CC5 ~ 41!

~ 41 ~

The Reductionist now had a dilemma. Should he go and report his discovery right away… or should he enter the tunnel system and try to learn more information? There were pros and cons to each of the options. Namely, if he left the cave, the door would open and light would shine through and into the tunnels. The Elves might be given a chance to close this off.

But, if Joe was fast enough, he might be able to get an entire battalion of Dwarves back here. He would need to get out at night, and… he looked at the dial that still showed a ‘four’. If the room shrinking back down was any indication, he was stuck in here for at least three and a half more days, unless he went out through the tunnel. Joe sat and watched the hole for another few minutes, but he didn’t see any more Elves. That was unsurprising. He guessed it was… early. Very early. If the sun was going down—cut off by the mountain—around four in the afternoon the previous day, then it made sense that most rational people would be asleep.

“If I’m going to go… it needs to be now.” Joe motioned for Salgathor—his new name for the Slag Elemental—to hurry over and start melting the wall. While he waited for an opening large enough to fit through, he cracked open his two Ritual Orbs and placed Common ranked Cores in them.

Ritual Orb of Corify. Charge remaining: 1,112/1,112. Cost per hit: 65. Cooldown: 4 Seconds.

Ritual Orb of Cone of Cold. Charge remaining: 1,545/1,545. Cost per hit: 195. Cooldown: 24 Seconds.

“That’s… expensive.” Joe winced at the hefty cost associated with using the now on-hit effects. “Cone of Cold can only be used eight times before it drains the Core?”

Slagathor finished melting into the tunnel and squeezed through. Joe gave the path enough time to cool down, then jumped through and started walking down the unlit corridor. The elemental started rolling alongside him, and Joe wavered between letting it guard the area, or just going it alone. “Hey… I’ve decided that I’m gonna need my mana, so I need you to go. If I call out into your plane another time, is there a way that we can work together again?”

Feelings of acceptance came back to him, so Joe cut the flow of mana between them. Since the terms of his side of the bargain were no longer being met, the elemental instantly vanished, like a soap bubble popping. Now down a protector, the human rushed over to the spot where he had seen the Elf vanish. He felt around, listening to his Hidden Sense, until he found the spot where he could take control of the point. He didn’t activate it just yet, instead opting to use its function.

The point was set to ‘open travel’, likely due to capturing Dwarves and carting around massive creatures made of rock. A message appeared, asking if he wanted to travel to ‘point Qfzt1554’.

“Don’t mind if I do.” Joe stepped through just as he blinked, and found that he was sweating right though his Neutrality Aura. A low red light filled the area, and the heat…! Quickly searching for a place to hide and figure out his next move, Joe spotted something that boggled his mind. Two things, actually.

He was clearly inside an active volcano. That was a pretty big deal. It explained both the light and the heat. Frankly, ever since someone had mentioned a volcano a few days previous, he was almost certain that he would eventually go into one. The second chunk of news was a bit more alarming: he could see an entire fort within the cavern. If this was the volcano he thought it was, Gramma’s Shoe, then it meant that there was an Elven outpost practically right next to the Dwarven capital city!

“How? How could this go undetected?” Joe breathed the words softly, not trusting that he could keep quiet enough at even a low speaking volume. His mind was buzzing with possibilities, but the main thought spinning around was that the Elven race were masters of illusion magic. Joe had only heard one thing about the most active volcano in the entire Zone, namely that it was so dangerous that no one should ever go there. Had that always been a lie, or had something changed?

“They must have this place layered in illusions so thick that you can swim through them!” Joe’s eyes were so wide that it felt like they were about to fall out. He was glad that he had come here; there was no chance that they could have found this place if the Elves had shut down the fast travel points. He was frazzled, unable to even think about how he could alert the Dwarves or stop this…

“Wait.” Joe peered at the fort in the distance. “Wait, wait, wait. That many illusions…? There has to be a permanent structure supporting something that powerful. I can do something about that.”

The entire area was a series of lava flows that had hardened, and drifting ash had settled in thick drifts. There were plenty of niches where Joe could go to hide and get off the main path. As long as he avoided any actual lava… or was it magma? He was technically underground, so he felt that it would be magma, but it was on the surface… “What am I doing?”

Illusion Breaker (Ring) has come into effect!

Illusion broken through: Fae Beckoning.

“So there are defenses, even in here.” Joe realized that he was standing up and staring at the lava in the distance, so he tossed himself back to the ground and started trying to blend in. His bright white clothing and reflective head wasn’t helping him, so Joe did the only reasonable thing he could do: he turned off Neutrality Aura and rolled around in the volcanic ash that was covering everything. Sweat started to run down his body right away, and he began to itch terribly. “Whoo, boy. I’ve gotten really spoiled from being clean at all times.”

Joe started to creep along a low patch, sliding forward using only his elbows and knees to maintain the lowest profile possible. The wall of the fort wasn’t too terribly far away, maybe a tenth of a kilometer? The fort itself was roughly a kilometer from the stone wall in all directions, but the travel point was luckily far closer. His path couldn’t be straight, as that would stand out to anyone that happened to be on guard. An hour into his snail-paced scuttling, he started hearing voices and the heavy grinding of stone that signified Earth Elementals in the distance.

“How could they think that a Dwarf saw through the grand illusion? I refuse to put those mongrels in my eyes!” A high-pitched, arrogant voice echoed over the empty space. “Even if they had broken through into the tunnels, there’s no way they could have come through here. They’d have been caught staring at the shifting patterns of the lava on the ceiling by now!”

“The Lady Elfreeda is gnashing her teeth over this failure, Journeyman.” Another voice cut off the first. “We should have closed the way to the caves a week ago. We have plenty of test subjects, and the illusions have proven to be perfect. The only reason they stayed open is the rank lethargy of the ‘Helper’ she found. Who forgets to close the abyssal door when we are this close to a successful strike at the heart of the short ones?”

“I still say that the Dwarf in that cave must have incinerated itself. The entire room was practically melted, as was the opening and path in a straight line. The wall to escape was still closed, and the Dwarves have no idea how to use any travel system other than the option provided by the fortresses; that Dwarf is long dead,” the first voice petulantly complained.

“Still, her orders aren’t something we can ignore.”

There was more to the conversation, but they had been moving fast enough that Joe had needed to strain his ears just to hear everything that he had. His progress had come to a complete stop; he wasn’t sure if the earth elementals would be able to detect him if he was moving and causing vibrations. Eventually, Joe had no choice but to start crawling again and hope the thick coating of ash prevented the elementals from detecting him. He was close enough to the unmanned wall at this point that he doubted anyone would expect him to be here, but if they were searching carefully… they would eventually find him.

Issue resolved!

The human had to grab his mouth and throat to prevent a scream from spilling out when the random fanfare and bugles started playing in his head.

Your complaint about the new ‘intent’ system factoring into kills has been resolved in your favor! After extensive review, it was shown that the deadly rituals you use instead of commonplace effects are more similar to a trapmaker or rogue’s ability to use environmental effects. No longer will you need to worry about variation rituals; just clean or murder, all in one, to your heart’s content!

While future actions—or wide-scale devastation released upon a Zone—may result in a different outcome or secondary analysis, you will be rewarded for finding and reporting this issue upon completing any future quest.

So long as the reward meets the certain criteria, it will be applied multiple times. For instance, a quest rewarding you with a thousand experience may also give you a thousand class experience!

Breathing heavily, he dismissed the notification as quickly as possible. There was nothing he could do with that information right now, but it still gave him a small thrill to see something resolve in his favor when it came to the system. Looking up at the wall he was practically huddled against, Joe raised himself to a crouching position and shifted around until he was fairly certain that no one would see him.

The gate was a solid distance away, and he hadn’t seen a single Elf walking the walls. That may have changed since they had gone on alert, but he was going to have to chance it at some point. Now was as good a time as any. Eyeing the wall, he got into the proper position and jumped. He blew out nearly a hundred mana in an attempt to make a smooth landing, but he ended up only reaching a third of the way up the forty foot wall.

He fell and landed in an ignoble pile, kicking up a cloud of ash with his impact. “Well… plan B. Been wanting to try this for a while, so why not now?”

Joe pulled a single Ritual Orb out of his ring, and tossed it into the air. Up, up… he stopped it about five feet under the height he had reached last time, which was marked by a streak of black soot. “Okay, keep the orb in that spot, land on it, and jump again. Don’t think, just do!”

Air rushed past his face, and he kept his eyes locked on the orb as he sailed up. His right foot landed on the orb, which started to drop almost instantly, but he managed to kick off it hard enough to get another third up toward the top of the wall. Another orb was summoned under his foot, and he kicked off that as well. Over the wall he went, rolling to be as flat as possible. Just as he arced over the peak of the barrier, he managed to lock his eyes on the orbs before they hit the ground and were buried in ash. In a moment, both orbs sailed up to his hand and into his ring.

Skill increase: Aerial Acrobatics (Beginner III).

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” Joe whispered at the notification with a massive grin on his face. That had been a rush. He glanced around the battlements to ensure there wasn’t a patrol coming, then turned his gaze down into the unexpectedly massive interior of the fortress. “Oh, celestial feces. This is a major fort, isn’t it?”