Luca DR
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Accidentally summoned 20
🕑 Added 2024-02-06 23:21:21 +0000 UTC20 – Dungeon
Ishrin studied the complex lines on the floor of his room at the inn. Every inch of the space was filled with diagrams, and the diagrams were merely a projection of the ritual they were supposed to represent. Even so, they occupied the whole floor with their complex structure.
The ritual that killed me…
Ishrin paced around, the lines drawn with chalk undisturbed by his feet. Chalk that was inert unless activated, and that would not be blurred by the amount of disturbance his careful steps caused. Unlike the magical version of it.
It’s a simple retrieval ritual. Supposed to pull a soul from the Beyond. Fueled by the might of a Tier 15 mage. Why did it fail?
Albert, the god, had mentioned that the ritual had tried to use the whole universe as fuel. That they were lucky he had been able to stop the ritual after it consumed just the planet of Eternia as opposed to the whole universe.
But what was the ritual trying to pull? Was a soul heavier than a universe?
Ishrin had thought not, back when he designed the ritual. But, back then, he had no notion of Tiers beyond the 15th. Now, though…
This is worrying. She couldn’t have been more than Tier 10 back when she died. Right?
Unfortunately, the memories were fuzzy. He sat on the bed, cradling his head in his arms, trying to remember. Fighting a rising headache as the memories struggled to come into focus. Too much time had passed, filled with grief, sorrow and the deepest depravity known to man. All in an attempt to bring her back. Or to quench the pain.
Time had done most of the work, in the end.
A knock on the door. Ishrin waved his hand, flexed his magic, and the chalk disappeared into his inventory. Back to being a simple mound of white powder. The wards protecting the room vanished, and he opened the door.
Lisette was there, waiting for him to get ready. She and Ishrin had agreed to meet up early in the morning to do some dungeon diving at the Labirintine Dungeon before it got too crowded, so that she could get some materials, money and battle experience while Ishrin gathered some materials and stuff for more rituals. He was getting ready to break into Tier 2, which basically just required him to increase the size of his mana core by absorbing ambient magic passively. Or, he could make it much faster and actually more efficient by absorbing mana from slain monsters.
He was on a clock, after all. And most of his problems could not be solved without rising through the tiers first. He still hoped to be able to rise in power the right way, without stunting his growth, but the news that a new guild master was coming was disturbing. He might have to expedite things up.
Ishrin greeted the young adventurer and got a court nod in response. Lisette informed him that she already had registered them as a temporary party and had done all the paperwork at the guild, and they were ready to go.
Ah, the advantages of having a friendly Guild Master.
A thing that was going to change soon, he feared.
On the way to the Dungeon, Lisette reported seeing some strange new sights at the guild. A man, roaming around, who she had never seen before but who also stood out enough for people to notice among the many newcomers.
“He was taller than most men, and completely covered in rags. Goddard, that unpleasant human, told me to warn you about him.” She made a disgusted face. “I didn’t believe him at first, and was about to punch him for his insolence when I saw the strange man reach towards the quest board, and that his hand was made of metal. I can recognize something strange when I see it, Ishrin.” She said, looking at him in the eye. “The man had no cultivation. No life force. He moved stiffly and when he did not move, he was completely still. Like he was not breathing, and his eyes were shining with a red light under his hood. I do not know what he did when he touched the quest board, but he stood there for several seconds before leaving, not once looking behind himself.”
Ishrin nodded gravely. He had seen things like the man she was describing, back on Mekano’s world. He wondered if what Lisette was describing was one of those machines, but it was impossible. To travel here from Mekano’s world, one needed to cross universes, a thing nobody below Tier 15 could do. Or so he thought, at least.
Lisette, in the meantime, had already jumped to a new topic.
“How many spells do you know, Ishrin?”
“I actually don’t know.” He replied, but his mind was still digesting the new information.
“You do not know?” She asked, monotone but he could make out an undercurrent of disbelief.
“Yeah, lost count after a while. How many do you know?”
“Twenty-six,” she stated, “And I was considered a prodigy.”
“Huh.” Ishrin said.
By the time he had reached Tier 6 the first time around, he already knew more than five hundred spells and variations. Perhaps he could teach Lisette some.
***
Hours later, Ishrin was left pondering on the meaning of many things. Specifically, how some rituals were more gruesome than others. Even more specifically, how written words and half-remembered instructions did not really make justice for how horrifying and disgusting certain practices got. Some things were not demonic only by virtue of not involving demons, but they sure made for weird sights.
A pile of 25 goblin corpses, neatly stacked on top of each other like a gory pyramid at the center of a magic circle, their bodies mangled and broken and oozing dark clotted blood certainly qualified as a weird sight.
It had taken Ishrin and his black-clad companion a few hours of delving to reach the fourth level of the dungeon. The decision to delve had been easy: he needed power and money and materials, and the dungeon was an easy source of all three. It was also a good training opportunity to get used to a weaker body, to try out his pebble sword, and to see how Lisette actually fared in a fair fight without being wounded and outmatched by a pack of monsters.
She had also grown since last time, cultivating religiously every night. She was nearing the peak of Tier 4, and although the breakthrough into the next tier was quite the hard thing to do, Ishrin was confident she wouldn’t be stuck at that tier for long. Besides, he could help smooth things over.
Each level of the dungeon was one tier harder than the previous, starting at 0 at the ground floor. Handy, it made one wonder whether this ‘natural’ occurring dungeon really was natural or perhaps some sort of training ground of a civilization long gone. Ishrin had noticed some clues that pointed in that direction, but he had been too busy to investigate them. The maps he had seen at the guild did mention ruins, though.
And Albert never explained how the multiverse came to be in the first place. What if these places are remnants of past iterations, perhaps?
Their style was interesting. Ishrin had no problem withstanding the magical pressure that the Tier 4 level of the dungeon imposed on his soul—it was much stronger than his actual tier, after all—but the same could not be said of the danger the monsters posed to him. His soul might be strong, but his body was a weak Tier 1 body, and still lacking the Derillomouf drop, it was still an unaugmented one at that.
This meant that their strategy had to keep him as safe as possible, while at the same time making use of Lisette’s mobility and speed to the fullest. They also had to adapt on the spot, due to the fickle nature of the dungeon itself. It liked to change layouts as often as multiple times a day. The layout changes also sometimes led to monsters spilling out, and the guild issued quests accordingly.
Pest control IV
Kill 25 monsters in the fourth level of the Labirintine Dungeon.
Reward: 10 gold coins.
“The reward seems low, compared to other quests,” Ishrin had said back at the guild.
To which Lisette replied: “you get to keep the core and the monster parts.”
And that was that. Incidentally, Ishrin’s inventory was now full of monster parts and cores ranging from tier 1 to 4. Completely unrelated.
As for how they split the loot, Ishrin offered to carry it around in his inventory but to then split it 50-50, as it was only right. At the beginning, Lisette had accepted it, but after seeing how Ishrin fought she tried to push for a different split.
“Nonsense.” Ishrin replied to a gore-covered Lisette. “We split it evenly, and that’s the end of it.”
He, on the other hand, was pristine clean. Lisette grinned, still panting lightly. The thrill of the battle had made her eyes shine blood red. “I accept, then. It is your loss, after all.”
Her canines showed for a fraction of a second, and Ishrin had the impression that she would make for a fine cat-girl, much more feral than Melina ever was.
The fights went like this: Lisette ran into the thick of the monsters, disrupting their nests and sowing chaos among their ranks, attracting their attacks and keeping them from rushing at Ishrin. From the safety of the backline, he and Liù took turns sniping them all. His Pebble Sword used no mana and attacked up to Tier 5, with only a minor drain on his stamina that was getting lesser and lesser the more he got used to it. This meant that he could fire dozens of shots in a very small amount of time, and his aim was quite good.
That VR stuff Mekano made me try did come in handy after all.
On top of all that, Ishrin could use his magic to give a helping hand. He could choose from the thousands of spells that he knew, and even though their effectiveness was starting to wane when used offensively—he could shoot only two tiers above his level—the utility spells were much more effective.
Lisette weaved around the room with her absurd mobility, layering her spells with some of Ishrin’s for maximum effectiveness, making use of his gigantic repertoire. Sometimes a monster would slip past her guard, and that’s when Ishrin’s newest ritual showed its effectiveness. Ever since gaining access to the forces of nature with the Touch from Afar ritual, he had been developing new telekinetic abilities which he trained religiously whenever he could.
The telekinesis was not accurate, precise or powerful yet, but it was enough to thwart an otherwise fatal attack and allow Lisette to kill the monsters with much greater safety. Besides, Ishrin could heal. Healing magic was not his forte, but he could use it and once a room was cleared, it was safe to stay indefinitely to recuperate and heal up.
At the end of each fight, Lisette was covered in blood, gore and viscera. At the beginning she refused Ishrin’s offer to clean her up, but she then relented.
“I have to say, I am reevaluating the impact of utility magic,” she said after the spell cleaned her back to perfection. “I will ask you to teach me this spell, when I have enough money to pay you.”
To which Ishrin tried to refuse the money and was utterly rejected.
By the time they reached the fourth level, Lisette and Ishrin were a well-oiled machine with complete trust in each other’s abilities. Liù was still struggling with teamwork, but her wildcard power bursts, area of effect attacks up to Tier 8, were always appreciated.
