Valerios
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Chapter 82: A Sky Under Our Feet
🕑 Added 2022-07-22 17:39:00 +0000 UTCHeh. You thought I'd forgotten about last Friday's chapter, didn't you?
Enjoy the double release!
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Clashing blades and blood-chilling roars echoed through the Mists as Jerry jumped from stone island to stone island. The dark water was calm beneath his legs, only revealing the slightest of ripples despite the tangible tension, while the group’s members shot warnings at each other.
“Careful!” Marcus yelled as he stepped on a shaky stone.
“Horace!” Laura called out, and an arrow whistled by her ear to meet the monstrosity behind her. A moment later, an axe-wielding skeletal form fell on the monstrosity, tearing it apart in a few short moments.
A grunt escaped Axehand’s skull as his crimson eye-flames darted left and right, scanning for the next opponent. He and Horace were covering the retreat, taking care of any enemies that dared approach.
The monstrosities were fine. Each of the two could easily handle them. The real problem were the death knights, who needed both Axehand and Horace to focus on them or they could survive long enough to drag someone down—after all, their strength was similar to a non-overcharged Axehand’s.
The enemies grew wary of casualties after some point. Instead of rushing in one or two at a time and getting butchered, they ran parallel to the group instead. They seemed to be aware of each other’s positions as they wove a net, trying to outrun them by the flanks and surround them.
This development should have been disastrous, but it was actually a blessing in disguise. Jerry’s group didn’t care about getting surrounded; they only cared about making it to the damn rock.
The battle had stopped for now, but creepy roars still came from the left, right, and behind them. Marcus and Laura had legs of lead and throbbing temples. They could barely keep going anymore.
A single misstep could lead to ruin. A single accident could become a disaster. Twice, they almost fell but someone caught them. The roars were closing in now, from every direction at once except for directly ahead.
Birb had located the rock. They just had to get there in time.
They did.
A lone gray rock stood tall over the dark waters, proudly overlooking the hunt before it. The moment they saw it, everyone was invigorated. Soon, they were only two stone islands away.
The mist roiled and parted. Several forms appeared all around them, death knights and monstrosities alike, and they numbered more than a dozen. Axehand and Horace had already destroyed four death knights, but there were another four present, plus the three from the outer-lake squad. There were also nine monstrosities.
When Jerry and co. had lured a dozen death knights away, they’d thought themselves smart. In truth, Arakataron had only spared that force because he didn’t need it. He had another dozen, as well as the monstrosities, the mist-face warrior, and himself.
The group was surrounded. The death knights howled in triumph and prepared to tear these invaders apart, but they didn’t know they were too late. The rock was already very close.
“Now, everyone!” yelled Jerry. “Swim to the shore!”
It was a lie, of course. Everyone jumped into the water and headed for the rock, escaping the undeads’ sight.
The water splashed, and Jerry’s eyes widened from the cold. It wasn’t just temperature, either.
Even as a necromancer—and, therefore, an undead—such thick concentration of death energy was enough to send chills down his spine and make him feel ill.
It was like diving into a starless night.
Distorted sounds reached his ears, signifying that the others had dived as well. Jerry turned around on instinct.
Surprisingly, he could see. The lake’s surface was pitch-black, but it got brighter when you got past that. Jerry couldn’t tell where the illumination came from, but he was glad for it.
His eyes witnessed an infinite void. His friends floated in nothingness and the darkness stretched endlessly below, creating the illusion that this lake had no bottom. A few rocks could be seen in the background, but Jerry didn’t pay too much attention, instead focusing on Marcus and Laura.
The moment they dove, both of them got pale. Their eyes widened to the extreme and they started shivering, completely unable to handle the invasive death energy. Jerry channeled his magic, trying to force the energy away from them, but it was like using his hands to push the rain.
We must hurry, he realized. His own body was getting corroded too, but slowly. He could endure for a few minutes. Marcus and Laura couldn’t.
The only silver lining of this situation was that they could breathe. As much as this death energy resembled a liquid, it wasn’t one, taking that anxiety away. Of course, though they could breathe, it wasn’t a good idea; inviting death into your lungs sounded stupid.
On the bright side, Jerry didn’t need to breathe.
Let’s hurry!
Filled with haste, Jerry turned around to look for the proud rock, and he found it—a lone obelisk rising from depths untold. He also found something else, and he spat out a bunch of bubbles in shock.
There was a creature staring at him. It was gray and at least ten feet tall, while its eyes seemed hollow. Jerry froze in shock before realizing what he was looking at. It was a statue, and it wasn’t alone.
The many stone islands were the peaks of stone formations reaching all the way to the bottom of the lake. Their lower segments weren’t visible from the surface, but now that Jerry was in the water, he could see that these weren’t just stone formations. Every single one of them was an intricately carved statue.
Some resembled humans. Others were also humanoid but with completely wrong proportions—short limbs, tall faces—or even extra limbs. There were even some that had feathers or gills, resembling species completely alien.
Each and every one of these statues were hunched and had their hands up as if supporting the entire sky on their shoulders, with said sky being the stone islands that Jerry and company had been walking on. Each was crafted to a lifelike degree, and each was roughly as tall as two men.
Jerry was surrounded by stone giants holding up the ground he used to walk on. It was awe-inspiring. He lost himself for a second, as did everyone else, and only returned to reality when a white fish approached his face and gazed at him curiously.
Crap!
He quickly looked around, looking for the proud rock that was thankfully right in front of him. This was the only rock not carved into a statue, which was suspicious, but Jerry didn’t have the time to consider mysteries right now. They needed to get inside the treasure room and seal it back up before Marcus and Laura rotted away—and then hope there was enough air to breathe.
Axehand! He sent through their mental link, and the skeleton snapped out of his awe with a grunt. He knew what he had to do. His axes worked like rows as he propelled himself forward, and the moment he reached the stone’s base, he lightly tapped against it. Then, realizing he couldn’t hear the echo underwater, he gave up and simply smashed an axe into it.
The impact was dampened by the water, but Axehand flew backwards anyway. He quickly returned to find a head-sized hole in the rock, behind which lay a wide gap.
He’d found the hidden room.
With quick strikes, Axehand widened the hole enough to pass and squeezed himself through it. Marcus and Laura were right behind him. They dove through the passage with the desperation of drowning people, and everyone else followed as quickly as they possibly could. Jerry helped organize the undead, and he was the last to cross.
The moment he did, he fell a couple feet to the ground and landed on Headless.
“Oof,” he said. “Thanks, big guy.”
Headless made happy sounds as he kneeled on the floor, patting around himself. He was looking for his head, which he’d apparently lost in all the chaos.
However, the problems weren’t over. Death energy flowed in freely from the gap behind them, dispersing into mist the moment it made contact with the room’s stale air—which stank, by the way. Axehand was already at work. He stuck a stone pedestal into the opening, blocking it partly, and all the undead tore their clothes apart to try and close the gaps.
The mist thinned, and in a few moments, an incredibly poorly-made patchwork of clothing covered most of the hole. Tendrils of mist still seeped through the cracks, but Laura’s water appeared and blocked what few gaps remained.
Everyone watched with bated breaths for a moment, but no new death energy entered.
“We did it!” shouted Jerry, and the rest burst into cheers. Quietly, of course—the enemy was still up there. “Good job, everyone!”
The undead exchanged high-fives, smiles, and thumbs-up, while Marcus and Laura hugged themselves, still shivering.
“Are you okay, guys?”
“I’ll be fine,” Marcus managed to mutter, “just a little cold, that’s all.”
“Mhm.” Jerry nodded but spoke no further.
At the next moment, Marcus realized where he was and seemed to spontaneously recover.
“Treasure!” he shouted, looking around wildly. Jerry looked the other way, towards the stone wall separating them from the outside. He was interested in this Dorman’s treasure too, but those stone statues… Who made them? Why? Did it happen after the death lake was created, or was it just a scary coincidence?
An unintelligible sound coming from Marcus’s throat made Jerry turn around. The treasure hunter finally managed to speak.
“Where the hell is the treasure!?”
To his utter disappointment, there was no mountain of taels here.
The stone room they found themselves in was quite simple. A few columns supported its low ceiling, while the entire room was circular with a diameter of only thirty feet. It was also mostly empty. The only visible treasure was at the other side of the room, where three items lay on the ground.
One was a corpse. It was female and dressed in flowing robes, both they and the body perfectly preserved. Her skin was white as milk, her short hair blonde, and her face angelic, as if a kind goddess that was only sleeping and could wake up at any moment—but she was very dead, as Jerry’s soul perception indicated. However, what really surprised Jerry wasn’t the corpse’s state, but the two wings jutting out from its back. This was a winged human!
“What the hell!?” exclaimed Boney, turning to Jerry. “Master! I want wings too!”
Jerry shook his head.
The second item was a tiny brown booklet. This was also well-preserved, but Jerry couldn’t read the title without going closer.
Finally, the third item was a half-black half-white pearl thrown to the ground like a toy. Besides the interesting coloration, there was nothing special about it. However, the moment Jerry’s eyes landed on the pearl, he froze. His soul churned. His mind slowed down. His heart forgot to beat—thank Desistos he was a necromancer.
Jerry’s mind told him this was just a pearl. His soul told him it to worship it. He was struck.
“Master?” Boney shook Jerry out of his reverie. “I said, are you okay?”
Jerry blinked and shook his head.
With shaky steps, he ignored Boney and everything else as he paced for the pearl and grabbed it. His world exploded. Colors and notions of indescribable depth flowed through his mind. The mere stone walls became a kaleidoscope of endless mysteries. Complete ecstasy and the greatest terror overtook him at the same.
Jerry had a certain degree of resistance against mental illusions and invasions, but before this pearl, he was like a newborn. In a flash, he witnessed the death of a million people, and he experienced each and every one of them personally; the transformations of the soul, how it grows or shrivels from the vicissitudes of life; a single death stretched over infinite moments, where every tiny change in the body is captured and magnified a thousand times.
Jerry’s world became a black-and-white spiral of mind-bending magnitude formed from endless tiny specks, each representing an entity on the level of Jerry.
Of course, Jerry’s mind could not comprehend these images. He couldn’t even count to a million, let alone experience that number. He was just frozen as the images flickered before his eyes, and his mind protected him by tuning everything out.
Suddenly, Jerry recovered, and he was still touching the pearl. Not a moment had passed in the real world. Everything was normal, and the pearl was unexpectedly warm in his touch. Everyone was still talking excitedly behind him.
However, Jerry drew a cold breath because he suddenly felt transparent. The pearl was looking at him. It had no eyes—it was just a pearl—but it was looking at him. Everything that was Jerry was seen through, be it his soul, body, mind, or even the innermost desires and secrets that not even he knew.
He was judged, and he was deemed worthy.
The pressure disappeared. In the next moment, the pearl cooled back down, and it was now just a pearl. Nobody would have guessed it was the most divine of items.
Jerry knew what the pearl was. There was only one thing it could be.
He turned around to find everyone approaching. “Hey guys, guess what,” he said, raising the pearl high with a smile. “I found the Prism of Death!”
Many jaws hit the floor.
