Before coming back out, I take a bundle of cloth from my pocket. With a quick toss, it falls over my shoulders, covering my sleeves. This is yet another preparation.
Made from Amelie’s threads, woven by Sylves, and enchanted by me, it’s similar in function to what my masterwork for the second floor did. This one is a little lesser in scope, but it should still work. With a quick nod, Sylves dispels the wind around me, and the smoke floods in, wrapping around me.
I quickly limp back out from behind the counter, trying to stay on my feet while knitting the torn muscle back together. It takes a chunk of my mana, and I drain the core Harry filled for me. More mana pours into my core, and I take a deep breath.
The sumeen’s eyes glance over me as I quickly shuffle past, still locked on the counter. Their skills remain disrupted by the shrapnel for another second, then they begin to rise again, casting more magic. I let them, shuffling by for another moment as mana hums through the enchantments.
For a moment, they catch me. Their awareness latches onto me, and the enchantments quiver as their unformed spell targets them, the threads of the cloak fraying slightly. But, by then, I’m behind them, manifesting a knife of mana.
It shatters, and the sumeen hums in victory - only to find that it wasn’t a purely manifested knife, simply a regular dagger wrapped in a shell of magical crystal.
The plain steel stabs into their face, through two of those strange holes as I drag down. The hum turns into a screech as the sumeen thrashes, delivering another shallow slash across my shoulder, and one that scratches against the cloak without managing to damage it, remaining white and pristine.
I drive the dagger deeper, and push it upwards, only to find resistance.
There’s a field there, that the dagger presses against, where it wants to unravel. A push that makes it harder to drive the knife in.
A bone dagger stabs into the back of my thigh, and my leg buckles underneath me. I cling to the knife even as I fall, dragging a long, jagged cut all the way down the sumeen’s face. Another howl of pain makes my ears ring, but I break the darkness before it can take hold of me, even with the pain of the stab arcing through my leg like fire.
With a quick, jerking motion, the unmaker moves backwards. Threads of flesh detach from nearby bodies, weaving around them, covering them, and they hold the carved, bleeding part of their face. I can feel indignation rolling off of them like waves.
There’s a hint of their mantle in the air. The bonus for reaching level fifty, and I smell it in the iron. “What is it called?” I ask.
Grunting, the sumeen hums. “Devil,” they whisper. “You are a devil.”
“I am Ion,” I say. “Do you wish to break in front of me?”
At that, the sumeen staggers back. “Damn you,” they hiss. “Tower’s wrath, damn you.” They step backwards again, towards the exit. My knife is still lodged in their face, and they pull it out with rippling skin. “My mantle is the cocoon of perfection, devil. Take it as payment and let me go.”
Just a hint, I smile. And nod. “Swear you’ll not come back.”
“I swear,” they whisper. “By the tower’s grace, I shall not come seeking revenge for this.”
The air quivers, mana acknowledging the request, and I nod again. “Sylves,” I say.
Her eyes turn upon the sumeen, going entirely black, her pupils expanding until her sclera turns dark. “Run, little singer.”
And the sumeen runs, out the door, past Bay, past Jess, and out of town entirely.
[Class up! Nullmage 13 > 14]
[Level Up! 40 > 42]
As per the usual, all points go into vessel. I see morale break as Sylves’ sinister whisper feeds into the others. Thatch stands amidst corpses with bloodstained fists, and the room is whisper quiet around him. Inu looks almost clean, almost out of place in all of it, unmarred as she is, but the wood of the guild is cracked around her.
Sylves floats, unbothered, with an echoing laugh that sends shivers up my spine. She leans forward, leaning on her hand teasingly. “Any of you still wanna cause trouble? Run, little sweetings,” she whispers.
Unfortunately, these aren’t so fortunate as to escape the traps outside. With the grinding of snapping metal and bones, the stragglers die.
And we move further into the guild.
- - -
Thatch smashes open a door, breaking the nose of a guard behind it. The zoof looks confused for a moment, trying to raise her spear, but before she can even move, a second punch crashes into her face, sending her sprawling on the stairs. Blood spills onto Thatch’s fists, and hot puffs of steam leave his angry face.
Inu moves forward. She steps on a pressure plate, but before it can sink, her own step rebounds off it, and the trap remains inactive. She quickly hops past it, moving further down the isolated dungeon. There’s a reason these guards are unaware, after all.
And that’s all the noises of misery we hear on the stairwell. There are anti-noise enchantments engraved on the door. Yes, I am absolutely going to steal it and use that to make noise-cancelling headphones. That sounds amazing.
In this case, though, the reason is less savoury. Moans of pain and hunger reach up, even as we descend deeper. And deeper still.
Wood starts to become stone, etched with expansion runes. “That’s a lot of money to spend on a bunch of cells,” Thatch notes, unhappy.
“Nothing too costly to maintain a monopoly,” Richard replies, and there are hums of agreement. Behind us, Amelie’s puppets crawl in to fill the stairway, plant bodies and vines slithering over the cobblestone, making sure there is no escape. There is one person down here who must not escape at any cost, after all.
“We’ll kill them for it,” I say calmly. I’ll kill them.
Another guard rushes around the corner, up the stairs to get us, only to crash into the steel wall that is Inu. She bats a blow aside with a half-shield, and the parry staggers the guard for just long enough that Thatch steps forward and slams their skull into the wall. A few steps later we reach the bottom of the staircase.
It opens up into a hallway, wide and spacious, with dozens of cages.
Dozens upon dozens of cages. Each one housing a minotaur, all in shaggy, ripped clothing. Most starved, some leaning against the walls, drooling, others clutching their heads. We walk forwards, seeing half-broken bodies. Some of them have even had their horns splintered or broken. Some appear to have been sawn off.
Those hold especially strong embers. Inu’s face twists in discomfort. She can feel the suffering and the hatred. The misery that is baked into these stones. I breathe in the stale air, and let the despair fall into my apathy.
No more of this. We’ll end the cruel treatment, at least of this branch, today.
More steps take us past many, many cages. Until, eventually, we find the ones we’re looking for.
“Huh?” Bile asks. He’s wearing a roughspun tunic and pants made from canvas. Just looking at them makes my skin crawl. “You, wha-”
Opal chuckles from a nearby cell. “There they are,” they say, smugly. “Heroes of the moment, eh. Took ya long enough.”
Their face is twisted into a wide grin, despite the caked blood staining it. There is a long, half-scabbed wound across their forehead, and another across their shoulder, heading towards their pecs, but vanishing underneath the crappy shirt. They’re hurt, and yet, they bear it with casual ease. “Told ya, Dar,” they say.
“Friends of my blood sibling,” the wulven warrior nods his head at us. “I apologize for underestimating you.”
“What are you doing here?” Bile hisses. “Run! Get out! While you still can!”
And then, there is the noise of creaking wood in the darkness. “There will be none of that,” a calm, almost amused voice says.
The shadows, almost physical, slough off a figure. It’s a scythian, a tall, gaunt man with raven-black hair, slicked behind his head. His skin is almost sickly pale, and his eyes the kind of soft grey that makes it look almost like the only dark in them is his pupils. His wings are made of onyx, black, sharp shapes.
“No one leaves here,” he says, slowly spreading his arms wide. He’s tall and imposing. He’s also the second person I need to fight, for a very specific reason. “People come here to break, and only leave once broken. I so missed having more toys. You see, I-”
And he talks. Thatch steps backwards, and so do Sylves and Richard. They step very far back, in fact. To replace them, Amelie’s puppets step closer. For the simple reason that her reach is higher than this guy’s abilities. Probably. Maybe. Surely.
While he talks, I take my preparations. And really, it’s quite simple. I drop my attunement loop, and the heaviness of my mana settles into my body. My legs are stiff, but I heal them up enough to work. Then I breathe, and [Select] the guy as an enemy.
As I do so, my mana brushes up against him.
[Mindbreaker, lv. 62]
I take a breath, and as he frowns, mana slams into me. A part of my self cracks.
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