Chapter 120: Chain Smokers - Interlude

  It was day four of the trial, and Emilia and her team were already hating every bit of it.

  The skies were black with smoke, gases of all sorts, and volcanic ash. All saturated with corrosive mana.

  Not to mention the intense heat that the black skies emitted.

  Apart from that, straight down below, the land was overflowing with lava, either due to the random cracks spewing out lava or due to the volcanic eruptions themselves. This level of the dungeon had very quickly turned into an apocalyptic hell zone. It had been a day since they had seen the sun. It was that bad.

  And flying above the cloud cover was a foolish choice because there was nothing but oppressive, hot, toxic smoke above. And even beyond that would be the dungeon boundary. So they had to maintain their current elevation.

  Right now, at this elevation, they had visibility at least. Another day and that would be gone as well.

  Emilia was immensely grateful that they wouldn’t have to put up with this for much longer. They would be clearing this level of the dungeon in a few hours. At the maximum.

  All six of them had their hoods, visor and neck gaiters pulled up. They didn’t want to inhale any of this. A weak telekinetic bubble surrounded them as their ice platform moved through the air. Emilia kept it purposefully weak so that it didn’t require all her focus. The bubble was not supposed to be defensive. Its sole purpose was to block out most of the poisonous air.

  This was supposed to be the trial of fire, not the trial of burnt lungs.

  “Ten o’clock,” Stefan called out.

  She didn’t feel anything in her telekinetic range, which was pretty vast now. So whatever Stefan had detected was most likely outside that range.

  The next moment, a green bullet of mana went screaming through the air in that exact direction. A few seconds later, there was an explosion as it impacted something hidden in the smoke.

  “Two more bullets. Rapid fire,” he said.

  Emilia turned towards Opal, who was on artillery duty right now. Her face was covered by the Gryphon mask. A thin layer of green mana surrounded her. Her Gryphon construct wasn’t fully active, but just the mana surrounding her head had perfectly transformed into the shape of the beast. Its beak was wide open as two more bullets of mana fired one after the other.

  The kids had improved. Previously, they could only shoot out beams. It was simple; all they had to do was expel mana. And the beams were the strongest attacks in their arsenal, but they consumed a lot of mana.

  Now they had managed to learn to condense it and release it as bullets, which was relatively faster and less expensive. Mana control, as usual, came easily to fairies.

  On top of it, their unique effects carried over to the bullets as well. Just as Opal’s beams exploded on contact, so did her mana bullets. Similarly, Amber’s bullet had insane piercing power, whereas Zircon could manipulate the trajectory of her bullet after firing it. Apart from the obvious speed correlating to their artifacts as well. As usual, Gryphon had balance, the Manticore had attack power, and the Enfield had speed.

  Outside of her telekinetic range, two more explosions resounded. There was a screech mixed in somewhere in between, and given the way Stefan turned away, that threat was eliminated.

  It was most likely a death bat, or a couple of them. Those things were thriving in this oppressive heat and darkness.

  “Andrea, there’s going to be an eruption. Bank left and continue for ten minutes. Full speed,” Stefan ordered.

  Their system worked well. Andrea brought the mobility. Stefan provided the insight. The triplets were the artillery for defense and offense. And Emilia was pulling triple duty.

  Thankfully, they hadn’t come across any Voyagers, but this level of the dungeon was nasty as it was. There was no need to add more people to the mix and make it worse.

  As Stefan predicted, ten minutes later, there was an eruption in their vicinity.

  “On it, Emilia spoke to the untold command. Her weak telekinetic bubble immediately gained strength as she pushed more mana into it.”

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  Lava, smoke, and ash flew towards the skies at a massive speed. The heat radiating off it was so intense that the ice beneath their foot immediately began melting, despite Andrea throwing so much mana into it.

  “Need some help here, Emilia,” Andrea said, her voice strained.

  “All right, let’s keep pushing,” she replied. Right now, all they needed to do was push. So Emilia and Andrea began pushing together with utmost speed. They wanted to put as much distance as they could from the latest eruption.

  A few minutes later, they were past the danger zone, but it was never safe here.

  “Take control, please. I need a breather,” Andrea said as she collapsed on the ice, panting heavily.

  Emilia obliged and took control of the ice platform, which was once again rapidly getting back to its normal structural integrity. This had been their rotation. Whenever Andrea got tired, Emilia moved the platform while Andrea just maintained the structural integrity. And while Andrea steered their ship, Emilia pitched in on the offense and defense.

  It worked, so there was nothing much to say and nothing much to change.

  Finding spots to rest in this hellscape was hard. So they had to keep moving. Just a few more hours, and they would be out of this mess.

  Damian Dill-T hated every moment he was inside the dungeon. Functionally, his team and his allies were repeating the same shit that they had done in the previous run.

  Toby’s Palm Palisade carried the landlocked voyagers. Joe went on strafing runs, being the Wingman. Linda provided support with her fancy hip flask. Damian refused to call it by its asinine name. Damian himself was predicting the safest path with his limited precognition. And Francisca was raining thunder on any monster that dared to get close. And as usual, Neal did fuck all.

  Damian didn’t like Francisca, sure. But he absolutely hated Neal. The damn freeloader was doing nothing. Just coasting on his teammates’ efforts and otherwise being a yes man and a nuisance in general.

  So functionally, nothing had changed in this level. But the problem was that this floor of the dungeon was turning out to be a larger mess than before.

  “Here, Damian,” Linda held out her flask to him.

  “Thanks, Linda, you’re a lifesaver," he said and took a swig from the hip flask.

  This specific concoction was a bit fiery and burned a teensy bit when it went down his throat. He wished he could connect it to his implants and directly inject the liquid into his bloodstream. But alas, potions had a ritualistic component to them. They had to be consumed the normal way, not the artificial way that the synthires were used to.

  So he kept drinking and downed the potion in seconds.

  With unshakable trust in his teammate, he removed his face mask and took a deep breath of fresh air. The potion had worked. It was filtering the air and not allowing any pollutants inside his body. In the current condition of this trial, that was a tiny miracle in itself.

  Sure, Joe was safe in his advanced helmet. If it weren’t for Linda’s potions, the rest of their lungs wouldn’t have survived. Especially since they were so high up in this nasty environment.

  He would never understand why Byrone named such a smart artifact with such a dumb name. The Conchemist, he had named it. A wordplay of concoction and alchemist. Maybe it sounded smart in that guy’s head, but Damian thought that it was dumb.

  The concept behind the artifact was pretty nifty. Any liquid poured into the flask would be converted into a potion of the user’s designs. It required its users to be brainy, because they needed to visualize and understand what the potion would exactly do. The user needed to understand the phenomenon before they could make a potion for it. Or else anyone would be able to create any bullshit portion.

  And air filtration was not such a difficult phenomenon to understand. Heck. Linda had a data pack that was completely dedicated to act as an encyclopedia. So she could read and understand the cause and effect of various things.

  Knowledge was not the only limitation, though. The major limitation was that the more outlandish the potion and its effect, the higher the mana requirement to transmute the liquid.

  So a simple filtration portion or a cleansing portion didn’t take much mana. But let’s say the user wanted a potion that would give them fire-breath. Therein lay the complication. The hip flask could give them fire-breath, but it would only be small sparks spitting out of the user’s mouth. The scale of the effect itself required more mana too.

  If the drinker wanted to spit out large jets of fire that could reach Parth’s level, Linda would need to empty her entire mana reserves on it. Even then, the effect would not last long.

  Cause and effect. The bigger the effect, the bigger the mana required to create the potion. And the problem was that Linda didn’t have a very high synchronization rate. Neither were her mana reserves amazing. Despite that, she still managed to pull her weight. Unlike goddamn Neal.

  Francisca was spitting mad that she wasn’t able to cash her bounties. Heck, she had been very pissed when she had learned that Path and his team hadn’t made it out of the dungeon. Damian was confused for a second when he’d first witnessed that. But then he realized the implications. Damian was bummed because Parth was a stand-up guy, and Damian didn’t want him to get hurt like that. Francisca was bummed because if Parth and his team died inside the dungeon, she would lose out on her bounty.

  Heck. Three days ago, Joe spotted something on his radar. He said that something hot and fast was moving through the air at half Mach. The kid got excited and immediately wanted to give chase. But Damian had shut that down, despite Francisca’s insistence on sending out Joe.

  The kid liked to fly. He loved it. And a high-speed chase in the air would be right up his alley. But Damian wasn’t willing to risk his teammate like that, despite what his allies or his patron would suggest.

  Nasty weather, nastier company. He was just counting his days before all of this ended quickly. He couldn’t wait to retire and relax in Tava in the lap of luxury that he would gain after this entire thing came to an end. He wouldn’t even be participating in the final tourney if not for the prestige. The more the prestige, the more the earnings down the line. He wouldn’t put that off.

  But for now, he had to put up with this band of assholes. At least he wasn’t alone in the suffering. Linda was here right next to him. Even though Joe, the lucky brat, had escaped because he was airborne most of the time. Away from the hearing range of Francisca’s bitching and Neal’s constant glazing.