Part 29 - Revelations II

  When Elizabeth had chosen to accept the skill [Templar’s Conviction], she hadn’t actually uttered the words of the pledge herself. The skill was standardized amongst holy warriors within the system, and she hadn’t given the exact wording too much thought. Her decision to take a skill requiring her to show no fear had been with the idea in mind that she wasn’t afraid of many things… in an Earth sense.

  In truth, bugs didn’t bother her, and she never saw her trauma as a child around undersea creatures being a realistic issue. She didn’t foresee herself visiting the beach, so the one thing she felt she was actually afraid of wasn’t likely to hurt her.

  So, when the door of the sealed room popped free and the myriad tiny creatures came pouring out, she didn’t really have a reaction of fear.

  A thousand spiders came out of the opening, likely stirred up by the sudden movement.

  Elizabeth didn’t have an issue with the common spiders you’d see in your basement. No, she didn’t have a fear reaction at all. The problem arose from the spiders being both numerous and furry.

  The revulsion factor of tiny, scrambling, many-legged things just made her skin crawl a bit. The hesitation born from that feeling caused a problem. [Templar’s Conviction] itched in the back of her mind, urging her to act and informing her that she was on the verge of a penalty when she began to chew over the problem in her mind for a rapid solution.

  Instead of bringing back information properly, her mind had also leaned into the question of ‘just how many of these things are there?’

  So, [An Eye for Detail] brought back a count of the creatures as they poured from the open doorway in droves, each carrying a speck of mana inside of them. Tiny specks of Sound mana.

  [4,090…5,186…7,368…]

  The creatures that came at first were so small that they were either newborns or in some other form of extremely low level. Larger forms were stirring deeper within the dark room, all to be put off for future solutions.

  With a focused mind, Elizabeth pooled mana into her skills and started tackling the issue with Proteation. Her Gemstone skills just weren’t suited to taking on swarms, even if the creatures were low level or potentially system-less.

  The spiders needed to be handled quickly. If they spread to the rest of the lab, they would inevitably cause endless new batches of spiders to get into everything that wasn’t a sealed work room.

  The little buggers—pun not intended—were incredibly slow compared to Liz. They hadn’t spread far but she was the closest thing to them, and she was still quite skeeved out by the tiny furry legs. Things weren’t meant to look quite like these, and it was, at least, unsettling.

  Proteation was delightfully flexible, and as a survival class with the skill [Concoct], she had a ton of options. Henry White was also a professor of biology, and had taken copious notes on any biological creature he could lay eyes on. Spiders were relatively simple creatures, even when his notes expounded upon the ones that the system had granted effects to. Fire was a universal tool for handling most insects.

  Elizabeth had a specific compound she was fascinated by, as well.

  She’d played a side role in a film set aboard a submarine once, and while she was aboard, she’d been taught a few things about how submarines could burn certain special candles that caused a chemical reaction that created oxygen in the process. Chlorate candles. They burned really hot, and wouldn’t suck up all her breathable air if she lit the substance off.

  Proteation was fundamentally built around creating compounds from a sequence of components, and thus, creating the sequence for the base fuel she wanted was one of the shorter casting options she had available to her.

  Elizabeth backed up with a quick hop, having decided on her course of action.

  Fragments of material came together in the sequence she desired, creating a sort of magic molecule from glue-like viscous material. With a flick of her wrist, the spell formula was infused with mana and sent forward, then created a semicircular area across the ground around the spiders, even as the tiny creatures clambered onto the new material.

  Creating fire—a spark, really—was the simplest reaction in her repertoire.

  The hard part would be her proximity to the result. She pulled mana together and used a slapdash [Crystallize] to cover her exposed areas with garnet, a gemstone highly resistant to heat, making a sort of shield that mostly served as a face protection. Thankfully, garnets could be translucent, meaning she didn’t have to cover her line of sight, either.

  The spark set the chlorate candle alight and it began to burn rapidly.

  Chlorate candles burned at around six-hundred degrees celsius. The shift in temperature was a shock to the cool atmosphere of the undersea lab, and the spiders quickly decided they didn’t like it one bit.

  Kill notifications blurred across her vision as she frowned.

  She was still slightly rattled, even after such a long time. She’d last seen so many notifications as Mourningloft had fallen into the ocean. The reminder had her suffering a small pang of loss.

  She disabled the notifications. No distractions would be getting her killed.

  Instead she began working on her plan to deal with her slightly contained immediate threats.

  The larger spiders were much more visible through the new source of light as she finally got some proper readings on them.

  [Deep-Dwelling Cave Spider - Sound Lvl 384, Dark Lvl 366]

  And many more of the same. If one of White’s experiments had gotten into the room with eggs and propagated such a massive nest, it wouldn’t explain why they continued to have enough food to maintain themselves. It meant there was an exit beyond that room, and the spiders had found the location suited their needs for a breeding haven.

  Elizabeth was planning to end that.

  It had taken about a third of her mana to create the barrier of flames she’d created, and the creatures seemed totally out of sorts from the sound of the fire. Her best guess was that they used sound to navigate, and the flames were generating so much heat and noise that they had no way of sorting themselves out. Perfect for level grinding.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Liz smirked as she began to create magical formulae to spread fuel beyond the initial flames that would deal with the rest of her targets.

  The wildcard would be the dark aspect of the larger spiders. She hoped their skills might help them tear into prey. All the same, she saw them all as fodder, and her own stockpiles of supplies were at her back.

  She pulled up her Runeweave and activated the breathing skill, just to be safe.

  Then she conjured grease using Proteation, all of it going up rapidly as the oxygen producing flames fed the new ones even more wildly, spreading inside of the room with a ravenous hunger.

  The notifications must’ve been pouring in for the poor beasties, but with a wall of extreme heat keeping anything from powering through to get to her, all they could do was run away, through whatever passage they’d settled in through.

  The flames burned for quite a while longer than she’d first intended, but since she was lacking knowledge of how the flames might interact, she kept fueling the fire with extra Chlorate to burn, just to ensure there would be more breathable air available once she stopped using her Runeweave.

  After an hour, she checked her summarized gains.

  [*ding* You have slain 8,496 [Deep-Dwelling Cave Spiders]!]

  Elizabeth was slightly curious what the numbers were for the higher level parents compared to the number of spiderlings, but the answer wouldn’t have been terribly exciting. She didn’t like kill notifications after all her prior experiences, so she could live with wondering.

  [*ding* Congratulations! Your class [Crystalline Oracle of Order] has leveled up from level 172 to level 180!]

  [*ding* You have gained the following stats per level! +56 Free Stats, +24 Strength, +80 Dexterity, +96 Vitality, +96 Speed, +80 Mana, +256 Mana Regeneration, +128 Magic Power, +128 Magic Control from your class! +1 Free Stat for being Partially Human, +2 Vitality, +2 Magic Power for being Partially a Living Gemstone! +1 Vitality, +1 Magic Power from your element!]

  [*ding* [Gemstone Mastery], [Gemstone Manipulation], [Crystallize], [Gemstone Binding], [Mental Partitioning], [An Eye for Detail], [Learning] and [Imaginative] have all remained capped! 172 -> 180]

  Not many levels there… Elizabeth did have to admit there hadn’t been any risk to herself, she had barely used her first class for any of the work, and the lion’s share of the enemies had been tiny. Based on the final number and the size of the creatures, most of the things had fled when the fire was being spread into the room itself.

  [*ding* [Fate’s Luster] has leveled up! 141 -> 162]

  The pleasant part of fighting such a crowd was that there had been several of them with over a hundred levels on her, making the skill finally be active for the first time since she had merged her classes. It explained why she’d felt so powerful during the battle, and the skill had leveled nicely in the process.

  [*ding* [Templar’s Conviction] has leveled up! 52 -> 56]

  [*ding* Congratulations! Your class [The Hermit] has leveled up from level 40 to level 97!]

  [*ding* You have gained the following stats per level! +8 Strength, +16 Dexterity, +40 Vitality, +16 Speed, +24 Mana, +16 Mana Regeneration, +24 Magic Power, +24 Magic Control from your class! +1 Free Stat for being Partially Human, +2 Vitality, +2 Magic Power for being Partially a Living Gemstone! +1 Dexterity, +1 Vitality from your element!]

  [*ding* [Rune Molding], [Ooze Layering] and [Survival Sense] have remained Capped! 40 -> 97]

  Elizabeth had used the class for every kill. It was great to see so much experience… but almost all her skills were no longer capped. She had no idea what [Survival Sense] was doing remaining capped, but she was reasonably certain that because everything she’d done was exceedingly dangerous to her own well-being, and she’d carefully navigated around the problem successfully, the system had rewarded her.

  [*ding* [Purify] has leveled up! 40 -> 65]

  [*ding* [Concoct] has leveled up! 40 -> 62]

  [*ding* [Minor Biological Transmutation] has leveled up! 40 -> 72]

  [*ding* [Ooze Resistance] has leveled up! 40 -> 43]

  [*ding* [Adhesion] has leveled up! 40 -> 52]

  The lower level skills appeared before her like a dirge at a funeral. She’d put weeks of work into so many of the skills that having the class gains tank her pretty numbers was something worth feeling some petty annoyance about. All directed at the spiders, of course.

  After handling some cleanup and breaking down her mess in the hallway, Elizabeth strode into the actual room and turned on the lights to survey the contents.

  Spider corpses.

  Spider corpses filled the room from end to end, and the room was full of raw materials, as well. Well, filled with a singular raw material: Sand.

  At the end of the large room was a single structure.

  Imperiously looking over the lengthy room was a truly ridiculous mass of glass in the shape of an archway covered in runes that caused the glass to reflect the light from the ceiling in odd patterns.

  A massive Spatial Gateway was the room’s sole intended occupant.

  It was turned on, as well. The doorway led to a cavernous hall somehow being lit by the light spilling out from the undersea lab and into the darkness.

  No spiders were within sight as Elizabeth chewed on her lower lip.

  From her understanding of the spatial catastrophes plaguing Pallos, thanks to Seira’s explanation, space itself was slightly distorted all around the world, causing Spatial teleportation magics to somehow resonate with any nearby spatial gates, creating an earthquake between the two epicenters.

  Which meant that Sentinel Magic’s long ranged [Gate] had triggered the catastrophe in Mourningloft when it had likely resonated with the very portal in front of her.

  She’d been studying White’s runes for long enough to understand a bit about the sequences being used. The arch in front of her was a fairly complex creation, but it didn’t have White’s infamous cut corners that allowed for longer distance travel in exchange for stripping out the protections one would normally use with such a magical creation.

  This particular portal was following all the rules and had caused all those deaths anyway.

  Liz did the math.

  She hadn’t wanted to attempt the sea route for her escape, since she didn’t have the skills needed to get out of the water and up the cliff, even with no interruptions from the wildlife.

  The portal before her was set up with a receiving end that existed… somewhere.

  She’d made up her mind.

  Elizabeth would restock her supplies and then travel through the portal. Fortunately, it didn’t consume too much mana, so it couldn’t be connected very far.

  She had most of her gear stashed inside her pouches, but she wasn’t so certain she was ready for spelunking in random caves, though.

  She needed more tasty slime rations, more raw material for her Gemstone skills and possibly a few of the Professor’s books on various cave-dwelling monsters.

  Her overall skill set was very versatile. She also couldn’t leave the portal unattended for long.

  Liz let out a sigh.

  She was stalling. She needed to get her final prep done, then take the plunge.

  By the goddess, why did she have to get so used to sleeping in the real bed in the lab? It was so hard to say goodbye to the bits of luxury and memories she’d developed in that room.

  She had memorized so many of the books from the labs… she admitted to herself that she didn’t need to bring any of them with her.

  And, Elizabeth could also grant herself that her food supplies likely wouldn’t matter.

  Surely White’s secret escape path wouldn’t lead to an empty cave system. There’d be some fancy house in a city on the other side, right? Even if there wasn’t, there had to be plenty of ingredients for more tasty slime treats in the next place lined up.

  There was a reason she was stalling…

  She knew she couldn’t leave the portals standing on either end.

  Once she stepped through, there couldn’t be any regrets, as there’d be no way back.