Chapter 13

Rion quickly threw himself to the floor along with others. The lack of a mana shield in their group guaranteed their death. He could only pray that the people at the campsite survived.

Waves of air, dust, and uprooting trees being launched into the air reminded Rion of the fear he had felt when his parents were killed.

Mountains of destruction avalanched towards them and a few seconds after the ear-ringing bang sounded, the blast reached them.

Suddenly everything was black. He felt himself being thrown and suddenly his sense of direction disappeared as his eardrums burst.

…

His instincts told him to hold on to the sword, so he did as if his life depended on it. 

He felt his shoulders crack, ribs shatter, legs pulverize, and several concussions as the debris of the explosion slammed into his feeble body. 

With the shut of an eye, Rion felt his consciousness awaken from a years-long coma that spanned a few seconds.

Upon regaining consciousness, Rion did not know if just a second had passed or days had gone by. The scenery looked like doomsday and was too different compared to before.

With a ringing light-headedness, his eyes barely followed his movements.

"Cough, cough." He coughed and coughed some more. 

On the floor, he took deep difficult breaths as his lungs fought against him. Feeling a stinging and numbing pain around his body, Rion forgot where he was for a second.

He coughed again and cursed and his mind returned to his setting. 

What to do?

"Lucian, are you there?"

He stumbled around to find nothing, only the boiled up dusty soil and the black logs of trees. The charred dirt looked like skulls and the dust of bones and corpses. 

Was he in hell? Did dungeon explorers come here after death?

His arm flailed around, finding nothing but the remnant particles of mana. He swiped left and right seeking to regain some motor control over his body, yet the dizziness could not leave him.

The scorched trees were burnt to extinction, dead remnants of a world that had once had life.

Wondering where his sword went he directed his eyes to the floor to scavenge the prized possession that allowed them to take down the gigantic construct.

Since the sword had been attained in this same dungeon and it was obviously key in this floor, it was essential to find it again to leave this dungeon.

Tripping over something, he looked down and saw a body charred black to death. The pungent and acrid smell of mana radiation circulated through his respiratory system, spiking burns along his lungs.

Reaching down to uncover the face of the grisly corpse, Rion saw an unrecognizable face with a ripped out scalp. Marks of blood cooked by heat and radiation left brown blemishes, and the cauterized opening mocked an illusion of a weirdly shaped human. The head was stained by scattered black burn marks demonstrating a horrific death. 

Seeing familiar weapons by the sides and leather dagger holders hugging the body's legs told him of Lucian's fate.

His fingertips burned. Rion did not know if it was because he was unused to the density of the mana in the air, or because he just touched the boiled corpse of his friend.

Raising his head, his view panned out to find all of his comrades similarly annihilated. Most looked worse, missing limbs and chunks of flesh. 

All were burnt to oblivion, having visible bone whether it was from pulverized skin or broken forearms piercing outside the muscles and flesh.

Along the way, he found his sword surprisingly still in clean condition. 

Reaching down to pick it up, Rion realized he was missing an arm.

…

…

…

Minutes that felt like hours later, the nuke finally dimmed down.

As the explosion settled, Larsson couldn't help but bring his hands up to his hair in stress.

The squad was dead. Cade was dead. Penelope was dead. Jai was dead. Rion was dead.

The beautiful sky was painted an apocalyptic orange as the backdrop of the deathly trees that had all wilted away. The atmosphere was heavy and suffocating, partly due to the condensed mana, and partly due to the deaths and horror that just transpired. 

Larsson didn't want to imagine what would've happened if they left the dungeon alone. After a dungeon break, that mana construct would have left this floor and entered the Earth. The city would've been annihilated.

He had no energy to sigh and could only grasp chunks of his hair in lament.

"Sir…"

"..."

"Even from this distance… I am afraid to say that the body count has reached dozens, not including the scout squad that we have yet to locate. Ms. Ryoha has also passed away. In an attempt to save everybody, she imposed a mana shield to ensure the most survivors."

The groups were far away from each other, the mages especially since they had to maintain their distance to fire the cannon. Ryoha had sacrificed herself to save the bigger group of people. That also meant she sacrificed her life to save him.

Larsson could only nod, aware that if he was too emotional or showed signs of despair, his men would also feel their morale sink.

So he had to be a hard man. He had to maintain a stone cold exterior and pass off his friends' deaths as if nothing had happened.

He had to act, and believe in his act. He had to think that these deaths were just another casualty. That they knew what they were getting into. 

With inner trepidation, he asked for his other friend's fate expecting the worst.

"What about Alessandro?"

"In clean condition, sir."

At the quick reply, he allowed himself to heave a sigh of relief.

"Take men that still have the energy to move and tell them to scout the area and see if they can find our separated scout group."

"Yes, sir."

"Tell them to not separate themselves too much. I want them to come back alive. We cannot dwindle our numbers any more. Just one more dead person will be a death sentence for all of us."

The soldier paused to imagine the tragic fate Larsson described. "Sir, yes sir."

"Larsson!" 

He turned his face to Alessandro's familiar voice.

"Doppelganger ghosts have been located once again. We can't afford to let them possess the few people we have left."

"Scratch my past command for scouting, tell everyone to gather around! We will move as one group."

The soldier ran off in a hurry to collect the entire company.

"We have to quickly find out what the hell is the objective after this."

With a spell, he lit his sword on fire and slashed a crescent wave towards an incoming shade. 

He couldn't sit back anymore, not with this number of injuries, and not at this critical juncture. He couldn't hold himself back in the strategy that there'd be a bigger boss awaiting them. After all, Ryoha was no more.

The slash was instantaneous and the crescent arrived immediately. A clean and devastating power held itself concentrated by the fine power of hours of practice, talent, and finely tuned mana control. 

As the lead berserker, his skills were magnified. As if the dungeon knew that its opponent's main damage dealer would finally take action, several more shades appeared.

The smokey figure and granite-like texture of the shades dissolved into the trees. Transparent like a terrifying fabric that seemed to shuttle between reality and nonexistence, the shades barely visible silhouette turned into a clawed monstrosity cannoning towards the hunters.

The heart rates of the others sped up, because they were tired, injured, and had to quickly find out where the others were. Why did more opponents have to come?

A vibrant and elegant red arc glided to the hostile ghosts and ended their lives. The slash reminded him of Rion's concentrated hours of ache practicing that same slash he had just executed.

"Rion. You better be alive damn it."

…

…

…

In a far-off place in the forest, a conglomeration of ghosts, wisps, and spirits sent out streams of attackers to the hunters' encampment. 

In the middle of their gathering, a stone pillar floated. 

Carved roughly in one of its sides, it read: 

The key to the world lies in the key of creation. 

The north was frost and the south was fire.

Their eternal joining was interrupted by the void.

When these combined, the seed of origin proliferated.

When the seed exploded, its progeny was devastated.

The keyhole shall be the cranium of the progenitor.

Face the Jotun.