Chapter 384

Once everyone had recovered enough to attempt the trek into the inner area of the dungeon, they cautiously emerged from the tunnel.The first few rays of dawn were peeking over the horizon, turning the swamp's complete darkness into a murky gloom and letting them move more easily.

“Clear,” Nick called once he finished sweeping their surroundings. Not that he expected to find the Hones waiting for them, since Vane already had everything he needed to access the Dungeon Core, but he was feeling especially paranoid after what had just happened.

The others filtered out behind him, pausing to adjust to the light and perform their own checks. "Back through the muck," Monte muttered, adjusting his belt for easier access to his rapier. The noble looked haggard, his finery stripped of all pretension, leaving only the tired swordsman beneath. “Joy."

They headed north for the first time, aiming to reach the Inner area rather than just skirting the edges.

It didn’t take long for them to realize that something was wrong and that it wasn’t anything good.

The death of the Southern Guardian should have eased the tension in the area, ending the final part of the Greater Ritual and allowing the mana flow to return to a more natural state.

Instead, the pressure was rising, and it wasn't the localized heaviness of an Anchor; it was a widespread, atmospheric density that rubbed against their skin like static electricity, as if just before a storm, yet only a few solitary clouds hung overhead.

As they moved north, the feeling only grew stronger, and although they initially managed to make good time, avoiding most of the swamp’s more dangerous creatures, their streak of good luck quickly ran out.

A salamander burst out of a deep pool they were skirting around, lunging with its maw open to take a bite out of Yvonne.

Having been warned by Nick about its presence, she only muttered a curse, swinging her greatsword upward and unleashing a wave of frost.

Nick vaguely noticed that she was using mana-heavy skills much more freely, something she had avoided earlier in their adventure, but it didn’t seem that important at the moment.

Working together, they rounded up and defeated the monster quickly, overwhelming its defenses with intense magical saturation.

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Minutes later, they passed a grove of mangrove trees where a pack of goblinoids stood frozen in shallow water. They remained perfectly still, ignoring the humans walking past them, entranced by something unseen, and the only sign they were alive was the constant rolling of their eyes in their sockets.

As they moved through the swamp, Nick grew increasingly convinced that destroying the Anchors hadn't stopped the Ritual. It had destabilized it enough that it couldn’t fully manifest or reach completion, and the mana once distributed across the four cardinal points was no longer anchored.

But just as clearly, it wasn't dissipating; it was rushing inward, pooling in the center of the dungeon like water in a drain, obeying some unseen command.

Perhaps nothing would come of it. It was a wild thing now, far beyond what even a Prestige being should be able to handle, but Nick had the sinking feeling that they wouldn’t be that lucky.

Worse, the strain in his soul from absorbing the Southern Guardian hadn’t healed as quickly as the emptiness in his coils, and no potion Ogden had brewed for him could speed that up.

If he were forced to take control of the ritual’s structure when it was this chaotic…

Thanks to and , Nick had often managed to overcome seemingly impossible odds, but entering this mess unprepared would be too much even for his luck.

No, he had to do something in case the worst possible future came to pass.

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There was a limit to how much the superstructure he was building around and through his soul could endure, and he had seen that in the previous confrontation with the Southern Guardian. If he depended entirely on it to face an entire Greater Ritual about to run wild, he truly risked tearing himself apart, something which couldn’t defend him against.

If it did end up going that badly, however, he might be forced to take some very dangerous steps. To do something he was quite sure his grandfather would have boxed his ears for even considering, much less doing. But hopefully, it wouldn’t reach that point.

“We’ve got movement ahead," he murmured as his senses detected something in the distance, bringing him back to the present. “Humanoid."

The others tensed up, ready for more furious goblins or even an attack from the Hones.

A group appeared from the fog a minute later, stumbling and splashing through the water. There were five of them, all adventurers, based on their mismatched gear and speed of movement. They were bloodied, with scorch marks on their armor, and had the thousand-yard stare of survivors who had seen too much.

Raphael intercepted them before they got too close. “Hold it!”

The lead adventurer, a woman with a broken nose and a shield sheared in half, almost lunged with her sword before recognizing him as human.

“Are you mad?!” she growled, her shoulders hunching as she tried to regain control. “Do you have a death wish?! We need to leave!”

“What happened?” Raphael demanded.

"The inner area has become a slaughterhouse," the woman gasped, coughing up bloody phlegm. "We tried to push deeper to test ourselves against stronger monsters.” She laughed, a brittle, cracking sound. "Fools. We were fools.”

"Who attacked you?" Nick asked, stepping forward. "The Hones?”

The woman looked at him, her eyes unfocused. "The Hones? No. They’re fighting for their lives too. It’s the dungeon that’s gone mad. The wolves. The goblins. They have converged on the center and are attacking anything that moves in a frenzy.”

One of the men behind her finally gathered his wits enough to speak. “Turn back now. We got a glimpse of the Inner Guardian, and that thing is not something we can face. You’ll just throw your lives away.”

"We can't turn back," Monte said gently. "We have to stop it.

The woman looked at him with pity. "Then you're already dead. We left three of our own back there to be torn apart by wolves, and we would have died as well if we’d stayed any longer. Run while you can. There is a massive wave forming, and no one can stand up to it.”

She didn't wait for an answer, signaling her broken team, and they fled north, disappearing into the mist, preferring the dangers of the swamp over whatever was to the north.

Nick watched them go, noticing the trail of nearly tangible fear they left behind.

“I didn’t think the Inner Guardian would make a move so soon,” Raphael muttered.

“Its chains must be loosening,” Nick said, pressing his lips together as he considered what that meant. “Either because we broke the anchors, or because of something Vane did. It doesn’t really matter at this point, but we’ll have to be very careful and expect to be attacked constantly once we enter the Inner area.”

There wasn’t much else anyone could say about that. They all knew the dangers by now, and while no one liked the idea of facing a Prestige-level monster, they had to stop Vane.

The terrain began to change as they traveled farther north. The soft mud of the swamp gave way to firmer, healthier ground as the elevation rose. The trees grew healthier, and rocky formations jutted out from the earth like claws.

It wasn’t long before the swamp’s chilling silence was broken, only to be replaced by a low thrum, a vibration in the soles of their boots. Then came the noise, a chaos of howls and screeches that could only come from a fierce battle.

Minutes later, they arrived at a ridge overlooking the dungeon's inner valley.

Nick pushed as hard as he could, filtering through the oppressive noise of the domain, which had become a constant companion, and scouting ahead.

The inner area was unlike any other biome. It was a valley formed by the convergence of the ley lines. In the center, miles away, stood a structure resembling a temple carved from a single mountain of obsidian that he recognized from Calder’s memories, the place containing the Well, where the Inner Guardian would be waiting.

But between them and the temple, an army had gathered. Thousands of monsters swarmed the valley floor. Goblin tribes that had been warring for centuries stood shoulder to shoulder with packs of Dire Wolves. Massive trolls lumbered through the ranks, ignored by the smaller beasts. They were a single, writhing mass of hatred, all facing the temple and attacking the defensive perimeter set up by a group of humans that Nick deduced were working for the Hones.

Some of them were the masked warriors they’d faced in the swamp, but others were dressed like adventurers, paid off, or more likely promised enough to risk their lives against the overwhelming wave of monsters.

The bodies of soldiers and adventurers littered the slopes, broken and discarded. The Hones held a tight line near the temple entrance, flashing with magical discharges as they mowed down wave after wave of monsters, but they were drowning in the tide.

“Can we even go through that?” Monte asked, and it was a reasonable question. So far, the battle seemed to be going in the dungeon’s favor, but the Hones were still holding on, and it was only a matter of time before Vane did whatever he had planned to deal with the last Guardian.

It would have been foolish to expect him to just walk in and face the Guardian directly, given how smart he had shown himself to be, which meant they needed to get there quickly.

“We have to fly in,” Nick decided.

The others turned to look at him. They knew he could fly, of course, since he had levitated off the ground for a good part of the initial walk from Long Reach, but there was a difference between holding himself up and doing so for multiple people.

“Can you do it without exhausting yourself too much?” Raphael asked seriously. “Once we’re in, we’ll try to take down as many of the Hones as possible, but defeating Vane, or whatever it is that’s protecting the core, will be up to you.”

It was an honest assessment that many wouldn't have the self-awareness to make, and it clearly demonstrated why Raphael was the team leader.

“If it’s just Vane, I can handle it. If the Inner Guardian has been released... It’ll be tough," Nick admitted, basically saying that there was a good chance they all might die.

“Can’t you use the bracelets again?” Yvonne asked, which earned her a slow nod.

“That might be a good idea. This is certainly a worthy cause, though we shouldn’t expect them to solve everything. Their magic is powerful, but not meant for sustained combat. It might give you an opening," Raphael murmured as he considered the band around his arm.

“That will have to be enough,” Nick said as he prepared to lift everyone.