With a metallic clink, I threw what was left of my sword from Goran into the dark. The torn stump of cheap sheet metal bounced off the stone floor and froze in a puddle of stale water. My attempt to save resources on the first floor had definitely come to an end. Ordinary artisan steel simply had no right to withstand the raw physics and massive weight of my modernized Vessel.
I turned slowly toward Shnee. The elf stood right under a ruined pillar. Her breath was still slightly accelerated after the fight with the Mini-Boss, and physical fatigue showed on her pale face. She did not have any structural upgrades or unnatural regeneration yet. She was a fragile, mortal being in the heart of an underground hell, but her diamond eyes still carefully scanned the gloom with predatory vigilance.
"Gather the loot," I threw shortly with a cold tone.
The girl nodded, obediently switching to gatherer mode. With a bowed neck, she picked up the heavy purple crystal left by the destroyed construct. She stepped closer to hand it to me, but her gaze automatically slid to my empty hands.
"You are left without a weapon, Dave," she noted with analytical apprehension in her voice. "The ordinary steel broke. Are we going back to the surface to the blacksmith?. We simply won't survive without a blade on the deeper floors, even taking your absurd strength into account".
I laughed quietly. I weighed the heavy crystal in my hand, and then smoothly threw it into the bottomless pouch at my belt. My Brazen chill completely dominated the space of the corridor.
"Go back?. I haven't even properly warmed up yet," I replied, straightening my back and scratching my neck. "I only needed that scrap so I wouldn't have to burn my own power on trash mobs right away. I don't need any blacksmith, Shnee, to have a deadly tool in my hand. I just need a fraction of a second of pure focus".
I extended my right hand in front of me, spreading my fingers. I had no intention of putting on a cheap theater, chanting senseless spells, or asking the local structure for permission. Peasant reason suggested simple engineering logic. I opened the internal valve in my weaves.
A thick, rushing stream of blue energy instantly poured out of my pores. Sapphire Slime. The magic mercury hissed quietly under the influence of my brutal will. I forced the raw mana into drastic compression. The slime hardened in a fraction of a second to the density of solid diamond, forming a long, vibrating blade of power in my hand.
Orcrist.
Shnee drew in air loudly, and her eyes widened with pure fascination. Her own aura instinctively reacted to this sudden jump in force and density in the corridor. She took half a step toward me, shocked by this display of breaking physics.
"Mana is just a raw material. If you have a hard enough will, you crush it and force it to take absolutely any shape," I answered with a relaxed smile, checking the balance of the blue construct with a few quick cuts of the air. "We are going lower. It's time to clean the second floor to zero".
We left the silenced battlefield of the first level behind. The corridor sloped gently, turning into monumental stairs carved in solid granite, which led straight into the thickening darkness. With every subsequent, steady step of my hobnailed boots, the architecture of the Forgotten Necropolises underwent a drastic change. These were no longer ordinary catacombs. The second floor of the dungeon resembled an abandoned city buried deep underground, whose absolute, black heart was a colossal, ruined cathedral.
Massive pillars, hewn in cold stone, rose dozens of meters upward, completely disappearing in the impenetrable gloom. An overwhelming, grave silence reigned here. But it wasn't the brutal architecture that was the main problem here. It was the air trapped between the walls.
The entire floor of the cathedral was covered in a thick, blood-red mist. It drifted lazily just above the cracked slabs, slowly spilling over the rubble. It resembled boiling fumes leaking from an old slaughterhouse. As soon as we stepped off the last stairs, we were hit by a sharp, chemical stench of copper, bad blood, and concentrated acid. It wasn't a visual effect. It was an extremely toxic biological environment.
Shnee immediately put her forearm to her mouth, violently suppressing a painful cough. Her diamond eyes, usually full of murderous focus, instantly clouded with tears. The frosty aura that naturally surrounded her petite body began to weaken drastically, literally eaten away by the corrosive fumes in the air.
I stopped. My peasant reason immediately evaluated the situation. The elf did not have the Seal yet. She did not have that sapphire, powerful foundation inside her that could support her immune system and automatically regenerate destroyed tissues. In this choking, acidic environment, she was just a fragile, mortal being. If she stayed in this zone for even a few minutes longer, this toxic gas would simply melt her airways from the inside before we even had a chance to draw our weapons.
"Dave... this air... it bites into the lungs," she gasped with great difficulty, squinting her burning eyes. Her hand clamped on my shoulder, and her body trembled with the effort not to fall onto the poisoned slabs.
My modernized organism, powered by a sapphire reactor running at steady revs, completely ignored these toxins, treating them like ordinary morning frost. I had no intention of chanting any complicated wind spells from cheap books for mages. That would be a waste of time and valuable focus. I applied the simplest mechanics of displacement based on pure physics.
With Brazen chill, I slipped my left hand deep into my coat pocket.
"Breathe, Shnee," I threw calmly, tilting my head slightly.
I opened the internal valve in my weaves. I expanded my passive aura, allowing the massive, inhuman weight of my Vessel to simply spill out insolently. The sapphire density hit the ruined corridor like a solid, physical wall formed from the hardest concrete.
The bloody, corrosive mist immediately retreated with a loud hiss. It was brutally and mechanically pushed out by the advancing mass of my energy. An ideally clean, stable bubble of oxygen with a radius of exactly ten meters formed around us. Inside this sphere, maintained by the mere push of my existence, the red fumes simply had no physical right to reside. The laws of physics bowed to my will.
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Shnee dropped to one knee, taking a deep, greedy breath of clean air. Her shoulders trembled as her lungs finally got rid of the burning, acidic residue. She slowly straightened her back, and her gaze rested on the invisible barrier against which the thick waves of gas unsuccessfully crashed.
"You just... squeezed it out of space," she said quietly, and her exhausted voice held a fanatical respect mixed with complete relief.
"My zone, my rules, darling," I cut off coldly, with a slight, protective smile appearing in the corner of my mouth. I stood right in front of her, firmly separating her fragile silhouette from the gloom. "Stay close to me. This mist didn't come from nowhere. In nature, such dirt serves only one purpose. It's the perfect camouflage for the local ecosystem. The local trash will start crawling out of it any second".
Two largest individuals stopped halfway. They puffed up their chests, and then spat out a volley of bone spikes. This required logical resource management based on peasant reason. I did not intend to burn the reserves from my tank on erecting magic shields.
"Take care of the ground! Cut off their momentum!" I threw to Shnee, stepping off the line of fire smoothly.
A spike bit into the floor right next to my boot, crumbling the granite into dust. The girl did not hesitate for a fraction of a second. She understood the physics of this clash. She fell right into the middle of my oxygen zone, drove her rapier into the earth, and released a wave of cold. Absolute frost spilled across the floor like a lightning strike. The ghouls that were charging along the ground immediately lost their grip. Their limbs slid apart with a wet snap, and the monsters face-planted into the frozen pavement, completely losing their momentum and point of support.
Having immobilized targets, I drove into them with the vibrating Orcrist. My mind worked in analytical mode. No unnecessary movements, no theatrical swings for show. It was pure surgery on the living organism of the dungeon. I slid on the ice created by Shnee, bypassing puddles of acid, and I cut off limbs and skulls with mechanical efficiency. The blue blade passed through their bones without absolutely any resistance. Pure sapphire energy immediately incinerated the cut tissues, preventing splatters of toxic blood.
"From the right!" the elf suddenly shouted.
She sent a frosty projectile at a Ghoul that tried to jump off a pillar straight onto my back. Ice froze his arm mid-flight, drastically disrupting his flight path and center of gravity. I executed a fluid half-turn on my heel. I tore the falling beast into two equal halves with the blue blade, before its claws could even brush me. Only smoking ash remained of it. The slaughter lasted barely three minutes. After a pack of twenty predators, only black slag and a mountain of pulsating cores remained. I gathered the violet stones into my pouch with Brazen chill. Pure Trash Cleaning. I dismissed Orcrist with a quiet hiss, allowing the compressed mana to return to my weaves.
I turned to Shnee. The girl stood leaning on her rapier. She breathed heavily through parted lips, and sweat beaded on her face. Her chest rose violently. Fighting in this toxic environment rapidly drained her human reserves. Her organism still had huge deficits after months spent in chains, and without external power supply and autonomous regeneration, she was simply fragile. I noticed this, but I did not show any pity. It was a brutal proving ground. Her physical weaknesses had to be verified on the run.
"Good job, you caught the right rhythm," I assessed coldly, checking if the pouch was securely fastened. "But save the oxygen in your lungs. Ahead of us is the descent to the third floor, and the gates are guarded by true elites."
We left behind the smoking corpses of the ghouls. I moved forward, and my sapphire oxygen bubble ruthlessly pushed apart the bloody mist, paving our way through the ruined nave of the underground cathedral. Shnee walked right behind my shoulder. I heard her ragged breath. Her organism was still fighting a massive oxygen debt and fatigue after the last fight, because she did not yet possess autonomous regeneration. The girl did not complain, however, clenching her teeth and keeping pace with me in silence.
At the very end of the gigantic chamber, the darkness finally began to give way to a weak light. There were massive stairs leading into the deep abyss of the Third Floor. The descent was guarded by two powerful units. They were gigantic Gate Guards, clad in black plate armors that resembled hard blocks of coal. A heavy breath emanated from their deep helmets, and in their armored hands they wielded massive greatswords. Their breastplates were covered in dead runes that glowed with a rusty light.
Shnee instantly stepped back instinctively. Her sharpened mind immediately recognized the threat.
"Runic armors," she assessed, and her voice hardened. "My magic won't pierce this, and your sword might have a problem too. These runes are systemic anti-magic. They dissipate surface energy upon impact."
I scratched my neck. Peasant reason suggested to me that the girl was absolutely right. But in this dungeon there was no room for blind trust in theory - every mechanic had to be verified physically.
"I know," I admitted coldly, standing with my legs apart and clenching my hand on the blue Orcrist. "Let's check how good their software is."
I sprang from my spot, breaking the distance in the blink of an eye and falling into their zone. The guards reacted with machine precision. I braced my boots against the floor and executed a powerful cut from a full swing, aiming straight at the ribs of the first monster. The blade simply slid off the black armor with a loud squeak and a shower of sparks. In the exact same fraction of a second, the rusty runes on the enemy's armor ignited with red, immediately absorbing and dissipating my condensed mana. Pure energy was completely neutralized by the systemic anti-magic.
The collision threw me half a step back.
"Too hard for pure energy!" Shnee shouted from behind.
I retreated softly by a few meters. I understood their mechanics in a fraction of a second. The guards moved toward me step by step in a perfect formation. Their armors still glowed with a rusty red, hungry for the next portion of magic to devour. The vibrating weapon in my hand darkened in a fraction of a second. It turned into a pitch-black monolith. A hard armor coated the sapphire, turning the luminous sword into an inhumanly heavy anomaly. It was no longer a simple spell. It was pure mass encased in the armor of the soul.
I smiled predatorily.
"Let's see if your runes can handle a hard reset," I murmured.
I drove into them, loading all the kinetic force of my Vessel into this move. The first Guard lowered his greatsword, trying to pin me to the stone floor. I countered from below with a full swing. The black blade did not even squeak. It did not bounce off. It simply passed through the enemy's steel, disintegrating his greatsword into a rain of rusty dust. Before the monster could correct its stance, I executed a fluid spinning cut. Gōtai entered his runic armor like wet cardboard. The anti-magic signs flashed desperately, trying to suck in the energy, but the black monolith ignored the dungeon's software, brutally crushing the sheet metal under its own tonnage. I cut the Guard into two equal halves. His hidden core cracked, and the heavy body turned into falling ash in a fraction of a second.
The second Guard tried to block me with an iron-bound shield, taking a swing from behind cover. I ignored that piece of sheet metal. I focused raw will and used point telekinesis. I crushed his massive helmet from a distance like an empty can, denting the steel right to the center. When the monster lost its center of gravity, I drove the black Orcrist straight into its heart. The chamber immediately fell silent. Two heavy stones landed with a clink on the stairs. I pulled Gōtai back into my weaves, and the sword dissolved in the air with a hiss. I gathered the heavy cores into the stuffed pouch.
Shnee ran up to me, and her boots crunched on the ash. She breathed very heavily. With every breath she took, I saw how her fragile organism, still devoid of my seal and regeneration, fought against the toxic fatigue of the second floor. She was exhausted, acidic fumes slowly ate away her oxygen reserves, but there was no trace of weakness in her stance. There was only the hard pride of an assassin. She looked at the gathered loot, and then at the darkness of the stairs leading down.
"Cleared to zero," she said with deep respect in her voice.
I stopped at the edge of the stairs. The darkness below was thick like solid concrete.
"Yes. Cleared," I murmured with Brazen chill, adjusting the belt with the heavy pouch. "We did a piece of dirty work here. You kept the pace well, despite the lack of oxygen. And now it's time to see what the system has prepared for us on the third floor."