Path of Dragons

Book 6: Chapter 12: The Guardian

A paradoxically cold wind drifted through the tunnel, cutting through Elijah’s Cloak of the Iron Bear and seeping into his spirit. He shivered, but after many hours spent fighting through the labyrinth of a crypt, he’d grown accustomed to the discomfort. And crypt it was, as evidenced by the burial chambers dotting the network of underground corridors. Some were elaborate, displaying golden sarcophagi surrounded by lesser coffins. Others were more like mass graves. But unlike the tomb where Elijah had recovered the ring and the guide, there were no rewards for exploring the subterranean burial ground.

Just more zombies waiting to rip the intruders to pieces.

And troublingly, they’d grown more powerful with every step taken by Elijah and his companions as they made their way through the web of tunnels. The leap in strength hadn’t been dramatic, but it was definitely noticeable – especially when Dat revealed what he saw with Hex of Scrying. The first group the party had encountered had only been level sixty or so. Strong, but not overwhelming. However, after many hours and countless fights, their average level had risen by at least five.

That wasn’t enough to push Elijah or the others to their limits, but it did raise a question about what they would encounter moving forward.

Oddly, the tunnels themselves were entirely bare of decoration of any kind. No frescoes. No carvings. Just empty walls that weren’t nearly as eroded as he would have expected, given the state of the ruins he’d seen elsewhere in the Trial. That led him to believe the entire thing had been conjured by the system. Perhaps the rest of the challenges had been as well, though Elijah got the impression that explanation was only part of the story. Instead, his personal theory was that the system had taken inspiration from real events, populating the challenges with real people – or copies, perhaps – rather than building them from scratch.

Was that an energy-saving measure? Or was there another explanation? Maybe the system was trying to teach the Trial-takers a lesson by including the real history of a world that had gone so wrong that it had been excised by the World Tree.

There was no way to know for sure, and Elijah expected he wouldn’t discover the truth until the system chose to reveal it in its entirety. So, he endeavored to push those thoughts out of his mind as he focused on his surroundings – as well as the onslaught of undead plaguing every step.

Every now and again, the group paused for a short break, but as they’d discovered a couple of hours after entering the crypts, they couldn’t afford to wait long. Thinking that the appearance of the zombies was tied to a location, they’d thought they were safe enough to rest and recover. However, that assumption was quickly proved false when the waves of zombies continued to assail them. The implications were clear. Like the persistent rot of the increasingly destructive death-attuned ethera, the threat of the zombies was just something that would accompany them throughout their entire time within the tunnels.

On top of that, neither Elijah’s nor Dat’s stealth abilities worked properly. The damage caused by the deathly ethera broke their concealing skills, rendering them entirely ineffective. So, they couldn’t even scout the way effectively.

But now that they were down there, they were committed. Perhaps that had been the case from the moment they’d accepted the invite into the Trial. There was no backing down now.

So, on they went, pushing through the tunnels and laying waste to the endless hordes of zombies. Along the way, Elijah got a good look at just how efficiently Dat and Sadie could handle the undead. Their abilities seemed to do more damage, their defenses were sturdier, and their tactics more effective. In short, their experiences in Hong Kong had prepared them well for the current task, and for the first time since grouping up with the pair, Elijah felt that they were better suited to overcoming the challenge than him.

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Of course, he didn’t like that one little bit, so he endeavored to mimic their strategies while pushing himself harder than ever before. Gradually, he adjusted to the enemy type, and after a while, he began to truly incorporate his full suite of abilities. As they fought, he learned that Nature’s Rebuke wasn’t strong enough to finish the monsters off on its own. To fill that gap, he alternated between using his staff and shifting into his various forms. The only limiting factor for that strategy was that each transformation took a second or two to complete, which meant that he was vulnerable during that brief window of time.

It was just further evidence that he needed to work on his Soul cultivation sooner rather than later. While his Mind was tied to the ability to regenerate ethera, his Soul determined how quickly he could funnel the energy from his Core and into his spells. So, his casting speed – as well as the time needed for his transformations – could be reduced by advancing his Soul to the next grade.

Still, Elijah had yet to find an area with dense enough ethera to fuel advances in his cultivation. On top of that, there were two other issues he needed to surmount. First, while he was familiar with the pattern necessary to refine his channels, he would need to learn it far better if he was going to start carving it. At the very least, that would take weeks of constant study before he was comfortable making any major changes.

The second problem was that he wasn’t entirely certain that would be his next focus. He still hadn’t forgotten just how outclassed he’d been by Halima – or rather, the monster she had become – and while he knew he couldn’t compete with physical-based classes, he did believe that he could bridge that gap with cultivation. Advancing to the next stage of his Body would go a long way toward accomplishing that goal.

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And what’s more, he had a good idea of how to accomplish it. So, as he and his group continued to progress through the tunnels, Elijah kept his Body cultivation in the back of one facet of his Jade Mind.

More than a day passed, and over that time, they had fallen into a comfortable rhythm. Their group was powerful, and though the zombies continued to grow stronger, Elijah and his companions were more than prepared to overcome the obstacles they represented. And the experience was good, too. Not individually, but rather, because there were so many enemies, their overall progression went quickly and smoothly. Elijah even gained an extra level, and for the first time, he saw the advantage of his specialization when he received an extra attribute point in both Ethera and Regeneration. It certainly wasn’t enough to make an immediate impact, but over time – and with every progressive level – it would hopefully make a difference.

The real benefit was that he drew one level closer to the Mortal peak, after which he would choose a class evolution. The Animist class had treated him quite well, but at the time of its choosing, he’d accomplished very little – aside from befriending a powerful guardian creature. That would not be the case when he reached level one-twenty-five, and Elijah had high hopes for his potential options.

On top of that, he had five more spells – be they evolutions or new additions – between now and then, so the potential for extreme growth was there for the taking. He only needed to keep at it.

With that in mind, Elijah continued to do his part as the group progressed through the tunnels. Most of the time, Ron was more than capable of keeping everyone upright, though there were a few instances when the others were injured by particularly vicious waves of zombies, and Elijah was forced to add his own heals into the mix.

The role he’d adopted fit like a glove, because he was able to leverage his versatility to maximum effect. He couldn’t defend like Sadie – he simply didn’t have the same durability or tools like Call of the Crusader – and he certainly couldn’t heal as well as Ron. And though Kurik was at a disadvantage in the crypt, he’d already proven that his traps were extremely powerful. Finally, Dat occupied a similar role to Elijah. The Witch Hunter wasn’t the best pure damage-dealer. Nor could he take the sorts of hits Elijah or Sadie could. But he was a great scout, and his Hex of Scrying was extremely useful. On top of that, his Miracle, which he’d used against the fallen Druid in the Frozen Fortress that was the challenge of Pruina, was a potential game-changer. With that ability, he could kill most enemies in a single blow. As such, the Witch Hunter was not to be underestimated.

None of them were, which left Elijah with mixed feelings. He’d never have said it aloud, but he liked the notion that he was special. Ego didn’t drive his decision-making process, but he would have been lying if he had made the claim that he wasn’t proud – at least on some level – of his accomplishments. He’d overcome long odds just to survive, and he’d taken it much further than that, becoming one of the most powerful people in the world. By all measurements, he was special.

And yet, so were his companions. Even Kurik, who’d fled to Earth to escape the stigma associated with is exiled clan, had a powerful class that allowed him to do some truly extraordinary things. Dat and Sadie had elder cores, just like Elijah, and Ron’s abilities set him apart from any other Healer Elijah had ever encountered.

But as much as their presence prompted doubts about his unique power, it was also comforting to know that Earth had such champions.

Those thoughts occupied one facet of Elijah’s mind until, suddenly, things changed.

“You feel that?” he asked.

“What is it?” asked Sadie, looking back. They’d just defeated a wave of zombies and had taken a few minutes to recover.

“Life,” he said. “There’s not much, but it’s definitely there. I think we’re getting close to one of the towers.”

“What do you think we’ll find?” asked Ron.

Elijah shrugged. “I don’t know. This doesn’t feel like any other life,” he admitted. “It’s almost like it’s partially obscured. It’s just energy. There’s no organisms down here.”

“Except us, bro.”

Kurik snorted. “And for good reason. I feel like my skin’s rotting off,” he muttered, scratching his forearm. Ron’s ongoing efforts kept the rot from visibly affecting anyone, but that didn’t mean it was comfortable. For Elijah, it felt like he had a vicious rash all over his body, and though he kept that discomfort quarantined in its own facet of his Jade Mind, he knew the others – aside from Ron, who’d reached the Quartz Mind stage – lacked that ability. “It ain’t natural.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Elijah said. Because he could only sense the energy, One with Nature wasn’t nearly as effective as it could have been. The only reason he felt anything at all was because he’d taken the Connection specialization. Otherwise, he’d be just as blind as everyone else.

“We move on, right? Nothing has really changed,” Sadie said.

“I could go ahead and scout it out. I know Guise of the Unseen won’t work, but I’m still the fastest person in the group,” Elijah pointed out.

“No. Without you protecting the rear, we’ll be vulnerable,” she said. “Plus, you’re not that much faster than us. We move together.”

“Is that an order? Or a suggestion?”

“Please don’t do that. I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, but someone has to take charge,” she said.

“And it should be you?”

“Unless you want that burden, yes,” Sadie answered. “I’ll follow you if you want to lead, but –”

“No thanks. But if you expect me to just blindly follow you, you’ve got another thing coming. If you lead us in the wrong direction, I’ll say something.”

“Obviously,” Sadie said. “This isn’t the military. There’s no court martial waiting for you if you disobey orders. This is merely organizational in nature.”

“Can’t have too many cooks in the kitchen, bro.”

Elijah understood that reasoning, even if he didn’t like the notion of taking orders from anyone. He hadn’t always had such an independent streak, but spending years with no one to answer to but himself had shaped him in ways that decades of civilized living hadn’t.

“Like I said, we’re following you.”

With that, they continued on, and with every step, the level of vitality in the ambient ethera continued to increase. Then, at last, they reached their first destination, which was one of the chambers directly beneath a sealed tower.

But the interior was not what any of them expected.

Indeed, Elijah didn’t know what sort of setting he’d imagined. Perhaps another crystal, except white instead of black. Or some sort of enchanted circle, maybe. Or some other stationary and powerful object.

Whatever the case, he did not expect to find himself staring at a twenty-foot-tall skeleton. And the moment they came into the thing’s line of sight, it tilted its head back as if roaring, but no sound escaped its jaws.

Then, it charged.