Underworld - Book 4 - Chapter 9

It was Jess’s turn to fight as we were heading toward the Ireki Wraith's tomb. We were in a tunnel near The Belly. The goblin scout had left us an hour before. Jess suddenly blinked out of existence. At least, so it seemed to the naked eye. 

Mana Sight gave me a much more detailed explanation. As she activated fade, her entire being was drawn to one point and all that was left was a glowing orb, much like the orbs we used to power Sanctuary, but this one was only visible in the mana realm. She didn’t stay still. Looping around the humanoid-ant creature, she reappeared behind it, heaving a two-handed slash with her sword at the base of its neck. There was an audible clunk. Her sword bit into its furry shell-like skin, but her attack was still blunted after the third time she’d hit it in approximately the same place. At level 395, she was almost fifty levels behind the creature, but her Fade talent made the fight very one-sided. Her only issue was the obvious, that she didn’t have the strength to kill it quickly.

Jess

Level: 395

Health Points: 16,350 (+164)

Mana Points: 3,030 (+20)

Stamina: 3,270 (+33)

Attributes

Strength: 145 (+1)

Dexterity: 1,002 (+10)

Constitution: 327 (+3)

Intelligence: 303 (+3)

Wisdom: 301 (+2)

She had followed Melony and Kylie with her character build by focusing on Dexterity, but she didn’t have the same weapon skills that they did. Her Fade ability used Dexterity to increase the distance she could travel while fading though, so there was a practical reason for it. Even more than Melony, her abilities seemed to rely on mana instead of stamina. They didn’t take a lot of mana, so she had written it off Intelligence and Wisdom as secondary stats. I was starting to believe they were her primary.

The fight ended about a minute later. It was little experience for Aeris and me, but Melony, Jess and Perry all leveled up. I Drained the mob and received a mediocre +7 to Constitution. Most of the creatures we’d run across, Wererats were the most common, were much lower in level than this mob. It seemed that The Belly had repopulated in our absence. No surprise there really, with all the corpses we had left, even though I’d drained them of blood during our visit, I hadn’t yet learned Lesser Devour at the time so their corpses remained. Our massive show of magic may have scared them off for a time, but, undoubtedly, the mobs had returned and feasted on our leftovers.

It would take a detour for us to actually end up in The Belly, but there was no way for us to not drawn close to it without taking tunnels that would take us far out of our way to avoid it entirely.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I heard Aeris whispered in my ear.

“That it’s time to eat?” I said aloud, excited about the prospect.

Her face appeared before mine. She was upside down. “No.” She shook her head in a quick flurry that reminded me of a hummingbird. “I’m pretty sure your Devour ability has replaced your brain with a second stomach.” Her tongue shot out, teasing me.

As I began to laugh, she shook where she hung from her place perched on my head.

She gave me a quick kiss on the nose before narrowing her eyes. “I think we should go to The Belly and see if Xaphan is still there. If he isn’t, I want to kill things.”

That sobered me faster than being encased in a block of ice. “I think you’ve been drinking too much Muck-cow Milk again.”

Her face scrunched down in a pout. Or was it up? Technically, she was hanging upside down, so she was frowning up…

“Please?” Her eyes pleaded. “Let’s just check, because if he’s gone there is something I’ve been wanting to try—really bad.”

“What happened to that person that is always rebuking me about putting myself in danger and not thinking about the others?”

She didn’t even have to roll her eyes to give me the same impression as if she did. All it took was a look. “There’s one big difference, Skeletor. We’re talking about it, and I’m inviting you to come with me.”

It was my turn to stick out my tongue. I couldn’t deny what she said, but no part of me wanted to have to face that Primordial Cat again. If I thought there was any chance that we could persuade Xaphan to defend us against Mistress Nava, then all of our worries could be brushed aside. I had little doubt he could end her as easy as a cat could a mouse. But that wasn’t an option. Trusting a cat was bad enough, but this was like putting your trust in a hurricane—a category five hurricane cat that might be hungry when woke up from its nap. When I’d tried to run from him before, he’d caught me without any effort. No, approaching Xaphan wasn’t an option.

“I don’t think taking the chance is worth the danger,” I replied.

Dropping the silliness, she floated down to hover in front of me and held me in a compassionate gaze. “I know he scares you, after what he did, but I don’t think it’s likely for him to wake up as you think. Our casters went all out at the same time, Lady Contessa was there, as was her dark elf and the dwarf, the wargs, etc., and he didn’t wake up through any of it. It was only when you used your magic to take a peek inside of him and steal his abilities that he began paying attention. Don’t do that again and we should be fine.”

“We aren’t just going to check to see if he’s not there, are we?”

She shrugged. “We will assess the situation first.”

Glancing over, I saw the others watching us intently. They also seemed to lack the anxiety that I was feeling. If The Belly had truly been repopulated, then they knew there was a huge amount of experience just sitting there waiting for us.

“Fine, but even if you’re right, we don’t have a lot of time to spare.”

“I won’t need a lot of time.” Aeris promised.

Seeing her resolve, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, then nodded my head.

***

The more I thought about it, the more I realized Aeris had probably been planning on stopping by The Belly from the beginning. Her reasoning was too laid out for her to have not put some thought into it. Her logic was sound, but it wasn’t any of her reasoning that convinced me we wouldn’t become cat food—probably. It was how the imps had come out in mass like a bunch of buzzards and shown no fear that Xaphan would attack them that gave me a little peace that this might just work out. I just hoped he didn’t recognize my mana signature or something.

It wasn’t difficult to find a tunnel that headed in the direction of The Belly. Just as Waldemar had likely found us because his scouts had felt my Light Magic from a distance, we could feel the mana from the numerous mobs awaiting us. It was clearer to Aeris and I since we were casters, but you didn’t have to be talented with magic to feel the life that awaited us. I wasn’t sure if I could feel Xaphan. His Magma based mana was unique, but if he was still sleeping and not using it...

The tunnel turned so that we could see the cave opening up to our destination. Even if I had somehow persuaded myself that this wouldn’t end in tragedy, it still sent my stomach churning like a bubbling stew. I really would have preferred lunch…

We approached slowly with Invisibility covering our forms. At the mouth of the tunnel we stood, looking out into the cavern the size of a large city. We stood on a cliff a few stories above the Crystalis. The forest of crystal was still intact and actually seemed to have grown since we’d been here last. Hedges of crystal, littered like the back of a porcupine, spouted up at the base of tree-sized ones. Each crystal glowed in a different color of light, being filled with one type of elemental mana. It wasn’t dense, but there were so many of them that if you could ever collect the power within you could drown yourself in mana. I already knew I couldn’t Drain them from my first visit here. I might be able to find out more about them though through Force Learn. That would have to wait though.

I looked in the direction of Xaphan’s lair at the top of the outcropping of rocks in the far side of the room to our left. With Mana Sight at full power, it only took a glance to see his intense crimson-silver glow.

“He’s still here exactly where we left him.” I said.

“We’ll give him a wide berth then.” Aeris replied.

Lowering my gaze, I didn’t bother arguing. “Melony, Jess, Perry, you guys stay here. We don’t have a lot of time, so we’ll leech you.”

“Sweet!” Perry said, making a celebratory fist.

Turning to Aeris, I continued. “Let’s stay away from the Crystalis. We might figure out a use for the crystals in the future. How do you want to draw them out?”

“No need,” The wind sprite said, staring out into The Belly. “Elorion, I need you to stay here as well. You aren’t the only one close to mastering. The nature of Wind Magic hasn’t allowed me to go all out in my training because I need a lot of space. This is the perfect place.”

“Do you need me to add some heat?” I was pretty sure she was about to drop a twister on the place. As we’d done before when facing the imps, I’d cast a massive Flame Thrower into her vortex, which drew the fire in, heated it up, and helped defeat the army of flying casters.

“Thank you, but no. Not this time. And stay back. I’ll try to leave the crystal forest alone, but no promises.”

I found Jess glaring at me like I should do something to stop her. There was a part of me that agreed with her, but I wasn’t worried for the same reason. We’d already faced The Belly before and Aeris was much stronger now. There was nothing here that I believed would give her a hard time. At least, not among the regular monsters.

Flying out above the cliff from where we stood, Aeris drifted toward the middle of The Belly, past the Crystalis. I kept Invisibility cast on her, but it did little good while she was moving. Rock rose up around the crystal forest that was porous with deep natural trenches that were perfect for creatures to hide in. She stopped many stories in the air, hundreds of meters away. Nothing had yet to attack her, but I could see the movements of mana forms below her. The mobs in the immediate area were checking her out. I just hoped enough of them would be curious enough for her to get her 39 levels to get to 1,000 Intelligence. That should give her a nice boost in power and hopefully calm the uneasiness she’d been feeling.

Reaching out her hands to either side, she began to spin in place where she hovered. I could see the silvery mana flowing out of her hands, churning up the air around her.

I frowned. She hadn’t used any kind of bait. I suspected most of the mobs in the area would just hide once they felt her magic. If she was really that close to reaching the Master Rank in Wind Magic, perhaps killing a bunch of mobs didn’t matter.

The twister began to form, and I lost sight of her behind the wind at the top of her vortex. It was the first time I’d seen her cast the spell when she was inside of it. At first, I thought it might help her speed the process of creating her twister, but I remembered it forming much faster during our fight with the minotaurs. It was also obvious that she wasn’t funneling nearly as much mana into the spell as she normally did. She was trying to create the twister using as little mana as possible…

The funnel started to grow before looping toward the ground to touchdown on the rocky floor. A few lesser creatures were caught up and tossed aside, but it wasn’t strong enough yet for it to throw them far enough to kill them. As I feared, I watched many creatures through the mana realm cower back as the twister started to build.

Placing her hands on her hips, Jess shook her head. “Why aren’t the mobs attacking her? Last time we were here this place was crazy.”

I shrugged. “I still don’t fully understand how Xaphan did it, but he caused the mobs to attack us last time. Maybe it’s because he’s the alpha predator in the area and they have to obey him for some reason, or they thought he was leaving them some of his food…”

Melony leaned forward from the other side of her friend. “So we aren’t going to get any experience?”

“If not, I’ll do a little hunting before we leave.” I said to reassure her. 

Looking back to Aeris, then to Xaphan, I took a deep breath. Despite my fear, I was glad Aeris was getting this chance to let loose and experiment a little with her magic. I hadn’t thought of space limiting her, but it made sense now that she mentioned it. Condensing a lesser spell to increase its damage could only go so far. There was room to cast a twister in The Bridge, for she had already done so facing the minotaurs.

She was still being very precise with her mana, but the twister continued to grow. She increased her mana flow ever so slightly to keep it developing. When it reached the largest I’d seen it, she shot up out of the middle of the vortex, stopping just shy of the ceiling that glowed in eerie green light. It was odd seeing her so high above the top of her funnel, which was at the most two hundred meters high, but she was now at least a mile off the ground.

She hadn’t abandoned her creation though, for her palms were sprawled out in front of her and mana flowed downward. It was then, that I felt the increased pressure as much as I saw it. Power gushed out of her like the downpour of a mighty storm. It fell toward her twister like it was going to crush it into nothing, but when her mana reached the churning wind, it exploded in strength and size.

A moment later, a blanket of wind pressed against us. It didn’t stop. We stepped back from the ledge. The funnel spun up, reaching into the heights of The Belly toward Aeris while widening at its base.

I began to chuckle to myself. That’s more like it.

“That’s terrifying,” Perry said.

Glancing at the others, they all had the same look of awe on their faces. They weren’t alone. I knew she was capable of more than what she’d had the opportunity to show, but what had may have been an F1 tornado had suddenly shot up to an F3 in size. Its base seemed abnormally wide, which I was sure was her intention. The reason was clear a few moments later as the bodies of monsters started to fly out from the lower quarter of the funnel. It was only a few at first, but then she began to move. The twister began sweeping the ground, sucking up the mobs hiding in the crags of the rock.

I quickly looked and confirm I was getting experience. It was starting to roll in. The others scurried to bring up their character sheets. They already had some new stat points to spend.

When I received my first popup, I ignored it and instead focused on Xaphan in the distance. He still hadn’t stirred.

It looked like we would all level a little after all, though I saw that the densest mana forms had been left unscathed from where her twister had been after she moved on. Most creatures were starting to flee in the immediate area, and the strongest ones wouldn’t be sucked up from their cozy hiding holes so easily.

I now understood why Aeris had taken her time building her funnel. She had planned well and knew she’d need to hold the twister for an extended period of time. Was it enough to get her to 1,000 Intelligence though?

Watching Xaphan from the corner of my eye, I finally checked my popups. I’d received three levels already. The others must have been making a killing.

Aeris’s twister was now dark with dirt and rock, so it was hard to see how many mobs she was really pulling from The Belly’s floor. Some of them caught some decent air and were tossed dozens of feet away from a hundred meters up. It was going incredibly well.

When she turned toward Xaphan, my throat tightened, but she soon changed her heading. She was still hundreds of meters away from him, so I was probably being over-cautious, but he was so fast that if he did go for Aeris, I wasn’t sure I could place myself between them in time. Of course, if anyone was faster than him, it would be her. If he caught her off guard though…

“Stay here,” I said, looking at the others. I answered their question before they asked. “I’m going to get a little closer in case our cat friend wakes up. It’s only a precaution. And don’t worry. Even if I get sucked up in that thing, I’d survive. As Richard likes to remind me, I can turn myself into a very sturdy cherry popsicle.”

Melony giggled, but Jess and Perry didn’t seem convinced.

“What if he notices you?” Jess replied.

“Aeris might get mad.” Perry added.

“Two very good points that I’ve considered. I’ll be sure not to try to steal his essence this time.” Without another word, I walked to the edge of the cliff, and jumped.

---

Author  Note:

Sorry for the delayed chapter. The rest of this scene is coming soon, but I decided to post this part because it had a good natural transition. Also, we are under a tornado watch because of the tropical storm, so if Iose power, you guys at least get something to read. :D

Cheers!