Ah, to be back on the road again, my good friends by my side, such a wonderful feeling. I’ve got the breeze blowing through my antennae, a wide open plain before me, and fresh, crisp air in my lungs.

Except the breeze is in fact filled with smoke, ash and death, the wide open plain is in fact choked with demon monsters in a fighting frenzy, and I don’t have lungs.

Who needs ‘em, anyway?! What have lungs ever done for anyone?

Even the friends aren’t quite “by my side” so much as “running rampant smashing everything they see, clinging to my carapace and greedily blasting things with green lasers.”

At least Al is being cool. I mean, he can’t really be cool in a temperature sense, due to his nature as a knowledge demon formed entirely from fire, but he’s… cool… in a different way.

My mastery of words continues to impress!

It didn’t take us long to make our way to the tunnel opening between this layer and the next, despite the rampaging demons. The gravity domain continued to be amazing for this. Reinforced by the Altar, it kept the weaker demons squashed flat.

My sub-brains continued to grind on my magic Skills as we travelled, blasting gravity spells at random targets. The levels tick along steadily. Gweheheh.

The issue we face is….

[How in the heck are we supposed to get down?]

We stand around the pit that was once the entrance to the tunnels. I say pit, it’s more like a lake. Of lava.

[I see that this might prove an obstacle for you,] Al notes.

[Well yes, my body is comprised of non-flame elements. Not to mention, I lack the inborn demonic trait of heat resistance. Swimming through lava is not really my thing.]

[Pity….]

I can tell he’s looking down on me. I suppose, to him, it is fairly odd to not be able to get through something like this. Demons continue to climb up through the molten goop constantly, after all.

[Is there a solution? If we need to swim through a kilometre of melted rocks and angry demons to get down, we might be better off staying here.]

[I’m sure we can arrive at a satisfactory solution.]

In the end, I had to create a tunnel of reinforced stone that went diagonally through the blockage to the next layer. It was only possible at all thanks to the Altar, and we were all a burnt mess when we managed to clamber out the end and onto the roof of the next layer down. Except Al and Invidia, of course….

[It’s toooo hot,] Crinis groans as she melts across my carapace.

[Is the enchanted gear working?]

I’d secured all the heat resistant gear I could and given all of it to Crinis in the hopes she’d be able to resist the heat during the wave.

[It is, but I’m weak to this much heat. I’m sorry, Master.]

Poor thing. As a shadow monster, this environment is like kryptonite to her. It’s only thanks to the efforts of the Colony that she’s been able to function at all.

[Don’t worry too much. Once we’ve blasted our prey, we can descend to the fourth and you’ll be way more comfortable.]

Me too. The Call is constantly yanking on my guts even now. If anything, I think it’s getting stronger as time goes by. Stupid Ancients. The sooner we annihilate these stupid tier eights, the faster we can get the heck out of here.

[For now, let’s find our way down, I can’t cling upside down like this for long.]

[Master Grip (IV) has reached Level 12.]

Eyyyy, nice! Seriously though, I need to get some ground under me. Naturally, when we descend on a platform of force and arrive on said ground, we find ourselves back in the thick of the demon rampage. Except it’s worse.

How in the name of heck can it be worse?!

Somehow, they pulled it off. More larvae, fighting more insanely. It’s honestly impressive to see. That all translates to more higher tiered demons, though, which is great news for us!

The other issue we find is, Arconidem’s influence seems stronger as well. Any demon that has succumbed to his Will turns on us the moment they lay eyes on us, breaking off their fights and sprinting through swathes of opponents before they get punched into another dimension by Tiny.

That is not normal behaviour. The urge to annihilate anything that isn’t native to this stratum has overcome their instinct, and it’s revealed in the manic way they attack us. The more we move around, the more we run into roaming packs, looking for things like us to attack.

I sigh.

It isn’t hard for us to wipe them out at this point. After a few days, or weeks, it’d get tiring, especially if the demons get stronger. We need to find our prey, take them down, then get the heck out of dodge.

[Al, any thoughts on how we might find these friends of yours?]

[They are not… friends.]

[Fine. Can you track them?]

[As heralds of Arconidem, they will attract those demons who have succumbed to his Will. They will not be hard to find….]

In other words, they’ll be surrounded by hordes of demons, meaning we need to fight like mad to even get to them. Great.

[Alright then, so let's just fight everything we find as we roam around. We’re sure to find a big army of demons somewhere out here.]

So we set off.

It doesn’t take long to find a demon army, as it turns out. We crush it, but there aren’t any tier eights around. We dust ourselves off and continue.

The second army takes a little longer to find, but we crush that too. Still no tier eights.

The third army looks promising. Some strong demons in there. We crush it, and there’s still no Torrifex.

This… sucks.