Chương 360: AF Chapter 359 – Center of the Caulcano

The marguls were twisted, shrunken approximations of drakes, imbued with Shadow and Fire. They were mean, vicious things, which could claw, bite, jump and glide long distances with their wings, while still being no bigger than a big dog. Their flaming breath was not appreciated by anyone, and the spells they sent off, a mixture of Life Magic Debuffs and Fire War Magic, didn't endear them to us, either.

Kris could laugh at most anything of that nature, of course, and what her Null couldn't take she could Spellcut off herself quickly. The Mick wasn't quite so fortunate, but his Magic Defense was plenty high and hard to land on, so I didn't have to Dispel him much, saving on mana costs and letting me focus on Healing as needed. With the two of them taking lead, Wolfpacks quickly shattered the clustered, scrabbling spawns of marguls, then the shades that sometimes spawned with them.

Virindi clusters of them and the Marionettes were not enjoyed, as they were much heavier and relentless with the spells, as well as annoyingly lethal in personal combat, the Paradoxes in particular being quite well-armored. They were still Summons, no real ones among those present here. I gathered the real ones would be attacked by the spawns of the other side in place, and so didn't bother coming here to be torn apart by uncaring Summons. An interesting state of affairs.

We had almost made it to the southern pass when I stopped everyone, Shaped the ground level, and spread a Tapestry cloth down. The next minute slick dark volcanic glass was pouring out of a nearby stand of it, including an entire boulder with a dull red glow revealing itself as it began to flow over and onto the cloth.

I didn't need to erect a containment box for this, as it was going to be hundreds of tons of solid stone, veined with crystalline patterns of fire scattered in a regular pattern of red dots and lines of red stretching between them to preserve the internal energies of the stuff. It took only a couple minutes to pull up enough Firestone Obsidian to form a full Tapestry.

I invoked the spell, and the massive cube of stone, twenty feet on a side, fell into the cloth below it, becoming an illustration of a massive stone cube instead of a real one, woven into the cloth. The cloth was promptly Itemized, reduced to an eighth of its size, and stowed in my Masspack after quick folds. We cleared out of the area about a minute ahead of the rapidly returning respawning Summons, that process hastened along by being the first time anything had died there for some time.

"Anything else of interest?" Princess Kristie asked me just before the next fight, against two Paradoxes, a Rift, and two Marionettes, was going to start.

"There's a vein of Earth Diamonds directly under those six marguls over there." I pointed to a spawn point down off the wall. Kris noted it and the spawns on the way down to it.

"Anything else along the wall to pull out?"

"Fire Jade and Fire Quartz. Neither are high demand, and we can come back for them."

"Fire Jade is mostly for Wondrous Architecture and Sculptures. Fire Quartz?" she pressed quickly.

"Tips Wands and stuff to get a little more fire damage out of them."

"Where's the Fire Quartz?" she asked promptly.

"Just popped up at the edge of my Detects, about halfway to the next pass." Kris grinned fiercely.

"Good. We'll pull some of that out for funsies." She pointed ahead.

"Archers, take out that Rift first. First team on the first Paradox with me, second team on the second Paradox. Team three and four with the Mick on the Marionettes. If the Rift dies first, clear the Virindi." What it meant was that she was going to be tanking all of the things, because Summons were stupid, and she'd be doling out Sword Beats Fist in all directions in explosions of slashing damage. That was going to drive the Wolfpack engine of furious Opportunist attacks and relentless crits piling on the damage.

The Mick, with Bunita in Coldphasing, was going to concentrate on the Marionettes, most vulnerable to that Element, while the Archers picked the big glowing target, a floating mask atop an amorphous blob of filtered virindi-Tainted light, from above, then would start on the hardest things to kill, the Paradox. My main job was to Dispel, Healing if needed…

but Kris, having donned her Olthoi Armor, didn't need much Healing with Healing Edge active on Quaver, all those attacks generating tons of Healing if anything got through her Armor's defense and Crystal Shield Damage Reduction. Amusingly enough, if they were Casting Pyreal spells, I could Counter them directly now, and I was happy to do so. It was much more mana-conservative than Casting Dispels. Isparian-style Dispels were Tier-based, but auto success against that Tier or lesser on standing spells.

The lesser Marguls, like the Hellion and Helcan, as well as the Phantasm Shades, popped out Pyreal spells. The virindi stuff and the Biaka Marguls let loose with Platinum, so I had to use Matrix Dispels at a fixed 30 mana a shot to get rid of those Debuffs if they landed. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

It was much easier to Heal them up when they were wounded, all things told, but if the gods of bad luck unleashed multiple spells at once on a target and they got through, well, that could be bad if I wasn't on the ball. Hence, Counters at the ready and Dispels ready for double-duty, with normal and Fastcast Healing magic optional, too.

Happily, luck was not with the Summons, mere unimportant tools that they were, and the Wolfpacks were working together with marvelous efficiency now, especially if they levered the creatures apart and more people could fit around them for the killing. Focused by all the archers at point-blank range, the amorphous blob of colorful energies that was the Rift collapsed first.

The Virindi were getting hacked into with enthusiasm, but their armor was thick and very resistant to damage, with it being proven that Brilliant and Umbral Weapons wouldn't even damage the energy-beings inside it! So, no ability to bypass it, only Imperil and Vuln the things to bring them down faster. Which I could have done, if I didn't have to focus on keeping Kris alive. I did Imperil V both of them at once, and then was basically on guard duty in case of catastrophe.

The arrow fire moving to the Paradoxes signaled their end, and then all fighters were on the Marionettes. The archers eased up as Quaver flickered over to frost, and incidental Attacks of Opportunity became blizzards of arcing blows that rapidly tore both of the animated floating corpse-puppets apart.

"Ye must be one o' those masochists, soaking up so much punishment like ye do, Highness," the Mick offered on behalf of everyone, watching burns and long cuts start to pull themselves back together as her Fast Healing went to work. She'd had at least fifty spells target her, about half of which had gotten through her Null, of all energy types.

Some were Spellcut, some were Reflected, some were Countered or Dispelled, and I still had to Mend her underleathers up again for the punishment they'd taken between spells and physical attacks. It was fair to say that the greatest amount of blood staining her Armor was her own.

"Nah, just very high pain tolerances, and a refusal to let a fear of pain slow me down," she answered directly.

"Pain is still pain, I don't mix it up with pleasure like a masochist does.

"Now, getting revenge on something that is inflicting pain upon me, that's something different." Eight canines gleamed in satisfaction.

"I get QUITE the rush out of that!"

"I swear to never enter a torture chamber with ye after a sparring," he uttered with completely sincere conviction, earning laughs from everyone else.

"Let's go. We've got some Fire Diamonds and Fire Quartz to get harvested!"

"Hold up," I told everyone, bringing them to a halt. We had encircled the entire caldera, and had liberated a very good haul of stuff. I had Itemized Fire and Earth Diamonds, Fire Quartz, Fire Jacinths, Earth Peridots, Firesnowflake Obsidian, Fire Zircon, Earth Topaz, and of course Fire Rubies. Heck, I even grabbed some Fire Jade, because it was only two spawn points to clear to do it. But now it was time to address the center of the caldera.

There were two, maybe three spawns to clear to make it there, depending on how cautious we were, and all of them were marguls, only one group with shades among them. Fast and easy to kill with Cold, as it were.

"What's up?" Kris asked automatically, all eyes on me.

"We're going to treat this as a dangerous thing to do," I stated firmly.

"We can clear the spawns, but I want everyone ready to Teleport out on the instant. That means an empowered Formation, and if anything happens, you're gone. Instantly. If you don't go, likely there's going to be dimensional fuckery going on, and you're going to be trying to get away from a possibly erupting volcano."

"Gor…" the Mick muttered, eyes towards the level expanse of red-veined black rock at the center of the place.

"That be not sounding like fun, lass. What's spurring this?"

"We haven't checked out Mount Lethe, but after the Crater I'm 99% sure there's an Elemental Boss sitting there in the active caldera. I'm likewise betting there's one on Tenkarrdun." Everyone there had been to the Crater of Mount Esper to get their White Fire Infusions for their Weapons of Lost Light from the Helion Elemental there. They all looked around slowly.

"There's not a single Fire Elemental in sight anywhere," Selena breathed out in realization.

"That's… probably not natural, right?" she murmured.

"There's a lot of Shadow in this area, just like Tou-Tou. And if you remember, the theme of the Patron of Bael'Zharon is Shadow… and Fire." Everyone's eyes dipped to the lava under our feet.

"This did suddenly get more complicated than I be thinkin'," Lord Mick observed ironically.

"Gor, I always hated this damn place…"

"So, Lord Mick, you are going to be sitting with everyone in a Formation, and if you get the order, you go. No delay, just go. Aim for the Seal Focus on the rim, and then immediately bail and make tracks for the Withered Beach to the northeast, it should be in range of you."

"Got it." And he did. No heroics. His job was to get them out… and make a Lived-Line connection here while he did it.

"And ye?"

"Like last time, I'll be finding out if something is down there, and Kris will pull me out if needed." If you were watching, the pupils in his eyes got very small.

"Right, then," he said roughly, turning cold, dead eyes on those Summons, only death promised for the hapless Summons now.

"We'll get ye there, lass, no worries on that score."

It was indeed pretty fast and brutal. With only two Shades to worry about and no need to conserve mana, everyone went Coldphasing except for Kris, since Quaver could use his Arsenal to shift back and forth for her. The Marguls were wolfpacked down with great speed by everyone, no arrow fire bothered with this time.

Kris triggered AoO's for everyone, had them triggered in return, and sparkling cold Lost Light motes filled the air with crystalline death as the twisted mini-drakes coughed, froze, and their inner fires stilled and quenched, died. Still no vivus, because nobody was going to make the mistake of feeding vivus to a place where it might wake up something that didn't like the feel of it. I whipped up the Teleport Formation for everyone, a temporary thing that the heated rock here would rapidly erode away.

The Mick made sure everyone was inside it, in position, and had fed mana into it to power their Teleport out. Quaver could Teleport us out of there as well. I took a deep breath, brought up the Detect Elements VI +1, and standing at the center of the Caulcano caldera, took a look down there, hoping to see some Earthfire Obsidian.