After spending an hour walking around the fort, Matt walked over to one of the formation masters and started talking to him. Quickly, he started helping out with some of the formations and even going back over the already laid down formations that he'd said were weak. To my amazement, my screen dinged and I looked to see that the required time to complete the defenses had dropped by over 12 hours.
"So there are multiple ways to solve this mission." I said, talking to myself.
Connor, who was standing behind, me nodded his head in agreement. "Yes, I was wondering if we shouldn't try to recruit some people from school who are skilled in Formations to help out."8
As we were talking, the gold rimmed glasses guy from the Alchemist's Guild had walked up to Rick and Alexandra and gotten them to follow him. Another 14 hours were cut off of the estimated time to completion almost instantly.
"I'm getting the idea that gathering all the ingredients for the potion is the only way our group can complete this mission." I said, going over everything in my head. "The dungeon should be almost abandoned right now, and even if it's not the corrupted there will be restricted by the formations. The lake should be fairly easy for us to deal with given our experiences, the only part I'm concerned about is the mothertree. Even if we manage to avoid the Giant, I have the feeling that the mothertree won't be so accommodating."
Connor nodded as we reached a spot that'd been designated for us to set up camp. I glanced around before deciding to log out, I was no help here and if I was lucky I could sneak into the shower before everyone got up.
Exiting MSE, I immediately started gagging. Apparently, when Rick broke through violently he splattered the entire room we were all hanging out in. I rushed from the room as quickly as possible, running outside and to the outdoor shower they'd had installed when Rick was little and kept falling into the cow pen. Tearing my clothes off, I took a shower using the industrial strength soap that stung like none other just to make sure I got it all off.
Suddenly, lights flashed in the distance and I turned to see a camera crew that'd snuck onto Rick's property.
'Thank god I'm almost immune to the cold, I wouldn't want naked pictures of me all shriveled up.' I thought to myself as I grabbed my clothes and scrubbed them off with the special cleaner left out here. Within a minute, they no longer looked or smelled like someone had covered them in toxic waste, so I put them on and started focusing on a trick I'd figured out about a week ago. I created a water ball, gathering all the Water Elemental Energy from my clothes and the exterior of my skin before sending it flying with a burst of energy at the camera crew.
I laughed to myself at their expressions as I walked back to the house, created a barrier around so I wouldn't have to smell anything and kicked Rick in the balls... twice.
I headed to the kitchen to cook something to eat and figure out a way to clean that room before. The nice thing about a small ranch like this is they all have chickens. If you've never had an egg minutes after it's been laid, you're missing out. When we were kids, the chickens were nearly as tall as us and would chase us around pecking us whenever we went to grab the eggs. We used to pretend we were James Bond and try to sneak into the Russian Nuclear Testing Facility, and if we were caught the mutated monsters, that couldn't be killed by our imaginary bullets, would chase us until we either got away or died of pecks to the face... 'That's a good memory.' I thought to myself with a smile as I cracked a couple eggs and threw some cheese, ham, and bell peppers together. A couple minutes later I was covering my omelette in salsa before chowing down.
As I was eating, I heard Beth scream in disgust before running out of the house to clean off. "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?" She screamed and I heard cracking and crunching sounds, 'Guess she found the reporters.' A couple minutes later, she walked into the house, dripping and pissed off. Taking pity on her, I dried her off. When she walked over to me, hugged me in thanks, and took off with the remaining half of my omelette, I decided that she deserved to be wet and threw the water back at her.
A few hours later, we'd all gotten cleaned up and somehow managed to remove the smell from the room. I'd decided to take a nap while the rest logged back in as soon as the place was cleaned up.
Yawning, I stretched and decided I'd wasted enough time. Logging back in, I found that everyone was already busy. Only 5 people could enter the dungeon at once, so Rick, Beth, Connor, Sarah, and Gunthar had decided to head there first. I agreed with their decision, deciding that since I was the only one who was comfortable underwater I should head off for the lake.
Which brings me to the present, where for the first time since I was chased around Storm's Refuge by a hoard of goblins I'm at serious risk of shitting my pants. When I got to the lake, I created a water barrier and jumped into the lake figuring that nothing would've changed since the last time I was here. I couldn't of been more wrong.
As I sunk through the mucky water, it began to feel off. The familiar feeling of corruption started to seep through my barrier. Normally I don't have to worry nearly as much about it as others because of the Lightning Element's ability to purify corruption. However, for some reason I had a premonition that if I used the Lightning Element to hold it off I'd be in trouble.
The deeper I got into the lake, the worse the feeling became. My barrier was corroding at an alarming rate, my hair was standing up, my heart thudding as I realized that the corrupted being here was far stronger than any I'd ever encountered before.
At about 40 feet deep, the murky water cleared up as the churned up mud on the bottom of the lake began to settle down. Finally able to see again, I nearly shit my pants. The fish from before were all gone, and in it's place was a massive abomination the likes of which I'd never imagined before in my life.
Flesh and fins, with a massive mouth filled with the sharp teeth of the mutated piranha's grinding back and forth against a pale barrier slowly wearing it down. As I got closer, I realized that the statue's of the two men where flickering in and out of existence. As I watched, the corrupted being started glowing that poisonous purple light and I could feel more and more corrupted energy being gathered around it. A beam of light shot towards the statues, breaking the barrier but before it could touch either of them the swordsman waved his sword a light shot forwards chopping the abomination to pieces.
Before I could in joy, flesh slowly gather back together around a pearl. Patrice struck, a lightning bolt surging through my body and slaming into the flesh around the pearl, the purifying affect temporarily stopping the recovery of the corrupted being. I swam towards it as fast as I could, but before I could reach it the barbarian erupted with an incredible aura of destruction forcing me backwards.
A giant fist grabbed the pearl and holding it between it's thumb and forefinger crushed it. Yet, even though it'd been crushed into a powder it kept coming back. A voice spoke to even as the statue crushed it a second time. "It's such a pain to launch a soul attack through dimensions you deal with this little storm."
The pearl shot towards me even as it pulled itself together for the third time.
Before I could do anything, Patrice's phantom appeared in front of me and surrounded the pearl as it kept regenerating. Lightning Elemental Energy surged through the lake as Patrice's storm lit up with bolts of lightning hammering the constantly reforming pearl. To my amazement, the pearl just kept reforming over and over again even as the corruption was purified until finally it stopped and the pearl dropped into my hand, a pure white color giving off a holy aura.