[LitF] 48. Of Commanders and Dungeons (Patreon)

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[A/N: Late again. Sorry.]

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Arthur nodded to the dwarf. "Thank you." He turned to the elf. "Is that enough?"

The old woman smiled and said, "Black Aegis, deactivate."

The dwarf was next. "Black Aegis, deactivate."

The trap's enchantments obeyed. Arthur also reconnected the building's internal wires just in time for them to send signals informing that everything was fine. The voidsteel bars started descending back into the floor, and no more dust was being pushed against the metal lids on the tubes. A few seconds later, the sirens turned off—

Arthur frowned when he discovered he had missed something.

The individual cells in the goo he had taken from Terrell's body should be dying. He should feel the change in his life and death domains. That was happening to the remains of the dwarf Arthur had also killed. However, Terrell's gore had disappeared from his senses.

As if on cue, Terrell's skin suddenly turned into something closely resembling melting wax.

Arthur had seen something similar before. His mother's head had melted the same way.

"A mind-shared soul clone," Tamara declared.

The Golden King had once said that the clone, which let someone share two bodies, was untraceable and expensive. Graham had explained it better to Arthur in the dungeon. The mix of alchemy, enchantment, and spellcasting was a peak shamanic technique that required rare and expensive materials.

What Arthur's father hadn't said was that having the clone die hurt a lot and halved one's level. According to Graham, the level halving was why the thing had "soul" in the name. No one had a soul element or a way to prove its existence. Well, at least that had been the case in the past. That's why he was so impressed by the League's item that could read one's soul anchor.

The prince was surprised that the clone could trick his life domains. He had noticed nothing wrong. But it made sense in hindsight. The clone could trick intent strings, and his domains connected him to the elements around him more or less like countless invisible intent strings. It was a great reminder that he wasn't almighty.

Terrell had prepared well for Arthur's arrival. He had probably decided to kill the prince from the moment Howard was caught. And if he had planned for Arthur's death, he would have other plans in case of failure.

"Everyone, leave at once," Arthur suggested with urgency in his voice. "Terrell might have other plans for you or this place. Someone take me to the dungeon at once. I need to destroy it no matter what."

The sirens returned, and a loud announcement could be heard over it. "This is Human Commander Blaze Terrell. Joint Command is being held hostage by—" his voice and the sirens suddenly cut off.

The helping dwarf snorted. "Me ain't blind, cun'. Weselv's prepar'd as well."

Another loud announcement sounded in the Institute, this time with a pleasant female voice. "Core Tenent C, Article 9 has been evoked by Dwarf Command. Until Joint Command gives further instructions backed by at least two races, all Commanders are stripped of their individual authority."

Arthur had never read anything about Core Tenents. Joint Command had special rules.

More importantly, he was curious about why everyone was speaking the human tongue instead of the League dialect, especially the dwarf who was so bad at it. Or maybe the dwarf was that bad at it as a statement?

Whatever the case, he had more urgent concerns. "You're still not safe," the prince insisted. "Leave this place, maybe the entire Institute, then comb it for traps. And get me to the dungeon fast."

The dungeon entrance was the most likely place to have a surprise waiting for him. Arthur had said he would head there. But it was an unavoidable trap if so.

"Me hav' secur'd it, Boria," the dwarf revealed. "First thin' me did when me heard of ya retur'. I'll bring ya lat'r." The sudden use of "I" instead of "me" proved to Arthur that the dwarf was speaking extra poorly on purpose. "Ya jus' need to be leavin' the buildin' for a momen', ay?"

"I'll bring you, too," the old elf added. "But he's correct. We can't order anyone to let you enter the dungeon until our authority is restored. Commander Terrell claimed we were kidnapped. We must prove him wrong by having you stay away from us when we declare him a traitor."

"You're not listening to me!" Arthur screamed, and the room shook under his anger. "Terrell planned for this! Leave at once! And get me someone to the dungeon! I don't care if I have permission to do it. I'll get inside. And I'll do it now!" He didn't want to explain everything, but he found it best that he did. "The dwarves might have secured the dungeon when they heard about my return, but Terrell knew about it. If he planned to do something to the dungeon, he would've considered the resistance there. He would also know Joint Command would be this slow to react after his announcement. You have exactly three seconds to start moving before I decide to find the dungeon my way. I'll not be merciful to anyone who tries to stop me. This is too important."

The elf opened her mouth to say something, but the dwarf pointed down slightly diagonally and spoke before she could, "The dungeon be straigh' ther' from her', Boria. Leave if ya must. Weselv's going to be done before ya get ther'. We gonna be sendin' word to let ya through. And weselv's know the danger. The human cun' ain't as good as ya imagin'. Weselv's ain't that stupid, ay? Don't ya keep under'stimatin' weselv's!"

Arthur didn't reply with words.

He extended his arm sideways. While his arm was still going, he turned Sophie's mythril dagger into tiny shards and shot them at the room's walls. They pierced the metal casing hidden by the wood and scrapped the runes in the metal. The spatial-strengthening enchantment died, and he pulled the mythril back, reforming Sophie's dagger.

He was done with breaking the enchantment before his arm had moved enough to activate his spatial storage ring. The opening into the pocket space appeared, and he stopped before his hand went through it. He wouldn't risk his limb; what if there was a backup enchantment he couldn't see?

Instead, he reached inside with an authority chain and pulled half a ton of metal. He immediately turned it into a massive rotating drill. Then, he pushed it fast and hard into the floor, starting beside the dwarf and going in the direction he was pointing.

A moment later, the drill had gone through the building's floors and disappeared into the ground. Underground, it went through three thick enchanted barriers before it was beyond Arthur's metal domain.

"You are the ones who keep underestimating me, Dwarf Commander," Arthur said. "Believe me, you'll not be done before I get there. But thank you for your cooperation."

He grabbed his people with his domain and an intent string and flew into the hole.

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* - * - *

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Arthur never found whatever special defenses the dwarves had added to the dungeon entrance. Or maybe it was the dozens of layers of thick enchanted metal? One of them could resist a level 70 awakener for an hour or so, and the heat it released was so intense that it instantly melted Arthur's drill at first.

He then fuelled his magic with mana, and his drill couldn't be stopped anymore.

Arthur's primary element was metal. It was only at 51% comprehension to life's 60%, but he had a 95% affinity with metal to life's 75%. His metal domain reached further, and he was more potent with that element.

It took him three seconds to reach the final barrier before the dungeon's entrance. It was a thick voidsteel box that he melted with his sword.

At last, he stood before the voidsteel door blocking the dungeon's entrance.

Instead of a damp underground chamber, the place had become a null chamber. A fancy one. It had a red carpet for people to walk on without getting their footwear's enchantments broken by the voidsteel floor.

The prince paused there to get in full war regalia. Not the one his father had left him; his sorcerer's robe with the two swords on his waist, the fire one and an unenchanted one. On top of that, he left rotating disks, spheres, swords, and javelins floating next to him, three dozen of each. Tamara also put her armor on.

"I'm not risking getting any of you out of my sight," Arthur declared. "We're going in together. Unless you want to defy me on this, Graham?"

The knight wisely shook his head, his only defiance being not vocalizing his denial. Good. Arthur would've had to consider any other decision a suicide attempt and forced him to come.

The prince used his domain to turn a sphere into a floating metal hand and pulled the dungeon door open.

He was greatly relieved when he found nothing wrong. Ahead of him was the same earth corridor from so long ago. Despite seeing the entrance's stone archway, he had been worried the dungeon wouldn't be there.

"Let's go," he said, flying inside with his people.

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* - * - *

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Arthur reached the dungeon's first room. The unconscious girl was gone. Good.

The one thing the dungeon was not lacking was mana. Quite the opposite. There was way too much mana in the air, moving, revolving, and trembling with the dungeon itself.

Something was amiss.

The prince's dread increased when he found no monsters as he moved deeper into the dungeon. Moreover, the more time passed, the stronger the trembling became. He flew full speed ahead, hurting himself and his people in the process. It still felt too slow.

It took them one day to reach floor 95.

Floor 95 was no longer the last.

The dungeon had leveled up. He had feared it. Without him forcing it to spend mana, it could focus on strengthening itself.

Floor 96 was also not the last one. Nor was it floor 97. Or floor 98. The further Arthur went, the worse the knot in his stomach became. His stomach sank when he climbed down the stairs at the end of floor 99.

By now, the mana in the air was shaking so violently that it forced the air molecules to tremble. An unawakened would die if they got to that place.

Floor 100 was a gigantic room. Humongous. Absurdly vast. However, unlike floor 95, where he had fought the dragons the first time, this one was an empty cube. The walls, floor, and ceiling were bare wood.

This floor also had no monsters lazily flying or sleeping about. Instead, fourteen dragons, one of each element, stood guard or flew close to the archway that led into an empty room.

One dragon was a massive beast as tall as ten of the others, lean with silver scales.

A chronomancer.

The final boss's element didn't surprise Arthur. Time was the strongest element, the one Arthur couldn't defend against no matter what he did. Moreover, the dungeon would want to delay the prince if it couldn't kill him. The chronomancer was perfect for that.

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| Dragon — Level 99

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This was floor 100, but the final boss was only level 99. Arthur didn't believe there was a level 100 monster hidden somewhere. Instead, it was obvious that level 100 was as remarkable to the dungeon as it had been for him.

If Arthur wasn't mistaken, the dungeon core was ascending—or whatever dungeons did when they reached level 100. Fate certainly wouldn't help it ascend as it had Arthur, who was from a Fated Race. Right?

Whatever was happening, the prince wouldn't let it happen. Dungeons were parasites. Arthur didn't believe for a second that a superpowered parasite would be kind enough to let go of his world.

The presence of monsters was excellent news. It evidenced that the dungeon couldn't prevent Arthur from getting to its core. Not directly. The path was open, and the dungeon could only place monsters to hinder his way.

The monsters' levels were worse news. Except for the actual boss, the other dragons were all level 98. Arthur didn't doubt he could kill them, but could he do it fast enough?

"Stay here," Arthur said as he finally put his people on the ground, on the stairs. As much as he wanted to keep them close to him, the dragons might surprise him. It was safer there.

The prince took a moment to heal himself, formed a metal armor around himself with the tiniest slits for his eyes, then shot toward the dragons like a comet.

The dragons reacted at once to his approach. Spells of all elements were thrown at him. Yet, the reception was very lackluster. Every attack was a mere elemental ball, and even the sphere of light was slower than him. He dodged everything and kept approaching the monsters.

When his life domain touched the first dragon, he understood why their response was so pathetic. Their eyes were dazed, and their brains barely working. Their minds were under an influence that he couldn't pinpoint with precision but obviously came from the dungeon.

That confirmed the core was focusing on protecting itself and was doing so by keeping the dragons in that place. Although no awakener could bypass the final boss to reach the dungeon core—the last boss had to be killed for one to gain access to the core room—the dungeon seemed to fear an invader might find a workaround.

Arthur stopped moving at once when he felt the mind control. He wanted to take advantage of the dragons' condition. Unfortunately, despite being preoccupied with its "ascension," the dungeon had enough presence of mind to notice him and release the dragons from their leashes.

With freedom came fury. They all roared angrily. The air trembled even more. They were outraged at what the dungeon had done to them but could only take it on Arthur.

The prince's life domain was still a few hundred yards away from the actual boss, who stood further in the back, but thirteen monsters were fair game.

Unfortunately, he found that his life and death domains couldn't damage the dragons. Every monster was prehending itself with its second element, life, a natural response to having their minds controlled. His latest improvements weren't enough to ignore a level 98 biomancer's prehension from protecting themselves.

Fortunately, he could snap those life intent strings, which would hurt or disable the dragons with the rebound.

No matter how fast they reacted when freed, the prince had been better prepared for the opening salvo. Arthur kept two of his six intent strings in reserve for an emergency, covering the space around him in spirals, ready for any surprises. That meant he had four about to reach the dragons, as he had pushed them ahead of himself. So, he could attack four monsters.

While each intent string could theoretically affect more than one target, his strings' speed depended on the Mana Reach trait. He couldn't move them fast enough to attack more beasts before they reacted. Four would need to suffice.

Arthur only had to decide which dragons to attack first.

The purple shaper was an obvious pick; space was the second most dangerous element, only behind time. He also wouldn't dare to fight another black shadowmancer because its element was too illogical. While Arthur had the death element, he also chose not to risk facing the light-gray necromancer; what if it somehow killed him before he could protect himself?

The last one was harder to pick. The prince discarded the metalmancer and the biomancer because he trusted himself against them. Whatever trick they might have wouldn't be as dangerous as the necromancer's. The bloodsinger also didn't feel too dangerous against his biomancy. The aquamancer, the firemancer, the aeromancer, and the woodsinger didn't feel too scary, either. That left the geomancer, which might waste his time with its defenses, the lightbender, which might be hard to catch if it ran around, and the thunderbringer.

Arthur concluded the thunderbringer was the most likely one to cause him trouble. Metal conducted electricity, and while magic could resist it, the lightning was a direct counter to metal. His body was also vulnerable; if lightning struck his brain, he might falter in the worst moment.

So, four intent strings reached four dragons: the shaper, the shadowmancer, the necromancer, and the thunderbringer.

Arthur's life comprehension was higher than the enemies', so their intent string snapped. The dragons roared in excruciating pain, but while the prince's intent strings weren't cut, he also suffered a rebound. The bigger the gap between the dragons' comprehension of life and his, the easier it would be for the winner and the worse for the loser.

Arthur felt like he was punched in the face. Hard. It wasn't that bad, considering it was the united rebound from four intent strings, but it was much worse than he had expected. These level 98 dragons were considerably stronger than their level 95 counterparts.

He did a quick math, and it became evident that without the enlightenment in the elven forest, he wouldn't be able to counter every dragon's intent string without getting dizzy for a few seconds, which might prove lethal.

'Fatedamned prophecies,' he thought. 'Thank you.'

As things stood, Arthur could think straight while his foes couldn't. He prehended the dragons' bodies in the instant they took to recover from the rebound and exploded hearts and brains. The distinct change between the creatures' life and death—which was different from dying individual cells—proved there was no surviving his attack.

The other dragons didn't stand still as he killed those four.

The golden lightmancer was unsurprisingly the first to act. It moved so quickly that it might as well have teleported to a dozen years behind the prince. Without his life domain feeling the dragon, Arthur would've died when a truck-sized white laser beam formed before the dragon, already moving in his direction.

Yet, as fast as the dragon was, it wasn't light itself. Arthur prehended his metal armor with a reserved string and barely managed to turn its metal backside into a heat-resistant mirror-like surface. The beam of concentrated light was so hot that it turned air into plasma, but he had expected to deal with such an attack, and his magic was stronger.

The dragon had "teleported" on top of his remaining intent string. So, simultaneously to his defense, Arthur snapped the lightmancer's intent string protecting its body, then killed it like the others.

The laser beam was a spell and kept coming after the monster died. It struck the prince's armor, which resisted the heat and deflected some of the light. The attack from a level 98 dragon was nothing to scoff at, but Arthur's metal was just too powerful.

While that happened, the other dragons got a hold of their anger and formed barriers to prevent his approach. They had decided to bet on the dungeon despite how it had treated them. The prince guessed it had promised them freedom after it was done, while Arthur himself had no choice but to kill them to get to the core room.

Magic walls appeared between Arthur and the dragons. The metalmancer and the bloodsinger used the metal and blood from their own bodies to form thin domes. The aquamancer didn't sacrifice his body's water but used air moisture to produce another thin barrier. The woodsinger used the wood the room was made of to create the second thickest wall, only losing to the air barrier from the aeromancer. The geomancer pulled stones from beneath the wood floor. Lastly, the firemancer burned the air to create angry white flames.

There was no barrier of the time element, which was worrisome. But the prince could only deal with the obstacles on his way.

As impressive as the dragons' barriers were, the creatures had failed to understand how Arthur had killed their fellow monsters. None of those spells could stop his intent strings. He pushed them into all dragons, even the big boss, and prehended their bodies at once.

Their life intent strings snapped, and Arthur suffered a much worse rebound this time. He actually lost track of himself for an instant. He still recovered much faster than the dragons, though, and killed almost all of them in a fell swoop.

The first four dragons he had killed were still turning into light when the last of the thirteen level 98s died.

The level 99 chronomancer, however, had disappeared while Arthur was dazed.

The prince turned around, desperately searching for the boss. He could's see or feel the damn dragon anywhere, but he had to kill it to enter the core room. Only one thing could explain that: the monster was using time magic to move faster than Arthur could see. It also knew better than to stay close to him.

Arthur quickly returned to the room's entrance. The dragon couldn't leave the room unless the dungeon could change the rules during its ascension. Once there, Arthur pulled out all his metal from his spatial ring and turned everything into fingernail-sized spheres. He then cast the same spells into them all: fly, search, adapt, stick, and push.

Countless spheres littered at the entrance's wood wall. There was a lot of space between each ball, but the boss couldn't go through the gaps. Not even close. The colossal beast would touch at least a thousand spheres if it tried to go through. The balls were linked together by an overarching spell and shot into the room as one, searching for any lifeform that wasn't as small as a human.

Arthur created over a dozen such layers so the dragon couldn't destroy a sphere and go through the "metal wall," which would force the prince to start over. He flew forward with the spheres in the very middle, his six intent strings extended as far as they could while occupying the most space. He was ready to react as soon as he found anything.

The dragon postponed its discovery for as long as possible, a few seconds. That's how long it took Arthur to reach the final ten percent of the room. By how the mana and the air shook increasingly furiously, Arthur feared those seconds might be enough for the dungeon to win in the end.

The confirmation that the dragon was still in the room came when the sphere on the top-left corner of the room suddenly disappeared. The place was so big that Arthur didn't see it. The chronomancer was fast and knew how to exploit the prince's blind spots.

Arthur only noticed what happened when the spheres on the top-left started moving in a crawl while the others kept their pace, though never stretching the gaps between each ball too much. The spells he cast aimed primarily at narrowing down the dragon's hiding place. If the dragon was still up there, it might destroy all the spheres behind the first and disappear in the already swept area. When the spheres in that area slowed down, it made it so the monster would have to end up being ever-so-slightly slower to go through, which would hopefully be enough for Arthur to catch it.

The monster had only been testing Arthur's spell, though. It didn't try anything again until it had to be in the small final stretch the spheres were about to cover. Then, half the spheres in the bottom-right corner disappeared.

Some of the spheres on the top kept going ahead, but all the ones in the middle and below changed their trajectories to cover any direction the dragon might go. Arthur also moved quickly to the bottom right.

Then, he barely saw a shadow moving up. He could still see the monster if he looked directly at it! That he only saw a shadow showed how scarily fast it was; Arthur had 1,000 points of perception.

The monster had chosen well. The net had become thinner on the top as the spheres moved to cover the gaps created by the ones in the middle, which had, in turn, floated downwards.

Still, the dragon no longer had any room for maneuvering and decided to run. The prince reverted his flight direction at once, but he would be too late. The monster didn't sneakily destroy the spheres as it moved through Arthur's net. Instead, it bulldozed its way through, likely to save mana. Time was the most potent element but also the most costly. The dragon couldn't go on forever—or so Arthur hoped.

Arthur's spell proved its worth then. Every ball stuck to the dragon and pushed it in the opposite direction it was trying to move. The monster touched thousands of the spheres as it moved, and while they didn't slow it down, they forced it to waste a lot of mana. Every sphere the beast touched fell from the air as its spells were spent. That meant the creature had wasted time mana to counter the spells and maintain its speed.

In fact, Arthur's tact proved to be ridiculously effective.

The prince had expected to do multiple sweeps through the room, but the dragon suddenly stopped moving. Only half its mana pool remained, evidencing that moving that fast cost a lot of mana and that any objects on the way made things much harder for the dragon than Arthur thought they would. So, it had decided to waste Arthur's time another way.

Arthur prehended himself and his metal armor and willed both to shake incredibly fast.

The dragon was mighty, but it was just an inexperienced monster. The time element was dangerous, but magic cost mana. The prince perfectly predicted what the creature would attempt. It was obvious, considering its goal was to delay him.

It tried to stop Arthur in time—and lost because it didn't make its brain think faster than Arthur's.

The prince had already been throwing mana to make himself move fast when the dragon used time magic on him. Two opposing wills trying to affect the same things started a mana-loop. The prince had two elements, two mana pools, and his elements were cheaper to use. He had acted first, and magic was absolute; he had priority. He kept trembling while the dragon's magic tried to stop him. The fact that everything was shaking—ambient mana, the dungeon, the very air—was the final nail in the coffin, as the monster failed to notice what was wrong before it lost all its mana.

It's mana pool emptied after half a second.

It fainted.

Arthur quickly killed it.

The prince didn't waste time resting on his laurels. He rushed back to the entrance, grabbed his people, and shot towards the next room.

He was relieved when the world changed as he stepped through the archway. One moment, he saw a vast empty room ahead. The next, he and the others were elsewhere.

However, they didn't enter a small obsidian room. Instead, they stood on a big obsidian platform floating in the middle of four gigantic nebulas. Each rotated slowly around a copy of the dungeon core, a round transparent crystal filled with ever-moving mist-like mana. The differences from last time were that they were as big as enormous stars, and each had mana of a single element: orange-red fire, light blue water, teal wood, and purple space.

"Wow," Sophie breathed in wonder.

Arthur, instead, couldn't be further from wonderment; the scene filled him with horror.

Life.

The nebulas were too distant from him, but he could still feel life in them somehow. And countless living beings were constantly turned into mana that flowed into the oversized dungeon cores. They were being consumed.

How big were the nebulas? Were those actually planets? How many planets could support life? And how many beings were dying every second?

Millions? Billions? Trillions?

"Illusion of potential," a raspy voice said in Golden Kingdom language. "Not real. I kill no more. No need."

The prince turned to the middle of the platform, where a child-sized humanoid form made of moving rainbow light stood. It had no features except the fist-sized dungeon core that filled most of its face, like an eye too big to fit. Ethereal mana streams came from the star-sized cores and strengthened the creature, which grew almost imperceptibly taller by the second.

The dungeon core's lie might have worked if Arthur hadn't been so well-trained. After all, it was just too absurd to think so many deaths could happen. He couldn't understand how anything could be that big and unstoppable. It was easier to accept it was indeed an illusion.

But he always inspected everything in sight, and Fate had answered his inquiries.

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| Fireblight Devourer — Level ???

| Waterblight Devourer — Level ???

| Spaceblight Devourer — Level ???

| Woodblight Devourer — Level ???

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Fate was here. Why didn't it stop the core? This ascension—and there was no question that that's what was happening—was different from his. He also had received no mana or power from other creatures that he could tell.

Yet, what if it was just what Fate did for dungeons, as opposed to someone from the Fated Races? What if the Fated Races were being raised like sheep to help dungeons grow stronger and be slaughtered when the time was ripe?

Arthur didn't believe that. It didn't fit the facts. It was easier and more effective to strengthen the Fated Races in other ways. Still, it was more comfortable to believe in a betrayal than the actual most likely circumstances: That Fate couldn't stop the Devourers.

Whatever the case, those things weren't illusions. The mass murder was happening. Those Devourers were consuming what looked like galaxies. They were over ten levels higher than Arthur, who couldn't see their levels, and helping the local dungeon ascend.

The prince knew his senses could be fooled. The mind-shared soul clone had just proven it. Perhaps the dungeon was telling the truth and no longer needed to take mana from the world to live; maybe the Devourers would feed it all the energy it needed.

But Arthur couldn't risk the possibility of the Devourers being a dungeon core's final form. He couldn't ignore the most likely truth that dungeon cores were seeds the Devourer sent everywhere to reproduce.

The faster he killed the core, the better.

Arthur could feel the dungeon core in his life domain. It was alive. He willed it to die, but his domain was denied. So he sent an intent string into it instead—

His intent string hit an invisible barrier between him and the core.

Arthur tried to send floating spheres next, but they were also stopped. He approached and confirmed the invisible wall also stopped him, even when he tried to touch it with his bare hand. The wall was also endless; he couldn't send any object around it.

How was that even possible?! He could see no mana in the wall. There was no visible magic in play, but the barrier also didn't feel actually physical.

What was happening?!

"Your father stupid," the core said. It had no mouth, producing sound in ways Arthur couldn't determine. "You smart. I lie. I eat your world soon."

There was no malice in its voice, only an uninterested conviction. It was sure of its victory but not nebulous; it was just how things were. It would eat Arthur's world simply because those were its instincts, just like a lion eats a gazelle.

Arthur tried using his metal drill. It didn't leave even a scratch on the wall. He threw projectiles of all sizes and at various speeds against it. It didn't work. He pulled out his fire sword. Nothing. He punched and swung his word and tried to cut it with his rotating discs. The barrier stood undamaged.

There was nothing he could do against it.

He couldn't remember ever feeling so powerless.

"Let me try, sir," Graham said as he used space magic and skills against the barrier, to no avail.

To make matters worse, the awakeners' presence seemed to speed things up. The mana streams grew thicker and flowed faster into the core. The humanoid form was already as tall as a teenager.

Arthur had no idea how big it had to grow to finish the ritual. It might need to grow as big as a giant, but it might also only need to reach an adult's height. He had to find a solution and do it fast.

There had to be something he could do. After all, the dungeon had tried to stop him with the final boss. Unless it was instinct? But if Arthur was powerless, why did the core mind-control the dragons then likely make an agreement with them to ensure they behaved defensively and wasted his time?

The prince thought furiously about everything he could try but reached only two possibilities.

If they didn't work, they would all die, and that would be it.

He extended his arm to the side and was elated when his spatial storage ring worked. He pulled a rectangular case from the inside.

He opened it, took the mythril sword from the inside, and tested it against the barrier. It didn't work; it was just an enchanted blade. He had hoped the high elves had prepared something when they forged the Kalavor Shävyr. However, naming it "All are Equal in Death," or Equalizer, was just to make it sound cool.

It was alright; he had tried that just in case. He returned the sword to the case and pulled the voidsteel scabbard next.

That was it.

His last chance.

It was time to see how that mysterious barrier reacted to the anti-magic alloy.

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[A/N: Thinks escalated quickly =P.

As an author, it's nice to see so much foreshadowing coming together like this. I hope you also enjoy it.]

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