Chapter 290 - Space Monsters (Patreon)

Reivyn and the others quickly gathered the last of the resources in the final boss room. They had quite the collection of various metals infused with Tier 5 Mana: Copper, Tin, Iron, Silver, Gold, and some other metals Reivyn couldn’t identify. They looked similar to the other metals, of course, but there were slight differences if one looked. The biggest difference was the aura of Mana that they held. Reivyn could tell with his Mana sight that they contained different properties than mundane metals, but he would need to talk to someone about it or do some research to figure out exactly what.

They checked the corpses of the deceased goblins, but there wasn’t anything worth taking. The weapons and armor were crude steel. Yes, they were Tier 5 Mana-infused, but their quality was so poor it didn’t matter. They were shoddily made and had streaks of rust throughout. The shaman had accessories made of bone that at first glance looked like it might be something, but upon inspection, they were just ordinary decorations with no properties at all.

That was what they expected, though. resource Dungeons weren’t known for dropping loot, and the only time Reivyn or the others ever received gear in a resource dungeon was from completing the Hard Mode fights. None of them knew how to activate the Hard Mode fights in this Dungeon, and there was nothing about it in the dossier. As far as Reivyn knew, Hard Mode existed in every Dungeon, but it wasn’t always so straightforward.

After experiencing Epic Mode in the Dungeon outside of Willowan, Reivyn wondered if such a difficulty existed in all Dungeons, too. He bet that it was most likely not the case. There were probably very specific instances for the appearance of an Epic difficulty. They would need to travel around and experience more Dungeons and do lots of research to figure that out, though. If Epic Mode did exist in every Dungeon, Reivyn would definitely challenge himself with them.

“That about wraps it up,” Refix said, shooting one last glance around the picked clean boss room. “There isn’t anything left to do here, so we might as well make our way out. We can rest for the rest of the day and start the journey back tomorrow.”

“Sounds good,” Teilon said. Everyone else just nodded in agreement.

“I just wish we knew how to clear the whole Dungeon,” Reivyn opined. “The dossier only mentions the four floors and how nobody has found anything else, but it also explicitly states that the System is clear that it’s not the complete Dungeon.”

“I mean, we could stay and tear the whole place apart if you want,” Refix shrugged. “We’re not exactly on a strict schedule.”

“Nah,” Reivyn shook his head. “Maybe one day, when I want to figure out the Hard Mode or something, but not today. It’s our first expedition, and I want to finish on a high note, not frustrated when we fail in uncovering the secret.”

“You never know,” Teilon said, placing an arm on Reivyn’s shoulder. “We might figure it out.”

“Yeah, but it’s not the point of our outing. We’ll save it for some other time.”

“Sure, it’s up to you.”

The Party didn’t bother to form back up into a proper formation. There would be no respawns of any of the monsters they slew until the Dungeon reset and they entered an entirely new instance. The dossier mentioned the Dungeon reset once every two weeks.

From what Reivyn gathered, barring the exceptions, higher-Tier Dungeons took longer to reset. It was another reason why there were so few extremely high-Level Classers throughout the Realm. Once someone achieved Tier 8, anything Tier 7 or below wouldn’t grant any Experience, and they had a lot fewer options for hunting in the wilds or delving Dungeons, and if the rate Dungeons needed to reset grew exponentially, then they would need to wait months between delves.

Reivyn was idly chatting with the others as he led the group to the exit. Time seemed to stand still inside the Dungeons, the sun not moving, casting the world in perpetual daytime, but he knew that it was getting on toward the late afternoon, early evening on the outside. He prepared himself for the sudden shift in light as he stepped through the Portal.

Reivyn took two steps before stopping and glancing around with a frown. His Divine Sense took a second to catch up from switching between Sensing what was inside the Dungeon and the outside world. It took another couple of seconds for Reivyn’s brain to process what his Senses were telling him.

The first thing that broke through his fugue was the smell. There was a distinct coppery taste in the air. The second thing he noticed was the sound. While they were camped out in the tent city, there was a constant low murmur of conversation among the other Adventurers who were also waiting, either to enter or resting to leave.

Other than a slight wind, there was absolute silence.

The blood drained from his face as he stood as still as a statue, blocking the way from the others walking forward. Kefira bumped into his back, but Reivyn hardly even noticed.

He slowly turned his head to the side where his Divine Sense was telling him there was something there that should have been impossible.

His vision panned with the turn of his head, and floating just above the ground a few yards away from the Portal they just stepped through was another Portal. It was just sitting there, not doing anything.

The real horror, though, was the pile of human bones and pool of blood directly under the Portal.

“GET BACK!” Reivyn screamed as he grabbed his companions with his arms and Mana and lunged back into the Portal they’d just stepped out of. The instance of the Dungeon would protect them for a time. They would just have to wait out this creature until it got bored and moved on.

“What’s the matter?!” Kefira asked, concerned. She had never seen such a look on Reivyn’s face before.

Reivyn dragged the others behind him into the instance of the Dungeon, ignoring the calls for clarification and protests. None of the others had been outside long enough to notice anything amiss. Reivyn had been the first to step through, and he had only spent a few seconds before reentering the Dungeon.

Reivyn’s heart pounded in his chest as he looked around in a panic. He slowly calmed down as he recognized everyone was shoved into the Portal with him and weren’t trying to leave. He took a deep breath and focused his attention on his friends and family. They calmed down and waited for him to address them. Reivyn was happy they trusted him enough to follow his commands despite being completely unaware of the reasons.

“I don’t know if it was the same one or a different one, but there was one of those Portal creatures we came across in the Wilderness,” Reivyn explained.

“You mean the Portal floating over the lake by the waterfall?” Kefira asked.

“The one that had the terrifying tentacle monster inside it?” Teilon focused on the main part.

“Yes, and that’s not all,” Reivyn said, gulping. “In that short amount of time I was out there, I noticed there were no people, and there was a pile of bones and blood under the Portal…”

Kefira covered her mouth with her hand as she gasped. Kimberly and Serilla tightened their grips on their weapons. Ameliyn laid her hand on Reivyn’s shoulder with a concerned expression.

“Okay, I see why you ushered us back into the Dungeon,” Refix said, “but what do we do now?”

“This isn’t the first time we’ve been stranded in dimensional space,” Reivyn said, glancing at Kefira. “We’ll have to rely on Kefira’s Space Mana to get us out of this. She’ll need to take us far enough away that we don’t garner the attention of the -”

Reivyn’s voice cutoff as he noticed a flare in the Mana around the Portal. His heart dropped to his stomach as a sense of foreboding overcame him. The world seemed to come to a standstill as he focused his attention on the Portal. Everything moved in slow motion as the tip of a black tendril squirmed its way through the Portal.

Reivyn’s eyes widened in alarm. He shoved Kefira to the side while shouting.

“RUN!” He screamed.

Everyone immediately bolted without any further prompting, once more showing their trust in Reivyn.

“Not inside the cave!” Refix shouted. “That’s a death trap!”

The Party turned and ran along the cliff face toward the path leading up the side. Reivyn’s Divine Sense picked up the tendril blasting through the Portal, turning into a full-sized tentacle. It just kept coming, and coming, and coming.

The tentacle morphed into a ball and the rest of the creature’s limb seemed to melt into the ball, enlarging it over and over until a giant ball of pulsating meat floated just above the ground. Without any additional movement or orientation, an eyeball suddenly formed facing the Party and opened to look right at them. Reivyn felt the gaze of the monster focus solely on him. He could practically feel the hunger in the gaze. It was almost a physical sensation.

A grotesque mouth filled with razor sharp, needle-like fangs split open beneath the eyeball. It was almost wide enough to split the creature completely in half. The maw opened wide and a terrible screech came forth, vibrating Reivyn’s bones and making his ears ring.

Additional tentacles sprang out of the meatball and shot out to grip the ground, pulling the meatball along with it. It looked like a giant spider, except the body moved along and into the limbs instead of the limbs dragging the body after it.

The speed it moved completely dwarfed what the Party could muster. Reivyn knew that the monster was after him, so he made an executive decision. With his life, and the life of his friends and family, on the line, he dug deep and once more suffused his body with Qi, something he had been unable to replicate since the first time he did it during the expedition to Vairo.

He focused a denser concentration of Qi in the soles of his feet and focused on adding Gravity Affinity to the Mana coursing through the Qi. If he had not had the breakthrough in his Mana that consolidated his Skills, he wouldn’t have been able to achieve such a feat.

He turned and sprinted up the sheer cliff face, away from the others in his Party. He didn’t know what he was going to do about the monster, but he could at least try to buy time for Kefira to pierce the veil of dimensionality to whisk them away to safety. Reivyn was skeptical whether or not that would be possible, though, as the monster shouldn’t have been able to join them within their instance.

Reivyn sprinted up the side of the cliff at breakneck speeds. Time seemed to slow down as he viewed his other Party members seemingly crawling along at a glacial pace. The terrifying monster, though, kept up with him.

His guess was right, though, and the monster immediately changed directions and chased him up the cliff face. It had no problem scaling the cliff along with him. It didn’t seem to be affected by gravity at all. The tentacles shot out in multiple directions, but the main body ascended right behind Reivyn.

Reivyn was moving so fast he almost immediately reached the top where the shelf was located. He managed to make it a dozen steps across onto the cliff face when several tentacles shot out ahead of him. A shadow covered him, and he Sensed the monster arrive directly over him.

He felt like he was trapped in a cage as tentacles dug into the ground on all sides surrounding him. He looked up and saw that the eyes and mouth had oriented straight down atop of him. Saliva dripped from the open maw and another, smaller tentacle peeked out from the mouth, swiping side-to-side like someone licking their lips at a delicious meal.

The monster screeched in triumph as it descended to consume Reivyn.

The ground shook and cracked beneath Reivyn’s feet, throwing him off balance. The entire world seemed to be shaking as he was bounced around. The monster paused in its journey to eat Reivyn, and several more eyeballs popped up on the main body as well as along the sides of the tentacle, looking around for the source of the earthquake.

Reivyn felt the vibrations in his bones, much deeper and stronger than front he shriek of the monster, before he registered the sound.

“rooooooOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAARRRRR!”

A deep bellow from beneath the cliff, though well above anywhere they had been inside the cave, broke through the cracked open surface of the cliff face. Rievyn had the wherewithal to send a rope of Mana out to lasso onto a protruding rock and pull himself to safety as the shelf beneath him seemed to disintegrate.

Reivyn’s Divine Sense finally picked out the cause of the new disturbance.

A giant lizard head poked up out of the crack, larger than the meatball creature even when it was fully contained together. Heat and anger radiated off of the new monster emerging from the depths of the cave system.

A giant claw attached to a powerful limb emerged and grabbed at the top of the cliff, assisting the new creature in pulling itself up and out of the ground. It kept coming, up and up and up, until it towered over the little meatball monster.

The new beast was covered in scales, had two wings, horns and spikes covering its spine, four legs, and a long tail.

A Dragon had been hiding in the cliff, somewhere inaccessible to anyone from either the inside or outside of the cave. Reivyn had no time to think about exactly where the Dragon came from, but exuded menace as it stared the meatball creature down.

Despite the size difference, though, Reivyn could feel the aura of the meatball far eclipsed that of the Dungeon Dragon. The Dragon didn’t seem to care, though, as it opened its maw and Mana gathered in a hurricane in front of its mouth.

A beam of concentrated Dragon’s Breath struck the meatball monster. Reivyn saw a Mana shield spring up around the flesh of the monstrosity, but it was quickly burned away. The Dragon’s Breath struck the body of the tentacle monster full-on. The light and Mana overwhelmed Reivyn’s sight and Divine Sense, and he couldn’t tell what happened to the monster that followed them into the instance.

The beam of Dragon’s Breath finally exhausted itself, and Reivyn was finally able to see the results. The meatball creature was still there, though he could tell it had reduced in size significantly. It shrieked in defiance at the Dragon, once more shaking Reivyn from top to bottom, inside out.

Tentacles shot out of the meatball and wrapped around the dragon’s limbs, wings, and neck. The sharp thorns protruding from the tentacles dug into the flesh of the Dragon, completely piercing and slicing through the scales that had previously appeared impenetrable to Reivyn.

The tentacles began sawing back and forth, digging deeper into the flesh of the Dragon. The Dragon roared and bit down on the main body of the meatball monster as its powerful wings beat and launched it into the air. It brought its back legs up and raked the tentacles with its claws, freeing its front legs to do the same to the tentacles wrapped around its wings.

The tentacles simply shifted to a new location, forming a new main body with the mass in the previous main portion quickly following along, freeing itself from the bite of the Dragon. More tentacles shot out and attacked the Dragon once more.

The two monsters fought each other in the sky, trading blows and trying to achieve dominance. The tentacle monster could move about with impunity, escaping the clutches of the dragon over and over again, but the vitality of Dragon was strong enough that it healed its superficial wounds at an astonishing rate, almost completely balancing out the damage it was taking.

There was no clear winner, but Reivyn was afraid the tentacle monster would somehow cut off a piece of the Dragon and turn its body mass into its own use. He stood up on shaky legs and gathered his Mana. The other Party members finally ran up and joined him on the broken shelf above the cliff.

Ameliyn and Kefira joined Reivyn in gathering their Mana. This was no ordinary fight, so they kept drawing more and more into themselves, empowering their Magic with true weaves and visualizations. Refix summoned his ethereal arsenal.

The four of them unleashed their fury on the tentacle monster from below, careful not to damage the Dragon. They could escape from the Dragon if it attacked them once the meatball was eliminated, but the meat monster had already shown it could cross dimensions to pursue them. The choice in who to target was clear.

Multiple variations of Affinities slammed into the meat monster as ethereal weapons hacked, slashed, and slammed into the creature. They could tell they were doing damage, but it was marginal. Most of the damage was coming from the Dragon, but the little bit of help they could provide seemed to immediately tip the scales in the Dragon’s favor.

They kept up the firepower as the fight raged on in the sky above them. Reivyn was fully concentrated on doing as much harm to the meat monster as possible until a tap on his shoulder brought his focus back to his Party.

Teilon pointed off into the distance, his face pale and bloodless.

“Look,” he whispered.

Reivyn tore his gaze away from his friend and the fight above them to look where he was pointing.

Off in the distance, miles and miles away, a shadow crept along the ground. He focused his Eagle Eye Skill to zoom in his vision and make out what it was. His already pale face seemed to lose even more blood as he recognized what was headed towards them.

Hundreds of tentacle monsters were slithering their way across the landscape toward them at breakneck speeds. They were still hundreds of miles away, their elevation on the mountainside and cliff placing them well above the ground level of the Realm.

“Of course they can travel across the dimensional borders,” Reivyn said.

Another shriek brought Reivyn’s attention further up the mountainside. Another tentacle monster appeared well above them. It shrieked as it launched itself into the air towards the fighting monster and Dragon.

As it plummeted to join the fight, the tentacle monster already fighting the Dragon shot out of its grasp and launched itself up. The two meatballs smashed into each other, and after wrapping around each other, morphed into one, larger meatball. The new monster must have already combined with some others, as now the meat monster was almost the same size as the Dragon.

New eyes and a mouth formed on the meatball, oriented on the Dragon, and it shot through the air, completely disregarding gravity once more and wrapped itself around the Dragon.

The Dragon summoned more Dragon Breath and clawed and bit at the monster digging into its body. The Spells from Ameliyn and Kefira intensified as they poured all of their Mana into the Spells.

Reivyn despaired.

They had to do something about this closest monster before more appeared from the mountainside above them. They had to end the fight and escape before the horde of monsters got close enough to find them. They needed to move away from the Dungeon far enough and fast enough to lose their trail.

Reivyn didn’t know if it was possible.

This was the closest he had ever come to giving up, but he wouldn’t allow himself. He would never give up. He would fight until his last breath. He would make this space monster work for every tiny morsel of flesh from his body.

He once again dug deep into himself. He infused his Qi with multiple Affinities: Metal, Piercing, and Weight. He took the strand of Qi and added it to the weaves of his Mana, infusing yet more Affinities into the Mana: Gravity, Kinetic, and Mass. He manipulated the weave with knots in the right places and added his visualization to it.

A Heaven-Piercing Spear unbound by Gravity and launched with ferocious power.

The Mana built and built within him. His body cracked open and the light of the concentrated Mana weaved with Qi shown through the cracks instead of blood. He did bleed, though, as blood poured out of his head. Through his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. He was practically drowning in blood.

He kept his Iron Will focused on clamping down on the raging power of the Spell he had formulated. Just like the Dragon’s Breath, a maelstrom of energy formed in front of him, but it grew and grew until it was larger than even he himself was, fed with the immense amount of Mana he could control. He even mastered the four basic elements in the ambient Mana and fed it into his construct.

When he finally reached a point where he knew he could go no further without losing catastrophic control of his creation, he zeroed his focus in on the meat monster.

He launched the spell.

It had the properties he had devised of a “Heaven-Piercing Spear,” but it traveled at nearly the speed of light like a Beam Spell. It wasn’t a Beam Spell, though, despite the afterimage lasting several long seconds giving the illusion that he was channeling the Spell.

It wasn’t a channeled Spell.

A sonic boom echoed out from launching the Spell, and the meat monster and Dragon both instantly had over 90% of their mass simply extinguished. It was no more.

The Mana surrounding the two monsters dispersed, and the remaining flesh of both of them disintegrated into the air.

Reivyn’s vision went dark as he threw up blood. He was barely aware of the warmth of his mother’s Healing Spell surrounding him as his consciousness drifted into the wind. He knew no more.