Chapter 75: Descending Demon

  Stepping through the portal to the third and final floor of the dungeon should have felt more impact-full in Alex’s opinion. Instead it simply felt like walking into a hospital. It was cold, sterile and far too bright than it had any business being.

  The cavern was massive, dome-shaped, the air thick with the cold weight of ancient magic. The walls curved in smooth, unnatural arcs. At the far side of the chamber, a tall figure waited, motionless, half-shadowed by the bright glyphlight bleeding from the walls.

  Alex slowed his pace to a stop, his eyes scanning the chamber. The floor was the real showstopper. It stretched out in concentric rings, all carved with glowing glyphs and interlocking sigil scripts. Some pulsed faintly, others looked dead. There were small ridges separating each band, almost like rails or locks that could spin or realign.

  “Obby,” Alex muttered under his breath, “is it just me, or was I totally right and this place screams ‘final boss battle’?”

  Obby pulsed once in his mind. “Oh, you are about to be so thoroughly wrecked ”

  The figure at the far end stirred.

  It stepped into full view, letting Alex see it clearly for the first time. The undead entity was tall, emaciated, wrapped in robes half-melted into platemail and bone. Its skin was stretched thin over a skeletal frame, and its face was hidden behind a cracked bronze mask, half-fused to its skull. Lines of ancient glyphs pulsed like veins across its body and armor, some etched directly into the bone itself.

  In its right hand it held a long halberd weapon made from fused rib bones and reinforced with a steel blade. Runes spiraled along its haft like vines strangling a tree branch. Sickly red-green energy radiated from its edge.

  Alex’s gut twisted just looking at the thing. His hand brushed the kobold dagger at his side. It was warm, too warm.

  Don’t start shit, he thought. Not yet.

  The figure raised a single hand, and the glyphs around the chamber flashed once, just briefly, and then dimmed.

  Alex set himself into a ready pose, flowing into the first stance of the Demon Asura. He was ready. Challenge accepted motherfucker.

  He launched forward, boots slidding across the glyph-ringed floor as he closed the distance. He prepared no spell, had no overarching battle plan. He went in with just fists and fury. His arms blurred into motion, his movements flowing sharp and precise as he struck low, then high, chaining a sweep into a spinning elbow that slammed straight into the Warden’s armored chest.

  The sound was like hitting a wall of stone, jarring Alex’s arm and sending him stumbling.

  He grunted and ducked just as the Warden countered with an overhead swing. The halberd cut the air with a hiss, clipping the edge of his leather torso armor and sending him skidding back even further. Alex looked down seeing the leather armor torn open and flopping to the side. That was the barest of grazes, if it had been a true hit… Alex was in serious danger. Not to even mention the fact his attack did nothing at all to the Warden.

  “Okay. So that’s a no on punching through your bony-ass chestplate.” Alex looked back at the boss with a bare smirk.

  The Warden didn’t speak. It simply started walking toward him.

  Another flurry followed, this time he moved purely on instinct, deflecting the halberd’s shaft with his forearms, turning inside the arc of its spin. He aimed his next punch for the elbow joint, an open spot in the armor plating, but even that was reinforced with glyphs that shimmered when struck.

  It like it’s protected by a spell or... no. Not a spell. A glyph array.

  He ducked under a horizontal slash, planting one hand on the ground, and used the momentum to roll into a backward spring. He landed near the second ring of floor-glyphs and glanced down. The runes were different here, not decorative or without reason, instead they were functional.

  Obby's voice crackled faintly in his mind. “Use the terrain, idiot. This place is one giant tool bench ”

  Another swing, Alex jumped, barely clearing the weapon’s tip as it screamed across the stone where his legs had just been. He landed near a floor tile with a crescent-shaped glyph half-buried in dust. His eyes scanned the markings, it looked familiar. A trigger glyph, maybe? No, not just a trigger. A redirection loop. Alex followed the lines with his eyes, plans forming in his head.

  The Warden charged. He had no more time.

  He crouched and slammed his palm against the floor tile. A jolt of aether traveled down his arm and flooded the glyph in the floor, the sigil lighting up happily. A narrow panel in the inner ring shifted, then spiked upward under the Warden’s feet like a jaw snapping open and closed. The Warden stumbled, knocked off balance by the sudden upheaval. Its foot twisted awkwardly, and it lurched forward with arms wide.

  Alex didn’t waste the opportunity. He darted in, driving his shoulder into the Warden’s midsection and shoving it further off-center. Not enough to do damage, but enough to buy him a breath. Alex sent a flurry of blows into the Warden’s body in those precious moments. Fist after fist rained down on armor joints and limbs. Sinister ambient aether was dragged along with every blow and injecting it into the Warden thanks to the [Demon Asura style]’s passive [Burning Strike]. But it wasn’t enough. The armor ate the impacts and the aether without any visible damage at all.

  Alex fell back, panting.

  The glyphs on the floor still glowed faintly. The one he’d triggered was now inert, but others were beginning to shift, responding to the aether pulse he had sent into them. He wiped sweat from his brow. The dagger on his hip throbbed again like it was begging to be used.

  The Warden stood up fully, armor plates scraping and bones clacking from the movement. Alex met its gaze and grinned.

  “Alright, glyph-boy. Let’s dance.”

  Alex sprinted across the second ring of the chamber, his boots slamming into etched stone panels that flared with light and shifted beneath his weight. He didn’t need to understand every glyph, just enough to know their basic function. The runes were puzzles. And puzzles? He could solve those under pressure. The dungeon itself taught him that on the second floor.

  The Warden was moving again, rushing Alex with terrifying speed. Another pulse of aether was sent into a floor tile, a line of aether bursting across a cracked control glyph, and another panel exploded upward behind Alex, blocking the Warden’s line of pursuit.

  “Hah! Eat infrastructure!”

  The Warden’s halberd smashed through the stone tiles a moment later, like it was chopping through rotted wood.

  “Fuck!”

  Alex didn’t stop moving. He vaulted over another ring, this one lit by a different set of glyphs: element-shift sigils. These were elemental energy-routing scripts, half-dead but twitching with residual charge. He slammed his palm against one, another glyph behind the Warden triggered and ignited a narrow shockwave of force that threw the boss sideways to crash to the ground.

  Alex closed in fast, flipping over the spine of the Warden’s back and landing behind it. He drove a fist into the boss’s back armor plating, directly over its spine. He injected as much of the aether from the [Burning Strike] passive as he could in attempt to eat away through the armor and get to the Warden’s bones underneath.

  The glyphs on the armor under his blows throbbed a black-red, the Warden shuddering underneath him. The armor cracked faintly, but it didn’t break. The whole suit of armor was still very much intact and as far as the Warden’s body underneath; no damage could be seen from his effort.

  “Come on, come on,” Alex growled, chaining a series of precision strikes into the back of the creature’s knees, arms and torso, then vaulting away before the halberd could seek revenge. “You’ve got more cracks than a porcelain toilet, just go down already!”

  The boss twisted back toward him, movements jerky now, and the glyphs on its armor flared. Alex watched the hairline cracks in the metal plates began to repair and close. Alex’s mouth dropped open. “How the fuck is that fair?”

  The Warden attacked this time, halberd swinging in furious arcs and lightning fast thrusts. Alex fell back into a defensive path to the Asura Style. He shifted through the stances, dodging, deflecting, and feinting to interrupt the Warden’s rhythm. [Shield] spells formed and splintered in rapid succession as he wasn’t able to handle the boss’ attack speed with his physical stats alone.

  Obby chimed in. “You’re stalling it, not killing it. That armor’s got at least two layers of reinforcing runework, one to enhance durability and one to repair damage. You need to sever its power source or pierce through it entirely.”

  Alex gritted his teeth. “Guess we go full risk then.” He drew the kobold dagger. The moment his fingers wrapped around the hilt, the warmth became a burn. The weapon was hungry. It hummed low, the edge flickering with corrupted aether. Glyphs along the blade shimmered faintly, almost like they were reacting to the anticipation of the battle.

  “This better work.”

  He dropped one of his enchanted aether crystals and he back pedaled. The Warden followed, weapon still flashing. A moment later the crystal exploded, the boss jostled from the shockwave.

  Alex charged again, this time his strikes didn’t attempt to damage the Warden’s body, he focused an attacking the armor he was encased in. He slashed toward the Warden’s limbs, not to pierce flesh, but to gouge and scratch along the enemy’s armor lines. Wherever the dagger touched, its foul energy infected the material, eating at it and then absorbing the Warden’s aether in return. The light on its armor slowly dimmed.

  Alex refused to relent. His stabbed the dagger into the glyphs covering the Warden’s mask, aether flashing between himself and the boss. The dark aether in the dagger lurched into his forearm once more. This time, his vision flickered, just a flash, like looking down a hallway lined with mirrors. His mind felt scraped raw.

  Not now. He hissed through his teeth. He surged aether down his arm to push back the dagger’s meddling.

  The Warden jerked as its movement lost rhythm. Its halberd’s next swing stuttered mid-air. Alex pressed the new advantage, stabbing the dagger into one of the Warden’s hip joints. The creature reeled.

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  Obby’s voice crackled again. “It’s draining the power from its glyphs. You’re weakening the armor’s bindings!”

  He knew Obby was right. He could feel the dagger feeding him some of the Warden’s aether through its bond with every one of his strikes. Alex drove the blade into the creature’s elbow joint next, and that’s when it happened.

  The dagger’s glyphs pulsed violently. Black lightning flickered across its hilt which engulfed his arm, and Alex’s hand seized up. He gasped, vision tilting, and then he wasn’t in the dungeon anymore.

  The world around him was gray and shapeless, aether swirling about in the air like ash in water. He knew the area immediately, it was the same space he had encountered the vision of Adam, his soulspace. But it wasn’t shrouded in the facade of a fake dungeon chamber anymore, it was open, bare.

  In the distance he saw a fracture. A jagged tear in his soulspace as something foreign rooted inside it like a tumor. A mirror-fanged serpent, coiled and hissing, formed from jagged runes and black fire. The dagger’s curse had awakened.

  You little bastard, Alex hissed in his mind. You are trying to possess me?

  The thing looked at his consciousness inside the soul space and then lunged. Alex didn’t have time to think, he wasn’t a soul cultivator, nor a mentalist, but his instincts, boosted by his wisdom and willpower, roared to life. His soulspace shuddered and the outer walls of the realm began to glow, every part of the serpent that touched the azure-blue energy began to smoke and be eaten away. Alex was pulling in his aether from his body to attack the dagger’s sentient construct.

  The thing didn’t just sit there and endure his assault. Aether streamed from the edges of the voidlike serpent toward his core. Or... what remained of it. And that was the thing’s big mistake.

  The curse-made-manifest slammed into his soulspace and found nothing to infect. Inside Alex’s soul, there was no intact mage core, just shattered fragments and raw, unfiltered aether. The serpent screamed in feedback, writhing in pain as the absence of structure tore at it. The thing needed a mage core to hold itself together, to cement its possession. Alex didn’t have that.

  He took the opportunity, reaching inward, clutching his scattered core like a spark, and forced his will through it, a pulse of sheer refusal. Aether shot from the shattered core now as well, attacking the serpent from both sides. Pain lanced through his soulspace from the effort, but Alex didn’t care.

  The serpent flashed once more… And burst into black glyph-dust, scattered into the aether wind.

  ***

  Alex snapped back to reality just in time to see the Warden above him, ready to cleave him in half. He dodged back just enough to take a glancing blow across his ribs. He hit the ground hard, rolling across the floor tiles for dozens of feet. He gasped and spat a mouth full of blood. Downing one of his final health potions as quickly as he could, Alex felt his torso rearrange itself under his skin. Even that glancing blow had cleaved through his ribs and wrecked chaos on his insides.

  “Ggh- okay,” he coughed, blood still leaking in his mouth. “That was definitely not just a cursed dagger.”

  Alex dragged himself to his feet, body shaking. His hand still held the dagger, but now it glowed faintly red, its curse momentarily silenced. Obby was yelling something through their mental link. Something about glyph loops destabilizing, but Alex barely heard it. He looked up at the advancing Warden, chest heaving.

  The Warden’s body crackled with failing glyphwork, armor split at the seams, joints stuttering as lines of etched energy sputtered across its limbs. Its movements weren’t as clean anymore. The boss was getting desperate.

  So was Alex. But desperation had its advantages. “Time to close this out.”

  He tossed the dagger aside. It skidded across the floor and clattered to a stop, pulsing in complaint. Alex didn’t need it anymore. That fragment of rot in his soulspace had taught him something. He needed to rely on himself.

  “Let’s see if you remember this one.”

  He reached into his bracelet and pulled out two of his enchanted aether crystals. He threw one behind the Warden, just outside its awareness, and kept the second in hand. Alex sprinted forward, his hand grazed the floor tiles as he moved, and he released a jolt of aether. The Warden moved to intercept but its left leg locked up as the rerouted glyph circuit Alex had just activated caused floor tiles to clamp around its limb. Alex grinned, that moment was all he needed.

  He tossed the second crystal forward and snapped his fingers mid-sprint. Both crystals detonated in sequence, behind and in front, the twin shock-waves slamming into the undead boss’s sides, throwing its balance and knocking it into the very center of the arena.

  Alex skidded across the ground and leapt on the boss. He had retrieved the remaining crystals from his bracelet as he moved and he jammed them under the Warden’s armor, tucking them between the plates and the thing’s bones. Then he jumped away before all of the crystals exploded.

  A rumble rocketed the enitre chamber. The Boss flailed as pieces of metal and clothing were ripped from its body and flung across the room. Smoke rose from it as the thing lay on the ground. Alex thought he might be able to close in for the kill, bu then it stirred and rose to its feet, weapon still in hand.

  It turned to Alex, its mask cracked and smoldering, but he could see the thing’s dark eyes underneath. Pieces of armor fell from its body revealing its bare bones. All of them were etched with lines and glyphs. Resting inside it’s rib-cage he could see a pulsing orb of energy the size of a marble, dark green and crimson red, threaded with veins of black.

  The creature roared and lifted its weapon in both hands.

  Alex felt a shift in the air around the chamber. A pressure change just before the runes on the Warden’s body all began to grow brighter. The halberd’s edge also began to glow a sickly green light. Whatever it was doing, he knew it was big.

  He began to back pedal, but the Warden rushed him at far faster a speed than it had before. The halberd swung back, ready for an overhead strike as the undead closed on him with no possibility of escape.

  It was a finishing blow. The boss’ big attack.

  Alex had no aether crystals left, and no delusion his [Shield] would be strong enough to make a difference here. His hand shot to the bone on his belt, and he held it between himself and the Warden before flooding it with aether.

  The kobold talisman shattered, releasing a pulse of energy as bone erupted around Alex, forming a thick jagged dome just as the halberd struck. The halberd slammed down like divine wrath, and the bone shield exploded, shards flying in every direction. The blast launched Alex backwards crashing into the far wall, vision swimming, ears ringing.

  But he lived.

  The Warden strode through the smoke, its weapon still gleaming, and its core flaring in its chest. Alex was still fucked. The thing was still coming, it wouldn’t stop. So this is where I die? So close to the end?

  He sighed and slumped his shoulders. He felt the stone under his fingertips, the lines etched in the surface all burnt out and dead. There was nothing else he could use, even if he did, it was prolonging the inevitable.

  “You’re scared…” he heard in his head.

  It was Adam’s voice. From the hallucination in his meditation.

  Yes, I’m scared. Terrified. I’m going to die here. Alex watched the Warden approach, the weapon still gleamed with bright green energy. He closed his eyes.

  “What happened to standing back up every time?”

  Just leave me alone. I accept my fate. I know my place here, okay. There was no response back. Alex heard the foot falls of his looming death and the creak of bone as the undead raised its weapon. He was so close now that Alex could feel the energy on the blade’s edge with his [Aether Sight] ability. He felt how it shifted and swam through the material. It didn’t cut through the ambient aether in its way, it consumed it and fed its power.

  So that’s how it’s done huh?

  The Warden swung down, and Alex moved.

  The blade cratered the stone where he once knelt, shards of stone flying everywhere. Alex on the other hand, rolled along the floor and slid to a stop on his feet. He stared down the Warden, azure light burning in his eyes from his active [Aether Sight].

  I get it now. Alex entered the first stance of the Demon Asura. Connecting body and mind. Imparting my intent to the aether inside me and claiming the ambient energy of the world as my own. He shifted into another stance as the Warden stood back up, tearing its halberd from the ground in a spray of dust.

  “Um Alex? You okay?” Obby asked gently.

  I always felt a rage in my spirit. The System saw it too, and tried to feed it with its messages. It was helping after all. The wrath of the [Demon Asura Style] isn’t controlled or dominated. Its inhabited, its weight... shouldered, its pressure… a tempering. That’s what I missed, what I didn’t understand. If I inhabit my place, and express my will unrestrained, the world will acknowledge it.

  He entered a third stance, and the aether around his body began to smolder, wisps of energy rising around his back and shoulders, dark shadowy horns forming on his brow. The Warden was closer now, its weapon high overhead for another strike, the edge glowing bright once more. The Warden’s halberd descended, and Alex’s fist shot forward at the same exact moment.

  And the world tore.

  A black-red aura exploded from Alex’s back, the energy condensing into a phantom arm, massive, rippling with overlapping bones, and jagged veins of spectral muscle. It descended and moved with him, mirroring his motion, an echo born from his own spirit and wrath.

  The Warden looked up, saw death coming and still continued its attack. Alex twisted mid punch. The halberd scraped his shoulder, hot blood burst free from his body and bones were sheared through entirely.

  But Alex’s fist also landed. It didn’t strike the Warden, it collapsed on it like mountain.

  Sound vanished around the two of them. Then came the implosion, an aether detonation compressed by his rage and intent. The glyphs on the Warden’s bones screamed with light as the phantom arm crushed down it like the hammer of a god.

  The Warden’s body folded, bones shattered, pulverized. Its halberd was torn from its grip and flung away. The boss collapsed, its chest a ruin and the core inside its ribs was shattered beneath the blow. Dead.

  Alex slowly straightened, the phantom arm fading behind him in a wisp of red-black smoke. That, he thought in his mind, was the coolest shit I’ve ever done.

  Obby’s voice chirped, “You're bleeding from at least six places, three broken ribs, a sheared collar bone and scapula, and collapsed right lung. You still have internal bruising, and you probably just tore two ligaments using a that technique.”

  Alex coughed out a pitiful laugh, hand on his knee. “Worth it.”

  “You’re also glowing slightly. That’s probably not good.”

  He looked down at his body, finding the lingering aura of red-black aether from the Demon Asura technique clinging to his torso. Even as he watched, it was slowly dissipating.

  A faint chime sounded in his mind. Alex looked up at the heavy doors across the chamber slowly creaking open, revealing a stairwell spiraling up back towards what Alex assumed was the dungeon entrance.

  His eyes burned with exhaustion. His body ached, blood still poured from his right side where the Warden’s last attack cut into his body. Despite all that, he grinned.

  Let’s see what’s next.