MAZE - Chapter 1124 - Surprise back up

Hera was really not expecting that Helena was going to show up. And the moment she saw her friend, she couldn't help but give her a big hug.

"What are you doing here?" the Empress asked.

"You want to go through a whole expedition against a bunch of undead and don't expect me to come help you? I'm hurt," Helena chuckled.

"But what about the Wendigo detecting system?" Hera frowned.

"My part in that project is pretty much done. If they can't do any of the final adjustments without me, then the alliance has bigger problems than the Wendigos."

"Are you sure about that? We're going to deal with undead. That's not really an easy thing to handle."

"Hera, you were there when the Wendigos got me, when I couldn't use magic. I'm going to be here for you when you are fighting a bunch of undead. Besides, Typhera gave me a heads up. She gave me a rough rundown of the situation, and I do believe I can help."

"You do?" Hera asked, not so much because she didn't trust Helena but because she had no idea if the mage knew anything about necromancy.

But Helena just nodded. "Of course I do. You see, something that a lot of people don't realize is that shadow magic starts off as dark magic before you specialize in actual darkness. And when you're learning about all that kind of stuff, you inevitably learn about some of the areas that dark magic excels at. You can specialize in shadow quite quickly, but you end up with some surface knowledge of how things work."

"Besides, Typhera mentioned that there is a strange darkness in the Fields of Elysium. And if we can't figure out a way to push that away, it might be even more difficult to continue with this expedition. So why not have a shadow mage helping you? A mage who can use both light and dark magic?" she continued.

Helena smiled, and Hera just chuckled. "You know, I can't really argue with that. But still, it's going to be very dangerous. The monsters we fought already proved to be much more problematic than we imagined."

"It wouldn't be fun if it weren't hard. Besides, it seems like there's something else going on there. Typhera was very cryptic about that, saying that there was something big going on, but she couldn't divulge the information without your permission."

Hera raised an eyebrow since that wasn't the deal. The council had full permission to share whatever they wanted about the expedition. But something told her that the Harpy Queen was just being coy to let Hera herself tell her friends about what was going on. And the Empress wasn't really sure if she enjoyed that or not. For some reason, she felt like she was being manipulated, and that just didn't sit well with her.

Still, she wasn't going to complain about Helena being here. Having the Ying Yang mage on the team would surely help.

Even if there were a lot of things to consider. And Hera also had one specific task in mind. She gave all the roots that she had gathered to her dad and tried to see if there was anything she could help. If he managed to create a specter protection for the outpost, everything would be much, much easier.

There was one more thing that Hera wanted to do, and that was tell Typhera about her plans of going through the dungeon. She knew for a fact that it was a good idea, especially considering that they had no real hurry to solve the undead issue. Sure, it wasn't as if they could just ignore it and let it go. After all, it could eventually be a problem, and it was in the way of truly reclaiming Deakoshara.

Saying that they were not going to do anything about it wasn't really acceptable, especially since there was absolutely no indication that the effects of the undead mana were growing rapidly. Meaning that if they took a month or a year, the end result would be the same. And especially for Hera, who now had a lifespan three times bigger than she initially thought she would have, there wasn't really a reason for her to worry about the timeline of this expedition.

But on the other hand, she did want to make sure things would develop somewhat quickly to allow her to continue exploring Deakoshara without being interrupted by anything.

The Harpy Queen understood where Hera was coming from. Even if the presence of the undead and the way they existed was something to worry about, it wasn't something that they had to enlist the entire alliance to solve right away. Sure, that could be the case in the future if things started to devolve into something more serious. But for now and in the nearby future, that didn't seem to be the case. Or at the very least, the undead were not being threatened by anything, and for that reason, they were not actively becoming more powerful in order to fight back or anything of the sort.

Typhera also was trying to see if there was anyone else who she could ask to join the dungeon run. While generally a dungeon would accept only six or seven people, battlefields were known to have maybe 20 members at the same time. And that was the regular version. When they were talking about the combined battlefield that would happen once both sides of the dungeons were completed a certain number of times, that number increased quite considerably.

Back in the Cobalt Battlefield, Hera only saw maybe 20 people running the hard mode, but the reality was that the battles could reach 100 without much of a problem. Which was something that Typhera recognized and asked Hera to warn her when they were about to do that version of the dungeon. She wasn't going to ask the Empress to give up a first-time reward because that would go against everything that anyone who lived in the MAZE would stand for, but asking to warn her before the battlefield started was a different matter. Doing so would allow a small boost to their forces.

The Harpy Queen even told her a small surprise she was preparing for her. She had set up an open call for anyone who would be willing to join the expedition against the undead. And while there were a few people interested, there was one specific person, who was close to Hera. His name was Leonidas, and he was Hera's old training mate.

After the war and having saved his uncle, he had finally returned to exploring the MAZE and was now working together with the people that he collaborated with back then to continue his adventures. The problem was that he was still a over a week away, which wouldn't really fit with the timeline of the first dungeon run. But maybe the second would be a bit different.

The Ophidianite was genuinely worried about Tiger's presence in a place where they needed to be somewhat quiet, but she imagined that since the rain frog was able to help Leo find his uncle, it would be well trained enough not to start squeaking in moments when they had to be quiet.

Hera also spent some time to research the two creatures that seemed to be a part of the dungeon. The lizard filled with spikes fit very well with what people would call a tarasque, a monster from French mythology that was more widely known for its presence in some tabletop games.

It was supposed to be a giant beast that could barely be killed for the most part and just devoured everything that was in its path. In many representations, it was considered a natural disaster, something that people couldn't even stop and could only work around it to make sure they wouldn't suffer as much under its anger.

The other wasn't really something that Hera ever saw, just a roiling mass of multiple eyes. There were some horror movies and literature that talked about Eldritch beings or biblically accurate angels, whatever that meant. But everything felt too far from what she had seen.

But the Empress didn't need to worry. She wasn't the only one working on that kind of thing. Even without being here, Bonnie was surely trying to learn more about those creatures.

She ended up staying here for one more night to both spend some time with her dad, who was trying to get the hang of life as an Ophidianite. He was still a bit awkward with his tail and couldn't really use it for anything else aside from sitting, yet he was slowly but surely improving his handle of the new appendage and his new physicality. The fact that he had yet to spray poison on anyone by accident was already something to be proud of, especially since Hera knew that her dad also had the [Ophidianite Poison] skill.

Over the course of the night, Hera did her best to see if there was anyone else who would be high enough level to participate in the dungeon without being too much of a danger and if there were any other items they could pick up to use both in the outpost and the battlefield.

She also had a video call with Ogryn to explain the situation of the outpost and iron out some of the details of the future construction. The Dwarven mage was partially responsible for the construction of the outpost, and he needed some of the plans to start gathering the people who would be actually building the place.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much that Hera could gather right now, not for tomorrow at least. Everything she found to be mildly interesting or that could be of help were all various items and tools that were far from the Harpy homeland.

The main problem was that the Harpy homeland was somewhat far from the rest of the MAZE, at least when comparing the Elven homeland and the Dwarven homeland. For those two, they had ways of reaching most of the major cities in just a couple of days. Sure, they might require some specific passages or the use of some ready-made infrastructure that would cross large rooms, but they could still do that.

It was funny to think about that. If she was leaving from the Tree of the Elders, which was the name of the capital of the Elven Kingdom, and decided to go back to Earth, it would take her the same time to reach Brilansis, the city where Hera hailed from, as it would be to reach Tokyo. The directions she was going to go would be completely different, and there wouldn't be a single room that she would cross on both journeys, but it was still possible to get there in roughly the same time, maybe with a single day's difference.

For the dwarves, the distance was similar, although they were a bit closer to rooms connected to Japan. So it would be quicker for her to go to the other side of the world and then take a plane back to Brilansis.

Then again, Hera was now an Ophidianite, and inside the MAZE was everything she would ever see again. She chuckled at that thought since she was basically complaining that she only had infinity to explore and not infinity plus a planet.

One way or another, Hera spent the night at her place together with Helena and her dad, and when morning came, the Empress and the Ying Yang mage left for Deakoshara, going straight to the outpost.

Hera even wanted to awaken Nimbus again, being confident that they wouldn't be needing to awaken anyone before the last day of the battlefield. But unfortunately, that wasn't an option since it had yet to be 24 hours since his skill was activated. By the time she could awaken him, they were already too close to the outpost to even consider stopping to awaken the Sentinel before continuing the journey.

When they arrived, Helena greeted the girls and, not long after, talked to the harpies, making sure to tell them a little about her abilities and the things she could do.

Having traveled most of the day, Hera and Helena were ready to go to the dungeon. And so was everybody else who agreed to the decision to go. They all blocked off the entrance to the outpost using some stone shaping spells but left a mark on the other side just in case something were to happen and people came here without letting them know first. And then they walked all the way down through the cave network until they found the entrance to the dungeon.

The two statues, one of this strange giant eye creature and who Hera was assuming to be a tarasque, stood side by side.

"So, which one should we start with?" Alex asked.