With Benny hanging limply and wearing an embarrassed expression, Cynrik placed his right palm on the stone door leading to the Kobold Village and applied enough pressure to open it without making any noise slowly. Then, sensing Brance arriving behind him, Cynrik went ahead and opened the door beyond the inch-wide crack he had created, making a gap barely large enough for them to move through.
Brance brushed past Cynrik and Benny, making himself and Gabby the first ones through the threshold, which wasn’t something they had previously agreed upon, but nonetheless, Cynrik was okay with it. Brance and Gabby had the most ground to cover, so breaking away sooner meant they’d already be in place by the time Cynrik and Benny arrived at the lavafall.
Cynrik watched his brothers back with [Mana Sight] active before following through the doorway with Benny in toe, being carried like a stray cat. However, the instant Cynrik’s foot stepped into the Boss room, not only did several notifications start popping up in his view, causing him to halt his steps, but the door leading back to the dungeon forcefully slammed shut. Luckily, Cynrik hadn’t opened it all the way, so the only audible sound was a soft thump that the bustling Kobold Village quickly drowned out.
-You have entered the Instance Dungeon Boss room for A-G-22097.-
-Exit has been SEALED.-
-You cannot leave the Instance Dungeon Boss Room until all tasks and quests have been completed.-
-WARNING, ANOMALY DETECTED, EGRESS CORE IS EMITTING UNSTABLE AND UNPREDICTABLE MANA FLUCTUATIONS. AN EMERGENCY QUEST IS BEING GENERATED. THIS PROCESS WILL TAKE A TOTAL OF 5 MINUTES TO COMPLETE.-
-Time Remaining until Emergency Quest Generated, 04:58.-
Cynrik felt his heart drop when he heard and read the final notification, but he immediately went into action.
[Brance, ignore the quest and stick to the original plan for now. Be prepared for subjugation.]
[Copy, moving out.]
Like Cynrik, Brance didn’t get entirely distracted by the system notifications and had already covered several meters, moving in the direction Cynrik had indicated on the map. Feeling Gabby shivering in his arms, Brance rubbed tiny circles on the girl’s back with his thumb to calm her down.
Not hesitating any longer, Cynrik activated his [Shadow Leap] and, with Benny in tow, sunk into the rocky surface and into what he dubbed the “Shadow Realm.”
Benny was flabbergasted as he watched the world around him lose color, and a feeling of weightlessness took over. However, he didn’t panic. Instead, Benny, fully trusting Cynrik’s abilities, allowed himself to be carried along as Cynrik flitted at breakneck speed through the shadows towards the direction of the lavafall.
“Benny, listen up, I didn’t want to say it around Gabby, but shits gunna go real sour fast. The fact we received an Emergency Quest prompt is proof enough about what will happen.” Skipping from one point to the next as if flying, Cynrik broke the silence against his better judgment. Even though they were in the Shadow Realm, he still kept his voice to a whisper subconsciously, even though he knew no one could hear him other than Benny.
“There is a 95% chance we will be forced into a mandatory Subjugation, at which point, you’ll need to do what needs to be done. I expect your sister to falter when it comes down to killing helpless beings, at which point if neither Brance nor I are present, it will fall to you to handle it.”
Cynrik felt the younger boy tense up at his words but could only shake his head helplessly.
“I…I…understand Cyn.” Benny stuttered his words but eventually got his point across.
Reaching over and grabbing Bennys right arm, Cynrik had the boy grab hold of his shoulder and subsequently released his grip on Benny’s neck.
“I know I am asking for a lot here, Benny…you and Gabby aren’t like Brance and me, and neither of us expects you to be ruthless; all I am asking for is if you are in a situation where everything falls on having to make the decision to spare a life or end one, you choose to do what the mission dictates. If it eases your mind, blame me for it, as technically, I am the one putting you in this position.”
“The only consolidation I can give you is nothing here truly exists. The Egress Core explicitly created every creature in this village; think of them as simply XP if you need to, but I need you to have a grip on your emotions if the situation presents itself.”
Looking over to check the younger boy’s reaction, Cynrik nodded approvingly as he witnessed Benny’s face go from utterly scared to confident and resolute.
“Alright, we will be arriving soon; keep your wits about you and start collecting the necessary Mana.” Cynrik looked forward and continued making long-striding jumps to cover distance quickly, similarly to how a certain ninja wearing orange leaps from tree to tree, only in this case, instead of a forest, there were pillars of darkness and shadows as far as the eye could see, which Cynrik was using as footholds to cover distance at a quicker pace than just floating in one direction as he had before.
The Shadow Realm vaguely resembled the outside world if it was merged with a massive forest of darkness; each of the Pillar-like platforms was the physical manifestations of shadows being cast in every direction. So the boulders Cynrik would have been passing in the outside world cast strange oblong shadows that he could step on as if they were solid.
From his point of view, everything around him seemed to be a reverse negative version of the world but devoid of colors; by looking up, he could see the reflection of the natural world and was using that to tell which direction he was moving.
Meanwhile, outside the Shadow Realm, Brance and Gabby arrived unhindered beside the Shaman’s hut and were nearly overcome by the stench coming from inside the building. It was a mixture of feces and rot, making both of their stomachs churn. Trying his best to ignore the smell, Brance lightly kicked off the ground and stepped on the hard surface of the building before running up a couple of steps and leaping onto the roof soundlessly, and putting Gabby down.
Unlike with Cynrik’s [Shadow Veil], which would hide the people under it from each other as well as outside eyes, Brance’s [Vanish] was like casting a blanket over himself and Gabby, so he was able to make hand signs to the little girl telling her where to stand and pull out her bow.
Gabby nodded upon understanding Brance’s signals and equipt her bow and quiver before notching an arrow and activating her [Eagle Eye].
The world she was seeing became much more vibrant instantly. Although Cynrik had stated earlier, [Eagle Eye] strongly resembled a weaker version of [Mana Sight], the main difference is that it doesn’t allow Gabby to see Mana particles but heat signatures instead. So it is, in a sense, a pseudo-heat vision. But that’s not all it does; the best way Gabby could describe it when she first learned the skill was, “It’s like when you have a video in low definition and suddenly make it HD and add weird hazy effects around everything while also making a zoom in and out feature.”
It was the perfect skill for archers, and if Cynrik hadn’t stumbled on it in the RWTC, who knows when she would have found a similar skill.
Standing atop the largest stone hut with her bow drawn, Gabby scanned the entire village while making a 360-degree circle. Her eyes seemed to vibrate with how quickly they were darting around as she targeted and counted every single Kobold her eyes fell on.
Beside her, Brance gave the hut under his feet a good look; from what he could tell, it appeared to have been a singular massive boulder that had been carved away and shaped into a building. But the most unsettling thing was his inability to see through the stone with his [Mana Sight]. Brance quickly shut off his skill for fear of blinding himself because the rocky hut seemed to reflect Mana and turned it into an extremely bright rainbow-colored light making Brance feel like he was attempting to stare at the sun.
Closing his eyes for a second and rubbing them, Brance felt a tap on his shoulder from Gabby, pulling his attention.
When he opened his eyes, he was greeted by Gabby, holding both her hands in the form of a fist like how a fighter would hold up their guard. This was Cynrik’s sign of enemies, so Brance nodded while Gabby proceeded to hold up her fingers in a numerical fashion indicating she had counted 139 Kobolds causing Brance to shiver.
Cynrik was WAY off in his initial estimation of the Kobolds numbers.
[Fuck, Cyn, there’s almost a hundred and forty Kobolds, by Gabby’s count.]
In the Shadow Realm, Brance’s information caused Cynrik to miss a shadow pillar and catapult himself forward weightlessly into the abyss, making Benny yelp in fear.
[Shit…SHIT…fucking damn it. What the hell? I only saw like 50 earlier. Is her number accurate?] Holding out hope that Gabby miscounted, Cynrik waited for Brance to do his own reconnaissance.
Brance went silent and didn’t immediately respond but instead activated [Mana Sight] once again while being careful not to look directly at the huts and began counting bodies. A few seconds later, he came up with a similar number to Gabby’s and reported it to Cynrik.
[I counted around 120ish, but it isn’t as accurate as Gabby’s, whatever these huts are made from is blocking my vision too much to count everything, but I still got over 120, so I have to lean more towards her count.]
Cynrik inhaled sharply and, with a front flip, corrected his forward momentum, carrying himself and Benny to another pillar while floating at the natural speed presented by the Shadow Realm, which seemed to have a flowing natural current. His eyes flicked towards the notification box, indicating how much time was left until the Emergency Quest was generated.
-Time Remaining until Emergency Quest Generated, 02:06.-
[What do we do, Cyn?] Brance, unable to hide the nervousness in his voice, tossed the question out in hopes his brother would have answers that he was unable to come up with.
Cynrik’s brain was firing on all cylinders; half his attention was divided to making his way towards the rapidly approaching lavafall, the other half towards simulating every possible option. Plans were quickly formed before being picked apart by his own logic and starting from scratch. Burning through more than five crudely organized ideas a second, Cynrik eventually came to one that may work.
[How many Mana potions do you have on you?]
The question made Brance freeze for half a second before he pulled up his inventory to check.
[Aside from the two Small ones you gave me before we entered, I’ve got the five Mom packed for me. So the equivalent of 840 MP why?]
[840 MP… you’re sitting at 880 right now, so that’s 40 points shy of a full tank restore if you chug all seven in succession. If memory serves, your [Stone Spike] should have roughly the same MP cost as [Air Missle], baseline 15 MP unless you charge more in to strengthen the skill.]
[Son of a bitch, Cyn…don’t tell me you want me to turn into a turret?] Brance frowned and pulled up the skill descriptions for the two skills Cynrik mentioned to double-check they were 15 MP each.
[Look, Brance, we have 140 fucking lizards to kill and not a whole lot of time to do it. I reckon there will only be a few minutes at best before we get surrounded and are in a shit hole of a situation. The more bodies we can pick off under cloud cover, the better position we will be in when the battle breaks out. So if we subtract 75 MP for [Mana Sight] costs, that means you can fire off a little over 50 spikes or missles before needing to recharge.]
Cynrik heard Brance sigh heavily through the mind link and smirked.
[Fine, but potion costs are on you, jerk.]
[Hehe, bitch please, we are already rich, remember.]
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