Chapter 17

"Really? I remember one of your lectures that something like this is a bad thing to do."

"There will be new lectures. First, massacre the rats," Partner sensed something changing within him. Something cracked and disappeared. The last connection he had with his source was no longer in place. No longer was he the good olde' hero helper. If Stone would ever die, he would die with him. But he was free. That made it all worth it.

And boy, Stone went nuts. He conjured a bubble with all of his refined mana and compressed it with heat to a point above the rats.

King Ratam cast a powerful shield above the four pack-leaders and himself.

'BANG!'

A powerful blast resounded in the shaft. Five of the remaining normal rats were seared to charcoal. The pack leaders, even though protected by Ratam's shield, were slightly wounded by the pressure wave. However, the King Ratam was completely fine; not a single hair was touched.

[Your spell Mana Point gained a level]

[You have killed 5 rats. You have gained 103% experience points]

[Resistance: Heat gained a level]

[You have levelled up!]

"What an interesting pebble!" He carefully stepped near the pebble. "Fine! Gift accepted! RATS! ATTACK! Destroy the anthill!"

Rats yet again pounced towards the army of ants.

'Peng! Bang! Peng! Squeak!'

The explosions bombarded the army of rats and ants. Ant Queen was thrown back onto the wall by one of the blasts.

King Ratam impassively watched the massacre while throwing one or two mana bubbles around. As the battle slowly concluded and the rats played around with the leaderless ants, he curiously glanced at the enlarged pebble and questioned, "what is this pebble? Is it alive? Or a tool?" He conjured the most powerful [Mana Shield] he could and smelled to Stone.

"MY KING! DWARFS!" He was interrupted in his investigation of the anomaly and rapidly turned towards the voice.

There he saw three dwarfs.

But Stone did not sit there, doing nothing and even if he wanted to revel in his exquisite level-up feeling, Partner started to shout at him "do something, you silly stone! Or you will end up as some rat's ornament!"

"Is that bad?"

"No more levels for you!"

"Oh, that's bad!" Stone exclaimed in horror.

"Wait, dwarfs?!" Partner finally calmed down and registered the new arrivals.

At that moment, King Ratam turned to ash as one of the dwarfs threw a fiery arrow at him. "Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish!" The four leaders followed the example of their King by becoming small piles of ash too.

"Oh, goddammit! If they have seen you use refined mana..." A horror intensified in Partner. He thought that it could not get worse, but… Well...

"CRACK!" The ground cracked in the place where the Stone's last Mana Point was conjured.

"For Perditio's sake! Now what?" Partner cried out. He hated being immaterial in that moment as he had no tears to shed.

"Loud!" Stone complained as the ground under them broke.

☁☁☁☁☁☁

The drunken dwarfs

"Eriv, do ya see that too?" Breadbeard could not believe it. He thought that someone had to spike his beer.

"Yea! Do ya think the beer was spiked too?"

"If yea, someone will suffer! I'll bury them under the craphous!"

Around two meters before them, a cluster of ants and rats were battling over a little white pebble. Small mana bubbles filled with fire were conjured and countered left and right.

Thousands of ants swarmed over the rats that were jumping around.

"Gross!" Eriv exclaimed, disgusted. She gagged when she saw a small cluster of bloody ants squirmed from a rat with chunks of its meat in their mandibles.

"What's happenin?" Dafur had sobered quite a while ago, and when he glanced upon the battle, with two elementally attuned Monsters, he murmured, "somethin must goin on her."

"BANG!"

A short flashy explosion echoed over the shaft. Even the dwarfs had to blink several times to clear their eyes.

"What was that?" Breadbeard asked while rubbing his eyes.

"Refined mana?! Here!?" Dafur was even more bewildered. "Where woulda refined mana came from? Mixed with a heat to boot," he wondered. As his master advanced a long time ago to the fourth rank runemaster, he could refine a tiny amount of mana. He proudly boasted about it whenever he could.

The battle came to a halt for a moment as everyone was trying to gather themselves.

After a rapid squeaking of the rats' leader, the battle resumed with the rats clearly winning.

Dafur finally gathered his wits and conjured a rune. Mana gathered before him and shaped into a fiery runic letter.

A few fiery arrows later, King Ratam and his pack leaders ceased to exist. Only a handful of ash remained of them.

But before he could go over to the pebble, he was stopped by Eriv's hand.

'CRACK!'

Cracks appeared in the ground under them. Translucent mana leaked from the fissures with flame red and occasional deep blue streaks.

The ground billowed.

"Dornus dammit! Attuned mana crystal deposit!" Dafur and Breadbeard shouted in unison, astonished.

Eriv watched in disbelief as more and more mana leaked and filled the shaft. The fissures rapidly reached them, and they staggered a bit.

"RUN!" She shouted, but it was too late.

"Boom!"

The ground exploded and subsequently collapsed under them. Three dwarfs, Stone, and the remaining army of ants and rats started falling.

"FUUUUUUUUUU…!" Screams of dwarfs were drowned by the collapsing shaft.

☁☁☁☁☁☁

As Stone was falling down, he felt a new sensation. Flying, or falling in this case, was a very... unusual. Wrong.

After quite some hard pondering, he decided that flight was not something for him. In the end, stones belonged to the ground, not in the air.

"Partner?" Stone calmly seeked to gain attention.

"YEAH!?" The panic in Partner's voice was apparent.

"Loud!" Stone complained out of reflex, "I don't think I like flying."

"We. Are. Falling!" Partner was fully immersed in terror. He finally felt good about himself after so long... And now he was about to die.

As they were falling, Stone calmly observed plenty of odd rocks. He wanted to ask about them, but Partner was fully absorbed by the long fall, "I curse you, gods!" After a moment of deliberation, he corrected himself, "I don't! Please, help!"

Then Stone said something that forced him to focus on him; "Partner, I don't feel too good. I think I might die."

"WHAT?!" Partner examined Stone's body and his panic swelled to new measures. He saw cracks and flickering mana veins.

"Lifeforce," Stone wished and the tablet materialized with its classical 'thud'.