Chapter 301

“I still don’t like you.”

“Right.”

“You sound like you don’t believe me.”

Rory turned his head, looking at the woman currently lying naked next to him, a blanket half covering them as they lay atop a portable roll-out bed, the joys of having an inventory.

“Don’t give me that look,” Allison said, glaring at Rory.

“We just had sex,” Rory said, staring at her flatly.

“I haven’t had sex in over a hundred years, so sue me,” Allison nearly growled.

“And whose fault is that?” Rory asked, arching his eyebrows.

“What, were you off getting laid with your people?” Allison asked incredulously.

“No… Well, once,” Rory admitted. “But she was like, sixty when she appeared.”

“So, you’re a grandma fucker,” Allison snorted.

“No, she very much did not look like an old grandma after an ascension or two, and not like she was super old and wrinkly to begin with either way,” Rory answered defensively.

“Uh-huh,” Allison said. Then, before Rory could react, she lunged forward, nipping his ear before standing up.

“So, are we like… a thing?”

“You think we’re a thing after fucking once?” Allison asked, glancing over her shoulder at Rory, who was not at all opposed to the view.

“Uh, well, maybe call me a little confused?”

“Look, I still have no damn idea what I feel about you,” Allison sighed. “Garfunk is gone because of you. But Garfunk didn’t exactly win himself favors. And I’ve spent enough time around you that while being an annoying dick who thinks he is funnier than he really is-”

“Thanks?”

“-you’re also not a bad guy. Also, not like I have a great list of potentials. Tom and Eric. Unlike my sister, I am very much straight.”

“Best of three, I’ll take it,” Rory said, miming a fist pump as he too got out of the portable bed, vanishing it into his inventory a moment later.

“Cool your jets, hotshot,” Allison snorted. “I like a guy who can actually throw down with me. Eric wasn’t even close.”

“And Tom?” Rory asked, curious.

“Considered it briefly,” Allison said with a shrug. “But it’s not just strength, but character. He is too passive.”

“So, best of one,” Rory said, crossing his arms. “I’m both first and last place.”

“And you’ve been giving me fuck me eyes for ages now,” Allison said. “Which I can’t place. You wanted to get with a chick who was ready to spear you?”

“Was that a self-pun or…?”

“You get what I mean,” Allison sighed.

“Maybe I just want a girl who will literally just kill me,” Rory said, something he’d said more than once in the past.

“You have mommy issues or something?”

“No, I just don’t like passive girls,” Rory shot back.

“Did… did you ever have an interest in my sister?” Allison asked, sounding mildly horrified.

“What? Fuck no,” Rory snorted. “She’s cute, but also, I want a woman who can reach the cabinets without a stepping stool. And you know, not asexual.”

“Not sure if that’s a relief or not,” Allison said, donning clothes before her armor appeared on her. “So, business time.”

“I thought we were just doing ‘business’?”

“Not that kind,” Allison growled. “I still think we hunt a territory alpha first, then set up a base.”

“Fine,” Rory threw his hands up. “Are you happy?”

Allison glared at him for several seconds before Rory waved his still raised arms.

“What? We’re going with your plan,” Rory said.

“Are you doing it because you finally folded, or because you want to have sex again and don’t want to piss me off?”

“…. yes?”

“Men,” Allison sighed, stomping off as Rory followed her.

“I was joking ,” Rory said, catching up a moment later. “I realized we might have a hint of a naturally occurring shop if we kill a territory alpha rather than wasting anomalous energy summoning one.”

“And what gave you that idea?”

“Uhh, a guess?” Rory offered. “Realistically, if you remove when The First summoned that shop for us, how else were we supposed to find one? Not exactly like they offered a bunch of ideas or suggestions.”

“Fair enough,” Allison admitted. “So, that aside, any ideas where to start?”

“How would I know?” Rory asked.

“Because you’re the one with answers for everything,” Allison pointed out.

“Well, in this case, my answer is ‘search for any potent surges of aura or energy and hope for the best.’”

“Bring out your glider,” Allison suddenly said.

“What? Why?”

“Because we can make faster time from the air.”

“But then we will end up split up, which could be dangerous if-”

“I’m going to ride with you, dumbo.”

“Not exactly a two-person vehicle,” Rory said with a frown.

“Just do it.”

“Alright, if you say so,” Rory muttered as the glider appeared. Stepping carefully on top of it, he suddenly felt his fellow Founder wrap her arms around his stomach.

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“What are you- oh, I guess that works,” Rory said as the woman went full koala on his back. Given she was nearly the same height as him, it should have been a rather gangly and unwieldy setup, but then they were also tier eights; a person playing backpack was hardly make-or-break.

Life comes at you fast.

Ignoring the oddity that the woman who had defeated him in single combat only a few years prior, for the entire world to see, was now latched onto him, Rory gently lifted off, getting a quick feel for flying with a passenger attached, before taking off at max speed.

Flying at max speed, it didn’t take long for the two to slow down as they noticed a swell of power rising from a cresting hill in the distance, which only moments later exploded as the two drew closer. From it, what looked like a galloping horse rose into the sky, its bones undulating, grasping hands reaching out and flailing along its sides, as if it were swimming through the air.

As if to make the entire scene worse, the monster opened its mouth in six directions at once, peeling apart like a blooming flower and revealing a mouth full of smaller mouths like baby snapping turtles.

Several more of the odd semi-skeletal horses rode out into the air moments after, until the hill ripped itself apart fully, a giant skeletal thing pulling itself free, so large that only the top half managed to pull itself free.

“Grave Pit,” Allison said, checking out the monsters. “Also, those are all one monster.”

Grave Pit

A malevolent essence that slowly converts vital energies into necrotic energies. Anything unable to escape the pull of the Grave Pit is assimilated, becoming part of the Grave Pit hivemind and joining its strength.

“The horses must have been a recent addition,” Rory said, pointing out the obvious, given they weren’t fully decayed.

“Strategy?” Allison asked.

“Probably can’t be killed the regular ways; going to have to break it down. Thankfully, I’ve got an answer that should work.”

Lifting his hand skyward, blue lightning began to spark up as Rory began channeling heavenly energies.

“In the meantime, you want to play patty cake with it?” Rory asked as Allison huffed in his ear.

“Everything a joke?”

“Maybe,” Rory admitted as a moment later, the weight on his back vanished, the woman dropping directly into the pit.

Strafing the pit, hard light ‘bullets’ began to spray into the towering expanse of bones, tearing into them as Rory himself began throwing down bolts of blue lightning and swerving around the chasing skeletal horses.

Within the pit, Allison looked as if she were recreating the hundreds of undead movies from Earth, dipping, dodging, zipping, and striking between endless corpses that advanced on her, many in differing states of decay, all the while the titan of bone attempted to smash her beneath its amalgam fists.

As for Rory, he was thinking more of the classics, pulling a Top Gun as he maneuvered around the dogfight in the air, the weird skeletal horses capable of firing the snapping bulb-like ‘mouths’ within their true mouths at Rory. Waves of grey energy would coalesce around their bodies, shaping into tight spirals, like the horn of a unicorn, before blasting lances of that same grey energy as a decaying beam.

Rory wasn’t easily hit, though, as he suddenly held a handful of gems that he whipped out, raining down exploding fire upon the corpses within the pit. Detonating gems, to this day, was far from the most efficient method of gem usage, but Rory also didn’t care that much about efficiency when he was the one making the gems. Low-grade gems weren’t exactly much work for him to whip up at this point.

Allison was sweeping her spear through the hordes of skeletal creatures down below, the necrotic energies failing to find purchase in her own aura.

As if sensing hordes of skeletal monsters wasn’t the answer, the Grave Pit suddenly pulled them back as they fused back into the main body. Growing stronger, the Grave Pit began to swing about with wild reckless abandon, forcing Allison to dodge back and out of the way as the skeletal monstrosity moved with speed far greater than something its size should really have any right to be moving at.

“Incoming!” Rory shouted, hovering the platform outside of easy swipe range, as the air between himself and the Grave Pit began to glitter with black and white ‘sparkles’ growing denser by the second.

Realizing what was coming, Allison got out of range as the Null Glitter Lance fired. Detonating into a ball of energy, the skeletal monstrosity leaned back from the sudden damage. While purifying forces were best for corruptive energies such as blood essence or necrotic energy, the annihilation forces of oblivion energy did just fine .

Roaring with a strange sound that something lacking organs might sound like, it ‘flexed’ its body as an omnidirectional cloud of bone spears shot outward at dizzying speeds. Rory was barely fast enough to sweep his hand upward as several rows of shields appeared, shattering as the bone spears struck.

Allison physically defended herself against the storm of bone spears with her literal spear, spinning and striking them out of the air. Where she wasn’t fast enough, she simply dodged out of the way or relied on the defense of her two layers of armor.

The Null Glitter Lance was already recharging, something Rory let it do at its own pace this time around. In the meantime, Rory raised his staff overhead, chanting quickly before lightning began to stab downward into the oversized skeletal titan. The benefit of fighting an oversized, immobile opponent was that it was rather easy to slam the wall of heavenly energies down on the monster.

Having defended herself from the spear burst, Allison shot forward, her spear striking into the Grave Pit. Unfortunately, piercing damage wasn’t the best option against something skeletal in nature. Still, Allison was far from out of options, her aura rippling along the spear as the tip ‘blunted,’ warping just enough to shatter bones directly.

Rory, meanwhile, did another bombing run, flying above and strafing the monastery with the hard light cannons and dropping exploding gems atop it. They were rapidly wearing down the energies that seemed to regenerate the monster constantly, or so it seemed until, nearby, another hill violently exploded, some form of ‘burial mound’ that began feeding necrotic energy back into the Grave Pit.

Right, I’d rather not waste so much time.

“Punch a hole!” Rory shouted as Allison nodded down below. Dropping into an unfamiliar stance, it was like she were a big cat about to pounce, before a moment later, she launched her speed with hypersonic speed. Slamming into the direct center of the Grave Pit, paradoxical glitter had begun to color the air.

The spear struck instantly, punching through the monster and revealing the interior form of the Grave Pit, some form of core that to Rory’s senses felt damn near indestructible.

Allison was already racing out of the pit as Rory tossed out two gems, shattering them as excess paradox energies suffused the area, hastening the last bit of charging required, and then some.

When the Null Glitter Lance roared out, the interior core of the Grave Pit was swallowed in an explosion of oblivion energy. Rory’s gut instinct regarding the toughness of the core was vindicated when, explosion fading, the core remained.

Significantly reduced in size as if eighty percent of the outer layers had been erased, but still there.

Rory and Allison were preparing for round two when the Grave Pit shuddered, and all at once, the reanimated bones and corpses began to fall away in a necrotic slough.

Several seconds of relative silence passed as the two Founders waited to see if another shoe would drop, but when nothing did, Rory descended into the pit before hopping off.

“Wasn’t too bad,” Rory huffed.

“Says the one who was remaining outside its necrotic influence,” Allison huffed. “Felt like standing way too close to a bonfire that was constantly trying to burn me.”

“You survived the hydra’s aura, but this one bothered you?” Rory asked, eyebrows raised.

“I wasn’t literally sitting in a pit with it,” Allison pointed out. “But not the point.”

Agreeing, Rory made his way over to the hill of bones and corpse flesh that had once been the Grave Pit. Ignoring the ick factor, something Rory had become unfazed by long ago, he nabbed the core, inspecting it, now the size of a bowling ball.

Necrotic Core

“Interesting,” Rory muttered. It was essentially a regular monster core, except naturally attuned to a form of energy that was already exceptionally rare. “But more importantly…”

Flexing his well, easier now that the most local territory alpha had been defeated, Rory raised something that had been hidden below.

‘Hidden’ as Rory felt fairly confident that it hadn’t actually been there until the defeat of the territory alpha and manifested postmortem.

Post-postmortem?

It was an odd-looking keystone, filled with cracks as if it were an egg about to hatch.

Nascent Conduit of Anomalous Flame

The nascent form of a conduit of anomalous flame. When planted, the anomalous flame contained within will burst free.

“So, guess that’s the shop question taken care of,” Rory said as he showed the keystone to Allison.

“So….”

“Don’t say it,” Rory’s eyes narrowing.

“Soooo.”

“Don’t.”

“You’re saying I was right in the end?”

“God damn it.”