Mountain of the Immortals

We continued in absolute silence for a bit less than ten minutes, walking at a steady pace so as not to waste our buffs, but also not too fast to avoid causing too much ruckus. The humidity that had been present at the entrance of the cavern was slowly disappearing, a warm dryness taking its place. No sunlight had ever touched these walls and yet a soft, gray glow was seeping out of them. It didn’t look like luminescent fungi, but rather like a special quality of the marble and stone itself.

The dryness in the air was starting to become incredibly uncomfortable and I noticed that everything around us was covered in a thick layer of dust.

“This isn’t normal,” Artemis said. “This whole place looks like it has been untouched for years, but I’m sure this is where all those corrupted creatures are coming from.”

“Perhaps there’s an opening that we missed?” I offered.

“I didn’t miss anything,” she retorted. “Something else is—”

Before she was able to finish her thought, a deafening roar echoed from the depth of the tunnel in front of us. It sounded as if a were standing in the middle of a gigantic horn that someone had just blown into.

“Hold your breath and cover your faces!” I shouted, and we all did exactly as I said.

I just had time to register a sonic wave of dust travelling toward us with incredible speed before I fell to the floor, head between my knees, trying to protect myself from what I could only assume was the first layer of the dungeon’s defenses.

The wave hit me like a raging bull, and I was barely able to hold my ground by digging my feet into the soil below us. The strong winds kept coming for a few more seconds, though each felt like a whole minute as the dust was not the only thing the powerful gales were carrying. Shards as small and sharp as little teeth and rocks as big as fists were flung at our crouching bodies. I tried my best to cover Aphrodite and realized that Artemis was doing the same thing.

I could tell we both really appreciated the boost in our Physical Defense granted by her buffs. Trying my best not to lose my concentration and subsequently my balance, I dared take a glance at the party view to get a feeling for how we were doing.

As expected, Artemis hadn’t sustained any serious damage, though her HP was down at around eighty percent, ten percent less than mine. Aphrodite on the other hand, despite her much lower defense stats, had somehow managed a tiny dent in her HP, which didn’t look like it had fallen more than three percent.

Once the winds ceased, we all waited a couple more seconds just to be on the safe side, then I stood and started shaking my head and patting my whole body to get rid of the dust that now clung to me. The thickest of it was easy enough to get rid of, but there were also particles so fine that I wouldn’t be able to clean them off without a dip in a hot spring.

“Is everyone okay?” I said out loud, as I didn’t think it mattered anymore. The blast was much louder than our voices. “Did you inhale any of it?”

“I’m fine,” Aphrodite replied, having just now exhaled for the first time since before the wild winds had started.

“We should push forward,” Artemis said. “We don’t know how often that’s going to happen.”

We all nodded our agreement and continued moving forward at a much faster pace now, Aphrodite’s speed buffs coming in much handier now we were less concerned about making noise. A couple of minutes later, we reached the end of the long tunnel and finally saw where the winds had come from.

The grotesque sculpture of a monster’s face emerged from the wall and regarded us with angry stone eyes. Its expression looked like one of immense pain, and its monstrous characteristics were only further emphasized by its screaming mouth and large fangs.

“This must be where all the dust is coming from,” I said, using the guild chat again just in case anything was listening from the corridor branching off on our right. “Let’s head in here so we’re protected from the next volley.”

“Let’s rest for a bit before we go any further though,” Aphrodite said, and sat down a few feet away from the terrifying sculpture and its range of attack. “Let me regenerate my mana, and we’ll continue once it blows again.”

I knew that mana regeneration accelerated significantly when sitting down and resting, especially for spellcasters, but my own MP bar was still full so I decided to stand while she rested. Besides, if we were attacked I didn’t want to be found on my ass, and by the looks of it neither did Artemis, who was staring down the far end of the new corridor.

I took the opportunity while we stood there for a few moments to appreciate our new companion.

When I finally tore my eyes from Artemis, I noticed that Aphrodite was leaning to the side and watching me, a coy smile on her face. I felt a bit uneasy that I’d been caught staring at a moment like this until she sent me a personal telepathic message.

“I can’t blame you really,” she said. “I was thinking about how great she must look underneath all that armor too.”

Before I had the chance to reply, there was a rumble inside the walls and then a loud roar as the dust was being catapulted out of the sculpture’s mouth again. Aphrodite took it as a chance to stand up and recast all of our buffs, using the deafening sound of the dust funneling through the cavern to mask any incantations that needed to be chanted out loud.

Soon we were all buffed again, and ready to go with almost another twenty minutes’ worth of powerful boosts. What’s more, Aphrodite cast a weak healing spell on both of us, using only a very small amount of her mana to heal us both completely.

“Let’s move,” I said mentally, “but carefully. This sculpture is clearly not a natural formation. It was made by someone or something, which means there’s an intelligent creature behind this corruption.”

“I was afraid that might be the case,” Artemis agreed. “A naturally occurring level-sixty dungeon with only monsters in it would have been fine, but a dungeon created by a level-sixty individual is going to be much more troublesome.”

“You don’t need to worry,” Aphrodite reassured her. “We’re here to finish this.”

The new tunnel twisted and turned for a few hundred feet, the faint light coming from its walls illuminating our path. The ground slowly turned from stone into fine sand with just the occasional odd-shaped rock here and there. It was only after seeing a few such rocks that I realized what we were really walking on.

“This no ordinary sand,” I said in the guild chat. “The rocks are bones, and the sand is bone grain.”

“Crows damn it. What fell from the skies in this place?” Aphrodite asked.

Artemis retrieved her bow from her inventory immediately, and no sooner had the red glow of her enchanted weapon illuminated the narrow corridor than she’d fired an arrow into the darkness ahead.

“Incoming monsters,” she said, stepping to the side to allow me to walk in front of the two of them, while Aphrodite positioned herself behind us, ready to cast any healing spells we might need.

I held my lance up in front of me, pointing it at whatever was moving in the low-lit corridor and waited while Artemis released one arrow after another. All of her shots struck true, as was clear from the fact that each flight ended with a fleshy thump followed by the sound of something big hitting the floor. All but one caused no additional noises.

But the one that did gave me an idea of what we might expect from the incoming horde of monsters. The beast that was only now becoming visible to me, untrained as my eyes were at night-hunting, screamed a roar of pain that sounded nothing like a bear. It sounded more like an angry lion.

A second later, my suspicions were confirmed.