[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 240 – Proof

Sam opened his eyes, surprised to find everything intact and nothing trying to kill him. Komachi, tucked in his arm, looked up adoringly at him, as she always did when they were introduced to something new.

“Well,” Sam told her, “we made it.”

She made a strained face.

“...Komachi,” Sam said warningly.

She relaxed. “Nope, still can’t fart.”

He gently bowled her out onto the ground. Meowing, she circled his boots, the badge-sized instruments strapped to her [Bronze Mail +1] glowing with colorful green and white mana.

Taking his clockwork greatsword in hand, Sam surveyed the room they were in. Small and unappointed, it was hardly different from the other brass and stone rooms that he had known. It felt like a lifetime of familiarity.

In front of him was a door with a glowing sigil on it. Approaching it, he recognized the purpose immediately.

“Think we’re going to fight more of those automatons?” Komachi asked eagerly, trotting up to the door alongside him.

“Maybe,” Sam said, placing his hand on the warm, glowing runes. The sigil faded away, and the doors sprang open with a hiss.

The smell was the first thing that assaulted him.

Unlike the lived-in, slightly warm air that banished the ever-present chill that pressed in from outside the ruins, this was bitterly cold as if nothing had ever lived here.

The hallway beyond was as large as the other section of the ruins he was used to, but immediately he could tell this would be different. Even if he hadn’t spotted the pair of brass automatons, he would have heard them a mile away as they clanked and clomped their metal feet against the wrought metal grating that ran down the middle of the floor.

Sam knew within a heartbeat that this thing wasn’t friendly. The brass blades that extended out from its elbows were another giveaway as if he needed any.

Rushing out, Sam tapped his Tin aura for a trickle of power and came at the creature with an overhand slice. He expected it to turn and block the attack, but it never saw it coming.

Sam split the first automaton in two just as the second one was turning around, red glowing eyes on its faceless headpiece pulsed with malicious intent.

With his greatsword slammed into the ground, it would take him precious seconds to lift it and strike at the automaton now making its way toward him.

Luckily, he didn’t have to.

As the automaton sprinted toward Sam with unsettling speed, no doubt thinking that he was vulnerable, Sam pulled out his second greatsword. In another overhand chop, he split the surprised automaton in two as well.

With both swords on the ground, their attacks making a great ringing sound that echoed throughout the hallways, Sam didn’t have to go far to find enemies.

They found him.

The oversized hallway allowed Sam to wield both greatswords with ease. In a normal-sized hall, he’d be at a severe disadvantage. A stark reminder that he really needed to get a sidesword for close quarters where having a massive greatsword was at a disadvantage.

Komachi slunk closer on her belly. He noticed a shadowy effect coating her fur as she used [Stealth]. It was completely at odds with the musical instruments playing all over her armor.

[Haste Mazurka] rapidly began to build up, and with more intensity than ever before.

The buff began to stack. First two stacks, then three, as Komachi continued to support Sam.

Truthfully, he didn’t need the boosted Strength and Vigor from [Heroic Rock] when his colossal greatswords already dealt more damage than these automatons could handle. He was able to make much more use of [Haste Mazurka’s] boost to speed to recover faster and deal more rapid attacks.

Even with one greatsword, Sam’s attacks would have come out as a blur with his recent training and his greatsword-centric skills lifted to E-Class.

The difference in his skills against monsters, rather than a highly proficient opponent like the Empress, was more than he had imagined.

With [Haste Mazurka], Sam cut through the monsters like a hot knife through butter. His colossal greatswords cleaved the creatures two or three at a time as he sprinted down the halls, choosing his course based purely on the density of monsters.

His video game theory proved to be right when he arrived at a cavernous room supported by curious twisting pillars of brass and stone that vaguely reminded him of hydraulic pistons.

At the center of the room was a creature he had not seen before. A floating series of twisting gears and pistons moved of its own accord.

How it stayed aloft was anybody’s guess, but Sam wasn’t about to give it an opening. He wasn’t that cocky. Despite how easily he had bested all the monsters before him, he knew he couldn’t gain Experience here.

If he wasn’t strong enough already, he wouldn’t get stronger. And though his skills would improve, he had a hard time seeing how the challenges set forth would push him to new rarities. These monsters were nothing compared to the power the Empress had used against him.

If I can withstand that, I can do this easily.

Beams of coruscating white light lanced out of several lenses strewn across its floating body, but Sam was already familiar with this sort of attack. His cat sprinted behind his much larger form, musical notes trailing after her paws.

Two greatswords made it easy enough to shield himself and Komachi from the superheated attacks, and Komachi’s songs made getting them into position a simple affair.

Sam fell into the Hydra movement, both greatswords out wide as he performed his favorite modified form of them all, Hydra’s Strike which called for both blades to slice together from separate angles in a great V-shaped attack.

The collection of gears and metal exploded on impact, its lenses shattering and spraying out beams of brilliant light that died a moment later when Sam brought both greatswords down on what remained of its body.

You defeat a [Catastrophe Gear Cluster (Level 50)].

You are unable to gain Experience in a Dead Echo.

Substantial Experience converted into skill growth.

You gain substantial skill growth!

At the center of the room was a familiar sight. A transporter.

Seeing no more enemies to conquer, Sam looted the remains of the monster, searching for anything valuable.

As with the other creatures, there wasn’t really anything. A few [Ancient Gears], a couple of [Dim Cores], but nothing that seemed like a great treasure.

Then again, with his [Inventory] skill so much higher, Sam had a veritable walk-in closet of storage space, so he absent-mindedly tossed everything in.

Komachi poked and prodded at the remains of the gear-like monster. “Dang, you obliterated it. Still some stuff left though.”

“How’s your [Inventory] skill looking, Komachi?” he asked while Komachi looted some junk from the defeated monster.

“Real good,” she said, excitedly shaking her rump. “It’s E-Class now!”

“Hey, mine too!” Sam said as he stepped on top of the portal. “Let’s see what else we can smash up.”

A familiar sphere of light gathered around them. In the blink of an eye, they were on the second floor.

The room looked to be a carbon copy of the previous one they had just left, with the only difference being that one of those tall pole lamps that had granted Sam his Authority brand stood at its center.

There were no monsters that Sam could see.

Still, he kept his swords out and at the ready. “You see anything?” Sam asked.

“Nada,” Komachi replied, stepping lightly around him and investigating the lamp. She pawed it like any cat would a strange object, and the lamp lit up with a brilliant ring of light that expanded out for several feet, then stopped abruptly.

The area immediately around Komachi pulsed, the ring of light narrowed into a beam and streaked off into the gloom.

Sam watched in confusion as the pole stayed dimly lit for a little while, then winked out.

“‘Machi don’t know what happened,” his cat confessed.

“You’re not the only one,” Sam said.

He stepped up to the pole, which immediately began to glow again with a ring of light that lanced out into the darkness.

This time, Sam sheathed one sword, scooped up Komachi like a football, and sprinted after the streak of light.

It moved faster than him, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was meant to follow it. His Bard strummed a harp, building up more [Haste Mazurka] stacks.

There were several walls and twisting passages in the way, but he saw the light a few times pierce through the walls as if they weren’t there and continue its straight path.

A fifth left-turn brought them to a new area, which was par for the course for the ruins, in Sam’s opinion. He had given up trying to make sense of it. The Empress had explained that the ruins crossed through something called sub-space and that was when Sam’s eyes glossed over and the Empress stopped trying to explain.

Even Komachi had pretended to be asleep to skip all that, despite that they all obviously knew she really wasn’t asleep.

This new room had another lamp pole, and it was pulsing with light as if it wanted him to touch it.

So he did.

Touching his hand to the center of the bronzed pole, where the glow was brightest, triggered another ring of light that streaked out through the nearest wall.

Sam waited, watching and wondering if the light would return.

He cursed when the lamp eventually faded completely and would not respond to his or Komachi’s touch. “I hate these kinds of puzzles! Just let me fight something already!”

“We gotta go back to the first one, then try all over again?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Sam told her. “I think we need to touch one, then the other, in sequence.”

“I could go back,” she offered. Her ears flattened as she looked around for any threats. “Doesn’t seem to be anything lurking.”

“We do this together,” Sam told her with finality as he headed back.

They got lost several times. It could have taken them days for all Sam knew to return, but eventually they made it back after far too many infuriating dead ends.

This time, Sam put his other greatsword away and set Komachi onto his shoulder. He got down in a runner’s start and looked over at Komachi. “Ready?”

“Ready!” she cried excitedly.

Sam lifted himself into the starting position as Komachi reached out and batted the pole to start it up.

With [Haste Mazurka] hovering around five stacks, he was already sprinting down the twisting hallways by the time the light streaked through the wall on his left. Sam followed it far faster than before now that he wasn’t wary of threats and made it to the second lamp in record time.

Then the third, fourth, and fifth followed.

On the way to the sixth lamp, however, a horde of monsters appeared. Everything from misshapen lumps of flesh with too many claws and teeth to mechanical monstrosities.

In panicked response to all these monsters, Komachi casted a new Bard song, [Discordant Elegy]. A wave of shivering musical notes passed over the group of monsters, causing some of them to lock up temporarily and others to miss their attacks so badly they hit one another.

Sam ignored the monsters, diving and twisting out of every grasping claw and mechanical blade that tried to get to him. And then he came upon a new monster. One that he couldn’t ignore.

[Alzahan Dreadnought]

It looked like a cross between a semi-truck, a tractor, and a hotrod with arms that ended in whirring drills and hydraulic legs that were too thick for Sam to slide beneath.

So he did the only thing that made sense, given the army of monsters on his tail and the sickening knowledge that if he stayed and fought, the lamps would reset.

Sam surged his Tin aura, flaring it around his armored body at the same time as he gathered mana in his legs and leapt for all he was worth. Not to sail over the dreadnought’s thick body, but straight through it.