Victor of Tucson-Chapter 23Book 10: : Crucible Redux

23 – Crucible Redux

Victor stood atop a mound of monstrous corpses, watching as Arona fired a beam of sunlight from her outstretched staff, obliterating a great swath of the army that surrounded them. Her eyes blazed with the solar Energy, and a mad smile had affixed itself to her face as she annihilated hundreds of the fire-attuned undead that climbed from the crevasse in a seemingly never-ending onslaught.

Victor chuckled, his Iron Berserk allowing some levity to enter his mind as he took a breather to watch his partner go to work. The encounter was made for her; the destructive power of her solar-attuned Energy seemed to be tailor-made for the destruction of the undead. This was their third gate, and though Victor had done the brunt of the work on the prior two, she was definitely carrying the lion’s share of the burden on this one.

It wasn’t that Victor couldn’t have slain the hordes; she was just faster at it. Watching her, he decided that it was nice to have a partner. He’d been able to experiment with some of his new spells without having to fear burning through his Energy reserves. If he ran low, he just fought with his axe and let Arona do the heavy lifting for a while. He’d created several differently-attuned Core Domains, including one fueled by fear, which had been, in his opinion, a literal waking hell. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use it in a duel, but if he did, he almost pitied his foe.

Neither he nor Arona had gained a level from clearing the first two gates, but Victor had high hopes for this one. They’d already slain tens of thousands of the undead, and the monsters continued to climb their way out of the massive rift that ran parallel to the road through Du’s hellish gauntlet of a dungeon. As Arona finished wiping the field clear of active enemies, her solar beam flickered and winked out, its buzzing hum fading from Victor’s ears long enough for him to hear her shout, “Are they endless? Should we seek their source?”

Victor grinned, shaking his head. “I don’t think so. Du likes to throw large hordes of enemies at challengers to his dungeon. At least that was my experience.”

“Right. You told me about the hundred-thousand.” Arona’s voice was raspy but dry with restrained humor. “I’ve used nearly half my Core’s potential.”

“Just take it easy for a while, then. Let me go to work.” With that, Victor leaped from the top of his mound of smoldering skeletal corpses and charged a cluster of undead as they clambered out of the fissure. With their numbers thinned for the moment, it was easy to run from group to group, smashing them to bits as they gained their footing. As more and more escaped the chasm, and he began to feel the pressure of their burning, black-iron weapons, he’d cast Velocity Mantle for a short burst of speed, slaughtering them en masse, before letting the spell drop to conserve Energy.

He could feel that his Core was getting to the point where it could almost regenerate enough Energy per second to maintain his Iron Berserk indefinitely. Almost, but not quite. As long as he remained berserk, he slowly burned down his reserves, and any additional spell he cast only hastened that process. Despite the ease with which he dispatched the monstrous undead, eventually, their numbers began to climb into the hundreds and then thousands again, and he was forced to fight defensively, swinging Lifedrinker in great arcs as he backpedaled toward Arona.

“Ready?” he shouted over his shoulder.

“Yes!”

With her response, Victor sent a stream of Energy into the pathways that ignited his fiery wings, and he launched himself into the air. Immediately, Arona’s beam of solar Energy erupted, annihilating the fresh horde of undead. Victor landed beside her, watching as she blasted their enemies into ash. When she was finished wiping the field clear, he charged the chasm again, starting the process over as he pounded the undead clawing their way up onto the stony ground.

They repeated the same strategy a dozen times, and Victor began to think he’d have to cancel Iron Berserk for a while and fight with his natural strength as his Core recovered. As Arona wiped out the horde for the thirteenth or fourteenth time, though, he noted a marked decline in the number of undead climbing forth. He charged among them, slaughtering them with abandon, and in just a few minutes, he found himself with no enemies left to fight.

***Congratulations! You have cleared the third gate of the Crucible of Fire! Collect your reward inside the gatehouse!***

Victor couldn’t help noticing that he was no longer getting a second message from Du about clearing “group-rated” challenges as a solo adventurer. He’d also noted a marked decrease in the apparent value of the treasures inside the gatehouses. He couldn’t blame the Dungeon Core for conserving its “influence points,” but he hoped he wasn’t wasting his time. He hoped he was still making significant progress toward leveling.

It wasn’t so easy to tell; he was solidly in tier eight now, and, according to everyone, Arona included, the difference between levels 85 and 75 was enormous. Even so, as he watched the thick pools of Energy gathering over the slaughtered undead, he felt hopeful that this infusion would push him over. He looked at Arona and arched an eyebrow. “Ready?”

She smiled, clutching her silvery staff. “Always.”

He nodded, trying to think of something clever to say, but then the Energy hit him, and he was made senseless, his conscious mind blown free of his body like a feather before a gust of wind. His awareness drifted through what he took to be some sort of cosmic adventure; he saw clusters of stars and icy planetoids, and then, somehow, he swept down through a dense atmosphere, and he saw the toils and battles of great, obscure figures—shadowy giants that carved mountains from the earth and battled serpents whose lengths were measured in miles.

As he slowly came back to himself, Victor wondered if he was seeing the dreams of his primordial ancestors, those great titans that came even before the Quinametzin. His experience with Azforath brought those questions to mind as he recalled the ancient titan’s claim to be a “world maker and a world breaker.” The disjointed images had a dreamlike quality, but Victor supposed ancient memories buried in his blood—or, more likely, DNA—could be stirring with the massive influx of Energy.

Sitting on the ground, musing over the weird visions, he was vaguely aware of the System message waiting for him to read. He put it off, though, as his mind chased wild theories. He wondered about the sensation of flying through space that he often had during such visions. He wondered if some ancient progenitor had hurtled through the cosmos, comet-like. The image made him smile, picturing a mighty, frozen titan smashing into the Earth and spawning a lineage there.

Shaking his head, amused by his fanciful daydream, Victor focused on the System’s message:

***Congratulations! You have achieved level 85 Warlord and gained 24 intelligence and 17 vitality.***

***Congratulations! Your Feat, Warborn Mind has become Greater Warborn Mind, doubling its effects.***

Victor stared at the second message for several long seconds. “No wonder people like the Warlord Class.” Just like that, he’d gained more than twenty extra points for both dexterity and agility. Interested in the actual numbers, he opened his status page and focused on his attributes:

Strength:

680 (780)

Vitality:

870

Dexterity:

280 (338)

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Agility:

303 (361)

Intelligence:

292

Will:

673

Thanks to the crown atop his head, his strength had an extra hundred points, and his ever-increasing intelligence was providing fifty-eight extra points to his dexterity and agility. The best part about the feat was that it wasn’t conditional on him retaining the Warlord Class. He wondered how that would factor into things when he became a steel seeker and had to forge his own archetype.

A burning in his chest brought him out of his daydreams, and Victor touched his aegis, sending it into storage. Peering down at his chest, he frowned, irritated to see the spot of void Energy was slightly larger. He’d hoped gaining a level would set the curse back a bit.

Arona’s raspy voice intruded on his dour thoughts. “It’s looking worse.”

“Nice of you to notice.” Victor stood and summoned his armor again, carefully stuffing his arms into it before sealing the seam with a wave of his hand. He looked at Arona, who was staring at the ground, her eyes distant. Had he been too harsh with her? Her social skills were lacking, but he didn’t have to take offense just because she was blunt with him. He tried to change the topic. “Did you gain a level?”

Arona shook her head. “No, but I feel I’m close.”

“Damn. Four battles and not one level? Tier nine is no joke, eh?”

“Indeed not.” She sighed. “Shall we see if the dungeon will award us anything more interesting?” She gestured toward the distant gatehouse, and Victor nodded, leading the way. So far, Du had awarded them precious metals, sacks of Energy beads, and two Energy hearts—one attuned to fire and the other poison. When they entered the gatehouse, Victor nodded to the chest, giving Arona the opportunity to open it. He’d opened the two before, and they’d had an entertaining discussion speculating on whether it made a difference who opened reward chests.

As the glittering golden steam and motes of Energy faded, Arona peered into the chest and shrugged. “More beads and several diamonds the size of my thumb.”

“All right. Take your share.”

“I don’t need more wealth.” She stood and walked toward the gateway to the next section of the crucible.

Victor approached the chest, shaking his head. “I don’t either.”

“Then give it to your loved ones. Build something in your town. I don’t have such things to worry about.”

“Not yet. You’re not a Death Caster anymore, Arona. You need to consider that you might start building a life you want to cultivate.”

She nodded and looked at him, smiling faintly. “Thank you, Victor. I’m not destitute, and I promise I’ll speak up if something appears that I would dearly love to have. Until then, I’ll save my favors.”

Victor nodded and reached down to collect the sack of beads. Considering they were attuned with multiple affinities, he figured the sack’s value at around a hundred thousand. The pile of diamonds was beautiful; each cut expertly and, as Arona had said, quite large. He wondered what they could be used for other than jewelry. He would imagine such perfect gemstones could be enchanted with potent magics. With a shrug, he sent them into his storage ring.

When he joined Arona in the gateway, he surveyed the landscape before them. It was another canyon with high walls, but about halfway to the next gate, he saw a squat, dark stone structure. It looked like a keep, though small. “Think we’ll need to destroy it?” he asked.

“Perhaps. Or perhaps we’re supposed to occupy it and defend it. Will the dungeon tell us?”

“Yeah, it usually does.” Victor stepped out of the gateway, and when Arona followed, a message floated before their eyes:

***Congratulations! You have reached the fourth gate of the Crucible of Fire! Defend the citadel—its destruction will mean defeat.***

As Victor read the message, dark shadows moved in his peripheral vision, and when he looked up, he saw enormous swarms of black beetles with glowing red eyes pouring out of tunnels near the base of the cliffs. “Were those tunnels there before?”

“No! They make more as we watch!” Arona pointed, and Victor saw she was right; the beetles, each about the size of a small car, were pushing out of the ground, streaming in great numbers toward the stone structure at the canyon's center.

Victor’s fiery wings exploded from his back, and he launched into the air. “See you there!”

Arona wasn’t going to be outdone. In a blinding flash of white light, she blinked out of existence and reappeared halfway to the “citadel.” Victor laughed and focused on the distant rampart, forming the spell pattern for Tactical Reposition. His stomach lurched as he rushed through the gap instantly and found himself hovering over this rampart, his fiery wings dripping magma on the dark stone blocks. He released his wings and hefted Lifedrinker, watching the approaching swarms of beetles.

“I’ll take this side!” Arona yelled, and he turned to see her standing on the ramparts, watching the beetles approach from that direction.

“Right!” Victor moved to the other side of the keep, focusing on the wave of dark insects. Looking more closely, he saw smoke drifting from their mouths, and he knew they were going to be spitting or breathing fire. “Shit,” he said, a new idea entering his mind. He turned and hollered, “Arona! Don’t let them get close! I think they’ll explode!”

She nodded, leveling her staff toward the oncoming wave, and, as before, a beam of solar energy tore through the air. Victor watched as first one, then ten, then a hundred of the enormous beetles exploded like they were packed with TNT. “Holy shit!” he laughed, then he stared at the incoming wave on his side. He bunched his legs, leaping at them. Halfway through the air, he cast Volcanic Fury; if he was going to be standing in a horde of exploding beetles, he wanted all the fire resistance he could muster.

As his body surged with power and scorching rage, he roared his lust for battle and killing, and then he smashed onto one of the beetles, crushing it beneath his enormous, powerful form. Fire and heat billowed out of the dead creature, rippling through the teeming horde, knocking them back, toppling them, and generally slowing their advance. Victor laughed and, without thought, stomped his titanic foot, casting Wake the Earth.

Thankfully, he was a hundred yards or more from the little citadel, and when the earth buckled and split, smashing and swallowing hundreds of the giant beetles, only some mortar shook loose from the walls. The resultant wave of explosions filled Victor’s rage-fueled heart with joy. He waded among the horde of bugs, ripping his wonderful axe left and right, popping them like ticks under a hammer.

The bugs were single-minded in their desire to get to the keep, but Victor and Arona were thorough—he in his rage and desire to destroy and her in her methodical use of clever, precise spells. Not only did she blast the incoming beetles with rays of solar Energy, but she summoned storms of sunlight-filled globes that fell from the sky like brilliant, slow-motion raindrops, burning through everything they touched, causing the beetles to explode as their volatile innards were exposed.

If Victor hadn’t been so engrossed in his slaughter, enjoying the explosive destruction, he might have been angry or envious or at least frustrated to see Arona slay her horde several minutes before he was done. When the battle was over, and he stood heaving on a blackened, blasted battlefield, she hung back by the keep, staying out of his line of sight; he’d taught her not to tempt the rage in his heart when he took on the mantle of the Volcano’s fury. For his part, Victor paced the battlefield, desperate for something more to kill until, nearly ten full minutes after the last of the beetles was dead, his anger began to cool.

The surge of Energy from the dead assailants finally sent his fury into complete remission, and Victor found himself standing amid their remains, leaning on Lifedrinker. The only message that awaited him was the one from the dungeon informing him of his victory and encouraging him to find his reward in the gatehouse. He looked at the citadel and saw Arona sitting on the ramparts, staring into space. “Heh.” He started toward her, fairly sure she’d finally gained a level.

He focused on the rampart beside her and cast Tactical Reposition. When he stood beside her, he squatted and asked, “Are you still out of it?”

“I’ve regained level ninety-four.”

“Nice one.” He held out a hand, and when she took it, he hauled her to her feet. “Do you like your new affinity?”

She smiled at him, genuine amusement in her eyes. “Imagine how you’ll feel when that curse is gone.”

“That bad, huh?”

“That good!” She nodded toward the distant gate. “See you at the reward chest.” Then she flashed with brilliant golden light and reappeared halfway between the citadel and the gatehouse. Victor chuckled and launched himself off the rampart, summoning his fiery wings as he began to feel gravity pulling him. He swooped down, black smoke trailing behind him, and skidded to a halt on the stones inside the gatehouse. Arona was there before him, but not by much.

“Go ahead,” he nodded at the chest.

“Again?”

“Sure. I opened two. Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

With a nod and smiling faintly, Arona approached the chest and lifted the lid. When the steam cleared, she exclaimed, “Oh, my!”

“What?” Victor stepped closer, and Arona lifted out a glittering, crystalline scepter. It was about two feet long, and one end was bulbous—a glittering ball of perfectly cut angles that sparkled like a diamond. At its very center, Victor could see a small fiery heart burning like a tiny, miniature sun.

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“It’s attuned to solar Energy, Victor!”

Victor nodded, rubbing his chin. “Hmm. I think that tricky little guy is still trying to hook us up. I wonder… Do you think it’s solar-attuned because you opened the chest? Would something else have been waiting if I opened it?”

Arona shrugged. “I wish I knew how to tell.”

“Well, obviously, you should keep that. I’ll open the next few to see if something drops that’s more suitable for me. That fair?”

“Of course! If you want to sell this at auction, I’m sure it would—"

Victor waved a hand. “Don’t be ridiculous. Come on. Let’s see what’s next.” He grinned and hefted Lifedrinker onto his shoulder. “We’ve got three more gates and then the boss. Hopefully, we’ll fight something big.”

“Something big?” Arona followed him to the far side of the gatehouse.

Victor nodded. “Yeah. Something like a dragon would be cool.”