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Punishment reincarnation 33
🕑 Added 2024-02-20 19:13:23 +0000 UTC33 – Fights
The door opened with a hiss, revealing another long tunnel of ice. However, the deeper they ventured inside the impossible mountain, the more the technological aspects of its making became harder to spot. They were more sophisticated, less damaged, and more integrated with the structure of the rock until they appeared completely natural to the eyes of the adventurers. Only Ishrin, who had visited many worlds where technology had been the focus of civilization rather than magic, could still spot the machines in the walls. But even he was having trouble understanding what they were there for.
It was like the mountain had grown over time around a central node of high-tech machinery upon which other, less advanced, stuff had been grafted onto it. Thus, venturing through the tunnel was like advancing through entire ages of technological discoveries, soon overtaking even Mekano’s world and entering realms Ishrin was unfamiliar with. How such a structure came to be was hard to tell, but it was clear enough that the tunnel had come later, and its strange shape and walls were a result of the mountain’s automatic repairing functions which, over time, had sealed the gaping wound into something more akin to a scar.
Another problem was the ever-present magical haze, that rendered their magic vision completely ineffective, robbing them of their second sight they had all gotten so accustomed to. Ishrin, despite being the lowest Tier of them all, was the one who had been more dependent on his magical senses and thus, was the one who felt the most blind. Lisette and Melina fared much better, and their higher Tier also granted them much sharper mundane senses and a sharper mind to handle the information.
“Watch out!” Melina’s voice cut through the silence.
The three members of the party threw themselves to the sides of the narrow tunnel, with Melina – who was leading at the front – backstepping and only narrowly avoiding a section of the wall as it literally exploded in a shower of ice shards and pieces of metal. Three small machines, shaped like spiders of many mechanical limbs with a triangular head and a single red eye, appeared from where the wall had been destroyed. Without pause they each selected one target and lunged forward, propelling themselves into the air with small rockets spewing flames under their metallic frames.
The light blue ambience of the icy tunnel exploded in a cacophony of colors and reflections. The orange of the rockets and the red of their single unblinking eye was refracted and distorted by the walls, in a dizzying display of mismatched shapes. Some of which were not even reflections, but more machines hiding beneath the ice, waiting.
Lisette unsheathed her twin blades before the spider could even reach the halfway point in its trajectory. The metal robot was met with the sharp edge of one such blade, swiping the air in a horizontal arc with extreme velocity and precision. However, the metal was too strong, and the spider was not cut in half but merely sent flying into the wall with speed. The wall reacted, the ice shifting, and machines appearing underneath, helping the spider to adjust the angle and bounce back, headed for Lisette’s head. She swatted it out of the air again, dancing around the other two members of the party who she knew were busy with their own fights, then she took a stance and came to a full stop just as the spider prepared to jump again.
She studied its shape, and the two opposing enemies lunged at each other. This time, however, thanks to the magic armor Ishrin gave her that boosted her speed, Lisette corrected her trajectory at the last possible moment. The spider hadn’t predicted this, its circuits instead telling it that Lisette would have kept going at it from the front and found itself flying towards the far end of the tunnel. Before it could come to a stop and turn around, a blade severed two of its limbs, leaving it limping on the ground. Then the flat of the other blade pushed it down and Lisette stomped on it, using her heel and the other sword like a hammer to crush the robot.
The sound of circuits dying, metal bending and the smell of smoke told her that it was dead.
Melina reacted similarly to how Lisette had. She immediately moved as soon as she sensed the arrival of the robots, sending a blade of magic to destroy the one lunging at her. Unlike Lisette’s physical blade, her magic found some purchase and damaged the machine. However the damage was light, most of the magic just sliding off of the strange metal the spider was made of. She mentally checked how much accumulated charge her reactive armor – the one Ishrin made with the ritual – had and found it to be enough. The next time the robot lunged at her she just punched it, willing the armor to release as much charge as it could into that one hit. The robot was sent flying into the wall, but its velocity was too great for the wall to react. It impacted the ice and tumbled to the ground as if stunned. Melina didn’t know if it was dead, so for good measure she prepared to cast another wind magic, this time slow and precise, like a thin needle that stabbed the robot over and over until it was nothing but scrap metal.
Ishrin didn’t see the robots coming, due to his lower Tier, and the fact that they were mostly technology and not magic. They barely glowed under his magic gaze, impossible to spot through the fog of magic that enveloped the tunnel. He was the last one to react, but his reaction was the most effective. He raised his right hand, flicking his fingers, and a ball of steel shot out from one of his pockets. His training implement turned into a fearsome weapon, controlled by his telekinesis, and slammed into the machine. It stopped mid-air, barely having crossed a third of its whole trajectory, before it ricocheted and bounced off of a wall. Having seen that the steel ball bearing was not enough to finish the technological spider, Ishrin seized control of the stunned machine directly. It oscillated in place for a small fraction of a second, as if tugged by many forces, before he closed his hand into a fist and the robot underwent a rapid compression that left it as a small ball of scrap. A single spark of electricity fizzled out into smoke as it fell on the floor with a clang.
“It begins. The mountain is actively hostile now.” Melina said.
The other two nodded.
“Maximum focus from now on.” She said.
The tunnel finally opened up to a large underground room.
Here, the whole internal structure of the mountain could be seen like a hollow scaffolding that surrounded a frozen lake, with bright light coming in from the damaged section that had been destroyed. Only the tip, above most of the damage, was still whole. As for the damaged sections, forcefields and mechanical doors sealed them off as best they could, but they were insufficient at keeping the light and the magic of the outside from reaching the lake inside.
In the middle of the lake there was a monolith, of a making that was clearly magical and an architecture that was very different than that of the mountain, and inside the monolith a light shone impossibly bright, from where a beam shot up to the far away ceiling, hidden by the mist. There were sounds of hissing and beeping, the hum of machinery coming from inside the monolith. The blue glow invaded the space and the air, almost palpably solid as it was in the chill bite of the cold. The ice reflected the shadowy images of faraway stalactites and the snow that had accumulated, coming from the hole in the rock.
Before the great monolith of stone and ice, covered in rags and dark as the night, a lone figure stood tall on the thin sheet of ice of the lake. It was hunched and bent, but even then it was taller than most men, imposing yet thin and knotty, as if an ancient tree had dried up and left its shriveled remain to stand guard there, alone. With wooden movements, slow and strained, the figure extended one of its long arms towards the three interlopers, and pointed at Ishrin.
“You.” It said with a cold whisper that seemed to come from everywhere. “Are back.”
***
Syrma sat, arched back as his gaze was bent towards the pile of documents that lay on his large onyx desk which he had personally brought with him to replace the old, chipped wooden table Melina used to call a desk. He called in the next adventurer and squared him up. C-Rank. Then, he sent the shivering and squirming armored man away, without a word. The adventurer’s token now displayed a different rank: D. Syrma motioned for the next one to come in, however the long line of nervous adventurers waiting for their mandatory inspection was halted by the arrival of an official dressed in black and gold.
“Sir, the reports you asked for. Chromatic shift in the magic saturation, veering to blue-orange. Increase in density of 3.5 times and rising.” The newcomer said, adjusting his optical aids.
“It’s them.” Syrma said.
“Them?”
“The former master of this gods forsaken place and her lackeys. The universe hopper as well.”
“Sir, are you sure?”
“Of fucking course not. Otherwise, I would be apprehending them myself, and taking the hopper with me.” He slammed a metal fist on the table. Cracks spread out from the point of contact before slowly disappearing as if moving backwards. “But there are protocols. I will notify the guild of these developments and require for a Dynasty class to be dispatched to handle this new ‘threat’.”
Then Syrma’s head rose from the papers for the first time since the official came in. He looked at the diminutive man for a long moment, then motioned with his fingers towards the door.
“Thank you. You can leave.”
“Sir.”
