Paragon of Skills

Lyra is metaphysically pacing back and forth while she awaits her Shredders to finish excavating themselves from the amniotic fluid that fed them, rich in Mithril and other rare ores.

But, as she looks at Jacob Cloud absorbing the Mithril, she notices he does so to coalesce it onto his sword. And, as he does, the sword glows brighter for a few moments.

“How can that artifact absorb Mithril like that?” Lyra mutters.

She tries analyzing the sword, but… nothing comes back. Just a blank.

Inadvertently, she’s in the same situation she’s been putting Jacob Cloud up until this moment.

She’s an Apostle of Apocalypse, how is it even possible that an artifact could be unreadable to her?

As she looks at the dozen Shredders that are almost fully out of their cocoons, she has a moment of doubt.

Then, she shakes her head.

“No, no. They’ll just die to them. I’ll deactivate all their offensive Rainbow Skills right when they think they’re going to win through them.”

Keeping their Rainbow Skills suppressed is something she can do, but not easily. Not at this distance. If they were in the Boss’s room, here, she’d be easily able to suppress them all at once.

But this damned group has a density of Rainbow Skills that has never manifested before in the course of known history.

How could these brats get so many Rainbow Skills, with a few of them having even more than one?!

Lyra looks at the Shredders, now ready to heed her orders in their chitinous, mithrilaceous shine.

Then, she looks at Jacob’s sword, zooming on it.

Searching through the memories of the souls she has consumed, she finds that…

“Baalrek?” She consults more memories.

“An Infernal King that ascended and… that sword is a divine artifact. That is why I can’t read it,” she says. “But if its aura is so weak, it means that Jacob Cloud has barely activated a sliver of its power. There’s nothing he can do to my creations with that little thing.”

She looks at her Mithril Nightmare Shredders of Apocalypse before nodding, reassuring herself.

“Go, my children. Consume the Champions.”

Lyra watches as the Shredders break into a tumultuous run, breaking the ground they walk upon.

She watches with closed eyes as they approach the group at incredible speed.

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They’re not far from the Boss’s room. Running all the way there barely takes her children twenty minutes, burrowing through walls and barriers that nobody else would have been able to recognize.

Lyra sees Jacob Cloud perk up when he sees the monsters approach in the far distance, closing in so fast they’ll be upon them in a matter of seconds.

She immediately deactivates all the Offensive Skills they have, especially that girl with the cursed water.

“Boomgar,” Jacob says.

Lyra immediately also deactivates the Dwarf’s Skill.

Yet, the Dwarf simply takes out some bombs and throws them at the creatures.

“Pathetic. They’ll barely feel—“

Then, she sees Jacob Cloud erecting a massive mandala in the air, trying to interfere with her power.

“HOW DO YOU DARE?!” Lyra shrieks. “My power is beyond your understanding!”

She immediately pushes back after having dropped her control over Rainbow Skills for a few seconds. But she has to fight Jacob’s power—

“He’s drawing power from the sword!” She snarls.

She focuses, but…

“Dungeons are pretty dumb,” Jacob says, looking up.

The next moment, Orrivane’s Event Horizon appears horizontally right in front of Jacob, who had been at the forefront of the group.

One after another, with unstoppable momentum, the Mithril Nightmare Shredders of Apocalypse pile up and…

One by one, they’re bisected.

Boomgar’s bombs fizzle out without exploding and Lyra is left dumbfounded, looking at a Jacob Cloud already upon the dead body of the first Shredder, plunging his sword into it to absorb its Mithril faster.

“Y—YOU!”

She immediately understands what just happened.

Jacob Cloud used the bombs and the Mandala as a distraction, as a way to trick her into shifting her attention to the Rainbow Skills.

Yet, she’s too distant to perfectly control both her children and suppress all the Rainbow Skills of the ones there.

“I will just wait you out, Jacob Cloud,” she hisses. “I will trap you in the Boss room and—“

Jacob coughs and points at a distant corner of the room they’re in.

“Guys, I have some tents. We’re setting up here and mining the Advanced Grounds until we bleed the Dungeon dry.”

Lyra looks dumbfounded at Jacob Cloud and slowly brings her ethereal palm to her forehead.

“The Advanced Grounds are very rich in Mithril. And even if we’re trapped here, we can just consume Mithril faster than the Dungeon actually can. And since the monsters require Mithril to grow, souls, and energy, it’s just a matter of who can consume it faster. Oh, and I’ve just confirmed that the Dungeon cannot suppress all of our Rainbow Skills at once at this distance from the Boss’s Room and the Dungeon Core. So, I’ll be setting up some Mandalas on the ground… with someone’s blood. Don’t worry, Nimirea can heal you even if Garros can’t.”

“Wait, what do you mean we camp here? And the Dungeon can actually suppress our Rainbow Skills? How do you know all of this?” Nimirea asks, terrified.

“Sorry, couldn’t tell you before the Dungeon fell into my trap,” Jacob says.

“Your trap?” Lyra hears a Dragonkin whose name she doesn’t remember being dumbfounded by what Jacob just said.

“He… did he plan for this?” Lyra is wary. “No. He couldn’t have. He’s dying! What trap! It’s a bluff!”

“We’ll extract so much Mithril that the Dungeon’s Nightmares will die out. My sword can absorb an indefinite amount of Mithril. And the more Mithril it absorbs, the stronger it becomes. The stronger it becomes, the more we’re shielded against the Dungeon,” Jacob smiles. “It all went according to plan.”

Lyra feels a strong pang of anxiety.

If that sword can actually absorb endless amounts of Mithril, which is perfectly reasonable for a Divine weapon with an empty tank… then she’s in trouble.

Her monsters rely on Mithril. They actively consume it. She has to replenish them to make sure they don’t collapse. The only other currency to be used for their sustenance is souls. But she just trapped only twenty-something people in here.

“Have I… have I made a mistake?” she thinks, almost terrified of the thought itself.

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