Chapter 124: The Sky King
The announcement reached the group through Dorn, who had seen it on the hunter network and had reacted as though the system had done something specifically to inconvenience him.
"Another one?"
They were gathered near the registration area outside the newly formed gate. The fracture hung in the air above the plaza at nearly fifteen feet high, lightning crawled across its edges in slow, irregular arcs, as if the dungeon disliked being contained.
Rin looked at Kei. "You say that like you’re the one clearing them."
"I contribute emotionally."
"You don’t."
"I absolutely do."
Lina sighed.
The argument was going to continue.
Dorn was reading the system notification. Kai was looking at the gate.
[C-Rank Dungeon Found.]
[C-Rank Dungeon: Thunder Peaks.]
[Recommended Level: 47.]
Kei pointed at Kai. "See? The dungeon is trying to catch up."
Kai looked at the notification. "Still behind."
"That’s an unreasonable response."
Sera was already walking toward the gate. The rest of them followed.
The world inside was loud before they had taken three steps.
Wind hit immediately, not a gust but a constant pressure from no single direction, the kind of wind that wasn’t interested in compromise.
Floating mountains filled the space in every direction, massive stone formations suspended at different altitudes, with storm clouds occupying the space between them.
Lightning traveled between the distant peaks in continuous moving lines, bright enough to see clearly, too far away to threaten anything near the entry point.
Ancient chains thicker than buildings connected some of the mountains. Others floated entirely free, rotating slowly in the storm currents.
Everything below the entry point was cloud cover. A uniform white floor that stretched to the horizon and hid whatever was beneath it.
Kei stood still for a long moment. "Okay," he said finally.
Nobody responded.
A few seconds passed.
"This is the coolest dungeon we’ve entered."
Nobody argued with this.
The first monsters came from the cliffside to their left before anyone had moved far from the entry point. Bodies made of condensed storm energy, the form of wolves but with blue lightning threading through the structure where fur should have been, eyes burning white.
[Thunder Fang.]
[Level 46.]
The lead one lunged without the preliminary circling that predatory creatures usually did. Kai activated the Storm Sovereign Cloak, and the wind gathered around him, and the resistance vanished from his movement immediately.
The Thunder Fang saw him.
Then it did not.
He was beside it. The Fractured Blade came through the structural core of the storm energy body, and the construct collapsed. The other three froze for the fraction of a second that followed. The fraction of a second was enough.
Four Thunder Fangs. The last one hit the ground as the first one was still dispersing.
Kei looked at the scattered storm energy where the pack had been. "I didn’t see that."
"The cloak," Kai said.
"What about it?"
"It removes the resistance from movement. Wind pushes instead of resisting."
Kei considered this. "So you’re just faster."
"Different kind of faster."
Dorn nodded and looked at where the Thunder Fangs had been. "We need to be more careful"
"Agreed," Kai agreed.
They kept moving.
The dungeon kept sending monsters.
None of them lasted long.
Lightning Serpents along the cliff paths, the bodies sinuous and the attack pattern relying on reach and speed became considerably less useful when the target was moving the way the cloak allowed Kai to move.
Storm Raptors in the open sections between mountains meant the aerial approach required the tracking ability that Rin handled efficiently, with her arrows finding the trajectory-interrupting points.
Thunder Beasts in the connecting path sections, heavy and built for sustained pressure rather than burst damage, which Kei, Lina, and Dorn handled with the practiced coordination of people who had been running dungeons together long enough that the formation happened without discussion.
Kai handled the things that needed to end quickly before they became problems for the others.
The biggest fight came when the path opened into a wide plateau with no cover. The entire population of the section was visible at once, Storm Raptors circling in the air above, Thunder Fangs spread across the stone below, and Lightning Serpents moving between the two in a pattern that made the approach complicated.
Kei looked at it. "That’s a lot."
"That’s definitely a lot," Rin confirmed.
The nearest Thunder Fang saw them, and the signal went through the whole group simultaneously, every creature orienting and the charge beginning from all points at once.
Kai reached into the cloak.
The stored wind came out as a directed release rather than a movement boost; the compressed air that the cloak had been accumulating since the dungeon entry released in a single outward shockwave from his position.
The radius was immediate and significant. Storm Raptors were knocked upward from their trajectories. Thunder Fangs tumbled across the plateau stone. Three Lightning Serpents were moved sideways off the nearest cliff edge entirely.
The surviving creatures looked at the empty space around Kai where their colleagues had been.
Kei turned to look at him. "That’s not equipment," he said.
Kai looked at the cleared plateau. "No?"
"That’s a natural disaster."
Sera was laughing.
Dorn looked at the scattered monsters with the expression of someone adjusting their baseline for what was possible. Rin dispatched two of the grounded Raptors that had recovered before they finished recovering, the arrows arriving before the creatures had completed the decision to continue.
The rest of the encounter was brief. The next few hours went smoothly. The dungeon was challenging for everyone else.
It wasn’t challenging for Kai or Sera. They simply kept helping out the others get stronger and test out these high level foes.
It’s then after they enter into a wide space, they hear a screeching sound.
[Thunder Drake.]
[Level 48.]
Emerging from a cloud bank in the upper section of the dungeon, wings spread wide, silver scales with the blue lightning flowing in continuous currents across the surface. It roared, and the sound of it was large enough that the storm clouds below them rippled.
Kei pointed at it. "That one looks expensive."
"Probably," Kai said.
The Drake circled the group from altitude, and the combat phase began with everyone managing the aerial problem. Rin targeted the wing surfaces to disrupt the flight pattern. Kei intercepted dives and disrupted the approach momentum with the Pulse Fist.
Lina found the openings that the disruptions created. Dorn was blocked attacks from whenever the Drakes dove down.
Sera held the aerial containment, her spear redirecting lightning strikes and her barriers absorbing the larger directed attacks.
The Drake was fast, and it adapted between passes, each dive incorporating information from the previous one. It was a legitimate C-rank boss operating at its level.
Then it descended.
Kai moved.
Air-step, second air-step, the third covering a distance that the first two had established the angle for. The Fractured Blade hit the Drake where the lightning circulation pattern had been tracking heaviest, where the class output analysis said the structural integrity of the storm energy composite was lowest.
The Drake froze.
Then it came apart.
The group emerged into the upper section of Thunder Peaks, where the storms were strongest, and the mountains were largest, the final path running between the two highest peaks visible from anywhere in the dungeon. The path ended at a gap between two floating formations with nothing spanning it.
No bridge. No chain. A clean gap of open air.
Dorn stopped at the edge. "Well."
Rin nodded. "That’s unfortunate."
"I could throw Dorn across," Kei said.
"You couldn’t," Dorn said.
"I’d try."
"I appreciate the confidence."
Kai looked at the gap and stepped off the edge.
Air-step, the first one, the ripple forming under his foot and holding. Second step. Third. The movement was the same movement it had been since he had first figured out how to use the empty air as a surface. Then the fourth step.
No ripple.
No platform forming.
Nothing activated.
He did not fall.
He remained suspended while the storm wind moved around him. The air held him the same way it had above the Roc’s arena but this time it was longer. He continued forward. The fifth step found the edge of the far formation, and he landed and looked back across the gap.
The others were in various states of crossing on the available air steps. All except Sera, who was standing at the edge of the near formation and not crossing.
She was looking at the space he had just occupied. The empty air between the fourth step and the fifth, where nothing had been, and he had not fallen.
"Kai," she said.
"What?"
"How are you doing that?"
He didn’t have a complete answer yet. Air-step had always needed a surface and now it needed one less and less.
"I’m not sure," he said.
Sera crossed the gap and landed beside him. She looked at the space they had both just passed through and then at him with the expression she used when she was watching something she had not finished categorizing yet.
"Something is changing," she said.
"Yes," he said.
Neither of them said anything else about it. The final section of the dungeon was ahead, and the boss of Thunder Peaks was somewhere in the storm above the highest peak.
Whatever was changing, he’d understand it better after a few more dungeons.
He started walking.
