"Lewis, was that your doing?" Lue asked as he returned to the group, the three granite minions having been destroyed and cores looted.
"Yeah, I got lucky and managed to interrupt its spell, causing it to backfire and blow up in its face. Honestly, we're all just lucky it hadn't seemed to invest many points into speed, or we might have all been destroyed without being able to fight back since the thing was level 19." Lewis explained, warning them of the real danger they were all in and still might be.
His words had the intended effect, all of them getting shocked expressions as they looked over to the faintly smoking pile of blackened stone, even Patch and Jonny seeming to entirely forget about arguing over who was right to get which hammer, as the news seemed to drain the enthusiasm right out of the group, their victory suddenly overshadowed by a serious threat.
"That's not good. We definitely can't deal with that sort of thing at our level. I'm honestly surprised you managed to kill it." Lue said, giving Lewis a surprised look.
"Oh, did you destabilize the strange spell field thing to get it to explode like with my fireball?" Matt asked, his face making an O shape as the pieces clicked in his mind. Lewis just nodded in confirmation.
Technically, it was different, as the origin of the spell, the spell stone itself, was partially destroyed in this case, causing the mana to instantly implode instead of simply popping the field like he had done with Matt's spell. The difference was mainly in the level of damage from the backlash due to the different level at which the spell was disrupted, but both were essentially the same thing.
"I had assumed that this dungeon would present us with a scaling difficulty, increasing the threat the deeper we go, but encountering something double the level of everything around is bad news. How are we supposed to know what we'll find next if they don't have some sort of pattern of restriction on what will show up? For all we know, some level 50 creature could come running in and crush us all like bugs before we can react." Patch said in a serious voice, his eyes darting around the dark rocks, making Lewis nervous as he did the same, suddenly finding the patches where the crystal's light didn't reach to be far less innocuous compared to before, making him focus his [Mana detection] outwards.
Lewis's detection skill had been invaluable to him so far, the skill that had allowed him to notice he even possessed any mana to begin with, his anti-mana having no visible presence even to Matt's senses. Not to mention powerful enough to inform him when his enemies were using their mana to form spells, the skill had saved his life and his group a number of times, like during that first goblin ambush. But he had been forced only to use the skill sparingly, not that it wasn't always active outside of his boosting spell, but it was too strong, especially inside this dungeon, with its large mana pillars spread everywhere, making him unable to accurately discern individual mana sources when he constantly sensed mana everywhere.
Dismissing his other senses, he fully dove into the information the skill was giving him, finding that he could actually sense a lot more than he initially realized. Like squinting through bright light, he had been dimming the skills information only to inform him of the general spikes in mana, allowing him to detect any building spells without requiring him to actually discern much about them, usually only granting him a basic intuition about the type of mana being gathered.
Whether it be because of his increased intelligence or a higher skill level, he now realized that the skill could be used to learn so much more. He hadn't really thought about this before, but Lewis closed his eyes and was still able to perfectly use his skill; the information it provided was not diminished in the slightest, the same way he could sense mana out of his line of sight. But as he tried to parse the brightly radiant mana sources coming from the crystal pillars, he found that 'seeing' the mana was hardly necessary; the skill bundled various forms of senses and instinctive knowledge into his mind that couldn't be fully translated into any specific sensation. All of this extra information had been subconsciously blocked out to avoid overwhelming him, but as he pried open the seal on that limitation, he suddenly found that the different mana sources appeared to be almost releasing their own frequency.
Sweat began beading on Lewis's forehead as his eyes were scrunched shut and he tried to sort out the alien sensations in his mind. It was as if he could feel a different frequency from each of the mana sources, like they were humming. The large pillar close by exuded a deep and low frequency, acting almost like some version of sonar, as he found himself able to tell its precise location and rough shape. The sort of frequency it emitted is not actually audible, more like the deep reverberation you feel in your bones when attending a concert where the music is too loud.
Noticing this, Lewis found that most of the crystal pillars had a similar deep frequency with only slight variation due to the shape and mana density difference, but it became very obvious exactly how far away all the crystal pillars were from him and how big they were. Knowing this, he tried pushing past that deep reverberating frequency, doing his best to ignore anything emitting that deep frequency as he searched for something different, not even knowing what he was looking for. That was until he felt it. A fainter light, exuding a higher-pitched frequency, coming from hundreds of meters ahead, the signature was far harder to read than the glowing crystals, as its shape and position were blurred in his mind, but it was most certainly moving.
Eyes snapping open, all the frequencies around him faded back into the background of his mind, just out of reach once again, as he suddenly felt a headache and swayed slightly on his feet but caught himself almost immediately, shaking off the drowsiness and glancing through the notifications that had appeared.
Skill: Mana detection has reached Level 6
Skill: Mana detection has reached Level 7
Skill: Mana detection has reached Level 8
Skill: Mana detection has reached Level 9
Congratulations! You have gained +1 Perception
Well, I definitely feel like everything is a bit sharper, even my mana senses appear to be less blurry, but I feel like sensing frequencies like that is still a bit beyond me. My head feels like it's on the verge of overheating, so there was clearly too much information to process when I tried to expand the scope of the skill. I definitely need to put more points into intelligence the next time I get free points.
"Guys, there's something up ahead. I think it's another granite minion." He told them, the group looking at him questioningly before squinting ahead into the darkness.
"Are you sure? I don't see anything." Lue said with a scowl.
"Oh, can I kill this one? I've been playing defense with my barrier during the last few fights and still don't have any mana core to sell to the system shop." Matt exclaimed, appearing giddy.
Lewis wasn't sure how the young mage even intended to slay the stone creatures, his toolset seeming a poor match against stone enemies, the mage having ignored his physical stats to focus on his magic, which, admittedly, had grown considerably compared to when they had both tested out their skills together, Matt having learned to reinforce and overclock his spells to a certain degree, granting them additional power. But he didn't think a fireball would be enough to kill a mobile stone turret; it just wasn't the best weapon against that sort of enemy.
"Sure, but how exactly do you plan on doing that?" Jonny asked, echoing Lewis's own thoughts.
But the young mage just smiled broadly and waved his new staff around.
Ah, yeah, I guess bathing it in scorching flames could work, but I don't know if he can make it hot enough to have the same kind of damage as the level 19 stone spider.
"Alright, let's see if you can get the job done, but I think we should head back after getting Matt his own kill; we don't want to test our luck out here," Patch said, walking towards where Lewis had pointed, the young mage excitedly rushing alongside him, his mana flowing into the spell stone within the staff as it began being converted into fire mana.
Lewis was about to object, having hoped to get to level 10 before leaving, having a strong feeling that reaching that milestone would be important, but he also couldn't argue with the man's logic. Out of all of them, only Lewis himself might be able to stand a chance against another high-level creature showing up, and he didn't fool himself into thinking what happened before wasn't just blind luck and perfect timing.
But with his head still feeling rather tender, he didn't dare attempt to relocate the nearby enemy, figuring they could probably find it without issue anyway, since they were walking towards it. Still, he prepared to use his anti-mana in case it turned out to be another stone spider, even if he didn't believe that to be the case based on the strange frequency he had felt.
It didn't take long for them to lay eyes on the thing anyway.
[Granite minion - lvl 7]
Seeing as it was just another minion, Lewis and the others felt entirely confident in letting Matt face it alone, the others all standing at a distance while Matt approached, all of them prepared to jump in if necessary, but trusting the young mage to handle himself.
When the stone creature noticed Matt, it immediately rolled to aim itself at the mage while gathering mana from its core and forming a stone spike. Since he had nothing else to do, Lewis focused intently on the movement of mana inside the creature as it prepared to fire, his incrementally increased perception giving him an edge in locating its mana core despite it being buried within layers of rock.
The creature fired its projectile at Matt, who simply summoned his barrier to intercept it. As he strolled closer, his movements oozing with confidence, he continued to channel more mana into the staff at a low but steady rate, not even reacting to the creature's attempt to fire stone shards at him. Then again, the thing was hardly a threat to him; it didn't even move as it charged up another shot.
This time, however, Lewis noticed a small dimming of its core as it conjured another stone spike, its energies being used up to power the spell.
Is it using its own life force to attack? It must have a strict limit to how much mana it can utilize; otherwise, it would run itself dry and die.
But before it would ever get the chance to use up all the mana in its core, Matt leveled his staff, having stopped channeling his mana. Lewis noticed a tiny blip of mana entering the spell stone, but unlike the rest of Matt's mana, this wasn't converted into fire mana; instead, it passed through unchanged, marking the start of Matt's counterattack. A large inferno exploded forth and engulfed the spherical rock in its blaze, the air warping from the intense heat.
Lewis was shocked at the power being unleashed; the temperature was more than enough to burn the stone creature, its body blackening and cracking as the intense heat and flames tore it apart, the creature not even making a sound as it was cooked alive, the second stone spike it had been conjuring never having the chance to be fired as the wall of flames cut off after a couple seconds, the spell stone still glowing with fire mana, but the smile on Matt's face and his distant gaze told Lewis that he had received the kill notification.
"Well, damn. I'm glad you didn't unleash that when around us." Jonny said, whistling at the scene.
Before them, the brittle and blackened stone pieces lay, Matt hopping over to the smoking remains as he peered down, wincing at the heat as he no doubt searched for the mana stone, his face suddenly becoming worried as he glanced back at them.
Lewis smiled despite himself. It seemed he wasn't the only one who didn't have a way to extract their mana stone after killing it; his own loot was still somewhere within the large, melted rubble of the spider creature, if it had survived at all.
Focusing on the mess, Lewis pushed his mana detection to locate any mana sources within the partially melted rock, and to his surprise, it seemed the creature's core was indeed intact. He had assumed that it would have been destroyed along with the minion, the first core he had gotten having also crumbled into pieces, but perhaps that was rather the result of his anti-mana instead of a large attack like Matt's.
"Don't worry, the core's still intact; I'm just not sure if you can get to it from within all that mess," Lewis said.
"Don't worry, I got this. My hammers are already pretty broken as it is, so I'll see if I can't route out your loot." Patch said, much to Matt's relief, as he stepped towards the smoking rocks with his bent hammer and started to push pieces of the still-hot fragments out of the way.
Lewis helped by instructing him on where the core was located, being the only person with the skill to perceive it. When Patch had extracted the small stone, they discovered that it wasn't even warm. Matt being able to pick it up without issue.
"Alright, now that we all got something out of this trip, we should really get back to the other. It's been a few hours, and we have no way of knowing if they are all right." Patch said, and all of them walked back towards the dungeon's entrance.
"Before we leave, do you guys think you could help me extract that Stone Spider's core too?" Lewis asked, smiling brightly as he sensed the much larger core within the cooling pile of stone.