NOVEL NEXT 28: The Nether
The [Nether Devil’s] were terrible news. Emphasis on terrible. Zenakris’ memories painted a rather condescending image, but Tom wasn’t a trained magical supersoldier with a Noble powerhouse for a father. The first shocker was that… well, they were aliens in a world that was already alien to him. The concept was hard to digest and the more Tom ruminated upon it the more he realized that the English language didn’t even possess a word to describe such a phenomenon.
No, don’t think about that. Don’t think about how miserably out of your depths you are.
So, Tom kept running, spraying a mist of warm air mixed with spittle each time he gasped and wheezed from the exertion, his pace having ratcheted to near athlete levels, if he had to venture a guess. The second, crucial piece of information that had made him break into a desperate sprint had to do with the [Nether Devil’s] or rather, the [Phantasmal Beings’] powers. They were fundamentally different from the monsters he had encountered up until this point, that had been native to Artezia— in the sense that they subscribed to a completely different power system. The analysis in Zenakris’ memories had been too jargon-heavy for Tom to completely grasp it’s meaning, but he got the gist of it- The [Nether Devil’s] didn’t possess cards of their own.
In fact, the reason for their invasion partly had to do with their desire for [Soul Cards]. Or atleast, Zenakris seemed to think so. At this point, Tom wasn’t sure if the difference between those two suppositions held any relevance to his current situation. Either way, the [Nether Devils] were not only stronger, faster and far more cunning than the monsters that he had encountered up until this point, but they also had their own arcane abilities to draw upon. Abilities that the [Divine System] categorized as [Phantasmal Skills].
[Nether Gaze] and [Miasma Claw] weren’t especially powerful skills in Zenakris’ eyes, but Tom found them on a different league compared to the beasts he’d encountered so far. [Nether Gaze] seemed to be some sort of madness inducing skill, forcing the target to gaze upon the dimension these… creatures hailed from. Or maybe it was something else, but that was the leading theory Zenakris recalled from his lectures, which made it good enough for him. Fighting creatures without being able to directly gaze upon their visage was…. tricky.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, he still had to find a way to deal with [Miasma Claw]. A single blow would take weeks to heal, completely negating any additional recovery boost his physical stat provided him with. All it would take was a few deep cuts, and he would bleed out before he could even reach help. Not that Zenakris had to worry about any of that, considering his higher physical stat and the fancy armor he wore underneath his robes… but his own remained an illusion and Tom wasn’t sure how willing he was to test out the durability of his rags against [Nether Devil] claws.
The third and final piece of information he had was the glittering gems he’d noticed lying next to a [Nether Devil] corpse that he encountered every couple of minutes. [Corrupted Gems] were an integral part in forging artifacts, much like the [Card Gauntlet] Zenakris’ used. They might be worthless for the noble scion, but for Zenakris it was a veritable fortune that he was being forced to leave behind.
Run. Run. Run, damn it!
His legs felt like they were on fire. His lungs hurt, it fucking hurt to even breathe and his heart rate was going haywire— but somehow, his legs kept carrying him forward.
Twenty minutes. That was his best estimate.
That left a little under ten minutes to clear the tunnel and come out the other side, but Tom couldn’t see any sign of the exit. In his current state, Zenakris’ memories came back to him as a dissociated jumble, as he desperately tried to ascertain how much of the tunnel stretch was still left ahead of him.
A glint flashed in the corner of his gaze, making him flinch. Tom slid to a groaning halt, almost tripping as he slowed down his burgeoning momentum.
Sucking in a cold breath of air, he jogged over to the vista, or more specifically, the object that had caught his attention.
Next to the carcass of a [Nether Devil] was a… sword, unlike anything he’d quite seen before in his life. At first, Tom thought that the blade’s stygian metal was absorbing the light around it but no, it was repelling it somehow. It was hard to explain, but Tom knew that the human eye relied on reflected light to see them, but the stygian blade just came off as this… foriegn mass of darkness, which had an imperceptible sheen on light ensconsing it, but never able to quite reach it.
[Nether Blade, Common+
Requirements: Physical 7, Proprioception 7, Mental 10.
Description: This weapon does not belong to the world of Artezia, and thus it’s parameters cannot be accurately judged. The Divine System has assessed that this weapon will not influence the faculties of someone that has reached the first threshold in the Mental Stat.
This weapons’ parameters exceed the Common Tier but do not yet reach the Uncommon tier. Nether Skill is inactive. Please insert a Corrupted Gem to utilize Nether Skill: Rend.
Rend, Common +
Utilize the charge of the Corrupted Gem to enshroud the blade in Nether energy. Lasts for as long as the Corrupted Gem has charge.
Please consult an Artificer for more information]
Tom had never recalled this particular weapon in Zenakris’ memories, but he supposed that it was still a far cry from the [Uncommon] rarity weapon he used.
But for Tom though, it could be the very difference between life and death.
Less than eight minutes were left, and his gut already told him what he had been ignoring for a while now.
He wouldn’t make it.
“Blast it all,” Tom muttered under his breath, reaching for the stygian blade. The moment it’s cold steel brushed against his skin, a notification popped up.
[The Fool has detected a foriegn mental influence upon your soul.]
[The Fool has successfully eliminated foriegn mental influence.]
“Huh,” Tom muttered, as he broke out into a sprint towards the exit. The closer he got to the cave exit, the greater the density of the [Nether Devil] carcasses would be— he didn’t know how, but the group that had come before Zenakris’ had lured them close to the entrance in waves before dispatching them.
That meant the odds of him getting a [Corrupted Gem] were very high, but the addendum was he got there before the dungeon reset.