Ch.39
The forest on Floor 18 went deeper than it looked from camp.
After the Goliath, after the dust and the ash and Ryuu's arm across my chest, the situation on Floor 18 had gotten complicated. Loki Familia was here. A Poison Vermis swarm on the upper floors had forced them down to the safe zone, and they'd arrived to find a broken ceiling and a dissolving boss monster and our group standing in the middle of it.
Ais had appeared. She'd found our group first, found Welf unconscious and Mikoto shaking and Hestia crying. She'd looked at me across the camp and I'd nodded and she'd gone to help without saying a word.
Then the Goliath's death had triggered secondary spawns in the forest, and Finn had ordered a sweep, and somehow in the reorganization I'd ended up on the eastern perimeter with the one member of Loki Familia who wanted to be near me least.
"I don't need your help," Lefiya said.
She was walking ahead of me through the crystal undergrowth, her staff in both hands, her golden ponytail swinging with each stride. She hadn't looked at me since Finn had paired us and she wasn't planning to start.
"Didn't offer any," I said.
"Good. Because I don't need it."
"You said that."
"I'm saying it again." She ducked under a low-hanging crystal branch. "Ais-san asked me to check this sector and I am checking this sector and you happen to be walking behind me and that is the extent of our interaction."
"Works for me."
She glanced back. Quick. Her dark-blue eyes narrowed and her mouth pressed flat and she turned forward again.
"Stop being agreeable," she said. "It's suspicious."
The crystal trees were dense here, the trunks growing close enough that the path between them was barely wide enough for two people. The light was dimmer, the ceiling's glow filtered through layers of crystal branches, everything tinted green and blue. The ground was soft, mossy in patches, and the air smelled like wet stone and ozone from the Goliath's death still lingering.
My right arm was still numb. I could grip the Hestia Knife but the sensation was muffled, like holding it through a glove. The Argonaut backlash was taking longer to clear than I'd expected.
Lefiya stopped walking.
Her staff came up. The butt of it planted against the ground and her hands tightened on the shaft and her body went rigid. Her ears, elven and pointed, were angled forward.
"What-" I started.
"Quiet." Sharp.
I went quiet. Listened. The forest hummed. Crystal branches clicked against each other in the faint breeze. Under that, deeper, a sound that didn't belong. Wet. Heavy. The drag of something large moving through undergrowth, punctuated by a thick squelching that sounded organic.
The crystal branches to our left exploded.
The creature came through the tree line like a wall of dark flesh. Tentacles first, thick as my torso, black and glistening with a slime that smoked where it touched the crystal bark. Behind them, a mass of knotted tissue with too many limbs, pulsing with purple veins that glowed faintly under the skin. No eyes that I could find. A mouth, or several mouths, nested in folds of dark tissue, each one lined with teeth that curved inward.
Corrupted Spirit fragment. Nightmare-class. Level 5 equivalent.
I knew what this was from the anime. The things that lived in the Dungeon's deeper cracks, spawned from the Corrupted Spirit that was slowly eating its way upward through the floors. This one had been shaken loose by the Goliath's death or Hestia's Arcanum or both.
A tentacle whipped toward my head. I ducked. It hit the tree behind me and the crystal trunk shattered and the impact sprayed fragments across my back and shoulders.
Lefiya was already chanting.
Her voice came out fast, clipped, the syllables overlapping in a rhythm that human vocal cords shouldn't have been able to produce. Concurrent chanting. The technique Filvis had taught her. She was building a spell while moving, her feet shifting through a defensive pattern, her staff tracing glyphs in the air that left trails of golden light.
A tentacle swept low. I grabbed Lefiya's arm and pulled her sideways and the limb missed her legs by inches. She stumbled against me, her shoulder hitting my chest, and for a second her dark-blue eyes were right there, wide, startled.
"Don't touch me-"
"You were about to lose your legs."
She pulled free. Her chanting hadn't stopped. The golden glyphs in the air were growing, branching, a framework of magic building in the space between us and the creature.
Another tentacle. I cut it with the Hestia Knife and the blade went through the dark flesh and the severed end hit the ground and kept writhing. The stump on the creature's body was already regrowing. Regeneration. Same as the Goliath but faster, the flesh knitting back in seconds.
"I can't damage it fast enough to outpace the regen," I said.
Lefiya's eyes flicked to me mid-chant. The golden light around her staff was pulsing.
"Arcs Ray will burn through it," she said between syllables. "But I need time."
"How long?"
"Fifteen seconds. Maybe twenty."
Twenty seconds. I could give her twenty seconds. My right arm was still half-numb but Argonaut didn't need grip strength. It needed time.
I started counting.
One.
I planted my feet. The white glow began in my right fist, faint at first, a spark that grew. Standing still while the power built.
Two. Three.
A tentacle swung at me. I leaned. It passed over my shoulder and the slime on it spattered across my jaw. Acidic. The skin burned.
Four. Five. Six.
Another tentacle, lower. I couldn't dodge and hold the charge. I took it across the ribs and the impact drove me sideways and my feet slid on the mossy ground and the charge wavered.
Seven.
Golden light flared. A barrier snapped into existence between me and the creature, circular, translucent gold. Dio Grail. Filvis's barrier magic, reproduced through Lefiya's Elf Ring.
A tentacle hit the barrier and bounced.
Lefiya was chanting two spells simultaneously. The barrier with one layer of her focus, Arcs Ray building with the other. Her face was white. Sweat was running down her temples. Her nose was bleeding, a thin line of red from her left nostril that she didn't bother to wipe.
"Keep charging," she said. Strained. Through gritted teeth, between syllables that came out at half the speed of the first ones. "I'll hold it."
Eight. Nine. Ten.
The barrier cracked. A tentacle punched through the fracture and the golden light shattered into fragments and another barrier replaced it immediately, weaker, thinner.
Eleven. Twelve.
Her legs were shaking. The second barrier flickered. Her knees were bowing, her staff hand trembling, the golden light dimming.
Thirteen. Fourteen.
The white light in my fist was blinding. It had spread up my forearm, the same progression as the Goliath fight, but this time the channel was different. Wider. The numb arm wasn't fighting the charge. It was conducting it, the dead nerves letting the power pass through without resistance.
Fifteen.
Lefiya's barrier broke. The fragments scattered and the creature surged forward and its tentacles reached for both of us and Lefiya's staff came up and golden light blazed from the tip.
"ARCS RAY!"
The beam erupted from her staff. Gold. Concentrated. A column of light that hit the creature center mass and burned through the dark flesh and the purple veins lit up like circuits overloading.
I raised my arm.
"FIREBOLT!"
The Argonaut-charged bolt left my fist at the same instant. White-red, trailing fire. It hit the creature beside Lefiya's beam and the two attacks met inside the monster's body and combined.
The forest went white.
Gold and crimson merged into a pillar that punched upward through the creature, through the crystal canopy, through the ceiling of Floor 18. The light hit the dome and scattered into a corona that turned the entire artificial sky into a wash of red and gold for three seconds.
The creature was gone. Vaporized. The space where it had been was empty, the ground scorched black in a circle, the crystal trees around the blast radius melted into smooth glass pillars. The air was hot. It smelled like burned stone and copper.
The pillar faded. The sky returned to blue. The forest was quiet.
Lefiya dropped.
Her staff hit the ground first. Then her knees. Then she was falling forward and her eyes were glassy and her nose was bleeding freely now, both nostrils, and Mind Down was taking her consciousness in real time.
I caught her.
My right arm was the one that moved. The numb arm, the one that shouldn't have had the strength. It went around her waist and pulled her against my chest and she was light. Her head fell against my shoulder and her golden hair spilled across my arm and her staff rolled away across the scorched ground.
"You..." Her eyes were barely open. Dark blue, unfocused, the lashes fluttering. "You didn't run."
"Neither did you."
Her mouth twitched. Her eyes closed. Her body went limp against mine and her breathing evened out into the shallow rhythm of someone who'd spent everything they had.
I got my left arm under her knees and lifted. She weighed nothing. The staff was on the ground and I couldn't carry both her and the weapon. I left it.
The scorched circle around us was still radiating heat. The glass pillars that used to be crystal trees caught the ceiling's glow and scattered it in fractured rainbows across the forest floor. A bug crawled across one of the glass surfaces and its legs made a ticking sound against the smooth surface.
I walked.
The forest thinned as I moved west, back toward the camp. Lefiya's head rested against my shoulder and her breath was warm against my neck and her ponytail hung over my arm and swayed with each step. She smelled like singed hair and spent Mind and something faintly floral.
The group appeared through the tree line. Ais first, coming at a run, her gold eyes locked on Lefiya's limp body in my arms. Behind her, Riveria, moving fast, her staff in one hand. Behind them, Finn, Tiona, and a cluster of Loki Familia members I didn't have names for.
Ais reached me first. She looked at Lefiya. Then at me. Her eyes tracked the acid burns on my jaw, the bruise forming across my ribs, my arms full of an unconscious elf.
"Is she-"
"Mind Down. She burned through everything casting Arcs Ray and Dio Grail simultaneously. She's breathing."
Ais's shoulders dropped slightly.
Riveria arrived. Tall, jade-haired, her green eyes already assessing. She looked at Lefiya. Looked at me. Took Lefiya from my arms with a gentleness that didn't match her expression.
Riveria settled Lefiya against her chest, one hand on the girl's forehead. Her jade eyes came back to me.
"What happened?"
"Corrupted Spirit fragment. Nightmare-class. She shielded me while I charged Argonaut. We combined the finisher."
"She shielded you."
"Dio Grail barriers. Two of them, concurrent with Arcs Ray."
"Three concurrent processes." Riveria looked down at Lefiya's face, pale and still against her arm. "She's never done three."
"She did today."
Riveria studied me.
"She's never let anyone stand beside her like that," she said. "She fights beside Ais because Ais doesn't give her a choice. Everyone else, she pushes away." Her eyes were steady on mine. "You stood still for fifteen seconds with no shield and trusted an elf who hates you to protect you."
"She doesn't hate me."
"No," Riveria said. "She doesn't." She turned and carried Lefiya toward the Loki Familia camp and didn't look back.
Ais was still standing beside me. She hadn't said anything during Riveria's assessment. She looked at the direction Riveria had gone, then at me.
"Thank you," she said. Quiet. "For catching her."
"She caught me first. The barriers kept me alive."
Ais tilted her head. The slight angle she did when something didn't fit her understanding. Then she nodded and followed Riveria and her golden hair caught the crystal light and she was gone.
The glass pillars in the forest behind me were still catching the light. The pillar we'd made together had been visible across the entire floor. Everyone had seen it.
My right arm was starting to get sensation back. Pins and needles from the shoulder down, sharp enough to make my teeth ache. I flexed my fingers. They responded. Slow, but they moved.
I walked back to our camp.
Hestia was waiting. She ran to me and stopped short of the tackle when she saw my face, the burns, the way I was holding my right arm.
"Who did this?"
"Lefiya helped."
"The elf girl? The one who tried to attack you with magic on-"
"She shielded me. Burned herself out doing it."
Hestia's mouth opened. Closed. She reached up and touched the acid burn on my jaw, feather-light, and her blue eyes were wet again.
"You smell like another woman's hair," she said.
"I carried her."
"I know." She took my left hand. Her fingers were warm. "I know you did."
She pulled me toward camp. Ryuu was there, her twin swords cleaned and sheathed, her supplies repacked, waiting with the still patience of someone who had questions she wasn't going to ask yet.
The crystal ceiling hummed above us, cracked and broken in places, the blue light filtering through at wrong angles. My right arm tingled.
I sat down. Ryuu handed me water without being asked. The canteen was cold. The water tasted like mineral and stone.
I drank and waited for my arm to stop hurting.