A-Zone: Traces, Written by AzPhoenix

  Chapter 05

  The End of the Dungeon

  -

  "Next destination! spooky temple!"

  Trace kept moving towards the temple he had seen earlier, even though he has been on the move for few hours at least it seemed to him that he wasn't advancing at all, the huge temple still sat in the distance.

  During these past hours Trace had encountered many different and strange dangers that were not really difficult to deal with considering the firepower that LiLy offered. Later on he discovered that LiLyan was also capable of splitting into two identical revolvers, one of the revolvers had also had a crimson carving reading Lia and the other had Lyn written on it.

  These two revolvers both had the capability to be easily reloaded while firing as they had a exposed cylinders. These revolvers lacked the firepower and the fusion ability of the rifle mode LiLyan but made up for it in fire rate and portability. Both revolvers had a 5-round cylinders each and being able to fire as fast as one could pull the trigger.

  The past hours were not boring to Trace as he experimented with different fighting styles on how to efficiently kill anything and everyone in his way. In the end he preferred the close quarter combat style gun-fu mixed with gun kata, using the barrels of the revolvers to parry and block attacks, while firing in midst of the enemy groups. These were necessities as not everything can be fought like wolves.

  Trace had died multiple times before as he had continuously improved his fighting and mid combat decision making. The new material that LiLyan was made of was also the same the revolvers were made of, this material was so far the hardest thing Trace had ever seen, even the dungeon walls weren't that hard. This was one of the reasons why Trace has been very confident in using the barrels to block and parry various attacks.

  He had also noticed that the environment around him was gradually changing, from far one could not notice this kind of change but the ground was littered with half buried corpses and their weapons peeking every now and then. To Trace it gave the feeling that this might have once been a battlefield where many lives were lost.

  ----

  After a day of walking Trace had finally reached quite close to the imposing temple, now that he was near it he saw how huge that thing was, it was like an ancient mayan temple.

  Trace looked at the huge entrance and estimated its total height to be around 10 meters and 4 meters in width. He wondered what would need this kind of entrance to go in.

  He then peeked inside, to his surprise the insides of the temple were still like an enormous cave.

  "What happened to the grandiose design?" Leaked from his mouth.

  The difference in looks between the outside and inside were like heaven and hell. Looking like the gates of heaven on the outside, but on the inside was filled with bones of the dead.

  Completely surprised, Trace unconsciously took a step backwards. He then decided that he would at least rest before heading inside. In his guts he knew, that to exit this place one is supposed to go through this dangerous looking place.

  ----

  After proper rest, Trace checked all of his equipment and gear before courageously heading inside.

  The eerie atmosphere was still there, but to his surprise that was all, no enemies, no traps, just a plain creepy cave.

  Few dozen minutes later Trace had finally arrived at the end of the cave. In front of him was a huge room mostly filled with water, at the middle of it was an small platform that had an altar on it. From the entrance to the platform and from the platform to the other end there reached a long stone bridge.

  Trace cautiously looked into the water, using both of his eyes to see any movement and also to probe the depth of this pool. He couldn't see anything in the water nor could he see the depth of it at all, which surprised him. He also noticed a small flaw in his left 'eye', simply there was just too much water and his sight could not differentiate anything inside it, just blue.

  After determining that there was no immediate danger, Trace headed slowly towards the altar platform in the middle.

  As he walked towards the middle, the water nearby stirred silently. Something was in the water.

  Upon reaching the middle Trace looked at the altar, it was a small pillar in height of around 1 meter that had a large crystal peeking from inside. [Trace] touched the crystal and the menu popped up, stating "TO ACCESS THIS DUNGEON CORE, THE NEARBY GUARDIANS NEED TO BE DEFEATED" and after these bold characters there was a small text underneath "...or be given the permission by the guardians or the core itself"

  Reading the words Trace got a very bad feeling about that. He vigilantly looked around and finally noticed that the water surface had started to distort.

  Something was coming towards the surface, Trace scanned with his left eye and noticed that the thing coming towards him was most likely the 'guardian' that the system mentioned. He took his combat stance and loaded LiLyan with 'double solid' bullet and prepared to fire the moment it surfaced, he knew that the guardian was hostile as air in the room was starting to fill with rage.

  Trace was an intruder in their home, the owner would be angry when someone just walks in and starts touching their things.

  The moment something emerged from the water a loud bang was heard and almost immediately after a clear *ping* resounded, the bullet that previously had instantly killed most of his enemies had barely even scratched the guardian.

  The guardian's head had finally emerged and even though it was being hit by a special bullet, it just shrugged off the impact.

  Even though alarmed by the loud ping sound, Trace finally had seen what kind of huge monster this 'guardian' was.

  It was indeed an enormous serpent, with only a part of it was seen on the surface, Trace had estimated the size to be at least ten to twenty times longer than what was seen. Considering the diameter of the serpent which was over 2 meters, this guardian indeed was humongous.

  After the first shot Trace quick loaded another 'double solid' bullet straight from his inventory to the inside of LiLyan and instantly fired it. Another loud *ping* resounded inside the cave.

  Noticing that his bullets did not cause any damage.

  He quickly started to look for weak spots, places that were not covered in durable scales. Meanwhile the Serpent prepared an attack of its own after locating this human in its chamber. The two previous attacks were ignored.

  Looking for weak spots seem simple on paper but considering the size of this monster, one could see that it was almost an impossible task.

  While reloading another bullet inside LiLyan he did not instantly fire it again, but instead said with a grin "If two don't work, what about three" and loaded LiLyan with another 'solid X' bullet a small whirring sound was resounding inside the hunk of metal and soon the block started to steam and a click was heard, the letter L on the barrel lit up. This indicated that the bullet was ready.

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  Normally when fusing more than two bullets the gun will start heating to the extreme, depending the bullets being fused, for Trace he had found through trial and error that supplying the gun with water while its fusing will noticeably reduce the heating and smoothen the process of creating a better bullet.

  During the loading of the third bullet the serpent finally opened its jaws and spit out an extremely thin and fast jet of water, This jet sliced through the ground like a sharp knife through paper and was moving fast towards Trace. Trace moved the moment he saw the jet and it passed right over his head cutting a part of his hood off.

  Along this jet stream, a screech was heard from the serpent. Instantly landing a huge pressure on Trace.

  Cold sweat ran through his back, he was alarmed by the speed and power of the recent jet spray. Even though he managed to reload the 3rd bullet, he wasn't calm enough to hit the serpent... The serpent was not moving too much but to Trace hitting the serpent under such pressure was extremely hard, his hands were uncontrollably shaking and his mind was screaming to his body to move.

  During the time Trace was under the pressure, the serpent was not idle and used its tail to stab Trace from behind and making a hole through his body.

  LiLy fell to the ground and Trace fall soon afterwards.

  'YOU HAVE DIED', this familiar message was again appearing to Trace.

  But this time there was few more additional messages such as.

  'DUE TO THE POWER OF THE DUNGEON CORE, RESPAWN CANNOT BRING YOU OUTSIDE THE AREA' and 'ACTIVATING BOSS MODE 10%'. Trace had no idea what boss mode was, he wasn't even sure when and where had he acquired it from. These messages continued with a familiar messages 'INITIATING RESPAWN' and 'ACTIVATING DRAMATIC ENTRANCE'. (lives left 9/10)

  Trace respawned from the ground, his first priority was to get to LiLyan and use the already loaded round to make a hole into this guardian's head.

  When Trace respawned the Serpent had already calmed down a bit but was not completely unguarded. The serpent quickly noticed Trace, that was dashing towards LiLyan, the serpent was alarmed by the sudden appearance and quickly made action. The serpent's tail swept through the platform, but it had to halt mid swing as Trace dodged behind the dungeon core.

  As the final guardian of the dungeon, it could not damage the core. How underhanded the serpent though in rage.

  The serpent screeched and suddenly the core was lifted into the air and flew towards the ceiling, causing Trace to be totally exposed behind the core. Trace did not stay still for too long and dashed towards LiLyan and made a forward roll, caught LiLyan and finished into a knee position and took a shot towards the serpent. *Pa-Dish* the bullet left the barrel and soon arrived at its target, this time instead of a loud *peng* sound there was actually a loud *crack* as the bullet hit and destroyed a single scale... scattering the scale fragments all over the room.

  This time the Serpent did not casually shrug the damage being given to as the impact of the 'triple solid' bullet was actually quite strong, but the impact was still softened a lot by the scale in front of it.

  Actually the one who was more surprised was Trace, as he had finally seen the toughness of these scales, he would have to shoot at least a 'triple solid' bullet to even get rid of a single scale.

  The opponent roared in anger and used a sharp jet stream to bisect Trace in half.

  Just as the stream was about to hit Trace the world came to a halt, everything just paused, Trace could not move, but his mind did. Suddenly gentle words echoed inside his mind.

  "Trace, you want power?" the voice asked

  "Just give me a permission and I will deal with that thing"

  "What? You do not believe me? Bah!"

  "Whose power do you think you are using, it is only a small portion you are capable of using right now, a taste if you will"

  "I can promise you much more as long as WE survive"

  "So what shall be thy answer, Trace?"

  "Denied? Well, good luck then, I hope you will change your mind before you die for real"

  The conversation had ended even though it was only one side talking, Trace was unable to answer any of the questions, but it seemed the entity was capable of reading his emotions.

  Time had continued and Trace was cleanly bisected in two and familiar message was shown. This was going to be a long battle.

  ------------------------------------

  After hours of fighting, the arena was covered in small sharp fragments and blood. The air smelled of iron and gunpowder, the serpent was still circling around the platform and looked quite healthy despite the amount of missing scales, it seemed like Trace had not managed to hit the exact same place twice. Looking at the number of broken scales, Trace has been able to fire his weapon multiple times.

  Trace was in low stance breathing loudly, he was extremely tired, both mentally and physically. The situation did not look good for him his concentration swayed and he was unable to fuse bullets anymore.

  There was still 2 lives left on his counter, but he was not sure he could do this much longer. He had noticed that the respawn did not reset his mental state, a deadly flaw in long winded high intensity battles. His hands were getting tired holding LiLyan, just as he was about to drop it, time stopped. again.

  "Hello, Trace, remember me?" The voice asked

  "It has been a while and your situation has not gotten any better, worse if you ask me"

  "So, What it is gonna be?"

  "Life or death?"

  "Finally!"

  Trace's body jolted and then everything went black.

  -------------------------------

  In another location far away from Trace. There was a meeting of people happening, they were chatting with each other before the meeting had actually even begun.

  "Hiune, You, You, You, Terrorist. You can't treat people like that! They are not tools! or things to play with!" A Young man that looked like he was in the mid thirties wearing a golden armor was admonishing a green haired and eyed beauty in a green dress.

  "Geez, Arcyn. Calm down, They knew about it before going"

  The green eyed women called Hiune said in a relaxed manner.

  "I can't accept this! Why is Kain absent" Another person shout out loud. This person had long white beard and glasses on top of his hairless head.

  "Stoll please put your glasses on, for heavens sake, you, a seeker of truth who can't even see properly should still be able to see that Kain is sitting on his chair. We aren't allowed to be absent on these meetings and Kain knows it"

  "Right, Right. That person is so thin, I can barely even feel his presence" said Stoll in defence "By the way Yuuhei, don't you ever get bored? You never leave your room, or even change your clothes"

  "Stoll!, Haven't I told you before not to peek on me with your abilities! Girls need some privacy at times!" Answered Yuuhei the girl in black clothing.

  "A Girl like her doesn't need any privacy! He should be guarded all day without break so that she could not cause any trouble to anyone" said a man in white robes next to Stoll.

  "Now, now Gari. I know you hate her for what she did but that is in the past now, am I right? This time you have me. I won't let you down" Said a woman accompanying Gari.

  "That's right Fialyn, we should just ignore this trash!" Answered Gari while smiling happily as he had imagined himself dumping Yuuhei into a river.

  "Ooh! Long time no see, Fialyn" Shouted a woman wearing a frilly rose patterned dress in mid 40s

  "If it isn't Mikre, How is your garden doing? Have you gotten any exotic flowers lately?" Answered Fialyn "Have you found the one I was looking for?"

  "Yes, yes, I have found that one, I'll give it to you soon. It needs to grow a little bit more to be in bloom so that I could harvest it's nectars" she answered with quick and short sentences

  "Believe...Flowers...Stupid...Talk..." This heavy voice was coming from a towering figure just entering the meeting room. He seemed to have overheard the conversation between Mikre and Fialyn which is why he commented.

  "Welcome, Uugar'ba. Seems like we are still waiting for a single person to arrive." Said Arcyn

  After a minute or so the last person had arrived.

  "Sorry, Sorry. So sorry for being a bit late. My carriage got stuck in to the mud! Can you believe it!"

  "No, we cannot" Said Arcyn "You literally live here. You were chosen to be the host of this meeting."

  "Oh, right. My bad!" The woman answered "Then let's get this meeting started. First the roll call"

  "Gari of Light!" shouted the woman

  "...Here..."

  "Fialyn of Peace!"

  "Present"

  "Arcyn of Order!"

  "Yes!"

  "Yuuhei of Darkness"

  "Here!"

  "Uugar'ba of Greed"

  "..."

  "He is here!, Next Prill'nn of Chaos. Oh wait that's me! *giggle*"

  "Hiune of Freedom?"

  "Yes?"

  "Mikre of Nature"

  "...One flower that cou..."

  "Stoll of Truth"

  "..."

  "Stoll! WAKE UP!"

  "Uhh, Wha-What, I'm awake. Just thinking about something."

  "And lastly our newest member Kain of Hidden"

  "Yes..."

  "Now that we have finally gathered here we can start, I will go through all the rules because we have a new member joining us this time"

  "Every thousand years gods can use their cosmic influence to summon potential champions from all over the universe, we as high gods can summon up to a hundred people, unlike the 'normal' gods who have one to two summons each"

  "Three months have passed since the summoning and now it is the earliest time to select your new champions"

  "You can only have one champion active at a time and you can change or choose a new champion when your old champion dies, actively goes against your faith or a year has passed"

  "You can only interact with your chosen champion and priests"

  "Oh and the point of the summoning is to ascend but you only need to have a successor."

  "Wait what? You only need a successor to get to the next level?" Kain interrupted

  "Yes, it is much harder than you think. You have just ascended to godhood, you should know how hard it is to do"

  "And you did not replace anyone here so no one of us did get to ascend, so there is a possibility of guiding a champion to ascend but he deviates from your chosen path at the last possible moment just before gaining godhood"

  "But no need to think about it too much, Right now we are still at the beginning of the whole thing"

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