There was barely any time left to escape. Ananizarte focused, trying to teleport from this devious trap, but suddenly felt powerful resistance. The teleportation spell wasn’t working! An alien force that looked like blinding white chains seized her, hoisting her up spread-eagled and binding her. The goddess instantly located the source of this power: a bright star burning far above, behind the red mist. It blinked and flashed with light. Spear of Power, a divine light spell, lunged at the chained goddess, shearing through the air.
Transforming into a giant black whirlwind, Ananizarte tore through the fetters, repelling the spear with a shield woven from pure darkness. Still, the seconds spent on her transformation took their toll. Torrents of blue fire, the beasts’ furious breath, rained down on her. The ocean of magma boiled and receded, pushed back by the roaring flame, and the violent vortex of lava and the beasts’ breath began spinning across it. Screaming with pain, the goddess surged upward, trying to escape the deadly furnace. She almost made it, too, seeing her freedom just inches away as she broke through the curtain of fire, together with the glowing star that turned out to be a wondrous astral ship shrouded by a protective dome. Several Spears launched by the vessel impaled Ananizarte like a bird in flight, dropping her back into the boiling sea. She fell to the ground, and the colossal beasts closed ranks around her, enraged.
* * *
“Attention! Use Spears and Chains on cooldown! Don’t let her get away!”
Tao watched the battle below from a safe distance. At last, he witnessed the power of the Ancients first-hand. Cone-shaped rivers of hot plasma belched out by the beasts covered the area. There was enough flame to burn down an entire city. Tao knew that despite the outward similarity, that element had nothing to do with fire. It dealt six types of damage in three dimensions at once, the most powerful of them being the so-called “Ancient” damage, deadly to incorporeal beings. The six creations of the long-dead race viciously lay waste to everything in front of them with their huge flamethrowers, transforming the area into a growing hemisphere that was starting to overlap with their own bodies. Nothing could survive there, and the blazing emanations were powerful enough to reach the ship and damage the dome.
To add some heat, several winged beings in glowing armor sent more spears into the thick of the battle. The divine power distracted the goddess, preventing her from breaking away from the beasts.
“Attention! It’s done! Target status: dying!”
A frenzied ultrasonic howl drowned out the noise of battle, forcing the attackers to shield themselves from the acoustic assault. Concentric circles rippled from its hidden source, distorting space itself. The shrieking swelled, turning into a piercing wail, thin and nauseous, like nails on a chalkboard, and suddenly burst, stopping on the highest note. The blazing hemisphere rose up in an orange-blue eruption and collapsed into itself, creating the semblance of a tsunami that swept over the Ancient beasts. The beasts, which had been furiously stomping something, froze. The torrents of lava they had been expelling suddenly dried out. Closing the waning gullets of their breath weapons, they broke their ranks and went their separate ways, slow and melancholic. Nothing drew their attention anymore. Their enemy had been defeated.
“Target down. Three items dropped. You can take the loot. It’s a wrap!”
Incredulous and ecstatic at the same time, Tao started descending. If Ananizarte had been crushed by the beasts’ might, her loot must be slowly sinking somewhere far below, to the depths of the disturbed ocean of magma. That was the reason he had started this whole scheme: Divine Blood.
The equipment had been ready for a long time — the Dragon Hunter set, the best fireproof gear in Sphere: Rings and an amulet with resistance to Earth and Fire, cleansing, for removing all previous effects. New elixirs — Dragon Scale, Salamander’s Mark, and Red Dragon Blood — raised his overall fire resistance to the coveted 92.7%. The limit was previously considered to be 90%, as the stacking effects penalty didn’t allow to max out any immunity. Each item with the same bonus added less and less in percentage terms.
But Tao was well-trained and well-prepared. He knew that he could stay in the fiery ocean of Infernis for about thirty seconds or around a minute if he used an Air Bubble scroll and activated the Eternal Warrior’s invulnerability. That should be enough to pick up the items sinking in the viscous magma.
A sudden chiming of the global announcement chilled him to the spine.
BALANCE HAS BEEN BREACHED!
“Attention! Alarm! The control interface has been intercepted; we have no access! Teleportation lock was hacked! Unidentified signals approaching! I don’t know how, but they...they’re opening Astral Portals!”
Subconsciously, Tao had expected something like that. Once, he had let victory slip away from under his nose. He couldn’t waste time. Onward!
Like a skilled swimmer, the PROJECT leader straightened in a delayed dive, vanishing in the yellow-back magma without a splash.
* * *
Mara’s summoning caught me by surprise. Just a second before, I had been cheerfully rearranging lots and filling in a delivery contract, preparing an entire batch of goodies besought by a small but friendly alliance, and then I was rising from the stone plates in the boudoir of the Succubate’s Mistress.
So what was it this time? Had she decided to remind me what I owed her for her help with the battle for Condor? Or was it her libido, again?
The demoness was standing by the window. Not wasting her breath, she gestured for me to enter her wide open balcony. Contrary to my expectations, Mara was completely serious and never tried flirting with me.
“Something’s wrong, one of
