Chapitre 79: Chapter 79 - Drowned Refuge I
[Kai Crestless POV]
"Welcome, my dear students. This is the D Class Dungeon, Drowned Refuge. The least dangerous dungeon with the most ancient mages remains that our dear Xyrus Academy can give us access to." My Lord said while we walked in the dungeon that we would "explore".
I observed well all the surroundings of that initial area, it seemed simple and without the presence of mana beasts, or at least they weren't that close to us. I was walking along with my colleagues, Alexyo and Letty, we were on the right side of our lord, while the other trio were on the left, all of us a few steps behind him. After all, he is our sovereign, so he deserves to always have a complete view of everything ahead.
Behind us, I could hear the voices of his other students. Everyone looked incredibly excited and anxious, looking all around and that girl who was assigned to my lord's assistant was jotting something down in a small notebook. I was a little disgusted by them, weak dicathens, but now I just thought how lucky they were to have someone so magnificent as a teacher, even if they didn't know his full potential.
In fact, none of us know his real potential. After all, so far he has only demonstrated a small fraction of the power he has, even in our special training sessions that we had at times when we were supposed to be "studying runes".
After walking a bit through the wide initial corridor of the dungeon, we started to see some mana beasts, they seemed to be reptiles like salamanders, with their backs covered by rocks and sandy escapes. Their stones were slightly brown, but had black tips, and there was a bump on their heads that resembled small horns, equally black. The creature's eyes were slightly dead, but there still seemed to be something there, with a small red glow in them.
"Apparently some mana beasts here have already been drugged by other alacryans, but these for example don't seem to be completely affected... They are in the middle of the 'forced evolution' process." I thought to myself as the adventurers behind us seemed to huddle together so as to be very vigilant in protecting the students.
"Relax guys, they usually only attack specific mana beasts specialized in water, if we don't attack them we'll be fine." Said the dagger adventurer behind me.
He could be right about that fact, but at the moment those mana beasts were affected by alacryan potions, we never know what they might do now. However, it was minimally expected that they would attack us.
"What do you mean?! What species is this?" One of the adventurers in the background said, confused. Clearly not recognizing that race of mana beast because of the physical changes.
With no one responding to her at the moment, my lord raised a hand and made a motion, indicating that we could attack. In this case, Letty and I started activating our spells while Burkit augmented his hammer with earth spikes. Our targets were 5 corrupted mana beasts in front of us.
"Earth multishot!"
"Metal Spear!"
"Golem Stomp!"
The three of us used our spells, even though that wasn't my spellrune's name, it activated by causing several of the metal darts within my dimensional ring to come out and unite, thus creating two sharp spears that were aimed at one of the monstrous lizards. Burkit managed to advance on another lizard, hitting him hard on the side of the face, leaving his enemy stunned and badly injured, with one of his eyes bleeding from the spikes.
Letty shot with speed, several sharp stones that were coming out of the floor, ceiling and walls around her, the other three lizards that had not been attacked, were her targets. One of them was hit in the forehead area, but not deep, with the other shots aimed at it, hitting the rocks on the back of that, the others received wounds in the paw areas, it seemed to have been deep enough for us to hear the noise of some bones breaking.
The mana beasts seemed to really have a hard time defending themselves from our attacks, possibly because, even though they were evolved mana beasts, they still had considerable slowness. But it was surprising that one of my metal spears ended up being reflected by a small wall of hard sand that appeared in front of my target, but the other spear would have hit, piercing one of the creature's limbs.
"Ice Spikes!" I looked back, seeing Battione activating his spellrune, spikes of ice appeared on the ground and seemed to hit all of our enemies in the lower half of their bodies. But it was something so reckless that even Burkit had his body almost hit, luckily, he managed to fortify his legs, jumping back and dodging.
"Ice Spear!" Denver yelled his spellrune as he ran towards the least affected mana beast of all five. Jumping while swinging his own sword with his right hand, and at the same time an ice spear appeared in his left hand that was thrown towards the enemy.
That reptile managed to dodge the ice spear's full attack, but still had difficulty moving because of the ice spikes. Denver took advantage of this and swung the sword willingly, while using "Ice Spear" again, this time on the blade itself, making it sharper and with the characteristic of the ice element.
He managed to rip the head off that monstrous lizard, there were now 4 of them to defeat, but soon we heard a soft laugh and when we turned, we saw our Lord, laughing and clapping.
"Good job! But I think we should let Alexyo handle it, they may have rock hooves but their skin is covered in sand." With his comment, everyone understood what he wanted to happen and we walked away a lot.
Looking at Alexyo, I saw that all this time, she was preparing an intensified form of her spellrune, with two magic circles formed in front of her palms, she attacked the mana beasts.
"FIREBALL!!" Her spellrune name was the same as a base spell for fire mages from Dicathen. However, what she released was an immense sphere of fire that seemed to warm the body of all of us, in the midst of the cold weather inside the dungeon.
The creatures began to scream in agony, and seemed unable to enter the surrounding puddles, thanks to Battione's "Ice Spikes". And so we see the parts that would be their skins, becoming glass.
"Good job." Our lord said, approaching the mana beasts paralyzed by the glass that bound them. He snapped his fingers using a high frequency sound spell, which ended up cracking the glass that was the skin of the lizards, thus killing them for good.
"Incredible." The adventurer, who I think is called Kriol, started talking as he left the formation and walked towards us. "Is that why you hired us just to protect one of the two classes you teach?"
"Yes, Kriol, that's exactly why, old friend. As you can see, they're pretty strong and finished off enemies quickly. It only lasted 5 minutes at most." our lord replied.
"I think it was two and a half minutes." Alexyo replied, not doubting our lord, but making the situation more specific. "This is the minimum time it takes for my Fireball to become that level, given that my mana core was completely full."
"Thanks for the specs, Alexyo. Anyway... Let's get going guys! Most of the runes we'll be studying are on the 2nd floor!" he said leading us all along the hall.
Meanwhile, I looked at the ground, seeing that in addition to the rock hulls, the horns of the sand lizards were left over, so I took them and kept them in my dimensional ring. Looking around, I saw that there weren't that many people watching me, and the few that saw me doing it clearly thought it was no big deal to get caught. None of them know the real value of something like this.
"Wait a minute! Did you call me.. 'Old friend'?" Kriol asked, even I was confused by my lord's choice of words.
He turned to the chubby adventurer, didn't answer him with words, just made a gesture of silence and passed his hand lightly over his face, and then resumed walking. Kriol's expression remained confused, but soon his eyes widened.
"You must be kidding?!" Kriol exclaimed, insisting on not staying in his original position anymore, wanting to talk more with my master.
Given this lineup change, Diane Whitehall, water conjurer defenser who was at the front, decided to stay behind with adventurer Samantha Tempest. With those changes made, we walked to what appeared to be a dead end, just a large subterranean lake in front of us, with no dry surface to step on.
"It's now, isn't it??" Emily Wattsken asked and soon her answer came with the adventurers and my lord making their spells.
"Wind's Sphere."
"Water Dome."
In this way, shields from the elements of water and wind appeared in our surroundings, and we started to walk forward, so we were able to walk on the submerged ground, descending further and further below the water.
Me and the other faithful were inside a Wind's Sphere that our lord created for us. I looked back seeing that the BRL group had split into two groups. One of the groups had a mixture of Wind's Sphere and Water Dome being used to dry them out, while the group further back was just using a set of two Water Domes.
Because we were under water and in separate elemental shields, I couldn't hear the other students very well, but from the look on their faces, they were all amazed that they were walking in a large underground dungeon. I looked at my colleagues, all very attentive to our surroundings, just as we are trained to act in these situations.
After a few steps, we ended up seeing a fork of two paths in the water, one of which seemed to lead deeper, and the other led to the 2nd floor of the dungeon. We decided to go to the entrance on the 2nd floor first, so we could all talk better together.
Arriving there, the landscape of the dungeon remained the same, but we could already see some runes carved into rocks highlighted on the walls, luckily there were no mana beasts around, at least for now. With everyone gathered there, several students went to the nearby ruins, they took notes and seemed to talk to each other about what they were seeing, Emily was with them helping them. Meanwhile, all the adventurers approached us.
"Mr. Leywin. Excuse the question, but Diane and I talked a little with the others adventurers while walking to this floor... And we wanted to ask something, could we be alone for that?" Kriol spoke.
"Relax, they already know." our master said pointing to me and my colleagues, as if he knew what Kriol was talking about.
"So it's true? Are you Adventurer Diamond?" The rogue, Jayden, asked, eyes wide.
Instead of answering with words, our master just took out of his dimensional ring the mask he told us he would use in risky situations, apparently, this same mask was the one he used in the training periods he said he had here in the Beast Gladers. All the adventurers present there were quite wide-eyed and with confused expressions.
"I was never an elf, my beast will that allows control over plants." He said whispering to them.
"T-this is insane...." Samantha said in a low voice, but showing complete surprise.
"But you're a wind-fire conjurer. According to the data Cynthia gave us." Jayden said.
"So did she really give you my data? Well... Anyway, I'm also an Ice deviant, I just asked her not to put it in my report as a teacher." He replied.
"That explains a lot..." Diane said.
"And to think you saved us... Wait... That was about 2 years ago... Were you 11 at the time???" Kriol said and my master just nodded.
"Wait, did he save you too?" Diane asked looking at Kriol.
"Yes, he and the adventurer Note together killed an S-class mana beast to save us." Samantha said with a dark look.
"Wow, he single-handedly saved us from an A-class mana beast that was corrupted by some bizarre mage, according to Kaspian, who was with us at the time, that mana beast had the strength of an S-class, but the intelligence of an A-class yet." Jayden commented.
Me and my colleagues were not impressed, after all, it was our lord they were talking about, him killing an S-class mana beast alone or even with the help of a single person was nothing abnormal in our view. But still I couldn't stop thinking that, because they didn't know his real nature, it was extraordinary.
"Well, can we stop talking about my accomplishments?" My master said, smiling. "We could talk more later, now I need to take my advanced class students to the runes located in the deeper areas."
"Alright... At least it's good that we understand why we were chosen, you trust us a lot for working together." Jayden said looking at the other students further away with Emily.
"Wait, who else knows this?" Samantha asked, possibly so they knew who else they could talk to about it, or maybe so they wouldn't end up talking too much without realizing it.
"Of the people on this trip, only you and my advanced students know, my beginning students and Emily have no idea. Other than that, Kaspian... My family, the famous group of adventurers known as the Twin Horns, Cynthia Goodsky.. And well, these same people." Our master spoke as he appeared to be doing a warm-up exercise with his arms being held fully up.
"Understood... We'll stay with the people there watching them, you can continue on your way." Samantha said with a weak smile.
"Relax, Sammy. We won't have so much trouble. And you still have those scrolls, don't you? So do I. In case something happens, we can make contact between the groups or even contact that thunderhead out there." When my master said that, adventurer Jayden chuckled, clearly "thunderhead" was referring to adventurer Alexander.
"Of course, you're right... But anyway, it's good to know you're okay after those years... see you later." Samantha Tempest said, giving a simple smile.
Soon the adventurers were moving away and we went towards our lord, who looked thoughtful, watching the place where we entered that floor. We didn't get very close, but I could see that his eyes were closed.
Without activating the Wind's Sphere, he re-entered the water, as if he wanted to feel the submerged dungeon. "Come on guys... I have an interesting feeling." He said without turning to us and finally activated a Wind's Sphere.
We entered that wind dome, and returned to our group's original path. On the way to the depths where we knew that an alacryan camp might possibly await us.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
[Emily Wattsken POV]
I was with the BasicRuneLearning class, looking at some runes highlighted on the wall. I couldn't describe them any other way than attractive. They didn't have their own light, but the paint used on them reflected the light emitted by the crystals around us, giving them a navy blue tone.
A couple of students next to me were redrawing the rune in their notebooks. Everyone was talking a lot and having an opinion about which rune that would be, but those two were the ones I could hear the most clearly.
"Hmm.. I'm telling you, this rune is clearly from the wind element, look how it curves at the ends, it's smooth but very thin." the boy said.
"No. It must be an earth element rune. The shape of the rune as a whole is too square to be a wind one in the first place." The girl replied, scribbling agitatedly in her notebook.
"I still say it's a wind rune." He said, still not changing his mind.
"Couldn't it be a wind rune with high defense function?" I said, intruding on their conversation.
"Oh! Emily, why do you say that?" The girl asked and I responded by showing her some notes Luz had given me about the basic rune language he taught them, pointing to a rune that read as "shield".
"Hm... Okay, if we look at it this way, it could be a shield rune, but can runes be mixed like that?" The girl finally gave up on the rune element idea, causing the boy to silently celebrate.
"Mixed runes is a subject covered in your professor's advanced classes, if I'm not mistaken. So that's why you didn't know." I answered her, and then went to other students, help them and see what they were talking about.
Everyone seemed incredibly excited about the situation. As the runes were the only source of light away from the waters, we decided to stay closer to them as we walked deeper down the hallway on the 2nd floor of the dungeon. The students were around me while the adventurers Kriol and Samantha were at the front of the group and the adventurers Jayden and Diane were protecting our rear.
There didn't seem to be any mana beasts on that floor we were on and after a while, we stopped in an area where there were 5 different runes highlighted on a nearby wall. We started to prepare a makeshift camp just so we could make some food for everyone.
Jayden Lovefall decided that we would use fire stones instead of real flames, as we knew that this dungeon had some holes where there is air passage, but we didn't know how big the amount of air would be. So, using a method that doesn't deplete our supplies was the best possible way.
"Can you figure out what runes those are, guys?" I said sitting on a rock, but I had put a cloth over it to make it more comfortable for me.
"I think it's 4 wind runes and 1 fire rune." an elf with green hair and glasses replied.
"And why do you think so?" I asked, curious to see how good they were at identifying the details.
"They all seemed to have smooth curves with fine points, coming from how you spell the wind element with runes." That same elf answered me.
"But one of them seemed to have more straight lines than curves, so it's possibly a fiery one." one of the class dwarves added.
"Great, good to know. All the runes we've found so far in this dungeon are mixed runes, so could you tell me which runes you think are mixed with elemental runes?" I asked, wanting to encourage curiosity in them.
Everyone looked at me thoughtfully and seemed to share the notes they had with each other, apparently not so many brought the notebooks they normally use in the classroom. So few had the utility rune designs that Luz had taught them.
While they were thinking, I ended up feeling a light touch on my shoulder, when I looked in the direction, I saw Kriol handing me a kind of sandwich. I took it, thanking the adventurer and then taking a bite.
"Ooh! My god this is amazing!!!" I said with stars in my eyes, looking at Kriol who was delivering sandwich to other students there.
"Oh, thanks. It's a recipe my wife used to make for me." he said smiling and soon I heard a female laugh beside me, looking at the source of the laugh, it was Samantha, sitting on the floor next to me.
"What's so funny?" I asked her.
"No big deal, it's just that this reminds me of a dungeon we've been in before... I mean, it wasn't an underwater or quiet dungeon like this. But there was a quiet moment like this... Everyone eating sandwiches made by Kriol and talking a little." Samantha said that, but with her voice getting a little depressed at the end.
"Oh... Something horrible happened in that dungeon, didn't it?" That was the only thing I could understand from the way she was talking.
"Well, yes... 2 members of our party died but otherwise, everything went well, thanks to Diamond and Note." She said, smiling again.
"Diamond and Note? What bizarre names, no?" I asked with a slight laugh.
"Hm? Never heard of them?" Samantha's eyes widened.
"I'm never see news about what happens in the world of adventures you participate in. I'm always locked up in my laboratory, to be honest, today is both the first time for these students and my first time inside a dungeon." I replied to her.
"Well, they are two masked adventurers with similar clothes. They are famous among rumors for reaching S and AA Class after 1 year and little adventure around." Samantha said taking a bite of her sandwich.
"This is too much?" I asked curiously.
"Very much, just to give you an idea, some of us have been adventuring much longer than that." Jayden said stepping into the middle of the conversation. "For example, my brother and I have been adventuring since we were 15, and we're still B Class"
"And even though I've been venturing out for 4 years, I'm still a C-Class." Diane also decided to intrude into the conversation. "I think you and Kriol are both A Class, don't you?"
"Yes, we know the two masked adventurers simply because, the dungeon we entered could only be completed by minimally A Class adventurers." Samantha replied to another water conjurer.
"Woah.... I think I now understand the level of complexity." I said, impressed, if the adventurers that were chosen for us were mostly B and A Class... What would AA Class or S Class adventurers be like????
"Not that much... The difference between classes is more exponential than you think." Jayden said with a sigh and apparently taking a hot drink, as he had a mug in his hands and a little steam was coming out of it.
"Okay... Out of curiosity, what else do you know about these guys? Since I know nothing about." I asked, still biting into my sandwich.
"Let me see...not much is known about them, but the only confirmed things are that one is human and the other is an elf." Samantha said.
"And how would that be confirmed?" I asked again.
"One of them is a Plant-Wind mage, and the other is a Fire-Water mage. These elemental duo combinations only exist in elves and humans respectively." Samantha said, finishing eating.
I also finished eating and she offered me a glass with a drink that seemed to be tea, because they are reliable people, I had no doubts and I took a small sip, it was very sweet, but not to the point of being joyful. "Yes, given this combination of elements, there's no way to put it into context." By my answer, not only her, but the other adventurers nearby gave a strange smile, I didn't decide to delve into that action of theirs.
After a little while, with everyone watching the runes, I started to feel a slight tremor in the ground. "A-ahn?!"
One of the stalactites ended up falling near a student, luckily adventurer Kriol managed to get there in time and use his big shield for protection. We all had a startled look and right after that, a new tremor appeared, this time it was very strong, causing some faded crystals to fall from the walls, with the ones that fell into puddles of water starting to glow. But it only lasted a few seconds, with the shaking stopping, for now.
"M-my god! I think there's some instability going on! We should get out of here!!!!" Samantha said having a panic attack as if the scene had reminded her of something else.
"Wait! I don't think it's anything. There have never been reports of the known maps of this dungeon being different, so there shouldn't be anything serious. After all, this place can maybe have those tremors from time to time. Why just now things would be different?" Jayden tried to defuse the situation, managing to get everyone's attention using a light gust of warm wind that wasn't painful, just warm.
"He's right..." An elf with a dubious body replied, it was Zenkya, the best elf girl in the BRL class.
"Still, we'd better stay near the exit area of this floor. Let's go." Kriol spoke and we started walking towards the flooded area that we had used to get to the 2nd floor, but soon I heard a noise that could not be a good sign.
It was one of the communication scrolls that Luz had given me, I immediately opened it and was surprised by the image there. Luz had some blood running down his forehead, and it sounded like there was some battle going on in the background for the sounds.
"Emilly! It's an order! You'd better get out of the dungeon now! Things are bad down here. Apparently there were mana beast invasions from a dungeon that was secretly connected to this one!"
"W-wait, so that was the tremors?!" I asked still shocked and even though I wasn't looking at the people around me, I knew they were wearing the same expression.
"Wait, did the tremors get that far?!? My god, that shit apparently had more power than I imagined! I thought you didn't feel it, so I thought I'd let you know!" He said in a tone of voice I've never seen him use, he was definitely surprised.
"My god! Is that blood?!?" One of the students behind me spoke up as she managed to peek into the communication scroll.
"Relax, don't worry, I've had worse things, for example, I've already ripped out my ow—..." Before he could finish the sentence, his gaze was startled, but it didn't look at us but at something that was happening wherever he was, but still we couldn't see.
"ALEXYO!! LOOK OUT!" He was screaming and suddenly communication was cut off, with a new tremor appearing on the ground, this one being much more intense than the previous two.
"We need to get out of here... NOW!!!!!" Kriol said hurriedly entering the water, while activating his spell.
"Wind's Sphere!" "Water Dome!"
So the adventurers created the spells that would allow me and the students to walk underwater with them. I could see the panicked look several students had as we sprinted in a limited way to the 1st floor of the dungeon. Even with all the panic, they could understand that it wouldn't do any good to run ahead of the adventurers or stop to stay a little behind, otherwise they would enter the water and possibly drown.
Arriving on the 1st floor, we were surprised by the mana beasts of the same species we encountered earlier, but their bodies seemed to be darker in color. In addition to their expressions showing aggression, it was as if instead of wanting to run away to survive, they wanted to prevent people from getting out of there alive.
"Shit! Guys, get behind me!" Kriol exclaimed putting the shield forward and augmenting it with two water layers, protecting us from a strong blast from a dark spike that the mana beasts created.
"They've been corrupted! Was this fucking dungeon home to those freaks by any chance?!?" Jayden exclaimed as he tried to use his daggers to shoot lightning at the mana beasts, even though he wasn't a conjurer, the simple act of slamming the daggers together seemed to do the job.
"If it is, after this, we need to let Kaspian know!" Diane responded to him while appearing to shoot a bubble of water at Jayden's lightning, thus creating a joint attack that when touching the mana beasts seemed to paralyze them, but only for a short time.
"What are you talking about?!" I exclaimed, confused.
"No questions asked! We're going to paralyze these things and you try to run out!" Jayden exclaimed as he and Diane continually launched their attack together.
"BOREAL WRATH!!!!"
I could hear another voice screaming at the top of my lungs a spell, and when I saw it straight, behind the mana beasts Alexander Lovefall was running madly towards them, gripping his greatsword tightly. His body seemed to be surrounded by pure ice... No, it wasn't ice itself, it was Ice Mana.
With a slash in the air, he projected a glowing Ice Slash that hit the mana beasts from behind, freezing the rock spikes they had. But in addition, it caused much of the ceiling, floor and walls nearby to be covered by a thick layer of pure ice, luckily it didn't get so close to us as to freeze our feet to the ground.
"THEY ARE FRAGILE IN THE BACK! ATTACK ALL!!!" Alexander said stopping and sinking his greatsword into the ground, as if that spell had used up most of his mana and stamina.
The mana beasts seemed to continue to focus on us trying to attack us with more of those black spikes that popped up from the ground, but thanks to the layer of ice, those spikes were a little slower and we could see where they would spawn because the ice got a little broken in the areas before them arise.
"Water Cannon!" Diane and Samantha used the same spell directed against the mana beasts, strangely it was possible to see that their spell was both water and ice, as if the spell Alexander used was not just an attack, but a temporary domain creation. The mana beasts in that state ended up being taken back a bit and being frozen in the affected areas.
"Water Rush!" Kriol charged at one of the mana beasts, with an immense layer of ice forming around him thanks to the AOE spell cast earlier. With that, he was able to turn the mana beast and knock it down.
That way, we now had an open way to escape. Me and the students started to run while Diane and Samantha were still releasing their spell, freezing the mana beasts by the legs, Jayden was running from side to side, augmenting himself with lightning and wind, thus being a target for the enemies, making no dark thorns attack us.
Arriving next to Alexander, I helped him to move with us, while I could see the other adventurers following us, finally, after climbing the stairs, we left the dungeon.
I was panting a lot, but my heart almost stopped when I heard another spell being cast by our ice augmenter.
"ICE SPEAR!!" Alexander cast a spell that hit several parts of the entrance intensely, forcing it to collapse.
"Al! What the fuck are you doing?! Luz and the others are still there!" Jayden exclaimed angrily upon seeing his brother's decision.
"Fuck it! He told me to do this!" When Al said that, we all stared at him in silence, or at least me and the adventurers, as the students seemed to be crying or providing emotional support to others.
"He... told you to do this?" Diane asked.
"Yes... He said he found a possible alternative exit from the dungeon, anyway. So if any corrupt mana beasts tried to get through the main entrance, it wasn't even to try to kill them directly, but to destroy the entrance." Alexander replied without showing much emotion with that as he threw himself on the grass there as if he was too tired..
"What the fuck, Diamond, you always do that!" Kriol said kicking a rock.
"Eh?" I was too confused by his words, even some students were doing the same thing as me simultaneously. "EH?!?!?"
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone