Chapter 931: A Hall of Horrors
Arthur and Rishia awoke to find themselves half-submerged in a pool of liquefied cosmic energy that reached about their knees, and as he looked around at the temple-like architecture of the chamber, Arthur muttered,
"This reminds me of a game named after my dad."
He got up from the pool, glancing at Rishia, who was surveying their surroundings before directing her attention to the only visible exit from the chamber.
"Our Existence Realms are intact, all our Authorities are sealed. I can’t even use my Aspects or summon my Ego Weapons."
Arthur attempted to mentally contact Celestia or Lostvayne, but all he received was silence, confirming that his connection to them had been blocked.
"Well, damn," he muttered, wading through the pool to its edge and climbing out.
He pushed the doors open and was met with the sight of a long hallway lined with flaming torches on both walls, casting light across the cracks and spiderwebs scattered across the ground and ceiling.
"Great, so we have a classic dungeon-style floor first, huh?"
Arthur was about to step forward when Rishia grabbed him and pulled him back.
"Have you checked your condition properly? Even the passives from our Authorities are gone."
Her words made Arthur blink, and he realised that this was likely the first time she had faced one of the Levites’ ’Trials.’
"I know. It’s not the first time I’ve had all my Authorities sealed by them, after all," he said.
He raised his right hand, making magic power flow through his energy circuits and over his palm, coating it in a thick layer, and he shook his head silently.
"The speed is too slow," he muttered.
Rolling his shoulders slightly, a pair of black wings sprouted from his back, and seeing them, Rishia remarked, "Right...you have wings for some reason."
"My mother’s a Leviathan Devil. I inherited her wings. I just don’t use them much since I can fly using cosmic energy," Arthur said, turning to her and asking, "You don’t use your wings outside of combat for the same reason, do you?"
"I do use them outside of combat," Rishia replied.
"But only when you want to fly faster, right? It’s the same with me. I bring them out when I want to reach my maximum possible speed."
As he spoke, Arthur tried to mould the magic power covering his palm into a ball, but it was misshapen, so he continued squeezing it within his hands, working to smooth it while continuing.
"I also use them when I need a boost in energy manipulation speed and efficiency."
Just as he finished speaking, he succeeded in moulding it into a perfect sphere, and then he retracted his wings immediately afterwards.
"Then why didn’t you use them when fighting that Machine god in Valmone?"
To Rishia’s question, Arthur tossed the sphere of magic power into the air and replied, "Because I hadn’t played all my cards when Charisse intervened."
That response made Rishia think of the strange set of Scales Arthur had brought out of his subspace just before Charisse’s chains of causality began pulling Valkalonex down to Taemia.
She wanted to ask about them, but Arthur caught the sphere of magic he tossed into the air, reabsorbed its energy, and began walking forward as he spoke.
"Let’s get moving. We can’t stay here all day."
Rishia silently nodded and followed him, the two walking down the long hallway in silence for nearly half an hour.
The only sounds were their footsteps echoing against the cracked stone floors until they reached their first intersection, a T-junction in the path.
A grunt came from the left side, and both of them peeked down the left path, their eyes widening at what they saw.
In the middle of the path stood a 1 metre tall, green-skinned, child-like creature with pointed ears and a curved nose, staring blankly into the air, wearing nothing but a ragged loincloth.
They leaned back slightly and glanced at each other, still surprised, as Arthur muttered, "That’s a goblin, right?"
"Definitely a goblin," Rishia confirmed.
They looked again, and there, staring at the wall and grunting occasionally, was the same green-skinned goblin.
"Is Barda messing with us or something? A trash mob, really?"
"He did say he referenced games and comics, so it makes sense," Rishia said, prompting Arthur to turn his gaze toward her.
"What?"
"Nothing," Arthur said. "Just that you’re the serious type who doesn’t usually vibe with gaming, so it’s a bit surprising whenever you say things that remind me that you are indeed a gamer. And an avid one, at that."
After that, he peeked around the corner again, keeping his eyes on the goblin as he spoke.
"Anyway, back to this matter. Either that goblin was placed there to mess with us, or it’s NOT a normal goblin."
"There’s a simple way to find out," Rishia said, picking up a stone and peeking alongside Arthur as she threw it.
The stone traced a clean parabolic arc in the air and landed on the goblin’s head, eliciting a short shout of pain from the creature, which raised its short arms to its bald head and then turned toward the direction the stone had come from.
Seeing Arthur and Rishia peeking at it, the goblin’s large yellow eyes blinked in surprise.
Both sides stayed silent, and then the goblin opened its mouth.
Rishia expected it to scream and call for allies, but just before she could shoot its mouth with a bolt of magic power, she saw the insides of the goblin’s mouth.
"...eh?"
Circular rows of teeth that would make shark fangs look blunt revealed themselves, and in the centre was a long tongue about three times the goblin’s height, slipping down to the floor with a hissing sound like a snake.
Immediately, Arthur grabbed Rishia by the collar of her shirt and leapt backwards, just before the goblin’s mouth shot out of its body like a giant worm about 4 metres wide, its rows of teeth consuming and shredding everything in its path.
The entire corridor was devoured instantly, even the corner where they had been peeking was torn away, and at the sight, Arthur shook his head.
"This is definitely Raikis’s handwork," he said, now certain of which floor they were on.
That, however, didn’t help their current predicament, as the goblin’s worm mouth began to retract into its body. Seeing this, Arthur immediately conjured a sword of magic power and dashed toward it, while Rishia formed several spears of pure magic and fired them at the pink, fleshy worm.
Her spears pierced through its body, elongating as they did, pinning it to the wall and keeping it in place long enough for Arthur’s sword construct to slice it apart.
The goblin screeched loudly as its worm mouth was cut short, instantly retracting the rest of it, blood pouring from its lips as it glared at Rishia.
However, its glare changed to a look of confusion as it realised it couldn’t see Arthur, but it never had the time to process that thought as Arthur separated its head from its neck with a slash from behind, blood spurting as the dead goblin’s head rolled down towards Rishia’s feet.
"So we know we have Eldritch Horror goblins on our list," Arthur said with a chuckle. "I wonder what comes next."
Rishia didn’t answer, only staring at the area behind him, and noticing this, Arthur turned around to find three more pairs of eyes looking at him.
The eyes simultaneously dropped to the goblin corpse at his feet and then back up to him, and then, all three goblins roared, revealing their circular rows of teeth and elongated tongues.
◇ ◇ ◇
Fighting three of the horror goblins wasn’t too difficult, considering that individually, they were only as strong as a Half-Deity.
But while the physical challenge was manageable, their appearance was the kind one would normally avoid for the sake of their mental health.
After they finished killing them, Arthur and Rishia noticed a fist-sized, irregularly shaped stone with a glowing inscription resting nearby. Arthur picked it up, turned it over, and saw that it was made of the same material as the tower’s exterior.
"A power-up after the first enemies? How generous."
He tossed it to Rishia, who caught it and examined it. When she saw the ’S’ carved into it, she raised an eyebrow and muttered, "Skill?"
"That’s what I thought too," Arthur replied. "Considering how committed Barda is to this whole roguelike bit, I seriously doubt that’s the only kind of drop we’re going to find.
I suggest we don’t use this one yet and keep it until we’ve found all the other kinds of drops and similar stones. That way, we can figure out what each one does and get a sense of the probability for each type dropping."
She nodded and slipped the stone into the pocket of her trousers as she followed Arthur, who, for some reason, was carrying the head of one of the goblins.
"What’s that for?"
"To distract other monsters we run into," he replied. "In case we come across larger groups."
Rishia didn’t say anything else and simply continued down the hallway beside him in silence.
Eventually, they encountered several more monsters, and after dealing with around a dozen groups, they ended up finding 5 more stones, each labelled differently.
"So we’ve got ’S’, ’A’, ’T’, ’W’, ’E’, and ’U’."
When Arthur laid out all the stones they’d collected, Rishia pointed to them in order and spoke.
"Skill, Authority, Technique, Weapon, Energy, and Unique abilities?"
"Same guess I had," Arthur said. He then moved four of the stones to one side as he continued,
"We only have one ’A’, ’E’, ’W’, and ’U’, but we’ve got a lot of ’S’ and ’T’."
Looking up at Rishia, he raised a fist and said, "Rock, paper, scissors?"
The dragoness gave him an incredulous look at the suggestion, but he just shrugged and explained himself.
"That’s the fairest way to split them. We leave everything up to luck. If you’ve got a better idea, I’m listening."
In the end, Rishia went along with his suggestion, and the result was that she unlocked her bow along with its corresponding Weapon Authority, while Arthur obtained his Anti-Divine Gravity Authority, which fell under ’Unique abilities’. While it would’ve been ideal for him to get his Anti-Divinity since it worked best with it, he ended up unlocking his Divinity using the ’E’ stone instead.
Using the stones was simple enough, since all they had to do was channel magic power into them, and with a little lightshow, the cosmic energy inside each stone eased a random seal on them.
Afterwards, they continued down the dungeon, the cracked hallway paths expanding and becoming more complex as time went on.
