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MAZE - Chapter 1108 - Dropping Down
🕑 Added 2025-09-21 04:45:48 +0000 UTCThe Empress, together with Bonnie, Alex, and Shane, moved towards the edge of the plateau. This particular group had the option of flying everywhere. After all, Bonnie had confirmed that there was a constellation in the area that she could use to make Ruby fly again. But since it was the first time some of them explored this entrance of Deakoshara, they decided to take the scenic route, so to speak.
Bonnie and Alex were the ones who insisted on doing that. It didn't take too long for the pair to realize it was a mistake. There was really nothing on this plateau. Some unique plants and vegetation, sure. But there were no signs of anything interesting, really. Which, to Hera, made a lot of sense. If this particular plateau was the home of a research facility, a secret research facility at that, there would be no reason for the Naga to make a village here. It would increase the odds of someone stumbling on the facility by accident.
That was even more of an issue once you put the poison lake in the equation. It was something made by the Naga. Something that they created for some reason. And the more people would be around it, the more likely they were to find out about the strange altar at the bottom of it.
After about an hour of walking, the group arrived at the edge of the plateau. Not in the same direction that Hera took to find the specters, but not that far away from it either. They all looked down, seeing the cliff dropped for a few kilometers before reaching the sands below.
The sands were strange. They were not the pure white of beachy dunes but also not the reddish color that you would see in the Sahara or something. Instead, they leaned more towards a dark brown, the same shade as the mountains. Conceptually, that made sense to Hera since they were nothing more than the dust created by the eons of wind battering the cliff sides.
But at the same time, it also felt strange to anyone who was looking at it. Even now, a few years into her journey across the MAZE, Hera couldn't really wrap her mind around some of the unique geographical locations that she encountered.
"How are we going to get down there?" Alex asked.
"Well, one option is to have Nimbus take us. We're going to need multiple trips since he can't carry all of us, but it shouldn't take that long," Hera turned to the Sentinel, who nodded in response.
"We could also try to climb down, but that's probably going to take a while," Shane suggested. "Even if I use my Legacy to have the rocks bend to create a passage for us."
"Actually," Hera paused for a moment, "I do have another idea if you're all willing."
"Which idea?" the three women asked.
"We can just jump," Hera replied.
"Say what now?" Bonnie gasped.
"Exactly what I said. We can just jump. We don't need to go slowly or anything. Nimbus is going to be by our side and be ready to help us if anything happens during the free fall."
"And what are you supposed to do when we're about to land? Hope that the sands are going to catch us?" Shane rolled her eyes.
"No," Hera replied. "I have Slow Fall. It's a spell that can make us slow down before we land. I can either cast it right away and we go really slowly, or we fall for a while and then I cast it."
"Have you done that before?" Alex asked.
"Not with this many people from this height, but I have used the spell before. Yes."
"Do you know how far we need to be from the ground so we won't become part of the sand?" the Empress pressed.
"Roughly 300 meters would be more than enough. But I'll cast it at 500 meters just so we can be safe. If I miss anyone, Nimbus can catch them. And if you all have another way to slow down our fall, feel free to use it."
"Maybe Ruby can turn into a parachute. We've been practicing some stuff," Bonnie replied.
"I could enchant the sands behave like pillows, but I'm not entirely sure how well that's going to work," Shane said with a frown.
They all turned to Alex, who just shrugged. "My best idea is to just fall down and use the [Wind Chaser] when you're about to hit the ground. I think that's going to reduce the damage I'll take, but it's still going to hurt."
"I am 100% sure I can catch at least three of you, even if we are at terminal velocity," Hera added. "Four would be a bit trickier, but we have Nimbus."
They all nodded, but Shane said with another sigh, "Are we really doing this? It sounds stupid."
"You want to walk around the plateau to see if there are any stairs?" Hera gestured to the ground. "Do you think we can climb all the way down there?"
Shane looked at the sand below and shook her head. "Yeah, you're right. It's going to take too long."
During the entire conversation, Hera was listening to her Court arguing against her idea. They really didn't enjoy the prospect of the Empress free fall from this height. She knew that they were overly concerned about her. They had practiced this exact type of thing in case someone were to destroy Nimbus while he was flying at high speeds. And this was just a more controlled occasion for practice, even if it wasn't completely safe.
The group started to fall, making sure to jump far away ahead so they wouldn't end up hitting parts of the cliffs below. Thanks to everybody's attributes and their general physical ability, it wasn't hard to get enough distance.
As they started to gain some speed, Hera realized that the valley between plateaus was surprisingly well lit, even if in theory it shouldn't be. It only got sunlight during a few hours of the day, but the surrounding plateaus seemed to only be enough to make the place somewhat shaded.
So it didn't seem like they were jumping into a black abyss, but instead as if they were going to a shaded area. It wouldn't be as bright as if they were in an actual open space, but it was far from being a location that would require them to use light spells or something like that.
She continued watching the walls as they quickly passed by, trying to see if there was anything interesting near them. The entire time, her conversation with her Court was going through their mind just so they were aware of anything that could happen or if her Court decided it was too much for them.
Oberon was on top of her head, calculating the distance between them and the ground the entire time. Eventually, her conversation with Nimbus started to sound muffled, as if they were talking from far away. If that wasn't enough, their voices became even more distant, seemingly as if they were talking underwater or through a thick layer of something in the environment that was blocking everything.
Hera quickly tried to use a simple light spell, but it fizzled out before it even left her hand. Worried that something below could interfere with her magic, the Empress started to look around and try to figure out a way to stop them.
She was about to call Filigree when her eyes caught something on the wall of the cliff. A single white protrusion into the sky. It wasn't particularly big, but it was long. Most of it was still buried underneath the plateau, but even without any spells or skills active, the Empress could sense such a dense concentration of mana coming from it that she couldn't really understand what she was looking at.
However, she only had a brief moment to try to understand what was going on. Since just as quickly as it came into view, it vanished. And little by little, Nimbus' voice returned to its natural state.
They were still about halfway through the cliff when that happened. And the Sentinel kept staring at her with worried expressions.
'What if that happens again?' Oberon asked.
For some reason, Hera felt that wouldn't be the case. But still, she wasn't going to just pretend like nothing had happened. She quickly grabbed Hoop and used [Magnetic Domain] to increase her range as much as she could, tossing the blade down to the right, away from the cliff. The cyr wheel had one singular job right now. To look over the entire wall and see if there were any other protrusions like the one they just seen.
Once Hoop reached the edge of Hera's range, she dismissed him so her mana wouldn't be drained out and summoned him again to ask what he saw. Thankfully, there were no more white protrusions anywhere that Hoop could see. And while they were moving very fast, Hoop was the one blade that was used to that kind of thing. So the Empress didn't feel like there was any chance they would have missed it.
Even then, she waited just a few more moments, and when they were around 700 meters away from the ground, she cast [Slow Fall] on all of her companions. She made sure that she would be the last one to receive it since if she started to slow down, it would be harder to catch up with the rest of them.
Alex was the first since, after all, the assassin was the only one who didn't have any other options when she jumped from that height, completely trusting that Hera was capable of delivering on her promise. Then Shane. While the enchantress had options, it was something surrounded with uncertainty. And lastly, Bonnie, who could probably figure out something between the constellations and Ruby.
Hera only cast the spell on herself when they were about 500 meters away from the ground, meaning that if she had started when she wanted to, they would still have enough time for their landing. From terminal velocity, they slowed down to a graceful pace of 5 meters per second. And then, when they started to get closer and closer to the ground, the spell would recognize that and slow their fall even more.
Without the wind blowing through their ears, they could even start talking, and Hera turned to Bonnie and asked, "Did you see that white thing on the wall?"
The astral witch nodded. But realized that Hera was probably too far away for her to notice that, "I did. It felt very weird. Do you know what that was?"
"I don't, I was hoping you had any ideas." Hera replied.
"Why don't you use your relic to ask about it?" Shane asked from above.
"Because I can only ask the question once every 2 hours, and I don't want to take a shot in the dark before at least seeing if anyone has any ideas that could be close," the Empress replied.
"Might be something buried," Alex said getting a blank stare from the rest of the group, "I mean something intentionally buried. Not just a random thing," Alex tried to explain herself.
"But what?" Bonnie asked.
Hera paused for a moment, trying to think about the things she saw here in this room, and suggested, "Maybe bones?"
"Bones?" Shane shouted from above. "Why would there be bones there?"
"I don't know," Hera replied. "But this room has something with undead, and a white thing that is buried, the first thing my mind went to was bones. Maybe it has something to do with the specters."
During that conversation, they finally reached the ground and landed on the sands. Thankfully, it was solid as sand could be. It didn't seem to be some sort of quicksand or anything that would just swallow them whole.
Hera waited for the rest of her companions to land before they could continue the conversation.
"You saw how big that thing was? If it really was a bone, whatever it came from should be massive," Bonnie said.
"Yes," Hera started to remember about Chika and the guardian beasts the Naga had. "Maybe it's one of those creatures they could control. The giant ones that could grow in levels."
They all paused and looked at each other.
"It would explain why there's so much mana on it. Yeah, if they had something that could get stronger with time, it might still have mana even after so long. I mean, Chika's corpse was raining with mana," Shane replied, getting a sad look from Hera.
Chika was the guardian beast that Darni was trying to create. The Naga hero managed to find her when she was still a baby and raised her back in the Wailing Valley. Unfortunately, there was a war happening or some large battle during that time. The old Naga Hero, who had Shane's legacy, decided against taking Chika with them.
The snake waited for so long that she went mad, but the process of becoming a guardian beast had already started. She could continue to grow endlessly, becoming not just a gigantic creature but also something that was far beyond the regular level of that room.
In the end, Hera managed to help Chika by retrieving a small plushie she kept for thousands of years. And the snake helped her escape the depths of the Wailing Valley. In doing so, Chika revealed herself to the guild, who hunted the creature down. The last thing Hera had to remind her of the giant snake was Daskka, who originally was a gift from Darni and received from Chika, acting as if it was her reincarnation.
"Let me see," Hera spoke up after being reminded of a friend that she had for a brief while, pulling out Ariadne from her waist. She asked a question while pumping about 10,000 mana into the relic.
"Is that white thing that I saw on the way down here, the one that seemed to be with so much mana that messed with my spells, the bone of a guardian beast?"
It was a very specific question, which is why she didn't put too much mana on it. And just as fast as the words left her mouth, the answer came.
"Yes."
"Holy crap, so they are burying the guardian beasts on the plateaus? Does each plateau have the bones of one of them?" Shane looked around, trying to see if she could spot any more of those white spots on the cliffs.
"Or each plateau houses the bones of one of the guardian beasts," Hera did the same, trying to imagine how many guardian beasts once roamed this place.
#### Author's Notes ####
What do you think? One gigantic guardian beasts, or several smaller but still giant ones?
