CHAPTER 35 Canyons of Ash and the Halfway Point of the Dungeon

Silas's office smelled of old ink and biting tobacco. I pushed the heavy doors with my boot, entering with a lazy step and hands pushed deep into my coat pockets. Shnee slipped in right behind me, silent and cool.

Instead of playing at pleasantries, I pulled the giant core of the Six-Armed Colossus from my bottomless pouch. I threw it onto the table cluttered with papers. The crash was so powerful that the old merchant almost lost his teeth, and his rusted quill swirled in the air.

"Fourth ten cleanly cleared," I threw with Brazen chill, leaning my shoulder against the frame. I yawned briefly, scratching my neck to relax my muscles after yesterday's slaughter. "Prepare new ledgers, Silas. We are changing the trajectory of our financial plans. Today we strike deeper. We are reaching the halfway point and closing the fiftieth floor."

The old merchant choked on smoke from his pipe, and his bloodshot eyes grew as big as coins. "Holy fuck... The halfway point?! Dave, you will evaporate down there!" he rasped, leaning heavily against the desk.

"Pure time management, Silas. Money does not sleep, and we have no intention of slowing down," I cut off shortly. I shooed away a passing fly with my hand and turned on my heel. "Wait for the delivery."

Barely a quarter of an hour later, the Sapphire Prism sucked us in and spat us out straight into the dark of the deep underground.

The descent to the forty-first floor of the Forgotten Necropolises resembled entering a giant oven. The smooth obsidian architecture of the previous levels ceased to exist. It was replaced by the Canyons of White Ash - dry, claustrophobic crevices full of gray dust that crunched loudly under our boots. The gloom was illuminated only by pale fumes from the floor.

The worst part was not the terrain. I frowned, adjusting my coat collar. The air here was damn thick with flammable gases leaking from cracks in the ground. The stench of sulfur scratched the throat with every breath.

"Stay close, Shnee. This biome is one big minefield," I instructed her calmly, assessing the threat on pure logic. "Zero blind frost, because sudden environmental changes can trigger a chain reaction."

A massive, chitinous grate reached us from behind a steep rock. Monsters emerged from the gray dark. The role of pawns in this biome was played by mutated, blind insects the size of merchant carts. Their thick armors regularly rubbed against protruding boulders, striking showers of sparks. They were completely deprived of sight, but their antennae flawlessly caught the vibrations of our steps on the dust.

Shnee immediately lowered her center of gravity, and her hand rested on the hilt of her crystalline rapier. She was compact and ready to attack, although I saw how carefully she placed her feet.

One of the giant bugs suddenly accelerated, moving towards us with a dull fury. Its heavy leg grated against the rock, throwing a bright spark straight into an exceptionally thick cloud of yellow gas.

I took a soft step forward. A cold spark flashed in my sapphire eyes as the gas surrounding the insect began to rapidly ignite from the struck spark, threatening a massive detonation.

"Poor motion physics," I muttered under my breath, slowly taking my left hand out of my coat pocket.

The spark struck from the chitinous armor hit the yellow gas, and a violent chain reaction immediately ignited in the narrow canyon. The air exploded with a roaring wall of fire that rushed straight at us, carrying a massive push.

Instead of panicking or looking for an escape, I used the simplest physics and pure logic with Brazen chill. I raised my left hand and released precise, volitional telekinesis, forming an absolutely hard cage of force in the air. The invisible wall of pure physical might caught the explosion in a fraction of a second, stopping the billowing fire like a titanium vise. The flames hit my barrier with a hollow thud, but instead of breaking through, they simply smothered themselves, going out with a hiss deprived of oxygen.

I reversed the force vectors. I caught all this destructive might in flight, and then changed the trajectory, reflecting the accumulated push straight into the charging insects.

The sound of the impact was deafening. The wave of force drove the giant insects into the rocky walls of the canyon, mercilessly crushing their thick armors like fragile shells. I shooed away the smoke obscuring my view with my hand and yawned briefly, cracking my stiff neck.

"Pure destruction efficiency," I muttered coldly.

A few beasts in the back survived this attack, disoriented by the sudden hit, but Shnee did not intend to give them time to recover. The white-haired elf took off with a murderous speed, firing up her elite frost. With surgical precision, she finished off the terrified insects, freezing their insides so that her attacks would not generate any new sparks in this flammable biome. Her rapier flickered in the gray gloom, leaving behind only swirling dust and cloudy mana cores, which I immediately gathered into the bottomless pouch.

Our war machine worked flawlessly. We left the crushed armors behind and moved down the canyons at a ruthless pace, swallowing subsequent levels.

We broke through the floors with machine precision. The gray ash under our boots rapidly darkened with every kilometer, turning into hard slag that bit the throat. When we reached the vicinity of the forty-ninth floor, rare magma began to ooze from deep tears in the floor, and the air choked with the heavy stench of burning sulfur.

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I heard a quiet growl. Slender, four-legged silhouettes leaned out from the shadow of rocky overhangs. The Hounds of the Abyss. Mutated beasts formed from burnt meat, glowing slag, and thick smoke.

Before I could move, the dogs jumped to attack. Shnee took off with a predatory grace, aiming the tip of her transparent rapier straight at the neck of the nearest beast. The blade whistled in the air, but instead of the hollow sound of tearing meat, the steel passed through the target like through a void. A fraction of a second before physical contact, the Hound literally blurred into a puff of black smoke, perfectly bypassing the cut. It materialized immediately behind her back, snapping its burning teeth millimeters from her shoulder.

I stopped. I raised my left hand. I grabbed my chin with my hand, and supported my elbow with my right arm. I thought in silence, coldly analyzing the situation while Shnee made a neat dodge from another attack.

On logic, hitting this mutated species with anything point-blank was a complete waste of calories. Since they could disperse their density for a fraction of a second and turn into smoke, any standard directional cut would simply slide off them. Pure logic suggested a drastic change of direction.

"Leave them, Shnee," I threw with a free Brazen chill, taking my hand off my chin. "They have too much slack in their structure. Since they bypass point-blank force, we change the scale of the impact."

Instead of running after them all over the canyon, I simply yawned briefly and shifted my body weight to my right leg. I packed an absurdly powerful charge of pure physical force in my boot and with all my raw might I stomped straight into the solid basalt floor.

I did not aim at any of the dogs. I released the crushing push directly onto the entire plane within a radius of thirty meters around us.

Space quivered. The hard rock immediately collapsed downward with a deafening, seismic roar, crushed from above by a massive, wide-area force. The Hounds of the Abyss tried to instinctively blur into smoke, but the giant, focused push acting on the entire terrain crushed them in a fraction of a second, regardless of what physical form they took at that moment. Their slag bodies and gas shells were literally pressed into the ground, falling apart into flat stains from which there was no return.

Only the smell of sulfur and cloudy, smoking cores hovering in the air remained of them.

"Pure area utilization," I summarized coldly, gathering the loot into the bottomless pouch. I cracked my stiff neck. "We have the fiftieth floor left. Let's go close the halfway point of this dungeon."

After hundreds of meters of hard march, the tunnel widened sharply. We entered a vast chamber that closed off this level. It was the finale of the tenth zone, the fiftieth floor. Three colossal silhouettes slowly emerged from a shallow lake of lava right in the middle of the room with a rumbling crash. The Ash Titans were massive. Their thick armors consisted of solid obsidian connected by veins of liquid magma. Shnee sent a lightning-fast stream of ice at one of them, but her attack simply evaporated before it even touched the heated stone. Ordinary steel would break on their armors like a toothpick.

"Leave them to me," I told the elf, taking the sapphire coat off my shoulders. "These armored tanks require a precise opener.".

I clenched my hands into fists. Dark energy immediately flowed out of my organism. Black ornamentation coated my hands all the way to the forearms, creating a pitch-black layer of Gōtai. The ordinary magic shield of monsters or the hardness of obsidian meant nothing to it. But that was not enough to smash the Titans. I focused my mind. I applied a thick layer of telekinetic force right over the black coating, creating destructive Kinetic Gloves. It was a perfect fusion.

I withdrew the energy after the massacre. The black coatings disappeared. The space around my hands stopped vibrating. Only three powerful essence cores glowing like bonfires remained of them.

"Half of the underground is closed," I said coldly, completing the final loot management and loading the huge blocks of ore into the bulging pouch. "We are going back up.". "It is time to visit old Silas and see how his psyche handles a new dose of reality.".

We walked out of the dark underground straight into the crisp air of Oakhaven. I completely ignored the main tracts and guard patrols. I directed us straight to the hideout on the outskirts. I did not knock. I pushed the heavy doors with my boot, entering the tight office with my hands shoved deep into my coat pockets.

"Nice to see you too, old horse," I answered with a free Brazen chill.

I approached the desk. I dumped the heavy sacks of loot onto the counter with a hollow thud. Leather hit the coins. When I cut the straps, raw mana poured out. Three gigantic cores of the Ash Titans from the fiftieth floor illuminated the whole room. Silas reflexively rested his hands on the desk. His own weaves reacted to this powerful density. His merchant senses scanned the mana instantly.

The merchant scratched his sparse beard. He whistled quietly with clear respect.

"Well, fuck me in the ass, Dave. This is pretty," he muttered, turning one of the titanic cores in his fingers. "It is clean.". "I will pull seventy, maybe ninety gold coins for the whole batch, if I press the alchemists from the northern district hard enough.".

I smiled brazenly, leaning my shoulder against the shelf. "This is starting capital, Silas," I said quietly. Every word of mine weighed a ton. "Half of the underground is officially behind us.". "I intend to clear these ruins to the very bottom.".

An absolute silence fell in the office. Silas's brain literally caught a massive lag. The merchant's eyes widened to the limit. He opened his mouth, closed it, and tried to say something, but he only let out a quiet wheeze. He fell into the chair so heavily that the old backrest cracked loudly.

"To the bottom...?" Silas finally stammered. His voice broke like a maturing boy's. He stared at me, looking for any shadow of a joke on my face, but he found nothing except dark certainty.

The merchant turned pale. He wiped his bald head and abruptly pulled out the bottom drawer of his desk. He pulled out a heavy bottle and three chipped cups from it.

"Dwarven moonshine," he babbled. "Stinks of troll vomit and burns holes in the bladder, but I have to drink.". "I will not process this sober.". He poured the oily liquid with a trembling hand. "To this suicidal plan of yours, Dave.".

I looked at the offered cup. I pushed it away from me with my finger with a slight smile.

"I will pass," I summarized coldly on pure logic. "I need clean weaves and a clear mind.".

Silas snorted, but he did not manage to comment. Shnee's pale hand slid soundlessly from the shadow. My snow doll, with a face completely devoid of any emotions, grabbed the cup rejected by me. She poured this incredibly strong liquor into herself in one fluid gulp. She put the empty vessel down on the table with a hollow thud. She did not blink. She did not grimace even by a millimeter.

Silas stared at her with a dropped jaw. Slowly, with deep respect in his eyes, he nodded.

"Alright. I withdraw that," the merchant muttered. He downed his own cup. He grimaced powerfully and gasped for air. "Respect for the lady.".

I adjusted the collar of my sapphire coat.

"Valuation the day after tomorrow, Silas," I threw firmly. "And a list of the first debts to buy out.".

I left him with an empty bottle and a reset brain. We went out of the hideout straight into the dark of Oakhaven. I looked at Shnee. She wiped her mouth with a delicate smile. It was time to return to the base. Half of the underground fell under our boots. I intended to treat the whole crew in the Golden Griffin to a party today. This event will load our calories to the brim. It will guarantee us a massive hangover tomorrow morning.