Stroud came at Zane like a demon. He struck to kill. The glaive flashed for his throat, down for his belly, tried skewering him in the eyes, one strike crackling into another at a brutal pace.
But Zane could fight like that too. When the glaive shot up, he brought his Chains to block. The glaive came low, and he wrapped its handle as it passed, forcing Stroud to jerk it out before Zane wrenched it from his grasp.
Zane countered. He swept his in a furious arc as though to cleave Stroud clean in two. Axes met glaive, and blew apart, and came together again. Each clash was a blinding explosion.
He was surprised to find when they clashed head-on Stroud was the one who caved first. Zane was stronger!
After that Drake fight, Zane realized something. He'd been underestimating himself.
The higher Level he got, the more rare Skills he got, the more rare Classes he got… the greater the difference between men like Stroud and men like him. Even just jump from Chain Reaver to Infernal Mauler was massive.
This Lightning Lord class of Stroud's was likely an Uncommon class. Solid. Good, even.
But the difference between that and what Zane had, between Stroud's Titles and Skills and Zane's own… It easily bridged the Level difference.
As he was now, Zane was confident common man at his Level—or even close to it—could stand with him. It took someone special. Someone like Avery.
Stroud was starting to realize it too. Zane ripped into him again and again. And each time the Axe blasted aside the glaive, each time Stroud had to leap back or bend, throw up a desperate skill to blast away his Axe. Zane was the one putting a pace on him now. He came faster and faster, ripped through Stroud's defenses with disrespectful ease.
Stroud's moves were getting herky-jerky. He was starting to stumble. His eyes got wide, sweat beaded down his brow. He was getting desperate. He had that one Skill in his back pocket: Stormbreaker. He must've been saving it for just the right time.
So Zane gave it the chance. He swung his Axes a little too wide, missed the mark, and went stumbling over himself. For a second, his entire backside was exposed. He felt the electric shift in the air, he felt Stroud lunging—
He ducked. Stroud flew over him. The glaive's head was a star, crackling with lightning so bright it hurt to look at, but Stroud had lunged too hard. He was a victim of his own momentum. He only realized mid-lunge that Zane's Axes were swerving around behind him.
The Axe-heads dug deep into his thick back. Two fiery explosions rocked Stroud's body. He screamed.
A spasm of lightning sent Zane's Axes flying, but the damage was done. Stroud stumbled over, teeth clenched, eyes wild. He looked like a cornered animal.
Next time he lunged, he fought like an animal too. No more careful, clean strikes. No defending. He didn't care if Zane caught him with another Axe blow. He just wanted Zane's head. He fought Zane the way a drowning man claws for air.
It kind of worked. He landed a couple of times, clean, two down Zane's chest, a few scrapes up his arms. Enough for—
𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘: ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝟝𝟘%!
But not enough to beat him. Not even close.
Soon Stroud stumbled back a bloody mess, heaving in deep gulps of air. His eyes bulged wildly. "How?!" he croaked. "How are you doing this?!"
Zane grinned bloodily. And went for his head.
Stroud chucked his glaive like a spear. Zane blocked with his Chains. There was a blinding flash as lighting cracked uselessly against dark steel.
When it cleared, he saw Stroud's backside receding against the dull gray sky. The coward ran!
Zane chucked his Axes right after. But before they could catch him, he went splat.
Just flattened against a stretch of sky. Zane blinked as the illusion peeled away, revealing the stark black face of the mountainside.
Then his Axes caught up, and finished off Stroud for good: one thudded into his back, the other into the back of his neck.
He looked to Avery, who gave him a sheepish grin. "Look, I know you said he was yours and all, but dude's pretty fast. He was really going for it. Might've gotten away."
He was still breathing heavily, heaving in gulps of air. She considered him. "Well," she said, "you just kicked the hornet's nest. Now they'll really start coming for you."
"Let them," he said. He licked his lips. "Next time, I hope they bring someone stronger."
"… Dude, you're weird, you know that?"
***
They started down the tunnel to the second floor. It was a massive and dimly lit, void of life. Just pure black, pockmarked rock going on and on. They must have walked for half an hour, maybe an hour. This went deep into the heart of the volcano.
"Random thought," said Avery. "I wonder what it's all for. Like…" she gestured around them, at the cavern, at the ghostly torches bolted to the walls, "All this. Can't be natural, right? Someone made this—someone designed this."
"Maybe."
"But why? Don't you ever think about it?"
"No."
A silence.
"It's just… there's a lot of weird stuff. I don't know, like, there's no non-combat classes. Isn't that weird? We have to rely on the Beacon store for everything. Food, shelter… and the only way we get stuff we need is by killing. Monsters, or each other. Like. There has to be a reason, right?"
"Hmm."
"Aliens made this. I mean, this—" she waved around the C-grade manual—"says Planet Thalen. There's definitely aliens, and they must've designed it this way. But they haven't, like… made first contact? They just threw the System at us and said, 'Here, have at it!' Like they're just waiting for us to duke it out."
"Eh." Zane was pretty happy with how things were going. He saw no need to question it.
"Maybe it's like… a training tool? Or maybe it's like a prison for monsters, and it's using us to kill them? …You don't care, do you?" said Avery, looking up at him. "You just want to hit things."
He shrugged. "Pretty much."
She grinned, punching him playfully. "You big lump!"
He could tell she was still chewing on it as they went deeper and deeper. At some point, the torches stopped. The ground flattened out. There were little breakages in it, little veins of magma here and there. The farther they went, the more there were. Eventually there was no need for torchlight. The ground was like a tortoise shell. Light from magma buried in the cracks streamed up, giving the pitch-black walls a red sheen. Steam vents popped up here and there, hissing. The air smelled of burning.
"I think we're near the start," said Avery.
They'd come across a crossroads. One tunnel led left, the other right. On the left side, the ground somehow got even blacker, the cracks between deep red, like dried blood. That route was smoky, murky. It smelled of brimstone. The mini-map read—Brimstone Region.
On the right path, lava spilled everywhere. Lava flowed down the walls, crisscrossed the chambers. There were rivers of it, sometimes open pools. You had to cross a lava minefield just to get across the chamber. That path led to the Molten Region.
Presumably, left was where the Brimstone Titan lived, right the Molten Phoenix.
Avery looked at him. "Flip a coin?"
He just went right, shrugging. She followed. Molten Region it was.
On the mini-map, the chambers down this route were much wider. They just opened up into these great dark halls of stones. The ceiling drooped with stalagmites which looked like giant ash icicles. You could probably fit a small mountain into the chamber—it had its own craggy landscape. Natural rock formations littered the place. Steam vents hissed here and there. And through it all, across it all, off the walls, down the paths flowed streams upon streams of gurgling lava.
This was not normal lava, he realized. It shone brighter. There was essence in this fueling its burn.
He knelt down to inspect a nearby stream. Then a burning hand shot out of it, and he jerked back. He blinked, took another step back as the monster climbed onto land. It looked like if a bonfire in human form. Two arms, two legs, no face, just fire.
𝔽𝕝𝕒𝕞𝕖 𝕎𝕣𝕒𝕚𝕥𝕙 (𝕄𝕠𝕟𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣)
𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟜𝟞
It blitzed him. He hacked at it with his Axe, but it seemed not to care—it got cut in two, the halves became little flame wraiths of their own—a little less bright—and kept dashing at him.
He swept at it with his Chains. Nimbly they hopped over. Avery cried out. They crashed straight into him.
𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘: ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝟟𝟝%
"…"
"Are you OK?"
"Pretty much," he said.
As they walked, they steered clear of the streams. A few more came lunging at him, but he chopped them quickly and brushed them off. They were tiny by the time they got to him, and barely put a dent in him.
A few came for Avery, and she shamelessly hid behind him and let him take care of them. "Can't you roll them off or something?" he said, exasperated.
"Yeah, but they still burn me a little. Same goes with lightning. Or any force, really. I redirect stuff, but I still kind of touch it. It stings!"
"It stings me too. A lot."
"Yeah, but there's more of you. You're a big boy. You can take it." She patted him encouragingly on the back.
"…"
So far, nothing truly concerning popped out at them. They were heading for the northwest corner of this chamber, it was marked a Treasure Area. At some point along the way, Avery got curious about one of the spires and climbed to the top to check it out. As it turned out, what she thought was a boulder at the top was actually a monster. A 'Cinder Raven' that looked just like a giant rock when its wings were furled. They still looked mostly like giant rocks when their wings unfurled, just angry, winged rocks with deep-set red eyes.
They chased her all the way down the spire.
"Kill it, kill it, kill it, kill it!" she cried at him. He did. It was Level 49 and it scored a nasty wound down his middle with its rake of a beak. From then on, Avery covered them with a moving cloud of smog as they went. They saw flocks of Cinder Ravens roosting on the craggy peaks, but the smokescreen worked.
"You should learn an offensive skill," Zane told her. Running from these things seemed a little sad to him. She pulled her hoodie over her ears, all sheepish. "… Yeah…"
They were coming up upon the treasure area when Avery grabbed him and yanked him to a halt. "Shit!" Then she doubled the thickness of their smokescreen, so thick he could scarcely see the path ahead.
"What are you doing?"
"You'll see," she said.
About ten strides later, the treasure area came fully into his mini-map's viewing radius, and he did.
It was one huge splotch of red. So many stacked together he couldn't pick out the individual Monsters. They came upon it slowly, cautiously.
The treasure area was a giant pool of light orange-yellow lava. Or, rather, the thing at the center of it, pouring into it—a giant waterfall of lava. Lava-fall? At first he thought what he was feeling was the heat of it—and there was a lot of that. But hotter, stronger… he felt the essence just gushing off that thick flow. It made a deep-throated rumble as it poured over.
A single path ran out to the center, right under the fall—where it poured into the lava lake.
ℂ𝕣𝕦𝕔𝕚𝕓𝕝𝕖 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕍𝕠𝕝𝕔𝕒𝕟𝕠 (𝔻)
𝔸 𝕝𝕒𝕧𝕒-𝕗𝕒𝕝𝕝 𝕨𝕙𝕚𝕔𝕙 𝕣𝕦𝕟𝕤 𝕗𝕣𝕠𝕞 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕙𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕥 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕍𝕠𝕝𝕔𝕒𝕟𝕠, 𝕥𝕖𝕖𝕞𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕨𝕚𝕥𝕙 𝕚𝕥𝕤 𝕡𝕦𝕣𝕖𝕤𝕥, 𝕞𝕠𝕤𝕥 𝕡𝕠𝕥𝕖𝕟𝕥 𝕖𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖. 𝔹𝕖𝕨𝕒𝕣𝕖: 𝕥𝕠 𝕖𝕩𝕡𝕖𝕣𝕚𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕚𝕥𝕤 𝕗𝕝𝕠𝕨 𝕚𝕤 𝕒𝕝𝕤𝕠 𝕥𝕠 𝕗𝕖𝕖𝕝 𝕚𝕥𝕤 𝕓𝕦𝕣𝕟 𝕠𝕟 𝕓𝕠𝕥𝕙 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕓𝕠𝕕𝕪 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕤𝕠𝕦𝕝. 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕝𝕒𝕥𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕚𝕤 𝕗𝕒𝕣 𝕞𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝕕𝕚𝕗𝕗𝕚𝕔𝕦𝕝𝕥 𝕥𝕠 𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕦𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕟 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕞𝕖𝕣. 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕣𝕒𝕣𝕖 𝕗𝕖𝕨 𝕨𝕙𝕠 𝕔𝕒𝕟 𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕚𝕥𝕤 𝕗𝕝𝕠𝕨 𝕘𝕒𝕚𝕟 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕙𝕪𝕡𝕖𝕣-𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕟𝕤𝕖𝕕 𝕖𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕧𝕠𝕝𝕔𝕒𝕟𝕠 𝕚𝕥𝕤𝕖𝕝𝕗.
'The rare few who can stand its flow'? That read like a challenge to Zane.
He would've gone for it instantly if not for those mini-map dots.
If he had to guess… under the surface lay hundreds upon hundreds of Flame Wraiths.
Could be tricky.