Chương 214: Chapter Two-Hundred-and-Fourteen

Natalia gasped herself awake after Adam had settled them all down. In front of them was a large cave mouth in the southeastern corner of the rectangular box made by the mountains hemming in the stage.

"How long was I out?" she asked.

"About three minutes," Adam replied.

"As promised, we arrived quickly."

"I think I prefer unconsciousness," Chien remarked. Natalia ran her hands down her body frantically as she got up, but Adam had already removed the constructs from her and Chien, although he left one wrapped around Seo-Yoon, since she'd threatened to hurt him when he tried to take it away. Natalia looked towards the cave mouth directly in front of them.

"Is it in there? The shadow bird?" she asked.

"It is," Adam confirmed. His compass had pointed to the cave the entire journey here, and now that they were close, he could sense a faint melody from within. It was that of an animal, but twisted and tainted. According to what Natalia had said, the shadow bird had broken free of the Forlorn Shadow, and Adam assumed it was because of its resistant brain, which the Guardian wanted her to collect.

He was hoping that it meant the Shadow wouldn't be able to protect it, but he didn't want to make such assumptions, because it was after all a secret boss, and those were always more challenging than normal boss encounters. Even without the aspirant's cowl, Adam and the others could visibly see the tainted blanket of unnatural darkness that coated the Forlorn Shadow's domain, but now that they were standing in it, Adam realised the Shadow couldn't climb the mountains around the kingdom.

He had already thought as much, given how Gothershall was protected, but seeing it up close clearly confirmed it as fact. It also meant that where the cave mouth led into the mountain wall, the Shadow struggled to enter, despite the opening being large enough to fit two carriages side by side. Chien led the way inside and Adam briefly regretted not bringing a true flame from Old Town.

He had believed they wouldn't need it, since Chien's rosary was topped up following the death of the army, but Adam now realised that such thinking was naïve. It's better to be overprepared than underprepared, after all. As soon as they were all inside, Adam created a flame with his fire glove and passed it to Seo-Yoon, who absorbed it into her Cloudmaker staff and created a thin fog ahead of them that lit up the rock tunnel as they moved through it.

Adam used the bones from his raiment to make a barricade behind them, before drawing out several layers of spiderweb using his blood silk. He also added snare patterns into the webs to further increase their stopping power. The shadow bird only targeted lone players and animals, so Adam assumed it was a flighty enemy that would try to escape out into the open air where its ability to fly would put most of them at a disadvantage.

Once the traps were set, he brought up the rear of their party, summoning a bright flame into his hand to add even more light to the darkness. The cave was a series of long tunnels, and every time they reached an intersection, Adam used his compass to guide them down the right path. They were going on foot, because they weren't sure about ambushes or traps, given that Adam couldn't detect all forlorn enemies. They also hoped to get the jump on the boss, which required a careful approach.

Since they appeared to have quite a long trek ahead of them before reaching the boss, Adam started experimenting with making flaming torches, and after just a few minutes of messing around with blood, flesh, and fire, he had made a stable flame that burned bright enough to be useful. He sculpted two torches and offered them to Natalia and Chien. Natalia wrinkled her nose at the bone handle of the torch, but she was still grateful to have it.

Adam also left a few behind on their journey deeper into the shadow bird's lair. He normally wouldn't have dared in this stage, but given that the Shadow was unable to enter the cave, he felt certain the standing torches wouldn't suddenly awake to unholy life and attack them from behind. After nearly an hour of traversing the cave system, they emerged from a tunnel and came out into a large chamber with tall pillars rising from the floor like stalagmites, except they were flat on the top.

Crouched atop one of these pillars was a shape that was darker than the darkness around it. It appeared to be quite fuzzy, but they all realised that it was because the shadow covering it was shaped into thousands of feathers. It looked to be asleep, so they wordlessly agreed to strike it as hard as they could before it could wake up and fight back. Adam made a bright-burning flame and offered it to Seo-Yoon who pulled it into her staff and immediately started making a large burning mist at the foot of the pillar.

He had prepared his Magical Disturbance affliction with the traps for this moment and shaped a spell pattern for Push, before applying it to one of his gauntlet fingers, hoping that its wildly unpredictable nature would deliver a decisive blow. Adam created more webs with snares around the large chamber, specifically placing them high above where the bird was likely to fly around. He also sealed off the exit behind them.

Once all of their preparations were done, Adam launched four fingers with snares on them, landing every hit on the boss and causing blood-formed vines to wrap around it, locking it in place. There weren't any affliction announcements from his cube, but the snares still held fast. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

< < Secret Stage Objective > > < Defeat the Shadow Bird > Seo-Yoon lifted her burning mist up the pillar towards the ensnared boss, while Adam fired the finger with the uncontrollable Push spell on it. As the finger struck, it made a strange ping and the entire chamber shook. Then the pillar that the bird was stuck on exploded into tiny fragments, forcing them all to hide behind a different pillar to avoid being showered with deadly projectiles.

A warbling screech filled the chamber as the boss fell with the broken pillar, moving through Seo-Yoon's spell. With an explosion of darkness, the bird broke free of its restraints and soared up into the air while firing a dozen shadow-black feathers down at them. Adam raised a barrier of bone, protecting them all, before firing back with a fusillade of his gauntlet fingers, popping holes in its wings, though they didn't do anything to slow it down.

Seo-Yoon switched to her Spellcaster staff and Adam created the black flame he'd used against the horsemen, giving it to her to absorb. She launched a ball of the unnatural fire with her staff, activating the ranger's lucky charm so that it would strike the boss no matter what. As the ball of black fire hit the bird from below, it tumbled forward with a screech and collided with one of Adam's snare nets, immediately becoming enveloped in blood vines and sticky silk, sending it plummeting down towards them.

Adam shaped five devastating claws from his raiment, sending them up to meet the falling boss. At the same time, Natalia somehow ran up the side of the nearby pillar and leapt for the shadow bird, activating her katana's special skill and passing right through it. The strike echoed through the chamber, but the boss was still protected by the dark feathery veil that coated it, making it almost completely immune to physical attacks. She's being impatient.

Adam's claws were likewise having a rough time of trying to penetrate the boss' shadowy armour, so he switched to using his flame glove, engulfing the boss in fire as it struck the floor of the chamber with a loud crash. Chien rushed forward and slammed his hammer into the boss with an activation of his duellist's glove and power ring. The impact cratered the rock floor under him and the boss, pumping it full of holy mana, just as the aftershock struck it again.

The physical part of the attack was shrugged off by its dark armour, but his holy power was able to chip away several of its feathers, and Seo-Yoon pulled the mana out of his cuirass and into her Cloudmaker staff to add to the onslaught with a holy-infused mist.

Just as Natalia was rushing back in to help break open the shadow bird's armour, the boss screeched and sent an explosion of darkness out from itself, briefly revealing its skeletal body below, which, unlike what Adam had been told, was not that of a raven, but rather a vulture. Chien's Shade Barrier triggered, shifting him out of harm's way, and Natalia was just far enough away to avoid being hit.

Before the bird could pull the darkness back into itself, Natalia flew forward and sliced her blade through its neck, separating its head from its body. Inside the cranium was an obsidian lump that glistened in their torch light. However, the bird was not defeated by its decapitation, and before they could pin it down again, it burst out through the bone barricade Adam had placed in the exit, flying down through the tunnel.

"We've gotta catch it!" Adam yelled, sprouting three limbs from his raiment and wrapping them around his team members. Natalia held tight to the bird cranium as Adam flew them after the headless shadow bird.

"I can hit it with a true flame attack!" Seo-Yoon exclaimed.

"My lucky charm is ready in about forty seconds!"

"Tell me when you want the blessing," Chien told her. He was for once not on the verge of passing out or vomiting, despite the speed with which Adam shot them through the tunnels, chasing down the boss which was almost as fast as them. After a few minutes, they were getting close to the exit and could see the shadow bird ahead of them before every turn in the tunnels.

"Wait until it hits the traps by the exit!" Adam shouted. He shifted the limbs carrying Chien and Seo-Yoon close to each other, while keeping Natalia out of the way. She was too focused on breaking open the bird skull in her arms to be of much use regardless. Suddenly the melodies of his traps by the entrance vanished all at once, and he knew the boss had triggered them.

"Now!" Adam yelled. Chien blessed Seo-Yoon's staff, and as they rounded the last corner of the tunnel, the downed and headless shadow bird lay at its end, only a few metres from freedom. Before it could explode its feathery armour to break free, Seo-Yoon, who Adam had shifted far ahead of himself, fired a sun flare with her blessed staff, lighting up the dark tunnel with a golden true flame. It zipped across the way and struck the bird, instantly vaporising it, leaving barely any ash behind.

< < Secret Stage Objective Complete > > < Defeated the Shadow Bird > Adam brought them down in front of the boss' remains, but there really was nothing left behind. No chests or secret relics. Just ash.

"That could have gone much worse," Chien remarked, using the cave wall to steady himself and his jelly legs.

"Do we not get any reward?" Natalia asked, holding an obsidian lump under her arm. Nearby lay the cracked-open bird cranium.

"I guess not," Adam replied, before consulting his compass. It didn't show anything inside the cave.

"Wait here," he told them and flew back through the tunnels, double checking just to be sure. He collected his scattered torches and broken barriers on the way, absorbing them back into his armour. Inside the large chamber, he did actually find something, but it was just a small leather pouch with a non-relic necklace inside. The moment he pulled it out, he received a quest.

< < Quest Unlocked > > < Left in Mourning > < Find the family of the Shadow Bird's victim > I should've also asked the compass about quest objectives, Adam realised. He returned to the others a few minutes later, showing them the necklace.

"Who does it belong to?" Chien asked.

"My compass points towards the west, so I'm guessing it's someone in Old Town. I was planning on going back there to get another true flame, so I will find the family this belongs to at the same time."

"What about us?" Natalia asked.

"I will fly you back to Gothershall first," Adam told them.

"It's too dangerous to linger around here, and the hamlet we're going to next is directly north, so its actually closer to Gothershall than this cave." Chien sighed.

"I hope unconsciousness takes me again."

"That can be arranged," Adam replied with a sinister grin. Before they knew it, Adam had wrapped a construct around Chien and Natalia, lifting them up into the air alongside himself and Seo-Yoon who still had the construct from their trip here. He shot them out of the cave and into the sunlight, which burned bright as the sun was almost directly at its zenith. Although they all hate this means of conveyance, we're saving so much time this way, compared to moving on foot or horseback.

He was already considering how to move through the stage whenever he ended up with a weapon that didn't allow him to fly, but that was a concern for the future. Seo-Yoon looked down at the Blue Vein river as they passed over it.

"After we go to the hamlet, we should check out that fishing village."

"We will," Adam promised. Ahead of him, Natalia and Chien dangled in the grips of his constructs, both completely knocked out by their intolerance to a little speed. Hopefully these prolonged stretches of unconsciousness aren't detrimental to their health…