Soon enough, four mages were down, the cyber monsters were gone, and another titan was gravel dust.
“Incoming!” Red cried out to me.
“Silas, watch out!” I turned over my shoulder, the last of the mages tossing a magic net at me. Upon contact, the white net wrapped me up like a burrito, its force around my torso pushing me along the edge of the volcano.
It happened so quickly that I hadn’t processed the fear of being burned alive. With my arms pinned to my sides, I struggled against the restraint of the magic net. But the more I fought, the tighter it seemed to get. Until I felt something grab my ankle, suspending me in the air.
When I looked up, I noticed it was Jezz, her large teeth holding me.
“Fuck, Jezz!”
She grunted, though before she could reel me up, something behind her pushed her toward me.
She yelped, her great wolf body slamming into me. Thinking fast, I triggered my Enrage and quickly broke through the net. Being strong enough to hold her, I tried my hand on my jet boots. While I’d never been able to use it successfully before, this was a life or death situation, and I’d always thrived better under pressure.
The boots roared to life, resisting against the weight I was carrying over my head. Between the heat and the strain I was putting in my body I pushed through. I gritted down on my teeth and pushed hard and fast. And just like that, we started to soar upward, leaving the bubbling cesspool below us.
God, even with my Enrage on, Jezz felt like a fucking tank!
Adrenaline fired through my veins as I resurfaced with her. As soon as we landed, I noticed Red putting the mage who attacked us down. He lay unconscious in a pool of water, but his chest was still heaving. I wish I could smile at the small win, but Jezz was hurt, her left hind leg limping.
I went pale for a second, noticing her bone hanging from a thin string of muscle. “Shit, Jezz. He got you good,” I panicked, offering her a healing potion. She drank it and moaned, her face expressing annoyance over pain.
Red chuckled. “She’ll be all right. Jezz is one tough cookie.”
I opened my mouth to agree with him, but one of the titans struck fast, his fist zeroing in on Red. “Watch out!” I cried, about to trigger my Speed Tap before Gerald came for the rescue.
But the angle, I was nervous.
It didn’t look like he made it!
Dust coughed up in the air when the ground shook, the sudden sound of Red grunting reassuring me he was at the very least alive. But as the debris cleared, my eyes opened up to the many pieces of metal and bloody guts smeared on the ground.
“Gerald?” I whispered, my body tightening at the possibility that the HO got him. Luckily for Gerald, it was just his arm that got caught. Unfortunately, the mage who tossed Jezz and I in the volcano was not so lucky…
“Holy shit…”
“Uguhughhh…” Red mumbled, scared shitless as he lay there on the ground. He turned his head slowly to look at me, with his eyes bulging out of his head. “I thought I was a goner,” he said, his voice shaky.
As for Gerald, he got up on his feet like nothing had happened. Then proceeded to go terminator mode on the remaining titans.
“Jezz, you stay here with Red,” I advised her. “Let Gerald and I take care of the rest.”
‘Okay. Be careful, Silas.’
I pulled out my long sword and went to work. With my cloak charm activated, I was ready to be Gerald’s back up. Although to my surprise, the dude didn’t need much help. To be honest, he did well with one arm, and we worked as a team to take out the remaining titans. We started off cautiously, dodging their attacks and taking them out one by one with accurate counters to each strike. Being careful not to be too reckless was key, and whenever one tried to summon something or someone from outside of the realm, I’d trigger my super speed to stop them with a sword through their glowing chest. Being a little more comfortable with my jet boots helped the process immensely, as well as Gerald’s vast experience with fighting.
As we progressed through the battle, I noticed that Gerald seemed to know exactly when to attack. It was almost like he could sense the enemy’s next move before they even made it. This uncanny ability of his led us on a path of success, and soon enough, we were down to the last titan.
The last titan panicked, doing something completely unorthodox. He reached his fingers over the temple and blue flames began to come out!
“What the hell?!” I cried, powering down my cloak charm. I swore they wanted to keep the temple standing, but this asshole was trying to bring the house down.
One by one he torched through the bridges. I ordered Gerald to deal with the titan while I went in to save the shard inside the temple.
Running into a falling building was never smart, unless you were trying to save a crystal that would keep a world from blowing up into the abysmal darkness of space. Again, time wasn’t on my side, and I was trying my damn best to grab Alzera’s shield and high tail it out of here. But as I searched every room of the huge temple in ruins, I couldn’t find it! My head was running a mile a minute, and every other second, I could feel this place sinking further and further into the mouth of the volcano. “Shit! Where is it?!” I cried out, until I realized that I was sweating this for nothing. All I had to do was calm down and listen to her.
The goddess was inside me, and she knew exactly where the piece of her was.
The dungeon core led my feet to the back room. Around me were statues in outfits that matched that of saints, all of them sitting on the pews, bowing their heads and folding their hands. I had no idea what the hell that meant, but I wasn’t concerned with the eerie ambiance of this place.
My eyes were focused on the divine altar that sat at the head of a nave. And on that altar was no other than the crystal shard…
“I can’t believe it…” I breathed, trying to pace my thumping heartbeat.
The fruit of our labor, the powerhouse of Mavriel.
As I stood there in awe, a friendly reminder jerked my feet, the floor beneath me shattering. I shook my head and snapped out of it, then ran the distance across the aisle. Liquid fire chased me down the nave, taking ‘the floor is lava’ to a whole new level.
I made it to the altar, my hands shaking as I reached for the crystal shard. My fingertips grazed its surface, my body answering with chills and a weightlessness that made me feel fucking infinite.
A smile stretched on my face. “We’re almost there, Alzera. Just hang on for a little longer for us.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
I rushed out of that temple with the help of my Speed Tap. When I was out, I noticed that Gerald had finished up with the help of Jezz, the both of them standing next to the large severed stone head on the side of the platform. When I looked over my shoulder, the temple was sinking, the volcano not taking the object that was taken from it too kindly. We had no time to waste, as the ground was shaking beneath us and smoke was filling the air.
We needed to get the hell out of here fast.
