Seth Chapter 83

Chapter 83

For the next hour, they thudded through the corridor. The occasional arrows that would fly their ways would be blocked by the moving, floating barriers around them.

Whatever arrow that would phase through them would be blocked by the body of Xarth who easily stunted the pointy arrows by his large axe.

By this point, they were too used to the strategy that they moved with a brisk pace.

The problem was more or less the flame spewing traps as well as panels opening on the floor that they would nearly fall into.

Those took more than a barrier to defend against. Once, Zara's hair singed, causing her to destroy the trap with a large fireball in rage. Another time, Zacky nearly fell to his height as a panel took him under, but Xarth pulled him up, saving his life.

Like that, they reached the door that led to the next chamber.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the final one, having the same features as the rooms they had already passed through with statues and chests. One thing that was different was the body of the guardian laid in the centre of the room, its eye broken and an arm thrown across the floor.

Seth frowned as he looked at it

“I knew they were persistent,” he muttered, looking around the chamber for the presence of any lesser abyssal horrors.

He saw cracks on walls and vines growing on it as well as dust piling everywhere, but there were no signs of any monsters.

“Prepare yourself and search around.” Xarth grunted, moving to the centre of the room.

“Where are those bastards hiding?” Log looked around, kicking at the guardian. “Are they hiding in the cracks?”

“No, I don't see anything,” Zara replied.

Seth moved ahead alongside Xarth and Rebecca. His eyes casted his gaze everywhere before he moved towards the statue. Like before, it was the statue of Rackus.

As he was a few steps away from it, he heard a creaking noise as he froze.

Holding his dagger, he moved ahead and just then, something popped out. He shrank back, flickering away as lesser abyssal horrors filled the room.

“Damn! They are even more than the ones we fought in the last room,” Zacky said, ducking as a tendril shot towards him. “Is there a rupture in the shape somewhere around the ruins? Where are these even coming from?”

“I don't know, but it's hope not,” Seth said, easily leaping up to dodge a tendril that whipped the ground before cutting it off with a swing of his blade.

Placing his foot down, he took out another dagger from his sheate, one that was taken from Charles and he had hardly used since his primary weapon had been so lethal already.

Taking an aim, he threw the secondary dagger right at a screaming lesser abyssal horror, chopping through the tendrils and hitting it right in the eye.

As it flapped his tendrils on the ground, he grabbed at it, moving it towards himself, taking out the dagger and throwing it at another lesser abyssal horror right in front of the statue.

Then, he flicked away.

Appearing right behind Xarth, he swung at a tendril that was about to hit the beastman's back.

As the monster cried out, the sounds propelled Xarth to look back before getting the blood of the horror from its axe.

“Thanks.”

“No worries. Those tendrils feel like a nasty whip if they hit your body,” he replied, moving on to counter two more lesser abyssal horrors.

“I know. They are similar to the whip my father used to have for me and my brothers.” Xarth bellowed a hearty laugh as his axe dove into the eyeball of yet another lesser abyssal horror.

Seth wondered briefly what the traditions of his tribe were before blades appeared right around him. They shot up towards the flailing tendrils and cut them into pieces before each of them landed the final attack.

He celebrated before looking around the battlefield.

Rebecca's protection helped Zara unleased heaps of fireballs, making sweat dripple down everyone in the room. Tons of lesser abyssal horrors screamed in agony as they burned to a crisp.

On the other hand, Log and Zacky moved as a group, taking on a group of the creatures efficiently. And with Xarth and his strength, he doubted they had anything to fear.

After having so many battles with them, he knew they were barely around mid Rank 3 and since he had levelled up so much, it was almost like playing with kids.

The only problem had been their numbers which seemed to be increasing everytime he faced against them.

Frowning, he heard a noise and saw another group of lesser abyssal horrors rushing his way.

He stomped on a tendril before swinging his dagger down at it. With his second dagger, he stopped the charge of another monster and ended their lives with Void blades. Then, he flickered away and appeared right in front of the last lesser abyssal horror of the small group.

It tried to swing it's tendrils and one hit his arm as he winced, but he held it with his left land and his blade swing in a horizontal motion as a crack appeared in its eyeballs, spurting out blood.

You have defeated a Lesser Abyssal Horror!

You have gained experience!

You have defeated a Lesser Abyssal Horror!

You have gained experience!

Notifications flashed through his eyes, but he could care less as he moved to kill more of these nasty abyssal creatures.

***

They moved ahead after dealing with the monsters in the chamber. Like before, it was mostly empty other than a few chests filled with gold coins.

Seth didn't knew whether he would find the Weather Staff, but he knew he was going to be considerably wealthy once he gets out of the ruins going by the chests of gold coins.

It seemed like The Divers were thinking the same thing as all of them had grins on their faces whenever they would chance upon a chest and mark the location on a map that Zacky was carrying.

Unfortunately, the rest of the ruins was also filled with lesser abyssal horrors.

Not every room was, but it seemed like they were swarming the ruins as quite a few times, one would emerge right in the corridor, hiding around the ceilings or the lamps.

The more annoying part was the swarms of them that filled every other room. They were always around three to four dozen in numbers and would take over an hour to deal with.

They also got more injuries to deal with. Other than Rebecca who was protected by her barriers, Seth who moved too fast for the tendrils and Xarth whose body was too sturdy and tough, everyone else suffered major injuries.

Zacky's left leg was crushed by an abyssal horror grabbing him and throwing him to smash into the statue with a large chunk of it ended up falling on his legs. Log was overpowered by a group of five and ended up nearly getting his neck crushed by the tendrils while Zara was whipped badly on her back and groin in one of the chambers.

Despite this, they moved and found themselves in a room that was different. It was circular rather than the rectangles and had a staircase going down.

Other than the staircase, there was nothing in the room and as Seth crouched to look down into the staircase, he saw nothing but darkness. Even with Zara's fireball to lit it up, they saw an endless rows of stairs that seem like they would be a time consuming descend.

“That might be the end of the ruins, the boss room,” Zara said, bringing her fireball back before ending the spell and sitting down on the floor.

“Are you sure about it?” Seth looked at her.

“Yes, there's no other reason for this flight of stairs here. Moreover, the Stormweaver was clearly not a fan of interior design going by how most chambers and rooms looked like. This room has different designs and the stairs at least hints that there's something important down there.”

“You all don't want to go see what it is straight away, right?” He asked, looking at their slumped selves on the floor. Rebecca sat in front of a wall, holding her legs, her face pale from over usage of mana. “Because I am too tired to walk hundreds of steps down.”

“Yes, let's rest and sleep. I don't know if it's night or early morning, but my body needs sleep,” Xarth said, looking around the room before taking up a spot besides the stairs.

The others did the same with Seth taking on the first watch as they all rest to rejuvenate themselves. He dragged himself to a corner right in front of the door they had walked in front.

From here, he would be able to keep an eye out on anyone who tried to get in.

Taking a breath, he leaned against the wall before opening up his notifications. Nearly three rows of them opened up, but his focus was only on the last three of them.

You have reached Level 36! You have received +5 points in Agility, +2 points in Strength, and 1 free stat point to assign.

You have reached Level 37! You have received +5 points in Agility, +2 points in Strength, and 1 free stat point to assign.

You have reached Level 38! You have received +5 points in Agility, +2 points in Strength, and 1 free stat point to assign.

Looking at the level up notifications, he smiled. It was always a good feeling to get these, especially after killing over hundreds of lesser abyssal horrors throughout the day.

If it wasn't for the quantity of those shady looking monsters, he wouldn't even get one level.

But all in all, it was probably a good thing right before going down the stairs. Seth took a peek at it and wondered what layed at the bottom of it.

If it was really a boss room, then the Weather Staff should be there, alongside whatever monster the Stormweaver had constructed to protect it.

Staring at the stairs, he felt a bad taste in his mouth, but realised he was just biting his lips too hard for it to bleed.

***

After a good sleep, they all gathered on the stairs and started spiralling down. After hours of rest and few sips of health potions, all of them looked way better.

They had mostly exhausted whatever potions they had brought and only had two of those left in between themselves, so they were trying to be sparse.

Especially with none of them having a clue on what they might see on the bottom.

Seth took careful steps as he descended. The stairs were big enough for three of them to walk at the same time, but they didn't look sturdy with cracks in between a couple of them.

The last thing he wanted was the the step breaking and him falling to his death, so he put each step down carefully.

It took more than two hours for them to climb down the stairs with breaks in between and when they finally moved over the last step, they could themselves in front of a large, black door that was rusted.

It was easily thrice as tall as Seth and he saw runes covering the edges of it with a handle to spin in the front to open it up.

As he stared, it gave off the feeling off a door adventurers would come across in the stories he had read and inside of it, there would be some sort of a dragon or an eldritch creature they would have to defeat in order to get the treasure

A boss room.