Chapter 374 – King Of The Sky
Damion flew back to where the core to the floor was. It rested on a flatter area of the rim of the volcano, and he hit it with an Ice Shard. When the core broke the passageway to the next floor revealed itself and he called out to Phil to come so they could head to the next floor.
When Phil arrived, in each of his talons he carried a Demonic Beast. Surprisingly, both were still alive. One was a Smoke Hare, a small rabbit like Demonic Beast that could exude a cloud of smoke as a distraction to help it escape from predators. As an E Rank beast with a Fire affinity, it was fairly common, but rather difficult to catch most of the time because it liked to hide.
The other Demonic Beast was a python that was wrapping itself around Phil’s talon in a desperate bid to try and find a way free. Despite this being a Fire affinity floor, the python Damion recognized as a Maple Strangler, named for the maple leaf pattern on its skin and its propensity for dropping from trees to wrap around the neck of its victims.
Damion quickly dispatched both Demonic Beasts with an Ice Shard each and stored them away. Knowing that both could be found on this floor would be useful information to pass on as while their cores were not the best the fur of the Smoke Hare and the skin of the Maple Strangler were valued fairly high because of their unique colors and patterns.
The eighth floor was exactly as Damion had expected after the volcano on the seventh. He came out of the passageway between floors to the sweltering heat of an active volcano. The entrance to the floor was on the rim of the caldera still, but instead of the lava having crusted over, the molten fire was oozing and bubbling in in the pit.
According to the map, across the caldera lay the core waiting for him to destroy it. Once he did it would open the way to the ninth floor. Unlike the previous floors, this floor had flying Demonic Beasts. Before he simply flew across to the exit he decided to pick off a few Demonic Beasts to add to his prize pool.
On this floor Damion had already spotted Ash Eagles and what Damion took to be Fire Hawks flying over the caldera. He could handle all of those F and E Rank Demonic Beasts easily, what was not so easy was collecting their carcasses before they plunged into the lava.
While Damion was considering his options, Phil shot up into the sky. The Blizzard King’s trajectory would send him into the heart of the Fire Hawks. He was not sure if Phil was out to prove itself the superior bird of prey or if the Blizzard King simply wanted to prove Ice was better than Fire.
The Fire Hawks were not about to relinquish their control of the sky just because a stronger Demonic Beast arrived, which Damion found unusual, but perhaps they were just as eager to prove Fire was stronger than Ice as Phil was of the reverse. The Fire Hawks broke formation when Phil barreled through, but then they came together behind the larger bird and started launching fireballs from their mouths.
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Phil was able to shrug off the attacks from the weaker Demonic Beasts, even if there were a dozen of them. As the larger Demonic Beast, Phil was not able to as easily maneuver around the Fire Hawks, but it was also much stronger than them and could fly faster.
The Blizzard King outpaced the Fire Hawks and looped around and charged right at them. As Phil flew through, it released an Ice Breath attack that froze several of the Fireballs solid along with the Fire Hawks that spat them out.
As the frozen Fire Hawks dropped from the sky, Damion rushed over on his Ice Sword. Luckily, he was able to pull the dead Demonic Beasts into his personal spatial storage before they fell into the lava. A moment later he looked up and saw Phil casting his Blizzard spell creating a sphere of winter above the lava filled volcano. As snow and ice drifted outside the sphere it melted instantly from the heat, and a few drops fell onto Damion as he watched.
The remaining Fire Hawks tried to escape from the Blizzard, but they failed and dropped out of the sky. Damion was able to catch a few of them, bringing his total of stored Fire Hawks to five. The remainder of the Demonic Beasts fell into the lava, each one with a dull plop and a sizzle as they were nearly instantly thawed and consumed.
“Good work Phil,” Damion praised his companion.
Even if the Fire Hawks were a lower Rank than Phil, the fact that the Blizzard King was able to kill a dozen of them and not let any escape showed its superiority.
‘Me King,’ Phil proudly sent through their bond.
“Yes, you are the king of the sky,” Damion said to Phil. “Time to head to the next floor.”
While he was speaking to Phil, Damion flew over and crushed the core for the floor. The pair flew into the passageway to the next floor as soon as it appeared.
The ninth floor, while no longer in the caldera of a volcano, was apparently a plain downhill from a volcano. The plain was ablaze and there were rivers of lava cutting through the ground. Dozens of Lava Scutalus were moving about on the lava as it flowed and for a brief second Damion caught sight of some kind of fish, breaking the surface of the lava just long enough for True Sight to tell him it was an E Rank Demonic Beast.
As he continued to look around, Damion checked his map and saw the core was upstream. There was not much of a slope to the plain, but there was enough of one that the lava had a definitive direction to its flow. Despite the amount of lava, Damion did not actually see a volcano on the map. He assumed there was one, but if there was it was beyond the range of his auto-mapper. The core itself was close to twelve kilometers upstream and were it not for his ability to fly reaching the core would be quite difficult.
The lava flows converged and diverged, creating a nearly impossible maze of fire. Some of the lava flows were over a hundred meters across, making it close to impossible to cross for the average adventurer. The terrain of this floor could quite possibly cut off the majority of adventurers from going deeper into the labyrinth. Higher Rankers, B Rank and above, would be fine, most could channel enough mana to be able to power a flight artifact long enough to cross the largest of the lava flows.
The problems lay in the D Ranker and the C Rankers. This was only an E Rank floor, if the D Rank and C Rank adventurers could not reach the floors best suited for them it would create a bottleneck on this and the prior floor.
After reaching the core and crushing it, Damion took another look at the rivers of lava and he realized he would need to find a solution to this floor. If middle Rankers could not move to floors appropriate for them it was going to create a hole in the economy of Atlantis.