Chapter 451 - Trials and Tributions

  Cire idly stared at the horizon as she swam across the sky. She was about an hour out of Amrinia, already deep in the Langgbjerns, but she still felt like she was on break. She couldn’t help it. Just yesterday, she was wandering around the city, buying everything and anything that happened to catch her eye. It almost felt like she had returned to her childhood and rediscovered her innocence, like the keen edge she had spent the past few years honing had been dulled by the moment of bliss. Of course, that was far from the case in reality, but she had certainly felt it in the moment.

  It didn't help that the aerial predators were much less challenging than promised. Perhaps it was because they were still in the outskirts—they had just passed the first mountain, as Cire had yet to pick up any significant speed—but the monsters were so weak that she sughtered them en masse between her zy yawns.

  Most were vaguely distinguishable as being based on creatures that dwelled within the oceans. There were stingrays that had oysters in pce of their wings, serpents made entirely of broken gss, and countless species of humanoid fish. Each was taller and more muscur than the st even though their heads remained human-sized. The rgest among them were the cod, which stood two meters from shoulder to shoulder and six from head to foot. Though Cire was in her true form, their biceps were as thick as her body.

  Still, none of the fish were quite as interesting as the most powerful predators that flew around the outermost reaches. Technically, they were starfish, and their silhouettes matched the description. They had five long limbs that radiated from a central core and a single orifice beneath them that served as both an entrance and an exit. That, however, was where their normalcy came to an end. The individual limbs were made from different elements, with the particurs varying between individuals. The fleshiness of their cores was the only static feature, that and the naked, bald, half-rotting skulls protruding therefrom. The precise number varied between individuals. Some had only one, while others had as many as seven. Whatever the case, they shared three weapons between them, artifact-like metal barrels resembling the buster rifles mounted to Vel’s wings.

  They almost proved intimidating, but Cire found them no more challenging than the vsches and mushrooms that roamed the fields below. She tore them apart without once waking the fox fast asleep in her mane.

  Certainly, one could point to the fact that she had grown much stronger. Her racial css had gained a full 200 levels since she first invaded the northern nd, but she doubted that she would have struggled too much against the starfish either way. The danger stemmed only from their numbers—they were literally all over the pce—and their defiance of gravity. Unlike birds, which could only stay airborne whilst maintaining a set minimum speed, the starfish could float for as long as they wanted simply by extending the sails between their arms. Their unpredictable movements were only made more dangerous by the projectiles they fired, which disoriented everything struck by way of nullifying gravity.

  Cire, however, was bound by no such rule in the first pce, so she ploughed straight through them, gaining the occasional level as she made her way northward.

  She did consider ripping open a hole in spacetime and warping her way over, but continued zily meandering her way along. Panda’s warning certainly pyed a role in the decision, but it was a small one. In the end, she shot down the idea for the same reason she had chosen not to ramp up her speed: her final destination remained yet unknown.

  She needed to wake Sylvia to pinpoint its location, but she couldn’t really be bothered. The fox was sleeping too peacefully, and she had clearly been drained from all the festival’s excitement. Or at least, that was how it seemed. Cire still wasn’t sure just how much sleep the zy furball really needed, if she even needed it at all.

  Whatever the case, her actions were unchanged. She didn’t feel like waking her, so she progressed slowly, lethargically, without a care in the world.

  Even the muscur salmon that feasted on the starfish were all readily ignored. As it turned out, they were surprisingly fragile, relying almost entirely on their overwhelming speed for the purposes of defense. Ending them was as easy as ripping them apart with her vectors.

  “Cire.” The zy adventure continued until a voice came atop her head. To her dismay, it wasn’t Sylvia’s. Another weight had suddenly appeared on top of her.

  “What do you want?”

  “Oh, come on. That’s no way to talk to your uncle now, is it?” asked Panda.

  “Be gd I’m not throwing you off.”

  “Cheeky little shit. I liked you better when you gave me less lip.”

  “And I liked you better before I knew who you were.”

  Panda ughed. “Well, it’s a shame, but you’re gonna have to deal with me either way if you wanna cash in.”

  “I know,” said Cire, with a sigh. “Get to the point. Where is it?”

  “If by it, you mean the dungeon that Sylvia was telling you about the other day, then it’s right in the middle of this whole ass mess.”

  Cire tilted her head.

  “Can you sense ley lines?” asked Panda.

  “Yes.”

  “Pick one and follow it. Keep heading upstream, and you’ll eventually get where you need to go.”

  “Or, you could just point me in the right direction and I can head straight there. Without wasting my time tracing a ley line.”

  “Yeah, but that wouldn’t be any fun,” he said. “And it’s not like you have the power to make me.”

  “I’m not becoming a tamer just to brainwash you.”

  “Oh come on,” muttered the raccoon. “Tamers can be strong too, y’know? It’s just the most amazing concept.”

  “Then where, exactly, is the god of taming?”

  “All I’m hearing is that opportunity’s knocking.”

  “For you, maybe.”

  “I’ll pass. I’d rather make myself the god of mischief.”

  “I don’t doubt that for a moment,” said Cire. She sighed as she turned her eyes on the ground. Pushing the clouds out of the way, she quickly located all of the pces where the mana was thickest and slowly followed along.

  She toyed with the surrounding monsters as she flew, ripping the particurly delicate ones apart whilst harassing those that were a little bit tougher. The poor fools bound to the ground were raised and dropped haphazardly, earning a thousand barks, roars, and looks of resentment. It may as well have been an act of terrorism, more entertainment for herself than an efficient method of hunting.

  Neither spoke of the upcoming dungeon. One wanted to experience the challenge first hand, while the other got off on the idea of withholding the necessary information.

  They simply proceeded in silence, with the inbound monsters serving as the only source of its interruption. They grew more powerful with every mountain they passed, but Cire found them surprisingly destructible. Her magic was stronger than ever. The safe rate of its flow had doubled since the phantom’s execution, but the strength of her spells had increased far more dramatically. It was hard to tell exactly how much stronger they were, given the ck of a proper measuring tool, but she found that even the vsches had lost the ability to resist her strongest vectors—not that they made for the best benchmark.

  Like the starfish, they had long become mere fodder, things to be hunted by the sentient, lizard-faced houses and the winged, eight-nosed pigs, who were in turn eaten by the fist-fighting ants and the giant, bded whales.

  So on and so forth the circle of life continued, until they reached their destination. Looking upon it, Cire immediately heaved a sigh while Panda ughed his ass off. It was a little hard to tell from several hundred kilometers away, courtesy of all the thick snow, but Aurora’s mountain differed greatly from all of the others. Giant patches of ice, true ice, shot up its length like the lines of a circuit. And so too did they share the function, guiding, redirecting an excessive number of greater ley lines straight into its core.

  If that wasn’t obvious enough, then the surrounding area would surely have given it away regardless. The goddess’ domain sat inside of a depression, rendering it roughly ten kilometers lower than its towering neighbours. Said neighbours were closer together than average, and their peaks were bent inwards, towards the core. It wasn’t obvious from the angle that Cire had flown at—she was only about as high as their crowns—but rising further into the sky, she recognized that they formed a protective, spiraling wall around it.

  The holy mountain itself was entirely devoid of monsters. Not a single one dared to walk the sacred path that led up to the goddess’ abode, or even approach. They refused to venture past the surrounding peaks, regardless of whether they crawled, walked, or flew.

  “The dungeon’s entrance is down there.” Panda pointed at a pair of pilrs. “The fox and I have already passed, so we’ll be going another way.” He prodded at Sylvia, who was yawning and rubbing her eyes, as he waddled his way onto Cire’s snout. “Oh, and just so you know, there is technically a way to make this all safer.”

  “Unnecessary,” said Cire.

  “Thought you’d say that.” The raccoon smirked, and after taking a step, vanished right before her very eyes. “Good luck.” The man in question was long gone, but his voice echoed through her head regardless.

  “Are we there already?” Sylvia, who had been asleep for the whole three-hour journey, raised the question soon after they nded. Sliding off the snake-moose’s back, she pnted her feet in the snow while assuming her elven form. The dress that appeared along with her much rger body was paired with a thick wooly cloak and a pair of earmuffs, which sat around her non-vulpine ears.

  “Yeah,” said Cire. “Panda said you’ll be taking a different entrance.”

  “Mmnnn… oh yeah, Aurora did say something about that,” said the fox. “There’s like this whole secret thing and I really want to tell you all about it, but I don’t really want to spoil it.”

  “I won’t be long.” Cire gently pinched the foxgirl’s nose with her talons. “It’s just one dungeon.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a pretty tough one,” said Sylvia. “It’s kinda like those thingies Al makes, and it gets harder as you get stronger.”

  “I’ll be fine,” said Cire. “My circuits are nearly fixed.”

  “Last time I checked, eleven percent fixed isn’t nearly fixed!”

  “Close enough.”

  “No it isn’t!”

  “It is. Now stop worrying.”

  “That’s way easier said than done,” said the fox.

  “I know. But I’ll be fine. I promise.”

  “That doesn’t mean I won’t be worried.” Sylvia beckoned Cire’s face a little closer before wrapping her arms around her snout, and pressing her forehead to her icy horn. “Do your best.”

  “I will.” Cire wrapped her body around the half-elf and gave her a bit of a squeeze. Ostensibly, it was a hug, though it more closely resembled an attempt at strangution.

  Sylvia still seemed to want to say something, but Cire unraveled her body and passed through the gate before she could. The dungeon must have been incredibly difficult for both the fox and the raccoon to behave the way they did, and the thought of the challenge had her heart pumping.

  Log Entry 918993

  You have entered the dungeon known as The Dead Dragon’s Den. This is a divine trial, issued by Aurora, the goddess of the frozen wilds.

  Please wait while the goddess calibrates the trial to provide an optimal experience.

  Ignoring the spinning circle hovering below the log entry, Cire turned her eyes on her surroundings. She had half expected to be taken into a sort of mystical realm, but much of the world was identical. The same mountain formation enclosed the area around her, and the same magical lines ran through the world at her feet. If she had to name one difference, it was that the shortest of the mountains was gone. The towering mass of ice and rock that clearly belonged to the goddess of the frozen wilds had been repced by a massive crater. Waves of divinity pulsed through the basin, further concentrating the ambient power with every subsequent tick.

  Log Entry 918994

  Calibration complete. You are qualified to challenge this dungeon at difficulty level 3/EX+24.

  Cire regarded the box with a tilt of the head before continuing forward. Without a point of reference, the provided code was impossible to interpret.

  3/EX+24 designates a difficulty level 24 steps above the most difficult predefined standard for an individual with three ascensions. The individual known as Allegra Cedr would have qualified for 3/EX+29 at the time she most recently entered the mountains.

  The lyrkress nodded silently. She still didn’t have the best idea of exactly how much of a difference each increment made, but the evaluation seemed to pce her just a bit below Allegra. In her mind at least, that was probably accurate. But so too was it an affront to her pride.

  “Raise it to 30.”

  3/EX+30 is an appropriate rating in the circumstance that your magic circuits are repaired to 50% efficacy. 3/EX+24 is appropriate, given the state of your body.

  “I’ll be fine,” said Cire. “Raise it.”

  …Request acknowledged. The difficulty of this dungeon has been raised to 3/EX+30.

  Another six pulses rang through the dungeon. They seeped into the nd, as if marinating it in their raw power. The accompanying box disappeared, as if to escape further compint—not that there were any inbound. Cire had already turned her attention to the violently shaking mountains. It almost seemed like someone had grabbed the pnet and started bouncing it up and down.

  She didn’t escape the earthquakes until she rose into the air. Only then did she look down at the world and recognize the crater as the source of all the instability.

  It was starting to crack apart, to morph and twist out of shape. But at the same time, it almost seemed to be stitching itself back together. It didn’t make any sense. She couldn’t make heads or tails of anything until the rumbling accelerated.

  All of a sudden, the snow melted away to reveal a set of brown, dying grasses. They slowly rose from their weakened states, their petals picking themselves off of the ground to form flowers, then buds, then nothing of note. It was the same process that the waterways followed. They trickled as winter turned to fall, ran during the summer, and leaked like faucets when it was finally time for spring, only to freeze again as the cold returned.

  The sun moved backwards.

  The moon wandered about.

  Over and over, the cycle repeated, accelerating with every day lost.

  Until it halted, stopping abruptly on a particur frame.

  The world that day was dark. Bckened clouds gathered overhead, pouring acid upon the crater. Only by the descending bolts was the steady rain matched. Every three seconds, they fell from the sky like clockwork, indicative perhaps of Tzaarkus’ presence.

  And yet, the mother was at peace, resting atop her eggs without a care in the world.

  Even though her body had long decayed.

  She was made of naught but skin and bones, and it was generous to describe her even as that. For the few bits of skin that decorated her body were tiny fps of flesh, little bits still present only because they were caught on her bones. Her nature was effectively skeletal. She had no meat and no organs. And yet, she warmed her nest.

  The fmes she blew from her lips nurtured her children, preserving their lives, even as she was without her own.

  Or at least that was how it might have appeared to one outside of her species.

  Because as a true dragon, she had no need for flesh.

  Her ck of organs made it impossible for her to perform body functions like reproduction and greatly limited her ability to engage in natural flight. Likewise, she needed to rely on more than biology to perform any breath-based attacks. But by all accounts, the dragoness was still alive.

  She was not like the inferior races, who needed eyes to see, brains to think, or circuits to cast. Simply by existing, she maintained all of the functions in question. She could even feel if she wanted, just as she felt each time she pressed her snout to her hatchlings.

  Still, it was certainly correct to interpret the mother as being much closer to death than a flesh-den specimen.

  Her state was born entirely of a desperate struggle, a conflict that had led her to sacrifice her flesh for power—a gamble that had certainly paid off. It was because she cast it aside, offered it to the gods, that she had gained the strength she needed to stave off the intruders who wished to loot her nest.

  It could never be returned, no matter how much she leveled. And even if she were to ascend, she had little choice but to become an infertile celestial.

  She could never produce another brood.

  And that was precisely why she was so determined to guard the one that y beneath her, so determined to incinerate the fool who had dared to invade her crater.