Weapons of Mass Destruction

I sit in deep thought, watching as Lily goes from person to person, healing any serious injuries while letting our natural regeneration deal with the rest. Everyone is battered, and the snapping of my Ley Line has dropped us somewhere unfamiliar.

Tess says she might have an idea where we are and she's confirming her suspicions with Maya and Min-Jae, neither of whom has much mana left over from our fight in the city. The same goes for everyone else, whether they were caught in the fighting amongst the mind mages after the Framework ignition or dealing with the fleshy golems afterward.

My eyes continue to follow Lily, and I think back over everything again. I replay the fight and all the mistakes I made. How I let my excitement and desire for the experience of fighting a powerful being take over. Even to the point that I failed to go all out right from the start when the newly freed Champion was closer to my current level of strength. I didn't even use Fracture and make no mistake, that was a very intentional decision.

Could I have killed it then, if I had gone all out from the start?

It's possible. But it's also more possible the eye had more cards hidden up its sleeve, much like I do, and perhaps it still could have endured long enough to regain its full power.

The problem here is that I didn't even stop to think about it and that nearly cost Lily her life.

I lean back and let out an annoyed groan. Then I jump back to my feet and rejoin the group.

All of our items have already been collected in a big pile: my golden chains, a selection of stolen weapons and materials, even some equipment the others managed to loot during the fights. Plenty of them have already sold their spoils, though they seem to have left the most interesting ones, either for study or use.

Izzy looks to me first, with Biscuit cradled in her arms. I feel her touch and used to not hiding it from her, I let her for a moment feel my current emotions.

I oblige, joining everyone else as they take their own seats, forming a circle, this time it’s Izzy's blue flames gathered in a sphere, cracking and providing a steady stream of warmth.

"I think we’re just a few days off from the Containment Cell holding the primordial lightning vyssari," Tess starts with that.

After a moment of silence, it's Sophie who finally breaks down and says what we all are thinking, "That is too lucky, isn't it? It's exactly where we wanted to go. Nat's [Ley Line] didn't even go in that direction, quite the opposite in fact."

"I can't deny that," Tess confirms. "But what should we do? Do we really think that thing meant to send us here when it disrupted Nat's skill? Could it really all be luck?"

"Maybe it was affected by the array around that floating island that holds the vyssari Champion and it acted like a magnet and pulled us towards it?"

"I think it was the vyssari Champion who caused us to come out here." I say, following Sophie’s line of logic and all eyes turn to me and I continue, "The Bloodroot Devourer, the eye thing, was trying to tear us apart when it interfered with my teleportation. Certainly something much worse than what ended up happening. There was a second force trying to help me. I think that while I did manage to keep us from dying, that second force helped bring us here. I don't know how capable that vyssari is, but every Champion seems to have some sort of influence on the world outside of their cells."

"Well, whatever it is, we’d better decide fast, shouldn’t we?" Aaron says, seizing our attention. "If that thing becomes a full Champion, it’ll be powerful enough to destroy the whole continent. Hell, that Tristan guy back on the 2nd floor destroyed life on an entire world."

"Any idea how long it might take that thing to regain its full power?" Tess asks.

I think about it for a moment before saying. "This is a rough estimate and I don’t have much experience to back it up, but if things continue as they are now, it should reach somewhere around the rank of Champion within a few hours. If it slows at some point, then maybe a few days. Assuming it even can regain its powers and it wasn’t crippled like the other Champions."

"Got it, even that’s better than nothing," Tess nods. "Sophie, did you get everything you wanted?"

"Beatrice and Archon escaped in the end, but we got one of her vassals and I got as much as I could from his mind. The array is fairly basic, but most importantly, I managed to obtain coordinates to the planet we are orbiting. With the spatial locks removed, all we need to worry about is building it up and powering it."

"How much mana?" I ask her.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

"A lot. You should be saving as much as you can as should everyone else. I’ll prepare the structure of the array in my mind in the meantime and we can work on building a basic platform to anchor it just long enough to teleport us. It's possible this is still a way for us to clear the floor, so the mana requirements might not actually be as high as if we were actually trying to move between planets, that would be crazy."

"Will do. As soon as my body and reservoir refill, I’ll start filling the crown. Do you think working with Archon and Beatrice was supposed to be one of the ways we were meant to escape?"

"Highly likely—if you happened to be capable of keeping yourself from falling under their influence. Another way to escape would probably be to wait for guards to show up to put the prisoners back under lock and key and escape through the way they came? Maybe we could coordinate with some other Champion and hope for mercy? I think the one back in the Mana Desert would’ve been capable of escaping if he had been freed."

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

That reminds me, "What about the last Containment Cell, Tess? You said you located the last one as well?" I ask, turning to her with the question.

"Let me guess, it's deep underground," Dennis grumbles before she can answer, which gets him a curious look from Min-Jae, and I sense them exchanging messages as he explains.

Tess shakes her head, "The last Containment Cell should be somewhere far to the north of here, beyond the central region. Surrounded by a wall of millennia-old ice and blizzards powerful enough to threaten and perhaps kill us, even at our level."

"We are not going there, are we?"

"No, we are not going there, Min-Jae," Tess confirms. "While Nat and Sophie prepare our way out, we are going to head over to the vyssari Champion and see if we can get her to declare more Candidates. If Sophie and Nat can get ready before then, we will leave right away, even if we have to forgo meeting her."

Tess gestures towards the blood-red sky far in the distance. The color deepening as it gradually takes over larger and larger portions of the sky. "I don't think we should stay on this floor much longer."

Looking at it, I nod along with her, my mind elsewhere.

We move quickly for the next day or so. We don't even stop to sleep, deciding to push through these last few days on the floor. When we meet monsters, we either avoid them or let the others deal with them, allowing me to save my mana.

At the same time, Sophie’s working on the teleportation array and often finds herself asking for help as she feeds me the specifications for the base I will need to anchor it.

During the few short breaks along the way, I melt the materials and form the base to save time later.

As I work on one of the mana stones we’re going to need, I get a message through a private link in my mind.

(It sucks, doesn't it?) Sophie asks.

(What?)

(You’ve barely said a word since Lily almost died, and you keep staring at that red light in the distance, Nat. It’s not exactly hard to figure out what’s on your mind—I don’t even need Izzy’s skill to see that.)

(I guess.)

(As you are now, you can't do shit about that monster. You went all out and you still had to run away, and now it's even stronger than it was.)

(Sophie. If you are looking for a fight, just say it to me directly.)

(I understand how you feel, you know. I’ve got my own unfinished business with Namior. He completely outplayed me, and then you went and killed him—stealing any chance I had at revenge.)

(I see.)

(Yeah. It sucks ass.)

I confirm, (It does in fact, suck ass.)

The Containment Cell holding the vyssari Champion floats over the mountain range.

Well, at least what remains of the mountain range. A near-constant barrage of red and white lightning tears through the air around it, many of the bolts continuously striking the mountains and tearing chunks free. Some of the tallest mountains have been stripped of half of their mass, the lightning tending to cause landslides, though even now each of these mountains is tall enough to tower over anything we have on Earth.

And there, amid the jagged remains of mountains, floats an island. Its base forms a perfect half-sphere, with a single cathedral-like structure resting at the top in a towering crown of spires. The entire building appears to be made of metal, and the lightning seems to be emanating from it rather than striking it.

I try to throw Ley Lines towards it but fail to reach the island. The moment they cross a specific point, a barrage of lightning targets my invisible Ley Lines and destroys them.

I always knew they could be destroyed by someone with the right level of skill. There is a reason why skills need to be mastered and leveled, and [Ley Line] is no exception. But for them to be destroyed by some automatic defensive measure... strikes me as particularly messed up.

So we fly there. Everyone capable of flight stopping to help those who can’t, while we squeeze in as close as possible. Tess flies a ways ahead, her crown glowing brighter and brighter as her own white and red Primordial lightning crackles through the air around her.

Any lightning that would otherwise strike our group finds itself directed at her instead, occasionally injuring her in the process, when it doesn’t fly directly at her crown.

As we pick up speed, the lightning grows denser, yet Tess, despite enduring dozens of strikes, guides us safely through. Only once we’ve reached the island does she allow Lily to heal her, explaining that healing anyone along the way would’ve disrupted some kind of ritual of passage.

From here, the metal cathedral looks even bigger especially as we walk through its big open doors.

There are no cells for us to search through, no holes, no circle of containment, and no massive chains to hold the vyssari Champion in place. Instead, after walking a scant ten minutes we find her in one of the towers. In a room spanning the full width of the tower.

The only bits of furniture In the massive room are a simple bed, a wooden chair, a table set, and a dresser stand near one of the large glassless windows. The rest of the room is taken up by books. Thousands of them piled everywhere we look.

"If you damage any of my books, I will beat your ass." The vyssari Champion says, sitting in the second chair on the small balcony connected to the room. Looking out, we see a view of the destroyed mountain range and the constant barrage of lightning responsible.

That vyssari woman is just as short as the other members of her race and her scaly legs have a gray metallic shine to them. Her hair is blonde and her eyes are gray. Though the most eye-catching detail is the slim metal choker around her neck, seemingly formed of the same material as the cathedral itself.

Other than that, I make note of the ring on her finger, which looks like it’s made out of pure lightning, constantly moving and swirling.

She lifts her eyes from the book in her lap and looks right at our group members, "Tess, I thought I told you to leave me the fuck alone."