Chapter 17: 16 – Life Goes On

"Finally, that bastard is dead." I sigh in relief as the last head falls to the ground. 

Wiping the blood off of the Godsword, Seren, the three of us all sit down to catch our breath for a moment. Defeating the level 54 hydra, the boss of the thirty-eighth floor, took longer than we wanted.

"Good work, Lia. Did the armor hold up how it was supposed to?" Ailine asks as she nervously looks me over.

"Ya! You got chomped on and sprayed like a leaky faucet!" Navi chimes in.

"I'm fine. Everything worked how it was supposed to." I lean back on my arms and let my heartbeat slow down.

After a few minutes of rest, I break the silence. "Let's grab the drops and head back home. Its core should be yours this time, Navi."

"Yay! Come to mama! Nom nom nom!" Navi excitedly flies over to the core.

After gathering everything, we head through the door to the safe room, again to the entrance, then take the teleportation platform back to the Tutorial Dungeon's core room. Our home.

Taking off our armor, I'm still surprised at what Navi has accomplished with her enchantments. Four years ago when we first made it to the Abyssal Dungeon, I couldn't even imagine how far we've come.

Getting the bathwater ready like we always do when we return, we do a quick clean with magic then all three sink in the water to relax. Navi soaks in her partially submerged bucket floating in the tub.

The dungeon has become much harder, and some floors much larger. Some taking multiple days, or over a week for that fucking maze, for us to reach the boss.

There are some that have a definite path, but when filled to the brim with traps, including traps that trigger traps when deactivated, our exploration is slowed to a crawl.

Drops were also all over the place. Armor, weapons, and hides were normal. But there were floors like the seventh that had, for lack of a better term, mutant, giant, aggressive vegetables with teeth. They all dropped things like actual vegetables or seeds of various types. All inside of small sacks already. It was a good place to grind, but a weird floor overall. 

There were also the trents on floor twelve that dropped stacks of paper. Not bleached white paper, but consistently sized and sturdy enough for use. On top of that, these weren't the only odd drops from floors. Dungeons are weird.

The first time we found a multi-day level, Navi was extremely worried about her flower. Rightfully so, since her life depends on it. It's in a much larger pot now, one just barely large enough to fit through the stair room. When we leave the core room, we'll have to remove a lot of rubble to get it out of here.

She's read through all of Tavelstein's books, and even come up with a few new enchantments herself. Like the ones we use for her flower. We now have a large hopper of slime cores next to the flower. With her enchantments, they drop a day's worth of cores to automatically give it light and water. Essentially, a magical automatic timed valve. Getting it to actually work was much harder than it sounds.

This took her quite a while to calibrate the timed enchantment for the valves, and also have a tube of slime cores for each of the enchantments to work automatically. It ended up being quite the contraption, but has allowed her to be semi-independent from her flower.

By far, the dungeon floors we hate the most are open-world floors. We're essentially dropped somewhere, and have to find the boss door ourselves. Not even a starting direction. Just a boundary wall that we can't go past because of the dungeon rules. These, along with a fucking maze that had changing walls, are the levels that take the longest.

Leveling up has become more time consuming for proficiencies in magic as well. As the skill goes up, the level gaps get larger, requiring us to run these larger levels multiple times. After the Death Mantis from the Tutorial Dungeon, we decided to not rush moving to the next floor or hastily fight a boss. 

This meant we ran a floor, looked at the boss, and decided if we should go in now, or come back with specific items. If we decided to come back, then we fight back to the entrance, all to return better prepared for the boss. After finding the best ways to clear the boss, we run the floor until we're all level up to match the boss. Only then do we move to complete the next floor. Only exception being if there was a boss that was extremely annoying for our skillset.

A majority of the time, we'll poke our heads into the next level before killing a boss a second time, just to see what scenario the level is and if there's anything else odd about it.

Overall, it's been slower, but I haven't been nearly cut in half like I was before. The process of creating these specific items has really helped us learn the concepts and techniques needed to better control our magic, and to create things like the contraption for Navi's flower.

For example, the armor that Navi made for this Hydra. We learned pretty early on that the Monster Compendium from the castle library was priceless. Having an idea of what the boss will do, its habits or patterns, and how to counter it, is incredibly valuable. 

The hydra has multiple snake-like heads. Twenty for the boss we fought. With acidic blood, hard and scaly hide, and a venomous bite. It wasn't an easy monster to fight. Not even Ailine's bow, with its enchantment to increase draw weight, and her enchanted or magic arrows, could go deep enough into the hydra to do mortal damage with its size.

What we ended up coming up with was to enchant a suit of plate for me. Putting multiple enchantments on an item becomes exponentially more difficult with each one, plus each individual piece needs it. This is incredibly delicate work. For this fight, Navi packed the armor with earth enchantments for defense and mild self-repair. Because the hydra doesn't have strong jaws comparable to its size, relying instead on venom for killing, these were enough to protect me from bites. 

The real lifesaver was the combination enchantment of arcane and water that made a thin film over the armor. The film held the blood just long enough so that the arcane could have time to neutralize the acid. Otherwise, it would've begun to eat into the plate, weakening it and potentially opening it up for a bite. It could have also seeped between the pate and burnt through my skin. Keeping these three enchantments going took a substantial amount of mana as well.

Originally I tried to make enchantments, but we very quickly found out that Navi's magic control is much better suited to how delicate they are. Enchantments are also only as powerful as the one using them. They aren't things like the trope of picking up an enchanted bow at a low level and you all of a sudden fire arrows like a damn ballista or finding a magic sword and now you can cut down a mountain. 

The enchantments act more like a way to funnel mana to create a pre-specified effect. Although, the power, duration, and efficiency are all based on the one powering it. Take Ailine's bow, for example. As she has become stronger after leveling and gained better mana control, she's able to finely tune how powerful she wants each shot to be. This only applies for what she can currently do. The bow is the same as it was four years ago, but as a tool, becomes better with a more experienced and skilled user. 

You can give the same exact software to a novice and an expert computer programmer, and will receive vastly different results based on their knowledge on how to use it as well as past experiences. At the end of the day, no god-level power-ups with only enchantments or items. The legacy items give us a major advantage, and have saved us years of grinding monsters lower level than us, but they're not all-powerful.

In addition to better weapons, all three of us have become so much more competent while here in the Abyssal Dungeon. Be it magic, swordsmanship, or archery, we've all grown by leaps and bounds.

Ailine's use of magic has become excellent, and she uses it well with her archery. She's able to blend into the shadows and fire arrows made of condensed darkness. When combined with her arsenal of enchanted arrows, she's become a ranged powerhouse as well as a great stealth sniper.

Navi studied extensively to get the greatest use of magic with her control. A master at enchantments, able to create magical projectiles that she can fire and adjust in the air to hit flying targets. She's even using the memories of physics from earth to combine and create some insane new magic. 

This is seen in how she used earth magic to create near microscopic particles in the air. She charged them with electrostatic, while also insulating the whole thing with air magic, before discharging it all into a small lightning bolt. The time and mana it needs, combined with the small size of the effect, make it nearly useless in actual combat. Even so, I think she's most likely the only mage to ever create lightning. I don't have near the control to attempt it.

Finally, I've accepted my role as more of a magic swordsman/tank depending on the situation. As much as I want to be a rogue or assassin, my high talent in all of the types of magic really is an advantage we can't afford to overlook. As our only frontline fighter, this style is really the best option for me.

Seren has become my main weapon. The longsword truly is unmatched in strength and durability, and even the acid from the hydra didn't harm it. My swordsmanship has increased tremendously as well. Reading through the swordplay manuals in the library, I was able to learn the basics and train in the styles they described. By no means am I a master swordsman, but I think I can hold my own to some degree. Someday it would be good to actually learn from someone, but I have no idea when or how that would happen.

My armor switches between dragon leather, plate, or dragon scale armor, depending on what we are going to be up against. Scales don't hold enchantments well, being more of an anti-magic, anti-heat material, but work great when we're up against monsters using magic. I also have an enchanted kite shield I regularly use now.

Every so often, a level will require us to sneak around. That's when Ailine and I get to make full use of our stealth skills. With our shadow cloaks and higher level skills, combined with much stronger dark magic, we make a great pair of assassins when the situation calls for it.

We haven't gone out of the dungeon more than a few times since we began. The times we went out, we collected a bunch of goblin corpses in a belt pouch for Navi to use for fertilizer. We also filled multiple blood bags for Ailine and I with ork blood. Not all levels have monsters we can feed on, and trying to fight on a multi-day level with nothing to drink really impairs us.

However, our time of staying fully within the dungeons will be coming to an end soon. Navi's flower has been growing larger as of late, and it's overdue to be planted in the ground to truly grow. That means we have to find and secure a space from monsters. 

Being that we're still conquering the Abyssal Dungeon, we're left with two options. The first is to tunnel out of the collapsed mountain/waterfall that the dungeon is buried under and then secure the area. The second is to capture the area around the Tutorial Dungeon, most likely meaning the town and castle.

If we wait much longer, we won't be able to move the large flower and its massive root system from the dungeon safely. Without it rooting in more than a pot, eventually, it'll die. After we discussed the pros and cons of each location, what we decided on was to retake the castle and town.

With the Abyssal Dungeon, it was just too big of an unknown. We don't know how deep the entrance is buried, but know it's substantial. We don't know what the area around it is like or if where we dig out of will be underwater. We could also hit a pocket of groundwater, gas, or any other number of complications. If we dig from the outside, we don't know what direction to dig or how deep to get to the entrance. We tried making a type of sonar, but that didn't work out.

With too many questions on the safety and practicality of it, using an Abyssal Dungeon tunnel as our home just wasn't worth the risk. Plus, we had an idea of how to retake the town.

Wherever we plant Navi's flower will become our permanent home. Having someplace that's already somewhat defendable with resources around would be a great help. After we retake the town, we'll need to fix the walls and also create walls around the Fairy Flower Garden that will house Navi's flower. Walls will at least keep out land dwelling monsters. This still won't do much to help against any flying monsters, and we've really struggled trying to find a solution to this. 

Just like the vampire's ridiculous weakness to light, Navi's direct tie to her flower is a massive handicap. Our races are very powerful, and being immortal gives us time to become ridiculously OP, but having to find ways around these issues is frustrating. The only solutions we came up with are finding allies, or having Navi create a rhizome flower for a new fairy that can watch the area. 

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As far as allies, we have no idea who we could trust, or who would trust us, to watch over the flower garden. The flower is Navi's life. Hail or the elements won't faze it, but get some people with weapons? Allies that could turn on us are too much of a risk right now.

We've all reached the point with space-time magic that we can teleport a short distance, but it's extremely mana inefficient. To do something like the teleportation platforms? Nope. We even tried meticulously copying them, but some part of the enchantment doesn't work as we need a large enough proficiency to tie the enchantment to them. Plus, it seems like Tavel somehow passively tied it to the dungeons power source. Just how incredible was Tavelstein to be able to make these? I guess if you can train for hundreds of years, you could become pretty powerful. 

From what Navi says, she thinks a new flower can come within a year if she pumps mana into it. That gives us a timeframe for when we need to have a secured foothold.

From what knowledge Navi has, we're already as strong or stronger than many of the elite knights of the empire. Their top people would still be stronger in a straight up or fair fight. Masters/experts may still have better proficiency in skills than we do. Their dungeons only go to floor thirty-five at max. The Abyssal dungeon still has another twelve floors, being a fifty floor dungeon. 

Would we be alright attacking the Empire now? Potentially. But the gods seemed to set this whole course of events to some degree. As such, we would be stupid if we ignored the obvious goal that was in front of us. What monsters will be on the lower floors? Well, all the dragon leather and scale armor the generals had, had to have come from somewhere. I have a large hunch it's the lower floors. But all of the information we can find only talks about wyverns. Dragons are only mentioned in passing and have no information. Someday, we should comb through the diaries or other books for any clues. However, there are more pressing matters.

We'll no doubt be able to defeat almost anyone alone or in small groups, but that's only if they don't know we're coming. Our best chance to kill as many as we can is to do it while they are unaware of our existence.

If the stronger light mages within the church or around the Emperor suspect vampires are coming for them, then we can expect a much stronger resistance and more targeted countermeasures. Why the fuck would we want to give them a chance to prepare?

No, our best chance is to become as strong as we can, and attack secretly and decisively while trying to sow mistrust in the populace. I already have a rough plan on how to do this, but when we strike, it needs to be full force and when we're ready. Our first step is to clear out the area to get a foothold before we continue in the dungeon. 

Putting my thoughts aside, I focus back on the present. After getting out of the bath, enjoying some time with Ailine, then laying down together, we fell asleep. Tomorrow, we would begin to claim a place of our own on the surface. 

Waking up, we armor ourselves in dragon leathers, and head out of our cave/dungeon hole. After walking, we reach the massive outer wall on the backside of the castle. Killing any goblins along the way like we're swatting flies, we make our way along the wall. Even the odd ork that comes by while we're working just gets a dark magic arrow to the head without much thought. Ailine then drains the orks into barrels or pots for us to place in our packs to stop their time. Higher level dungeon monsters still taste better, but any blood not on, or in, us just dissolves with the body, keeping us from stocking their blood.

While working on this, I really see how far we've come. It's sometimes hard to see how strong we are now, when for four years each time we fight it's with monsters around our level at the time. Coming back and nonchalantly killing monsters we once avoided makes me smile.

The first part of our plan requires there to be no breaks in the wall. Everything within the walls will die. I feel a bit sorry for any harmless animals that'll get caught in our plan, but our safety and survival will always come first for me. We go around the wall, and using earth magic, patch the sections that need it. The wall is so massive that it would take us a very long time to fully repair it.

Patching, honestly, is still a large undertaking with the wall being fifty feet tall and about twenty feet thick. With battlements all along the wall, creating this was a massive engineering feat to accomplish.

The reason we're spending days, going along and patching the wall, is to not mess with the forest outside of the walls. Our plan should easily take care of anything in the area, but we thought about the forest outside. We still want to have a close source of animals and monsters for blood or fertilizer. We also don't want to potentially mess with the monster territories before we're ready to erase them. 

Walking/flying around and patching up a massive wall, this was how we spent a couple nights. With our cloaks, we can also work on it a bit while the sun is up. When we got to the two areas that could have a gate, we filled the opening with rubble and magic, but made it so we could take it down if we ever wanted to build a portcullis or gate. For now though, nothing in, nothing out. 

Eventually, we finally finished patching the wall. An actual full repair would take months, but with this, everything inside of the wall is now trapped. It was finally time to start with the main portion of the plan.

Standing on top of the rubble pile leading to the dungeon, I ask the fairy hovering above me, "You ready, Navi?"

"Yup! Let's light it up like Cheech and Chong!" The fairy pumps her fists while buzzing with excitement.

"Be safe you two." Ailine says from the entrance hole.

For this to work, it'll require my magical power and Navi's magical control. Taking a deep breath, I create the image of a large and sustained flame surrounding the rubble. Seconds afterwards, it became like a bonfire around us. This drew so much mana that I couldn't hold it for long. This alone might work, but we wanted to make sure.

Navi then created a whirlwind with us at the epicenter. As the fire began to swirl and become stoked by the wind, it reached a combustion point for the trees in the area. She couldn't hold it for long, either, but it was enough. We began seeing trees go up in flame, catching those around them on fire as well. It was becoming unbearably hot at the center of this as the world around us became bathed in flame. Before it became too much, we retreated to the dungeon and to our core room. Glad that our idea seemed to work.

Letting out a breath and half unbelieving at what we just did, I ask, "Navi, that actually fucking worked, didn't it?"

"Sure did! We just made a biiiig forest fire! Smokey would be so mad at us! Burn mother freaker! Burn! Muahahaha!" The pyro fairy looked elated at the destruction we just caused.

Ailine comes up to us. Relieved that it seemed to go well. "I'm just glad you two had the dungeon to retreat to. Would you have been able to sustain that if you weren't at the center?"

"Nope!" Navi replied, "Even if I tried to control the wind to focus it, once it reached hot enough it'd still move towards me. I can't hold a vacuum that would have stopped it for too long, either. I'd end up nice and crispy if we couldn't fly into here."

"Damn, so no wiping out areas with fires." I mentally nix the attack plan I was thinking of. "Well, at the very least, this should wipe out most of the monsters inside the walls. Then we just have to clear a spot for your flower."

"Yup! Thank you for all the help, girls!" She gives us both a beaming smile with no hint of her normal teasing.

"Our pleasure, Navi. You have always helped me so much after Lia found me." Ailine returns the smile.

While watching the two, I try to think of our next course of action. "What now? Want to do a preemptive check on floor thirty-nine and see what we're dealing with? That fire should probably burn for a couple days before we head out."

"Sounds fun to me! Wonder what it's gonna be this time!" Navi flies over and lands on my shoulder.

"I'm fine with that too. Let's go see." Ailine says while picking up her bow.

Together, we head over to the teleportation platform, then enter floor thirty-nine to scout—and immediately hate the floor. 

Knowing that floors could be damn near anything, I had been hoping a floor like this wouldn't appear. I really fucking wished it didn't. In front of us was a very defined path. At the very least it wasn't an open-world floor. The problem was that this path was underwater. In fact, we were currently underwater in a dozen-foot round bubble around the door. 

"Fuck." I stare with contempt at the water around us.

"What'll we do, Lia?" Ailine asks with obvious worry. 

Looking around, the water seems to be about a hundred feet deep from what I can see. Depth while underwater is hard to estimate, but it does appear to have a surface.

"Damn." I resign myself to the ridiculous situation. "If we ever had an underwater floor, I had a little hope there would be, like, an underwater temple or something that had air. But this? Looks like we'll have to fight and complete this fully underwater." I turn to look at the moth on my shoulder. "What do you think, Navi? Any ideas on if you can enchant something for us to breathe underwater?"

The little fairy was deep in thought. After half a minute, she speaks softly to herself, "Hmm… I might be able to come up with something. The limiter would be on how much time we need… But do we go with a regulator or rebreather?..." Clapping her hands, she looks back at me. "I can probably come up with something, Lia. It'll take a lot of time and testing though. Especially for it to work over potentially a day or longer and in combat."

"That's fine." With our biggest issue now in the works, we can split the other needed tasks. "Ailine, could you go through the compendium again and see what underwater monsters are listed? I remember a few, but let's not risk drowning because we didn't do our homework.

"I'll sort through our spears. Assuming most enemies will be biters, we'll probably all need enchanted plate with spears. A bow, swinging weapon, and the majority of magic, won't do shit underwater."

"Sounds like a place to start. I'll look through the books then," Ailine said.

"Before we start," I say, while we turn back to the door, "let's grab the hydra armor and go back to floor thirty-eight. We should be able to run it again in two days while the fire burns."

Our short expedition to the underwater world of the thirty-ninth floor ended with us returning home to the core room of a dungeon currently surrounded by a forest fire.

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