Chapter 288: Loud Julie

The descent through the winding fault line felt like crawling down the throat of an ancient, petrified titan.

The jagged walls of Sector 4 pressed inward, narrowing until the four heroes and Julie had to walk single-file over slick, moss-covered shale. Fifty years of trapped plague energy lingered in the stale air, making every breath feel strangely cold despite the heat around them. The sharp smell of split quartz and raw Qi filled the narrow passage.

Nicholas walked at the front, his footsteps silent against the uneven stone. His dark blue eyes watched the shadows ahead, paying attention to the faint vibrations moving through the rock beneath his feet.

Beside him, Zero carried his unsheathed longsword at his side. The purple gemstone in the crossguard glowed with a steady rhythm, casting violet light across the rough ceiling. The stone seemed to draw in the energy around them, turning it into a layer of silver-white Qi that wrapped around Zero’s forearm.

"The resonance is peaking," Zero said quietly, his raspy voice barely rising above the distant roar of underground water. "We are directly above the primary node. Whatever Ikar buried here, it’s resting just beneath this shelf."

Behind them, Julie stumbled over a twisted root of glowing purple flora and let out a sharp squeak before catching herself against the cavern wall.

"Ugh, this stuff is sticky!" Julie whispered, quickly pulling her gloved hand away from the glowing sap with a disgusted look. She immediately checked her camera gimbal and tapped through the small monitor. "Battery at twenty-one percent. If this cave doesn’t open up into something cinematic in the next three minutes, I am going to have an emotional collapse right here on the shale."

"Keep your voice down, Julie," Selena cautioned in a tight whisper, glancing toward the dark cracks above them. Her sidearm was drawn, while her free hand rested on the empty containment case secured to her chest. "The sound carries in these narrow shafts. They could hear you from a mile away."

"I am whispering!" Julie hissed back. "This is my indoor voice! And by the way, Phantom, this footage is going to do numbers. Look at that moody silhouette you’ve got going on. That’s at least two million impressions on the teaser trailer alone."

"Thirty percent," Nicholas reminded her without turning around.

Julie rolled her eyes so hard that her oversized safari hat slipped over her brow. "You are relentless. Truly, an extortionist in tactical boots."

Before Selena could tell her to be quiet again, the narrow rock passage abruptly ended.

The walls fell away into nothingness.

The strike team stepped onto a massive natural stone balcony overlooking an enormous underground grotto.

The cavern stretched nearly half a mile across, with a ceiling hundreds of feet above them, hidden behind swirling clouds of glowing green mist. Huge crystal formations hung from the darkness overhead, dripping emerald-tinted water into a vast black lake far below.

At the center of the lake stood an ancient, hexagonal island made of black, hardened stone.

At its highest point sat a natural stone altar.

And resting in the center of that altar was the prize.

The second master power crystal.

The gemstone was easily the size of a man’s torso, carved into sharp geometric facets. Deep emerald light pulsed from within it, bathing the entire cavern in an eerie green glow. With every pulse, a heavy tremor passed through the lake and into the surrounding rock, strong enough to make their teeth rattle.

"Look at the size of it..." Selena breathed, her visor struggling to adjust to the crystal’s brightness. "The shard in the clone’s chest was barely the size of an arrowhead. That entire stone... it’s generating enough energy to lift this whole mountain range."

"It’s pure," Zero said, his eyes reflecting the emerald light. "Untouched by the Dominion fleet. Ikar placed it here to ground the eastern tectonic shelf."

"Then we cross the water, lock it in the containment case, and get out," Vixen said, stepping toward the edge of the balcony. Spatial energy was already gathering around her boots. "I can fold space and drop us right on the altar."

"Hold," Nicholas said.

His arm shot out, stopping Vixen before she could move.

Nicholas wasn’t looking at the glowing emerald crystal.

He was looking at the black water surrounding the island.

The lake was completely still, almost like black glass, except for a massive circular ripple slowly spreading outward from beneath the altar.

The water wasn’t moving because of an underground current.

Something beneath it was pushing the water aside.

THUMP.

The deep, rhythmic heartbeat they had heard earlier wasn’t coming from the stone.

It was coming from beneath the island.

The calm lake suddenly began to boil. Bubbles burst across the surface as the seismic hum grew into a deafening roar that shook the stone balcony beneath their feet.

"Step back from the ledge," Nicholas commanded, his voice suddenly cold.

The water exploded.

Thousands of tons of black water shot into the air as an enormous creature rose from the depths around the altar.

The mountain behemoth was colossal, easily eighty feet tall, with a huge hunched body covered in overlapping plates of black stone. Jagged emerald crystals had grown directly from its flesh after fifty years of feeding on the power stone. Four massive arms slammed onto the edge of the island, their curved stone claws cracking the bedrock beneath them.

Its head was a grotesque triangle without eyes, covered by a jagged crown of crystal horns. A wide mouth split across its face, filled with hundreds of translucent teeth that ground together as it opened its jaws.

The creature drew in a massive breath of the poisonous mist around it. Thick streams of boiling green sludge spilled from its mouth, sizzling as they struck the stone below.

Then it roared.

ROOOOAAAR!

The sound shook the entire cavern. Crystal formations broke loose from the ceiling and came crashing down toward the stone balcony.

"Spatial fold!" Vixen shouted, thrusting both palms upward.

She tore open a wide rift above their heads. The falling crystal boulders disappeared into it before emerging from another rift and crashing harmlessly into the distant lake.

Julie dropped to the ground, covering her head as her camera stabilizer bounced against the stone.

"That is not a cave monster! That is an actual mountain with teeth! What did you bring me to?!"

Nicholas didn’t answer.

Plague Touch.

Dense, pitch-black energy spread across Nicholas’s arms, taking shape until it formed a massive seven-foot double-edged broadsword made from condensed Void power.

"Zero, Vixen, draw its focus away from the altar!" Nicholas ordered, his voice cutting through the beast’s roar. "Selena, stay high with Julie and prepare the suppression seals!"

"Understood!" Zero called, leaping from the edge of the balcony.

He dropped toward the lake, but before he touched the water, he swung his longsword. The purple gemstone flashed brightly, releasing a crescent of silver-white Qi that cut across the lake and pushed him forward onto a group of floating boulders near the island.

Vixen blurred across the cavern, warping from place to place as she moved around the beast’s blind spots and attacked from the high crystal formations.

The behemoth’s horned crest suddenly flared with emerald light.

It slammed two of its massive arms into the island, sending the power from the master stone deep into the earth.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!

Dozens of fifteen-foot stone spikes burst from the ground and tore across the lake toward the balcony.

Nicholas moved.

Gravity Distortion.

He threw himself from the ledge, changing his own gravity in midair and shooting forward. As he fell, he brought the massive black broadsword down in a sweeping strike, Void energy crackling along its edge.

SHIK-BOOM!

The black blade smashed through the rising stone spikes, breaking them apart before they could reach the others.

Nicholas landed near the island’s shore in a low crouch, his eyes locking onto the behemoth as it prepared another attack.

High above the battlefield, hidden inside the darkness of a collapsed ventilation shaft near the cavern ceiling, three figures watched the fight.

Sniper lay on his stomach with the barrel of his rifle resting against a jagged rock. He wasn’t aiming at the roaring behemoth.

His scope was fixed on the center of the island, directly on the unguarded altar where the massive emerald crystal continued to pulse.

Beside him, Shadow knelt in the darkness, her pale hands pressed against the cold stone as she kept the three of them hidden beneath a layer of shifting shadows.

Hexi stood behind them.

His bruised face stretched into a wide, feverish grin, his bloodshot eyes reflecting the green light from the altar below. His fingers dug into the rock wall, his injured ribs forgotten as he watched Nicholas, Zero, and Vixen struggle against the enormous creature.

"Look at them..." Hexi whispered, his voice trembling with excitement as black miasma began curling around his fingers. "The beast has them completely pinned down. The altar is wide open."

Hexi stepped closer to the edge of the ledge, greed flashing across his face.

"Shadow... prep the jump. We take the stone right out from under their noses."

Below them, on the stone island, Nicholas drove his black blade into the behemoth’s armored shoulder, drawing a deafening roar from the creature.

The earth trembled.

The battle for the master power stone was reaching its peak.

And in the shadows above, the strike was about to begin.