Filth-covered Iron Scrap
Quantity: 200
Item Class: Relic
Item Quality: Mastercraft (+20%)
Weight: 1 kg
“Damn, this is a ton of metal!” Drace exclaimed after the last item had been pulled free of the bag. “It won’t be enough by a long shot to fill what we need for Aldford, but it’ll help tide us over a bit longer and keep us from needing to use that Æthertouched Iron.”
“Yeah, Léandre is going to love this stuff,” I replied, wiping my finger through the filth coating the iron. “We’re going to have to give it a really good clean though. I don’t know what this crap all over it is, but it’s everywhere.”
“Looks like a mold to me,” Drace said, inspecting a fragment in his hand. “Kinda smells faintly like that musk hanging in the air. Based on the pitting on the metal, I think it might have been slowly eating it.”
“Think that’ll post a problem with our gear?” I asked, checking to see if I had managed to get any of the pasty substance onto my chainmail.
“Dunno,” Drace answered with a shrug, sounding unconcerned. “The Sentinel was completely covered in it and look at the punishment that it stood up to. It probably took centuries for the mold to make the progress that it did.”
“Maybe,” I said, not completely convinced. “We should quarantine it just in case, then burn all this stuff off it before letting it loose in Aldford.”
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” the big man agreed, putting the piece of scrap he was holding in his pocket, then turning back towards the group. “Anyone have any claims yet?”
“I do,” Cadmus replied, holding the pair of heavy gauntlets in his hand. “These are a huge upgrade for me, at least twice as good as my current gloves.”
“Then they’re yours,” I said, nodding towards the Lizardman, who immediately stripped off his existing gloves and put on the oversized gauntlets. “Anyone else?”
“Since all the other casters are dead, I’ll take the Focus Crystal for now,” Halcyon answered, holding the crystal that had been embedded into the Sentinel’s palm for everyone to see. “I may need some help in attaching it to something, but this would make a great wand. The four of us can sort out who gets it after we get back.”
“I think Drace or I could help you out with that,” I told the mage with a nod, appreciating the fact that he hadn’t forgotten about the other casters.
“Well, that was easy enough,” Freya said, holding up the Sentinel’s Æther Core in her hand. “All that’s left is this thing now. From the looks of it, I guess it’s used in crafting.”
“Yeah, I think so too,” I replied, looking at the fist-sized crystal that was glowing with a faint azure light. “Maybe I can set it into a weapon or maybe some armor…plus three to all stats across the board is a pretty serious bonus.”
“It definitely is,” Lazarus chimed in. “Perks of being the first to clear a dungeon, I guess.”
“No kidding,” I agreed while motioning for Freya to hang onto the crystal for the time being. “We can figure out what to do with that thing once we get back to town. It might be worth hanging onto it until we craft our next round of armor…whenever that’ll be.”
“Considering that it’s a ‘Mastercraft’ item, that’s probably for the best,” Freya said, putting the Æther Core in her pocket. “It’d suck to waste it on something that would be replaced right away.”
“We’ll have to see what Léandre, Drace and I can come up with over the next few days, or weeks,” I said, indicating for everyone to take a share of the Iron Scraps we had recovered, intending to split the load between the groups. “Maybe we’ll be able to figure out how to forge larger pieces of the Æthertouched Iron and make something out of that.”
“Hopefully,” Drace stated as we all collected the scraps and prepared ourselves to resume exploring the ruin. “We sure have a lot of the stuff lying around now.”
With the loot sorted and no pressing reason to stay in place, we set off down the tunnel that Lazarus had pointed out earlier, a handful of the group members still muttering to themselves as they considered what to spend their skill point on. As we walked, I remembered that I had yet to spend my attribute points and took a moment to consider where my points would be best placed for this level.
Strength and Agility are doing pretty well, but I can never get enough of those anyway, I thought as I scanned through my character sheet and tried to gauge what I needed most at the moment. Compared to everything else though, my Constitution is falling behind. It’s my second worse attribute after Willpower…and the one directly responsible for keeping me alive.
Realizing what I needed to do, I mentally added my five attribute points to Constitution and confirmed my choice, feeling the still eerie sensation of my health and stamina improving. With the choice made, I briefly glanced over the top portion of my character sheet, familiarizing myself with the changes a new level always brought.
Lyrian Rastler – Level 15 Spellsword
Human Male (Eberian)
Statistics:
HP: 891/891
Stamina: 810/810
Mana: 940/940
Experience to next level: 534/31700
Attributes:
Strength: 55 (74)
Agility: 50 (71)
Constitution: 50 (51)
Intelligence: 54
Willpower: 20
Looking pretty good, I couldn’t help but think as I saw my new hitpoint total, feeling more confident in my ability to endure whatever the game decided to throw my way. I knew that no matter how good I was at dodging or avoiding attacks, my luck would run out at some point, like it had with the Sentinel, and I wanted to be sure that I’d be able to stay standing for when it happened again.
Deciding that I would read through the full character sheet later, I dismissed the rest of it from my vision and turned my attention back towards the tunnel around us. Much like the larger cavern that we had just left, it too had been subjected to intense heat until it had partially melted, causing the entire passageway to shrink and deform as the molten stone dripped down from the ceiling above, forcing us to pick our way through, and in several cases over, piles of dried lava.
“Whatever happened to this place, happened really close to here,” Halcyon said, breaking the temporary silence that had filled the air as we moved. “This looks nothing like the tunnel that we passed through before. It must have all been melted.”
“Seems like it,” I replied to the mage, noting that the walls and ceiling around us had narrowed drastically, barely stretching more than twenty feet wide in some places, which was a far cry from the fifty feet that it had been before.
Falling back into a companionable silence, we all continued to follow the snaking path through the melted tunnel, eager to see if we would finally reach the Ley Line or another intact portion of the Nafarrian ruin. Moving at the head of the party with Amaranth by my side, I couldn’t help but notice that in the short distance that we had traveled, the ever-persistent musk had grown practically impossible to ignore. Growing from a faint, yet potent, stench in the air, to an aroma so heavy that I felt as if it were sitting on my own tongue.
My mental reply back to Amaranth was cut short as the two of us rounded a bend in the twisting tunnel, and a bright source of magic unexpectedly filled the entirety of my vision, forcing me to shield my eyes reflexively from the intensity. Never before had I seen any source of magic as bright as what I had just experienced, causing me to immediately deactivate True Sight just as Amaranth’s stunned mental voice filter
ed into my head.
“Finding what?” I asked, blinking furiously to get the afterimages out of my eyes, and pulling my hand away from my face, my jaw dropping as I took in the sight before me.
Opening up just past the bend that Amaranth and I had just passed, the tunnel expanded drastically before us, widening until it joined a vast, almost impossibly large cavern that practically blazed with azure light. I felt my leg tremble as I rushed across the remainder of the tunnel, hearing voices call out from behind me as I moved. Coming to a stop at the tunnel’s mouth, I found myself staring out into a sight beyond my wildest dreams, barely able to process what was before me.
Just past a large ridge of stone, was a veritable forest filled with what could only be described as mushroom-like trees, each of them glowing with a faint azure light. Slowly turning my head away from the glowing forest, I noticed that the side of the cavern had been covered in patches of glowing moss, the combined light from the two almost perfectly illuminating the chamber in a dull azure haze.
Has this place been under Aldford all this time? I asked myself as I continued my scan of the cavern, gradually following the walls upward, until I had worked my way towards the ceiling, where I spotted countless brightly glowing crystals protruding from it, along with several larger ones on the far side of the cavern.
Hang on a second, I thought, squinting my eyes at the larger crystals in the distance, noticing that they didn’t look quite right to my eye. Those aren’t crystals at all! Those are the Ætherwarped Oak’s roots! Feeling my heart thundering in my chest as I stared up at the cavern’s ceiling, a twinkling light in the distance caught my eye, causing me to drop my gaze downwards. Squinting over the canopy of the mushroom forest, I could just barely make out a glowing waterfall at the far end of the cave as it dropped off a distant cliff face and out of sight.
That’s not a waterfall! The thought caused my heart to beat even faster as I tore my eyes from the sight before me and spun backward towards the rest of the guild, seeing them all slowly approaching me, awe written all across each of their faces.
“We found it,” I said to the group, watching as every single pair of eyes shifted onto me.
“We found the Ley Line.”
Chapter 40
“Wow,” Halcyon said gazing at the cavern before us, shaking his head from side to side. “Just…wow. I can’t even describe what I’m feeling…”
“I don’t think any of us can right now, Hal,” Sierra stated, standing beside the mage. “This is beyond anything that I was expecting…this is…”
“A completely new zone,” I said, turning my head to look at the pair and seeing them nod in agreement without taking their eyes off the cavern.
“This must have been ground zero for whatever destroyed the ruin and ruptured the Ley Line,” Halcyon commented, his head slowly moving as he scanned the area. “Look at how some parts of the walls are all smooth, while others are porous and cracked…”
“Just like the tunnel,” Freya noted. “Something in the ruin must have exploded in here and hollowed out a good chunk of the place. Then earthquakes must have then done the rest.”
“Probably the Æther they had stored here,” I suggested, remembering the size of the blast from the two depleted Æther Crystals during the battle with the Sentinel.
“That’s what I’m thinking too,” Halcyon agreed, taking his eye off the cavern just long enough to nod at Freya and me before glancing back. “It must have been a hell of a lot to create a cavern like this though. Earthquakes notwithstanding, this place has to be miles across.”
“And yet, it’s next to nothing compared to whatever made Crater Lake,” I pointed out, trying to imagine the scope of the devastation that would have been left behind after erasing an entire city from existence. Shaking my head at the depressing thought, I focused my attention back to the massive cavern, unable to help but feel intimidated by its sheer size.
And here I thought the hard part was over after making it through that dungeon, I thought, feeling a mixed wave of both resignation and excitement shoot through my body. On the one hand, we had a brand-new area to explore, and the Ley Line was finally within reach. But on the other, I had a sinking suspicion in my gut that going forward wouldn’t be easy.
As it was, we had already been hard-pressed to fight our way through the Nafarrian ruins, the level gap between the dungeon inhabitants and ourselves widening the further that we progressed. Even with the new level under our belts, I expected that this new area would continue the trend, if not increase it drastically.
We’ll figure out a way to manage. We always have so far, I thought, pushing my reservations to the side as I brought up my quest log, deciding to check on the status of our quest. Lately, I had begun to ignore the almost constant updates that had appeared in the corner of my vision as we explored the ruin, the majority of them being either a summary of recent events or just an incremental notification that had reached a new area.
Which I guess this one isn’t really any different, I noted as I skimmed through the newest update.
Quest Update! The Ruptured Ley Line!
Following the path that the Nafarrian device had opened for you, you and your party delved deeper into the ruins, encountering tremendous damage and destruction on your route to the next Æther Matrix, which proved to be infested with the spirits of the dead. With the aid of the device, you were able to overcome the spirits and continued onwards until you rejoined with the rest of your guild members, caught in the middle of a battle with an ancient Nafarrian construct. Rushing to their aid, your combined efforts proved enough to destroy the machine, despite incurring heavy losses.
After taking a moment to recover from the ordeal, you and the rest of your party resumed your exploration of the ruin, travelling through a large burnt out tunnel until you found yourselves overlooking a massive underground cavern filled with strange glowing plants.
From your vantage point, you can see a bright, azure-hued, waterfall glowing in the distance. Could this be the Ley Line that you came here looking for?
Explore the Cavern: 0/1
Ley Line Sealed: 0/1
“So, who feels up to exploring the place?” I asked, dismissing the quest update from my vision and checking Party Sense to see where Caius and Constantine were, finding them to be somewhere above and in front of us. “It doesn’t seem like the others have left Aldford yet for some reason, so we have plenty of time to kill before they get back.”
“Hrm,” Drace grunted, his head glancing up towards the cavern’s ceiling. “You’re right; they haven’t left yet. I wonder what’s going on.”
“Now that you mention it,” Theia spoke up. “Our group hasn’t left yet either. Maybe they’re waiting for their death sickness to wear off?”
“Maybe,” Freya acknowledged. “But it’s also only been what? Ten or fifteen minutes since we finished off the Sentinel? They could be waiting to see if anyone else pops in before leaving, they’re all going to have to go through those double doors again at the ruin’s entrance.”
“Oh right,” I replied, having completely forgotten about the two doors that controlled access to the ruin. “I’ll have to see if I can get the security system to disable that.”
“We can do it on the way out,” Halcyon said eagerly, motioning towards a small ramp of dried lava that led off our vantage point and downwards into darkness. “Let’s go and take a look around first!”
“I’m down for that,” Drace stated, casting a glance at the rest of the party and me before taking the first step down the ramp. “If the others are going to be a while in getting back down here, I’d rather be moving around in the meantime, rather than just standing and waiting.”
“Sounds good to me,” I replied, moving to follow the half-giant and casting a Light spell to brighten the path as he led
the way down, Freya and Amaranth taking up places beside me as we walked.
“I bet there are a bunch of interesting creatures down here!” Alistair announced from the middle of the party. “This place reminds me of zones I’ve seen in other games years ago…they’ve always ended up being my favorite places to explore.”
“And to hit level fourteen in?” Lazarus prompted, with a note of humor in his voice.
“Hopefully!” Alistair replied. “Though I haven’t been able to see any creatures here yet.”
“Me either,” Sierra chimed in as we continued to move. “Maybe they’re just good at hiding? The spiders in the Webwood were pretty hard to find at first.”
“Oh please, don’t use that ‘S’ word down here,” Halcyon groaned theatrically. “I’ve had my fill of those for several lifetimes. It can be literally anything other than spiders, and I’ll be cool with it.”
“Like scorpions?” Drace prompted from the head of the group, flashing me a smile over his shoulder as he spoke.
“Okay, spiders and scorpions,” Halcyon corrected. “Everything else should be cool.”
“What about a giant praying mantis?” Thorne suggested.
“Or giant mosquitos?” Abaddon added with a throaty chuckle.
“Guys, do you want me just to come out and say it?” Halcyon stated uneasily. “I’m terrified of giant bugs in general.”
“Is that really a fear though?” Lazarus asked, barely stifling a laugh. “I thought that was just called common sense.”
Legacy of the Fallen Page 54
