Wild Era, Ch 18: Shadowfall

Shadows stretched in every direction as the dungeon opened in front of Kelin.

Broken pillars and shattered stones soared into a dark grey sky that was filled with mottled clouds. 

The dungeon portal was inside a ruined building that looked like it had once been a temple. The remains of arches and a domed roof were still visible, but it was mostly open to the sky, providing a clear view of the strange storm. 

As the others arrived behind him, they took up only a small corner of the space in the old temple, near where the altar had been. The remains of a carved and polished stone table marked out its location, although now it was only knee-high rubble.

It had been a large building once, able to hold probably five hundred people. 

A bolt of purple lightning split the clouds above and droplets of a dark grey rain fell through the broken dome. It looked like streaks of falling shadow, only slightly lighter than the sky, making the reason for the dungeon’s name self-evident.

Kelin assessed the area, but there were no signs of immediate danger, so he dropped Blaze as he turned to the others. Two Soulfire Bolts and two Soul Arrows orbited his staff.

“So this is Shadowfall?” Galin rumbled as he looked around. “It definitely feels dangerous.”

The dwarf’s shield was raised high and his axe was in his hand. His eyes were narrow as he studied the stonework.

“It’s a well-known death trap,” Maro agreed. “I never thought we’d come here so soon. Maybe when we were in need of a challenge and nothing else was left.”

The large double-bladed axe he’d taken from Orest Nellen was in his hand, but two one-handed axes were hanging on his belt.

“If Mother Winter wills it, we will endure,” Serai said quietly. A swirl of snow ice surrounded her, particularly around the crystalline white staff in her hand.

Kelin pulled out a handful of Warden’s Talismans and activated them, surrounding one person after another with a faint golden shield that quickly faded to invisibility. 

He added one around himself as well.

Each talisman was equivalent to a Level 110 shielding spell, so one was enough unless something major appeared. They would absorb a solid blow before disintegrating.

The other three had prepared their spells and gear before stepping through and they were bright with mana and enchantments from their new gear. 

Kelin didn’t ask for the specifics, but he could see that most of it was around Level 80 and at the Uncommon grade with Professional crafting. 

He knew they each had one piece of First Evolution gear as well, although it would be hard for them to use, along with a few scrolls, talismans, and potions for support. 

That wasn’t too different from a new First Evolution team, so it was within the range of what was necessary for the dungeon, even if it was on the lighter side.

It would be enough if they were careful.

He would make up the rest.

As he finished setting the shields, they all looked to him to lead the way.

“The first thing is to find some of the wandering monsters,” he said. “We’ll deal with them and work on getting you levels as swiftly as possible. Once you’re up a bit higher, at least to 80, we’ll look for the challenges.”

Their levels were between 64-67 now, with Maro still in the lead, but that wouldn’t last for long.

He scanned the dungeon, sensing the mana concentrations.

“There are four signatures in here that mark a challenge and the final fight.” His tone was relaxed and he gave them a quick smile.

“We’ll go through them one by one. By the end, we’ll be capable of handling everything. Otherwise, we won’t need to worry about it anymore, but Celadon is going to have a hard time with us invading as undead.”

That got him a round of chuckles, since most adventurers shared a dark sense of humor when it came to dying in dungeons.

“Alright, let’s find some monsters,” he finished as he headed forward. 

The mana signatures in this dungeon were heavy in his mind, similar to the last challenge he’d faced. There was no warning from the Path about his Effective Level, so it shouldn’t get any harder.

The ruined temple’s entrance opened onto an abandoned city, one that was made of similar stonework. Cracked streets and the remains of towering buildings surrounded them on every side.

Kelin levitated to the top of a broken tower and took in the surrounding area to get an idea of what he was dealing with.

The city stretched for a dozen miles in every direction until it merged with the foothills of a distant mountain range. Its broken stones and patches of darkness were the only thing in sight, except for the rare bolts of purple lightning that crashed down on the horizon.

Sometimes the lightning struck the city as well, sending a wave of thunder through the stones. The impact made the entire area shudder as a wave of power crashed across it. It carried a sense of freezing death with it, so cold that it felt like it could freeze Kelin’s breath in his chest.

It wasn’t normal lightning, but rather some type of condensed necrotic energy. The level of that energy was so dense in this dungeon that it had turned into a storm.

His soulfire drove the cold away, but it made him check on the team. He would have to keep an eye on them and make sure they weren’t overwhelmed.

He turned his attention to the mana signatures he’d sensed and quickly found three scattered across the city. They were a long way off, but the city was vast enough to contain them all.

The final one was in the distance, off in the mountains to the north.

He jumped off the tower and floated back to the ground. The levitation spell made a golden flame swirl around him.

“It looks like the dungeon is mostly this ruined city,” he explained. “Three dungeon challenges are here and most of the monsters should be as well, scattered between the buildings or underneath them. It’s very large, so we’ll have to keep an eye out for ambushes.”

Maro hefted his axe and nodded, but all three of them were already wary, so there was no need to say more.

A golden mana shield formed around Kelin as he chose the closest challenge and headed toward it.

On the way here, he’d already decided on the general agenda for this dungeon.

The first thing was to go through the trash mobs and flood the team with experience as quickly as possible. 

There were usually a couple hundred mobs that wandered inside of a dungeon, and sometimes more. With all of them around Level 110, the team should get up to Level 80 or 90 quickly.  

Then he could give them some advice about preparing for their First Evolution.

Once that was taken care of, they could head into the challenges, where they would benefit as much as he would to improve their main abilities and set the strongest foundation. 

After that, they’d take stock of things and head toward the final fight.

By the time it was all done, they should be on the verge of the First Evolution, while he should be just over it, and the rewards would improve their future class choices.

If they were lucky, they might even make it to the First Evolution by the end.

Assuming things went well.

The other part of his agenda was to strengthen their connection as a team and to learn more about all of them, especially their backgrounds. 

He knew them fairly well by this point, especially when it came to their core characters, since he had seen them several times under the threat of death, but there were details to fill in. 

It was impossible that a Dwarf and a Winter Sylph would end up abandoned in Celadon and randomly choose to become adventurers.

Their families had to have some connections.

As for Maro, his story was easier to see, but there were still parts of it that hadn’t been revealed. Based on what he’d said, he was from a poor family in Cerith, but it wasn’t clear where he’d found the lucky break to become an adventurer.

Along with Kelin’s own advancement, helping these three to develop and finding out more about them was a decent goal.

He couldn’t bring back Irian or the life that he had before, but he could fill in the essence of this one with allies and purpose.

He had Yao and Naomi as apprentices, and if he had his way, he would eventually have three powerful allies as well, ones who could keep up with him.

It didn’t matter too much now, but when he reached the Sixth Evolution having a handful of allies might be critical. He was going to do his best to make sure they could reach it.

As they walked down the broken street, the buildings towered to the sides. Most of them reached twenty and thirty feet into the air, with half-crumbled walls and the frames of what had been large rose windows all that remained of their upper stories. 

Collapsed arches and fallen stones filled the street with rubble, making the foot tricky and slowing their progress. Meanwhile, the shadowy rain continued to fall in irregular waves.

It didn’t take long for a howl of fury to break the storm.

Two figures formed in the mist, racing toward them across the broken stones.

One was a shambling zombie covered with dark grey skin and exposed bones. Its body was larger than a human’s at eight feet tall and it had long, dark claws on its rotting fingers. Its eyes blazed with blue flames.

The other monster was a spectral being in a long black robe. Except for its glowing blue eyes, there was only a flash of pale darkness underneath the hood that was pulled over its head. It was just as tall as the zombie, but it had no legs, just the end of its robe that floated above the ground.

Gaius sensed the zombie first as it touched the stones, alerting Kelin to their presence, so he had enough time to analyze them as they approached.

Shadowed Zombie (108). 

Spectral Shadow Mage (112). 

The team had already prepared their tactics, so there was no need to say anything. 

Kelin’s hand flashed as he tossed the Soulfire Sigil into the air and he swiftly drew a ward circle on the ground. 

At the same time, Maro and Galin already knew where the circle would appear and they rushed to the front, while Serai hung back next to Kelin.

The zombie slammed into the ward an instant later, sending a web of dark cracks flaring through the soulfire. Kelin let out a breath of air as he felt the impact. 

He wasn’t using Blaze yet, so the monster’s force was barely within the range of what he could handle. If his abilities hadn’t been upgraded, or if the Soulfire Seal hadn’t been there, the ward would have shattered in another couple of blows like that.

Maro’s axe blazed with red flames as he swung it down at the zombie. A trail of fire seared through the air behind it.

Galin’s shield rose to match it, covered in an earthy yellow light, as he slammed it into the zombie’s leg and tried to knock it off balance.

Neither of the blows did much. 

The axe glanced off the zombie’s arm and only left a smoking line behind, while the shield blow made it stagger a few inches back.

A bolt of frost flew out from Serai’s staff, striking the shadow mage instead, but it disappeared into the darkness of the spectre’s robe without any obvious effect.

The spectre replied with a bolt of dark lightning that spiderwebbed across Kelin’s ward, making him hiss out a breath again. Another layer of cracks followed the lines of the spell.

A surge of soulfire fused the cracks back together, swiftly repairing the ward. 

Maro and Galin got the message and their next attacks were much stronger.

Their axes slammed into the zombie, digging an inch deep into its arm and leg, and a whirlwind of ice from Serai formed around both monsters. Jagged blades of translucent blue and white struck down at them as the storm spun.

Kelin focused on the shield as the three of them continued trading blows. 

Galin and Maro did their best, but their attacks barely harmed the undead. As time passed, they leapt forward and intercepted the zombie’s blows, blocking them before they could land on the shield.

Each time, they were hurled backward a dozen feet and they had to scramble to recover and get back inside Kelin’s ward.

Serai’s spells were the same. She tried to block blows with icy shields and to attack, but they shattered like paper in a storm.

It was to their credit that they kept at it and trusted in Kelin’s ward.

When he assessed that the team’s energy was under half, he sent a wave of Soul Paralysis across the area. 

The undead staggered back as they froze in place.

He followed up with two soul arrows that seared through the air and then a barrage of Soulfire Bolts. 

His spells did far more damage. 

Each Soulfire Bolt tore chunks out of the zombie and left smoking craters behind, while its bones sizzled and cracked, and the spectre began to disintegrate on itself as the spells tore apart its shadowy structure.

A few spells later, the zombie exploded into fragments of flesh and bone, while the wraith turned to ash.

He didn’t pay much attention to it. He just kept the ward up as he let Maro and Galin go forward to search for cores, and then everyone gathered back under the golden light.

His experience gain from those two monsters was meaningless, since it was split four ways and then divided with Gaius, but theirs was a different story.

For them, that was the equivalent of fighting two powerful dungeon bosses, or perhaps even more. Their expressions were a mix of relief and success.

“Three levels from that,” Maro said first. “I just hit 70.”

“Same here,” Galin agreed. “68 now.”

“Four for me,” Serai said. “I also just reached 68.”

“Rest up and we’ll keep going,” Kelin said with a chuckle. “Keep stressing your abilities on each one.”
This method was going to take a while and they would be exhausted by the end of every battle, but it was the best way. 

The good news was that he’d felt just a touch of improvement in his own abilities. Stressing his regular spells against First Evolution enemies without Blaze was productive.

They rested in place for a while until they were interrupted by another wandering shadow mage. Killing it netted them a couple more levels, and then they finished their recovery.

When they were ready, they headed deeper into the ruins.

The passage of time was marked by the shifting darkness of the sky, which slowly became deeper than before, and one wandering mob after another fell to their advance. 

Kelin’s expression was calm, but he could sense the surges of excitement from the other three as their souls glowed.

Their confidence improved with each fight, soaring upward as they saw how effective they could be, and their blows became stronger and surer.

Now and again, however, confidence wasn’t enough to save them.

Maro slipped up trying to block a zombie’s slash and his talisman shields shattered into golden shards. A line of deep furrows ripped across his stomach and chest from the undead’s claws and he flew across the street and slammed into a fallen wall with bone-breaking force.

Galin charged into the breach and a heavy shield rocked the zombie back, but it wasn’t enough to make it lose its footing. A second claw swept across and hurled Galin across the street in the other direction, surrounded by shards of torn metal.

The zombie lumbered toward Galin and Serai tried to help. She leapt forward as an icy wall formed in front of the undead, and a storm of winter magic surrounded her as her hair crackled, but the undead shrugged off the cold and shattered the wall with two blows. 

Kelin watched from the side, waiting for them to recover, and he nodded as he saw Galin roll to his feet.

The dwarf was staggering, but he was back up.

Across from him, Maro was also trying to find his feet, but he was swaying as the front half of his body was covered in blood.

Kelin flicked another talisman shield at each of them, but injuries were also part of training, so he only used one. 

It was enough to keep them from dying in a single hit.

The three of them struggled against the zombie for another ten minutes before Kelin stepped in and killed it.

Then they gathered back inside the ward to recover.

None of them complained that Kelin hadn’t done more. They knew why they were here and they’d all agreed on the best training method. 

If they wanted to get better class options and full experience from the dungeon, they had to earn it. 

Healing potions flowed like water as they rested under the golden light.

Kelin kept a close eye on the surroundings and did his best to leverage Gaius’s senses and his own to guide them from one small group of monsters to another.

He was prepared to Wildfire everything if anything larger showed up, and he would have liked to do it to build up his Aura, but it was more important to give the experience to the others. 

If he killed everything that quickly, the Path would almost certainly send the majority of the experience to him, with barely anything for the rest of the team.

They had to contribute.

Besides the zombies and shadow mages, other types of undead appeared one after the other.

They were a mix of things, from serpents with dark scales and venomous fangs that leapt out of shadows in the blink of an eye to stranger versions of skeletons, specters, and zombies.

Shadowscale Serpent. Level 110.

Nightshade Zombie. Level 112. 

Violetrot Skeleton. Level 112.

Moonbane Specter. Level 113.

Direnight Wraith. Level 115.

Their cores dropped like shining dark jewels, while necrotic gems, mana crystals, and the occasional piece of equipment accompanied it.

All of them had some variant of Shadow, Ice, and Wind affinities, and almost half were wraiths and shades, which seemed to be a favorite of the dungeon.

They seemed to come from the same general type of undead as the Deathrot skeletons he’d encountered before, but their affinities were different. 

As a Direnight Wraith fell, it left behind a glowing Shadow-affinity elemental crystal. It was a high-grade one, which got Kelin’s attention. 

He studied it for a moment before he stored it away, since it was rare for high-grade crystals like that to drop in dungeons.

They made it through about thirty monsters before everyone was feeling exhausted, so Kelin began to carve a more stable set of wards into the stone. Gaius helped by smoothing out the surface and making it suitable for an enchantment.

If he’d been alone, he would have dug his usual earth hideaway, but he doubted the others wanted to be trapped underground if a wraith showed up. 

Galin might have liked it, but he would have been the only other one.

He didn’t have a good way to carry them through the stone, since Gaius’s movement ability only worked for him. He would have had to open a tunnel, which defeated some of the purpose of the hideaway.

The four of them took turns resting with two on watch while the other two rested.

Galin was the first on watch with Kelin.

The experience had been good for them all day, and even though it slowed down with every level, they’d gained around fifteen levels so far.

The dwarf was up to Level 82. Serai was the same, while Maro was the first to reach Level 83. 

The level difference between the three had never been very large. With another day of this, it would probably disappear completely.

With those levels came some ability upgrades to Elite, so their strength had noticeably advanced. They were working on other abilities, but their speed wasn’t as good as Kelin’s.

He chatted about a few idle things with the dwarf, learning about his history.

He found out that Galin’s family had originally been from Baralis and part of the dwarven clans there, but they were a merchant clan and some of them had moved to Celadon about a hundred  years before.

His parents had been part of that move and were still working for the clan in Cerith. They had a store there that sold armor and jewelry. 

Their home was stable and had deep roots.

Galin had grown up on stories of their travels to Celadon and the monsters they’d seen along the way, and so he’d always wanted to see what else he could make of himself.

Once he came of age at thirty, he joined the adventurers’ guild. His parents hadn’t fully approved, but they hadn’t stopped him either. 

Dwarves had a glorious history of powerful warriors and every merchant clan needed protection.

“One day, I’ll see what I can bring them to make their eyes go wide,” Galin said with a chuckle. “And I’ll have stories to tell around the fire that are even wilder than theirs. This is a step in the right direction.”

“That it is.” Kelin chuckled in agreement.

There were many pauses in the conversation, and as he considered what they’d found in the dungeon so far, he pulled out the shadow elemental crystal from the last wraith.

He turned it over in his hand as he studied it, examining the flow of energy inside.

The quality was higher than he would have expected and the crystal was extremely stable.

Both were rare.

It was pure Shadow energy, but there were many subtypes to that element, so he searched his memory as he considered which fit.

It was icy to the touch and it had a distinct sense of decay about it, which wasn’t surprising since it had come from the undead, but the intensity of that feeling was greater than it should have been for undead at this level.

It was like the shadow crystal wanted to make everything around it decay, turning it to rot and death until it faded away into the shadows. 

The interior was a dense pool of energy that flowed like air or water, moving under his attention, and sometimes it surged against the exterior of the crystal like it wanted to destroy his hand.

The more he studied it, the deeper his frown grew. 

Shadow wasn’t inherently an element that held decay inside, although it bordered it.

It wasn’t impossible for this type of affinity to form inside a dungeon, but it was strange. He would have expected a dungeon-formed Shadow crystal to be more pure. 

It reminded him of some of the shards formed when a higher Law interacted with loose energy, which would change to match.

In particular, it reminded him of a figure he’d heard about, but had never met.

That shouldn’t have been the case, but if it was, then this dungeon had been formed from a ruin that was not good news. Perhaps it was even a true Remnant, something that the Path had sealed away.

There were powerful lords among the undead, creating a distinct hierarchy as they ascended in power. 

The vampire scion he’d killed before wouldn’t qualify to reach even the lowest rank of those beings, even if it had been at the Sixth Evolution.

Each of those Lords had a unique Law, some of which were very famous. 

According to the fragmented myths that reached this galaxy, they were tied in with the origin of the undead.

The Lord of Decay was one of them.

He was one of the enemy Immortals at the Seventh Evolution.

Although the sovereign forbade immortals from entering the galaxy, they were still beings at the Seventh Evolution. 

Some of them had come through the Chaos Gates before the sovereign’s command, and their influence could still find its way in from time to time.

That was why it had never been possible to completely destroy the undead.

Immortal Forms existed eternally unless another Immortal found a way to shatter them, and their galaxy was weak in that regard.

And beyond those Lords of the Undead, there were rumors of an even more powerful being, the source of all Undeath and someone who could rival the Sovereign of Silver Chaos.

Kelin tapped his finger on the crystal, but eventually he gave up on trying to pry more secrets out of it. 

He sealed it away in a web of soulfire runes and tossed it back into his storage, and then he returned to his watch.

He would have to collect more examples before he could decide.

If there was something from the Lord of Decay here, he would cross that bridge when he came to it.

If he could.

When the watch finished, he rested fitfully throughout the night, and he only allowed himself to sleep because Gaius was on watch.