielded. Thankfully, their levels were nothing to a group of four gods.

"Let me out and I'll blast the walls to smithereens!" the demon shouted, his voice reaching us despite the sirens and elephantaurs that were loud enough on their own to physically hurt our ears.

Aphrodite had already started casting her buffs on all of us and Ares had started to chant too, while Artemis was shooting down the attackers. Both of the charging warriors fell dead before reaching us, the body of the second one skidding toward us with the momentum of the significant speed it had gathered before Artemis's arrow killed it.

"How?" I asked. "This is your chance, demon."

The sounds of heavy steps echoed from the stairs above but when they reached us, none of them entered the room. Instead, the muffled scraping and clanging of metal suggested the door was being fortified to keep us inside the room. It was interesting that mortals thought they would be able to do something like that with a mere metal gate.

"My mana is trapped in this cell," the demon replied. "Let me out and my pent-up mana will explode, and take this whole place with it."

* * *

Astaroth has offered you a crossroads deal.

This deal is binding by the laws of the nine hells. Individuals who break the deal will be hunted down and exterminated.

He has promised to use concentrated mana to explode this level of the dungeon once he is free from his cage.

Do you agree with this?

Yes No

* * *

"There's no time to make deals with demons," Aphrodite said in the guild chat between her spellcasting.

"We could use the distraction," Ares replied verbally.

"Aphrodite, keep casting buffs," I said. "Make sure Hephaestus has defensive buffs too. Ares, you and Artemis protect him."

They all did as they were told and I held my spear up in front of the demon's cell wall.

"Get ready, fiend." I accepted his deal and destroyed the wall he was hidden behind, in much the same way I'd freed the forge god.

Astaroth crawled out of his hole and the first thing he did was spread his gigantic leathery wings as widely as he could. The light from the torch on the floor and Artemis's bow was soon outshined by the large demon as his whole body started emanating a deep red light.

"I'd suggest you take cover, thunder god," he said.

The light became almost too hard to look at. It was as if the demon was able to connect to his place of power in the nine hells after centuries of being imprisoned and that amount of power could not be contained within him. The infernal mana was too much for this mortal coil.

"I owe you one," the demon said. Then he exploded in a flash of light, bones, and gore.

When I'd made the deal, I had assumed he would create an explosion then fight with us or instead of us as we escaped. I didn't think he was going to explode himself, disappearing back to his home realm and leave us here to deal with it. Such was the way of dealing with demons, I guessed.

And I couldn't dispute the gaping hole he had left in the building's wall. A few of the prisoners had been blown in the air, rendered either dead or dying, their bodies falling helplessly through the clouds.

"The clouds!" Aphrodite shouted, as a stream of enemy warriors rushed through the now destroyed door and an opening in the ceiling.

"I'm bringing the bird our way," I said in the guild chat, though as I said it, I sensed something else--much more sinister--coming our way.

The steady flow of enemies was handled expertly by Artemis and Ares but a great feeling of unease overwhelmed me as a sickly figure of a man emerged from one of the cells whose walls had been destroyed. His skin was blistered and full of scabs, and he was surrounded by a faint green cloud.

* * *

Name: Nergal

Race: Greater Deity

Class: Pestilence of Humanity

Level: 54

* * *