I didn’t know what her upgrades had been exactly, but it hadn’t prepared her for this. I considered shifting out abilities, even though I was tied up in battle. If I could share some force blades with her, she might be more effective. Then I saw Urg take a hit and realized, I couldn’t stop what I was doing long enough to make the swap.

  Urg seemed to be causing the most damage. The bony mask, which was the monster’s face, was cracked and showing signs of serious wear. The green lightning he shot at it seemed to weaken the structure of the creature's body. Meanwhile, the black lightning tore into the flames inside of it. That monsters began to take notice of him despite Crag’s taunts. Its left arm began flailing about, trying to bat Urg out of the sky.

  Eventually, it landed a back hand which sent Urg careening through the air until he slammed into a column of stone that supported the roof. The impact knocked the eidolon unconscious. I fired off a Lingering Grace to heal him up, but while I knew he was still alive, he didn’t rise.

  I was gonna have to pull out all the stops here, but luckily, what happened to Urg gave me an idea. I wanted to shout my plan, but Azirin was still clearly intelligent despite the madness which had claimed him. Letting him know what I was planning would have given him a chance to counter it. I had to hope my team would get the gist of what I was doing.

  To start out, in-between shielding Crag and healing anyone who took damage, I began to fire off Hunter’s Tethers to bind the monster. I wove in and out of the columns on the sides of the temple as I wrapped the strands of force created by the new ability. Each initially was bound to my polearm, but I found that my ability to shape the constructs extended, allowing me to break that binding and secure them to the columns.

  The battle was starting to wear down my team, but after two minutes—I had nearly a dozen tethers in place. Each one sapped a small amount of the monster’s Vitality, Durability, and Endurance, but whatever amount it took wasn’t showing a difference in the monster’s HP total. So far, we’d only managed to knock about ten percent off of that. Where it did show was in the way that Nevin’s attacks were lingering longer and the flame was slower to fight back against his frost. The monster’s blows were also starting to come slower against Crag, giving him a split second of extra time to move further between blows.

  Dori had picked up the clue of what I was doing, and rather than using her shadow blades against the monster, she was cutting deeply into the stone columns. Her attacks, which were only minimally successful against the monster, were much more affective against the non-animated stone.

  As I wove each tether into place, I felt the strain on my mind increase. Whatever expansion had happened as a result of tiering up clearly had limits. Probably the only reason I was able to maintain two shields over Crag, two force blades I was using as attacks and eleven tethers was because the tethers were static. Once, I created and then shaped them onto the columns; I didn’t have to focus on them any longer. Still, they were a steady drain on my mind or soul, or whatever it was that allowed me to split my focus.

  Now, I just had to keep the monster busy while Dori systematically weakened each of the columns. By this point, all of Nevin’s undead were destroyed. Urg was finally back up, so I could stop worrying about him. He opted to join in with Dori in attempting to weaken the columns. Instead of lighting, he managed to shape a dark blade of force; it cut the stone like a hot knife through butter.

  That allowed me to try to get creative with my force constructs. I wove my magic while experimenting with new forms. Lightning surged from my hands, infusing the constructs with crackling energy. I shaped them into lances, hammers, talons—each a different tool of battle. I felt each of them and intimately knew how well they worked, as they were merely extensions of my will.

  With a thought, the constructs launched at Azirin, a barrage of electrically charged weaponry. I added in a liberal dose of my life attuned mana just before the attacks landed. They struck with the force of thunder, bolts of power seeking to shatter stone while the life mana served to disrupt the undeath mana that animated the lich.

  One construct morphed into a serpentine dragon, writhing and snapping at Azirin's legs, its body a conduit for lightning. Another split into a swarm of ethereal bees, their stings sharp with voltage, swarming around the lich's head in a buzzing frenzy.

  My head began to throb though, when I got too tricky with the forms of the constructs. I felt like claws were digging into my skull and the world’s worst migraine was beginning. So, I began to swap them for simpler forms and focused instead, on how I could move the constructs.

  I directed a larger construct, now a spinning drill of crackling force, at the same knee Dori assaulted. The drill spiraled with the fury of a tornado, lightning coiling around it like a cyclone. It bore into the monster's leg, grinding against the unnatural materials with far more effect than her shadow blades had displayed.

  The longer the battle went on the more desperate the situation felt. Our direct approach simply wasn’t having enough impact on the monster. Even my improved force constructs didn’t solve the problem. When I did finally slice deep enough through its knee that it stumbled, magma rippled through its body to reinforce that joint. I had to give it to Azirin; he had come up with a powerful concept for a lich’s body. It was far beyond the thin bony skeletons, which I would have pictured as the typical lich.

  The time of our execution was gonna come down to the wire. Even my mana regeneration was having trouble keeping up with everything I had to do. I supposed I shouldn’t feel too bad. This was a rare tier and not just that, it was a boss variant.

  Nevin's face was etched with concentration, ice and cold a stark shield against the scorching heat. Crag's form was a blur, his armor constantly reshaping, healing from the relentless pounding. The assaults continued, but I knew it couldn’t last forever. The strain was apparent on Nevin’s face. And then it happened. As so often is the case, a single domino fell, and that started the entire cascade effect.

  Crag tripped over a stone jutting up from the floor when he tried to dodge an attack. The blow instead landed squarely on him. His health plummeted to almost nothing before I could even start healing him. That was bad enough, but he didn’t move. He was suffering from a stun debuff, or at least I was pretty sure that was what it was. That made our tank a sitting duck, ready to be plucked. In battle, being stunned for even a second or two could easily be fatal.

  Nevin wasn’t going to let his friend die that easily. The magic around him swirled and a tornado like storm blasted into the monster’s core. He actually managed to force it back by the sheer wind-speed of his attack. The ice shards in his storm bit deeply into the stone and tried their best to extinguish the flame.

  But sadly, Nevin’s mana pool wasn’t the match of his determination and his storm sputtered out just as I finished layering shields over Crag to protect him till he woke. Nevin was struck then by a wave of heat and lava which blasted outward. I could hear him scream as molten stone burned through his gear and into his flesh. Without a doubt, he would have died there but for the fact that Urg left off his attack against a column and surged forward at top speed, swooping him up and bearing a part of the super-heated attack on his own flesh.

  Dori’s motion took on a desperate nature as she watched her team start to fall. She darted from column to column, her blades slicing through stone with a surgeon's precision. The columns, weakened by her relentless assault, began to groan under the weight of the ceiling. The temple was crying out in protest. It might have been irreverent to destroy this ancient structure which likely served a part in the Darje religious and cultural life, but I figured that Azirin had already defiled the place.

  Amidst the cacophony, I worked, my mind stretched to its limits. The tethers I had placed sapped at the lich's vitality, a slow bleed that seemed all too insignificant against such a vast reservoir of power. But it was working; the monster's movements were becoming sluggish, its attacks less frequent. The subtle difference was enough to keep him from landing a follow up attack against Nevin and Urg. The two escaped to the tunnel which led here.

  I watched, heart hammering, as Dori made her final cut. The last column began to crumble, the integrity of the structure compromised beyond repair. It was time.

  "Move! Get them out!" I shouted, my voice barely carrying over the din of battle. My teammates, battered and weary, grasped the urgency. Dori stepped through the shadows to appear next to Crag. Under any other circumstance, it would have been amusing to watch her slight figure pick up the heavy form of Crag. I could only assume she’d put a few points into Strength.

  The temple began to shudder, an old giant ready to fall. I turned back to Azirin, his eyes alight with fury and confusion. He sensed the trap too late, his focus too narrow on our previous onslaught.

  I held my ground, like a spider at the center of my web of tethers. I shouted out, “You brought this on yourself. We only came here to bring peace to the dead.”

  Then I pulled.

  The ceiling groaned, a lamentation of eons, as it began its descent. Stone, mortar, and ancient power. I felt the resistance in my mind and for a moment thought that I might be the one to give out rather than the temple, but then gravity lent me its aid as the heavy stone began to fall faster.

  The roof came apart, and I watched as a slab which must have weighed hundreds of tons sheered an arm off the construct. Its legs were soon crushed under the combination of stone, but I still had to pull. I’d already seen how resilient Azirin was and I couldn’t allow him an opportunity to reform.

  I could sense that the others were all clear, so I jerked one more time and brought the rest of the roof down. At the same time, I conjured the last force-fields I could focus on. I set them at slants trying to direct the debris away from me, but it all came down on top of me just the same.

  A notification popped up while the stone was still rumbling around me.

  You have temporarily defeated the lich, Azirin. Only 25% rewards will be available since the defeat is not permanent. Do you wish to accept these rewards or finish your task?

  I wasn’t going to leave it half done, so I rejected the partial reward. The good news was that I took that notification to mean that at least the elemental body was destroyed. The bad news was that we’d have to track down here Azirin’s phylactery was. The worse news was that I found myself buried under thousands of tons of rock with no clear way out.

  Chapter 40- Throwbacks

  The force fields eventually gave way. My mana couldn’t hold out against thousands of tons of rock. What they did do though, was position the rocks which fell down so that I wasn’t crushed. Trapped… stuck real good, but not crushed. I could only count my blessings on one finger at the moment, but it was a pretty dang big finger.

  My mind was racing wildly now, maybe that was the panic setting in. But for the moment, it felt like I was giving the finger to the system. Try to crush me will you… humans aren’t so easy to kill. I would have screamed, but wasn’t sure how much air I had left, so I forced myself to conserve it.

  At the moment, my superhuman body didn’t feel so amazing, but the less tangible of my enhanced stats were paying off in spades. My will was an iron vice locking panic away and not giving it an inch. Will didn’t automatically make me determined, but it gave me the tools to make use of my determination. A normal human psyche, no matter how determined will eventually crack under pressure. My ceiling was much higher now.

  Then there was my enhanced Mind stat. It let me run through options much faster than possible. The downside being that I wasn’t seeing many. I might be as strong as ten power lifters, but that was nothing compared to this small mountain of rubble on me. All those comic books had lied to me. Even Spiderman or Captain America wouldn’t have been able to push their way out of this. Heck, it probably would have been a challenge for the big green guy.

  There was really only one way. Spirit Walk should get me out of here, yet I felt a sense of dread. It was like there was a building pressure under me and it was playing with me. Before triggering the ability, I began to sing a tune from a song my mom used to sing to me when I was little. The words didn’t really matter; it was the intent behind the singing that mattered. It enhanced my understanding of the currents of spiritual energy around me. More importantly, I knew where Azirin’s phylactery was. I almost couldn’t believe that he would put it there, but the longer I sang, the more certain I was.

  The problem was that his spiritual energy was now being broadcast through the entire dungeon. It wouldn’t impede magic or physical movement, but it felt like bands of iron clamping down on my soul. I was worried that Spirit Walk wouldn’t work. But as I wracked my brain, I couldn’t come up with another option.

  So, I forced my heart rate to calm and then activated it. It was like pushing against a tidal wave. I felt all my effort being swept away. My body became immaterial for an instant, just long enough for some of the stones to shift. Then I was back in my physical form, except with tons of rock crushing down on my legs. Well, it couldn’t all be on my legs or they would have been turned to paste, but I was definitely pinned far worse than before.

  Basically, my one escape skill I had was rendered useless due to the overabundance of spiritual energy. I winced in pain, but held it all in. There was no point in giving up.

  No, I was going to need another way out. My Perception was giving me every little detail of what was around me. I could sense how precipitously some of the larger slabs were balanced. It was like a game of Jenga with me stuck on the inside. After a bit I heard Dori shouting, “Silas are you in there? The team interface says you’re still alive.”

  By now, I’d determined that there was enough air flow that I could risk shouting. Moving might be tricky with my legs pinned, but a bit of yelling I could manage. “I’m here, just stuck.”

  “Thank the heavens,” she said. I gave potions to Nevin and Crag, they’re recovering and Urg seems to be healing up. Not sure if he got some type of regeneration power with your new tier, but he should be fine soon. How are we gonna get you out of there?”

  “First off, don’t try moving any of the rocks.”

  “I wasn’t going to…”

  “Yeah, I knew you wouldn’t but Crag…”

  She laughed. “Good point.” Then she seemed to feel bad about laughing. “Sorry to be laughing while you’re stuck.”

  “Nah, if we can’t laugh at impossible situations, then what’s the point of you all following my stupid Forerunner ass around?”

  We both silently chuckled at that, then I asked the question, which was my biggest hope. “It looked like you got some type of shadow step ability…”

  I could imagine her nodding but with a frown on her pretty blue face. “I did, but I can only use it to go places that I can see, and I’m not sure I could bring you out with me even if I could reach you.”

  “It was probably a long shot, anyway; I was trying to figure out if you could even fit in this space with me. Maybe if I took off all my armor, and you did the same, but it would have been a tight fit.”

  “Silas, I didn’t know you felt like that. I don’t think I’ve ever had a man go to as much trouble as getting buried under a mountain of rock just to get naked with me.”

  Her tone told me that she knew I was trying to keep things light. After another minute she said, “Stay strong. I’ll talk to Nevin. Maybe that big brain of his will have something other than useless information about the system in it.”

  “Don’t be too hard on him. He took a pretty hard hit.”

  Then I was alone with my thoughts again. I pulled up my status sheet, scrolling through my abilities as though I were going to discover something I hadn’t seen before. No, it was clear that none of my regular abilities were going to get me out. If this was all that there was, I was going to have to let my team take the chance of shifting some of the stones.

  I’d have been lying if I said that didn’t freak me out. Then I felt like I saw a flickering candle in a pitch black room. My mind gravitated towards it and I thought about my new class core, or specifically about the Vestigial Hunter shard.

  Vestigial Hunter class shard- Superior Condition (Uncommon)- this rogue based class focusing on the hunting aspects of the rogue field. It calls upon lost traits and can enhance the bearer of this class in sometimes unpredictable ways.

  Unpredictable wasn’t entirely comforting, but I needed something out of the box. I focused my perception inward and then switched out Immobile Damage for Hunter’s Instinct. The passive ability immediately expanded my perception even further. I was able to start feeling the tremors in the stone around me.

  I was caught off guard when Samvek said, “Disciple, do you need aid? There is no shame in admitting that you need help. It comes to all of us, and that is the strength of our clan.”

  I heard the disappointment in his voice even as he asked me the question. This was only an uncommon dungeon, albeit overloaded, but still, he expected me to be able to handle anything that this dungeon threw at me. He’d help me, calling on resources to get me out, but I would lose some stock in his eyes.

  “No. Give me a bit longer.”

  “Good.”

  Then I ignored his presence and focused on the stone. There were small gaps all around me. They were simply too big for me to be able to move. Even my legs, which were pinned, weren’t truly crushed, they were just in a space too small for me to move them. I felt instincts rising within me.

  Then a notification popped up, providing me a bit of context.

  History of organic life on planet Earth has been analyzed. Multiple evolutionary paths indicated. Mammal path analyzed. Insufficient. Analyzing other paths. Options exist.