Random Portals

Steven racked his brain for ideas. His mana was slowly refiling, but even at full mana, he didn’t know how much help he would be. From the looks of it, he wouldn’t be able to leave this to Nev either. She wouldn’t go down without a fight, but she couldn’t take on both demons at full health.

“What will it be, Queen of the spiders?” The Elder Demon asked, “I'll allow you to keep me company for a while if you submit yourself to me.”

Steven was out of ideas and decided they needed back up even in the form a chaos. So he opened a portal above the Elder demon’s true form, and proceeded to drop out abominations, but he quickly stopped when they didn’t even bother with the Elder demon and went after Nev and a few drones that were left.

“Damit!” Steven quickly began opening portals and sending them back to inventory.

Meanwhile, the Elder demon looked on in confusion and seemed to notice Steven for the first time.

“Human,” the Elder demon bellowed, “are you a Domain Holder?”

Seeing as the demon wasn’t attacking and Nev’s wounds were healing at a visible rate, he decided buying time was his best bet. “I am, and who are you?”

The Elder demon laughed, “No wonder you were able to make my little brother flee, and here I thought you were a minion of the spider. It seems you are the one I need to deal with to end this, since the spider refuses to speak to me.”

Shit, shit, shit. He wasn’t trying to become the target. “How about you go deal with Sorin and I let you have this dungeon.” Steven said, trying to keep the fear out of his voice.

A booming laugh came from the Elder demon. “I would love to give that pesky vampire what’s coming to him, but unfortunately I’m under contract at the moment and can not take you up on that. I think I will take your domain instead. I appreciate you bringing it all the way to me. I’m impressed such a low level being was able to get this far, even with the help of the spider.”

The next moment, a massive flaming axe at least twice the size of Steven appeared above him and came crashing down at him so quickly Steven didn’t have a chance to react. Time slowed and Steven watched his mana drop to one eighty-three. The axe still on fire fell to the ground next to him. Steven quickly opened a portal and sent the still flaming axe to inventory.

“What just happen?” The demon asked.

Steven could have asked the same thing. He didn’t even see the demon move. Where did the axe even come from? He really hoped the demon didn’t have another one. He had burned his hand a bit while sending it to inventory.

It took the demon a long moment before he spoke, “I sense divinity on you human, did one of the gods send you here?”

“Say yes to throw him off. We need to buy time. The spider is trying to heal,” Silvia said in his mind.

“What if they did?” Steven said.

“Then they sent you to your death. You are too weak to deal with me. I grow tired of this. My undead half has finally regained its mana. This is over.”

Steven’s eyes grew wide. “Did you say undead?” Steven asked as he opened a portal behind the undead half of the demon.

“It matters not, little human. Your domain is mine!” The demon said with a wide grin.

Suddenly, the undead half of the demon vanished, and the demon’s eyes bulged. “WHAT!” The Elder demon began looking in every direction in a frantic manner before his eyes locked on Steven. Then he charged at Steven at an incredible speed. But before the demon made it to him, he was tackled by Nev.

Steven shook his head in disbelief. Nev’s health was already at seventy-nine percent. Her healing ability to recover was insane. The Elder demon’s health bar immediately dropped to fifty percent when Steven sent his other half to inventory.

Silvia floated over. “It seems we were yet again lucky.”

“That seems to be the case.” Steven said as he watched Nev and the demon fight. It was a one sided fight at this point. The demon must have lost a good portion of his strength when he lost connection with his other half. Steven turned to Silvia. “Why didn’t you tell me his other half was undead?”

Silvia was silent for a long moment. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry that was my fault. This is the first I’ve ever heard of a demon doing something like this. It must be a shard ability. I’ll be more aware of this in the future.”

Steven was surprised the wisp was being so earnest, and even apologized.

Unsure what to say, Steven just watched the fight with the demon and the spider. There wasn’t much of a fight left at this point. Nev had the demon mostly wrapped in webs. Once the demon’s health bar was at five percent, she stopped and wrapped him up in webs even tighter.

“We should rest before we finish him. We don’t want the Vampire to attack us before we are ready.” Nev said as she walked over.

“That is actually a good idea.” Silvia said.

Nev stared at the Wisp with narrowed eyes for a moment, “thanks, your attack with the adolescent wisps were well timed. I don’t believe i would have survived without your intervention.”

“Thanks, but don’t think this means I like you. You’re still a filthy arachnid!”

Steven rolled his eyes.

Nev turned to Steven. “Thank you, Master, for distracting the demon with the undead. It allowed me to regenerate my health. That was clever. It’s probably a good idea to always keep some undead in your inventory.”

“Is it over?” Sirus asked as he hesitantly approached.

“Almost,” Silvia said, “we still need to deal with the blood sucker in the other room. But he will remain trapped in there until we finish the Elder demon.”

Sirus nodded and sat down far away from the demon. “Steven, I want to say thank you. I would have died if you wouldn’t have sent the drone.”

“Don’t mention it. I’m sorry most of your warriors died.”

“They had a warrior’s death. Though my clan is severely weakened, children and those without a fighting spirit now make up the majority of our clan.”

“It is only a matter of time before your clan will become strong again,“ Silvia said, “though I would recommend joining with another race and swallowing your pride. There is strength in numbers.”

Steven stopped paying attention to Sirus and Silvia’s conversation and he pulled his bed out of inventory and collapsed into it.

He was worried the Elder demon would break through the webs, or the vampire would find a way to get to them when they weren’t expecting it. However, exhaustion quickly won, and he passed out.

The gall of that human to go to sleep inside the main chamber of his dungeon.

Sorin had thought the Elder Demon had them. But those impudent demons and their small talk. He wasn’t sure why the human didn’t use his touch powers to kill the Elder demon at the start, but he could never understand the minds of the lesser races, so there was no point in trying. They were all fools. He hoped one day he could surround himself with intelligent beings such as himself. Maybe he could even become a god himself, but first he had to survive this.

He wasn’t expecting them to bind the Demon and recover. It was the damned Wisp’s fault. She knew all the rules of the dungeon. He couldn’t even escape now that they were in the main chamber! The dungeon seen it as the fight was still going on. So he was trapped.

However, he had his elite knights to deal with the spider. His knights were nearly indestructible and would contentiously regenerate. It was the human that held the true threat. Sorin knew that’s where the Elder Demon messed up. If he had went straight for the human, then it would have been over. Sorin was starting to figure out the human’s ability. The human must have had to charge his touch power before it would work, otherwise he would have used it immediately. The one thing that was throwing Sorin for a loop was how he was able to summon Undead that he had killed. It made no sense, and this wasn’t the first time he had done it. It should not be possible but, this Steven was surely sent by a god otherwise why would the god of Undead get involved.

“Gather all the slaves from the dungeon and bring them here. Make sure they are bound.”

Humans always make poor decisions when dealing with hostages and all he needed was a moment’s hesitation from the human to use his Staff. The God of Undead said it would bypass all protections and shards. All he had to do was aim and shoot. The only downside was his staff would be destroyed afterwards. But it was that or likely lose his life when his domain was stripped from him.

Blank strained the limits of his concentration. He could feel the slightest pull from his familiar. It had been decades since he had to strain this much on anything relating to magic. He didn’t understand what could block an Elder Wisp aura projection. There had to be more at play here than the simple human he had encountered.

Blank was a level one hundred and fifty being. Life herself had requested him, then bestowed him with a blessing. There shouldn’t be anything that could interfere with his abilities on that planet. At least nothing Steven could get his hands on. He had been trying for two days with no breaks. But he was close now.

It was only a matter of time before he could solidify the connection. His ability was finally off cool down. And now had enough astral mana. He just needed to push all the mana through the connection to form the other portal. Opening portals to planets in the same solar system was hard enough, but opening portals across galaxies was something only a handful of beings were capable of, aside from gods. But even then, not all gods were even capable of such a feat. Blank was one of the few mortals capable of such a thing. And it was only possible do to his blessing from Life.

He didn’t like to portal into a place without scoping it out first, but he had lost Kat, and would slaughter all those responsible! After all, Kat was a gift from Life and she wouldn’t mind. Or at least, he hoped. Blank cleared his mind. He had to concentrate. He was getting too old for this. Once he got Kat, he would see about retiring if life would allow it.

Blank took a deep breath. “Not much longer now.” He said as sweat poured from his brow.

Steven woke up to several faces staring down at him. The only light came from Silvia, meaning his dark vision had ran out once again. Steven was about to ask what they were all doing, just staring at him, when Silvia spoke up.

“You just pulled out a bed and went to sleep? We thought something had happened to you. There was blood all over your armor and Sirus said he seen you get stabbed by the assassin’s blade multiple times.”

Steven’s hand reflectively moved to his stomach, and he quickly realized he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

“Your arachnid had already checked you over for wounds, but there was nothing.” Silvia said.

Steven had forgotten he got stabbed. When he changed into his spider form, it must have healed him. That was good to know.

“Well?” Silvia asked.

“Well what? I’m unsure what you want from me.”

Silvia’s light flickered a few times before she flew off.

Then everything went dark.

“She was just worried about you.”

Steven immediately recognized Nev’s voice. But didn’t see her anywhere in the dark. After drinking a dark vision potion, his eyes slowly began to focus, and he saw Nev sitting on the bed next to him. Sirus had left as well, only leaving Nev. “I can’t wait to get out of this dungeon! I’m tired of drinking these disgusting dark vision potions.”

“Don’t worry Master you won’t have to drink melted Drone eyes much longer. From what Silvia told me about Sorin, he won’t be too difficult to deal with. It’s his Elite Knights that are the real problem, but you can deal with those once we remove a piece of their armor.”

Steven was silent for a moment while he processed what the spider Queen said.

“Did you say Drone eyes?”

“Yes Master, that is the main ingredient in the dark vision potions the Naga use.”

Steven groaned. He had been about to pull a plate of food out but suddenly lost his appetite.

“Don’t worry Master, we only provide the Naga with fresh Drone eyes. The Drones go to the alchemist and pull their eyes out there so they…”

Steven held his hand up. “That’s enough. You don’t need to explain any further,” Steven sighed, “so what is the plan? Do we finish the Demon and then head through those stone doors?”

“Yes and I thought it best if you finished off the Elder Demon, then you could extract its unformed core and also get the bulk of the essence.”

“And you’re okay with me having it?” Steven asked.

“Of course, master, I am but your servant! I would, however, appreciate it if you let me have an unformed core in the future. I’m sure we will get more.” Nev smiled seductively.

Steven narrowed his eyes. From what Silvia told him, these unformed cores were rare and most never acquired even one. “Okay, I’ll let you have the next one.”

“Thank you Master, after all, you have two more in your inventory right now.”

“I, do?”

“The two undead dragons you have,” Nev said.

Steven seen Silvia flying towards him at a ridiculous speed, stopping right before she ran into his face. He had to move back to not be blinded by her pulsating light. “Do not be giving cores away, you imbecile!”

“You heard us talking?”

“Of course I did. The entire dungeon can hear you two,” Silvia said as her light flared.

Steven looked at Nev with a confused expression before turning back to Silvia.

“Are you okay?” Steven asked.

“Of course I am! Are you okay?”

“You seem...” Steven started.

“I’m perfectly fine!”

The Wisps light was flaring a bright pink, then changing to a dark green. It was so intense that it was starting to make Steven’s eyes hurt.

“There is something obviously bothering you,” Steven said as he held up a hand to shade his eyes, “is it because we are fixing to face Sorin? Are you scared or something?”

Silvia’s light dimmed. “I’m not scared, it’s just, I never thought this day would come. I’ve wanted revenge for so long and now that it’s so close, I…I.”

“I’m here okay,” Steven said, “and if you decided you don’t want revenge, then we can let him live.”

“No! I want revenge, it’s just…” Silvia’s light grew dimmer as she talked, “the council will hear of my betrayal. They are the ones who assigned him to me. They also warned me to stay away from you.”

“Stay away from me? Why?”

“Because there is the touch of divinity on you. It’s not really important.” Silvia’s light grew brighter. “I will just make my own council of Wisps. I’m sure some of the adolescent wisps will evolve.”

Steven wasn’t sure how that worked, but Silvia had been there for him and even saved his life a couple of times. “Okay, I’ll help you any way I can. As long as it doesn’t involve a dungeon. But first we need to deal with this Sorin. I want out of this dungeon!”

Silvia’s light grew brighter and brighter as Steven spoke, “You're right, so I was thinking when we enter Sorin’s main chamber you pull out a dragon.”

Steven listened to Silvia talk for a long while. Her plan was simple. The Elite Knights Sorin had were the biggest threat. So dealing with them would be a priority. Since the dragons would no longer have the Elder Demon to control them, they would just attack any and everything in sight. And she was right. It was simple for him to send the creatures back to inventory if they got out of control. Even Steven had to admit the portals coupled with the inventory ability made him the bane of all the undead. It almost felt like cheating.

Silvia tried to explain that he would do his best when he brought chaos to the table, since he was blessed by Chaos. Though that part was confusing to him, and he just agreed and then she moved on to the other part of her plan. Sorin apparently had some sort of shadow jump ability, so it could be tricky to touch him. Silvia explained how inferior his dexterity and strength were to Sorin. Silvia didn’t let them ask many questions, in fear Sorin may figure out what they were planning. She guaranteed them that Sorin was watching and listening right now. She had them shake their heads, yes or no, if they understood and agreed.

Steven wasn’t sure how long he had to listen to Silvia go over the plan. But eventually it was time to kill the Elder Demon. Steven didn’t have as much reservations about killing the Demon as he did killing the Undead General. This was a demon, after all.