I knew it would be bad even before I stepped into the dungeon, indicated by the pain, but only when I reached the fifth floor, I noticed the full intensity of it. There were two new breaches already, each in opposite directions, while a third one was opening in front of my eyes.
An intense commitment, I realized even as I opened a gate to the main breach. "Rosie, I need you to keep an eye on things outside. There are multiple breaches going on at once," I explained, opening a gate to the same outpost where Harold was.
While she used the gate, I snapped a branch from the tree, the only pause I had given to myself before I had used another gate to bring me to the first breach. Confronting them without analyzing the situation properly was risky, but at this point, I didn't have the luxury of safety.
And, as far as risks go, I was never safer than I was when I was on the fifth floor of the dungeon, where I could exert limited control over the decay aura to weaponize it in a way I could not achieve outside, enhanced further by the plantation project.
When I appeared at the location of the first breach, my blade was already radiating mana tinged with the acrid tang of decay, expecting to face a horde of wild lizards invading, led by a group of mutated warriors.
Indeed, I could see about ten of them, leading the charge through the breach, and behind them a pseudo-ascended warrior wearing a thick plate armor that seemed to ignore the decay of the dungeon, doing their best to spearhead the attack of the lizards — the chaotic breach not allowing the passage of the truly larger variants.
The sight of the mutated warriors once again sent a queasy sensation through me. Their skin was replaced by red scales gleaming under the dim, flickering glow of the dungeon, their claws strong enough to cleave through the defending insects.
It was never easy to see people lose their bodies, their minds, and their reason, all because someone decided to turn them into mindless pawns for some nebulous objective.
I wished that I had the luxury of just capturing them, hoping that, someday, I could be able to reverse their ailment. Every death was a tragedy, especially when I had no idea whether they were volunteers or forced. Yet, I swung my blade, cutting through the mutated warriors at once, leaving only the pseudo-ascended to create the beachhead.
A hopeless situation.
"You dare!" the pseudo-ascended shouted even as he pulled a familiar object and activated it, a burst of light moving toward me. External skill blocker. I opened a gate to jump half a mile away and close the gate behind me, only to watch the light follow me rapidly, but fade away before it could touch me.
"That's good, at least I have a method to avoid it," I said. While I had developed many ways to circumvent their ability to block my external skills, including practicing combat, that didn't mean it was an exchange I was willing to accept freely.
However, even before I teleported, I couldn't help but think about the number of skill blockers that 'heretics' used, while Drakkan forces used none. I couldn't help but wonder if it was just a specialty, or if it violated some kind of soul-related taboo.
Too bad I didn't have the time to explore it. I did not open another gate but returned directly, doing my best to conceal myself under a cloak of decay. But, I didn't need to work hard, as the pseudo-ascended had been buried under a wave of insects as he cut through them.
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I spent a few seconds watching him, trying to get a better sense of his fighting style. On the surface, the situation was the same, a stronger expression of Vitality, combined with a much greater display of Strength, but comparing him to the Drakkan warriors, the differences were steep. Not only was the control of his own body compromised, but his Vitality was also … emptier? Tainted? It was certainly not as capable of ignoring the decay fully, which had been the reason we were able to win when we first fought against them.
He was desperately trying to pull back toward the breach, but the insects that surrounded him didn't allow for it. Without the mutated warriors to cut through, they had reversed the equation, and they were easily overwhelming the lizards that spilled out of the gate.
I would have given a lot to watch him fight a few minutes safely from the dungeon mist, hiding the true nature of my success, but unfortunately, that was yet another luxury too rich for my tastes, since I still had to address the other breaches — a fourth one already appearing — before I returned to the surface and deal with Drakka.
Too many things to do, and too little time to achieve them all.
I swallowed hard before I took a position behind the pseudo-ascended, and attacked him with a slash of condensed decay energy. His armor might have been enchanted to defend against decay, but it clearly had its limits, a full-power blow enough to hamper its capabilities completely.
Under the combined attacks of me and the insect army, he didn't even resist for a few seconds. Decapitation was equally deadly to pseudo-ascended.
Once that was complete, I hurriedly pulled the branch I had snapped from the flame-repellent tree and placed a few of them along the edge, filled them with a burst of Mana, supported by some Health, enough to make them grow.
The lizards continued to spill, but I had to hope that it would be enough as a temporary measure of security.
But, I learned my lesson. For the next breach, I opened the portal half a mile away, and once again approached under the cover of the decay aura, doing my best to stay hidden. At the second breach, the situation was not too different from the first one. Ten mutated warriors, led by one pseudo-ascended, cutting through the responding wave of insects as the breach behind spilled an endless army of weaker lizards.
They might have been dangerous, but creative, they were not.
I swallowed as I slowly intensified the gathering of decay around my blade, waiting for the pseudo-ascended to gather a ranged attack around his sword before I let it go, not giving him a chance to react before I had destroyed a part of his armor.
Even without the insect army swarming him down, it was a problem, though it would have been an ordinary one if I hadn't reached for my connection with the dungeon, focusing the effect around him like a thick blanket, the destruction of armor suddenly fast enough to be visible.
From there, dealing with the rest had been easy. I cut through them without giving them even a second to recover, grew the trees around the entrance to limit the influence of the breach, and then teleported again.
However, this time, my destination was the original breach, using it as an opportunity to watch the situation. The boss monsters were still spilling out as fast as the breach allowed, but Dragon One was handling the situation expertly in their rotation, and Logan was there to take over in case of an emergency.
I couldn't help but feel thankful for the time I spent putting those defenses together. Without them, the boss monsters would have spilled into the dungeon, turning the battle into a true disaster.
Though, I couldn't help but wonder why the heretics weren't just attacking through the main breach. Things would have been far more dangerous if they had mixed a few ascended into the mix. Maybe it was a lack of creativity, or maybe whatever they had done to create so many boss monsters made the dungeon floor at least partially inaccessible and made the strategy unviable.
"Something to learn in the future," I said even as I responded to the third breach, replicating the same playbook. Luckily, while I had been dealing with it, no other breaches occurred, limiting their numbers to four.
"Hopefully, that's a permanent stop, and not a temporary pause," I muttered even as I prepared to jump, my mind already on the various ways I could plug these breaches … but before doing that, I checked the landscape through the dungeon door leading outside, a habit I had cultivated.
Only to see a giant ball of pure mana traveling toward the outpost that Harold and the rest were in. My eyes widened as I opened another gate and jumped in, ready to play the hero once more.
Even though it meant leaving the party alone for the moment to do whatever they planned to do.