Chapter 274 |
Tunnel after tunnel blurred by. We were moving faster now, less concerned with being detected than getting back to camp.
I was concerned, anyway. Julian seemed to be having the time of his life. He’d been edgy, uncertain until we had a plan in place. But now, he seemed to revel in the moment, smiling to himself. He was approaching a level of speed that was making it far more difficult to justify my supposedly lower level self keeping pace. This was something I’d never had to worry about with Nick. Despite the two of them sharing similar energy—infuriatingly good-natured and positive—Nick’s high-pressure sports background and subsequent injury meant I never had to worry about him screwing up when shit hit the fan. As long as no one close to him was dead or dying, Nick locked the fuck in. Julien, on the other hand, was an unknown quantity.
At least he wasn’t paying attention to me—
“Dex build, huh? Nice!” Still making distance at a ridiculous rate, Julien craned his neck back to look at me and grinned.
“If I wasn’t, you would have left me in the dust by now.” I answered dryly.
“Sorry. Gotta prioritize killing the boss with or without you. Lives at stake and all.”
“Less talking, more running.”
At a reasonable pace. So you don’t remember this late at night and start wondering how the latecomer had so much agility. I added silently.
As if he was simultaneously psychic and antagonistic, Julien lowered his head and picked up speed, only slowing once he reached the next cross-tunnel, boots skidding across the earth as he dropped to a knee and checked the corners. I made a show of cutting speed a few seconds early and catching up to him, panting slightly.
“Few normal drones heading that way, looks… pretty clear.” His brows furrowed as he stared at the passage ahead. It widened gradually, leading into a large circular chamber that was inundated with boulders that resembled pebbles in everything but scale, and bits of bark larger than me. “For now. That’s gotta be it, right?”
“Seems too easy.”
“We did kind of cheat.”
“Still.” I stared into the room, trying to suss out exactly what was putting me off. Then it hit me. So far, the Gilded Tower had shown a strong tendency toward single-target bosses. There’d been a few duos and even a melee trio, but only one other floor that had lower-level minions active during the boss encounter. Generally, dungeons were as unpredictable as they were dangerous, but if you looked closely, certain patterns emerged. For one, the boss was always on theme. If there were werewolves, you’d probably be fighting either a werewolf or a human with the capacity to shift. And considering how the enemies on this floor were comprised of ants and the red eldritch corruption that plagued region 6 controlling those ants…
No way there weren’t adds, right?
“Any scents?” I murmured to Talia. When she shook her head, I gestured for her to move closer. She crept forward, nose low to the ground, until the swishing of her tail suddenly ceased. She slowly raised her head and backed away, a growl deep in her throat when she returned.
“Not sure how you knew, but yes. There are nine creatures lying in wait that smell similar to the infected hexapods. Both their aura and smell are subdued, but they are there.”
Not good. The bark scattered across the floor created a lot of hiding places for something not-quite-human-sized. If they were just normal monsters that was one thing. But if Talia was right, and the bugs were infected, that put us in a rough spot. Because a single hit could be lethal.
I slipped across the hallway, studying the passage. At first it looked exactly like the rest of the smoothed out tunnels. But the longer I stared at the earth, the more subtle cracks and fissures stood out to me.
“Shockingly, your friend was right about something.” I told Julien.
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“What?”
“The second we go through, the tunnel will cave in.”
“Shit.” He thumbed the hilt of his sword nervously. “Look, when I told you I could handle a boss I meant it, but…”
“Maybe not with a small horde of ankle-biters peeling the flesh off your shins?” I said.
He nodded, his eyes flicking back and forth before they finally closed, and he put a hand on his forehead. “Okay. Okay. Like you said earlier, the more contact we have with this floor, the higher chance the corruption will spread. We have to clear this now. There’s no choice.”
“You’re going to get bit if you just charge in.”
“I’ll charge in, brute-force my way through everything. If I make it through unscathed, great. It’s possible even if I get bit, I can shrug it off. If I don’t, I’ll take care of it. But I need you to stay behind until it’s over.”
“Why?”
“Because I need you to make sure I’m dead if they get me.” He stared at me, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Can you do that?”
A mental flash played in my mind of Jinny stepping off the bridge.
“Fucking altruists.” I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“Almost right.”
“How about we skip the noble sacrifice part and just get through this?”
/////
Julien watched, quiet for a change, as I set things up, removing twenty firebombs from my inventory and placing them in a pile. It was around half the supply I’d obtained from an earlier boss, a fire wyrm that Nick and I had struggled with and ultimately brought down. Chastity typically charged an exorbitant rate for her work though in this case, she’d given me a discount due to the pleasure of working with such a rare material. The result was a round sphere bisected in the center, silver liquid on one side and a lava-like substance on the other. They were impact grenades, which simultaneously made the setup harder and the payoff easier.
“Be careful to make any use of power seem ordinary. He is observing you closely.” Talia warned me.
“Got it.”
This was a task that was easy enough to pass off as simple human dexterity. System grenades varied a great deal. Even if he identified them as an impact variant, he didn’t know the material, and wouldn’t realize they should be breaking when they weren’t.
Ambush pile first.
I used an area cast of on the pile to avoid any possibility of accidental discharge, held my breath, then rolled one underhand. It rotated in a blur, traveling across ground and slowing to a stop around six feet into the opening. I would have preferred a little farther, but my abilities rarely gave me exactly what I wanted.
Now that I had a focal point, it was easier. Nine more joined the first, forming a neat pile in the center. I paused, listening for movement.
Nothing.
A bead of sweat trickled down my forehead as I rolled the rest, each coming to a stop adjacent to a piece of bark large enough to serve as a hiding place. With the initial ambush pile in place, I was prepared to prematurely start the encounter. Instead, it went smoothly. So smoothly that I wondered if was wrong and the corrupted monsters were pulling the classic “Hide beneath the floor” trick.
As I rose, Julian and Talia took their places. Julian stood beside me with his sword at the ready, while Talia prowled further back, claiming a spot in clear view of the boss room.
“Sure you can hit those?” Julian leaned over and asked quietly.
I fought the urge to scoff. With a hand crossbow and paired with my quick draw ability, hitting every single impact grenade—even the ones that had rolled farthest on either side of the room—would be trivial. However, Julian was watching me closely. He passed it off as idle curiosity. Maybe it was, but I’d spent much of my teenage years watching my brother use a similar persona to lucrative ends.
“Who am I, Hawkeye? No. We let the expert do it.” I shifted my head back towards Talia.
“Maximize the glamour’s effect. Picking up what you’re putting down.” Julien grinned at Talia, who scowled at him openly. “Alright, show us what you’ve got, captain.”
The light show started, motes of holy fire circling around a prismatic halo that appeared around Talia’s neck. As they accelerated, Julian leaned in and whispered. “Uh, heads up. Once the boss shows itself, I may do and say some stuff that won’t make sense. Just need you to know I’m doing it for a reason.”
“System thing?” I realized immediately.
“Almost right. And I’d appreciate it if…”
“Not my first rodeo. Or the first time I’ve worked around a difficult title. I’ll keep it to myself.” I reassured him, waiting for a denial. He showed nothing beyond plain relief. Figured. My assumption came with experience. Most classes’s general abilities and skills were relatively straightforward, except for a few outliers. It was the Titles that always threw a wrench into things and gave the Users quirks that ranged from debilitating to outright overpowered.
The first projectile loosed, smashing an impact grenade and setting the nearby ground ablaze. And the screeching began.