Type of Mage Affinity Primal Chronomancer Aet Unknown Dimensionmancer Locus Unknown

-Glossary of Affinities and their Primals, Nys’vera Aesterith’s Treatise on Mana

Time blurred and creature encounters became routine. Arthur lost count of the number of corners they turned around. The scenes were the same, of bone grey outgrowth extruding from the ceilings like dripping glue and walls overtaken by a layer of growing limestone features. The deeper they went, the more prominent they became.

Such monotony would have engendered complacency and boredom, but it did not; their encounter rate was rising from mobs every half a quartz.

Needless to say, those were dealt with before Arthur got a chance to lift a finger. Livierre proved to be a good shot with her repeating crossbow. She was so good at it that Arthur was inclined to think that her main class was not [Artificer].

Also, it was hard to be bored out of one's mind when the Xazhu brew kept one on their toes like a continuous shot of adrenaline. Arthur found himself as high-strung as a taut bow even after three quartz of speed-running had passed. He could literally feel the energy singing and begging to be unleashed at the tips of his fingertips.

“ Hold,” Kervir whispered. His voice, barely more than a sigh, easily carried in their alert perception . The party slowed down as their main striker went down to look at something on the ground. He squat-walked following something unseen probably using a tracking skill.

“Something has changed,” Kervir whispered. “ There are fewer creatures about.” Indeed they’d been straining their ears but the tell-tale sounds of rustling and scuttling things had almost completely disappeared. The ambient lighting from glimmer worms and mushrooms had picked up a little, so much that it would have been no different from walking beneath the stars.

“ What does that mean?” Livierre whispered. She never kept her eyes off their surroundings. Arthur had seen one of those yellow-bellied brown-coloured pluripedes the size of a boa that had a penchant for springing out of nowhere if you weren't watching.

They were ambush hunters and omnivorous foragers, and mostly just did insect things, feeding on toxic looking bioluminescent mushrooms and small rock mites. However, they very much kept off the radioactive looking grub that smelt like ozone above their heads.

For a quartz running, a few had tried their luck and met a crunchy end from Arkilius’ oversized tenderizer. Now, they were nowhere to be found.

“ The pluripedes should be more than this,” Kervir sighed as he cast his eyes about.

The surroundings had been completely overtaken by the speleothems, turning the once grey facade into a glistening earthy gouache of caramels to rusty browns. It was also humid and there was a slight sheen of wetness on the uneven ground where one had to dig through calciferous rock to find the floor. Some of the deposits from earlier had started forming stumpy fingers, the largest growing to the size of anthills.

“ That would be great, yeah?” Arthur asked, moving to the front. “ Less riff-raff and all that?”

The party's layout was now closer together because the passages had grown narrower. Previously, it had been ten Arkiliuses thick, which meant you could pass two carriages side by side. Now a quarter of that was gone, pockmarked by stalagmites, stalactites , and stalagnate pillars. The ceiling was also no longer visible and much of it was jutting down like tattered curtains of rusty and oily water that had been flash frozen in mid-pour.

“ You would think that, yes,” Kervir said. “ But fewer of the scuttlers means that they’ve either moved deeper into the dungeons or something else is making short work of them.”

“ And what does that bode for us?” Livierre said. Arkilius and Nora stood guard but nevertheless listened in.

“ We’re about to meet more resistance when we cross to the third floor,” Kervir said in a grave tone. “ Everything is massing down there because the mana has changed.”

Kervir was right, the mana had ebbed and stayed that way. A few quartz ago, the mana was thicker than it was then, and Arthur had gotten good at telling how dense it was with his [Mana Sense].

Once, he’d used [Draconic Sight] and felt as if strobelights had been shone into his eyes. Thanks to the dwarven goggles, his acquaintances hadn't seen the change come over his pupils. Nonetheless, he’d been blinking away stars from the sensory overload.

“ So that means?” Livierre voiced her thoughts.

“ We are about to run into a frenzy. Past this, we were supposed to find stingbats and lunar moths, but I wager they went down into the fissure too.”

Arthur recalled from his [Eidetic Memory] skill that the dungeon’s overall layout was like an octahedron. Most passages had right-angled corners and intersections, and rarely were there smooth, curving passages. Arthur thought it was a matter of practicality rather than aesthetics. There wasn't even relief to be found; that or it had been covered up by the encroaching limestone.

Kervir looked at Arthur and said, “ It seems we’re running out of time sooner than we think human. Rappelling down is a death wish if we don’t know what we’ll find.”

“ And the dungeon core seems to be destabilising at a faster rate than thought,” Livierre said. She had taken out her mageslate and was doing some kind of arithmetic. She’d been looking at a pearl-shaped gem every time they moved, counting and timing the pulses that she said matched the ebb and flow of mana in the air. It must have been a valuable thing from the way she handled it like a nest egg.

Between the two upper floors and the deeper two was a fissure that divided the dungeon into two pyramids. They’d pulled back before they reached it on the second floor because of the switchbacks that marked their route .

But for the third floor, they had to cross, or rather, rappel down, the fissure. That was a short cut. The fissure was around 100 metra of flat vertical wall . There was no other way―Arthur swallowed thickly as he looked past Kervir's shoulders. Beyond that was the fissure.

“ So what do we do?” Arthur asked, steeling himself. It looked like he was going to have a part to play sooner rather than later.

The fissure was a discontinuity that looked as if a giant scalpel had parted it, leaving cleanly cut edges. The surface was even except for the parts where the limestone had started sloughing down like melted wax. The other side of that discontinuity was 50 metra away, half as wide as the fissure was deep. Connecting the two were free standing pillars with square tops a metrum in breadth.

Eyeballing the number of pillars from the top of Oonswarner’s bestiary, Arthur could tell that they were set apart at intervals of 1.5 metra. In all, there had to be around 20 of the things; gaps showed where some of them no longer existed.

Vapour swirled around the pillars, like fog haunting the headstones in a cemetery. The deeper he looked, the more he thought the pillars seemed like piles driven into a pit of tar. In spite of how humid it was, Arthur couldn't help but feel gooseflesh ripple on his arms.

“ The dwarves said there used to be a bridge made of magic across this fissure,” Livierre said, staring at the walls before the lip of the floor. Someone had chipped off the limestone to reveal an artifice that should have powered the magic bridge. It was a puzzle made of tiles that one had to shift to get the right combination, which made it an artifice for passglyphs.

Most of the runes were defaced, but it wasn’t like they'd have gone that way. Their destination was down the fissure, a shortcut that would expedite their passage to the heart of the dungeon.

'Two more floors,’ Arthur thought as he closed the bestiary made of parchment and leather stitched wood. He turned to the party, saying, “ I have all the information I need on stingbats. I’ll secure the rope on the other end so instead of rappelling you’ll have to zipline. You understood what I meant, yes?”

“ O―of course,” Lievierre stuttered, rather antsy about flying. “ Just don’t drop me,” she said.

To make the zipline, he was going to secure the site where they’d make an anchoring point for the rope. The large tube-like bag on Arklius's bag carried a ballista that could pierce bolts through wurm hide. They were going to use that to punch through limestone to secure a stake.

It was supposed to be mounted on a humpbeast when fishing for sand wurms but the large Djy’veli, who was 7 feet worth of muscle, had carried it with ease. It was also made to be assembled on site if possible, and that would fall to Livierre.

“ We’ll lower the thing after you, just make sure you choose a defensible position,” Kervir said.

“ Take care, will you, Master Arthur?”The dhampir said. She hesitated, as if she wanted to say more but settled for a smile instead.

“ Aye aye Mastresse Nora,” Arthur said. “ Watch out for Livierre’s signal,”

When Arthur retrieved his hoverboard from magical storage, he could tell that the mana was already having an effect on the aerofloats. He hadn’t even powered it up―

‘Better get those shielded later,’ He said, stepping on the board. It felt weirdly like standing on jell-o, wobbly, but he got it under control.

“ Dekara, Is it supposed to do that?” Livierre asked. “ You haven’t even powered up the artefact yet. Where is the sail?”

“ It works this way too. I assure you, it's perfectly normal,” Arthur said, extending his hand. Livierre vacillated before she took his hand. She yelped as the hoverboard wobbled and clung to Arthur with her hands around his torso like a koala.

‘You’re supposed to face the other way, Livierre,’ Arthur mused. Her short stature meant that Arthur was not encumbered as he looked over her head. He edged the floating hoverboard with a tiny, almost imperceptible press of the pedal and the little engine started up. He didn't have to infuse it with his own mana.

Slowly, the hoverboard glided past the lip of the fissure and with a two fingered salute he dipped.What Arthur didn’t account for the screaming; it was not part of the plan.

As they plummeted into the deep, Livierre screaming like the girl she was, they awoke things. Arthur felt his heart stutter as he saw the eyes, larger than he was tall, fade into sight. They were yellow, ringed with black, and looked like a giant stryxffin was in the fissure with them. Then two, three, and finally there were five eyes too, faded into sight.

Despite the paralysing insignificance of staring at something that big, Arthur had the sense of mind to depress the pedal to power the board. Either his meeting with Aeskyre had inured him to the aura of dangerous things, or the creatures were not dangerous despite their appearance.

Dropping [Light] spells to guide the way, he glided into the fog of the fissure, humid wind buffeting them in their descent. Danger Sense screamed at him,

“ Livierre, get a hold of yourself damn it!” he cursed as he swerved, rolling as though skating through a pipe. Livierre’s screaming climbed an octave from the sudden manoeuvre. A gust passed right past where they’d been a few moments ago, followed by a sound that eerily sounded like a hawk screaming on helium.

‘Damn lunar moths. She awoke them!’ Arthur swore as they glided through the mist. The woman was clinging so tight that he felt his ribs protest from her grasp. His hands were occupied with trying to balance out the wobbly board. They might as well have been surfing on a turbulent wave.

The mana was too rich for the engine, the only upside being that it was stable enough for the aerofloats to function. However, the malachite foci gems would need to be replaced if that kept up.

“Frag!” Arthur cursed as the sound of lunar months kicking up a frenzy got closer. They were following the balls of mage light he’d thrown out.

‘Dialing it up,’ “ Hold on!” Arthur shouted above the spew of Livierre’s whimpering and expletives. Then he overcharged a [Light] spell matrix. It ballooned into a lopsided sphere, as the spell gorged on more mana than a matrix of its size was supposed to have.

And the ball of light shone brightly, casting a halo that entranced the lunar moths that were large as wyverns. Then the mist ended, and the two riders came in hard.

“Frag!” Arthur yelled as he saw the pandemonium below. A writhing mass of pluripedes and young terra scorpions were swarming towards the fourth floor, while stingbats dive bombed them, skewering them with their prehensile stingers made of bone before making off with their catch.

Then there were actual rats the size of chihuahuas engaged in a three-way war of fang and claw. It looked like the entire ecosystem of the dungeon had gone goblin down there. However, the things that drew a spine-chilling reaction from Arthur were something else.

In the mass of carapaces, stony exoskeletons, and oily fur were monsters that saw everything as a free-for-all buffet. Arthur did not need to look up in the bestiary to know what the two things with pink pruney skin were.

There was not going to be a beachhead down there with the sea of chaos. Livierre screamed again. Arthur picked a random corner nearer the wall where the fissure met the floor. From the metal-tipped fingers of his right arm sleeve, a serpent of amber emerged as he tilted the hoverboard broadside.

The bolt of lightning lashed out like a shotgun booming and connected to the ground below . It scoured the ground, zigzagging as befitting its elemental nature.

At the point of impact, the shells of pluripedes and terra scorpions grounded the bolt of lightning, boiling their ichor from the inside out. Tremendous pressure from a rapid expansion of air flung those caught at ground zero away from its path of advance.

The hoverboard zoomed in after the glassed gouge of the spell amidst the smoking husks of those unfortunate to have been caught in the cross hairs.

Arthur brought the hoverboard around, putting their backs against the dungeon wall. A burst of wind from [ Gust Shield] cleared a cone around them. To the whimpering woman, Arthur let loose a bit of [Spark] to jolt her from her daze. She was no good to them mewling like that.

“ Xhezw!” she shrieked as a little bit of static charge stung her. Her hair looked like a frazzled mess.

“ If you want us to get out of this alive, you have to concentrate on the task,” Arthur snapped, banishing the hoverboard into storage. Arthur was rather off-put that he had to growl at her, but she had to get her head straight.

The lack of footing dropped the woman who, senses returning, scampered to nock a signal quarrel for the next part of the plan. Arthur’s job was going to have to clear the way for the landing party.

However, that was going to be easier said than done; the two crypt crawlers had noticed the two new entrants and were starting to wade against the mass of writhing insectoids. Those two were the actual monsters in this place as they boldly shouldered their way through the scorpions and pluripedes.

The crypt crawlers were the bogey man of the Dust. They were pink, ape-like monsters who in reality might have just been naked mole-rats. At least that is what Arthur thought. While their gaits were hunched forward and ape-like, their heads were the most unnerving because they were humanoid.

Where their eyes would have been, the crypt crawler’s skin whorled into pits of dark creasing holes. From their nonexistent ears, their distended jaws began; that was just about enough to unnerve him. Arthur had seen one unhinge it like a basking shark, showing rows of yellowed teeth and then ripping into the whole girth of a pluripede like boiled lobster.

Arthur felt his bile curdle at the sight of the slopping yellow ichor and black pluripede entrails. And those black claws that could crack a terra scorpion's rocky exoskeleton like a clam—

“[Delayed Activation; Flare Burst]!” Livierre cried out. A twang of the crossbow heralded the deployment of a runehead quarrel as a red blur that disappeared into the fissure above them. The runehead had a red cuprite gem that was meant to disintegrate like a flare once it reached the upper floor.

Arthur hoped the lunar moths would leave that flare alone as the crypt walkers had started stalking towards them . He found himself wishing for a gun; he settled for finger guns. [Thunder Bolt] and [Gust Shield] had both left him with 21 more casts of his tier 2 spells. But those would refill— the denser mana on this floor made sure of that.

“ Livierre!” Arthur yelled as he tracked the movement of the crypt walker with his finger guns. He felt silly, but it was the only way to bolster his range between 45 and 75 metra. If anything, the motion felt instinctive, almost as if he’d done it many times before and the familiarity of it caused his mind to reel. The implications of what that could mean for Arthur seeded doubts concerning what kind of person he was at the back of his mind. Had he been trained in the use of firearms? If so, did that mean that his knowledge of them was just locked somewhere in the recesses of his mind?

“ It is done!” Livierre yelled, bringing him out of his mullings. A click of the rewinding mechanism on her crossbow signalled her readiness. As if intuiting, the crypt crawlers let out guttural hissing screeches and burst into motion.

Arthur started strafing where he thought they would land next, but they had an uncanny agility to dart out of the way in time or lope behind another less fortunate monster. At most [Spark Bolt] could paralyse them long enough for Livierre to get a bolt quarrel in edgewise. But Arthur was not a marksman and they were gaining ground. He didn't want to have to reveal his ace either

‘Godsdamnit!’ Arthur swore as he concentrated his spells on one of them instead. Splitting his attention between bursts of [Gale] to dissuade the other creepy crawlies from coming his way was taking up precious attention.

However, Livierre picked up the slack. She had better luck with her runehead quarrels. Even if she missed, some of them burst like shrapnel rounds. They peppered the general vicinity of her target taking the riffraff with them.

Nonetheless, the crypt crawlers were getting smarter at it and it didn't seem like much of the shrapnel got to them. Livierre started swearing and unloaded consecutive quarrels with different effects. One ate at a pluripede exoskeleton like acid, while another burst into flame.

The duo really needed to knock one down if they had any hope of setting up the zipline. Arthur bit his lip at letting this open secret out—it was an open secret he'd glassed a whole bunch of bandits, had he not? Then he looked askance at Livierre's compound crossbow and its equivalent of shrapnel rounds and got an idea.

’Frag this, by the way!’ He growled . '[Spark Bolt]! [Spark Bolt] [Spark Bolt]! [Spark Bolt]!’ He cast the four matrices, holding them in his mind until he felt a pressure between his brows. It was just a hunch, but he never thought they'd work . They did but not the way they intended anyway. Also, the crypt crawler had been baited by the regularity between of the casting pattern. Then he released them—

Four bolts spun out of his hands following helical trajectories that diverged the farther they went. The crawler hesitated—

‘Gotcha’ Arthur thought, unleashing [Thunder Bolt] . Two of the four casts that had gone before splashed harmlessly to the left and right of the monster, two went wide, striking at other creatures.

Hot on the tail of the first spells, [Thunder Bolt] chewed a steaming chunk out of the crawler’s shoulder as it tried to evade the scattered shots. It went down mewling as pluripedes scented blood like sharks. And that was just in time as the rope conveying the ballista made its way behind the two defenders.