Chapter 557

The path descended sharply, and the ambient mana thickened, turning viscous against Nick’s skin.

The glow of the upper tunnels gradually darkened, bleeding into a sullen yellow that did little to illuminate the way.

A lone mortal mage, no matter how talented, would quickly deplete their mana because casting even basic spells required so much.

Nick wasn’t bothered, but only because every action he took had become an expression of his soul. The dungeon couldn’t compete with that.

It did, however, explain why the Vael mages were moving so slowly. The monsters were certainly trouble, and their greed made progress take longer, but few of them had the mana to spare necessary to ignore the oppressive atmosphere.

Even basic light-making spells were costly in this place, and the more the spatial warping intensified, the worse the effects became.

The tunnel sloped downward, yet Nick’s inner ear insisted he was walking along a flat plane. The rock formations grew stranger, with sharp angles jutting out in ways that defied natural stone, creating optical illusions that made the passage seem both endlessly long and claustrophobically tight.

He welcomed the distortion, cataloging every shift, comparing the dungeon’s raw manipulation of space to the spells he had practiced earlier, and trying to glean more of the art’s inner secrets.

It was slow going; such was the difference between the two applications, but every bit of information was valuable, especially given his end goals.

The narrow passage finally opened, spilling out onto a smooth stone ledge overlooking a large chamber.

A shallow lake of still water covered the cavern floor, reflecting the crystals’ light. Jagged spires of topaz pierced the water's surface, forming in clustered, aggressive formations.

For a moment, Nick stood on the precipice and watched.

Mana flowed in a continuous current in this chamber, swirling around a central point like a whirlpool and drawing Nick’s gaze to the largest crystal cluster rising from the center of the dark lake.

“Come on, I know you’re there, and you know I’m here. Let’s get this over with,” he called, his voice echoing oddly.

The structure shifted in response.

A towering, humanoid figure detached itself from the central spire. It was composed of faceted yellow quartz and stood easily fifteen feet tall. It had no facial features, only a smooth plane of crystal where a head ought to be. Thick, segmented arms ended in wedge-shaped blades that scraped against the neighboring spires, sending sparks cascading across the water’s surface.

Compared to the foes he’d fought so far, this was a wholly different beast. In fact, it was among the strongest Guardians he’d seen, and it was above level ninety.

A creature born of the deep earth and abundant power, it was a physical manifestation of the dungeon's defensive will. Yet, as Nick analyzed its presence in the ether, a prickle of disappointment cooled his excitement.

No spatial affinity. I was sure it would. Damn it.

Unfortunately, this creature's power was unadulterated mass and elemental earth defense. The mana radiating from its armor was formidable, but it was remarkably straightforward. It lacked the subtle, reality-bending quality Nick required for his grafting ritual.

It was a bruiser, built to crush interlopers through overwhelming physical trauma.

Perfectly adequate as a Guardian, but wholly mundane.

It turned its featureless face toward the ledge, and the water rippled in time with the slow drag of its limbs.

It stepped away from the central cluster with deliberate movements, incredibly smooth for a creature of its bulk, exuding predatory grace. It raised a bladed arm and pointed the tip directly at Nick, as if answering his challenge.

A pulse of earth mana surged through the cavern, making the ground tremble violently.

Nick rolled his shoulders and sighed, stepping off the ledge and dropping thirty feet to the cavern floor. He landed lightly on the lake’s surface, his mana flaring to create tension that kept him from sinking.

This wasn't his target, but it was a necessary obstacle, and hopefully it would reveal something interesting.

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“Let’s hope you aren’t as disappointing as you seem,” he murmured.

The Guardian lunged.

Despite its towering height, it covered the distance in a fraction of a second. The water parted around its charging legs in a roaring wave, and it brought its right bladed arm down in a blow meant to cleave Nick in two.

Suppressing the urge to roll his eyes at the Guardian’s certainty that it would land, Nick lifted a hand and crafted a simple shield.

The crystal blade slammed into an invisible barrier. A thunderous crack echoed through the chamber, and the backlash shattered the lake's surface, sending a spray of dark water fifty feet into the air.

The impact alone would have liquefied a mid-level mage after shattering their shield.

The blade slid uselessly against his kinetic barrier, leaving the Guardian vulnerable, and he pushed forward, slipping inside its guard.

He formed a razor-thin kinetic edge along his right hand and drove it into the creature's midsection to test its resilience. The blade bit deep, shearing through dense earth mana and slicing a horizontal line across the Guardian's torso.

Nick spun away, gliding backward across the churning water to observe the result.

A deep fissure marred the construct's chest. But the victory was momentary. The ambient light in the chamber flared; dark water around the Guardian surged upward, wrapping around its torso like a liquid bandage. The fluid instantly calcified into fresh crystal, sealing the fissure and restoring the armor to pristine condition.

Nick hummed in understanding, cataloging the mechanic. The Guardian was a localized extension of the chamber itself. It drew limitless vitality directly from the leyline beneath the lake, using the water as a medium to rapidly forge new armor plating. A battle of attrition was mathematically foolish; the construct would regenerate endlessly as long as the dungeon's core fed it.

It really is quite a bit better than most of its kind. I wonder why that is?

The only answer he could come up with was that no one had interfered with this dungeon’s creation. In the Green Ocean, the Fae had taken it over almost immediately and even installed their own kind as Guardians. In the Sunlands, the Feral God had done the same.

Was this what a dungeon could become if left to develop naturally? Without anyone to siphon power for their own ends, would the others have grown so strong?

Huh, that’s kind of scary. I’m sure Marthas and Arthur could have handled this kind of enemy just as easily, but in the Sunlands, things might have been dicey.

The Guardian didn’t allow much time to think, quickly stabbing both bladed arms into the lake.

Dozens of razor-sharp crystal spikes shot up from the water's surface, hurtling toward Nick.

“[Spatial Displacement],” he muttered, concentrating to craft the right spellform.

The air wavered in front of him, and he grunted as he had to overclock the structure to catch every projectile, but eventually, he was surrounded on all sides by glowing shards.

With a flick of his wrist, Nick reversed the vectors.

The spikes shot back at the Guardian at twice their original velocity and struck the towering construct in a staccato of shattering stone, tearing chunks of armor from its shoulders and chest.

Again, the dark water surged, rushing to fill the gaps and to rebuild the broken crystal.

Nick sighed, letting his hands drop. The study was over. The creature offered no unique insights, only a flawless loop of elemental regeneration. It was time to break the circuit.

[Saga of the Storm Caller] came to life with a roar, banishing the shadows.

Blue-white lightning crackled across his knuckles, vaporizing the moisture in the air, and grew in intensity with every passing moment, constrained in its form only by his iron will.

The Guardian sensed the shift as it abandoned its defensive stance, charging blindly across the lake with both bladed arms raised for a final, desperate execution strike.

Nick thrust his palm forward.

A blinding beam of electrical force erupted from it, punching a hole straight through the Guardian’s torso. The sheer heat and power instantly vaporized the dense earth mana, but it didn’t stop there. The lightning branched outward, racing through the construct’s crystalline veins, overloading its internal circuitry in a fraction of a second, and severing its connection to the rest of the dungeon, preventing any further regeneration.

The towering figure froze as a spiderweb of glowing white cracks spread across its chest, racing up its neck and down its limbs. It let out a rumbling sound, then exploded.

A shockwave of pulverized yellow crystal and vaporized water blasted across the chamber as Nick stood firm at the center of the maelstrom, a kinetic shield effortlessly deflecting the shrapnel.

When the dust settled, the Guardian had disappeared.

A single topaz the size of a melon hovered above the churning water. It hummed with power, and he could tell it contained extremely pure earth mana.

If nothing else, I won’t be short on funds anytime soon. That should sell quite well in the capital.

Crooking a finger, he pulled the core toward him, then, after a moment of inspection, dropped it into his iron ring, satisfied with the prize.

That done, Nick turned his attention back to the cavern. The Guardian's death had altered the local mana. The mana whirlpool had ceased, leaving a stagnant calm in its wake. The crystals lining the walls dimmed, their light fading to a dull, listless glow.

Nick flew to the far edge of the dark lake, stepping onto the dry stone of the cavern wall. He closed his eyes and projected his spiritual senses into the bedrock.

He mapped the flow of energy, tracing the lines radiating from the shattered crystal spire. A dungeon's structure followed specific rules. The core needed stability to interface with the volatile leylines, and it achieved it by tethering itself to cardinal anchors—Outer Guardians strategically placed to secure its borders and funnel energy toward the center.

The Crystal Guardian he had just destroyed was only one point on a larger grid.

As he analyzed the remaining currents of mana flowing through the bedrock, Nick detected three distinct presences in the deep earth, each echoing from a different direction and feeding downward toward a central, unfathomable density.

The Starlit Caves were surrounded by a powerful spatial distortion that allowed the dungeon to fold impossible distances into a single valley. That distortion had to originate from a specific source, an entity serving as the conduit for the spatial warping. Since the Crystal Guardian was purely earth-aligned, the anchor remained hidden within one of the other nodes.

He just had to hunt them down until he found the right one.

Nick opened his eyes and stared into the dark tunnel that led deeper into the rift. The prospect of facing three more high-level beasts, followed by the Inner Guardian at the core, filled him with predatory anticipation, though he hoped he wouldn’t have to waste so much time, especially since explaining to Bluetear why the dungeon was broken would take quite a bit of fast-talking.

As long as I don’t take the core, it should be fine. Rebuilding its defenses may take some time, but that might even be a good thing.

Eventually, he chose the tunnel branching to the right, following the strongest concentration of mana. The air grew instantly colder, and the rock walls shifted from yellow crystal back to the dull white of the upper caves.

It wasn’t long before he was attacked, though the blind moles covered in crystals could do little more than scratch at his shields as he picked them apart, using as much spatial magic as he could.

A dull roar reached him as he dispatched the last, and his eyebrows rose in surprise.

“Someone got there ahead of me?”