"To the Spirit mages!" I shout, too agitated to use [Bind], so Hana just hugs and lifts all of us, then runs into the fortress with Ciel following close behind.
The sounds of a firing line opening up echo across the fortress as Hana runs, and scores of tin cans drop dead instantly, and then the Hau-Hou start truly chanting. With no mages in sight to stop them, they get to unleash hell with abandon, filling the air with chaotic mana and adding more bodies to the pile.
For now, our presence won't be missed, so Hana beelines to the medical area without guilt. We've added Spirit mages to the medical teams since that's how we "heal" or "revive" a Spirit Chimera with a damaged body, so there's a number of them ready to help us the moment we barge in; we just need to dismiss the normal healers first as they immediately rush to us since Lily is still alive.
And Ciel explains it for us because we're in too much pain to speak properly, "Her Spirit was cursed by Titan magic, and it's doing something to her chest, but [Spirit Touch] seems to be holding it at bay. The problem is that it feels like the spirit hand is burning, so we require all mages to use it at the same time."
Hana drops us and delicately puts Lily down on a bed, then runs out to help the rest.
The Spirit mages give each other worried looks, then swallow heavily and promptly begin casting [Spirit Touch]. After just a minute, we have six extra hands to help, and it hurts so little that Yunia and I pull out our hands, then inspect the damage.
"Well, this sucks more than I expected," Lily wryly remarks as she stares at the six blue ethereal arms entering her chest.
"If you can joke, then you'll live," Ciel replies, sounding a bit irked.
I feel like my real right hand is acting weird, so I try to make a fist, but it's like I have nerve damage, and it takes a lot of effort to move my fingers. And Yunia's is the same.
"Fuck!" I quietly swear. This curse seems to be bad.
But Yunia immediately casts [Spirit Touch] with her other hand, then envelops her crippled hand with the spirit one, and a soothing sensation spreads all over. It feels surprisingly similar to Gify's massage, too.
"Gih!" the cowardly but also actually helpful little griffin appears on my shoulder, then immediately uses her "massage," and the pleasure is so much stronger than the spell that we both moan softly.
Our men know not to pay attention to our eccentricities, but Lily gives us an actually concerned stare.
This is a bit too intense for the situation, so we tell Gify to stop after a mere thirty seconds, which seems to have restored most of the strength in our hands, so we'll finish it later.
"Okay…" I mumble as I recompose myself, then clear my throat to get everyone's attention. "Mages, the 'fire' will temporarily damage your soul, but you can heal it with [Spirit Touch] or the touch of a nature spirit like ours. We might have to transfer Lily to Sky Lander care since our mages are limited, but keep taking turns and prioritize Lily since the Spirit Chimeras won't die."
"Fix me up quick so that I can return to the battle," Lily brusquely demands.
Yunia ignores her and suggests, "I'll call Sainalai here since her [Spirit Magic] is likely more powerful."
"Perhaps we might be able to overwhelm the curse with enough [Spirit Touch]es?" a Spirit mage suggests.
But I insist and add, "Wait for High Officer Sainalai. I'll leave a summoned bird here so that I can listen to things and also a [Gate] 'coordinate' to return quickly, so don't be afraid to call for help if things don't go well."
And the senior Spirit mage on duty obediently answers for them, "We understand, Your Highness. We'll do our utmost to save Dame Lily's life."
I nod, then smile smugly at the loli who hates that title as she narrows her eyes at me. Like Ciel said, if she's like this, then there's no risk of her dying… for now.
But there's no reason to dawdle, so we leave and put on our war faces. We still have to finish treating our hands, though, and it's hard to keep a straight face while drowning in pleasure.
Along the way, we notice that the portal at the center of our fortress has returned. It's curious that the Dungeon Master didn't attempt to bypass our fortress, but I guess it's some sort of dungeon limitation.
--
"Duality. The giver, and the taker. The start, and the goal. The crystalline aligns the paths, and so I shall take hold of their direction," the deer Princess begins to chant.
It's impressive how she barely releases any mana as her skills are very high, and as for the mana she does release, it feels very "dense," showing evidence of high "Magic Power." Both of these things make Roxanne envious since even though she graduated from one of the best magical academies of Maoka, it still isn't enough to compete with her, but she'll catch up soon enough, and then she'll have the rest of her life to create a massive gulf between them.
The Princess gracefully repeats the first chant a few more times, then releases a massive spell, "Align the paths and empower the aura! By my will, I activate it! [Magnetize]!"
Every single monster within our sight slows down as their metal armor suddenly begins to weigh them down like huge stones. The spell could be used to electrocute them, but the point is to just clump them up a bit as the berserking waves behind them should collide with the slowed-down monsters, creating a fucking mess.
Meanwhile, Patika chants her own spell, and a frightening amount of mana starts to leak from what she has already gathered. She's no less skilled than her daughter, though; she just has a fuckload more mana, so even at high efficiency, it still leaks a lot.
And her voice is only enhanced by the pandemonium she's raising. "I call upon the eternality of the wind, the fury of the storm, and the might of nature to crush my foes. Unleash the wild forces upon them! Scatter them all by the fearsome [Tornado]!"
The fun part of having a fortress surrounded by bridges is that everywhere that's not a bridge is a hole into who-the-fuck-knows-where, and in 4D, there's a lot of free space. Even if the dungeon's level does loop vertically, none of the tin cans seem to know how to fly, so they'll eventually go splat.
And that's how we force a lull in the waves as the [Tornado] keeps things mostly clear. It also removes the bodies, which isn't actually optimal, but oh well…
The portals have retreated beyond our sight, and the monsters start spreading out, seeing the huge wall of violent dust in front of them, so Patika soon stops the spell, though I'd say she killed a good thousand of them.
But now Chesa's spell is ready, and she turns the ground into glowing-hot lava. It's not that great of an idea, though, as killing the monsters this way is very gruesome. They're basically being cooked in a stupidly-hot pan because you can't sink into the lava.
You hear that, Peter Jackson? YOU CAN'T SINK INTO LAVA.
Back to the horrible sight… or maybe not to the horrible sight. There's no need for us to fight while Chesa has that going, so we retreat back into the fortress and recover.
"Eyes open for any change! Any Titan acting differently must be eliminated with haste!" we hear the muffled voice of an officer reminding the men.
It's too cramped to have everyone in a single room (a deliberate design to stall invaders), so the wives and I get a private one all to ourselves. There, Gify pops into existence on my right shoulder, and I go for Alissa's ears the moment she takes off her helmet since her tail is hidden in her armor. I need something to soothe my agitation because things are worse than they look.
We don't know the size of the horde, the numbers of their elite/special soldiers, what those elites can do, or if we'll even have enough bullets to kill them all. But the worst unknown is Lily's curse.
Mini-dragon-Aoi climbs up my other shoulder and nuzzles against my neck. She's feeling insecure about the factory line she built, so she wants to comfort herself, but at least she isn't feeling guilty or blaming herself; it's just anxiety.
We're all anxious. Very anxious.
"I need to go out and scout," I solemnly state.
"I'll do it," Alissa immediately intervenes.
"But what if-…" I stop myself because the truth is that [Bind]'s summon still works, but I can't summon myself away from the nail bastard, so if I get caught, I'm fucked.
Though I can summon the golems and use them to carry me away-…
"I said I'm going!" she interrupts my thoughts and pouts.
I pout back at her and cup her cheeks as I point out, "I have more tools to get myself out of situations."
And this time, she actually gets angry. "Why are you always like this…?"
"Earthling patronizing culture," Yunia snobbishly answers.
"Nah, the men here are the same," Hana retorts. She had quite a lot of experience with overly-protective men during her time with her Dad's escort company.
"Yeah, I totally agree," Roxanne hums with a nod. As a former mage adventurer with a killer body, that was basically her whole life.
"Gih," Gify surprisingly sides with me.
"It still feels patronizing," Alissa mumbles sourly.
"More of a childish wanderlust," Ciel diplomatically defends me because she feels the same.
But she and Gify are still outnumbered, so they don't protest too much.
So I come up with a compromise, "What if I take someone with me? We can also always carry something with a [Gate] coordinate for our men with us."
And Alissa begrudgingly gives in, "If it's just scouting, then I guess that's fine."
"We also need to find a way to the core," Yunia reminds us.
"The curse might be powered by the core, yes," Roxanne casually adds.
And Yunia suggests, "It might at least disrupt the Titan's ability to move their portals at will."
"But I'm the only one who can grab the Thread of Fate," I state and flash a cheeky smile at my annoyed fox wife.
"Our Threads might just point to you," Ciel wryly remarks.
Then Alissa frowns and lowers her head. "I never get my way, do I?"
"All I can say is that I'm sorry," I soothingly state and kiss her forehead.
--
But before we head out, I go back to the medical rooms because Sainalai has arrived, and Chesa, Thant, and Samkelo also accompany us. The lava won't cool down so easily, so she can afford to stop maintaining it for a while.
We arrive while the High Officer is performing her own investigation of the "soul burn"…
Oh, fuck, I just realized that "soul burn" in the way that RPGs and novels portray it might actually be very similar to what's going on here since Rupegia is some sort of VR-RPG. But that's not good news.
The little ginger halfling turns to us as we enter the room and gives me a very pretty smile, but it quickly fades as the burning sensation might be too much for the delicate woman.
"Your Highnesses, a moment, and I'll give you my analysis," she sweetly states.
"You can have all the time you need," I huskily reply.
But she goes silent and knits her brown eyebrows in concern.
Suddenly, she turns to me and grimly states, "I'm afraid time is something we can run out of."
Fuck.
"Elaborate, and quickly," Lily demands, sounding concerned.
Sai picks up on her tone and politely but firmly replies, "Apologies, but I have to be frank. This 'curse' isn't coming from a spell that we can interrupt or sense; therefore, it's a dungeon effect, but a dungeon core is powered by a mana storm, so the curse can last long enough that we might as well consider it eternal."
"What if we take her out of the dungeon?" Samkelo promptly suggests, showing a bit more intelligence than what I expected of him.
But Sai's answer is still negative, "We could try, but I don't believe this Dungeon Master overlooked such an obvious weakness. I've been reading the reports from Their Highnesses very carefully, especially after the 'freezing' Titan incident, but I'd assume that spirits being immune to it is the only perk that we'll get."
"So destroying the core is our only way of stopping it?" I ask for clarification.
"Perhaps, but there's much we can do to at least slow it down," she reassures me.
"How is this killing me?" Lily questions with a frown.
And Sai assuredly answers, "It's a constant [Soul Blade] that scrambles your soul in a similar way to [Ruin], but the effect isn't permanent like the latter's, so it doesn't immediately affect your physical body. The problem is that with it being constant, it slowly strains your spirit, which might eventually rupture. Containing the 'burn' with [Spirit Touch] slows it down but doesn't stop the strain from worsening."
"I have a Gift that makes me super sturdy, and I'm also immune to that 'freezing' effect because of it. Shouldn't it be safe for me?" Lily continues, and for once, I hear a bit of fear in her tone.
But this time, Sai isn't as certain in her response, "I… don't know how your Gift changes the interactions. This is merely my understanding of the curse by analyzing the effects upon my own hand. Only His Highness Wolf has a skill that can see inside the soul."
So I chime in, "I can only see a constant 'change' in your soul's structure, but I don't know what it means. So far, it only supports Sainalai's conclusion."
"For once, what I see makes sense. It really looks like some sort of flameless burning is going on," Samkelo adds with wry gloom.
And Lily sighs loudly. "Well, seems like I got fucked even though I have this Gift."
"Maybe the Titans specifically used this curse because they knew that some of us could resist the 'freezing,'" Yunia tactically analyzes.
"And now they're forcing me to rush out towards the core," I add grimly.
Thant suddenly interjects, "Wait, there's a whole horde between you and the core." And he seems actually concerned for me, which makes me more sympathetic to him.
"We can easily bypass them," Alissa proudly states.
"And only I can seek out the core with my Thread," I follow up with a gentle nod.
Now everyone falls silent as nobody has any more suggestions, so we all reflect upon the information available to us.
"That's a lot of assumptions," Lily suddenly remarks.
"Assumptions are all we have," I reply with a shrug.
"I guess I'll have to pull your Thread again?" Samkelo soberly suggests, and I nod.
--
Alissa and I take to the 4D skies while both of us have [Hide Presence], some anti-scent, and [Ignorance] active, so none of the Titans even think of looking up as we fly past them. But their bodies are piling up again, so we'll have to clean them away soon, or else they'll eventually get too far from the heat of the lava.
There seems to be a commotion going on among the ones not on the lava as they obviously want to avoid it, but their berzerking state makes it hard to ignore the voice in their heads telling them to just charge straight at the enemy. The waves behind them are also pushing the hesitant ones to step on the lava, so the cycle repeats again and again.
We still can't spot any elites or mages among them, though, so I wonder what they'll do if they manage to overwhelm our defenses. There's no reasonable place for them to enter since all of the holes are smaller than a Titan, so all they can do is punch rock until it breaks.
I guess the mages will only appear once the exterior is secured. Otherwise, we'd be able to easily snipe them, and the dungeon seems to be aware of that. It totally feels like we're in an actual war with an intelligent opponent, so this much should be expected.
We eventually reach the corridor of skulls, and though the ceiling is much lower, the Titans are still too enraged, so it's unlikely they'll pay any attention to us. We'll also be flying in the darker part as only the lower part of the wall is illuminated, and we'll be less visible this way.
But the moment we enter it, a very uncomfortable "pressure" washes over us. It feels different from last time. Rather than "intimidation," we feel pure, unfiltered hatred. It's actually more unsettling than before since it makes us feel guilty.
The silent and tense journey across the cringe/edgy/definitely-not-metal corridor feels much longer than it actually is, but we eventually reach the exit, and we now find ourselves staring at a wide black bridge floating in the middle of the void. The portal is at the other end, so far away that it's the size of a bowling ball in our eyes, but also close enough for us to notice the four tall towers surrounding it.
Huh…
Then the Titans suddenly stop and jerk their heads to face us.
Alissa immediately [Equip]s her rifle, but I stop her before she can begin firing.
They're looking in our direction, but they aren't looking at us.
Huh…
Still, it seems we've been spotted, and I bet the towers are related to that.
--
--
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