You Gain The Following:
+10% WIL
+5 END and VIT
Rarity of the Skill has upgraded!
Skill Level is maintained.
Mental Resistance (Rare) has become Bastion of Will (Epic)!
Bastion of Will (Epic), level 25!
Your mind is a fortress, and your Will is fierce. Let crash the might of your enemies, you shall not be moved. Resistance greatly increases with Skill Level.
"Whoa," Felix huffed. "Hell yeah." His second Epic Skill in as many hours, this trip into the mountain hadn't been a total waste.
Though that'll change sharply if I don't get out soon. That archon isn't the type to give up, and that wurm of his--
Felix's eyes widened as realization hit him.
I'm an idiot! The wurm can tunnel through solid stone!
"Pit! We have to go! Now!" That wurm wouldn't be stopped by a measly cave in, and the moment the golden giant realized his minions were stuck, he'd sic his precious Helga on him. Felix stood up and saw his tenku companion attempting to push an entire locked metal box off the edge of the desk. It was about the size of a cigar box, but seemed considerably heavier.
"Oh jeez dude, really?" Felix reached up and grabbed it, stowing it in his satchel. The leather bag creaked ominously, but it held for now. Happy, Pit lightly hopped from the desk, using his larger wings to glide gracefully to the floor.
They rushed toward the three star door. The latch was clear and didn't have any sort of lock, so Felix whipped it open and stepped out into a short corridor ending in two staircases. One led up, and one led down, and both were choked with debris. Growling in frustration, he reached out his right hand and cast Stone Shaping.
The flow of earth Mana was suddenly brought into stark contrast all around him, and Felix felt as if he could reach out and shape it all to his will. Focusing, he mentally commanded the stone before him to shift and open the way forward. With a scraping groan, the stone flowed like thick oil, pulling away from a central pathway no more than two feet wide and extending nearly ten feet up. With a gasp, Felix felt a large chunk of his Mana disappear immediately, eaten away by the Mana hungry spell.
Stone Shaping is level 14!
Wiping his brow, he hustled up the stairs, squeezing himself through the narrow crevice he had created. Even if the Arcids got free, they weren't following him through that gap. The stairs were clear after that, save for the occasional rocky debris. The next level expanded into several well preserved hallways, but he kept going up.
Gotta make the surface. Gotta go up.
Felix climbed nearly six flights before he could go no higher. The last level opened out into a wide landing containing only a set of double doors surmounted by a stylized frame covered in elaborate geometric patterns. Blocky and angular, like everything else here, the doors were fifteen feet tall and appeared to be made of stone as opposed to metal or wood. Felix approached them carefully before shoving one of the doors lightly, but nothing happened. He pushed harder, and they made a grinding noise before shifting ever so slightly. Felix's muscles protested as he dropped his arms, the release of tension almost worse than the weight itself.
Heavy. Really heavy.
Felix put his back into it, this time shoving on one of the doors with both hands. Slowly, the door swung open, grinding loudly into the floor as it went. It took four hard shoves to get the door opened enough for him and Pit to slip through, but even then the gap was under two feet wide. These doors were incredibly heavy even for his 78 points of Strength. He could imagine someone else being trapped here forever, unable to budge these behemoths.
Pondering these thoughts, Felix emerged from the double doors to find himself in a cavernous space. The walls were perhaps 300 or 400 feet away in any direction but back, and the ceiling was probably twice that. It all looked like rough stone, arcing above him and strangely devoid of anything like stalactites. The air was incredibly hot, hotter still than that courtyard where Pit had been caged, and he could feel the sweat drip from his pours almost instantly.
Exploration is level 16!
"Uff, I'm getting sick of this heat, Pit." Felix wiped his forehead with a ragged, dirty sleeve. Pit chirruped back at him, his wings drooping. Felix glanced at the ground, noticing it was flat and relatively level, despite the disturbances in the lower tunnels. Whatever seismic activity warped the structure below didn't affect this place too badly. The ground extended out a couple hundred feet, though not all the way to the edges of the chamber, he could tell. A ruddy light emanated from the edges of the cavern, and swirling gusts of sulfuric fumes filled his nose. Not quite believing what his senses were telling him, Felix walked to the edge.
A surge of hot wind buffeted him. Below him was a massive pool of lava that neatly encircled the stone platform he was on.
Heat Resistance is level 13!
"I'm in a volcano?" Felix panted through the increasing heat, his Stamina visibly ticking down. "What the hell?"
SLAM!
Suddenly the doors quaked, as if something huge had smashed into them. Felix spun around, hand on his sword. Dust rained down from the carved edifice above the doors, cracked and worn but still as beautiful as anything else down those tunnels.
SLAM! SLAM! SLAM!
The cracks spread further, splintering the stone and sloughing off entire sections. Whatever was behind those doors wasn't giving up. Felix gasped a breath, panic rising as the doors began to break down. He cast about, looking for anything, any possible escape route.
There! At the far end of the chamber, a platform extended nearly flush with the ground, making it all but invisible from straight on. It stretched outward in a sort of stone bridge toward the far wall of the cavern, which featured a shadowed archway. A bridge! The exit!
That's when he realized the slamming had stopped. Felix turned toward the stone doors, sensing a sudden something moving at high speed. He activated Manasight, and aside from the absolute deluge of orange fire Mana, there was an ochre blur the size and shape of a city bus barreling toward the surface.
Toward him.
"Fuck fuck fuck!" Felix started running just as the ground exploded into a geyser of liquefied stone. Helga, the massive wurm reared back with a screeching roar, breaching like a shark after a seal, her entire body clearing the ground for the briefest of instants. She landed with a bone-jarring quake, snaking toward Felix even as she hit the earth.
Felix ran with everything he had, but he could hear the wurm gaining on him with every step he took. He risked a glance backward, and saw a nightmare: Helga slid forward, her body twisting like an impossibly large serpent, her four-way mouth wide open and filled with drool soaked teeth the size of swords. Fear ran like cold electricity up his back and down his limbs even as he pushed himself to run faster. Faster.
Running is level 18!
Then he was at the bridge, the stone tapering to only five feet wide as it arced over the bubbling magma below. But his relief was short-lived: only thirty feet out the bridge ended, sheared off long ago. The far edge of the cavern was beyond a nearly fifty foot gap, an impossible distance.
Pit was at his feet, racing alongside him. He had grown bigger, but was still faster than Felix, and his wings...
"Pit! Jump and fly! Fly to the other side!"
Without a beat, Pit chirped and raced ahead, running to the edge of the bridge and jumping as far as he could.
Reign of Vellus!
The kinetic forces of the spell were leagues easier to shape than before, and Felix's quick mind and Fire Within Skill activated in unison. Azure lightning discharged from his body and Pit let loose a surprised squawk as he was pushed up and forward twenty feet. Felix had hoped the tenku's smaller mass and increased speed would allow Reign of Vellus to give him enough oomph to make the jump...and as Pit hit the zenith of his boost, his red-black wings snapped outward in a glide.
Reign of Vellus is level 26!
"Yeah!" Felix cried out.
Then Helga ate him.