Chương 23: -23- Threat Display

Calder-Still Stone Barrow Calder's eyes fluttered open; he had tarried in his sanctuary for a while and then, at some point after returning to himself, simply fallen asleep. He wasn't sure how long he had been out, but based on how damned thirsty he was, it had been at least half a day. Bringing the time spent down here far to longer than he would have liked, between all the hiding, fighting, and exploring. But what made him sit up suddenly, heart racing in realization, was what he saw. Nothing.

Darkness had fallen over the pale city once again; the few beams of light trailing around the washbasin he had placed in the window were gone, leaving the room in complete and utter shadows. Calder got up as slowly as he could, flinching at the creaking of the bedframe. Unlike before, when it was mostly eerie silence save for the colossal monsters battling outside. Here in the bottom levels the dark was alive. Chittering teeth and low growls echoed through the streets. He heard footfalls race past his window.

Then in the distance someone called out for help. Calder started reaching for the door on instinct before realizing how stupid that was. He forced himself to be still and listen. The distant voice called out for help again. In exactly the same tone and pitch. He frowned as it happened a third time and then shuddered realizing it was something mimicking a human to lure out prey. He did the only thing he could think of to pass the time.

He sat quietly in the darkness and used the tiny bit of tranquility he had access to. Bouncing a mote of darkness from finger to finger based on feel alone. He had to go slowly, but his control over the beyond once it had left his body was growing. He had made work in desperation several times now. And those moments of use had shown him things about the strange energy.

It seemed to cancel out mana, consuming it like an antimagic effect in large enough quantities, which would be imminently useful against spellcasters. But the average spellcaster could almost certainly make him run out of his grasp before they ran out of mana. Blocking a spell or two and getting in close might be all Calder needed, though. His thoughts turned bloody when imagining closing with spellcasters, making him flinch.

They tended not to have high physical resistances, spending their essence on improving spellwork or mana capacity. Then there was the other effect tranquility had. An otherworldly cold that plummeted temperatures beyond what he would have imagined possible. Enough tranquility would bring the air down to a bitter cold that would match even the worst winter blizzard. And when applied directly he had seen firsthand what concentrated tranquility did to normal flesh.

He was incredibly fortunate that a side effect of his class change seemed to be complete immunity to the unnatural hoarfrost. Calder almost lost control of the tranquility he was shaping as something barreled down the hallway outside his door, innumerable clicking legs scurrying across what sounded like the walls and ceiling. He took a deep calming breath. Dectus was nearby, blade in hand as always, but he seemed sedate. Occasionally he would press his form through a wall and peer outside before pulling back.

If he weren't a ghost, Calder would have bet whatever he was seeing would have made him pale. He didn't try and utter a single joke, simply standing at the ready. Calder drank most of his waterskin in the dark; one nice bonus to his skill set was that it was always nice and nearly icy for him. All he had to do was trace some tranquility around it. He damn near choked on said slushy drink as the light abruptly flicked back on. Hundreds, if not thousands, of horrifying screeches, barks, and howls rang out.

Followed by a stampede of flesh as everything in the streets fled to find darkened places. There was a tense few minutes where things slithered or climbed into neighboring rooms. Something briefly scratched at the cover over Calder's window before skittering away to look for a more easily accessible hiding spot. What Calder hadn't expected was the sudden sounds of fighting as monsters competed for the same darkened areas. This place is far worse than I believed.

It's an utter miracle that I wasn't on this level the first time the light went out; I would have died without question. The sheer amount of sounds slowly falling silent solidly convinced Calder that even exploring down here anymore before leaving might as well be suicide. He thought he was unlucky opening a door to find a dozen hidden monstrosities. Based on everything he had heard, he was probably eminently lucky it had only been a dozen and that it was something he could actually handle.

With a slightly pained grunt, he started sliding the bedframe away from the door. Things had settled as much as they would, and he intended to get the hell out of this deathtrap of a city before the lights went out again. His wounds protested at his movement, but Calder was shocked at how easy it was. With a surprised huff, he picked the frame up with one hand and lightly set it down.

"I'll be damned... Man, that was worth the essence." His gaze turned to Dectus; he needed to try the addition he had made to Shepherd of Souls. His grasp was still critically low.

"Tell me if this stings or something," Calder said with a chuckle. Dectus managed a "The hell do you mean sting? What are you about to!? Aghh.. well no I wouldn't say sting but it does feel slightly odd almost like im tugging on something that isn't there." Calder had linked to Dectus to pull tranquility into this realm hopefully without anything dire happening. It was an almost invisible thread of light blue energy wisping between them.

It looked eerily similar the threads the Darksteel had used to bind it's victims. The temperature dropped slightly, and if Calder focused, he could see the slightest wisps of tranquility dripping from the edges of Dectus's frame. He focused on pulling the motes of tranquility to himself. He was only catching the slightest tinges of the beyond doing this, but after nearly a minute of focusing solely on it, he noticed his grasp tick up a single point.

And if this worked the way he thought it would, being in proximity to tranquility should raise his passive regeneration as well. Dectus stared at him, waiting for an answer. Calder gave him a smile.

"Well, you aren't a font of infinite power now, but you are like a leaky faucet, and I'll take it!"

"Your class is bizarre, and coming from me, that's saying something. Running through walls, punching specters to death, and freezing every room you walk into... the system really was bored when it decided to grace you with these abilities."

"The running through walls thing is all me, a good diet and exercise and you too can tell shoddily built structures who's in charge!" Calder joked"It was fucking stone…" Dectus said in exasperation. Calder just shrugged and tried to hide his wry smile at being able to infuriate his mentor. Calder pulled the door open, peeking out into the hall to make sure nothing was lurking, waiting for him.

There wasn't, and concerningly, there wern't any bodies left either; something had dragged them off in the dark, evident from the utter smeared mess leading deeper into the building. He made his way out to where he had dumped the darksteel. A few pieces had been knocked off the counter, and there was even what looked like fangs stuck in one of the larger hunks, but it was all there, from what Calder could tell.

He hefted up the bag and suddenly froze as something inside shifted, emitting a small noise that sounded like a mix between a gurgle and a growl. With a deep sigh, Calder opened the top of the bag and simply dropped it, letting the contents spill across the floor. They cascaded heavily, throwing a small, lightly shimmering creature across the floor.

"The fuck!?" Calder stepped back at the sheer intensity of the monster's gaze. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. It was only the size of his hand, shaped like an evil gecko that was flatter than normal and swirled with tinges of blue light against its grey scales. But its eyes glimmered with an almost spectral white and blue haze that buffeted against his mind briefly.

Then instead of running, it shuffled forwards in short, uneven bursts of speed, staring at him the whole time.

"Shoo!

"Shoo!" Calder said as loudly as he dared, waving a hand at the oddly fearless creature. It didn't shoot; in fact, it bolted straight forward, veering at the last second so it was back at the edges of the fallen dark steel chunks. Then it stared him straight in the eye while its strangely oversized, toothless maw unhinged and tiny padded feet reached out and stuffed the smallest piece of nearby darksteel into its mouth.

It shifted and squared up with him, its mouth and gullet comically overfull, and tried a threat display on him. It reared back on its hind legs and waved its top half slowly in the air while hissing around a mouthful of haunted rock. Alright... what the hell are you, and how has nothing eaten you? Bah, I need to get out of here.

"I... you know what? Whatever, it's all yours, weird little hell gecko." Calder ignored it since it seemed harmless enough other than some mild mental attacks. Simply scooping the rest of the darksteel back into the sack. He turned and grabbed the large chunks, tying his loads back in place. He nearly jumped out of his skin when Dectus whispered, "I think it likes you."

Standing on his bag of dark steel over one shoulder, the creature was doing its threat display again, waving its arms in the air while sputtering around a mouthful of cursed stone. Calder tried to bat it away, but the thing skittered out of reach. Persistent little shit Instead of unslinging his entire load once again and wasting time, he just sighed and left the tavern. Occasionally glancing at his stubborn passenger.

His steps were still heavy and slow, but his stat increase had made it more like an all-encompassing burden instead of a herculean task that he was one pothole away from failing. The second he hit the large staircase and started going up, Calder's opinion changed rapidly. The first step was hard. The second was painful, but by the third, even with his increased strength, he was almost crawling upwards. He continued all the way up to the next tier before daring to stop.

He simply kneeled against the cool stones and tried to get his breathing under control. Dear Gods, Should have raised it higher; no wonder this stuff is so expensive. It tries to kill you when you mine it. It tries to kill you when you move it, and it definitely tries to kill you when you forge with it. An awful retching sound made him look back; the gluttonous little monster had somehow weaseled another tiny fragment of dark steel and was trying to stuff it in his overfull mouth with the other piece.

It noticed Calder looking and immediately reared up again, waving back and forth in between hitting him with gazes that gave him the creeps.

"Calm yourself, good lord..." He couldn't help but laugh at the ridiculousness of his situation. With a grunt he peeled himself off the stairs and forded upwards. One painstaking step at a time. He was shaking and sweating nearly two hours later, having made it most of the way to the top. He was at the very edges of the second to topmost tier of the city. That's when the lights gave a slight brief flicker. Dectus shimmered next to him.

"Find cover!" Calder was already stumbling towards the nearest buildings.

"Oh gee, really!? I thought I'd just take a nap with the lizard and see what decided to eat us first!" He didn't have time to be discerning; the lights flickering were a brief herald of the coming danger. Ahead was a street lined in homes on one side and what appeared to be storefronts on the other. Calder walked up to something that may have been an ancient bank. Its front door was a metal-grated façade. With a rusted steel door behind it.

However, it had been pried open almost certainly by previous adventurers, giving him just enough room to crawl in. The lobby was a wreckage of broken stone. Fragments of counters were laid in haphazard piles, and an obvious vault door lay in the center behind the piles of debris. The entire mess was lit by two barely functioning glimmering stones and, surprisingly, his passenger. The moment they had entered darkness, the swirling blue patterns along the lizard had lit up defensively.

It wasn't as good as a torch, but it was better than nothing in the dim light. He approached the vault door. It was an astounding glimpse of history, less the door and more the thousand years' worth of attempts to open it. Holes were tunneled in the floor and through the walls, stopping at the metal lining. Entire sections had been reduced to molten stone and glass as someone tried to burn their way in.

There were even incredibly out-of-place tree roots, like a druid had tried to force it open with the wrath of nature. And of course thousands and thousands of pick and blade and drill marks. Someone had succeeded, though, because the vault door lay cracked open, a neat empty space where its locking mechanism once was. It took every bit of Calder's strength, but he was able to pry the door open another few handspans to make room for him to squeeze in. He paused, raising a hand to get Dectus's attention.

"Anything in there?" There was a flash of spectral light and blood. An arm sailed over and hit Calder loosely in the face. Then Dectus materialized next to him.

"No, not anymore," he smugly answered. Calder pulled himself inside and then put his whole weight into pulling the door closed behind himself. It wasn't a moment too soon either; the slight streamers of light outside abruptly cut out. Immediately the darkness started stirring and growling, and the dance of claws across stone rang out. Calder looked around the vault for anything to put in the torso-sized hole in the vault door.

The room was a mess with pried-open boxes lining each wall and a few benches as well as quite a few dead adventurers. He found a heater shield that he roughly wedged in the gap. It wasn't perfect, but it was better than nothing. Since he was trapped in an ancient vault anyway, he started poking around to see if there was anything left behind of value. The bodies of the adventurers told a blatant tale of betrayal.

Slit throats and stabs to the back—obviously the team that had finally broken in here hadn't wanted to share evenly. He found a surprising amount of coinage between their bodies. Which made him gaze enviously at the broken open lockboxes. For the traitors to leave behind a few gold coins' worth of pocket change, what they found must have been incredibly valuable. Calder sighed as he looked at the glittering coins in his hands.

It was a great example of the disparity in earning between adventurers and the common folk. With great risk came great rewards. He tucked half a year's worth of wages into his coin purse and kept rooting around among the dead quietly, ignoring the sounds outside. Their armor, a mix of scale and leather, was in good shape but far too small for him and stunk horribly. He did find a well-crafted longsword that glittered in the light like it might have been made from magically reinforced metal.

He gave it a couple quick swings. It wasn't nearly big enough for him, but for now it would do. He waited in the dark, slowly practicing with his tranquility shaping. But here he at least had a goal with it. He would tease it out, holding it on the tip of his finger against the small lockbox's keyhole, hoping to make it brittle enough to break. It took a very, very long time; the metal used in their construction wasn't mundane, but it also wasn't immune.

After over an hour one had completely frozen over from the inside. Calder jammed another broken lockbox fragment into the keyhole and wrenched. Muffling the whole process with his cloak. It worked surprisingly well; the entire locking mechanism shattered into pieces that he dug out with his fingers until finally the door swung open. Dust washed over him when he slid out the small shelf inside. It held a single ornate wooden box. And two neat rows of stacked coins.

Calder spun a coin through his fingers, unsure what it was even made of. It was a silvery metal with a slight white shimmer and no markings upon it. He pocketed them with a shrug and moved on to the box. He cracked it open and pulled out paperwork, with attached maps and land details. Oh great wonderful deeds to houses in the pale city that's.. aggressively unhelpful Calder scoffed.

He dug under the papers hoping there was anything else of value he didn't have time to sit here and slowly crack the remaining boxes open one by one he was out of food and damn near out of water. Unfortunately, the only other thing of value seemed to be the box itself. The wood seemed very strong for how light it was, and he liked the geometric engravings across it, so he added it to a pocket.

"Alright, that's solidly enough shit to carry." Light had finally started streaming around the vault door again. He was about to leave when the lizard skittered across the floor, trying to get back on him from where it had been perched on a wall the last few hours. Calder lunged, managing to grab it.

"Ha, gotcha you freeloading..." The lizard simply turned immaterial and phased through his hand, plopping on the floor and then skittering up his leg onto the dark steel bag again.

"Oh goddammit, what the hell are you?" Dectus was silently laughing his ass off near the door, watching Calder so solidly defeated by a glowing gecko. Calder managed to point his spotter at the little monster finally (Soulshredder Hatchling Tier-1) (lvl 7). Calder slowly lowered his spotter and stared at his passenger with far more cautious eyes.

"Uhh... shit... good murder lizard." Wait, was this little bastard trying to suck my soul out with his gaze or something!? Calder put that on the back burner for the moment; he would try and get it to stay with a hunk of dark steel bribe once he was out of this deathtrap.