Blow 'em up

"Oookay. Ice won't work. Let's try... fire?"

Zora pretended to be all cool and not even fazed by the bone-chilling shriek of the zombie, but in reality his bones were, indeed, chilled.

But battlefield pressure is nothing new for him, even if he was a bit rusty.

He just raised his hand, showed the zombie his palm, uttered the name of fire in the ancient language, summoned a fire orb in the fraction of a second, then literally drowned his foe in flames.

That didn't do too much either. The only thing that happened was the zombie switching to continuous shrieking and trying to stand up as fast as possible, stumbling toward Zora. Possibly to do bad stuff to him, but he was trying not to think about the options. Also the zombie caught fire. It was trying to eat his brains out while being lit like a torch. This was mildly concerning. Also extremely terrifying.

"Jesus... Okay, lets try what I'm best at... Hope that works..." he said, thinking out loud. Both red and light blue orbs disappeared from around him, showing that he discarded the fire and ice orbs. Next he said two words, his right hand slightly closed, as if it was gripping at something in the air.

In a second two tiny lights, a greenish and a light red one appeared in his hand. They combined in the next second, forming a fist sized ball of purple energy in his hand.

Lightning crackled, tiny electrical discharges danced between his fingers. Marvelously it didn't hurt him at all, didn't leave behind any marks. It was very pretty and impressive for sure.

It took him 3 seconds to pull the lightning element up. He was already forced to back away as the first zombie, the one that was on fire, quickly closed on him.

His combat-ready arm, armed with the power of lightning, was already in front of him, all he had to do was to aim and release.

A bolt of thunder ran trough the chamber, perfectly illuminating everything for a fraction of a second. It was quite the sight to behold, when the zombie that was taking the lead caught the lightning with its chest. Next the purple strands of energy visibly spread trough its body, mostly towards its head, which in the next second exploded, showering the room with fragments of its skull, which fortunately were warded off by the pure-mana shield Zora set up before.

"Hahaha, oohh yeahh!" he screamed out. The other undead were caught off-guard by this performance, they stopped for a second to observe what happened to their comrade. Not like they had much intelligence. So right after the booming voice of lightning died down, the zombies kept moving forward.

Nothing Zora couldn't handle though. He still had the lightning orb crackling in his hand, spewing sparks everywhere. It just needed a bit of charging.

"Keep coming, undead scum, I'll show you back to where you belong! Six feet under!" he shouted. Despite the immediate threat and chilling surroundings, warmth tingled his heart. He couldn't help but grin. Killing zombies while spewing shitty one-liners, check.

The onslaught barely lasted a minute. The zombies lined up very well, Zora just had to keep shooting them down. Child's play for him. His internal mana battery barely got hit by all that.

When every moving hostile in the room got their head exploded, Zora was able to actually look around for a bit. Tomb raiding is a new experience for him, so he had to pay attention properly, if he wanted to find any treasure.

Actually there was barely anything in that room. Only the headless undead carcasses and the sarcophaguses they crawled out of, and a few urns. It was a bit creepy and disgusting for his newly developed farmer-taste, but nevertheless he moved closer to inspect them.

After a brief search he only found a ring in one of the urns. It seemed to be magical in nature. Its purpose was quite straightforward, Zora, even with his non-existent magical item knowledge, was able to discern that it was a simple mana-storing ring.

It was most likely used some time ago to slightly extend the mana capacity of its wearer.

It barely amounted to anything for Zora though. His capacity was big enough to make this small change feel like a drop to a bucket of water. But still, it didn't seem to have any adverse effects, so he put it on his left hand's index finger. With that done he was finished with the room. Back to the corridor.

As he kept exploring, the doors on either side of the corridor were beginning to appear more frequently. Most of them had some sort of undead in them, awakened by whatever trigger was under the door. The most common were simple zombies, also sometimes bare skeletons appeared, which were equally as easy to defeat.

They were resistant to lightning, but it was enough to destroy their skulls with something. Either by applying enough pressure on them to collapse, throwing something at them fast enough, or opening them up with a well-aimed ice spear. Usually Zora would be unable to use pure mana to fight, as anything with more magical core capacity than a non-mage human has enough passive mana emission that interrupts any will infused into the natural mana streams. This means there is no way to guide pure mana close to magi or magical beasts. But skeletons and zombies this weak have no cores, meaning they can be easily destroyed with pure mana attacks.

Zora also used ice as much as possible, it was the second combined element he was somewhat proficient at, but not as good as when it comes to lightning. It is made by the combination of air and water. With air he had some affinity, which showed when he was using lightning, and water was very important and frequently practiced by him, because he used it with light element to heal.

Thus ice became his second favourite element to use for combat.

The loot was meager at best. Some scraps of paper with an unknown language written on them. A few more rings or amulets, that were a bit more complex, so Zora didn't try them on. He had a small bag on his back, so he put the loot away, it barely took up some space next to his rations.

After spending what seemed to be many hours down there, after considering many times to stop and try conquering the ruin later with more preparation, he finally found a double winged door at the end of the main corridor. It had some sort of deathly aura to it. It was also heavily decorated with different kinds of skeletal engravings. Either wings were too heavy for him to move, as they seemingly were made of thick stone slabs.

Zora had to resort to opening one wing with magical force. It proved to be way easier that way. Not to mention his body was getting very tired already. He was hoping that's the end of the ruin there. He was hoping for a boss-fight though...