MAZE - The Endless Quest

As the vampire lord called its blood army, everyone got ready to fight. Still, they waited for the mutated ruler to finish its summoning spell before doing anything. Bonnie quickly changed Ruby’s form and the Ursa Major constellation to buff her, turning the slime into a bear that had a similar color scheme as the blood army. That was the first major constellation she had access to, and the first one that allowed her to create her own version of a noble house, or position, in her case. Using the Ursa Major opened a Daimyo level house for the Astral Witch. But that was still four rankings below the highest one she could muster. Still, the buff was already considerably more powerful. Ruby became taller than most people while on four legs, once she stood up, she even towered over Livy. And the tamed monster now had attributes that could rival the Leviathan.

‘I can still take her,’ Livy mumbled in the court’s mind once the massive red bear formed in front of them.

Hera just smirked and saw Paige, Sophie and Vash casting a few buffs over everyone. They already had organized what they could do without interrupting each other’s spells. Everyone in the group felt the effects, it was a bonus to a few attributes, as well as an increase in defense and damage of attacks and spells. The only ones that were not affected by that were Viper and Crimson. The two already had a buff that was stronger than what anyone else could do, and when there was an overlap, only the strongest buff was applied. At least, thanks to Hera’s [Army of One] they still got a bit of the benefit, even if it was just 10% of the effects.

Skyler and Fernando were the two who started the fight, the human man fired a couple of arrows at the hellhounds that started walking towards them. The elven controller, instead of being aggressive, used the water from the fountain to turn part of the field into a quagmire, stopping the blood red skeletal horses from rushing them.

‘Hera! Can we?’ Crimson turned to the Empress with sparkles in her eyes.

‘Sure, take care of the army, let the boss for the others,’ the Ophidianite rolled her eyes. She knew the Spymasters wanted to use their guardian forms. Normally, Crimson would be against using that skill, but in their awakened state, that changed.

Crimson didn’t wait and quickly transformed, since she didn’t need the help of her brother to do that. Her lower body grew, her tail becoming longer, and some spikes appeared on the sides, almost like the carapace of an ankylosaur. From her waist, a deep red exoskeleton appeared. However, unlike the normal version that replaced her torso with the body of an insect, this was closer to armor. Her hands turned into the claws of a mantis, but when considering the current tail like structure of her arm, that wasn’t much of a change. Still, those weren’t actual claws, but the daggers that were the true body of the wins. One red and one white. Crimotra’s face wasn’t a mix of a bug and a snake anymore. Instead, it was Crimson’s face with what looked like mantis inspired helmet from a sentai show, something that she leaned in heavily during the transformation. Without the awakening, the twins would vanish and then reappear in the complete guardian form. However, now, Crimson spun her arms, forming a circle in front of her before pointing the left hand to the sky and the right one to the left. She held the pose as the red and black energy covered her body and shifted her appearance to Crimotra. She also became considerably faster as Viper’s attributes were added to her own.

The other Spymaster had a much less extravagant transformation. He simply walked forward, long black scorpion legs appearing from the back of his tail in a burst of green and black energy. Only when enough of them appeared that they lifted him from the ground, but the legs were harder to see, almost as if they were made out of smoke. A large scorpion stinger that had a dangerous looking green liquid coming out of the tip hang about a meter above his head. Strangely enough, the actual tail that connected the stinger to the rest of his body was nowhere to be seen. The Empress knew the stinger wasn’t just floating, but there was something hiding the body of the tail completely. Viper’s torso didn’t change much, only becoming more muscular and the twin daggers were still firm in his hand. The one thing that changed on his face was that now he had another pair of fangs coming out of his mouth.

In a swift motion, the twins met the blood army in the middle of the quagmire, neither of them felt bothered by the difficult terrain. Everyone else was hanging behind, waiting for the blood creatures to clear that area and meet them in a more open field. The Vampire lord was the first to do so. He simply jumped over the field, a pair of blood wings appearing from his back. Roan and Flint quickly went after him as Ruby rushed to intercept a group of blood knights.

Hera asked her court to play defense and focus on the enemies that were not being targeted by anyone else. Even if she didn’t do it herself, because of her, everyone lost the chance to kill an entire horde of enemies, it was only fair that she let them fight without a worry this time. The one exception for that command was Vulcan. He could join the fight as he wanted, as long as he didn’t kill the Vampire Lord, of course. Having someone to cover everyone like this would be more than enough for the group to relax and do what they wanted, and considering how the blood army was still emerging from the waterfalls, this should be a long fight.

Or that was what Hera thought for a moment.

Flint and Roan seemed a bit too excited about the fight. The beastmen jumped to the side and brought down his hand axes on the vampire lord’s left arm, hoping only to damage it a bit, but the limb was cut clean off before Victor even landed on the ground. The dwarf, on the other hand, was already preparing a punch when that happened, and only had enough time to shift his aim. Instead of slamming the mutated lord square in the chest, he hit the vampire’s right hip with such strength that the dungeon boss spun in the air like a ballerina before collapsing on the ground. That combination of attacks was enough to knock the vampire lord out, which also caused the entire blood army to vanish less than a minute after they started appearing.

“Really?” Alex groaned.

“Sorry, I… he was the boss. I thought I could go a bit harder,” Roan stepped away from the body of the vampire lord, unsure if the dungeon boss was still alive or not. It was hard to tell, after all, a vampire didn’t need to breathe, and didn’t have a pulse.

Flint was just staring at his fist, “Yeah… sorry about that. We got some materials on the way here and,” he looked at the vampire lord and back to his arm, “They are good.”

Alex started walking towards the pair, “Elistrae, can you see if Victor is still alive? I can remove the thing now, but if he is dead, there is not much I can do about the mutation.”

The elven healer had her eyes closed and bobbed her head rhythmically, moving her lips without saying anything.

“Elistrae?” Alex asked again, this time louder.

“What? Sorry. What do you need?” the elf snapped out of whatever it was doing.

“Are you ok?” Bonnie frowned.

“Yeah. That scene just made me think of a song and I started singing. It’s been a while since I heard it,” the elf said with a smile.

“Ok, can you help here? We need to keep Victor alive here.”

“Sure, sure,” Elistrae walked forward, still humming the tune and gently swaying her hips from side to side.

Hera realized that as the elf walked, her entire leg came out of her skirt, almost showing the side of her curvy butt cheeks. It was very odd to see someone in a dungeon wearing revealing clothes like that. It was one thing to be a beastmen that could improve a skill by being hit, but this was clearly something made to attract a different kind of attention. Looking around, the Empress saw Flint, Roan, Skyler, Paige, and Fernando all with an expression of confusion similar to her own. But Sophie, Vash, and Neria stared with a very different interest in mind.

Being close to her triton friend, Hera couldn’t help but approach and clear her throat, which caused Neria to look away in a hurry.

“So, tentacles and ass? That’s your style?” the Ophidianite smirked.

“Shut up and stop putting me on blast like that. She doesn’t need to know I was looking,” Neria huffed, but quickly realized that no one was looking at them.

Hera winked, “Soundproof bubble. Just around us, and it’s invisible this time.”

Neria frowned, “Why did you always make it green then?”

“So everyone knows where it starts and where it ends. But it’s been a while since I managed to make them invisible. Just never needed to do that, if I want to tell my court to do something, I have better ways of communicating. Don’t worry, Elistrae didn’t hear me talking about how your eyes were glued to her.”

“Oh, shut up. I talked with her earlier and she likes the attention. And besides, are you telling me you don’t enjoy the view?”

Hera glanced to Elistrae, the elf was now bending down in a very suggestive manner while healing Victor, “That part is nice, but the backdrop kind of ruins for me. Not to mention the smell,” behind the elf were large pools of blood that were once the army created by the vampire lord. The mansion now had red stains coming out of the window as if it was a horror film.

Neria took a look around, “Ok, fair. But still, you have to agree she is hot.”

“She’s gorgeous, and I wouldn’t give up a chance to be with her. But I don’t know, the classic beauty is not my style. I tend to go more for the quirky type,” Hera sneaked a glance at Neria.

“Yeah, that tracks. That elf girl you hooked up with had a more small-town girl look. Not a…” Neria trailed off while staring at a very specific part of Elistrae.

“The clap of my cheeks can bring world peace look?” Hera replied.

The joke seemed to land as Neria started laughing out loud. But the Ophidianite felt that maybe it wasn’t just the joke, but the fact she never said something like that before. The surprise effect made it funnier. Before they could continue the banter, Elistrae spoke up.

“Ok, he’s ok enough now that if he turns into an elf, I can heal him still. Go for it,” she had even managed to fix Victor’s arm, reattaching it to his body.

Hera poked Neria with her elbow, “Get yourself together. I’m going to drop the spell.”

“Hang on. Gimme a minute,” the triton quickly recomposed herself before the Empress dropped the soundproof barrier. By then, Alex already had finished removing the mutation from Victor.

The vampire lord thanked the Purifying Light and looked around, “There are still many mutated vampires in the city. I understand you can’t cure them all, Alex. Instead, I’ll give them rest.”

He clapped his hands and the blood army was reformed. This time, there was no waterfall of blood or anything of the sort. Instead, the knights, hellhounds, bats, and skeletal horses all appeared from the blood in the area. But their numbers were on an entirely different level.

During the small fight, they saw maybe 100 units walking around. But now, not just the garden and the mansion, but even the streets were filled with the blood constructs. There had to be thousands, if not tens of thousands, of them.

“It’s time to clean my city,” Victor said in a snarl before the army started moving.

It seemed like even if the group wanted, they wouldn’t be able to fight all that much anymore. With that in mind, everyone just followed Victor along as he headed to the purifier headquarters to see Vanessa. The questions were, were they going to complete the dungeon quest before or after reaching the old penthouse?