The Pinnacle Warrior

“This isn’t a flame wyvern!” Muti said with only a second before it made contact.

Astrid and Felix both adjusted their stances, as they knew that if Muti could tell what kind of breath was coming for them, she would say so. Brief moments passed until they learned what was different. Instead of thick, heavy flames, a sphere the size of Astrid’s body flew down and into the center of their formation.

Astrid turned, bracing herself against the unknown attack as she tried to cover Skandr, but the party was entirely unprepared for the explosion of wind that threw them all away. She tumbled through the air, feet over head, as she flipped and saw the wyvern swooping toward Benedict.

The entire party cursed as the vestigial front arms of the beast caught the Bard and started to flap its wings heavily. It started to gain height as Benedict’s face screwed up in fear while he changed his focus from supporting the party to damaging the monster that threatened his life. It visibly slowed as it continued flapping, but there was very little that a trapped, isolated supporter could do.

Astrid hit the ground, activated Body Surge, and jumped toward the wyvern. It was already out of her reach, but she wasn’t looking to strike it directly  as she stretched out her hammer and pushed fully half of her stamina and mana into a Spectral Graviton right in front of the wyvern.

It flew in and its wings shivered as it tried to hold itself steady. The deathly energy that tore into it made it wail, but it continued to try to escape from the Skill that held it bound.

Fortunately, the Warrior’s interruption had slowed its escape enough for Muti to run closer, step into a shadow, and reappear on the wyvern’s neck between its wings. Her seax nearly glowed with how much mana she pushed into it, and she chopped down into the bone with a scream of effort. The sword, strengthened by Skill and mana, chopped entirely through the wing, and as the limb fell through the air, so too did Muti and Benedict.

Benedict’s curses grew sulfurous as the wyvern’s body fell to the ground. If he were trapped between its body and the ground, falling from this height, he probably wouldn’t survive, but Felix was there. He ran forward, stretched his axe toward Benedict, and caused his ethereal hook to appear and yank the Bard free of the irregular monster’s grasp.

Although saved from being crushed under the massive body, Benedict tumbled through the air and smashed into a stump with a long, pained groan. The effects from his Skills all faded as the wyvern smashed through the ground, leaving a furrow twenty meters long before it crashed to a halt against a particularly large boulder. Dust flew into the air as the party reoriented themselves.

“Felix!” Astrid commanded. “Make sure Benedict’s alright.”

She didn’t wait for an answer as she threw herself forward and, with Body Surge still thrumming through her, started to dispatch the monster. Her hammer blows echoed from the dual strikes from her echo stone as well as the sound reverberating. Well before the duration of Body Surge had finished, the monster was a cooling corpse on the ground in front of her as the rest of her party concerned themselves with Benedict.

Windburst Irregular Drako-Wyvern slain. 7,020 experience gained, split among party.

So the monsters were holding steady at about level 65. Every single wyvern they came across now was irregular, and it had been a little over a week and a half since they had begun pushing into the wyverns nest Dungeon branch. The monsters’ levels hadn’t changed in the past two days, and Astrid wondered if that would hold true moving forward.

But that didn’t matter for now.

Panting, she turned to reunite with her party, seeing that Benedict was sitting up and gingerly touching the ribs on his left side. He wasn’t using any of his Skills, but it was obvious that the Boon of a Gentle Touch was soothing the broken ribs.

“Potion?” Astrid asked as she came closer.

Benedict didn’t answer, just shaking his head as he closed his eyes and continued to tend to himself. It was easy for Astrid to forget how much of a difference there was between even her own toughness and Muti’s, with her own Fortitude now at basically six hundred now that she was level 54, while Muti’s was less than half of that and Benedict’s about the same. Skandr, as the one with the lowest Fortitude of the party, had nearly two hundred fifty.

“I already took one,” Benedict explained as he breathed slowly, seeming to finish recovering enough to talk. “That sucked.”

“It’s our first time coming across a different variety of wyvern,” Astrid nodded. “Is everybody else okay?”

Looking back and forth, the rest of the party quickly came to the conclusion that only Benedict had taken any real damage, and that had been from the combination of the wyvern squeezing him and then falling about thirty meters through the air while going about one hundred fifty kilometers an hour.

In fact, now that she thought about it, Astrid felt that he should’ve been way more injured. When she looked down at him questioningly, he seemed to understand the question she was silently posing.

“It’s the new breastplate,” he answered with a shrug. “Better protective bubble and I got it up in time.”

Astrid nodded in acceptance. It was easy to forget just how much everybody’s equipment had changed over just this short amount of time, and they had, according to the Verdant Walkers, another two and a half weeks before the surge would reach its peak and then break.

“Well, I’m glad you’re holding on,” Astrid nodded. “We’re halfway to the end of the day, so it’s good you won’t be nursing broken ribs for too long.”

Benedict hung his head and groaned.

Today was to be their fourth night that they were spending in the Dungeon since beginning to push hard to gain experience. They were all hoping that, by the end of this week, they’d have reached level 65. To do that, though, they needed to spend more time on the lower levels than they had until now.

“Hey,” Skandr said with a smile, “at least we have plenty of potions and potion-adjacent plants from Vera. We’re never in too much danger, right?”

“I’d say that was a sufficient amount of danger,” Benedict said, his voice growing stronger as he continued to heal himself and the potion took more effect.

“I suppose that’s true,” Skandr nodded. “But are we ready to keep going?”

Benedict rolled his shoulders, pushed probingly on his ribs, and nodded before he got to his feet with a sigh. He did decline any helping hands and continued to favor his left side.

Astrid nodded her approval and said, “How about we focus on clearing out most of the ninth floor for the rest of today? Then sleep in the juncture between the eighth and ninth floor?”

“You’re wanting to hit the Boss only tomorrow?” Skandr asked, surprised.

“Do you think I’m going to turn down twelve thousand experience? Or am I just planning on different steps to take?” Astrid laughed.

Nobody said anything as she asked the question, the answer apparent even without her saying anything. After all, she was slightly behind the rest of her party in terms of experience, and she was pushing the hardest out of all of them, and the Boss was always a welcome infusion of money and experience.

***

“This is the first time we’ve seen a herd with more than two irregulars, right?”

“You know that’s the answer,” Astrid laughed as Skandr held his staff high, ready to destroy the charging mass of nightmares.

This was the largest herd they’d seen so far, twenty-five individuals, with four irregulars among them. The two dullahans led the charge, their hooves making the ground tremble. The thick mass of rolling smoke and shadow over them was so condensed and compact that it looked more like dark metal than the influence of a Skill.

“Focus on the centaurs,” Astrid said, though the words fell on empty space, given that Muti had already disappeared.

The archers were fast, and they stayed far enough away that Muti couldn’t simply appear right in front of them, so a series of three bursts of darkness warned of her approach. Both of the irregulars focused on her, and Astrid didn’t worry.

The first to be caught was trussed up like a pig under the whirling rope that connected to her spinning blades. The experimental weapons from the end of Iron tier largely had fallen out of use, as her two swords were significantly more useful most of the time, but against something horse-like, having a strong cord to wrap around and snap delicate ankles was quite useful.

With that single attack, the first centaur went down with a screech, its monstrous face wailing as it tried to right itself. Muti dragged her dark midnight mithril blade across the beast’s ribs and belly. Its intestines spilled out as she rushed toward the second monster, her every step sending up puffs of shadow.

Astrid returned her attention back to the charging nightmares, and Skandr pushed his staff forward, sending a jagged red bolt of lightning smashing into their center. The Skill was largely dissipated by that, but the nightmares, and especially the lance-wielding dullahans in the front, still posed a deadly threat as their charge continued largely unimpeded, just no longer strengthened.

Seeing that his attack had failed to break the charge, Skandr stretched out his left hand, where the three rings sat on his index, middle, and ring finger. The middle one glowed, and another bolt of lightning exploded from it.

Instead of staying in a whole, condensed spear to carve a path through the charging horses, though, the nearly black lightning split once it was about two meters away from the Wizard. Then the lightning danced between the front ranks of the charging nightmares, the spell scorching flesh into desiccated, worthless charcoal.

Astrid had helped Skandr recover from the casting of that spell into his ring, as it had become a mainstay in his three stored spells. As such, she knew just how much of his health he put into that spell. That sacrifice showed itself in the potency of the weapon.

The lightning ripped through flesh and crippled wherever it touched. The two irregulars leading the charge, no longer protected by their Skill and attempting to reactivate it, found their front legs ripped apart as they and their companions on the front line fell, only to be trampled by their fellows who charged behind them.

In a few short seconds, the charge was broken, though the nightmares in the back were able to leap over their fellows and at Felix, who stood in the front.

He flared the new enchantments on his shield and sucked the charging beasts into his defense as he maintained their attention with Raging Guardian and Defender’s Mandate. He was driven back a few steps, but was never in danger as his axe slammed into the base of the monsters’ necks. Bone cracked and gave way as kill notifications flashed in Astrid’s eyes.

She and Skandr assisted with the cleanup of the slowed and crippled creatures. In only a few short moments, less than a minute, every one of the twenty-five kill notifications had flashed in Astrid’s eyes, and she smiled as she looked around.

Muti had returned after dispatching the two archers, her blades helping to dispatch the crippled beasts as the other members of the Wanderers finished the fight.

Though Skandr was obviously exhausted and benefited greatly from a charge of Physique, nobody had been seriously wounded. With a thought, Astrid designated Felix, Skandr, and Muti as the others to benefit from her charge of Physique and spent it, her insides aching for a split second as the result of Skandr’s first spell roiled through her.

With nobody else needing her assistance, Astrid did quick calculations of the experience they had all gained. 72,720, split among each of them, became 14,544.

That one combat was nearly one twentieth of the progress to their next level.

Astrid smiled as she looked at the rest of her party.

“Ready to keep going?”

There were no complaints, especially as the concentration of nightmares continued to climb the more that the party shredded every one of them to pieces.

With greater concentration of monsters, they continued to gain levels even faster, and Astrid hoped that, beyond all previous expectations, they might actually be able to get all the way to the watershed at level 61 before the surge ended.

***

“Are you still sure that this was a good idea?” Benedict demanded.

“Less complaining, more killing things with your voice,” Astrid snapped as she braced her shoulder behind her shield, pushed Power-aligned mana into it, activated Body Surge, and charged into the flanks of the nightmares.

The herd had been pursued by a pair of irregular wyverns into combat with the Wanderers. That wasn’t the first time, but the party hadn’t had any real experience with a pair of irregular wyverns until now, but the ninth floor was becoming more and more of a gauntlet through which to run as the surge neared its peak. And the number of nightmares grew so high that nearly every fight had at least a small herd that joined in at some point.

Fortunately, Astrid had some new tools to deal with these. Her new boots crunched stone underfoot, doing exactly what they were supposed to as she pushed mana into them to activate their enchantment. With them, her charge became nearly as unstoppable as that of the entire nightmare herd.

The unprepared flanks of the monsters broke as Astrid charged through six of the nightmares and left their broken bodies in her wake before hopping up and then leaping off of a particularly high stump, maybe three meters tall.

Wind screamed through her armor as the irregular wyvern in front of her whipped its head toward her.

This was a flame wyvern, and Astrid had already consumed a fireberry. The fire from Vera’s consumable fought against that of the monster as it tried to blow her away. Her momentum was far too great to be pushed away like this, and she spun in the air to smash her hammer into the monster’s spine.

It started to fall from the air, squealing, and Astrid spent a charge of Physique as she also pushed a heavy Spectral Graviton into the head of her hammer.

The wyvern smashed into the ground, whipping quickly to face her, its tail stabbing toward her face. She continued her spin, knocking the tail away with the edge of her shield before she completed her movement by burying her hammer in the wyvern’s skull.

Bone and scale crunched as the Spectral Graviton’s gray, deathly tendrils ripped its brain apart.

She didn’t care to pay attention to its kill notification as she briefly surveyed the chaos of the battlefield.

“I’m fine!” Felix barked as he withstood the attacks of three dullahan irregular lances.

He had managed to get one of them lodged in his shield, then twisted his body and snapped the sharp point off. His new armor, less fancy than his dusksteel, was primarily manasteel, though it had, according to Olafson, a small thread of adamantium laced throughout it. The resulting armor was impressively tough, and though Felix took hits relatively frequently, they were never able to pierce through his combination of the thick suit of armor and his heavily reinforced underlayment.

Astrid’s attention moved on past the rest of the nightmares, as those few that still survived were focused on the Guardian, with the exception of the four archers. Three had already been killed by Muti, and she closed on the fourth that, having seen her so quickly dispatch its fellows, tried to escape. The Lethal Shadow was more than prepared for its fear, though. 

An enchanted dagger flashed forward and smashed into the juncture of its human and horse spines. Thick shadow exploded there, and the centaur immediately began choking before Muti disappeared into the same shadow, which Astrid couldn’t see through. However, the kill notification came quickly, and Astrid turned her attention to where Skandr and Benedict faced the second irregular wyvern.

It was one of the windburst varieties, and though its breath wasn’t as deadly as the fire breaths of the more common flaming irregular Drako-Wyverns, they could use their breath weapon more frequently.

Unfortunately for the wyvern, Skandr had long since learned how to counter those bursting winds.

With a whip of his staff through the air, a storm only three or four meters across shot out of the blackened wood and devoured the twisting wind before carrying it back up toward the wyvern. Too fast to immediately take that return blow, the wyvern seemed to take pleasure in escaping its fate.

The Wizard was far from finished.

Those heavily condensed winds collapsed in on themselves until they became two circles of wind that whipped and spun so fiercely as to be visible. They clamped onto the irregular’s wings and forced them to be still. Unable to flap, the wyvern quickly lost altitude, its legs, tail, and head thrashing wildly until it crashed into the ground. Unlike the one that Astrid had smashed out of the air, it could somewhat glide down, not landing in a painful heap, and Astrid rushed to help make sure the beast was dead.

Skandr’s voice thundered as he summoned another storm, though without dispelling the bindings on his prisoner. The dark clouds twisted on themselves, the lightning within them a pure white-blue.

Wise that Skandr hadn’t sacrificed any of his health for this storm while another half-dozen nightmares still fought to get past the unignorable Guardian before him, Astrid noted to herself. Instead of thinking about random things any longer, though, she rushed past the clump of her allies and used a charge of Physique, targeting Benedict, Skandr, and Felix.

All three stood relatively nearby each other, and Astrid felt her shoulders, knees, and legs especially start to hurt before Physique healed her, and she got closer to the irregular wyvern.

On the ground, the beast thrashed, trying to free itself from the nearly solid winds that trapped it. Its wings moved, though slowly, and not enough to create lift-off as three peals of thunder sounded out. Each one was accompanied by a blinding flash of lightning that struck at the wyvern, keeping it grounded and confused. Unable to free itself, the irregular monster reared its head back, thick wind mana coalescing in its throat as it turned toward Skandr.

Astrid was there too fast for it, and she twisted with her whole body as she smashed her echo stone hammer into the side of its head. Its jaw cracked with the first hit, the second one entirely ripping the lower jaw off of the beast. It wailed as its hot blood fell onto the ground, but now that it was grounded and in melee distance with Astrid, it didn’t have a prayer.

Only a few short seconds later, her hammer had fallen half a dozen times on its head and reduced its defenses to nothing. Just as the kill notification flashed in her eyes, Astrid felt the mana run dry in her hammer. For the first time, she’d exhausted its internal mana supply. She turned, blinking sweat out of her eyes and tasting salt in her mouth, looking at the rest of her party.

They all seemed to be in pretty good condition, and Astrid almost relaxed before Muti stood up and looked to the horizon. The party all knew what that meant, but Astrid vainly held onto hope until the Barbarian announced, “Another herd approaches.”

“I don’t give a damn what you say,” Benedict complained, shooting a poisonous look at Astrid. “This is the worst.”

As she tried to refill her hammer’s reserves somewhat, Astrid couldn’t help but feel a small part of her agree with the sentiment.

Instead of saying that, though, she rolled her shoulders, raised her shield, and said, “How about we take a break with the Boss after this? That’ll take us most of the way to 60, right?”

“Only you,” Muti replied, and Astrid could hear the fierce grin in her voice. “All the rest of us are touching the border of this watershed.”

“Well, we’ve got two more days before the surge is supposed to break,” Astrid said, stepping forward beside Felix. “Let’s push hard so we can see what Skills will be offered, shall we?”

“It’s not like we have any other option right now,” Benedict continued complaining.

Even so, he resumed playing on his flute, one of the only pieces of equipment that hadn’t been replaced yet. Restful Reverberations fortified every member of the party as another herd of at least thirty nightmares crested the hill. Despite the frustration, difficulty, and exhaustion, Astrid found herself smiling as the next fight came upon them.

Just a few more days, and she’d get her second Skill offered to her in Steel.