"I swear I heard a voice here," Tariko grumbled as he scratched his unshaven chin, "Sounded like it belonged to those Zhen Clan kids too."
"Bah, who cares! The good news is that no one seems to have touched that expensive looking crystal ore, meaning we got first dibs!," Karudo proclaimed while chuckling, "Ain't that right boys?!"
"Yeah!"
Tariko Gudimani and Karudo Blartz were not members of the same team, technically and legally, they were rival contestants. However, there was nothing in the rules that inherently banned teams from working together. Temporary alliances were a common practice in previous challenges, this time was...only slightly different.
During the course of traversing the wandering ruins, these two teams had exactly zero luck when it came to finding anything worth of value in this horrible place. The two of them did however find each other, and then teams that had better luck finding stuff but were much weaker than themselves.
Naturally, the two of them decided right there and then to team up and steal from everybody else in order to get ahead of the competition. Since the two of them were 3rd ring Aether Acolytes, not a lot of people could stop them once they had joined forces.
So far their two teams have managed to secure at least three different high quality ores and one Ethereal minor grade aether weapon. Not not exactly first prize winning in this contest, but probably enough to keep them in the black if they could sneak this stuff outside and bribe their accompanying diggers.
A bit of an open secret of this competition was that almost everybody paid off the diggers to not squeal on them sneaking away the unregistered items. Granted, some diggers were more stubborn or pricy, but that was the price of business.
"Do you two know how to extract that thing or nah?"
The two diggers looked at each other, sharing a mildly confused look.
"On a technical level yes, but I don't think we don't need to."
"Huh? Why not?"
"That crystal is already on a base, see?"
Tariko and Karudo looked where the diggers were pointing, and lo and behold, the giant red crystal was sitting on an obsidian base for easy transport.
"Well shit! Let's go then!"
At the behest of their leaders, the two teams made their way into the magma treasure chamber. As the last members of the teams entered, something began to stir above them.
Perhaps if greed hadn't overtaken their eyes, they could have seen, could have heard, could have noticed, the strange monster looming over their heads.
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Click, Click, Click
Eight little rodents have entered my domain...
Click, Click, Click
They want my treasure, do they?
Click, Click, Clack
Then come little rodents, entertain me...
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The Gudimani and Blartz teams were trying their best to lift the Ifrit Fire Heart Crystal and get it out of the ruins, but so far it wasn't working.
"Come on lads! Lift with your knees, not your back!"
"We're trying boss, this thing is hea-WHAT IS THAT?!"
"RRRRRRHIISSSSSSS!"
Dangling from the ceiling was a huge, segmented serpentine-like beast with hundreds of razor sharp legs and pulsating veins of energy crisscrossing it's body. The monster looked like what would happen if someone decided to hybridize an anaconda and a giant centipede together!
Surprisingly, Tariko and Karudo were able to keep a cool head despite how horrifying this thing looked.
"Everyone, calm down! There's only one of it and eight of us! Charge up your aether and get ready to attack!"
Tariko and Karudo began to circulate their aether at a rapid pace, exhibiting the peak power of those that 3rd ring Aether Acolytes could reach. Assured by their leaders' action, the rest of them began to circulate their aether as quickly as possible. As they did, the air around them began to become distorted from the different expressions of aethers clashing against and synergizing with one another.
Normally, such a sight would be enough to instill fear in quite a number of ordinary people and some aether beasts at the third grade and below.
However, the snake beast didn't seem to care. If anything, it looked amused.
"Altogether now, attack!"
At Karudo's command, the two teams fired off a variety of arts. A veritable rainbow cascade of aether fired off one after the other, impacting the snake beast and causing all manner of explosions and smoke to form.
The attacks went on for a solid three minutes or so, before the leaders gave the command to stop.
"Cease fire! Cease fire!"
Once the command had mentally registered, the warriors fully stopped using their aether arts and began to pant from exhaustion. It's one thing to use an aether art in a battle, it's another to do it while dealing with horribly hot conditions like being inside a room full of lava.
The combined smoke from all of their attacks made it near impossible to see whether or not it was effective, the warriors had no choice but to wait and see.
Several tense minutes passed by as the warriors recovered their stamina in the mean time, but when the smoke finally cleared, the serpentine beast was no longer there.
While some of the fighters presents were still cautious, others were a bit more optimistic.
"Did we...do i-CHOMP!"
"BY THE GODS!"
"GERALD, NO!"
But all of that optimism went out the window the moment the beast reappeared out of nowhere and swallowed one of the fighters whole. What followed was utter chaos.
The remaining two teams tried their best to take down this snake monster, but it seemed nothing they had in their arsenal was effective as art after art just rolled off of it like it was nothing. Instead, the fighters got swallowed one by one until nobody was left.
Having finished dealing with its prey, the centipede snake retracted to the ceiling, as if nothing had happened.
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Outside of the lava death room.
Earlier, Zhen Liu had Nepherage set up a special camouflage shelter that allowed the team to hide in plain sight, looking like they were part of the ruin's natural architecture.
This in turn gave the team a front row seat to the horrific show of two of their rival teams getting swallowed alive by an aether beast they had never seen before. The group was awestruck and a little terrified from the whole affair.
'Well...that was nightmare inducing.'