Divine Apostasy Book 7 - Chapter 41

Chapter 41

Torchy didn’t respond, and his heart rate increased dramatically. The Ash Specter pinched an area just under his left shoulder and pulled down. The glowing grey skin folded down like a pocket revealing a fist sized chamber. He reached in and removed four finger sized crossing stones, holding them out to Ruwen like an offering.

Closing Torchy’s hand over the rocks, Ruwen gave the Ash Specter a slight bow. “I will find my own.”

If Ruwen could convince the Ash Specter to help, the knowledge would speed his search, but Torchy remained in obvious fear. After a moment of thought, Ruwen channeled twenty Energy per second into the level five Worker spell Calm. After the one second cast time, it increased his Persuasion by thirty, bringing it to eighty-two percent, and added two Charisma to his current value of sixty-six.

Ruwen had rarely needed to leverage these abilities, but he had experienced their effects from people like Big D and many of the performers he’d seen in Deepwell. Not to mention all the deities. With a little effort, he could now replicate that effect on others, as the body Fortification and leveling compounded his Charisma gains.

“I could use your help,” Ruwen said, as friendly as he could.

Torchy calmed in just a few heartbeats, as Ruwen’s voice, enhanced by his Persuasion and aided by his natural Charisma, struck the Ash Specter like a one-two punch.

The fear disappeared and Torchy turned chatty, explaining the stones sometimes washed up on shore, but the highest concentrations existed in the magma chambers underground. He pointed to the lava tubes that led to the largest magma pools and offered to take Ruwen.

Ruwen thanked the Ash Specter, feeling a little guilty about the purposeful manipulation. He stopped channeling Persuasion and Torchy came to his senses, immediately jumping away and fleeing.

Echo had still not recovered, and Ruwen tried to ignore the laughter. Since he needed to return to the blistering liquid, he skipped getting dressed and headed for the lava tube Torchy had identified as leading to the largest magma chamber.

Ruwen hurried, both to lose Echo and get back out of sight.

Two hours later, Ruwen strode into the portal clearing they had all arrived at earlier. Once again, he wore the Bamboo Viper Clan traditional attire along with his yellow belt. The Founders and Addas sat in a circle next to the portal stone, all meditating. He smiled and wondered if any of them had reached Sift’s ninth level.

Ruwen angled away from the adults and directly toward the cave Sift and the other Adepts had entered when Ruwen had left. Now that he understood the geography better, he recognized the openings were old lava tubes.

Motion caught Ruwen’s attention, and he focused on an opening six hundred feet to the left of the one Sift had entered. Demons, some of which Ruwen recognized from his time in the Infernal Realm, poured into the valley. The group of fifty moved with purpose, and it only took him a moment to calculate their destination: Sift’s tube.

Still a thousand feet away from the same destination, Ruwen sprinted, only using a fraction of his speed. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself with a concussive boom from moving too fast. Even at this pace, he would beat the demons by twenty seconds.

Ruwen considered his options. He could stop and fight the horde, assuming they knew the Bamboo Viper Clan had entered that tube and the demons’ intentions were bad. If they had some other intention, though, fighting them might draw more, or cause some other issue that Ruwen hadn’t considered. Since he could always fight later, he ignored the fighters and concentrated on finding Sift.

The group of demons saw Ruwen, but on the rock-strewn ground, most of them couldn’t increase their speed any further. A handful did, though, probably having Fortified into Gem and possessing the reflexes to navigate the dangerous terrain at a sprint.

On Rainbow’s end, as Ruwen had slowly created an atmosphere, he’d learned the loud explosions caused when he moved too fast differed as the atmosphere changed. Back home, he could move a thousand feet in a second and avoid tearing the air and creating a thunderclap. That number on Rainbow’s End started vastly lower and climbed with the air pressure.

Ruwen’s time there had made him an expert at judging when the boom would occur. From the lava pool fight with Torchy, he knew the air pressure here allowed him to approach one thousand two hundred feet per second and remain quiet.

With the precise control of a Peak Diamond body, Ruwen pushed off harder with his right foot and launched his body forward, crossing the remaining thousand feet in a single second.

Ruwen landed on his feet inside the lava tube and slowed his sprint to a jog. This lava tube had a diameter of thirty feet, twice the size of the ones he’d just swum through, and it angled gently downward. Without Survey, Stone Echo, or even Sixth Sense, he didn’t have any idea what surrounded him, and a slower, more cautions behavior felt warranted.

The walls looked smooth until closely examined, and the air still held the powerful scent of sulfur. Protected from the wind, and surrounded by all the stone, the tunnel felt almost warm, and Ruwen jogged forward.

As the entrance disappeared behind Ruwen, the tube darkened, and he compensated by speeding up the dilation of his pupils. Two turns later, true darkness took hold, and he considered triggering Glow. Instead, he relied on his hearing, using the echoes from his movement to paint a picture of the surroundings.

Twenty minutes later, Ruwen worried he’d picked the wrong path when he still hadn’t found or heard anyone. He’d passed over thirty branching tunnels, all smaller, and he’d reasoned the Adepts would stay in the large one. Now he wondered if he’d guessed wrong.

Five minutes later, Ruwen felt the first slight vibrations of distant movement, and relief washed over him.

Ruwen increased his speed to a run and within a minute heard faint sounds bouncing down the tunnel. Ten seconds later he detected the first heartbeats, and when the number passed thirty-five, he frowned. Sift’s group was not alone. Ruwen increased his speed again, sprinting through the darkness so quickly he needed to run up the walls at every bend.

The tunnel scattered the sound and Ruwen couldn’t tell if he approached a battle or not, but the noise echoing up the lava tube illuminated the tunnel like the midday sun. The smell of sulfur turned intense, and the temperature increased significantly. Fifteen seconds later, dim orange light filtered into the tunnel as it grew even wider.

Ruwen burst from the lava tube and into the magma chamber at over thirty miles per hour. Small shards of obsidian and pumice dust followed him like a long cloak, his wake roiling the air behind him.

The magma chamber spanned two thousand feet, and the ceiling soared to at least a hundred. The far side of the space held a bubbling pool of magma, three hundred feet across. Between the heat and overpowering sulfur smell, breathing felt painful.

At least six other large lava tubes, like the one Ruwen had just exited, branched off this space. Thousands of holes covered the walls and floor, their sizes varying from a couple of feet to over ten. Most of them had a demon head poking out, and they all watched the same thing.

Sift. Along with the rest of the Adepts.

Five hundred feet from Ruwen sat the only two structures in the room. The first appeared like a long warehouse with large double doors on one side. Sift and the Adepts grouped around the second structure, a fifteen-foot ring of black rock. White light filled the entire ring’s space and Ruwen couldn’t see through it to the other side.

Sift and most of the other Adepts fought off a horde of demons while the entirety of Rung Four attacked the ring with a frenzy.

Ruwen had slowed to forty feet per second after entering the magma chamber and now weaved between the demon holes, appearing and disappearing before any of them could react. He considered jumping to Sift, but his time with Overlord and all his various minion combinations had taught Ruwen painful lessons about the vulnerability of sailing through the air. With so many demons here with unknown abilities, he sped up and ran the five hundred feet.

The demons Ruwen passed didn’t have the variety he’d seen in the Infernal Realm. While they came in different sizes, the demons all had a human shape with the addition of a muscular tail and claws that extended from their knuckles. Exposed skin looked rough, like rock, and he guessed it provided natural armor. The size and number of horns on the tops of their heads provided the most variation in their appearance other than height.

Ruwen’s Perception informed him they were a type of Scourge Grunt.

As Ruwen approached the fighting, the demons on the far side of the glowing ring yelled and shouted in Inferni, trying to get the attention of their comrades before Ruwen blew by them.

One of the larger demons turned in time to prepare for Ruwen’s arrival. As he neared the demon, it jumped up and forward, its timing excellent, and pushed two clawed feet at Ruwen while balancing on its tail. Striking anything at his current velocity would crush a normal person, turning their chest into mush.

The demon had timed its jump with enough precision to earn a sliver of respect from Ruwen. Even though he traveled in basically a straight line, he ran at a faster speed than normal, and calculating the attack to strike him took some skill. The timing, in fact, would make the attack impossible to avoid for most people.

Ruwen didn’t slow but altered his center of gravity to the right, his reflexes and mental decision making more than enough to handle such mundane things. His training with Overlord had prepared him for far worse than this, and he didn’t even bother with Last Breath.

As Ruwen passed the demon, he grabbed its foot and then, like an acrobat, twisted in a tight circle, never slowing, the movement so smooth it never altered his balance. He released the demon halfway through the turn, throwing him into the demons on the far side that had warned of Ruwen’s impending arrival.

The now flying demon struck the group on the far side, and demons flew outward like a bomb and exploded. Two seconds later, Ruwen slowed as he reached the fighting.

Rungs One, Two, and Three had formed a circle around Rung Four, who savagely continued attacking the black ring. Blood stained many Adepts’ formal clothing, and most of it appeared their own. The Adepts however, held their position, using their superior techniques to counter the demons crude fighting skills.

Sift held a quarter of the circle himself, the area in front of him littered with unconscious or dead demons. Ruwen made a short jump over the fighting and landed between Sift and the ring.

Ruwen strode over to Sift. “Hey.”

Sift kept his focus on a group of three demons that were coordinating their attacks.

“I hate your golem,” Sift said without looking at Ruwen.

“Why?” Tarot said from above. “I told you the truth.”

Sift jumped forward before the group of three demons could attack. He slapped the middle demon and kicked it under the ribs. It wasn’t the most destructive attack, but certainly one of the more painful ones, which was what Sift had intended. As the demon jerked to the side in a natural pain reflex, Sift kneeled in a Bamboo Step called Begging Butterfly.

Grabbing the injured demon’s head, Sift used the demon’s own momentum to flip him sideways into the demon on the left, the motion so effortless and natural it looked gentle. But the cracking of bones as the two demon’s collided revealed the violent truth. Casually, Sift snapped his right leg out, crushing the remaining demon’s ankle. As the demon fell, Sift kicked higher, catching the beast in the throat. It fell backward, gasping.

Sift spun around and into a standing position, never losing sight of the surrounding enemies. He pointed up at Tarot without looking, keeping his focus forward. “He told us this tube had the most soul stones.”

“That’s true!” Tarot said. “I’m a thieving golem, not a deceitful one.”

“More like a ‘not all the facts’ golem,” Sift replied.

“Look at it!” Tarot yelled, pointing at the large black ring. “And there are more in that warehouse, I bet. I’m going to look.”

Tarot flew toward the warehouse, disappearing around its wall two hundred feet away. Ruwen glanced at the fifteen-foot ring. Could that come from a single soul stone? He used Analyze.

Target: Infernal Crossing Ring

Type: Structure

Strengths: Extreme Durability, Mobility

Weaknesses: None

Uses: Oversized portal linked to another. Resonance paired and not rune anchored provides location independence.

Rung Four franticly attacked the ring.

“Are you going to help?” Sift asked. “Or just stand around? We should blow this bakery before more of these things climb out of their holes and join the fun or better fighters arrive.”

Ruwen thought about the group he beat to the tunnel entrance. “I think it’s too late for that. There are Cultivators on the way.”

“Just great,” Sift said as he snatched a spear from the air, turning and throwing it back at the sender in one motion.

“What is wrong with Rung Four?”

“Good question,” Sift said. “They freaked out when they saw that thing and ran straight into this mess. They won’t leave.”

“Okay,” Ruwen responded. “Let’s get some breathing room and find out what’s going on. Should I take over here or do the clearing?”

“Clearing,” Sift said immediately. “You need to clean up your golem’s mess.”

While talking to Sift, Ruwen had kept track of the surrounding battle. The Adepts outclassed the demons, but the vast numbers had created some pressure.

“Give me a few seconds,” Ruwen said and then jumped to his right, landing outside the circle of Adepts and in the middle of the thickest clump of demons.