Lua trudged over to the shadow of the gigantic statue. Then unceremoniously, she flopped onto the ground, whimpering slightly at her exhausted body. Caster walked over and sat down next to her.
"Your essence conjuration skills have improved." He complimented her improvement with what Lua could tell was genuine feelings.
"Thanks, it got easier when I.. figured out how to make them faster." She responded, a yawn creeping into her sentence.
'Runes' She called the spell with a mental command, focusing on her memories
Memories: [Winter's Warmth], [Knight's Crest], [Sky's Gift], [Scale Suit], [Talon of Unrest], [Eventide], [Papyrus Scarab], [Sky Cleaver], [Valhalla], [Broken], [Blood Rune]
'A new one'
[Blood Rune]
Memory Rank: Ascended
Memory Tier: I
Memory Type: charm
Memory Description: [The Lord of the Dead slumbers, its leeches feed, its army walk.]
Memory Enchantments: [Restore], [Coagulation]
'That description is a bit misleading.'
[Restore]
Enchantment Description: [Convert soul essence to blood.]
[Coagulation]
Enchantment Description: [This charm is able to store blood]
Lua summoned the charm. It looked like a small stone disk, reminiscent of a hockey puck, with a complicated crimson rune nesseled in the centre. Lua held the charm up examining it for a few seconds before attaching it to the belt of the Blood Relic.
To test it she and circulating essence into it, aiming to use it as a battery to repair the Blood Relic. It worked. The crumpled parts of the armour began to restore themselves. Although the full storage capacity of the memory was scarcely more than a litre.
After only resting for around half an hour the cohort got up and began to move. Due to exiting out the wrong side of the city they had to circle the whole mega structure and head south from there. The walk was rather boring as with both Sunny and Kai they were able to avoid most of the nightmare creatures.
***
Because the crater was too big, the bent of its edge was almost imperceptible. Only by looking far into the distance could one say that it was actually curved. Because of this, the cohort could have continued traveling through the crater for a long time without having to move farther away from the goal of today's journey, which lay to the southwest of their current position.
However, they had to leave the crater and return to the Labyrinth sooner or later — not only to escape the black water, but also because there was nothing to hide behind on this vast muddy plain. If any flying Nightmare Creature decided to attack them from above, the cohort would have no defense against it.
The Labyrinth, while hiding its own fair share of terrifying threats, at least offered some measure of protection.
That's why, at some point, Nephis led the party to the sharp slope of the crater, and the seven of them climbed out of it. With the help of Kai and the trusty golden rope, the task wasn't hard at all.
For some time after that, they walked on the ridge separating the crater from the Labyrinth proper
"This is so boring." Lua mumbled as she summoned Wolf. The eidolon manifesting next to her. Commanding the eidolon to utilise the ability [Elliptical] and grow slightly larger. Jumping up slightly she hopped on the back of the wolf, riding it like a horse.
She looked towards Cassie once settled "Want on?"
Cassie shook her head in response "No, thank you" She said with a bright smile.
Nephis turned her head back, "We'll head into the labyrinth soon anyway."
And they did, moving into the Labyrinth proper meant a change in strategy. Annoyingly, unlike other areas of the Labyrinth this section was inhabited by a large number of nasty, spider-like critters that had a habit of decorating the walls and passages of the Labyrinth with endless amounts of grey, incredibly sticky cobwebs.
What's worse, their web seemed to be made not out of spider silk, but out of thin metal wires that were as tough as iron and could cut the victim into little pieces if it thrashed too much after getting caught.
The deeper into the Labyrinth they went, the more of these cobwebs surrounded them. They had come up with a rather stop gap solution. Lua merged two essence blades into one, double ended longsword.
The blade in question was hovering around 10 feet in front of them, and spinning. Rotating like a massive, deathly helicopter blade they were able to cut all the webs in front of them. The third blade was acting as a clean up tool. Cutting down any webs the spinning dual blade missed.
This was quite the precise endeavour and took up all of Lua's concentration, as such she was riding on Wolf, being protected by Effie as Caster and Nephis took the lead. After a few hours of this, Lua needed to rest. The mental strength required to keep this up whilst not even having slept since the experience in the catacombs was too much for one sitting.
Laying on the back of her wolf half conscious, Lua watched as the others batted the spiders and advanced whilst using Cassie's echo as a substitute for Lua's own blades. The spiders were about the size of a human, incredibly fast, and had plates of something that resembled iron covering parts of their repulsive bodies. They looked like armored battle machines created for the sole purpose of slaughtering living things.
The poor spiders were obliterated though. They unfortunately chose to attack arguably the strongest force in the Forgotten Shore. After all, there were 3 divine aspect holders, 1 sacred, 2 transcendent and an ascended aspect holders. The combination of aspects and legacies made the cohort utterly deadly.
After the quick fighting concluded Lua finally allowed her to fall into sleep's embrace as the others cut meat, and collected shards. Lua woke up just before the second skirmish. Sleepily she watched as another group of Iron Spiders climbed over the walls of the Labyrinth.
She peered into the creature's soul. 'Only an awakened beast' she thought as she conjured an essence spear and shot it straight through. The spider stumbled for a few moments, reeling back from the gaping hole where its core used to be.
[You have slain an Awakened Beast, Iron Spider.]
[Your soul grows purer]
The rest of the journey with a now awake Lua progressed fast, the cohort moved through the labyrinth with ruthless efficiency. After several more minor skirmishes with the iron spiders, they had finally reached their destination. Not too far away from them, colored pink by the evening sun, a magnificent arch of white marble rose high above the sea of crimson coral.
The giant structure was clearly created by the same people who had built the Bright Castle, and made from the same stone. It looked like a much larger sibling of the pristine arch that guarded the entrance to the white road which climbed all the way to the outer settlement.
Only this one was much more weathered, bleak, and damaged. Signs of corrosion and deep cracks covered its surface, with one of its sides partially collapsed.
Lua looked over to where Sunny and Nephis were talking "We need to pick up our pace. The night is close, and we might have to fight to clear the top of it." Nephis explained that they will probably need to fight their way to the top.
Lua sighed as Effie spoke up "More fighting? Come on! When are we finally going to eat?"
Soon, they reached the giant arch. Kai summoned his bow and flew up, only to return a few minutes later and report that no terrible monster was nesting on top of the ancient structure.
With sighs of relief, the members of the cohort climbed the golden rope one after another and were soon standing far above the Labyrinth, silently watching as the flood of black water drowned it in the lightless depths.
As the sun disappeared beyond the horizon, they were left on a rectangular island made out of white marble. All around it, there was nothing but the undulating waves of the dark sea.
Lua stood on the edge of the platform, everyone else was asleep by this point, besides Sunny, who was taking watch. She slowly walked over to him and sat down.
"How's your new armour faring?" She prodded.
"Good, but it's a bit too heavy to wear for a while." Sunny answered.
"Is it..?" Lua hesitated.
"It can lighten thanks to an enchantment, but obviously I can't use it."
"Are… it's enchantments good at least."
"They're amazing, an ascended sixth tier armour. Has a weird one too, it says it will increase based on defeated enemies." Sunny explained.
Lua smiled and leaned back. "That's good." Lua went silent for a few moments, "Your aspect… it means you can't use soul shards." Lua stated she had an inkling that Sunny's flaw was related to always answering questions. But she wasn't sure if there were any other conditions.
Sunny went silent. "It does, I can only gain them from killing."
"That's inconvenient." Lua nodded. 'His flaw probably is related to always answering with the truth, given how Kai reacts to him. It's obvious. Only a fool would take what he says and think it's made up' Lua confidently concluded. 'He clearly doesn't like to share unnecessary details much.'
'It's similar to Nephis and mine in that we still receive fragments from killing. Whilst nephis can absorb essence from dead enemies, Sunny can't use shards.' Lua watched the young man for a few moments before sighing.
"Just so you know…" She began, causing Sunny to look at her. "When you exceed the fragment count. You get a new core." She spoke calmly.
His eyes widened as he summoned his sword, clearly not expecting her to know that he had a divine aspect. "How did you…?"
"Relax would you, I know your aspect rank, I can see your unique cores. And I can easily tell that you also are 'named'. But it's obvious you don't want people to know. So I'm not going to pry, but we need to all be as strong as possible to survive this."
Lua spoke seriously, her voice firm and unyielding.
Sunny calmed down and sat on the marble. "So… we have three divine aspect holders on our team?"
"We do" Lua laughed to herself "Kind of absurd isn't it. The impossible divine aspect, the rank that doesn't exist, yet three of the holders all got flung into the same death zone." Lua barely hid her slip up, accidently hinting at another divine holder.
Sunny stared at her, clearly having caught her slip up in her speech. But he said nothing.
"Well," Lua stood up, "Sorry to have bored you." She apologised as rose to her feet, gave him a supportive smile before walking away to where she claimed as her sleeping spot.
Sunny sat in silence, gazing out over the dark sea by himself, thinking about their conversation.