Stepping onto Boblin’s cliff, Vivi placed down the giant slab of meat and flared her aura, pushing it into the tunnel.

  Last time she’d traveled to the surface with everyone, luring Boblin down had taken some convincing and retries. Someone eventually suggested meat, and that turned out to be what got the lizard curious, though even after that, they’d had to wait for over ten minutes.

  This time, Vivi couldn’t even send her prayers that Boblin would arrive quickly, as the giant lizard dove down from his tunnel, front legs crashing against the cliff. He arrived quicker than what the trip up and down should have taken, as if he’d already been on his way down.

  “Vivi…” the lizard uttered, voice deep and echoing.

  Vivi bowed. “Boblin. Majestic lizard. I deliver meat, in exchange for travel.”

  Hot air puffed out of his nostrils. “Boblin home gone. Destroyed.”

  His tone lacked emotion as always, but a hint of frustration was mixed in. He looked vexed if nothing else, though he remained calm, and he seemed to be eyeing the slab of meat.

  “The storms,” Vivi said.

  Another puff. “Yes.”

  Boblin didn’t need to say much more for Vivi to understand. It had been mentioned that the fourth level was also filled with storms, to the point that the whole level was mostly destroyed. Not that there was much to destroy in the gray wastelands, but if a storm had hit the blight, the results could be catastrophic.

  “We will help,” Vivi said. “Monsters will die. Take us.”

  Boblin didn’t look like he wanted to, but the slab of meat did entice him. He let out a deep grumble, then stepped forward and knelt down to eat the meal.

  While he was chewing, Vivi and the demons climbed on top, grabbing onto any parts of his body where they could firmly latch onto during the tip. Some of the demons connected themselves with rope wherever they could, but Boblin’s back didn’t have many spots to attach rope to. Mostly, they had to hug his scales as tight as they could.

  Boblin swallowed, then turned around. “Gently, please,” Vivi said.

  One more puff of frustration pushed from his nostrils before surging up into the tunnel. Vivi closed her eyes and held tight. Boblin did move more gently and slower now, almost sluggishly, as if he didn’t want to make it up top, but that would mean the trip would take longer, during which nobody could breathe.

  Vivi thus focused all of her channeling efforts on her lungs. She added ether to the air that was within to make it last longer. The wisps seemed to bond with the oxygen almost on their own. If Vivi could channel nature’s ether, she’d guess she could live on a single breath of air for a full day, as nature’s ether was known to let life grow where it should be impossible. Live ether wasn’t nearly as potent, but Vivi could easily double the length of time she could go without taking a new breath.

  Even still, it felt like the ascent up would never end. Don’t think about it, Vivi told herself, and focused entirely on channeling. For the duration of the trip, she could think of nothing else but keeping herself awake and alive underwater.

  The overwhelming sense of ambient ether within the levelstone slowly lessened, until the sensations of monsters above grew stronger, as strong as an ongoing surge. Boblin’s head popped up to the surface of the fourth level, and he immediately paused, frowning.

  A shower of ethereal auras rained upon them. Too many monsters to count filled the open space. The alcove Vivi remembered was utterly destroyed, the foliage ripped apart by what must have been a violent storm.

  She slashed wide with Dawnpour, and for a fraction of a second, saw that her target was a skeletal surgehound with tree branches growing out of its mouth, as if infested by a parasite. It died from one slash as the next red poisonous treant attacked immediately after, slashing at her with a greataxe.

  Anthony drove Crystal through its head, and Vivi cut the next monster, which looked like a chicken eaten alive and reanimated a second time, now with its skin and intestines having swapped places. She killed it before she had to look at it for another second.

  Waves upon waves of similar monsters attacked them. Everyone who could wield a runesword defended their chokehold, and Boblin, too, crushed a few monsters to bits. Everyone else stayed back, having no clear opportunities to utilize the slingshot launchers.

  The horde died within a minute of eating swords, after which only stragglers charged them mindlessly. Vivi and Anthony approached further.

  With no monsters attacking her every instant, she had a moment to take in the view around her. The blight had changed. Trees had been ripped apart. Poisonous foliage was destroyed, and from the amount of treants in the area, it seemed most of everything had died and then been reanimated.

  If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Vivi wasn’t certain whether the view was worse than the poisonous blight. More unnerving, certainly. The former alcove in the forest—Boblin’s home—was now just a hill. Looking down, she could actually see in the distance, which used to be impossible with the amount of vegetation that used to cover the blight. Though the air had grown so foggy and clouded with ether that seeing further than a few hundred feet was impossible.

  “Essi is somewhere here,” Vivi said. She summoned the slingshot launchers, missiles, and handcarts from spatial storage, and everyone immediately picked up their tasks, arming missiles and shooting at monsters that attacked them. She then summoned her own slingshot launcher and killed a larger treant.

  “Lucius, how direct was the location she shared?”

  Her spirit closed his eyes. He opened them, and a mental note appeared in Vivi’s head, pointing north. “Roughly five miles there,” he said.

  “Five miles…” That wasn’t too much. But in the blight, it could be a problem.

  “Send her messages,” Vivi said. “Make sure she’s alive.”

  “Already have been,” Lucius said. “Her signals are panicked, but they’re coming from that way.”

  Vivi considered running at full speed into the forest alone to snatch Essi back to the protection of the slingshot launchers. That idea was forced to be abandoned as another flurry of amalgamations showed themselves in the direction. If this amount of monsters continued across the blight, she’d need a strong ascension if she wanted to kill monsters, or even run past them, for five miles.

  She pointed her sword in the direction. “She’s north from here! Around five miles. Keep shooting and reloading! Anthony, protect the flank. I’ll clear the way forward!”

  Anthony seemed to agree, moving behind the team, where he killed anything that tried to attack. Vivi activated her ascension skill, keeping it at a safe seven and a half thousand, and started the trot.

  Loud snapping of stretch ropes accompanied Patryn’s voice as he called orders for the slingshot team. Vivi focused on slashing anything that charged them from ahead, while the slingshot launchers shot monsters with ranged attacks of their own. One of the demons with a magnetic gravitational skill pulled missiles back to be reused, though many were lost.

  Close calls happened right away as a tall pitch black monster with a tube-like head puked projectile sludge all over the team.

  Vivi quickly summoned Shield Of Nature. The shield burned and disintegrated upon contact, but it managed to block the projectile’s momentum. The poison fell limply underneath the shield and began spreading.

  From there on out, Vivi kept Shield Of Nature always active and filled with ether, but she moved the shield behind her, where it wouldn’t be in the way. If she needed it, she quickly added ether to the movement branches and flicked the shield where she needed it. This way, the shield was kept at maximum capacity, and flicking it was marginally faster than summoning it from scratch.

  They advanced deeper at a walking pace. That was fast, considering the amount of monsters, but it wasn’t as fast as Vivi would have liked, knowing that Essi was somewhere in there, alone, protecting herself from monsters.

  “Quicker!” Vivi shouted, picking up the pace. Demons behind her had no choice but to follow.

  Ten minutes felt like ten hours with the level of concentration Vivi kept up. She sensed and saw monsters long before they could attack, and she already calculated the best ways to kill them, whether it be to wait for them, or to use Momentum Leap to assassinate them immediately.

  That ten minutes became twenty, then thirty. Their advancement became methodical. Everyone seemed to be in a trance state, focused only on the task at hand. If not for the gravitational skill, the missiles would have run out already.

  “I’m running out of ether!” someone shouted behind them. Vivi immediately transferred him fifty thousand from her many millions.

  Where is she now? Vivi asked. Her hold on the protective layer was slipping. Keeping it up was starting to resemble holding a heavy weight with exhausted muscles.

  Lucius focused, eyes closed. He sent signals to Essi’s spirit. “She’s close. We can almost see her.”

  Vivi scanned her surroundings, but the fog blocked any burrows she could have seen. She gritted her teeth and sped up the pace again. The monsters didn’t stop. If anything, their attacks only grew more concentrated.

  “There!” Lucius said, giving her another mental image. “The signal is coming from underground.”

  Vivi saw nothing at first. She squinted into the fog. Then she spotted it. A little bump within the ground, of course with a monster sitting on top.

  Vivi yelled out as she killed it, while slingshot launchers continued releasing missiles in every direction. Underneath that bump? Vivi asked, while examining it further. The hole was covered up with red soil.

  Lucius blinked in approval, and Vivi began digging out the dirt, careful not to hit anything inside.

  The dirt began crumbling. It opened up, revealing a small hiding spot.

  Essi sat huddled up, clad in a dirt-stained white swordmaiden’s dress. Her arms had rashes, having touched redsoil, and her face was beyond a mess.

  She was alive. Thank all ether, she was alive!

  Vivi offered a hand. Hesitantly, Essi took it. Vivi pulled her out of the burrow. Essi stumbled on her own feet, trying to find a footing, nearly falling.

  Vivi trapped her in a tight hug, pressing her face on Essi’s shoulder.

  She couldn’t see what kind of expression her friend had. But she could feel Essi’s heartbeat. A mix of scents came from the dress. Cleanliness and washing detergents hit her first, mixed in with stains of redsoil and nervous sweat.

  “You really came…” Essi whispered.

  A snap from a slingshot launcher followed. Essi flinched from the sound.

  Vivi hugged tighter. “Always.”

  “Vivi, I…” Essi was silent for a moment. She wasn’t nearly as panicked as she was in Paradise. More so, she sounded determined. “I need to return to the surface. For my family. I’ll do what the hunters need me to do.”

  Vivi let go of the hug and held Essi from the shoulders. The mention of hunters brought back the faces of the five cloaked men. She was about to frown, but with Essi’s face in front of her, those feelings were overpowered with relief that her friend was alive and well. “Don’t be silly. I won’t allow you to die.”

  Essi bit her lip. “I won’t let my family—”

  “Nobody will die,” Vivi said. Nobody who deserves to live.

  Vivi matched Essi’s determined look. “I’ve saved you. Now let’s save your family.”

  Patreon!