Elysium's Multiverse-Chapter 345

Elysium's Multiverse-Chapter 345

Chapter 345
Chapter 345
The city, it turned out, was not only built around an Elysium Altar. It was also built on top of a dungeon that the city’s denizens used for training purposes, with a wide variety of leveled monsters on different dungeon floors. The book of scribbled notes that Riven’s demonic servants had snatched off the cultist they’d killed was chuck full of information about this particular dungeon after the man had used it as a hideout while performing experiments for one of his personalized world quest missions regarding the Apocalypse Beasts, and in particular - it talked about a blood spirit residing on the third floor down that Riven very much wanted to meet.
The notebook had labeled the creature as “Incredibly smart, agile, and dangerous” - and that it should be avoided “at all costs”. But based on the skills it used described in this book, Riven wanted to see if he could glean some insights about his own blood magics. He was going to expand his horizons, and hoped the effort would bear fruit.
Riven was escorted through the gorgeous city of marble buildings and hanging gardens, ignoring the stares and hushed whispers he got as the guards pushed through. He didn’t blame them whenever they cringed and scowled in his presence, when they snarked with angry or scared comments concerning the food situation that’d been made worse with Ren’s fight, or when they pulled their children back to hide them away from his gaze. The system, Elysium, was built on conflict that in many ways stemmed from the positive and negative effects of conflicting charisma - and his charisma was on an entirely polar opposite of what these people were aligned to.
Strange, that he even still cared. He supposed he still had some inkling of humanity left in him after all.
“Make way! Make way!” The guard captain shouted as she literally shoved some of the slower moving drunks off to the side of the street. “OUT OF THE WAY I SAID!”
“That’s one way to do things, getting drunk at noon on a Tuesday.” Riven said with eyebrow raised and a faint grin at the men and women laughing and falling over one another after being shoved. “Gotta say, I’m kind of jealous.”
“What was that?” The captain said, turning around to stare at him while her guards forged ahead to move the crowds.
Riven waved her off. “Nothing, nothing. Continue on and lead the way. I’m just excited to see this blood spirit of yours.”
Sculptures of animals were stationed at many of the doorways, which the captain told Riven were of a religious means to ward off evil spirits. When Riven joked that he could feel them pressing down against his unholy aura, he got less than an enthusiastic response for his attempt at humor.
Brilliantly colored tapestries with long red, blue, yellow, green, and pink feathers woven into the threads were hung from the outside of many homes with other less common colors also being present a handful of times. Some depicted landscapes, others depicted epic scenes of battle, while others showed animals or people - but it was all with an innate beauty to it.
Even better yet were the small streams of water rushing through the air, which were used to not only water the hanging gardens around much of the city - but were used for other things like drinking water or to flush out sewage and waste. The streams were anywhere between one and three feet in diameter and flowed overhead in spiraling designs that refracted sunlight, and were maintained by water mages that had to check on the enchantments once a week.
Otherwise, the city seemed to be a genuinely happy place. Riven saw children playing in parks with their parents cheering them on, an elderly couple being helped into a wagon by a group of teenagers, people lounging at bars or pubs, and a general sense of comradery with few altercations or ill words spoken between the citizens at large. Growing up in Dallas Texas, he’d never really experienced the atmosphere of something like this before - as American society was so hyper capitalism and self-focused that communal acts of kindness were mostly not present.
This was what he wanted. Especially because he’d not had it himself as a kid, and now he had a child of his own. He would not be lacking a presence in Iris’s life like he’d had done to him by his own parents.
Eventually they passed the towering Elysium Altar and came up to a large stone archway leading with a spiraling staircase into the depths of the earth. More guards wielding spears and feathered leather vests were stationed at the front, and they stiffened with a salute when the guard captain Riven still didn’t know by name came to a stop in front of them.
“Is anyone in the dungeon at the moment?” She asked the man who seemed to be in charge of the others stationed there.
The man scratched behind his right ear where long orange plumage sprouted, glanced at Riven with a frown, and nodded. “Jerico’s team is delving again, you just missed them a bit over an hour ago. They’re pushing only into the second floor today with a weaker group.”
The captain cursed, and she let out a long sigh. “How many did he take this time?”
“Just nine people between levels between 160 and 190.”
“Oh? That’s unusual. He usually has the entire thing slotted up.” The captain brightened a little, and turned to Riven with folded arms. “The dungeon only allows 10 people in at a time. Any more than that and you’ll be teleported out, it’s a feature not all dungeons on our planet have - but many have started adopting by making contractual deals with Elysium to protect them from larger raids. You can either wait for an escort and let them finish their run, or you can enter as the 10th member and catch up to the first group. Remember though, your blood spirit is on the 3rd floor of the dungeon. The group going inside is going through the 2nd floor, so you’ll have to either bribe one of them to take you further than their anticipated exit or you can just let me take you later.”
“And you trust me with your life down there?” Riven teased, seeing how tense she was at the thought of it.
She shrugged. “Better me than my men if you choose to have a snack. But you come off as someone who will keep their word, so I don’t anticipate problems. You’re a monster, sure, but you could have bought our friendship with far less gold than one you gave to us today. That alone puts you on my nice list.”
“You have a list?”
“Oh yes.”
“And what does it take to be put on your naughty list?”
The guard captain squinted her eyes. “Are you flirting with me, vampire?”
Riven held up both hands defensively. “Oh no, absolutely not! You’re not my type, or my girlfriends’ types. They usually like the submissive ones they can bully, you don’t seem to fit that bill.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Plural?”
“Long story.”
The captain snorted and folded her arms, unamused. “I don’t usually date blood suckers anyways. And yes, I am usually the alpha in my relationships. So what’ll it be? Go inside and catch up to the next group or solo dive to the third floor down? Or wait for them to finish? It’ll probably be another few days for them to finish it out since they just went down.”
Riven took another look at the sights of the artistic and well kept city around him, and then stared down into the depths where the spiraling staircase led around the bend. “I’ll probably just go down now. Short on time and all, and I really want to get out of this sunlight. What if the delvers think I’m a monster and attack me?”
Not that Riven was frightened for himself, but he’d hate to have to kill these people after spending so much cash to settle on good relations.
“Oh they probably will.” The captain said with a laugh, and she drew out a small silver badge with a hawk emblazoned onto the front. “Show them this and tell them Veronica sent you. It should help ease the tension.”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please it.
***
[You have entered Dungeon Fauxinshine. Contractual obligations with Elysium have compelled this dungeon to have 5 differently themed levels with 5 different floor bosses and 5 different exits. Dungeon Fauxinshine has placed a Curse of Reawakening upon you.
Curse of Reawakening: You will relive many of your previous crucibles at modified levels here in this dungeon, with more of them appearing the longer you stay.]
Riven blinked twice at the notification, and once more at the monstrous woman in the middle of the room as the stone doors slammed shut behind him. “Previous crucibles… You don’t say.”
Stone statues and partially burned husks of people littered the room around him as his flowing black cloak billowed in an invisible current of mana wafting off his body in small, shallow waves. In the center of the room was an identical copy of the first monster he’d ever seen.
The medusa regarded him coolly, licking her lips while curled around a table with a chess board on it, and she waved her hand to produce a chair. “Vampire? You’ve changed since last we met.”
Riven’s eyebrows lifted in surprise, and tore through space to stand abruptly in front of the creature with a curious glint in his glowing red eyes. “Since last we met?”
The monster’s shocked expression matched with her movements as she nearly fell over in an attempt to slither back, not having expected him to move so fast.
Riven slowly shook his head while maintaining eye contact with the obviously scared creature. “The medusa I met back in Chalgathi’s realm is dead. So who are you? And how did this dungeon pull the memory from my mind? I didn’t even sense a single fluctuation of power.”
The medusa’s hair flared out, snakes writhing in a convulsing mass as her face began to glow white with a hiss. Panic dripped from her voice as the monster held up a hand as if to ward him off. “I am one and the same! And I will have my vengeance, even if you are stronger than I anticipated!”
Riven flatly stared at the creature as parts of his skin began to turn into stone at an incredibly slow pace. Flecks of that stone slowly began falling to the floor and shattering as his vampiric regeneration easily battled the petrification effect, and he lifted a hand to watch it happen in real time as the medusa screamed while pouring more and more of her energy into whatever ability she was using to try and hurt him.
“It appears I’ll be needing to deep dive high E-grade or low D-grade dungeons to get any real benefit or challenge at this point.” Riven said, reaching out and backslapping the medusa into the next wall.
“UMPH!” The monster’s chest produced a quick sound of expelled air as her ribs and tail shattered, and two of the snakes making up her hair were utterly smashed with the impact of cracked stone.
There was no way this was the same creature Riven had met back in Chalgathi’s original trial. Elysium had once said itself in a system message that true resurrection from beyond the grave and after the soul had passed into the deeper parts of the void was almost impossible, so unless Elysium had kept a hold onto that medusa’s soul then this was merely some kind of mimicry - a creation of the curse that this dungeon utilized. Likely it was an attempt to throw dungeon delvers off balance, but he’d be taking the medusa out of the dungeon for closer inspection just in case he was wrong; or in case there was something to be learned from it about how it’d been so accurately depicted and replicated from his own memories.
And that would go for all of the previous ‘crucibles’ that showed themselves here.
Because, if nothing else, it would at the very least provide him with living replicas of past memories that he’d surely like to keep tucked away in a museum equivalent dedicated to himself. After all, why settle for memories or picture books when you could capture creatures like these and put them on display for your children to look at decades later?
Hearing the medusa’s heartbeat still lightly thudding in his ear, Riven grinned and wrapped the monster up in a smoother version of Wretched Snares to keep it in place, and smashed his will and aura down onto the monster’s soul repeatedly. It was a page straight out of Gluttony’s figurative handbook. Impact after impact left the medusa’s soul aperture shattered and frayed, but not destroyed, until he was certain the creature wouldn’t be able to use any of its abilities anytime soon without significant outside effort to heal the soul damage he’d just caused.
An evil smile spread from ear to ear as he thought about how nice it’d be to see that stupid-ass satyr warlord again. Even if it wasn’t the exact same creature, it sure would be good to beat its ass after the nearly fatal encounter he’d had dished out to him the first time.
***
Meanwhile, Riven wasn’t the only one dungeon diving while looking for answers. Athela was hot on the trail of another cultist, and she’d been burning through the quest logs like she was stealing candy from multiple stomped babies.
Athela rocketed downwards at blinding speeds with a sonic boom of power. Blood and shadow caressed her body to wrap it in a dark embrace, and eyes pierced the veil as twin katanas held in either hand were kept at her sides.
Behind her and falling like an avalanche were the pursuers. Dozens of scaled dungeon gargoyles, winged creatures of tooth and claw but not true demons either, were letting out screeches of rage as the well into the darker places of the world continued to swallow them all.
And they were gaining on her.
She tugged on the wall to her left with rapidly formed threads to dodge a lance of fire that blurred past - torpedoing into the darkness below where a distant end could barely be seen. Whipping around, she let her six arachnid limbs extend towards the nearest of the creatures with a flash of metallic black and a wave of solidified needle-like projectiles formed from far tinier threads.
BOOM
The first beast was decapitated and de-limbed in an instant. The other fliers immediately behind it were shredded to paste as the needles ripped through them like a woodchip grinder.
A flash-bang of energy erupted further up the tunnel’s shaft when another gargoyle’s fire spell backlashed, taking out at least a dozen of the other fliers while they screeched and pumped their wings frantically to try and burst through the attack.
But Athela was already in a steep dive again, and she continued to yank downwards on the walls with her webs to increase her falling speed exponentially as the wind whistled around her descent.
The crash that most would have experienced from such a fall never came. Instead, her body splashed down into the stone floor thousands of feet below with a silent wave of shifting air. Reforming from the dark puddle of blood she’d become after impact, Athela began walking away - her long black hair with a single streak of red trailing out behind while whipping around due to her passage.
Grinning to herself and demonic eyes narrowing as she came up to the circular stone door with markings of a jeweled crown on its front.
The cultist… was here.
She could… smell… him.
Perfect pearly whites became razor sharp and carnivorous teeth as her unnaturally cold and excited smile ripped across her face, and her clawed hands tightened around the katanas on either side as she thought about how Riven would reward her for killing so many of these lowly creatures while gaining him even more points.
Happily humming to herself with a truly wicked and unhinged look to her usually pretty face, she pushed her hand into the open slot carved into the door. As she channeled power into the dark stone, she heard the oncoming screeches of the gargoyle nest she’d stumbled on during her hunt growing closer.
But they were far too late to stop her now.
“Aside from the nicks on my blades, not even a scratch.” Athela mused, watching the light flow out from her fingers and into the construct at a rapid pace. “I wonder if this one will scream like the last…”
A shift in the stone door came just as a loud thud crashed into the floor behind her. She turned around, and was surprised to see that one of the gargoyles had caught up to her after all. The monster was far larger than the others, with bulging muscles and standing at least three feet taller than she was with outstretched wings and a snarl on its face. The ears of the bald creature laid flat against its head, and it hefted a huge claymore in his direction with a roar.
“DEMON!” It called, whipping its tail back and forth to slap against the ground. “YOU WILL NOT LEAVE HERE ALIVE!”
Athela raised an eyebrow, amused, as the monster lunged for her from across the distance. “Abomination, you are not even truly a demon yourself. You are a pale imitation of my distant cousin species. Meanwhile, I am no mere demon. I am an
arch
demon, and you will be cowed before your better.”
The gargoyle’s blade swung down in an arc, skidding off Athela’s right katana in a flash of sparks while her other katana came up left and jabbed the monster in the chest. The creature reeled back and attempted to sweep her legs out from underneath him with a spin of its tail, but Athela jumped only to follow up with a flash of movement that put her behind the gargoyle. Both katanas slammed into the monster’s back when he spun, and critical energy exploded from the attack as the monster let out a wailing scream.
[A Double Backstab has injured your opponent for a x7 Critical Modifier.]
The critical strike sent an abrupt spray of blood out of the monster’s back as energy ripped through it to create small trenches in bone and flesh. Tearing out the weapons from the creature’s back, she kicked off and flipped mid air while creating a sound nullification zone around her feet to land in absolute silence.
“PISSANT CREATURE!” the gargoyle screamed, only to stagger to its knees and glare backwards at the demoness not far off. “I WILL HAVE YOUR HEAD FOR THIS!”
Athela’s mouth merely opened, and she utilized a spell taken from her drider form - summoning ‘Crystalline Maw Cannon’ to the back of her throat before belching it forward in a wave of Sin, Frost, and Storm energy. Her ascendancy into the E-grade made attacks like this between body forms possible now, and she utilized it to her fullest as the monster was caught unawares and shrieked a final time. Its cry was cut short as the blast annihilated the already injured creature instantly, bulldozing the remnants of its energy reserves and laying waste to part of the nearby dungeonscape as well.
Her eyes flashed left when there was another sign of movement, and her smile returned when she came face to face with a surprised and suddenly horrified cultist that’d poked his head out of the sealed room she’d been forcing open before the rude arrival of the gargoyle.
“Found you!” She said in a singsong voice, before zipping forward in a flurry of blades as her arachnid limbs propelled her to greater heights - and the sound of a high pitched, horrified squeal left the cultist’s lips.

Chapter 345