BleedingTears
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Arcanist - Chapter 13
🕑 Added 2025-03-09 11:31:08 +0000 UTCTwo hours passed, and it was still dark in the cave. Dark with a graveyard of a stink coming from all around him. Water dripped from somewhere over the ceiling. That was the only sound. A tap and then another tap. The rhythm of it scarcely changed.
Valens picked himself up off the ground when he felt his mana source. He was ready, now, as ready as anyone caught in some twisted world could be. Questions were a dime a dozen here, and asking them one by one to Nomad proved, well, not particularly fruitful.
Nomad knew some things, and had little clue about the others, or rather, his kind cared not what the human populace was up to in their so-called peaceful lands. The Undead were mostly busy with dealing with demons caged in the bowels of the earth, and only heed to the calls they thought of as profitable.
It was a sick cycle, Valens came to realize, as the Undead had no other way to breed but to rely on corpses lent to this Eternal War. Used to be humans themselves, once, but after they had their hearts forged into stones they came alive as strange creatures fixated on a single mission.
So then, he presumed, it was only right for Nomad to not have a deep understanding of human society. If what he’d told him was true, though, humans were fighting somewhere in this cave system. Real humans who were a part of this guild called Duality.
Valens couldn’t wait to meet with some of them.
They moved onward silent as cats, Valens picking each of his steps with care, his mind ever-focused on the Resonance as he kept an eye across the stretch. He was brutally hungry, and parched as a man thrown out into the edge of a desert, hoping to chance his way into an oasis to quench some of his thirst.
He could conjure some water from the humidity in the air, of course, and there was some of it pooled over the holes across the ground, but by no means did he have any trust in it. The rot was heavy in here, and chances were, it blended into the water like an insidious poison.
Head kept low, mind blurry with all the strangeness that coated over him, he followed Nomad through the cave. The path was windy ahead, but thanks to Nomad’s bulk he could barely feel it.
By the time they came across another corner the ceiling started shaking, bits of gravel raining down in trickles from above them. Through his sound vision Valens tried to get a picture of what was happening, but the thick layer of stone and soil blurred the frequencies into a tangled mess.
“Back off,” Nomad said, holding his sword at the ready. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
Bits and pieces sprinkled about as another part of the ceiling started moving. It soon spread to the greater half of the rock, the outer layer trembling continuously as whatever force was drilling into it grew stronger.
“We should move,” Valens suggested. Standing under a ceiling shaking madly seemed hardly a sensible act. “We don’t have to actually wait and see what’s causing it, right?”
Nomad seemed to consider the words before giving him a nod. “Try to keep up, then. I don’t want to turn back just to scrape your paste from the ground.”
“You’re not very nice, are you?” Valens pursed his lips, and nudged him ahead. “Go, get a run on. I’ll show you a cool trick.”
Nomad gave him one last glance before bolting forward.
Valens immediately got to work, preparing a Blockage with his newly boosted mana pool. He fixed the spell with mana threads to the various parts of his body, connecting each thread to his mana core for continuous supply.
That done, he stretched his legs and leaned forward like one of those athletes competing in the spring festival games. It took him a moment to prepare a pair of Gales in his hands, weaving the web of spell threads round his fingers before he stopped.
Something is odd with the Resonance.
Gales felt different around his hands. Stronger, and sharper than before, but also lacking in a strange way. The frequencies had an uneven tune about them, as if their rhythm was broken. But before he could check further, the ground shook underneath his feet.
I can’t linger around.
With a deep breath he focused on the apathy and put his palms facing backward. He released both Gales at the same time.
The air roared around him as the spells launched him forward. The walls flashed past. Bits of gravel bounced painfully from his body. He nearly crashed into the ceiling when the force threatened to go out of control. This wasn’t the same spell he’d used to mess around in the Academy.
It had changed.
Still, he managed to twist himself in mid-leap, pulling his legs overhead to kick himself back to the ground. Then, with another twist, he placed one foot down and pushed his body through the cave, easing down on the mana supply being fed to the Gales even though the spell could take much more.
That was dangerous.
*Ding! [Gale(Master) : 1 > 2]
Sweat trickled down his face. He was rather rusty with practice, but soon managed to find his touch round the ground, taking a step between each burst of Gale to direct his way through the path.
Ding! You have learned the Class Skill ‘Light Feet - Master.’ Do you want to register it in one of your skill slots?
Valens accepted. Though the name ‘Light Feet’ earned an arched eyebrow from him, the notification didn’t come as a surprise. The Wind Magi, specialized in the feats of travel and such, often used this same method for trains or even air balloons. Granted, they had to fix a good deal of Wards around the aforementioned vehicles of travel to manage the balance.
A human’s body, though, just needed a pair of Wards clutched in one’s hand and a simple spell formula for Gale transcribed on the conductive tool. For Valens, turning the neutral mana in his core to Wind mana was basically done naturally with the initiation of the spell.
Ding! The Class Skill ‘Light Feet - Master’ has been registered into your skill slots.
Remaining Class Skill Slots (8/10)
Through the dark corridor, from under the trembling ceiling of the cave he darted, until he caught sight of Nomad bounding ahead. Each of Nomad’s steps crushed the poor moss underneath. He still had his sword clutched in one hand, ready to spin for a move in the case of need.
And he did just that, barely stopping the weapon an inch before Valens’s face when they crossed eyes.
“Nine Hells!” he growled, emerald eyes blinking in surprise as he strained and corrected himself mid-air before continuing with his jog. “You never told me that you can fly!”
“I can’t,” Valens answered matter of factly. He gestured with his head to his feet. “See? I’m just walking with some support on my back.”
Nomad looked greatly disturbed at the movement of Valens’s feet. He said, “You’re blasting yourself forward. How’s that fair?”
“Nothing’s fair in any world,” Valens muttered with a smile tugging at his lips.
Side by side, they kept at it, the ceiling still moving dangerously above them. Fist-sized rocks had joined the tiny pebbles raining down upon their heads. Valens even caught sight of a shining claw that ripped out a great chunk with minimal effort, tossing it randomly down across the cave before moving onto a different part.
“Are those… claws?” he said. “I think there are claws coming out from the ceiling.”
“Shit! They must be moles. What the hell are they doing here?” Nomad cursed.
Valens sure would have liked an answer to that question.
Nomad’s sword did a respectable effort at blasting the larger rocks, sending them spinning madly about the cave, some of them clanking off from his silvery plate, but lacking in the equipment and the Endurance departments, Valens had to dodge around the raining bits and stick close to Nomad’s side.
Something dropped from the ceiling. Right into Valens’s chest. The furry claws clutched at his shoulders as though a monkey grabbing at a tree branch, the sharp tips digging painfully into his flesh. The creature itself glanced curiously at Valens, its little eyes barely visible in the thick fur coating around them.
“It’s really a mole!” Valens winced as he nearly lost control. By sheer will alone he kept his palms facing backward. Even a little move would’ve sent him crashing into the walls. Still, he shook himself and tried to wriggle out of the creature’s hold.
The sword did the job for him. It cut a smooth way through the middle of the beast, spurting dark blood all across Valen’s face, leaving only a pair of clawed and gnarled arms still clutched at Valens’s shoulders.
“Fucking Steelmoles! They just don’t know when to let go,” Nomad muttered as they slowed down and came to a skidding stop.
Valens used the opportunity to wrench the claws off from his shoulders, followed by a hasty pair of Lifeward and Lifesurge to fix the damage, wincing as the mana threads stitched the flesh back to smooth. Then he rasped out a breath and glanced over his shoulders.
It was raining moles in the cave.
“This can’t be real,” he said, wiping the sweat off his face and giving Nomad a look when the undead stayed there silent with an odd expression behind his visor. “Say something. What the hell are these things?”
Nomad clicked his greenish tongue. “Mindless beasts. Always seeking an opportunity to mess with the dead.”
More creatures plopped down to the ground and shook off the gravel around their fur. The largest one came about Valens’s waist, with its claws emanating a dangerous set of frequencies that dinned inside his mind. Their dot-like eyes lacked any sort of glint, stooped backs slick with fur. All in all, they really looked like a bunch of overfed moles.
Valens checked that large one.
[Steelmole Carver - Level ??]
“I can’t see its level,” he muttered. “It must be strong.”
Nomad snorted. “Level 75. A damn adult, that one. You know the only thing they do is to dig the ground and bully the newly roused. Those claws can cut through bones like nothing.”
The trouble was, they weren’t digging now. They were staring at Nomad.
“They don’t just happen to plop here without any reason, right?” Valens glanced doubtfully into Nomad’s eyes, who averted his gaze and shrugged. “Why are they giving you that look? What have you done to these little animals?”
“Look, it’s complicated. They hate us, and we hate them. But you don’t actually believe I deserve a horde on my back, do you? Clearly they were running away from the fight above. This is all a big coincidence.”
“Coincidence?”
Valens heard that word used for quite a few things. It was the first time he’d seen an intelligent corpse use it for a horde of twisted moles glaring daggers into its face.
“What do we do now?” he asked. There was a difference between raining a fire storm from high up where none of the Skeletons could reach and facing off a horde of beasts who seemed to bear a special grudge against the Undead.
Nomad rested his sword over his shoulder and said, “We wait. We can’t outrun them here under the ground. Bastards are too damn quick on their little feet. We’ll wait and hope that they’ll not take their anger out on us.”
“What do you mean ‘us’? I didn’t do anything,” Valens said with a frown. “Are you trying to drag me to the old feud between your kinds? I’m afraid the most I can do is to give you moral support.”
Nomad managed to look disappointed with a tilt of his head. “We have fought together. Through the flames. Through the bones. Now’s not the time to turn your back to your company. I know Priests hate this kind of combat, but you’ve to man up and shoulder the responsibility.”
“That’s… What?”
“Looks like they’ve decided,” Nomad said and wrapped his hands around the sword as the horde stirred before them, dozens of moles inching slowly closer. “Get ready.”
Valens didn’t have a chance to answer when the first line of moles darted forward. He hurriedly pulled his hands up and called a pair of Fireballs, sending them blazing toward the shining claws.
……..
