Chapter 383 - Rebuilding (Patreon)

Zeke awoke to a blindingly white light.

He blinked a few times, trying to clear his vision, but it was no use.

“He’s awake,” came a familiar voice that it took a few moments for him to recognize as belonging to Sasha. He felt a gentle hand on his arm before she added, “Just stay calm. If you start seizing again, I don’t know if we can keep you still.”

“W-what…”

The word came out as an inarticulate grunt, which sent Zeke’s mind staggering toward panic. That was further exacerbated by the fact that he couldn’t move more than a few inches, which very nearly sent him over the edge.

Then he felt another soft touch and heard Pudge say, “It’s okay. You’re safe. You won.”

It was another few moments before Zeke’s mind caught up to the former dire bear’s statement, and when it did, he started to remember what had happened. The four women. The riddles. The mirror. The endless battle against his own reflections. And finally, he remembered that he’d used the Runebreaker technique to shatter the mirror.

And it had torn him to pieces, both metaphorically and literally. Zeke could still feel the deep cracks in his flesh and the shattering of his mind. Likely, it was only due to his unique constitution and uncommonly powerful Will that he’d managed to survive.

Ironic, considering that using his Path of Arcane Destruction had very much contributed to his wounded state. His Will, destructive though it was, had served to contain the worst of the destructive power of his braided technique. It was not unlike two trees falling against one another and somehow keeping one another upright. Everything was still broken, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.

“Not the best analogy,” said Eveline.

Belatedly, Zeke remembered how worried he had been with the four women had ripped Eveline from his mind. So, marshalling his concentration, he forced himself to ask, “Are you okay?”

“Nothing but my pride was injured,” she said. “Though I think that was more due to the nature of the dungeon than because of any ability on my part. Those women were…they could have destroyed me in an instant. I felt their power. But that wasn’t their purpose, so they didn’t.”

“I solved their riddles, though. Shouldn’t that have meant I won?”

Eveline gave the impression of shaking her head. “No. It just meant that they didn’t kill you themselves,” she said. “Getting a chance against the reflections was the prize.”

“How is anyone else supposed to have survived that?”

“They aren’t. Dungeons aren’t fair. They have their own rules, but the thing you need to understand is that they’re not…games. They aren’t intended to be beaten. Not easily, at least. It’s entirely possible that we will fail here.”

“That’s…I won’t let that happen.”

“You’re in no condition to make that claim,” Eveline stated.

Zeke tried to sigh, but his body didn’t respond. “How bad is it?” he asked.

“You remember how you were after your first visit to the demon realm?” she asked. With full access to his memories, Eveline was intimately acquainted with his entire history.

“That bad, huh?”

“No. Not quite. But it’s close,” she said. “Fortunately, even now, you’re being healed. It’s a slow process, but once the dryad gets you back on your feet, you should be able to hasten the process quite a bit.”

Zeke gave a mental nod. He could feel that his skills were once again available, and a quick look at his status told him that his attributes had returned to normal. So, with access to [Cambion’s Awakening] – specifically, the unattuned version – the damage of using his Runebreaker technique would be healed much more quickly than in Jariq.

Or that was the idea. Currently, Zeke couldn’t even see. Nor could he move more than a few inches. So, the alacrity of his healing was still in question.

In any case, he had little choice but to wait. So, that’s what he did, and over the next day or so, he remained entirely stationary. Fortunately, with his enhanced endurance and vitality, he was in no danger of starvation or dying from thirst. Eventually, both would affect him, but that would take weeks without food or water.

Eventually, he reached a point where he reached a point where he felt well enough to activate [Cambion’s Awakening], but his actions were premature. The moment he embraced the skill, agony lanced through his body. His wounds widened, and the pieces of his mind drifted further apart. He released the skill quickly, but by that point, he’d reversed much of the progress he’d made over the past couple of days.

So, the cycle began anew. This time, though, Zeke didn’t try to use his skills. Instead, he focused on runecrafting. When his path had changed, he had lost some of the old path’s utility. With Arcane Destruction, he knew he’d never craft powerful enchantments. However, his knowledge of the runes governing his skills was just as robust as ever. And thankfully, accessing that portion of his path did not damage to his body. So, that was how he occupied hismind.

After all, if he kept up his progression, it wouldn’t be that long before he needed to build a new skill for his level fifty slot. Sure, he couldn’t actually build and implement the skill before he reached that level, but there was nothing saying he couldn’t start laying the groundwork beforehand. If everything went the way Zeke wanted it to, he’d have all but the last bit of the skill entirely constructed – and more importantly, perfected – well before he could implement it.

So, with that in mind, he sank his focus into the task.

And so it went for the better part of a week. Vaguely, Zeke was aware of the others moving around him. He also knew that someone had dribbled water between his lips and cleaned up after him. But he was too entrenched in his task to pay any of it any mind.

Until, at last, Zeke tried his skill again. And to his incredible relief, he felt the soothing power of the unattuned version of [Cambion’s Awakening] flowing through his body. A day later, he regained his vision, which told him that he was nestled beneath the boughs of an ancient oak tree. He saw nothing else, so he had no real idea what was going on.

“We’re still in the dungeon,” Eveline said. “Now that you’ve regained your senses, I can feel it.”

That made sense. As difficult as the fight against the reflections had been, something had told him that it wasn’t the final fight.

“Where are they others?”

“Hunting, I would expect,” she answered. “But you know just as much as I do.”

That certainly wasn’t true. Eveline might be limited to his senses, but Zeke had long since accepted that she was far better at interpreting them. But that was fine.

“You know, you surprised me back there,” Eveline said. “With the riddles. I didn’t think you had that in you.”

“You can read my memories. You had to know that I used to play those games with my brother,” he said.

“That’s not really how this works,” Eveline explained. “If I tried to look at every single detail of your memories, I would go mad. Instead, I just…skim. Yes, that’s the word. I skim your memories for anything useful or particularly interesting. And while I’m sure playing games with your sibling is a cherished memory for you, it’s just…boring to me. Sweet, but boring. Most memories are like that, especially after I got over the novelty of the world you left behind.”

Then, she went on a long monologue about Earth that suggested to Zeke that she had not, in fact, gotten over its novelty.

In any case, after Zeke regained his senses, his body recovered more quickly. He wasn’t certain if the two were related, or if he’d simply crossed a meaningful threshold, but it was only a few more days before he could push himself to his feet. He could only remain standing for a few moments before his strength gave out, but it was a major milestone in his recovery. By the time another week had passed, the cracks in Zeke’s skin had completely closed. They left faint scars behind, but he felt fortunate that those were the only long-term effects.

In the meantime, Zeke discovered that, after he and Pudge had overcome the mirror and his reflections, the others had dragged him through another door and into an greenhouse garden that stretched for miles in every direction. Since then, Pudge and the others had waged a persistent war against the plant-based monsters that lived within the garden while Zeke had slowly recovered. Fortunately, most of those monsters were edible, so Zeke’s dwindling stores of food went untouched.

A little more than a month after the mirror battle, Zeke had fully recovered. He had also made incredibly progress on the skill he intended to build, and he’d even managed to spend quite some time meditating on his attunements as well as the nature of his path. All in all, the time he spent in recovery proved to be an incredible boon, and he felt that it had given him the time he needed to truly settle into some of his power.

Of course, they couldn’t remain within the dungeon for all eternity, so as soon as Zeke felt well enough to continue, he let the others know. Still, they all insisted that he take a few extra days, just to be certain that there wouldn’t be any lingering ill-effects. Zeke reluctantly agreed, though his impatience very nearly drove him to argument.

In the end, he and the others spent nearly two months in that garden, and by the time they were ready to leave, Pudge and the rest of the party defeated the huge plant monster that seemed to be the room’s guardian. Once they did, the way forward was clear.

So it was that Zeke stood between Pudge and Silik, with Sasha and Eta to his rear as they looked at the door. It was little different than the other doors they’d encountered, and to Zeke’s eye, it looked entirely mundane. However, previous experience suggested that, had they failed to defeat the room’s guardian, it would have remained closed.

“You could bring it down with Runebreaker,” Eveline stated.

“Not going down that road unless absolutely necessary,” Zeke responded. “Same with Worldbreaker. I’m just not strong enough to endure the backlash.”

“Technically, it’s not backlash. It’s just that your body is incapable of containing so much energy.”

“Same difference,” Zeke said to her.

“It’s really not.”

Not wanting to get into an argument, Zeke asked aloud, “Are we ready?”

“We’ve been waiting on you,” Eta said.

“Indeed, that is a question you should ask yourself,” agreed Jasper.

“Well, let’s get to it, then.”

With that, Zeke embraced [Triune Colossus], stepped forward, and opened the door before striding into the dungeon’s next room. The moment he passed the threshold, the world shimmered. Thankfully, the rest of the party came through the door just fine, and soon enough, they were all facing a new environment.

And like each of the previous rooms, it made no physical sense. Zeke stepped up to the edge of a cliff and looked down at thousands of feet of open air. It was wreathed in black mist, but every now and then, he caught sight of the landscape below. Or the creature.

“It looks like black noodles,” said Eveline. “If those noodles were alive and swimming in blood. So, more like a giant, eldritch tentacle monster. And are those eyes? I can’t tell.”

Indeed, staring up at them were thousands of eyes that were embedded in the slimy black tendrils. And even from such a distance, Zeke felt their hatred like a physical blow. Moreover, though he too far away to use [Inspect], he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that, if he or any of the others were to fall over the cliff, they would die soon after.

“I really don’t like this place,” Sasha said. Zeke glanced over to see that she’d approached the cliff as well, though she clung to Pudge’s arm. For his part, the former dire bear was scanning the area in front of them rather than studying the monster below.

“It is unnatural,” Eta agreed.

“Small blessing that we are up here while the creature remains below.”

“For now,” Zeke said. “Those tentacles look like they could reach this cliff.”

But fortunately, the monster seemed content to stay where it was, and after a few more moments, Zeke yanked his attention away and joined Pudge in studying the rest of the room. It was miles across, with a floating rock in the center. Huge chains stretched to the edge of the chamber, keeping that floating island in place. Without them, it would have surely gone all the way to the ceiling.

“Is it must me, or is the ceiling moving?” Zeke asked.

At that moment, a screech cut through the air, echoing off the walls and assailing Zeke’s ears. A second later, something detached from the ceiling. Then another. And another after that. Before long, there were hundreds of shapes in the air.

“More gargoyles,” Pudge said.

It had been some time since they’d entered the dungeon, but none of them had forgotten their first encounter with one of its denizens. That gargoyle had swooped in and very nearly ended their journey before it had even begun.

And now there were dozens of them. Perhaps even hundreds, just waiting to swoop down on them. On top of that, the cliff upon which they stood was only about five feet wide, which meant that there wasn’t enough room for fancy maneuvers. However, there was one good thing about the situation.

For the first time since the very beginning of the dungeon, Zeke stood on bare earth. And the ambient mana was appropriately attuned. The earth-attuned mana wasn’t nearly as dense as it had been back in the caverns and caves beneath Min Ferelik, but it was still more than enough to fuel Zeke’s transformation into a rocky behemoth.

In only a few seconds, he’d gone from the comparatively sleek, unattuned form of [Triune Colossus] to the bulky and jagged version that came from fueling it with earth-attuned mana.  With that came a marked increase in endurance and strength, which he hoped would stand him in good stead when the heavy, stone-bodied gargoyles swooped in.