Chapter 379

Spells flew overhead at high speeds as the panicked strike team tried to eliminate any traitor, not realizing, in the fugue that Nick had caused, that they were only making the situation worse.Every time someone managed to gain control of their emotions enough to stop attacking, someone else would take advantage of their distraction to hit them, sometimes seriously injuring them or sending them back into madness.

Vane tried to intervene, sending pulses of psychic mana in all directions, but unfortunately for him, the artifact he was using suffered from the same fatal weakness to spiritual mana that all dwarven magics had, and he couldn't even adapt to his approach like a true psychic would.

In the midst of it all, Nick slipped through the shadows, hiding in the smoke and trying his best to add to the chaos, making everyone even more confused.

As much as it pained him to admit, Vane was stronger than he was and would have the upper hand in any direct confrontation.

If he had known in advance, he could have prepared something to deal with him, but as things stood, it wasn’t worth risking his life, especially since the others were still out there in the swamp and needed his help.

Carefully, he slipped away from the crowd, only using when necessary to avoid revealing his position. And for once, the thick fog covering the swamp worked in his favor, enabling his escape.

“What the—” a man shouted as he appeared before him, startled out of his fugue. Nick didn’t waste time, wielding the Shard like a club and slamming it hard onto his head.

As the staff made contact, it released another , further scrambling the man’s mind and preventing any retaliation.

A low croak from behind told him that the massive salamander was taking advantage of the chaos to grab some snacks, and while he was normally strongly against man-eating monsters, he’d accept any help he could get at the moment.

Just as he was finally about to break free from the encirclement and hopefully disappear into the thick undergrowth, Vane seemed to reach his limit.

His voice wasn’t even particularly loud, but it was impossible to ignore. It pierced through the chaos, and as a massive amount of mana gathered into a single spell—the most powerful Nick had ever felt outside those cast by Prestige individuals—he knew escaping wouldn’t be easy.

Every other piece of magic fell apart. There was no other way to explain it. Fireballs, daggers of shadows, and arrows of light had been thrown back and forth across the battlefield for a good two minutes, but once Vane spoke, their cohesion was fatally disrupted, and for the first time since Nick had sprung his trap, silence took over.

The Shard shone fiercely, showing all his willpower and defending the structure of his protective spells, but despite his efforts, it wasn’t fast enough.

“I have to admit, you are even more resourceful than I assumed,” Vane said conversationally, but a new tightness in his voice warned Nick he wouldn’t be as generous this time.

Slowly and painfully, under the weight of the man’s magic, he turned around and realized that the captain of the Hones’ team was only about twenty feet away, staring directly at him.

“I can’t even begin to understand how you managed to affect the bindings, much less to do so all at once,” Vane admitted. “But I was never one for the dusty tomes. I was always a man of action, you see.”

Of all things, it was the sibilant tone he was using that made Nick’s skin crawl.

Desperately searching his senses for anything that could improve his situation, Nick was beginning to fear he might have to pull an Osmod and self-detonate his own mana to escape when he noticed something.

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Since before they were attacked, an old, strange salamander had been watching. Strangely, it did not interfere with the confrontation, seeming happy just to observe, hidden within the dungeon’s oppressive murk.

More importantly, though, it barely moved, remaining in its small pool even as the fighting began, only bothering to attack anyone who entered its reach.

And while he might have dismissed it another time as just an oddity, or maybe an older creature no longer able to hunt with the same agility as its younger counterparts, his panicked mind clung to its etheric presence, fighting through the layers of obfuscation with all his might until something finally became clear.

Crawling backward and to the side, while showing an expression of horror and defeat, was easy enough for someone with his CHA. Although Vane was not stupid, he also seemed to enjoy hearing himself talk a little too much. The sadistic gleam in the man’s eyes only confirmed this.

“Yes, it’s unfortunate that it had to come to this,” the man continued, slowly but surely walking closer. He lifted a hand, pulling his dark glove away, and revealed a burning crest tattooed on his palm.

The magic within was strangely similar to that of the Circle of Pure Souls, though clearly different in both nature and use.

Still, Nick wanted nothing to do with that, so he redoubled his efforts to crawl away, only eliciting another chuckle from his “captor”.

“Do not blame me, child. I gave you an out, and really, the only one responsible for your fate is your master. He shouldn’t have let you out of his protection in our lands.”

Nick was close enough to the salamander by then that he could feel its attention sharpening on him. If he moved just a few more feet to the side, it would lunge, and while normally that would be a very difficult situation to get out of, now it was his only chance to escape alive.

Mana started to gather in Vane’s palm, fueling the crest and causing crackling purple energy to gather around it.

“This won’t hurt,” Vane hissed, taking a longer step toward him, and Nick decided he’d waited long enough.

The Shard burst into a brilliant corona of crimson power as overcame the anti-magic effect Vane had imposed for just a second.

The salamander took that as its signal to lunge, emerging completely from its pool and opening its dripping jaws wide enough to swallow Nick whole.

Vane saw his magic, saw the monster, and prepared to dismiss both with disdain, as the spell he’d been building reached heights Nick could only attain over a much longer period.

But Nick didn’t release his spiritual lightning toward the man or the monster. Instead, he aimed downward, trusting that his judgment wasn’t wrong, or he would face a pretty miserable death.

The sulfuric compounds of the black pool immediately ignited upon contact with his magic, exploding and releasing a massive shockwave that might have torn his flesh if he hadn’t dived with all his strength directly beneath the lunging salamander.

Vane’s spell came to life, and the highly unstable blend of esoteric energies erupted into a second, even bigger explosion, causing the world to turn white.

By the time Nick regained his wits, he was fairly sure that several minutes had passed. The fact that he wasn’t currently being digested by a monster or torn apart by Vane’s magic told him that his gamble had paid off.

Yet, he couldn’t truly call himself victorious, as his throbbed beneath his skin, warning him that he had pushed himself a little too far this time.

Groaning, he slowly assessed his situation, ignoring the throbbing pain for now. His eyes fluttered open at his command, but that didn’t help much, given the almost total lack of natural light.

Yet something was shining just a few feet away from him, and as he pulled himself to a sitting position, he saw it was a cluster of mushrooms.

Their bioluminescence wasn’t much, barely enough to turn the complete darkness into an oppressive gloom, but his physical sight was no longer that of a regular human, not with all the levels and extra stat points he’d gained, so he was able to perceive enough to realize he was in some kind of underground tunnel.

Above him, a dense tangle of roots and lichens prevented the swamp from collapsing onto his head, and he could barely perceive that there was anything beyond it, let alone what.

Since his mystical senses far surpassed anyone else's in the mortal realm, he felt confident saying that finding him wouldn’t be easy. However, that didn’t mean he could just stand still and wait for Vane to recover from the explosion and come look for him. So he slowly got to his feet, using the Shard waiting by his side as support.

A moment later, he’d gathered enough of his wits to dare summon some light, which finally illuminated his surroundings enough for him to notice that he wasn’t in a hidden room, but a corridor, which continued deeper into the darkness for quite a while.

Behind him, there was only a slowly shifting wall of mud, roots, and more mushrooms, and above, an enemy beyond his ability to face was probably preparing to dig in. So, he began walking, using the Shard as a crutch while he slowly circulated fresh mana through his channels to soothe their irritation, eventually dipping into his stash of potions to deal with the worst of it.

The deeper he went, the more he realized this structure had to be older than the dungeon by quite a while. Occasionally, stone could be seen peeking out of the muddy walls, smooth despite water damage, and the overall layout was simply too uniform to be natural.

He walked for several minutes, gradually calming himself down until he could breathe more easily and Ogden’s brew had taken effect.

Accelerating his exploration, he wandered for a couple of miles through corridors that became increasingly intact until he started seeing runes carved into the walls.

It didn’t take him long to realize they were Irvinic, which, while slightly surprising since the language had long since fallen out of favor, didn’t exactly help him date the ruins, given that there was a spread of several centuries in which they were considered the most reliable methods.

At least, he was beginning to understand what this area was intended for. The runes were scattered, and often there weren’t enough to form complete sentences, but after collecting the first dozen, he realized they aimed to create a higher level of stability for any magic cast within, which was a novel approach he hadn’t really considered before.

“I normally wouldn’t bother with metamagics of this level when it’s just more efficient to use the time to cast whatever magic is better, but if I had to set up a permanent base for my more esoteric experiments, this would be a good addition,” he muttered. He was pretty sure a similar schematic was added to the Tower’s subterranean chambers, though the spatial magic there made discerning anything specific impossible.

Therefore, he was not surprised to find a ritual chamber covered in crawling runic formations when he finally reached the end of the corridor.

He was surprised, however, when he sensed something in his storage ring resonate with it.