by Nikita Thorn
Variation – Mapped: adds the stun effect to the single-handed version of the ability, allowing the user to set a straight path for the stun with the angle of weapon tilt upon contact with the ground. The energy requirement triples for every extra foot of range beyond 2 feet. Inability to supply the required amount once the path has been set causes the ability to fail and neither the damage applies nor the stun effect triggers.
As promised, the dagger scalded his palm as it shattered into a thousand pieces. Seiki let go. His whole arm, perhaps his whole body, was instantly lost to numbness. All around him, everything else had also exploded at once, and his cry was lost in the deafening blast.
Out of instinct, he raised his left hand to shield himself, using the Crimsonfire Tekko’s barrier to protect his meager amount of health. The ground gave way underneath him, and Strength of Will kept his destructed surroundings perfectly clear as he fell through the collapsing floor. Seiki realized then he had forgotten to take one thing into consideration. The rice barrels in the storage room were all filled with Obora poison, and the light from the destructed pearl had also set them off.
The ear-splitting burst was followed by an instant silence. Seiki was greatly surprised he was not dead as he found himself in a sea of rubble, with the fragments of the crisp, flame-colored shield dispersing all around him. Then it was pitch-black. For a moment, he could not feel his body, or move, and after a little he started to wonder if he was in fact in a death void.
Seiki waited. No circle of light appeared, and after a while he started to become aware of the strange trickling of health and energy from the curious Kombucha Tea pouring into him, a tiny amount at a time, confirming that he was still alive.
He lay still for a while, to give himself time to comprehend what had just taken place, or perhaps because movement was slightly beyond his ability. It was quiet, he noted, and no sound of clattering weapons or demonic screeches could be heard, which meant the light pearl must have done its job. Seiki simply hoped he had not been too late.
Something joyously wet and refreshing splashed into his side, filling him with a fifth of both his energy and health. Even without seeing what it was, he recognized the effect as one of Mairin’s Kindred Spirit phantom foxes, which meant at least she was still alive.
Once he could feel his body again, Seiki finally understood why it was so dark and so difficult to move. He was completely buried in what remained of the upper floor.
Still feeling too weak to struggle, Seiki waited, and not too long afterward two more healing foxes found him under the debris. At half health, he finally struck out with a bare-handed Focused Strike to clear the rubble from his body. Twice more, and he started to see lamplight, which also happened to be when he started to cough violently as dust got in his lungs.
As Seiki managed to free his upper body, the first thing he could see was a white fox, who had one paw raised off the ground as if ready to Dash.
A second later, sparkly transformation smoke went up around her body, and Mairin smiled and shook his head. “Well, that’s one way to make a re-entry, Seiki.” She then shouted, “Yep, it’s him.”
As always, perhaps the kitsune had volunteered to scout ahead once they heard something collapsed.
Seiki found himself back in the cavern where he had last seen his friends and the Obora. Several more wall torches had been lit in his absence, and now the whole place glowed with dim firelight. The cavern was nearly empty, but evidence of combat was apparent all around, in forms of residue trails of black poison on the ground, as well as unsprung metal traps protruding from the mud.
Seiki looked up at Mairin, then back up at where the upper floor had been, which now appeared as a jagged cliff ledge. There was no sign of Shousei.
Behind Mairin, Ippei and the rest of the group were slowly approaching, leaping over remaining pools of Obora poison. They were out of energy and were all missing quite a fair bit of health.
“What did you do exactly?” said Ippei in slight confusion as he came within range, his Hikari still drawn and dripping with purple blood.
Seiki glanced around. The cavern was now indeed empty. “I… think I killed all the demons? Hopefully?”
Yamura stared at him. “How? One minute they were clamoring over dead bodies to get through, and another second they were gone.”
“So you beat the dungeon and they all despawned?” said Kiku.
“They didn’t despawn,” said Ippei. “They dropped dead.” He looked at Seiki, expecting an explanation.
“It was a… Seed of Light,” said Seiki.
“Let me guess,” Mairin piped up enthusiastically. “You destroyed the Seed of Light, and it killed all the demons.”
“Yeah. That’s about it,” said Seiki.
“See?” The kitsune said to the group. “Again. I told you. I see a pattern now. The quests keep having us destroy these Seeds of Light. I swear it’s going to come back and bite us in the butt one day in some future quest.”
Yamura was still staring. “So one Seed of Light explosion killed all five thousand demons?” His jaw dropped. “The XP for that must be completely—”
“I didn’t get any,” Seiki realized out loud.
“He’s still Level 15,” said Mairin, before giggling. “Or he would be Level 30 Precious High Lord Seiki by now.”
Seiki looked at his friends. “So… everyone here?”
All six of them were, although battle-worn, looking tired and covered in blood. That said, Seiki was quite certain Kentaro was not looking forward to the amount of repair work waiting for him. One of Mairin’s sleeves was completely missing from the elbow down. Yamura’s left leg guard from the Shinshioka set had fallen apart and was now held casually in the ryoushi’s hand. Koharu seemed to be wearing a new, entirely different kimono.
“Of course,” said Ippei. His shoulderguard had a gigantic cut through the middle and the rest was barely hanging together, suggesting that it had earlier stopped what could have been a lethal slash. “We could have easily lasted at least fifteen minutes longer.”
“I doubt it,” said Kentaro with a laugh. “Since the Great General Ippei was running out of troops to sacrifice to the triton.”
“Players before NPCs.” Ippei smiled. “Always.”
“Not that I don’t agree,” said the houshi. “But…”
“It was gruesome,” said Mairin.
Ippei had devised a strategy to use the narrow opening that connected the previous room to this as a choke point. They then worked to pile up the demon corpses on top of one another to slow down the swarming horde, exploiting the fact that it took about ten seconds for each of the dead body to fade away.
“We built quite a wall,” Mairin explained. “But then the slug monster kept oozing poison through, and we had to use Yamura’s light arrow to explode it backward, and that destroyed the demon corpse wall.” She grinned. “It was ridiculous crazy.”
“I can imagine,” Seiki said.
His friends’ units were all missing, except for two of Yamura’s men, and Seiki had a feeling that the group had been on their last stand. Now that the threat was over, they were back in high spirits, chatty, excited, like they often were after beating the Nezumi Temple despite complaints about it being repetitive. “I guess the light-forged named dagger was worth it.”
Seiki had not realized he had said it out loud until Ippei looked at him and straight up asked, “What light-forged named dagger?”
“Oh.” Seiki chuckled. “A very good light-forged named dagger.” Now that he thought about it, he could not help feel a little wistful, as the tripling effect was most likely not something he could come by every day. But whether by official design or by his own measure of himself, it had been a two-way test, and Seiki was glad that he neither let his friends nor himself down.
Ippei’s expression was unreadable. “Okay, if you could have walked away with a light-forged named dagger and didn’t…”
Seiki l
aughed, said nothing more, and simply brushed off the rest of the debris from his body. He looked up again to check if he could catch any sign of movement from the upper floor, but the cave above now seemed completely empty. He doubted Shousei was dead, as the man had not been within ten feet of the exploding light pearl, but he had a feeling the swordsman would not be bothering him again until it was time for his next class ability.
Nothing happened when Seiki tried to summon his unit for a report. Ippei told him it was most likely because the instance was over, and that for the sake of continuity, it would not make sense for the unit to reappear in the cave after exiting through to the gorge.
“And I don’t think they would kill your troops out of your sight, if you know what I mean,” the samurai added. “So you don’t have to worry about that.”
The group had gathered around to listen to Seiki’s brief account of what had happened to Okamoto. Kentaro slowly topped him off with a Heal as soon as he had energy for it.
“You know what?” Seiki jumped off the crumbling pile of rubble as his health filled. “That kombucha tea. I’m a believer.” He wondered how much it had been secretly working in the background to get him through the last challenge.
The houshi smiled. “I told you it’s good stuff.”
Yamura sighed. “So? Now what? We’re done? That’s it?”
Seiki scanned his immediate surroundings once more. “I don’t know.” Although he could argue that saving Okamoto and getting the Vertical Spike variation were enough reward, he had expected there to be some kind of a clearer conclusion to the instance. “I really thought the light pearl would—”
He got his answer as soon as his sight swept over the far edge of the cavern. The gloom had not completely lifted from where the demonic army had gathered earlier.
From the far end of the room, two glowing red eyes were still staring at them.
The explosion from the Seed of Light must have thrown the monster back against the far end of the cave, and the Obora had now slowly recovered and was once again making its way back toward them.
“The Seed of Light didn’t kill that?” cried Yamura in horror.
Koharu grimaced. “Since the instance is over, we can just run, right? The thing’s impossible.”
“The slug takes very little damage and heals itself over time.” Ippei explained the obake girl’s meaning.
The Obora was approaching the range where Seiki could make out its label. Its health was nearly full.
Ippei glanced at the group. “So we need a massive burst, which, at 80k, will be about eighty times what we can do individually.” His tone pretty much agreed with Koharu’s sentiment that it was unfeasible. “Unless Shousei taught you something interesting up there.”
Seiki had to give it to his friend for the sensible guess. “He did. Another variation, on the Spike.”
Ippei raised his brow. “Anything that can potentially kill that?”
The incoming Obora was now less than a hundred and fifty feet away.
“Probably not,” said Seiki. Technically, the Mapped Vertical Spike could set off the poison from a distance. But without practice, he had no confidence, and he was quite sure whatever he could pull off was not going to deal eighty thousand points in damage any time soon.
“Run, then,” said Ippei.
“Run?” cried Mairin in disappointment. “Aren’t we supposed to beat the instance?”
“Maybe it’s already beaten,” Ippei said. “Seiki’s got a new variation, so maybe it’s time to get out of here.”
Mairin looked doubtful, and the samurai added, “Some instances do Fall of the House of Usher for the ending, you get the XP when you get out and the whole thing collapses behind you.”
Yamura frowned. “Fall of what again?”
Ippei sheathed his sword and glanced toward the narrow crack in the wall that would lead them back out toward the exit. “For instance, lore-wise, they can’t really let you kill the lord of hell, you know, or that upsets the balance of the universe. So sometimes you complete some other objective and the boss enrages and starts wrecking the place. The whole dungeon collapses behind you while you’re… ushered right out of the instance.” He finished with a little laugh.
Kentaro made a face but said nothing.
“We don’t have any health or energy to fight the thing anyway,” said Ippei.
“Or arrows,” Yamura added.
“Or will,” said Kiku tiredly.
Since the group had spent the past half an hour getting acquainted with the monster and its mechanics, Seiki trusted them to decide, and they all made a dash toward the narrow crack before the Obora could cut them off.
With unsprung traps and pools of poison on the ground, the progress was slower than ideal, and Seiki gauged they would have to get a few exchanges in with the Obora before they could flee through the hole.
“I’m low on energy, and for the first time in my life I’m out of potions,” said Kentaro. “So I can heal one or two of you, but not all at once. In other words, don’t try to explode the poison, all right?”
Seiki reached into his pocket to check if he had any potions left. Having given Mitsue some and used most himself, nothing remained in his inventory but several instanced Cards of Polished Shells, and a curious pair of socks—which he had intended to offer Mairin as a gift, which he had completely forgotten about.
There was also something else. Seiki paused in surprise as he found an unfamiliar item: a page of Demonic Clan Document he had never seen before.
“Mitsue,” Seiki said. When he thought she was attempting to Pickpocket him, she was doing the opposite and was instead putting something in his inventory. He unconsciously slowed to a complete stop. It must have been for a reason.
The document was torn. In the middle was a crude drawing of a black crystal, cut into an odd shape. The tip was sharp like a blade’s, but around it were numerous spikes. A short text accompanied it, addressed to the Spearmaster:
A Shadow Shard cut in the requested shape has been granted for your experiments. Lord Kagenushi expects detailed weekly reports of any progress.
Seiki’s breath caught. Everything now made sense. The shard was meant to pierce, and the spikes going into the opposite direction meant the object was to be left in the wound. He had seen it before, perhaps back in an East City sewage room a very long time ago.
He glanced back up at the approaching Obora, and he finally understood why the whole instance was the way it was.
Mitsue had left him a hint. Everything since they had set foot in this location had truly revolved around this particular creature. Piecing all the clues together, he could now guess in full details what had transpired here even before they had entered the cavern.
“What is it, Seiki?” Mairin noticed that he had stopped running.
Seiki bit the inside of his cheek as he came to the inevitable conclusion. “You know that third room with the Spearmaster and the cage? He talked about a prisoner.”
Mairin followed his eyes to the gigantic slimy creature charging at them, before looking back at him. “Oh,” she said. “You mean…”
Seiki nodded. “Months, the demon said.”
Even Shousei had mentioned it at one point, vaguely, how the creature had been tamed by the Demonic Clan for their use.
Seiki glanced toward the single tano-shrine at the left end of the cavern. The golden light was still glowing serenely under the stone roof.
“No way,” Ippei said, guessing his intention. “That’s a lot of poison to wade through, and you’re going to die before you get there, even with Slide.”
“You’re right,” Seiki said. Half the cavern was now covered in poison. The distance was impossible. On his own, at least. He turned toward Mairin. Grinning, he held out his left arm. “If I remember correctly, someone was looking to be thrown across a cliff earlier.”
A puzzled look passed over the kitsune’s face for a moment, before being
replaced by a delighted smile. “Ah,” she let out a quiet exclamation, her eyes sparkling in excitement. A second later, a warm, fluffy white fox leapt into his arm.
Ippei’s eyes widened in disbelief.
“I’m going to need the strongest Soothe and Ward you can give me,” Seiki said to Kentaro as he drew his sword, his eyes glued to the shrine. “But only at the end of the path.”
The houshi frowned. “What path?”
“You’ll see.”
The Obora was fast-approaching, and Seiki was already on the move as he jumped over visible traps on the ground. The white fox balanced herself in his arm, her two paws resting on his armguard like an eager pet on a bicycle ride. Ahead of them, the creature’s red eyes bore into their faces above the flowing wall of black slime.
The ooze near the far end of the room was thicker, and Seiki used his Mapped Vertical Spike to set off the poison in a long path in front of him, giving him more safe ground to run across. The move was an energy drain, and Seiki knew he did not have a lot to waste. Kentaro was frantically running after him, trying to keep in range, and Seiki felt the conflicting temperatures of Soothe and Ward layering themselves over his body as he came to the end of the safe path. He braced himself as he entered, ankle-deep, into the pool of slimy poison.
The Obora turned toward him when he burst past it in the opposite direction. The sickening slime gurgling as the creature changed its trajectory. Behind him, the rest of his friends were hammering it with attacks as they tried to attract its attention. But Seiki was already losing health, and the creature—after a brief moment of hesitation—returned its focus to the prey closest to death.
Seiki gritted his teeth. The poisonous ooze was already gathering on his legs, sending a paralyzing cold through his armor. And his health was dropping fast as damage burned through the houshi’s protective spells. The Obora made a sharp rotation toward him. Knowing he could not avoid the collision, Seiki swerved to give himself a few more seconds, before throwing the white fox in his arm as far as he could across the slime-covered ground.
