Chapter 276 - Source of Flame (Patreon)

Hera and Blue were running as fast as they could. The time to hold back and maintain some energy for emergencies had passed. If the column of fire rising from the lower city wasn't a signal that something was very wrong, they didn't know what would be. The flames coming out from the hole were so intense that they tinted the dark cloud covering the cavern's ceiling in an ominous orange. Looking up was much like looking at a volcano that was just becoming active again. Cracks of light peered through the black smoke, showing the firestorm that was forming behind it. It didn't help that the clouds were now much closer. Looking over to the other side of the city, Hera could see the top of some taller buildings vanishing within the smoke.

"Move, people!" Blue ushered the other dwarves. They were doing their best, but they were still too slow when compared to the humans. This wasn't just because of the level, but their legs being shorter took a toll on their running speed.

As they rushed through the main road, more rebels popped from the side streets. Blue tackled every single one that got too close and killed them in a swift movement. Hera, on the other hand, was going her best to just stop them from interfering. Creating walls and using her pollen to hinder them enough so they could keep running.

Hera wanted to talk to Blue about all this. It seemed far too easy for the controller to kill people inside the dungeon. It could be a good call to have her see a shrink when they left the room. Then again, that was something that both of them would desperately need.

There was another explosion coming from the back of the cavern. By the sound, it should've been the orchard again, but they couldn't see that area from here. On the bright side, this explosion seemed to appease the flames in the lower city. The column of fire became somewhat smaller and less violent. Despite that, they weren't about to stop their sprint.

Some of the dwarves were lagging behind, especially the elderly. Blue turned to the guard, "Go help the ones in the back."

Hera saw the dwarf nod and split off to assist those having problems to move around and turned back to Blue with a worried expression, "Are you sure doing that is a good idea?"

"Do what? I'm just telling him to be useful."

"He might die, Blue!"

"He can come back if he dies. We can't," Blue barked.

Hera just shook her head. But there was nothing she could think of as a response. What Blue just said was the truth. The guard wasn't real, or at least he wasn't alive. He was just something created by the MAZE, and worrying too much about him would only lead them to ruin. Even so, this left an unpleasant taste in Hera's mouth. It wasn't right to be so cavalier about killing people.

Five minutes went by before they finally reached the point marked on the map, but things weren't that straightforward. They could already see a doorway in the cave, but a massive collapsed building blocked their path. If that wasn't bad enough, the entire structure was burning.

"Everyone stay here," Blue ordered and turned to Hera, "Go right, I'll go left. See if you can find another path. If it takes more than two minutes, come back."

Hera nodded, and they split off. Hera tried to find where the building ended, but the structures by the edge of the city were all touching each other. She tried to walk inside one house, but the door was locked, and the next one was mostly collapsed. Part of the living room seemed to be carved out of the cave wall, but she couldn't see if there was a way to get behind the house. It was still a frustrating situation. Noticing the time that had passed, Hera quickly moved back to the collapsed building. Blue was already there, waiting for her with a worried expression.

"Are you ok? I said two minutes!" Blue gasped.

"Chill, I'm 20 seconds late. And I didn't find a way to move. All houses were either closed or blocked off," Hera frowned. She wasn't the one who killed a bunch of dwarves just to get here.

"Same on my side. I think we need to cross here."

"Right, I was thinking about that. What if you use two of those microburst things?"

"Two? I'm not sure I can handle that. Covering the entire road will be just as hard as it was with the venue."

"But you won't be doing that from above. Make two clouds and part the flames. The ground is not burning, so I should be able to make some walls to create a path," Hera explained.

"You're saying I should wedge two clouds in the middle of that debris and then force the flames out?" Blue asked.

"Exactly. I think you won't even need to make it so long. I can make the walls as the area gets clear. It probably won't hold for a long time, but it should be enough for us to cross."

Blue nodded and started making the clouds. The legacy allowed them to control the direction of her spells, but it took more mana than expected to do that. If it wasn't for her [Control] skill, it would be even harder. Even with the help of the skill and making the cloud as small as possible, while Blue was still preparing the two microbursts, sweat started pouring from her head. Hera didn't expect the legacy to make her that tired. All the previous times that Blue used one of her clouds, things seemed much easier. She could even keep a cloud still for almost 10 hours without an issue.

Hera glanced back to the dwarves, watching them with anxious expressions. She got worried that they would lose some people here, but shook those thoughts away and focused on the task. Just as Blue opened a path, Hera would raise the stone on the ground and create a safer route so everyone could move through it.

This process took longer than expected. Blue couldn't push the microbursts too quickly, or they would lose their shape, and Hera had to be careful not to make the wall touch the clouds. When they did, Blue almost lost control of the spell and if she wouldn't have enough mana to recreate it.

Ten tense minutes went by as the two worked together to create a path, and Blue wasn't the only one sweating buckets. With each second that passed, the heat increased, and the dark cloud above their heads was dangerously close. After the mines spewed out fire, the speed at which the smoke accumulated became several times faster. To make things worse, there seemed to be less and less air available for them. Blue and Hera were constantly coughing, and even the dwarves had trouble breathing. When they finally finished the path, they had created a 10-meter wide area that should be protected from the flames and, on the other side, there was an open doorway. Smiling at that, Blue crossed the freshly open passage.

Hera waited on the other side, with a stone pillar spell ready in case something went wrong, but Blue crossed without an issue. Seeing that, Hera signaled for the dwarves to follow the controller. The group already had about 50 dwarves, and it seemed a sizable number until Hera looked back to the city. For a place that big, 50 wouldn't even be a drop in the bucket. Even without seeing the other side of the kingdom because of the column of fire coming from the lower city, this was at least three times larger than Boothudurn. The kingdom should be the home of tens of thousands, yet they only managed to save this many.

Before she could get even more depressed about the situation, Hera started coughing because of the smoke. Looking down the path, she saw the last group of dwarves start their crossing. In other circumstances, everyone would be already on the other side, but the flames and smoke made them move more carefully. Hera took up the rear and walked along with the dwarves. Even if her intention was to be on the lookout for any issues, nothing stopped her from doing that while she was on the move.

After crossing the burning building, the people of Kul Dorul went straight for the doorway, vanishing inside the tunnel inside it. Every time someone passed through the threshold, the sides of the frame light up almost as if they were filling up a scoreboard. Hera and Blue watched as the lights went up to about halfway up the doorway until the last of the dwarves crossed. However, even after there was no other dwarf around, the notification about completing the dungeon didn't appear.

"Do we need more people?" Blue asked.

"Maybe we have to make the entire doorway glow," Hera replied and turned back to the city. She didn't want to keep coming back to a place like this, much less to have to fight against dwarves again. Doing that simply wasn't right.

However, just as she stepped towards the city, the column of fire coming from the mines became more violent, and the ground started shaking.

"To the doorway! Now!" Blue yelled and bolted towards the tunnel where the dwarves went to.

Hera followed right behind her friend, and as soon as she crossed the threshold of the doorway, the heat and the light vanished. Even so, they kept running for a few moments before looking back with worried expressions. The opening had vanished. Now they were in a tunnel with several torches on the sides. Just as they stopped running, a notification popped in front of them.

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You have completed the dungeon quest Escape the City.

By rescuing 53 people from Kul Dorul, you have ensured that their civilization will not perish.

Rewards:

45 000 gold

Shadow Flame Shard

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You are the first to complete this dungeon.

Rewards: Boothudurn Doorway Key

+1 level

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You have leveled up

Current Level 18

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"We did it?" Blue kept staring at the notification.

"We did it!" Hera opened her tablet and looked for the key in the rewards, but it wasn't there, "Did you get the key?"

Blue opened her tablet, and after a few moments, a key appeared in front of her, "Yep! Let's go open this room!" she started walking down the tunnel. This was the same path that led to the exit when doing the normal mode, and on the other side of the tunnel, there was a familiar stone door.

"Hang on. What the hell was that back there?" Hera asked.

Blue looked at her with a confused expression, "What are you talking about?"

"The dwarves, Blue. You killed them!"

"First of all, for me to kill something, they have to be alive. The dwarves inside the dungeon were not, and you know that. Second, what do you want me to do? Get beaten up?"

"No, but you didn't have to do it like that, and there wasn't a shred of hesitation coming from you."

"Hera, look. I told you when you talked about your assassin test. I don't see a problem with 'killing' people inside a dungeon. They are not real. It's like killing a character in a video game. It doesn't mean anything, and it's not like I'm going into a murder spree just because of this," Blue rolled her eyes.

"But…" Hera still felt bad about this, but she didn't have any arguments.

"No more buts, let's go. I wanna go home," Blue huffed.

"That's another thing. It's not a good idea to use the key today," Hera sighed.

"What? Why?"

"Because we need to check with Rutigan. Like it or not, this is their home. If we are going to open it for humans, they should be the ones to decide when we do that. Besides, it's late, and I'm exhausted," Hera explained.

"I guess… but if he says we have to wait a month I'm opening now."

"I doubt it. Let's try to open it tomorrow, and I'll ask him to gather a group to be their ambassadors," Hera said.

They walked out of the dungeon, seeing Rutigan, Ogryn, Telanz, and Silah waiting for them. This ended up being much quicker than the normal mode. It had been just a bit over 3 hours since they went inside. They did a quick checkup and had a long discussion with the dwarves about what happened inside. Knowing that they would see the fire that destroyed their previous homeland, they all felt conflicted. On one side, they wanted to understand what was going on. On the other hand, seeing all that death and destruction, not to mention that they would have to defeat their own ancestors, wasn't something easy to digest. After a few hours, Rutigan thanked the humans and agreed with Hera's idea of waiting to open the room during the next day. Some things had to be prepared for it all to work without any issues.

After that, Hera and Blue went back home together with Silah. Blue kept complaining about how she wouldn't be able to sleep. Yet, she ended up passing out on the couch. Before going to her room with Silah, Hera took a moment to level up and check her dungeon's reward. Unlike what happened last time, she only got 3 bonus points getting a total of 30 points to distribute among her attributes, and thanks to her [Exponential Growth], all her stats were now at 50. After doing that, she tapped the reward box on her tablet, and a flat black and red round crystal appeared.

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Shadow Flame Shard

A crystallized shard of fire and smoke. This can be used in the production of equipment to give it fire and shadow properties. The shard leaks mana periodically.

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After checking all that, Hera covered Blue with a blanket and went to her room with Silah. They wanted to enjoy their time together before the madness that would be opening the room.