RD 3 Ch 37

Chapter 37

The dracoon bellowed behind me, reminding me why I needed to hurry. That breath would bake the quicksand and it would be able to break free.

Movement ahead caught my attention. It didn't seem that large, but I had to remember I was now 16 feet tall, and something twice my height was peeling itself away from the trees.

The T-Rex looked familiar, and the sudden anger in its eyes when it scented me on the air told me this was most certainly the one I had met before. 

It roared, pounding after me, each step thudding through the forest. The thing was still fast enough to give me trouble if I ran.

While the dracoon was more than I could deal with in my current buff state, the T-Rex was actually feasible with my buffs from the Mul Branova. I just needed to move quickly before the dracoon was after me again.

I smiled and skidded to a stop just before it reached me, grabbing a pine and ripping its roots free of the ground. I transferred the momentum of my run into a swing that clobbered the giant head of the T-Rex before it could sink its teeth into me. 

The giant dinosaur stumbled to the side, wobbling to right itself.

My Blood Blade cut deeply into its thigh, but it wasn't enough to sever it in one blow. 

The T-Rex's jaws glowed gold as it snapped at me, breaking the pine in half and lunging forward, trying to get a piece of me. 

I danced back, my claymore-sized-blade shrinking into something more manageable as I swiped several powerful strikes at its head, leaving long gashes that failed to penetrate through its sturdy skull.

The T-Rex spun around, trying to use its tail this time, only for me to intercept it with my sword.

My blade pierced through the tail and pinned it to the ground before red thorny vines of sanguine locking spread from my Blood Blade, wrapping up around the T-Rex and its legs.

It activated several abilities, but none affected its legs and besides, my Sanguine Locking wasn’t so easy to break in my current state. 

I stepped back, picking up the broken chunk of pine and coming back with a swing that would have made my old baseball coach proud. I smashed the pine's trunk against the T-Rex's head as it staggered to the ground, unable to go far with its tail pinned.

Another Blood Blade came out of my hand, and in three chops, I was able to kill the T-Rex.

Its body melted away, leaving behind a golden fruit that I snatched into my spatial ring before hurrying once again towards the glowing pillar of light that spelled my exit. I was still in a bit of a time crunch. After all, that dracoon would get free soon.

Some would have said that I shouldn't have taken the time to deal with that T-Rex, but I knew my limits and needed opportunities to grow stronger when they appeared. Those choices had kept me alive more than once.

But I kept my feet moving now. I could feel that the reservoir of strength granted me by whatever ability the Mul Branova had used was beginning to run low. I focused all my energy on rushing towards the pillar of light, even as the dracoon freed itself.

Or at least, I assumed that was the reason that the ground was now quaking under my feet.

Another dinosaur appeared on my peripheral, and it looked as if it was about to give chase, only for a pair of massive jaws to come down over the other T-Rex, snapping it up like a midday snack in the dracoon's jaws. The monster roared in victory as if killing the dinosaur instill some level of fear in me.

But then I realized the dracoon was using an ability on me, one that I shrugged off easily with my enhanced spirit. 

Seeing that I wasn't affected, the dracoon rushed me again as I broke free of the pine forest into a cleared area, evident by all of the fallen trees. The pillar of light was now completely unobstructed by pines. The dracoon roared in frustration as I continued my escape, starting to feel my transformation waning as it ran out of fuel.

Both my Bloodrage Ascension and the Mul Branovas’ buff faded quickly a moment later.

The dracoon blinked stupidly as if I had disappeared, only to refocus on my smaller form.

Meanwhile, I was struggling to adapt my stride to the sudden weakness. I pushed through, the concern of making it out of here in one piece enough for me to ignore everything else. Rushing towards the pillar of light, I focused on my escape and shoved the errant thoughts of the dracoon to the side. Getting out was now my priority.

While the dracoon might not have been very smart, it was smart enough to understand my goal. A column of fire erupted from its mouth, slamming directly into the bottom of the pillar of light and fire came rushing to greet me.

Swirling tornadoes of heat tried to rip me off the ground.

I curled inwards and concentrated my weight, only for my feet to touch the ground again.As soon as I felt solid ground underneath me, I pushed off as hard as I could.

The heat continued to bake me, my hair most likely burning to a crisp as my skin charred and peeled back. 

However, I had to take the risk. It had been a while since I’d been in such danger. A strange excitement filled me as I threw myself directly into the heart of the dracoon's firestorm breath and towards the pillar of light.

The firestorm seared every inch of me before everything went dark.

***

I wasn't quite sure how much time had passed since I'd thrown myself into the column of light. It had certainly been some time, but it was a strange feeling like I was in suspended animation.

I woke up with my eyes open, but my body was paralyzed from head to toe. The strangest thing was, I was floating in a completely white space, my body locked as if completely frozen over, yet my mind groggily pulled itself back into function. 

"That's what I was saying," a nasally voice complained from nearby.

"But boss," a slower, deeper voice spoke up, "we're quickly running out of resources. We're gonna burn through our entire stockpile of souls if we keep this up." 

The higher-pitched voice, boss, I assumed, growled back. "Of course, while we are in this current space, we're gonna have to do the next phase one at a time to minimize how much resources we are utilizing. We have to absolutely minimize utilization while still following the rules." There was an exasperated noise as if he'd had this conversation more than once and was laying it out in simple terms. 

As the two talked, they came within my line of sight. I wasn't even able to move my eyes. Both of them were short, mature demons. The nasally boss, as it were, was about half a foot taller than the more portly one. That wasn't particularly impressive given that he was only about four feet tall. Meanwhile, the short portly one was probably closer to three and a half, but twice the body weight of the boss. 

They were apparently, according to their conversation, preparing for the next phase. I noted that the boss asked his questions with a tone that transcended even the divide between humans and demons. That was the tone of a superior wantiing to ask their subordinate a question while also imposing their superiority.

The boss slapped a hand to his forehead and rubbed it as if he had a massive headache.

"He was interested in the monster woman, and you said he'd changed his mind?" The boss asked.

"Uh, yeah boss." The fat one turned straight towards me and pointed up.

I relaxed my eyes, not focusing on either of them, worried that I’d be exposed. 

"After that one showed his abilities in the trial," the fat one swiped at a screen in front of him in the air. "He's trying to get his... He asked his subordinates to work on the ones that sacrificed themselves for him." 

Sacrificed? The other asked.

Luckily my face was not showing expressions, because I did not like the word sacrificed.

"They crippled themselves, but they have a healing ability," the boss said. "They'll be fine once we take them out of stasis.”

“”

“Should we be worried about stasis?" The fat one asked.

"No, none of the humans here have near enough spirit to resist it." The boss scoffed. "Heck, we could probably even put the demon general in stasis and his soul couldn't do a thing. Now, what's our utilization going to look like?" The boss suddenly asked that question.

I had a feeling he was new to his job. It kind of felt like he was asking the questions he had heard asked before, versus actually having a purpose to the questions.

"We've used up all demonic souls in our containers below C rank," the fat one reported. "To open the next trial, we're going to have to start to convert the souls of the B rank demons." 

The boss groaned. "What about the excess monsters that we have primed for this? Can we harvest any more of them?" 

"Duuuh." The fat one swiped at several new screens that appeared in front of him, and then he glanced back and forth between them, confused, before closing several more and only focusing on a single screen in front of him. "We can harvest a couple of them. I guess more if we are minimizing the third trial. The dracoon is the general's favorite, though. We can’t touch that one." 

"I don't care if the dracoon's his fucking mother," the boss spat. "If we need to sacrifice it so that we don't have to impact any of the A rank souls, that is more than acceptable. What I need you to do," the boss took on a condescending, overly patient tone, "is prep each of the humans individually for a phase four while keeping the rest in stasis. And we need phase four to consume as little space as possible while still driving them to the end goal. Can you handle that?" 

The boss asked. "Uh, phase four?" The fat one said. "I thought we were preparing phase three. There were the stairs, and then the-" 

"We are skipping phase three. Well, most of them are. We’ll run one through phase three to not break the rules." The boss rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "The rest will go right to phase four. The tomb." 

"Phase four. The tomb." The fat one repeated after him. 

"Yes. Phase four. The tomb. It will be our next step, and our last step for the humans." 

"Next step, last step, for the humans. Got it, boss." The grunt went back to the floating screen in front of him, before looking confused, and then began swiping at it randomly, while casting a glance at his boss out of the corner of his eye. 

The boss didn't seem concerned at all.

The boss’s eyes were locked up above me, but I couldn’t move my eyes or turn my head without getting noticed. 

I got the distinct feeling that I was on a shelf, and there were others positioned up nearby.

"Prep them and start sending them into phase four immediately. We can't continue to hold this space forever. In fact, the only purpose of this vessel is to possess these humans. The general, General Zaydelin, what is his status?" 

The fat one quickly removed the screen in front of him and brought up a new one. "General Zaydelin is… is," he echoed, stalling for time, "currently in phase four." 

The boss frowned. "He's in phase four? You mean we are currently active in phase four, using up resources?" 

The fat one's smile fell. "I mean he is passing through phase four. I will get on that in a second, boss." The fat one couldn't have run away fast enough, his short little legs nearly spinning with how quickly he tried to get out of there.

The boss, now alone, cursed several times about incompetence before looking up at the rack and licking his lips. "Once we get the general his body, and a couple of the elites, it wouldn't be bad for me to get a hop out of here." The boss chuckled. "After all, the way things are going, we're barely going to get a hundred demons sent out of here." 

He glanced over his shoulder, looking in the direction where the fat one had disappeared. "Fools. This is why the demon lord put me in charge." Boss cackled and I’d give it a 4 out of 10, it was pretty poor form. 

Once again, I was glad my expressions weren’t able to change. The demon lord putting this demon in charge was concerning, given he was completely inept. But I was even more concerned with the fact that the demon lord had been in the vault. 

It seemed as if this man was new to his job, which meant the demon lord had been here recently. Questions were piling up in my mind. But at the moment, I could not move my body.

Instead, I watched as the boss walked up and down the aisles, looking at what I assumed were the rest of the initiated that entered the vault, splayed out in shelves. 

Eventually, the boss walked out and I was left just lying there for what felt like hours, possibly days as time ticked away.