Road To Sierra Pt4

If not for the fact that we had to stop and go back through the hallways we had just cleared in order to gather up the ancient scrap steel loots from the shrouded bodies tucked in the walls my familiars and I could have probably set a time trial record with our speed.

Before going back through to collect more loot we had only spent around five minutes in the dungeon so far which was less than half as long as my party's first clear in Easy mode. Then again, I did not think that any of us had actually made it to level fifty before we actually started running the dungeon.

After my familiars and I met back up again I returned to my practicing while running numbers in my head. Ever since the beginning, most of my finishing blows while fighting mobs and then most of my fighting in general had revolved around lunging and leaping across distances to smack my targets. However, only the spinning and turning attacks had counted for anything and granted my 360 Edge.

Thanks to my fight with some speed based elite players, I now knew that my own movement skills were pretty basic. Even though I could go anywhere between points A and B based on the distance of my skill or enchantment, I could not properly attack until I came out of it. I needed a movement skill that could relate to continuous movement and attack.

Considering it took a thousand naked sword stroke for most people to generate a basic attack skill, I needed to perform around nine hundred attacks while maintaining constant motion. Or kill a hundred enemies in such a style. Rather, ninety enemies since I had a ten-percent training efficiency blessing.

Sadly, I had already killed over a hundred enemies using these lunging strokes by the time I halfway cleared the final hallway made up of level sixty-five berserkers and adult giant spiders. Each group had under twenty mobs among them and equaled an estimated two hundred experience apiece without modifiers.

No matter how I cut corners or angled my passes to lunge forward and slash with every step I took, it did not seem like I would acquire a continuous motion skill. I even run from one group to the next lunging fifteen yards at a time in a warped form of sprinting. However, it did not seem like I would achieve my goals as I approached the final group.

Irritably spreading my arms so my swords were stretched out to either side with their dark or bright burning blades facing forward, I channel Force Strike into both of my legs as well as Telekinesis to increase the kinetic force of my steps. Angling myself out from one side of the hall, I unleash Force Strike from one foot and blur forward at blinding speeds even greater than Quick Step.

The ground under my foot instantly shattered, leaving a small dust cloud looming over a three-yard crater that sank several inches into the ancient tomb's large marble block floor. By the time the dust cloud took shape, though, I had already passed by four of this group's bodies and left small explosions of bones or carapace and mucus.

Landing on my foot still bearing Force Strike and the amplified kinetic energy from the previous Force Strike, I turn ninety degrees in a fraction of a second on my toes before once again cratering forward. Both the wall and floor were marred by the crater once again left in my wake, this one much larger and over a foot deep where the wall and floor met. The bodies I passed by, though, were half of the remaining group as I all but flashed from one wall to the next through the middle of the group.

All that were left when I came to a stop crouched parallel to the ground on the side of a support column in the wall were two spiders and a single berserker clustered together. Just as the berserker facing my direction took a step forward, I unleashed my building kinetic energy simply shooting myself straight through the air like a torpedo.

I did not even have time to ready my weapons, simply lowering my head while tucking my arms to my side while tightening my neck. One tenth of a second after crushing the support column and surrounding wall, I felt something like taut paper being ripped apart on the bladed ridges of my ancient electrum and demonic ivory scaled helmet.

Then in the next tenth of a second I felt the bitterly hard ground and an explosion of force as my kinetic energy from movement was stopped and then released outward like a super concussion grenade.

I spent the rest of that second lying dazed on the ground while my vision cleared from the impact. When I could finally see again, the fight was already considered over and the bodies were gone. All that was left was a crater as deep as I was tall that had exposed the hard clay under the tomb. From the middle, I could lie down three times before reaching a side.

Once I was finally up on my feet after another second or two, I was greeted by a very welcome voice and notification.

[Learned Skill: Charging Rush]

[+500XP]

[Charging Rush Uninitiated: Using catalytic magics, you have learned how to perpetuate momentum to augment your attacks. Your first Charging step will generate +50% of your current MVSPD and PATK for 500MP and reach as far as (30)yds, each following step will generate +50% MVSPD/PATK for 500MP per step for up to three Charging strides. Hitting one tenth of your enemies by the third step will extend your Rush by (1) step for free and 1 more step for each extra tenth of the overall enemy number struck. Due to restrictions placed on the skill, Flash Step speeds cannot be achieved. To Initiate, kill one tenth of an enemy group greater than one hundred before your Rush starts]

Hopping out of the crater with a satisfied smile, I look to my familiars who were now only a dozen or two yards away and say, "Be honest with me. Ever since we've met you've seen me do a lot of random shit. What do you think?"

"If crazy is power, we've yet to meet your match," Hermes says without a second of hesitation, making Cweeper start to laugh and than cough loudly and suddenly to stop herself.

"When we do, though, we'll be here," she says quickly, as if to make up for her mess up. "Even if you have twice our mana supply, we have twice your health and a couple skills more powerful than yours. In fact, anything that can outlast your new skill can be safely left to us afterward."

Honestly, I could believe that. If Traytar had a preset AI based on killing the intruders rather than the free-set AI from he update, I would have been forced to feed him my life. Once his stockpile skill was used up and I was gone, he would have been in critical condition or close to it. Either of these two could have easily one-shot him at such a point.

"I might just hold you to it," I say with a small thoughtful smile pulling the corners of my mouth before quickly turning back around despite my helmet's layered masking. The end of the corridor had now opened up brick by brick with some subtle lighting effects, revealing the once sealed boss chamber.

If one were to taste and question the flavor details and backstory of places such as this, once would obviously question why the hell this ancient tomb had sealed corridors at all. It because the hypothetical predecessors from hundreds of years ago knew there was some bad juju here. My only question at this point, though, would have been why the magic seals at all.

Though the boss chamber was ringed by nine bright purple torches the area was more than ninety feet in circumference so the light never quite reach the middle. There were about ten square yards of relative darkness silhouetted by three torches at on the back wall of the round chamber.

In the middle where what most would assume was a single large misshapen statuesque silhouette that never moved as you entered the chamber. However, I had already been here a few times and knew that at the very middle of the dark area rest was a large dark but metallic sarcophagus in the general shape of a cylinder. Beyond this sarcophagus was the statuesque figure.

Once a player neared the darkness, the answer to why there were seals was revealed. The previous entrance closed back over, trapping them inside the boss chamber in time for the torches to flare to large. Now, the full chamber was illuminated with an oddly intense black light lighting to reveal the sarcophagus as well as its guardian.

Standing no less than ten feet tall when upright rose a giant stony looking spider with asymmetrically placed protrusions about its carapace and legs. This was the Silk Spitter of the Sepulcher, now bearing a name and tag of 'Silk Spitter LV72'. Despite what a surprised first timer might think, the Silk Spitter did not rush forward and unleash hell or even produce some kind of traumatizing sound effects.

Instead, the Silk Spitter's goal as the guardian was to alert the master in a more simplistic manner. The first time we came here, Stonewall, Go, Papi, and I had all rushed forward as soon as the spider was revealed. The spider, though, had simply ignored us and lightly tapped twice on the lid of the sarcophagus.

This time, though, I had I had all the necessary skills to see if I could clear the boss chamber differently than before. Just as the Silk Spitter was reaching a single leg out to knock on the sarcophagus, I had already jumped into a Force Strike kick before flashing over into the face. The first time I was here, the upper half of the sarcophagus exploded open and unleashed harsh shrapnel and debris all over us.

We had been knocked back as a group and the rear line was left undefended except for Merch, Skooma, and Conansson. What appeared from the sarcophagus was an eerily normal sized skeleton dressed in well preserved layers of mesh and metal armor. That eerily normal skeleton had unleashed a darkness based attack that blocked the rear line's retaliation entirely and even sped on to splash around twenty percent damage to everything it hit.

The mounts and familiars and rear line had been momentarily stunned and then slowed for a short time from the dark element while the undead boss mounted the Silk Spitter. By the time they came forward as one, though, most of us were back on our feet and Stonewall was able to engage the Silk Spitter directly while the rest of us surrounded and flanked the spider to control its position.

The boss fight had been hardest on Stonewall who bore the brunt of fore legs and two fangs but the rider wielding two large bastard swords had been distracted keeping the rest of us from climbing the boss. If not, Stonewall may well had died in that fight.

This time, though, the fused head and face of the spider was crushed inward while its front upper sides were exploded outward from the immense pressure within the hard shelled body. My foot sank up to my armor bladed knee in the spider's body but the spider soon flew halfway across the room before tumbling and skidding into the back wall.

Its reaching leg had never even managed to make contact with the sarcophagus. As for myself, I was thrown back from the force of the strike even though the horribly disfigured spider still had just over thirty percent of its HP in the bar now above its body. Landing in a backward slide just over ten feet away from the sarcophagus, I silently but swiftly rush forward once again. Leaping up over the sarcophagus into a Quick Step, I blur forward through the air all of the way to the far wall where I fall down upon the crippled spider and plunge both Hauntings into its upper back.

Its health bar emptied out in an instant and an odd ringing sound played out in my head, like a single soft bell not played out for more than a full second somewhere in the space between my ears. Surprised, I look back to the sarcophagus and then around the room when I see nothing out of the ordinary. The walls did not open up and the lighting did not change, nor did I receive any clear reward notifications.

Returning my gaze suspiciously to the coffin with narrowed eyes, I blindly Quick Step forward once again to the Sarcophagus while preparing my remaining Flash Step skill's charge for escape. When I stopped little more than a foot away from the sarcophagus, though, nothing happened. The giant thing did not explode and no undead boss appeared to whoop my ass.

Knowing full well I still had the original owner of the sepulcher to deal with, I simply reached out and placed a hand on the middle of the lid while preparing a kinetic barrier around my body. Instead, my field of view suddenly narrowed at the top and bottom while the sides stretched out and broadened ever so slightly.

While this was taking place, there came another ringing sound but this time I felt vibrations through my hand coming from the sarcophagus lid. However, after my field of view entered a cinematic widescreen style I could not remove my hand or move at all even as the lid began cracking outward from my hand.

I was both shocked and mortified as I realized what was going on while the ringing continued and the cracking slowly spread. I was in a cut-scene! This had never happened in our previous group runs so I could not help but wonder at why this was happening. Was it because I stopped the Silk Spitter or because I was solo?

Most likely the Silk Spitter, but I could always go again and run it normally.

By the time half of the sarcophagus lid had cracked, the ringing suddenly stopped and then the lid simply crumbled away outward from the sarcophagus. Just a second after all of the tense build-up, there was a decidedly anticlimactic opening of the sarcophagus to simply reveal the undead boss's body surrounded by some treasures.

Previously, the broken sarcophagus had contained and been surrounded by gold, precious stones, and broken equipment. Now, though, the fully armored skeleton was lying peacefully in its bed several inches below the rim of the sarcophagus. In its arms crossed over its chest were a pair of large bastard swords in a similar size and straightness if not shape and design to my fifteen-pound Fuller Bastards.

The armor it wore was lackluster shiny but plainly visible without its undead aura as my view was forcibly scanning its body. Most of its armor was made up of a densely woven mesh of incredibly thin wire that was annealed barely large than light bulb filaments.

About its torso were large decorated plates protecting the vital areas of the body as well as its forearms and upper legs. It was fairly similar in design to my own armor in its areas of coverage even though I used lighter weight and more mobile scales.

However, after spending a full two seconds examining the dried skeletal ghoul face within the metal feather plumed helmet my focus was drawn and locked on to a bright, magically glowing gold chain and pendent around its neck. The pendant was the source of golden glow, almost hiding the fact that the metal of the pendant was an electrum not unlike my own armor. the face of the pendant was set with a dark amethyst droplet that would have looked black if not for the light shining behind it.

Around the amethyst was a chain of dark purple lines and symbols that glowed independantly of the pendant. As my body reached forward of its own accord toward that pendant, I committed to memory every little detail. I had no idea what the lines or characters meant or why they were placed, but this was a much simpler network to memorize than the patterns of the Aegis.

By the time my fingers were inches away from grasping the pendant and almost blocking my view, I had etched every millimeter of detail into my frontal lobe. In the same instant that one of my fingers blocked the lowest part of the diagram on the pendant, there was a sudden blur of motion and my wrist was clenched in a vice that could be felt through my armor.

The head of the undead boss slowly turned toward me to meet my 'gaze' with its empty sockets as small points of dark purple light began to shine similar to the original Trollbone's when we first spoke. All I could think was, aw shit, here we go again.

*