The floor of the cave system was stone, obviously. The walls were made of stone and the ceiling was made of stone. There was gray, dull, cold stone everywhere.
The walls were terribly thin and the ceiling was terribly low.
The strange crystals embedded in the walls provided only minimum illumination and it quite annoying to walk and care not to stumble.
I used not to care about it much before.
When I first came here, I was too excited, too scared maybe to notice.
When I ran away from the boss room I was too exhausted.
When I experimented with the spell I was too obsessed.
It’s certainly not a pleasant environment, now that I think of it. The hard floor hurt the soles of my feet, making me more tired than I would like to be. The dark illumination exhausted my mental state, making me waste energy on not falling from stumbling on some protruding rock… or limb. I have kicked away not just one rotten head away already.
Too think I have spent so much time in this horrible place… Was it that much time?
To me it felt like a month. Ralph refused to tell me the exact time and there was no cycle of day and night to tell.
Of course it was much shorter than I imagined. Even with all the perks my plentiful mana provided, I would die out of exhaustion, hunger and thirst after two weeks perhaps.
Still, it felt like the time I spent here was not short. I was already showing signs of the beginning of physical collapse.
I could run, but running for longer than a dozen meters left my ankles in pain, my breath short.
The pain in my stomach would be unbearable – if I didn’t get used to it at least. My head was hurting constantly like it was about to come apart at the seams. To this I also got used to.
My thoughts weren’t as clear as they were before. I could hardly concentrate on what was ahead of me and my thoughts were swimming.
I knew that going to the boss room was the only way out, I also knew that I would most likely die. I many times considered committing suicide. With the remnants of what magic power I had, I could make my death not only painless, but even blissful.
I still refused to do so.
But enough of the small things, I have already reached the boss room.
This time I saw it… not clearer, at that time I was able to scan every inch of it that got in my field of vision, memories that didn’t stay with me. This time I could pay more attention to the coliseum.
It was wide. It’s shape was circular and there were sand-colored yellowish steps rising from above the walls of the arena all the way to the walls of the room.
Ralph took most of my ability to use Mana Insight, but my instincts were with me still. They told me that it was impossible for me to jump out of the arena.
There was an invisible dome covering it. It wasn’t a spell in the sense that I got used to, it was more like a natural boundary.
The undead tiger that was the size of a cow, had hooves and six tails that were covered in fish-like scales, was showing me its sharp grotesque teeth.
These teeth weren’t meant to eat meat or bone or vegetation… They were probably made to be creepy as hell, sharp as spears and useless as the new Ipho-… as wings on a tiger.
The tails didn’t move, the body didn’t move, the army of undead monsters of humanoid shape didn’t move. Only the green flames in its empty eye-sockets moved leisurely.
The arena itself was vast. It was as big as a large football field and even the sixty monstrosities standing around the tiger looked small in comparison to it.
I couldn’t believe it was so vast. The cowtiger, no, let’s respect our enemy, the undead tiger and his crew were pretty close. Last time I simply focused on them and ignored how big the arena was.
It was both good and bad. Good because once the Labyrinth spell took place I would be quite free.
Bad because my countermeasure against the sixty minions, the anti-undead fog will not be as useful.
Ideally, I wished for it to simply envelop the whole arena and, while I sneaked around, damage all the mob severely.
Now I’ll need to unleash the fog upon the mob personally, which is not convenient.
I don’t have time to adjust anything, I’m too tired.
Should’ve I visited the place before rushing in? Yes. I should have done this.
Too late for regrets now.
It’s a good thing I tend to generalize the spells I use so they will work in most environments, instead of being very specific on the circumstances.
Though, if I planned for the circumstances… Let’s not delve there.
“Will it be considered an act of aggression if I start casting Nightmare and Labyrinth now, Ralph?”
“I have told you already, but no, it won’t. It’s a simple difficulty labyrinth, so such small tricks are allowed”
“Well then. Here it goes”
The matrix in my hand looked like an incredibly complex cube made out of tiny gears when looked at with Mana Perception. I let it inside the arena and it glided away, as if it was a comet in the outer space.
As it fell, it unraveled itself, letting out countless thin threads and soon the whole arena looked like it was overgrown with exotic vines.
I waited patiently and let out a similar, but a slightly different shaped figure from my hand. It also stretched out its tentacles, obscuring vision everywhere in the whole arena.
Now the rest was a matter of time. With Mana Perception I didn’t looked like a human, I looked like a strange planet with countless comets circling me. I could easily orient in this sea of matrices full of deadly spells, so I gathered a few “comets” in front of me and prepared to fire.
I wouldn’t need to do it if my complete Mana Insight was with me though. Once again I realized just how incredibly handy that skill was.
As time passed while I thought, the vines and tentacles grew dimmed and thinner and the whole picture began making more sense. I saw how some things touched the vines and how the vines vibrated, I saw how the sixty monsters began running around in chaos and what seemed like panic.
There were thin wall-like things in front of me and in every other direction. There were also tiny particles everywhere.
The Labyrinth and the Nightmare spells worked.
If I turned off both my incomplete Mana Insight and my Mana Perception, I wouldn’t be able to see a thing in this fog and among the dust, there would be stone walls and rocks everywhere.
At least it was like this to my enemy.
I cast a small spell to prevent the dust getting in my nose and throat and proceeded with a slow pace.
There were two reasons for it.
First, is that I was tired physically. I’ve been here for how long with no food or water. It was natural that I couldn’t hurry unless I fainted.
Second, is because my enemy was an undead tiger. I had no idea how good its hearing was but if it decided to act personally and navigate the maze by breaking down the walls and following my sounds, I would be a goner.
Remember these bad boys: “A spell that manipulates the airflow so that the sound gets reduced. Mostly done under Ralph’s guidance, I don’t think I’m able to create something so complex anytime soon all on my own. And it doesn’t neutralize all sound, it just reduces it a little. And can only hold for 30 seconds each time. And I have only six of those, so I’ll use them sparingly”?
Yeah, these came in handy.
I used one and with hurried footsteps, as quietly as I could, moved towards my first batch of targets. Yes, batch of targets.
As I expected, the boss couldn’t control its minions while it couldn’t see them. They were violently breaking down rocks, hit the air and even each other as they tried to clean up the obstructions.
Unfortunately for the boss, it only made things worse as ungodly amounts of dust rose, blocking the vision all the same.
There were six close to me. They didn’t even feel that I was close. I tossed one matrix with the anti-undead fog at them, activated it, activated the anti-sound spell and hurried away.
It wouldn’t destroy them right away, but the longer they were exposed to the for, the faster they would break down.
The next batch was not as close. There were individuals, however. There were many lone undead and they were close.
I didn’t have enough matrices for all of them, so it would be more convenient if I gathered them together.
The fog would spread and work on them too eventually, but I didn’t have the luxury of time. The threads were pulsing and telling me that the undead were gathering towards the first batch that I just fogged. The lone ones were also moving towards the general direction, though very slowly.
It would probably be a pain for them to try and stand up if they fell down, as you can imagine.
I fired a stone spear in the head of the closest one to me.
It got my general direction and every undead started moving towards me now. Good.
The undead I fired at didn’t die with one spear, despite the considerable power behind the spear, so I fired another. It lost its head and died. The weaker ones would walk even without the head. But they were a different kind and less complicated in structure, so they had this kind of versatility in exchange.
Hm, this was simple. As long as I didn’t get hit I would be fine. If I did though, I would probably die.
I moved on to another undead after activating the anti-sound spell. I also left 4 matrices around me that would spread the anti-undead fog once I activated them before speeding away. I originally had 12 of those, used 1 already before this, so I now had 7 of these things.
The good thing about this fog is that it would linger and spread, so it didn’t really matter if undead weren’t close to it once it activated. It would take much longer though, to weaken the undead
I could activate them from a distance, so it wouldn’t matter if I wasn’t around.
It was better to weaken the enemies first, before using attack spells, so I left the matrices and walked away.
30 seconds is a long time, surprisingly. I gained a considerable distance from the matrices, hid near a rock in an empty place and waited for the undead to arrive.
Unsurprisingly, only a small number came, the rest was stopped along the way for various reasons. The number of undead was 16. I was pretty sure that all the already injured undead from before were among that number. Well, whatever, I would get them all in the end. Start!
After triggering the matrices, there was a second of delay and then the air was filed with ugly chaotic things that floated everywhere. I couldn’t see what was happening behind the debris, but I could see that one undead fell downk and another lost one leg (there was a small disturbance in the net, followed by a bigger one in the same place, so I assume that an undead lost a leg and fell down). Oof, that gotta hurt, haha. Oh, look, there is a small kind of feeling in the net. No falling down. Maybe it’s an arm?
Gotta move. I activated the anti-sound spell and moved to another batch of undead…
…
Aaand I’m out of matrices for anti-undead spells and anti-sound ones too.
I have directly “infected” from 29 to 42 undead, the rest will be infected as the anti-undead fog spreads.
I cast a spell to spawn a few more rocks locally all around me. This one was left from the experiments with the Labyrinth spell.
I am exhausted and now I’m sitting down and waiting for the fog to act. You should have seen the effects of the spell – not. It’s very grotesque. There were undead that literally fell apart. It was very gross.
The tiger has been running around all over the place for a while now. It’s fast. It has gotten near me three times but it avoided the rocks. Scary. Let’s wait.
…
It’s been like, fifteen minutes now? I don’t know. It could be an hour.
I can’t perceive the time well. Would it change if I knew how time attribute mana worked? Interesting…
Nonono, getting distracted is a big no!
The undead have stopped moving. But it’s the tiger waiting for me to show up and trying to trick me. How do I know? It’s not moving either.
Well, it’s getting closer to losing all its minions every second and I just get more tension. My heart is beating so fast, I hope it won’t hear it.
…
I think all the undead got immobilized. Why? Because all of them fell down. Slowly, one by one, they all fell down. Some with limbs missing, some just couldn’t stand anymore.
I’ll wait for a while longer anyway.
…
And I think I can come out now. All the minions are immobilized. Some are moving still, most in fact do. Some are not, but I’m sure they are alive anyway.
Then there’s the tiger. It’s been running about for a while now. I’ve been laying out my matrices for a big hit too.
It’s around 200 meters away from me, which is pretty good.
Ready, set… GO!
I fired a dozen fireballs into the tiger’s direction. They hit, the tiger shrugged them off. I can feel it’s hurt, but I can also feel its damage is equivalent to being punched well in the gut for me.
Around 160 meters...
I fired the second wave and third wave, spending thirty-six fireballs. It’s running straight at me, with no regard to the damage. It doesn’t feel pain and it doesn’t get tired. Not good.
130 meters...
I switched to a different composition of spells – 12 stone spears. FIRE!
It got stopped! Good. The damage is less than fireballs but the impact buys me precious time as its momentum gets thrown off.
100 meters...
Second wave!
I have prepared a spell with my mana here. It’s clumsy and not very easy to use but…
As the tiger got stopped by another wave of spears for a second, it continued running at me after a second. A second is more than enough for me.
80 meters…
I fired the spell, the ground in front of it got filled with ice. Its hooves aren’t very well equipped for dealing with the ice. The ice got cracked but the tiger flew in a strange direction, landed on its neck and slammed on the ground. Yikes.
I fired the rest of the stone spears and the fireballs. I think I saw some teeth coming off along with chunks of meat…
Damn, not enough.
I hurried away, ran in zigzags and changed directions wildly and hid in the fog. There were some debris that hid my position while it stood up.
It had lost me the moment I stepped into the fog, but I couldn’t allow myself to be careless, so I hid anyway.
It’s nice to have an advantage over the enemy. It can’t see anything, there are countless rocks getting in its way, while I can see it well in my net.
The undead have been moving crazily on the same spots. It was a good thing I came up with the anti-undead fog.
I prepared stone bullets this time. They are fast and small and precise.
I have fifty of them. I filled them with enough mana beforehand to hit 300 hundred meters away with a strong force. I don’t want to waste them, so I spent my time setting up a cool-ish thing: the bullets will fire consecutively into the same spot.
The speed of firing depends on the mana invested and the precision on myself.
Aaaarg, so scary.
The tiger is enraged. It’s running about and tearing down the debris and walls. It doesn’t care for the dust getting in its eyes and nose and the hooves crush the small rocks easily.
It’s one hundred and fifty meters away from me.
But It’s moving all the time, it’s bad.
I charged the array I just compiled with enough mana to fire all the fifty bullets In three seconds, I’m pretty drained.
I can’t afford to miss, so I fired a stone arrow from my collection at it. Knowing my direction it stopped and turned and ran at me. Ready, set, GO!
It hit it! It’s twisting its body but it’s still getting hit!
Oh, just look at it – not. It’s pretty gross. The tiger is pretty damaged now, half of its face is just gone.
It’s left front leg is pretty badly hit too. Not so fast now, eh?
I myself am pretty tired. I can’t even lift my legs though. And it knows where I am.
It’s moving towards me. Oh shi-
60 meters!
It’s slow though, I use my stone arrows to fire at it. I’m not very calm, so only a third hits.
A third of 20 is still about seven.
My stone arrows are slender and fast. Maybe not as strong as stone spears or as fast and precise as stone bullets, but they do good work in hindering movement. They get fired at high speed and get stuck in the flesh.
At sixty meters with the mana I fueled them with, Their whole bodies got stuck in the meaty parts of the tiger.
I don’t know how the tiger works, what moves it, but muscles certainly play a big role. And one of the lucky arrows got stuck in it’s ankle. It can’t move anymore, not fast anyway.
Good, it’s 20 meters away.
Fuck, it’s scary. It's roaring with half of its face, its teeth are as big as my palms.
I can’t move.
I’m frozen.
It can’t move either.
Gathering all the courage I have, I create a stone spear array. I fill it will all the mana it can hold, which, accidentally, is all the mana I can afford. I haven’t really spent much mana in the fight now. All the things I took with me were prepared beforehand and while I didn’t have full MP before I came in, I still had like 55%.
What I mean is, the mana I could put into the spear wasn’t small. About at the end, gathering mana became painful, as if there were maggots crawling under my skull.
I fired the stupidly strong stone spear and I might have been mistaken, but I think it made a sonic boom.
I couldn’t tell, I fainted as the tiger roared at me, while being fired at from only 20 meters away.
