Last Command of the Witheld Arc 1: Rebirth

Xander Vasilias, ☆☆Graviton Knight, Stone Lvl 14

“Water Temple” Dungeon, Falstaff Forest, Province of Aragonia

Salyyb sank into a meditative pose, his headflower drooping and his leaves wilted. Culvis flopped down on the ground next to him, wincing as he loosened the laces on one boot and tugged it off his foot. Jessaline stood guard, her arm still in a recovery sling while Culvis’ bonebreak formula was knitting her bones back together. Xander noted that although she held her long pulse sniper rifle easily in one hand, she was leaning against the doorframe in obvious exhaustion.

Zahara strolled around the group, playing her djevek softly and humming along, infusing the music with tensa. Xander immediately felt his muscles relax as the gnawing doubt and stress that had been building up ever since they’d made their way down here through the Borehole in Falstaff Forest began to drain away. Everyone else was breathing more easily now and Xander felt their animas unfurl as they began to use their gathering techniques to refill their tensa pools while they could in relative safety.

They’d congregated in what Xander thought had once been a little shop or restaurant in the distant past. The Dungeon Core had restocked the shelves with small stuffed effigies of an octopus-like creature in hundreds of different colors and patterns. Jessaline had clipped one of the little toys to her belt: a bright pink one that matched the current color of her hair. The familiar, eerie feeling of being in a room that felt like it had never had an intelligent presence within it while it also felt like someone had only just recently walked out of the room permeated the little shop, just like everywhere in the Dungeon. It was easy to succumb to paranoia here, but his team was seasoned well enough to keep it together, even after days of tough fighting against exceedingly resilient monsters.

“Jess, remind me where we are on our quota?” Xander asked as he unclipped one of his greaves and fiddled with one of the clasps that had been pinching a little in the last battle. “And please tell me you managed to stumble across a Rare shard of, well anything would be nice, but it’d be even better if it was a Rare shard of…damn, what kind of shard did you need to unlock your Shadow Jump movement technique, Jess?”

“Rare or better shard of Dimension, Deeper Shadow, or Endless Depths,” Jessaline called from the doorway. “And no, I did not ‘stumble’ on a Rare shard. I’d be singing about it better’n Zahara if I did. Believe me, you’ll know if I find the shard I need.”

“The last Rare shard of Dimension to come up at auction on the System Marketplace was snapped up by House Samir—”

“Fuck House Samir!”

“Fuck House Samir!”

“Fuck House Samir!”

Everyone said at once and Xander laughed. House Samir was always buying up the best shards with their vast wealth and ability to outbid anyone they wanted to. There wasn’t a Reborn in the Empire who wouldn’t join in on a hearty ‘fuck House Samir’—except for someone from House Samir or one of their vassals. Xander gauged the team’s mood surreptitiously.

“To answer your earlier question though,” Jessaline continued, “we’ve harvested eighty-seven lesser shards of various sorts, twenty-two Common shards, and four Uncommon shards. We haven’t found any Rare or better shards yet, though.”

Xander grunted, satisfied with their progress. “That means if we can kill the Boss in—how long do we have on the Boss Gate Key, Salyyb?”

“Ten more hours, my Lord,” Salyyb said. “It should be sufficient time to rest and prepare ourselves for the Boss battle.”

Xander frowned. He didn’t like that they were cutting it so close, but he hadn’t been able to argue for a longer time limit on the Key they had. The integration architect who had given them the Boss Gate Key had told them that all Keys in the Water Temple only had a twelve-hour time limit baked in. But you could extend that time by several hours by killing the lesser Boss monsters scattered throughout the Dungeon. Each Dungeon had its quirks, but this one was more irritating than most.

Culvis shifted to a more comfortable position, grabbing some of the stuffed octopus things off a shelf and arranging them into a lumpy but extremely soft pillow. “Do we know anything about the Boss? My Lord Xander, you’ve been here before. Did you fight the Boss?”

Xander shook his head. “No, I was too inexperienced at the time. I wasn’t even Stone rank yet.”

“The Boss would have torn us apart,” Salyyb put in. “We’d come here as part of a tour of the House’s Dungeons and my Lord was insistent on fighting a few monsters before we left. Nearly lost his legs to one of those flying Gulpers we faced back in that tidepool chamber a few rooms ago.”

Xander felt his mouth twitch into a smile at the memory. He’d been so concerned about looking good in front of his older brother, Ravi, that he’d been a total brat, demanding that he fight a monster alone. His brother had indulged him, but he hadn’t let him fight the monster alone. Above all, Xander remembered how in control and relaxed Ravi had been the whole time they’d been in the Dungeon. He’d so desperately wanted to have the calm sense of assurance that his brother exuded so effortlessly.

Zahara wandered nearby, pausing her soft singing long enough to say, “The monster report said the Boss was an aquatic monster—fitting for the Water Temple. But some notes there didn’t make sense, like ‘altered environment’ and ‘multimodal swimming’. That makes me think we’re likely to find our Boss swimming around in lava or liquid nitrogen: something we won’t be able to handle.”

“I noticed that as well,” Salyyb remarked. “But I did not think it significant at the time. Now that you raise the point, Zahara, I am very curious to know what ‘altered environment’ and ‘multimodal swimming’ mean myself. They could represent additional challenges that do not reflect in the Boss’ overall Class rating.”

“We won’t find out by sitting in the gift shop,” Jessaline said from the doorway. She shifted her pulse sniper rifle to her other shoulder, wincing as she jostled her injured arm. “Just give me ten more minutes and the bone’ll be healed enough for me to use my rifle.”

“Your shattered ulna needs at least an hour,” Culvis said firmly. His tone brooked no argument and Jessaline knew when to argue with the party healer (which was never—you never argued with the party healer, not if you knew what was good for you). “That’s what happens when you try to block a werecrab’s big claw with your forearm. Maybe remember that for the future?”

“It was either my forearm or my skull, old man,” Jessaline stuck her tongue out at Culvis. “Would you rather be sewing my head back onto my neck?”

“Don’t tempt me to experiment,” Culvis muttered. He looked much improved after just a few minutes of rest. “And I’m the same age as Lord Xander. Don’t call me ‘old’.”

“Then stop acting like such an old man!” Jessaline shot back.

“Enough!” Xander cut in. They could go on like that for hours if he let them. “We’ll wait for Jess’s arm to heal and then we’ll push on to the Boss. Get your rest now, everyone. You’ll need it for the battle ahead.”

It was a tense hour that passed as they waited quietly. Jessaline kept a careful watch out, but no monsters approached their gift shop hideout. Once Culvis had checked Jessaline’s arm over and pronounced it combat-ready, they formed up and moved out.

The Dungeon, up to this point, had been arranged more like an art gallery or a museum than a temple. Usually, Dungeons had some kind of overall theme, though the themes could be very difficult to discern—they weren’t built by people but grown by Dungeon Cores. The theme of the Water Temple seemed to be a bizarre cross of art gallery meets zoo. The Boss Room was through a large set of heavy wooden double doors with a brass plaque depicting a stylized octopus.

They gathered in front of the room in a wide hall. A thick red carpet cushioned their footfalls as they arranged themselves in front of the Boss Room. Culvis handed Xander the Boss Gate Key, a specially rune-engraved Lesser ethershard. Xander looked over at Jessaline and asked, “Can your Farsight see through the door? Give us an idea what we’re going to be facing?”

Jessaline shook her head, checking her rifle’s sights for the hundredth time. “Boss Gates have spells designed to enclose and entrap and they interfere with my Class abilities. We’ll just have to open it and see.”

“—t’s a Class 2 monster, my ass!” Jessaline shouted as she swam out of the way of another two-meter-long bone spear. “This thing must be Class 3! I’ve shot it fifteen fucking times!”

They’d found out what an ‘Altered Environment’ was: the air in the Boss Room was as thick as water and they could no longer walk through it but were forced to swim. Meanwhile, the Tyrannoarchiteuthis swam gracefully and terrifyingly through the huge chamber, completely in its element. The chamber was a huge open-air coral reef with a deep pool of black water in the center. Anemones waved in the air and kelp swayed gently in the current. Coral of all different kinds decorated the walls, ceiling, and floor in rainbow-colored profusion. It was undeniably beautiful, but it also happened to be the perfect environment for the Tyrannoarchiteuthis to hunt.

Even now, as it was actively attacking them with bone spears and lightning-fast tentacle whips, it was impossible to keep track of. It eluded their senses with ease, including their more esoteric anima configurations. It moved with liquid grace and could change its shape and color in an instant. The Tyrannoarchiteuthis preferred an ambushing style of attack where it would attack where it thought they were weakest from a hiding spot, then slip away and hide again just to repeat the ambush. On top of all that, the creature was extremely resilient, simply shrugging off most of their attacks.

The party was currently spread out in a wide circle at different elevations throughout the chamber in an effort to spot the monster, but it was adept at shooting its bone spears from oblique angles and then ghosting away. Jessaline was the only one who had a reliable shot at the creature, but her rifle did minimal damage and her grafts weren’t enough to penetrate the Boss monster’s thick mantle.

“Salyyb, can your bees distract it?!” Xander called out. “We need to retake the initiative!” He was near the floor of the chamber, readying his Final Collapse attack, hoping it could at least hold the Boss in place for a few precious seconds.

The ginpaari Botanimeister had fashioned a mat of kelp into finlike wings which he was able to control using his Command Plants graft, allowing him to move almost as gracefully as the Tyrannoarchiteuthis through the air. His brilliant green robes fluttered in the thick air as he dodged a whiplike tentacle that was twenty meters long and thick as a tree trunk and arrived next to Xander. Another shot boomed from Jessaline’s pulse sniper rifle and they all saw the Tyrannoarchiteuthis swirl away behind a huge brain coral and disappear from view.

Salyyb sprayed a Revitalizing Mist over both of them, infusing them with energy and increasing their tensa recovery rates. “My bees are not yet adapted to the new environment,” he reported. “I have poured tensa into the hive to speed the process and I’m currently on the one hundred and eightieth genera—”

“How long Salyyb?” Xander cut in. He had no idea how long they could hold out like this; it was only a matter of time before one of the bone spears hit its mark. “We can’t do this forever!”

Salyyb considered for a long, tense moment where the Tyrannoarchiteuthis was not attacking them. Xander could feel its inscrutable, predatory regard like a heavy itch between his shoulder blades, an ever-ratcheting tension that made him twitchy in the extreme.

Eventually, the ginpaari replied, “As you know, I dislike making predictions based on too little data. That being said,” he said, holding up one thorny finger in response to Xander’s unspoken protest, “it should take another two minutes and seven seconds. Give or take a few hundredths.” He sounded dubious.

“I appreciate your compromise on precision, my friend,” Xander said drily. “I’ll check back in a couple of minutes. Culvis! Any ideas?!” He shouted over to the healer, who was clutching a spur of ruck fifteen meters off the floor.

“I need a sample of its blood!” Culvis yelled back. “Then I can synthesize a lethal poison for it!”

A pair of bone spears made high-pitched whistling sounds as they shot at both of them and Xander only barely had time to interpose his infused Polyalloy shield in front of the spear. It punched through the shield like it was made of wet paper, only missing Xander because it was slightly off-target. The spear dragged on his shield and, seeing as it hadn’t protected him from the projectile at all, Xander let it fall, gripping his hammer with two hands. Culvis had managed to duck behind a piece of coral to avoid the spear shot at him, but Xander didn’t have time to check on him.

Xander felt a strong current of thick air through his anima and acted almost without thought. He combined several grafts and Class abilities at once, dumping tensa into the powers. His Singularity Hammer—an heirloom that had belonged to his great grandfather, Ulias Vasilias—suddenly gained mass until it was over five metric tons. Xander’s muscles bulged, his racial gift, Incredibly Strong, meant he could perform superhuman feats of strength. As the hammer’s head gained mass, he began whirling around in a tight, fast circle, pouring tensa into his Whirling Strike Class ability. He only let himself complete three revolutions before he activated his Meteor Blow graft and let the hammer go at the same time.

The Singularity Hammer shot away from him through the thickened air trailing black smoke and sparks. Xander’s instinctual attack actually hit his intended target, catching it as it was moving. He hadn’t seen the enormous monstrous octopod at all. The hammer dug into the Boss, its increased mass pinning the creature to the razor-sharp coral. As it tried to swim away, it shredded itself on the coral, tearing a huge rent in its body as it tore itself off of Xander’s hammer. The thing roared with earsplitting volume, infusing it with tensa. The effect was to send concentric rings of sound out, slamming into everyone in the entire room who wasn’t crouched behind coral.

Xander was blasted into the coral, crying out as his body was battered inside his heavy armor. Pieces of coral and anemone floated in the air around him and he realized he’d been slammed a meter and a half into the wall from the roar. And the Tyrannoarchiteuthis was gone again. Blood floated in the air around him, and Xander realized he’d been more heavily injured than he’d thought.

He tried kicking off from the wall and couldn’t do it. He felt a gut-wrenching tear inside his stomach and he screamed. He looked down at his stomach and gritted his teeth when he saw the bone spear stuck through him. It had punctured his Vasilias Heavy Armor and impaled him, stapling him to the wall. Even worse, he felt his muscles locking up as paralytic venom from the bone spear began spreading through his whole body.

Xander couldn’t see the rest of his party now. A chunk of coral had drifted in front of him and he couldn’t reach it to move it. He tried to move his arms, to grasp the bone spear and pull it out of the wall behind him, but his muscles wouldn’t respond to his will. The pain was overwhelming, but Xander couldn’t help it. He laughed, even though it hurt like being stabbed in the belly to do so.

This is an awfully embarrassing fate for an elite Reborn of House Vasilias. This Boss was far beyond us, Xander thought. Funny though. We didn’t even start looking for the Scions. The team was so worried about Zahara that they forgot we could die to a regular monster. His vision began to blacken at the edges and Xander knew he was losing consciousness.

He heard another shattering roar from the Tyrannoarchiteuthis. A rain of broken coral from the sonic attack showered down on him, but he still couldn’t move. Or maybe that was me who forgot about monsters being dangerous… That was the last thought he had before consciousness finally slipped away.