A Soldier's Life-Chapter 288: Speed Run

Chapter 288: Speed Run

“Don’t blame Mateo,” Glasha said, smirking. “He was quite drunk, and I have been told I am quite persuasive.” Mateo was hiding innocuously behind Maveith.

“Did you use magic on him?” Raelia said accusingly.

“No,” Glasha stated defiantly, with a quiet snarl. The orc and elf stared each other down under the strobing lights of the dungeon.

“Well, it’s done. It is not a dangerous secret unless Glasha plans to use it against us,” I said, breaking the tension.

“I have no intention of doing so, even if you do not aid Mynasha.”

“How can the cleric Mynasha help me free my sister?” Maveith said in his deep voice. We all turned to face the cleric. Maveith added, “I thought clerics were not allowed to own slaves, and only warlords were afforded that privilege in the Caliphate.”

Glasha nodded in agreement. “That is true. But the Supreme has the power to free any slave, even one owned by a warlord.”

I frowned, realizing where this was going. “The only way she can help us is if she becomes the Supreme Cleric?”

A wide grin formed across Glasha’s face. “Yes.”

I groaned. “Let’s complete the dungeon, and we will meet with your cleric friend,” I said loudly, shelving the discussion for now. I saw Maveith getting excited at the prospect. Maybe he was thinking he was closer to getting his sister back. Or maybe he thought that he could free all the goliath slaves in the Caliphate.

I turned to the chamber. It was dotted with large black stones that made moving within it difficult. The lurkers would most likely attack during the dark phase of the strobing ceiling moss. I tried to recall everything I could from Hearne’s lessons and my bestiaries.

Lurkers were nightmarish creatures that resembled hideous manta rays with impressive ten-foot wingspans or larger. They had sacs that they filled with air to float. I only knew this because a skilled alchemist could make levitation potions from those sacs.

Their skin had a camouflage that allowed them to blend seamlessly into their surroundings, making them nearly invisible until it was too late. As they swooped down from above with their massive wings spread wide, they aimed to engulf their unsuspecting victims. If you happened to be alone when one of these monstrous beings descended upon you, becoming ensnared in its constricting wings would spell your doom. The pressure would immobilize you, leaving you utterly helpless as its circular maw of serrated teeth chewed on you.

As I surveyed the dimly lit chamber, I quickly formulated a plan. “Raelia,” I called out decisively, “we need your fireball to strike at the pair lurking on the far side of the chamber. Can you reach them?”

Raelia took her eyes off of Glasha. Raelia’s trust had been broken after Glasha seduced Mateo to pump him for information. Raelia turned, scanned the chamber, and nodded. “It is within my range, but I cannot charge a fireball until I step into the room.”

“Not a problem. We will give you the time you need. Maveith, you will target the one over the entrance, and I will handle the other two. I will toss my glowstone into the room to keep it lit.” Mateo looked ready to join us in the fight. “Mateo, if any of us are captured, it is your job to cut us free. But don’t enter unless one of us is in danger.”

We prepared and Maveith entered first with me directly behind him. I tossed the glowstone to the center of the room at the moss’s brightest phase. As the moss dimmed, the lurker above the door dropped toward Maveith. He was prepared, and with a grunt, his hammer connected, folding the large creature like a bedsheet.

With the combat underway, the two figures in the corner of the ceiling glided down toward us. Annoyingly, the pair on the far wall also left their perch to approach. While Raelia’s fireball was growing, I focused on the two approaching me. They were silently gliding toward us in a controlled approach. I made the decision to go on the offensive. I used one of the black boulders to leap and meet the closest lurker in the air.

Boris’s runic blade removed a large portion of the wing, and a hissing sound from the wound echoed in the chamber while blood sprayed. The creature couldn’t control its descent and crashed to my right. Instead of falling to the floor, I landed on an air shield that appeared beneath my feet, allowing me to hack the second lurker as it approached.

I wasn’t as successful in this attack, and the lurker’s mass managed to knock me off my improvised platform. The impact also wasted my aether shield as a blue flash flared. I landed awkwardly as Raelia yelled, “Fireball!” in warning.

I oriented myself as best I could and established an air shield in the direction of the two uninjured lurkers as her fireball raced toward them. The blinding explosion, heat, and concussive wave deafened and blinded me momentarily. I channeled aether to my eyes, and my vision cleared instantly with my aether sight. I trickled aether to heal my eardrums, which were ringing loudly.

Dry, hot air greeted my lungs. I had been a lot closer than the others. As I stood, I sent aetheric healing to my right knee and sprained ankle from the bad landing. The surviving lurkers were all flailing in their death throes on the ground, their air sacs burst from the rapid heating.

The others were blinking back their sight from the flash and were clearly deaf, yelling to talk. I didn’t respond, knowing they couldn’t hear me anyway. I dispatched the three injured lurkers who lived through the blast. They were genuinely disgusting creatures in the light, with mouths that reminded me of a lamprey’s.

The reward chest appeared on one of the stone boulders in the chamber’s center. Raelia recovered first, as she had been smart enough to close her eyes when she launched her attack. “I am sorry, I invested more aether than I should have into the spell.”

Glasha was healing Maveith’s ears. “It was effective,” Maveith bellowed, louder than he needed to.

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“There is a safe room ahead. Why don’t you all head there and rest. I will clean up here,” I said.

“Do you have injuries in need of healing?” Glasha asked, assessing me from a distance. She had seen me in action again and probably had questions about what I had done to stand in midair.

“No, wait with the others. Maveith, prepare lunch,” I ordered.

“But it is still morning,” Maveith stated. “We have been in the dungeon less than an hour.”

“A snack then.” I waved him off. I needed them out of the room to use the collector. If I was right, the lurkers might give me an essence with a magic affinity. The group eventually left me to work. At first, I examined where the gas sacs were on the lurkers, trying to figure out how to harvest the organs. Most of them had ruptured in the heat of the fireball, but I did manage to harvest a few of the rubbery sacs. It was more out of curiosity than a desire to try my hand at complex alchemy.

I checked to ensure the corridor was clear before starting work with the collector next. I was right: the five lurkers yielded four minor air affinity essences and one provided a strength essence. The creatures probably used aether to create the gas in their sacs that allowed them to float.

The essences were more valuable than the contents of the reward chest—fifteen silver coins and a lesser dungeon healing potion. I joined the others and found them sitting around a firepit on stone benches. The ceiling moss here glowed a bright yellow, almost a match to daylight. I distributed the coins and gave the healing potion to Mateo.

He immediately apologized. “I am sorry about revealing our purpose in the Caliphate. It just sort of came up. Like she said, she can be persuasive.”

I shook my head in disappointment, like Konstantin used to do to me. In a calm voice, I told him, “Don’t make excuses. Just don’t let it happen again, Mateo. I blame Glasha more than you, anyway.” He nodded vigorously and stashed the potion after I told him what it was.

Maveith handed me some jerky and cheese. “The next chamber is the easiest of them all. Two rust monsters. Raelia and Maveith should be able to injure them with their bows; I will go with them while Glasha and Mateo rest here.”

“Rest?” Glasha said incredulously. “I haven’t done anything!”

“There are just three rooms left. You probably won’t have to do anything,” I said dismissively.

She studied me. “You should slow down. If you clear the dungeon too fast, it will draw attention.”

“And give your cleric more time to reach Grila,” I retorted. Her reaction told me I was spot-on in my assumption, but she was right; we were moving too fast. “We can always have lunch in the final room after killing the ghost spider.”

I didn’t argue further and walked to the next room with Raelia and Maveith. Raelia used a fireball to blind and disorient the two rust monsters before she and Maveith killed them with arrows. The collector yielded two minor earth essences, which I decided to keep for myself. The chest had twenty-four silver coins and a black stone serving dish. The stone matched the abundant black material of the dungeon.

We walked back to the safe room with the dish, hoping Glasha could shed some light on it with her lore spell. Mateo and the orc had been talking around the firepit and looked up. Mateo sported a grin. “We heard the explosion. That was fast! If delving is this easy, I may grow to like it. I bet Blaze and Benito will be upset after hearing how easy it was.”

I didn’t respond to Mateo to show he wasn’t entirely off my shit list just yet. I handed the large black plate to Glasha. “Do you know what this is? It is from the reward chest.”

She took the plate and turned it over, looking for markings and finding none. Next, she used her spell on it. “It is a simple preservation plate. It will keep food hot—or cold—and prevent the food from spoiling.”

“Is it worth anything?” Mateo asked, looking at the polished black stone plate.

“I think the local warlord has a set of them. He may be interested in purchasing it for a few gold,” she said uncertainly.

“Can I have it?” Maveith asked, looking longingly at the stone plate. I nodded and handed him the plate, not having a use for it myself.

I considered Glasha for a moment. I was going to ask her to use her lore spell on Boris’s blade and maybe a second artifact after we had left the dungeon, but I was uncertain, now that she had manipulated Mateo—even if Mateo had enjoyed being manipulated.

“I will check the fifth room myself,” I announced sternly, leaving no room for argument. I walked to the fifth room alone. The dungeon creature was a single ogre and would only take me a moment to handle. The chamber had a small waterfall and a carpet of grass. The ceiling moss was mostly white in this room with patches of pink. The ogre was splayed out and snoring on the grass.

I had never seen a dungeon creature sleeping before, and it intrigued me for a moment until I realized it was faking. The ogre’s eyes kept drifting open in my direction before squinting shut. It would have been comical if not for the smell that had reached me. Ogres had nasty scent glands and preferred to be covered in their own filth. This ogre was likely less than a day old but had already created an eye-watering scent that hung in the air.

With the collector in hand, I walked straight into the chamber as the ogre scrambled to its feet. It reached for a large club it had hidden on the other side of its body. It never got to stand to its full height before it grabbed its chest and coughed up blood. Confused, it went to all fours before collapsing as its lungs filled with blood and it stopped breathing. Its aether resistance wasn’t much, but it still bottomed out my aether pool.

I paused in my walk and surveyed the chamber. When I identified the reward chest near the pool at the base of the waterfall, I relaxed. The chest yielded thirty silver and a potion of giant strength. It was not the first such potion I had, and this one was much weaker than the one I got from the owlbear chamber in the Shimmering Labyrinth.

The ogre yielded only a minor strength essence, which was a bit disappointing. I had been hoping for a constitution essence to feed Ginger. I added some wounds to make it look like I had fought the behemoth, then wandered the chamber a bit, looking for any small creature the ogre might have fed on.

The pool at the base of the waterfall had tadpoles and some frogs. I didn’t even try to catch them to test the collector. The dungeon was so heavily delved that it was already struggling to produce enough aetheric smoke for the essences I was collecting.

I didn’t hesitate to walk to the dungeon’s final room. This massive chamber was lit by dark-blue moss, giving it and the large oak trees inside it the appearance of being twilit. Thick webs crossed everywhere among the trunks, leaving no clear path.

The ghost spider was extremely large and probably hiding in the canopy above. With its ability to become invisible, there was no point risking the room by myself. I would prefer for my aether to recover completely as well, and I wanted my companions nearby in case I made a mistake.

When I returned to the safe room, everyone turned to me with anticipation. “The ogre is dead,” I announced, my voice steady. Only Glasha looked surprised. I distributed the thirty silver coins among them, choosing not to keep a single piece for myself. “Inside the reward chest, I also found a strength potion,” I said, presenting the shimmering vial to Raelia. Her eyes widened in surprise, but she quickly masked her astonishment, accepting the gift with a nod of gratitude.

I sat on one of the benches and drew Boris’s blade. If Glasha was going to try and use us, I had no qualms about using her. “Glasha, what can your spell tell me about this …”

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