Chapter 328 - The Guardian of the Ironclad Abyss V

Sophia gritted her teeth and backed away from her foe as the ice spread from her fingers. The freezing cold slithered down her forearm and robbed everything it touched of all its function. The affected hand was unmoving; none of the muscles beneath her elbow responded to any of her commands. Her magic was just as heavily impaired. The limb refused to accept her mana, no matter how forcefully she tried to push it through. She was clearly open to attack, but her allies stepped in and covered her retreat. The elf unleashed a hail of arrows, and the fish-shaped dwarf put his body between them. It was a strategy that had worked on every other opponent, but the seemingly reliable arrows bounced right off their foe. It was not as if the mage had held back. He had thrown a talisman and created a barrage with over a thousand bolts within it. And yet, there was no apparent effect. They harmlessly bounced off its armour, leaving not so much as a scratch.

The dwarf invested more than just a talisman and went all in right off the bat. Knowing that his flesh could easily be replaced, he catapulted himself at the enemy with his sword-like nose extended. He activated every bonus that his body knew. His spear grew sharper and harder. Magic poured from the tip of his blade and covered his frame in a protective layer. His beard—his real body—pitched in as well. He bolstered the corpse’s strength and greatly increased the precision of his kinetic vision. It was an attack that far exceeded that of the body’s original owner.

And yet, it was completely ineffective.

He was caught by the enemy’s blade in the midst of his charge and split perfectly in half. Neither his magical barrier nor his physical enhancements amounted to any sort of reasonable defence. The shieldlance cleaved right through him regardless.

But Enrique’s assault was far from over. Detaching himself from his host, the living beard possessed one of the skeletons nearby and engaged her again. He led with a flurry of blows, a perfectly executed barrage performed with the centaur’s spear. But he failed to mar his foe. A flicker of the shieldlance saw his weapon repelled.

His efforts amounted to little more than a brief window of opportunity—a window that Krail immediately moved to seize. Having realized the target's threat level, he immediately raised his staff like a bow and unleashed his ars magna. It was the kind that required a lengthier cast, but the words in his chant were spoken so quickly that they seemed to blur together. The magic circle was completed just as swiftly. It was centred around a hexagram, with each of its sides made of one of his verses. Written in ancient runes, they came together to form a circuit through which his mana could flow.

The projectile born of the magic circle was at least nominally an arrow, but the tip was too large and heavy, with an extra bevel in the middle to give it two pairs of edges. Likewise, the feathering was enhanced to a ludicrous degree. Rather than a single plume taken from a single bird, it was adorned with a set of wings that grew from the middle of its shaft. And then, at the tail end, the feet of a crow formed the silhouette of a bird in flight. But despite its avian appearance and its almost spear-like size, it was undoubtedly a weapon that embodied the concept of an arrow.

The projectile was guaranteed to strike exactly where its archer demanded. The act of unleashing it, in and of itself, was what created and assured the foregone conclusion of its target’s penetration.

That was its greatest strength. As well as its greatest weakness.

Because the caster had incorrectly deducted that a skeletal mage could only have been a lich.

Krail had ordered the arrow to track and pierce the stone that was its core. But it had no such part. And so the arrow did nothing. It sat exactly where it was constructed, leaving the caster equal parts stupefied and open to attack.

The supposed lich, however, ignored the opportunity. It leapt across the room and chased Sophia down instead. The landshark could only grimace as the skeleton’s blade shattered her frozen arm. But bearing with the pain, she dug her feet into the ground, charged her muscles, and retaliated with a rising uppercut. The attack was backed with all of her overwhelming speed. It was too fast for even the landshark’s eyes. And somehow too slow to make up for her lack of range.

One backstep was all it took for the skeleton to avoid the blow.

The counter that followed swept across her chest. It had enough power behind it to rend her bone, but she managed to survive it. Sophia stumbled backwards with her remaining hand raised in front of her and only her clothes slightly torn.

There was a glowing sash hidden beneath her uniform, revealed thanks to the outerwear’s destruction. Every few seconds, it pulsed like a heart and exerted its presence on the world around it. There was enough magic moving through the item for the skeleton to raise its guard in case and brace for a powerful attack—an attack that never quite came.

The relic, House Ray’esce’s heirloom, was not offensive in nature. Its sole purpose was to protect and heal its wearer. And that was why the seventh pulse restored the kelpfin’s arm. It wasn’t as gory or savage as a Cadrian soldier’s active regeneration. Her flesh didn’t bubble, and a bloody limb didn’t suddenly sprout from the stump where the last had been before. Rather, a veil of glowing mana extended from her shoulder, took the shape of the missing part, and seamlessly placed it back within the world.

Sophia jumped into action even before the process was complete. Practically roaring at the top of her lungs, she pushed forward, into the skeleton’s range, and engaged with a flurry of punches and kicks. Again, her opponent evaded her attack and retaliated with a sweep of the weapon. Though her instincts screamed for her to guard it, the landshark avoided the trap with a twist and dove past the blade.

She aimed for the centaur’s legs. A straight punch dented the metal skirt and another nearly broke through, but the undead horse batted her away with her weapon before she could pierce the ironclad defence.

It looked like she had made some progress at least, but the metal undid its bends; the centaur’s skirt returned to normal before Sophia hit the ground.

That was when the other two finally caught up. Enrique was charging with his spear extended, while Krail grabbed ahold of his magical arrow and transformed his body into the vessel for its delivery.

They closed in from the centaur’s rear flanks, forming a perfect triangle with no room to escape. Sophia, likewise, charged up an attack of her own. With one hand supporting the other, she fired a blast of arcane magic. Her raw mana was hammered straight towards her target, a bright red flash as wide as a person was tall.

For a moment, it looked like their attacks had landed. But when the dust cleared, the skeleton emerged unscathed.

Krail had been stabbed through the gut before his arrow could land, and Enrique had his lance parried and his face grabbed. The two of them were repurposed into a pair of shields, used to block the attack that Sophia had so kindly unleashed.

Smoke drifted off their charred, broken bodies as they collapsed at the centaur’s feet. Sophia took a breath and lowered her stance. The dwarf would be fine, but Krail was in need of rescue. Any moment now, and the undead could easily finish him by tearing its blade through the side of its body.

Fortunately, it didn’t seem all that interested. Flinging the man off its shieldlance like he was a spatter of blood, it rushed right up to the landshark with its weapon raised overhead. She threw up her guard, but it was meaningless. The shieldlance didn’t freeze her hands like it had when they first made contact. Rather, it cut right through them, leaving her with two half palms and a blade buried in her shoulder.

She barely registered the pain by the time the weapon was twisted. It dug through the gaps in her bones with pinpoint precision and severed her arm from her chest. In the next moment, her knees were gone. Given the same treatment, they had been instantly removed from under her thighs.

It could have killed her at any time. But it didn’t.

The skeleton only turned towards the final target and pointed its bloody weapon at the maid in question.

“Wait, I’m not supposed to be a part of this, am I?” asked Chloe, as she awkwardly backed away. “I only signed up to do the laundry!”

She hadn’t participated in the battle, but Sophia didn’t blame her. There simply wasn’t any room for her to interfere. Even with an agility-focused build, she was too slow to match the skeleton’s speed, and her attacks were too weak to pierce through its armour.

“You were the one that grew the most,” said the skeleton. Its voice was distorted, but the tone and the rhythm confirmed the speaker’s identity.

“T-that was just because I was the lowest level!” cried the maid, desperately.

“I’ll go easy,” said Claire. “I’ll dull the blade.”

“That really doesn’t make it any better,” said Chloe. “How is it that you look like that anyway?”

“I’ll tell you if you can beat me.” The skeleton raised its shieldlance in front of its face and started to close the distance.

“You already know that isn’t going to happen!” screamed the maid. “Look, I’m sorry I groped you that one time back at camp! I swear, it wasn’t my fault! My hands just have a mind of their own!”

Claire paused. “Right. I did still need to hit you for that.”

The maid continued backpedalling as the lyrkress approached, with a scream welling up in her throat throughout. It was unfortunate then that it was not immediately unleashed. Having healed back up, Sophia charged the supposed undead yet again. She leapt into the air, in an attempt to get on the centaur’s back, but she was knocked right out of the sky with a flick of the tail.

Only after that, and another few thwacks to ensure that her limbs were broken, did Claire return her attention to her friend and confirm the changes that stemmed from her ascension.

___

Roughly two minutes and one entirely unnecessary, one-sided beatdown later, Chloe’s party was back on the surface. The injured were taken to a set of medical facilities set up outside the dungeon. It was really only the human and the elf that needed any transporting. The beard was never really hurt to begin with, and the shark had shrugged off all her wounds. Still, they accompanied them, silently meandering into the medical bay, faces clouded with gloom.

Upon arrival, they found two other parties in the same predicament. Their injured members were lying on beds of sand, propped up off the floor and covered in thick, clean blankets. To say that they were feeling down was an understatement. Somehow, they were even more depressed than the freshly broken.

Chloe couldn’t help but notice that she was the only maid subject to any harm. The other two were in perfect condition, and not just because they had changed out of the garments torn up by their most recent adventure. They seemed to have noticed Chloe’s predicament, as both kept shooting her glances as she lay in bed with her body still aching.

The medical staff didn’t do much. They simply set the fallen warriors down and returned to their previous posts without a care in the world. No one was administered anything specific; they were left to regenerate their health by themselves. For the most part, it was a reasonable decision. Only people with particularly strange constitutions would take more than a day to heal, and they were in no rush. She suspected, from what she saw back at the castle, that some of the weaker parties were more than just a few hours away from completion, assuming they would reach the finish line at all.

“Hey.”

A lizardman walked over once the doctors left. He was covered in cuts, missing half his scales, and walking on a limp, but he approached the party nonetheless and casually waved his hand.

Chloe didn’t reply, but her party members were more open to discussion. Sophia greeted the man with a nod, Enrique fluttered his beard—he had gone back to possessing his rock ever since his last body was destroyed by friendly fire—and even Krail propped himself up in his bed and sat at attention.

“You manage a clear?” asked the lizardman. His eyes were on the two uninjured, both of whom immediately shook their heads.

“We got our asses kicked,” said Enrique. “Pretty badly too.”

“You don’t look it,” said the lizard.

“Affirmative. A relic repaired any wounds she inflicted,” said Sophia.

“She?” The other soldier scratched the back of his head. “Did you guys get past the skeletons?”

“Seventeen of ‘em,” muttered Enrique. “The eighteenth took us down.”

“Was that the one with the long tail?”

“Yeah,” said the rock. “She pretty much ploughed right through us.”

“So it was the eighteenth for you?” he brought a hand to his chin. “Was the fourth for me, and the second for the first group.”

“Weird,” said Enrique.

“There’s really no point in trying to figure out how it works,” said Krail. “I would like to go back in, all things considered, but it doesn’t seem like we’ll have time for it if they haven’t sent you back in already.”

“Right,” said the lizard. “It’s a shame, really is. Would’ve liked to fight that last skeleton again.” He snapped his fingers. “Right, how could you guys tell it was a she? Bone structure maybe?”

“Well, the maid seemed to know her. Even managed to convince her to talk,” said Enrique.

All of the eyes in the room were immediately focused on the still-bedridden Chloe, who only responded with an uneasy twitch. She could feel the cold sweat dripping down the back of her neck as she came to the sudden realisation that the lyrkress had been hiding her identity. It was possible, likely even, that she would be reprimanded for revealing it. In the worst case, she would even be deprived of her laundry duties, and that alone she would not allow to pass. Perhaps, she thought, her loose lips were why Claire had decided to attack her in the first place.

“I don’t know anything,” she said, with a perfectly manufactured face. It was made with all of the knowledge bestowed by Claire’s criticisms and guaranteed to be impossible to see through.

“Negative. That is clearly a lie,” said Sophia. “I do not recall it, but you stated her name earlier.”

It was at that moment that Chloe came to a second sudden realisation. There was no guarantee that any of Claire’s feedback had ever been genuine; she could very well have been stringing her along without really teaching her how best to lie.

Of course, she knew that she was really just running away from reality. There was no way to lie herself out of the situation, but the maid continued to delude herself with the possibility until the soldiers gave up and left her alone.