Cultivation a fantasy li.., p.29
Cultivation: A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure (Battle Mage Farmer Book 3), page 29
The Master of the Blade clutched a long awl in each hand, and his abnormally long tongue licked over his lips under the half mask he wore. With his eyes fixed on Ellie, he had just begun to lift one of his awls when a streak of silver suddenly filled his vision. Unable to understand what was going on, all the Master of the Blade knew was that the silver streak was growing larger and larger until it seemed to fill his vision. Strangely there was no sense of danger accompanying it, but countless years of walking through dangerous situations on a knife’s edge caused the legendary Rogue to abandon any thought of continuing his attack.
Retreating with every ounce of his strength, the Master of the Blade still failed to escape John’s stabbing sword, and a lancing pain shot through his eye as the point of the sword slipped through one of the eye holes of his mask. A wretched scream burst from his throat as blue flame erupted on his face, transforming half his mask to ash in an instant. Without hesitation, he crushed a token at his waist and suddenly his body seemed to be sucked backward into a tiny hole that appeared in the air.
John, whose eyes blazed with blue flame, saw the tiny gate open in the air and slashed with his sword, barely missing it as the spatial portal winked out. Spinning, he was about to rush back toward the Master of the Skull, but the legendary Necromancer wasn’t going to wait around for him to attack again and activated his own teleportation artifact. John still got within five feet of the evil Mage before he vanished, and the last thing John saw was the naked terror in his eyes. Realizing he had lost them, John sucked in a breath, forcing the mana that bubbled up in him back down, locking it away tightly.
[+1 Doom Point.]
[The apocalypse draws closer.]
Suppressing the curse that rose to his lips, John took a second to get himself back under control. It had only taken him a moment to realize what had happened, despite never having encountered anything like it. As soon as he’d seen the strange hole that formed in reality behind the Master of the Blade, John’s Astral Insight skill had identified the hole as manifesting from a similar set of components as his Summon Water spell, meaning it was a dimensional portal of some sort. It had only taken a moment to recognize the similarities to a portal stone spell, causing John to surmise they were up against some sort of one-time-use artifact that teleported the user away from danger.
The question is, where did they go?
With his mana resealed, John dropped to the ground, creating a small crater as he slammed into the dirt. Ellie, who was still trying to wrap her head around what had just happened, ran over, her eyes wide and her cheeks pale.
“John! Are you okay?”
“Of course he’s okay,” Katrine said, flying down to join them. “But I want to know where they went.”
“I’m still working on it,” John said, his eyes closed. “The artifacts they crushed were clearly created by Kythov and the portals carried his mana, so I’m guessing they’re bound to his location.”
A shift in the mana behind Ellie caused all three of them to turn toward it, weapons ready to hand, but before they could attack they saw Thomas. His sword and dagger were in his hand, but he sheathed them when he saw John’s sword wasn’t drawn.
“I’m sorry, sir, I lost the Master of the Coil. We were fighting but he suddenly vanished.”
“That’s fine. The same thing happened to us. Katrine, can you give me an assessment of the state of the valley? And maybe a count on the undead?”
Nodding, Katrine shot up into the air, her arms spread out as she steadied herself with the wind that whipped up around her. Slowly turning in the air, she grimaced and steadily came back down.
“There are undead everywhere. And it looks like their numbers are still growing.”
“We need to find Kythov and eliminate him,” John said, turning to Ellie. “It’s time to head back underground.”
CHAPTER 37
Dodging past the dirty, cracked fingernails reaching for his cheek, John stabbed his dagger up at an angle, sinking the long blade through the zombie’s gaping mouth and sending a surge of mana into it to fry its brain. He was getting better and better at condensing the mana around him on the fly, but he had to admit it was only a fraction as effective as his own mana. However, considering that he only had fourteen more doom points before he hit one hundred, he couldn’t afford to use his mana on small fry like this.
Up ahead he could see Katrine floating in the air, her Wind Blades cutting apart undead all around them. Occasionally she would throw out a larger spell to try and gain some space, but it was clear she was conserving her energy as much as possible for the coming fight against Kythov and his minions. Thomas and Ellie were jogging along underneath Katrine, fighting against the zombies that made it through her spells.
“Are you sure we’re headed the right way?” Katrine asked, glancing down at Ellie with narrowed eyes. “It seems like all we’re doing is heading into the densest part of the zombie horde.”
“Yes,” Ellie replied after a moment of consideration. “The entrance that will take us to the door is in the center of the undead.”
“Katrine, can you clear them?” John asked, forcing a zombie back with a heavy kick.
“Of course I can,” Katrine said with a snort. “But they’re endless. If I have to keep clearing them all the way down, I’ll have no mana left for fighting against the Masters or Kythov.”
Frowning, John examined the place they were headed. It had taken them nearly an hour to cross the valley, heading toward the mountains below Wolf Den and the large caves where the storm wyrm was said to reside. Ellie was getting directions from the spectre who was hiding in her shadow along with information from her spirits, and they both pointed to these caves as the best entrance to the underground cave system. The problem was the veritable sea of undead milling around between them and the cave entrance.
Zombies stumbled everywhere, so tightly packed they constantly bumped into each other as they wandered around the cave entrance. Though each individual zombie was pathetically weak compared to the four members of the party, they appeared in such numbers that John estimated it would take at least a few hours to kill them all. Casually stabbing his blade into the head of the zombie who he’d kicked over, John frowned.
“And there isn’t another way in?” he asked Ellie.
“No, the other passages have been collapsed by Kythov’s forces. At least, that’s what Almar says,” Ellie replied, her eyes continuing to scan the sea of undead before them.
“Of course they have,” John said grimly, beheading another zombie with a backward slash of his sword.
It looks like the only option is to burn through them. But that means gaining more Doom Points. And after I kill all these zombies out here, there will still be a ton of them in the passage to deal with. I’ll be lucky if I still have a few seconds by the time we reach the place where Kythov is, if that.
Torn, John tried to come up with a better solution, but even with his Mental Model skill operating at full capacity, he couldn’t figure out a good way to deal with the undead besides unleashing his mana. Every time he looked at the monsters milling around he could feel a dull ache in his heart. Ever since he’d noticed the insignia stitched into the sleeve of one of the zombies he had seen more and more clues, identifying this massive horde as the dead from the many battlefields scattered around the world.
It pained him to destroy their bodies so completely, as he believed in honoring the dead, and in many ways the soldiers who had been raised to undeath were innocent. Yet that didn’t stop him from cutting down any zombies that got close and certainly wouldn’t stop him from destroying all of them if that was the only path forward. Letting out a sigh, he lifted his hand and was about to unseal his mana again when he heard Katrine, who was still flying above the party’s heads, let out a shout.
“John! There’s something coming down the mountain!”
Looking up, John’s eyes widened as he heard a sound he’d never expected to hear. A long, eerie howl stretched across the valley, echoed from the mountains all around. Dropping the hand he’d raised, John watched the forested mountainside intently. Above him, Katrine was the first to catch sight of the black wave rushing down the side of the mountain, under the trees, like a flood rolling toward the valley floor. The sound of paws hitting the forest floor, normally so quiet they were impossible to hear, beat a rumbling tattoo, causing the party to feel as if the entire valley was shaking.
“Are those all wolves?”
“It looks like it,” John said, a bit of a smile crossing his face as he answered Katrine’s incredulous question.
In numbers that nearly equaled the zombie horde, large black wolves sprinted out of the forest, their teeth and eyes gleaming in the moonlight as they launched themselves at the zombies on the outskirts of the horde, pulling them to the ground and biting through their necks and spines. The howl only seemed to grow louder with every second ,and John thought he caught a silver light gleaming in the wolves’ eyes, almost as if the moon had been awoken in them.
Recognizing this new threat, the zombie horde turned and shuffled toward the attacking wolves, reaching out with grasping fingers even as the army of wolves slammed into them. Instantly the entire area fell into a deadly morass as the wolves wove through the zombies, knocking them over and chewing through their spines. While the zombies all acted independently, the wolves coordinated their attacks, giving them a huge advantage in the fight.
An abomination who had been stomping around the entrance to the cave let out an enraged roar and charged into the wolf army, but the wolves were much too clever to allow themselves to be caught and darted away, leaving the abomination standing by himself. That simply infuriated the abomination even further and he let out another roar. This time, however, that roar was answered with a deep growl as half a dozen wolves that were easily twice the size of the regular wolves dashed out of the forest and pounced on the abomination, their giant teeth ripping the monster’s skin to shreds.
Behind the large wolves, another massive wolf made his way out of the forest and crossed the battlefield with swift leaps. Coming to a stop in front of John and the others, the wolf abruptly shrank down as Haver the Wolf King jumped from his back. Giving the two ladies a bow and Thomas a nod, Haver looked at John with a grin.
“You looked like you were a bit outnumbered.”
“Hah, you could say that,” John said, holding out his hand. “Thanks for coming. I thought you’d left the valley already.”
Chuckling, Haver clasped wrists with John.
“I did, but only to gather the pack. This is my home as much as anyone, and I won’t roll over and flee as some scummy Necromancer tries to take it over.”
“Your help is timely and welcome,” Katrine said, floating down to land next to John. “We need to get into the caves, but there are too many zombies.”
“Caves? Again? Ugh. Why is it always caves? Fine.”
Lifting a small whistle he had on a string around his neck, Haver blew a few short blasts of air into it, causing the wolves attacking the zombies to suddenly spit apart, dashing to the right and left. Because they were mixed in with the zombies, their abrupt movement ended up causing the zombies to move as well, drawn away by their fleeing enemies. As John and the others watched, the path to the cave grew relatively clear, only a few zombies still stumbling around.
Another whistle drew over the six large wolves who had been brutalizing the abomination, and they charged toward the cave, splitting into two groups of three to take down two more abominations. Dropping the whistle, Haver lifted his wolf tooth club and grinned at John.
“Ready when you are.”
“Let’s go!”
With John leading the way, the party dashed through the newly opened path in the melee between the wolves and the zombies, heading for the entrance to the cave system. Another abomination lumbered out of the cave as they were getting close, but John didn’t stop for even a moment. Instead, he sped up. Ramming into a zombie, he stabbed it with his sword, causing it to fall backward. With a leap, his right foot landed on its chest as it fell, using it as a platform to gain even more height. Flying through the air, he cast two Flame Arrows that spun to life on either side of his body.
A slash of his dagger sent them forward, burning through the abomination and the zombies behind it, even as his sword stabbed through its eye. Tearing his blade out of the top of its head with brute force, he stomped down with his left foot, crushing its chest and sending it tumbling to the ground. Landing without a stumble, he ran for the cave entrance. There were still a few other zombies surging out of the entrance, but a shadow passed John and the zombies simply fell apart as Thomas’ sword flashed.
Behind John and Thomas, Ellie and Haver hurried to follow while Katrine watched their backs. Her Wind Blades cleaved flesh and bone alike, making it exceptionally easy for her to destroy the undead that tried to chase after them. Unlike the cave they had crawled out of earlier that night, this cave was large, nearly twenty feet across, and its floor and sides were smoothed out, almost as if something had rubbed down all of the sharp pieces of stone. Continuing to move quickly, the party encountered hundreds of undead as they raced down the passages, moving deep into the earth.
Ellie wasn’t bothering to fight at all, instead communicating with her spirits to warn the party about what was coming up further down the tunnel and relaying directions from Almar, the spectre hiding in her shadow. Next to her Haver protected her with his wolf tooth club, crushing any zombies that got close. He had seven wolves with him who were padding along quietly beside the group, guarding the party’s flanks. Katrine was also with Haver and Ellie, working on restoring as much mana as she could before they found Kythov.
John and Thomas, at the front of the party, killed zombies as they moved quickly through the tunnel system. While there were many fewer undead in the tunnel than there were out in the valley outside, they were still packed pretty tightly, and the deeper they went, the slower the party was forced to travel. Both John and Thomas were excellent swordsmen, however, and with every flash of their blades, another zombie would crash to the ground, allowing the party to get closer to Kythov.
After nearly two hours of running the party finally reached their destination, a large cavern with a massive castle planted in the middle. Huge stone walls rose from the cave floor and towers loomed above them, nearly disappearing into the gloom of the top of the cavern. Set in the center of the thick stone wall was an open gate that looked like a gaping mouth, making the entire fortress feel like a beast waiting to devour the party. Even in the gloom John could see zombies and ghouls everywhere at the entrance to the fortress, fighting against an unseen enemy. However, the grim feeling the stone castle gave off wasn’t what caused John to pause. Instead, it was the intense mana signature he felt from the center of the fortress.
He could sense the dark mana that covered the artifacts Kythov had made permeating the fortress, but mixed in with it was a strangely pure mana source, causing John to pause. The pure mana was elusive, and every time John felt like he was about to grasp it the mana escaped his grasp. There was a shifting sense to it, as if it both existed and didn’t exist at the same time. A terrible curiosity woke in John’s chest, but he resisted the urge to race ahead.
“This looks like it. Kythov is in there,” John said, looking around at the party.
“As is the Master of the Coil,” Thomas said, his eyes fixed on the open gate. “I can sense one of my blades in his body.”
“If the Master of the Coil is in there, then I would expect the others are as well,” Katrine said, frowning slightly. “How are we going to deal with them?”
“I’ll deal with Kythov,” John replied.
“I can handle the Master of the Blade,” Thomas said, causing the others to look at him. “The Master of the Coil regenerates too quickly for my attacks to do lasting damage. Whoever fights him needs to be able to deal constant damage. He doesn’t rely on a magical shield, instead using his body to block attacks.”
“Sounds like a fight up my alley,” Katrine said with a savage grin. “Then that leaves the Master of the Skull.”
Seeing the party looking at him, Haver’s eyebrows rose and he shrugged.
“You want me to fight a legendary Mage? By myself? Are you crazy?”
“I can help,” Ellie said, raising her hand. “Between you, me, and Sigvald, we should be able to at least keep him occupied until one of the others is free.”
“If I’m honest, this sounds like a terrible idea,” Haver said, groaning. “But yeah, I guess that’s all we got. Fine, Ellie and I will handle the Master of the Skull.”
His eyes still fixed on the castle’s entrance where he could see hundreds of shadows flitting about, John nodded. He would much rather just burn through the whole thing, but there was something he couldn’t quite put a finger on that was bothering him. Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he focused on the upcoming fight.
“Ellie, can you give us a sense of the layout we’re dealing with?”
“Yes,” Ellie replied, calling up her earth spirits. “Almar says her people are fighting throughout the castle but avoiding legendary class holders. They don’t have any way to fight against them. There are five chambers in total, each one with two passages that split off to the right and left. But our destination should be in the fifth chamber. My spirits won’t get close because they’re afraid of whoever’s in that room.”
