2.11 Realization
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Going back in time a bit, when Alice had been struck with a sudden idea, her hand brushed the bug and secured the item inside in a tight grab through the fabric, that's how anxious the girl was. Then the latter retreated from the ant colony entrance and practically ran to the first appropriate place she could remember.

There, Alice pulled out from the bag a short baton with painted arrows on its ends, twisted it with force and tossed on the ground. It flashed with dull light and emitted a dome of grey mist that started to grow fast until it cut off passage between two rocks and a small grot in the wall it was leading to. 

> Safe Beacon is establishing a safe zone.
> Attention! Multiple hostiles approaching! Prepare to repulse dungeon attacks during the charge time!
> Countdown: 9m 57s

That's when Alice laughed with words, "Do it! Yes!", and immediately rushed back.

As promised, the girl heard multiple legs incoming towards her seconds later. She passed a few turns in the stone labyrinth, jumped up, pulled herself up, climbed on a wide cliff and prayed,

God, I hope you don't like the system acting on your turf because I really-really could use some help right now!

Ants swarmed left and right, driven by highest orders. Alice never even waited for them to pass the no-sound jammer, she leaped down and sprinted to the longed-for prize as soon as possible.

 

Into the blue flaming sea, the girl ran head-on, knowing well it won't hurt her at all. Inside, she spotted nine guards. Three soldiers, two workers, two hunters, and two armored tanks in one balanced party, all levels 4 to 6.

Alice shot the first three arrows in a split second. Soldiers that had large scary pincers and forward legs with a claw on each were her first targets. The closest to Alice took an arrow in its eye, another pierced its jerked body. The girl intended the third arrow for the next soldier, but underestimated its reaction speed and only scratched the carapace.

Guards just began to assemble in an attack formation of some sort when...

Burn.

Blood essence blazed in her veins. Ants, forks of flame coming up from corpses, rising globs of mana so thick the girl could palpate them, her own heartbeats, all docilely slowed down.

The girl drew six arrows at once, her hands moving so uncanny fast the string ought to never be pulled fully. Speed for strength: when the fifth arrow was ready for launch, four were still in the air!

Of course, ants were never ready for the rain of sharp metal. The scratched soldier twitched, took a dart into its body yet another seemed to predict this and caught it in the mouth, killing the creature on spot. A pair of arrows got to the last soldier in a similar way, only the fatal projectile went down through mandible, sparing its life.

Hunter ants who looked pretty normal had bent up and backward; Alice found the stance familiar, serenely sent an arrow for each and stepped aside. One shaft was hit by an expected spurt of acid, the last one passed its counterpart by and pierced the prey's head.

The girl's fingers jumped up, drawing out six more arrows at the time the acid jets crossed barely half the distance, aimed at now empty spot.

Blood essence of hers was burning drop by drop and deadly ants seemed laughably feeble.

Workers had started their charge by then and so received the full brunt of Alice's following assault. Not as lucky, they were killed instantly by initial shots. Still, Alice couldn't very well return securing arrows from the air...

Bulky, heavy armored ants were tardy aswell. The girl nocked an arrow calmly, its point bright-red, counted the meters and pulled the string back, released.

The shaft swished and the puny scarlet speck seemed to leave a trace in the rising mana. It slammed into the armored tank's head and exploded!

It wasn't a too powerful blast, but it broke open the hard shell and dropped the creature off-track. Alice backstepped and launched an extra explosive arrow into the other, dangerously closed up tanky bastard, entered into its eye... skull's contents erupted onto the girl's leg plates.

Out of nine, only three ants survived through six seconds of combat. A heavy injured soldier, a staggering tank and a lucky hunter, the latter was lingering at a certain range, without doubt refilling its acid glands.

With the bow in her left hand, Alice hopped over the armored carcass on her way, avoided burning corpses and bolted towards the spitter. It tried to dodge, yes, but the girl cut her foe nearly into halves with her sword all the same.

Waves of exhaustion bathed her as the blood essence had run out and all amassed burden sough to drag the girl down on her knees.

Alice clenched her teeth, endured with a mask of a stoic under her metal mask, walked to the soldier ant, parried a desperate claw slash and wasted the wretching thing. At last, when the stunned tank finally relearned how its legs worked and turned around, the girl pinned the sword tip in the crack on its shell.

It's...

She wavered, not willing to tempt fate and rechecked the battlefield, made sure there no bastard was hiding between the dead and silently evolving. Then she closed her eyes and nodded.

It's over.

Alice blinked and almost visually deflated.

Nine minutes left.

 

Shaking her head left and right, the girl did reprimand herself, mad, it was mad, but the magic stones rush in the eyes betrayed her. Holding her sword tightly, Alice curved out her trophy from the freshest kill. Tired as she was, the girl forced herself to pull apart the shell of armored ant, looking at monsters ants and their killer, tiger, with a corner of her eye.

Breath, Alice, breath.

Tongues of harmless blue flames fluttered and entered her body. Rich, cheerful stream of energy rushed to relieve her sufferings, revitalize every frail cell. Alice's hands meanwhile were working relentlessly, faster and faster. Eight magic stones the girl looted from this battle plus a few scraps she had apparently blown up herself with an explosive arrow.

Most old corpses had crashed heads, obviously cannibalized by their living kin, but Alice searched them anyway while rebuilding her strength and a few minutes later it netted her four additional stones. She stretched impulsively and looked over a shoulder,

"You're left."

Despite that logic had been dictating to butcher level 10+ monsters first, Alice had felt too weak after a fight. Now she wasn't, restored to peak condition ridiculously fast. She stepped to the main prize... then stopped.

Mana gathered in a vortex, thicker and stronger than she ever saw or felt, and the girl was in its center. Before her eyes, blueish flames were rapidly transforming, taking on bizarre shapes. They rose as clouds and rained as flowers, soared on wings, roared with a myriad of voices. Every pore on Alice's body opened in trepidation, blood surged in a thrill. Something was growing, flourishing under the call of magic.

Five minutes left... Part of Alice poked her bewitched self and failed to awake the girl from this both lucid and dreamy state.

When the external pressure exceeded the limit, it broke her outward barriers and mana gushed from all sides, filled her veins and heart!

85%...86%...87%...

With every little yet rapid step to completed blood integration, the heat was spreading throughout Alice.

90%!

Blood energy pierced her eyes!

There was no pain, no blindness. The girl felt incredibly dizzy, and it passed away as she closed her eyes and shook it off.

 

The snow-white world welcomed Alice as she looked around in a daze.

Serene and quiet.

The girl lifted her hand, still out of herself. Space shivered between her fingers. Like... an invisible membrane, a veil she could touch but not feel. It was tucking up everything: rocks under her feet, dead ants and tiger, crystal veins on the ceiling, the vortex of mana... her.

And the veil was pulsing. Alice saw it on the tips of the fingers, on the thinnest edges between surface and air. Her gaze moved slowly, from hard to simple, from effects to the source. Far into the darkness of the construction named Emerald Caves. Strings of the puppeteer lay there, the dungeon core!

Once born, this strange conviction fully occupied her mind and Alice gnashed her teeth.

95%

Familiar pair of fiery needles thrust out from her eye-sockets and the girl screamed. Muddy blood tears smeared her mask's inner side. The darkness in her eyes grew, smudged the whiteness. Two colours intensified and mingled, birthing grey, green, blue and all and every tint. Red came into being last when the pain finally evanesced.

Alice opened her eyes wide in wonder, seeing the world in all its pristine. Scarlet was everywhere. It dyed even the air. Dyed the mana.

96%... 97%

The veil, the strings shivered, all at once! The cave quaked, scarlet vortex howled and retreated as if alive, disconnected from the girl in a violent pull and Alice bared her fangs back at it.

What do I even call mana? This!?

In her eyes, the vortex now was clearly was of material nature. It had designs behind its shivers, purpose, destination. A far cry from a magnificent intoxicated vision of clouds and flowers, but all the more real and tangible.

This 'mana' is just like blood! Whose blood? The dungeon's blood! It's just like Leviathan, a creature made up of life energy!

Oh my God!..

 

> System message!
> Dungeon Emerald Caves became aware of your presence!
> Quest #1 is being terminated!
> Quest #2 is issued: survive and return to Node #8. Reward: 5,000 Battle Points.

Did I tell you already that Alice operates under false assumptions?

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