Although, right that moment, she could have done with a little less excitement.
Cerea hadn’t needed long to find the others. Ugnash was alive, having successfully fended off the brute from the Roaring Claws that had assaulted their team. Said brute apparently wasn’t dead though. His fight with Ugnash had just been a stalemate, and then they had dispersed when the tunnels had started shaking terribly an instant after they had heard the blast.
As soon as the tunnels had started shaking, the half-Scalekin, half-Rakshasa called Shagor had retreated, according to Ugnash.
“We’ll need cover!” Cerea shouted, dragging Ugnash along behind her, which was silly because he was twice her size pretty easily.
They knew this was going to happen eventually. Ross had discussed it with them, so they knew all the dangers involved and the precautions they were supposed to take. Of course, the main precaution was getting out of the dungeon, or as close to the exit as possible, before Ross’s core exploded. Sadly, it looked like there was no time.
“I’ve got the runes,” Ugnash said, pulling out and crushing several Runes of Barricade at once. They were kind of small in his huge hands.
“And I’ve got the real hideaway.”
Cerea’s voice was tense. The rumbling was growing louder and closer. She hadn’t thought she would need this long to find Ugnash, but perhaps she ought to be grateful that she had reached her friend in time.
Reaching into her Dimensional Storage, her Aspect of Dimensions manifesting with a swirl of black-and-white threads, Cerea pulled out the Conduit Crystals. Then she threw them down to shatter them all. The whitish blue shards rose into the air on their own, floating around Cerea and Ugnash.
“Stick close,” she said.
“Will this really be enough?” Ugnash asked.
“Hey! You’re the one who told me to get these!”
“Yes, because that’s what Master Kostis suggested in case we got caught up in the blast. He didn’t assure me what exactly was the optimum working distance from said blast for these, uh, what were they called again?”
Cerea sighed. “Conduit Crystals.”
“Right, Conduit Crystals.”
If he said anything further, Cerea didn’t hear him. The rumbling had grown far too powerful, the whole dungeon shaking so hard that she was minorly afraid that everything was going to fall and crush them. Her hand instinctively went to the watch in her Dimensional Storage. She might as well check the time in case she died here.
It was funny. Locked in her Dimensional Storage, this wasn’t at all the real time of the world. But it was a nice reminder of something Cerea wanted to really test out.
She wanted to see if she could put parts of herself within her Dimensional Storage, and thereby use its time-stopping effect to immortalize herself. Cerea cursed those thoughts. Or rather, cursed the fact that they were popping up in her head now of all times. No, she wasn’t dying here. Everything should work out just fine.
The ravaging storm of mana rising out through the tunnel at the end of the chamber begged to differ.
“Will Khagnio be alright?” Cerea asked. She was pretty sure Ugnash didn’t have the answer to do that, but she needed some reassurance just then, true or fake.
“I’m sure he’s scrounged up some way to survive what’s coming,” the big Rakshasa said. “We both know he’s not the dying type.”
Cerea laughed. “True enough.”
Her mirth faded soon, remembering the other party member of theirs who was in even greater danger than the rest of them. A mana implosion sounded like a horrid experience. Going by the terrifying tidal wave of energy about to slam into them, Cerea was having more and more difficulty believing that Ross could come out of a such an experience unscathed.
The mana wall slammed into them with the force and fury of those mythical hurricanes that supposedly existed an aeon ago. There was so much, it rushed over and wiped out everything in sight around them.
All Cerea saw was a wash of pure radiance, like they were floating in an endless void of white. This was… breathtaking. She had never seen anything of this magnitude.
Cerea and Ugnash weren’t touched. Not directly, at least. Though the tunnels around them disappeared, the blistering avalanche of mana barely touched them, thanks to both the Runes of Barricade holding the tide back and the crushed, floating remnants of the Conduit Crystals redirecting the flows.
But that didn’t mean they were completely safe.
“I—breathe!” Ugnash said. His whole body had tensed up.
His words came out cut-off, despite the fact that he was standing right next to Cerea. The lack of air was just one of the problems. She was having trouble breathing too, but more than that, it felt like space itself was compressing her in from all sides, slowly but surely trying to crush her.
The Runes of Barricade were supposed to protect against that, but it seemed the mana blast was just that strong. There was only one thing Cerea could think to do to save herself.
Her Aspect of Dimensions fired up with the black-and-white threads. A rift in space opened up the next instant, swallowing up a huge ton of the mana crushing them. Space was at a premium within her Dimensional Storage, that was for certain, but space only mattered for physical, tangible things.
Mana, being pure energy that wasn’t even visible most of the time, wouldn’t have trouble finding room there. And if it couldn’t, it would just be compressed. That brought on other complications, but right now, Cerea was out of options.
Plus, Cerea knew her time-stopping abilities within her Dimensional Space would ensure nothing she possessed got altered or affected in any way.
The pressure lessened somewhat after her endeavours.
“You alright?” Cerea asked, forced to raise her voice against the roar of unbound mana around her.
Ugnash nodded, now standing a little bit straighter than before. The pressure relief had worked.
But they still weren’t safe. Everything around them started tearing apart.
It was difficult to tell, at first. With the tide of white energy swamping everything and making reality almost imperceptible, Cerea couldn’t have even said the floor existed if she hadn’t been standing on it.
But now, the cracking walls and floating rocks were too obvious to miss. Everything was shattering, including their footing.
“What do we do?” Ugnash asked with a slight bit of uncharacteristic panic.
“Move!”
The perks of being a mage was that Cerea could come up with ways to tackle different scenarios using the various magical Aspects and their Affixes she possessed. Scenarios such as a dungeon being eradicated under a detonation of mana.
Cerea cast her Aspect of Dimensions and her Aspect of Lightning, the latter focused with her Ionization Affix. She didn’t get to use it often but now was obviously a prime time to do so.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
What that resulted in was Cerea’s Dimensional Storage swallowing up some of the rocks and dungeon matter, only to spit them out, before her lightning crackled between them to create opposite charges and force them to stick together. The end of the constructed rock spar was supported inside the Dimensional Storage. Essentially, she was crafting her own platforms.
“Come on!” she said, dragging Ugnash along with her.
“That’s not safe one bit.”
“Neither is our original spot!”
She was right. Just as they jumped to the first hastily-constructed platform, the ground below them fully shattered. Cerea almost slipped, but Ugnash managed to drag her back onto the rocks before she plummeted.
“The Conduit Crystals!” Ugnash said. “They’re following too.”
“Of course. I imbued some charge onto them to keep them close to us.”
Ugnash grunted. “I feel useless.”
“I’d just have fallen to my death if it weren’t for you.”
“Doubt it, but I won’t argue.”
Mostly because the both of them were now extra worried about Khagnio. And Ross too, but this was expected for him. For Khagnio though… the Scalekin was supposed to have been with them in case things turned sour.
They kept going. Their current platform wasn’t going to last so they had to move on and on, drag in new platforms and keep themselves from getting caught by the mana. It was straining Cerea’s concentration like nothing she had ever done before. She always remained at the back during confrontations. Her priority had always been to safeguard herself and all she carried.
But here and now, she had to be at the forefront. She controlled life and death for her and her only party member.
Without her, they’d fail.
The storm was unrelenting, but not constant. It was changing now, taking on a new shape, or perhaps they were approaching a different section of it, one that had turned into a cyclone funnel.
And at the very eye of the tornado of mana, far, far down below, was what had to be Ross.
She couldn’t believe she could actually see him from her current location. Though, technically, she couldn’t. Not yet. But what she did see very clearly was evidence that he was actively controlling the maelstrom, at least to some small degree.
“Do we go down and help?” Ugnash asked. “Somehow? Can we help?”
Cerea was a little too busy dragging them to another platform before it broke apart. “You’re asking me? You’re the leader here!”
“Yes, but I’m also smart enough to know when I’m out of my depth.”
Cerea cursed. When she was able to look down again, she saw why Ugnash was concerned. Something strange was going on at the bottom there. Even as Ross did his best to control the overwhelming tide of energy, space itself seemed to breaking weirdly.
It cracked, shattered, then opened into an abyssal maw. A void of blackness that dragged him in.
“That’s—”
Cerea was so shocked, she couldn’t even finish her own sentence. Ugnash was absolutely right, though. They had to get down there. Now.
I thought reaching the mana implosion would let me survive. Then I thought I was wrong about that.
Because the pain I felt as the explosion of mana ripped me apart was indescribable.
I couldn’t scream, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t exist except for unrivalled agony in every inch of my body. And yet, somehow, my consciousness didn’t depart. I remained just aware enough that I still had my body in one place. It was being eroded, eradicated, but across time. Not in a single instant.
Which meant that I could—more out of instinct than conscious thought—reach out and rip a piece of myself off with my own hand. Or what remained of it.
I just had enough presence of mind to use Sacrifice.
[ Sacrifice
You have Sacrificed 1 [Minor] Experience of Pain. Windfall bonus activated.
Reward: Pain Sense Control: Modifiable threshold of pain sense by up to 4x for 4 hours ]
I came back to myself, swallowing with what remained of my throat. I didn’t know how my body was functioning as it continued to be ripped apart. It didn’t make sense. How had I even torn off a piece of myself? For now, I blessed the fact I was alive.
It was hard to tell if Zoltan was simply eradicated or just blown away by the tsunami of white energy now completely flooding everything, including me. I had become an unrivalled tempest of magic. The cracks that had taken over me before had now linked up together to form an unending blanket of white that possessed me through my entire body.
Bits and pieces of me were blowing off like I was an over-pressurized steam vent. It didn’t hurt. The pain was now gone, or perhaps the actual sensation I was experiencing was so overwhelming, my nerves—whatever remained of them in my current state—couldn’t even feel the agony.
Though part of that was because my wounds didn’t exist. Or rather, they had taken on a new form.
In the centre of my torso, where Zoltan’s Icon had pierced through, there was no longer a giant hole. Instead, a condensed ball of pure white power had taken residence in the space opened up by my gory injury, like a tiny spinning core of a star. It was this core that kept blasting out more and more of the eradicating mana consuming the whole world around me.
Consuming me too.
All this mana needed a conduit. Until I finished my role as the anchor of this implosion, I wouldn’t be dying, no matter what my body went through. I was sure of it.
The dungeon chamber I had arrived in was shattering apart. Its floors, its walls, the pillars both broken and still standing, all of them were being annihilated, turning into a shredding storm around me. I was sure I was struck by several jagged chunks being ripped around by the mana storm, but the pain was dull and barely palpable.
It still caused me to tear apart more, though. Plus, I was losing my footing. Hard to believe that I could fall even lower within this dungeon, but what would happen when this floor broke too?
I couldn’t even begin to figure out what I needed to do to stop it. The pills I had taken in, the runes I had crushed, those were probably all that had ensured that my consciousness had remained in one piece. But how in the world was I supposed to stop this… this insane power?
Panic wasn’t going to help. Strangely, the fact that I was still alive, that I was conscious despite the terrible injury I had suffered earlier, helped bolster me.
What did I have? What could I use?
The bits and pieces of me were still splitting off my main body, shooting away after being forced apart by the incredible mana. But I could rein them back in. All I had to do was focus on and channel my Gravity Aspect.
[ Path-bound Core Aspect Unlocked!
Sufficient mana consumed. Core begins stellar ignition cycle. Cycles create charges for further mana ignition.
Core Aspect: Ignition Charge ]
[ Ignition Charge
Ignition Charge empowers Aspect of Gravity. Charges remaining under current circumstance:
Ignition Charge activates regardless…
Gravity: Orbit ]
This was the worst possible time for distracting blue screens. I could barely focus enough to read the words, much less take in whatever absurdity it was trying to convey to me. Really? An error? Now?
More importantly, something strange was happening with my Gravity. I had thought to use very focused applications of Field Manipulation to draw the broken bits and pieces of me back to my body. It didn’t quite work out that way.
In place of the fine threads of void-purple energy that spooled out whenever I used my Aspects, what I got now were literal sparks. Bolts arced out like nearly-black lightning, aimed straight for the flap of skin floating there, for the piece of hair twisting about in the maelstrom, for the end of the finger slowly being reduced to nothing under the mana’s unstoppable pressure.
They all started orbiting me, just as the blue screen had said. I wasn’t sure what was going on or how I was achieving that.
Not just the pieces of me that had broken off. But everything around me was getting affected by my new, strange Gravity.
The chunks of the dungeon, the floor, the walls, and the pillars, even fleshy bits that looked like the remains of the dead Scarthrall and maybe even parts of Zoltan too. Who knew. All I could see was that I was creating my own orbital storm of debris.
Of mana.
I was literally affecting everything, including the fury of magic expelling itself around me. Somehow, with Gravity affected by whatever this Ignition Charge was, I was now at the centre of the furious storm. The riptide of extreme force was still ripping me apart piecemeal, but I was starting to gain some measure of control.
At this point, I was beyond any simple measure of life or death. My whole body felt constructed of mana, somehow. I had no idea if this was a permanent thing, but since mana couldn’t exactly be killed or harmed in any way, I—
Black cracks spread across my surroundings. They weren’t like the lightning I had seen from Zoltan or used myself moments ago, somehow.
These were literal fractures slithering through the storm of magical energy and broken debris. They were eating away the mana and everything within it. Including me.
Now I really couldn’t understand what was going on. Couldn’t even begin to process it. All this chaos that I was just starting to get a grip on, all these new changes and the incredible new state of myself that I was somehow starting to if not accept then at least push aside to ensure I survived… and now, a new rip in reality was taking over everything around me.
Taking over me too.
Everything was falling the next instant. I thought I was using Gravity to keep myself afloat, but it seemed that didn’t matter against what new horror I was facing.
I fell into a void too. A ravenous black maw that made the entire storm of mana collapse in on itself. Teeth made of darkness chomped into me, the collapsing magical energy, and everything it had brought with it. I couldn’t feel anything from it at first, other than the same inflamed sensation like I had burning gasoline running through my veins.
Then the darkness touched the boiling hot core in my sternum. I didn’t even get the chance to scream at the obliteration that tore through my whole being. I just lost consciousness instead.