Chapter 124 – The Slime of the Ascent.

The journey inside the reinforced wooden cabin on the back of the Abyssal Worm was anything but comfortable.

In the first ten minutes of vertical ascent, Diana realized that thirty silver coins bought the secrecy of a clandestine route, but not a single ounce of hygiene.

The compartment jolted violently with every meter of rock the creature's diamond jaws ground through in the darkness. The oak plank floor vibrated so fiercely that Diana had to keep both hands clamped to the iron railing bolted to the wall to keep from being hurled against the ceiling.

To make matters worse, the giant annelid's carapace secreted a thick, yellowish slime reeking intolerably of rotten fish oil, essential for lubricating the thirty-meter body's passage through the cramped shale tunnel. The sludge oozed through the seams of the cabin floor, gathering in slick puddles that smelled like heated mineral sewage.

Diana kept her black leather coat tightly fastened up to her chin, protecting the letters from Rhea and the crew inside her inner chest pocket.

—Thirty silver coins to travel inside a wooden box full of worm snot...

The System's voice echoed in her mind in a tone of pure black-gold mockery.

—The luxury of demonic royalty is a beautiful sight to behold, Diana.

“Shut up and warn me if the roof structure of this box starts giving out,” Diana replied in thought, wiping away a drop of oily condensation running down near her right horn.

***

The first serious problem struck in the twelfth hour of ascent.

The worm struck a pocket of compressed sulfurous gas that was missing from Gurn's navigational charts.

Friction between the rotating jaws and the rock produced sparks that ignited the gas pocket. A yellow, acrid smoke began pouring through the cabin roof's ventilation slits with a shrill hiss. The liquid dripping from the cracks was not water. It was mineral acid that began charring the wooden ceiling beams and corroding the door's iron hinges into suffocating fumes.

Diana did not wait for the timber to cave in above her head.

Backed by 201 Intelligence, she thrust her open left hand straight toward the ceiling slits.

Arcane Ice Lance!

She did not fire a pointed spike outward. Instead, she dispersed her mana into a thick blanket of dense frost that coated every oak beam from the inside. The ice instantly froze the mineral acid, sealing the gas leaks and cooling the iron fittings before the cabin's structure could tear apart mid-ascent.

The air inside the box turned freezing, but the timber stopped scorching.

***

Six hours later, when Diana's body was already bruised from being thrown against the planks, a muffled thud struck the worm's belly.

The thirty-meter creature let out a deep, guttural groan that tipped the entire cabin at a crooked forty-five-degree angle.

Through the copper speaking tube mounted beside the door, Master Gurn's raspy, panicked voice crackled with static:

“We have trouble out here, girl! A nest of Level 42 Rock Leeches has latched onto the folds of the beast's underbelly! They're draining the worm's mana! If the creature loses momentum and stops digging, we slide eight hundred meters right back to the bottom of the pit!”

Diana unlatched the small reinforced iron hatch on the cabin's side, shoving the metal door open.

The wind of dust and gravel lashed her face with force.

Looking down into the darkness of the narrow vertical tunnel, Diana engaged her thermal vision pupils and spotted three gray leeches two meters long clamped into the giant worm's soft flesh, draining the annelid's magical sap.

Diana could not loose ice impact spells or electrical storms out there without risking cracking the carapace of the very worm carrying her or triggering a cave-in inside the tight shaft.

She needed a surgical incision of pinpoint heat.

Diana poked her head out through the narrow hatch, resting the base of her obsidian horns against the iron rim of the opening.

She focused one hundred points of mana into the two sharp tips.

OBSIDIAN HORNS' IGNEOUS FOCUS!

PZZZZT!

The fine beam of white fire lanced from the tips of the circlet straight down, piercing the gloom of the shaft like a needle of incandescent light.

Diana moved her head with millimeter precision, sweeping the thermal beam straight across the suckers of the three leeches. The concentrated heat disintegrated the parasites' mouths and reduced their bodies to ash without grazing the worm's thick chitin carapace.

The remains of the parasites plummeted into the shaft's void.

The worm vented a sigh of relief through its earthen gills, regained the rotation of its diamond jaws, and resumed chewing upward through the stone at an accelerated pace.

Diana shut the iron hatch, wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her glove, and locked the deadbolts with an irritated sigh.

The voyage was filthy, deafening, and dangerous. But it was working.

***

In the twenty-fourth hour of continuous ascent, the grinding of rock ceased abruptly.

The worm's diamond jaws chewed through a layer of ancient masonry bricks and rusted iron grates, breaking into an abandoned underground cistern deep within the southern sewers of the Ivory Citadel.

The creature settled its body into the cold mud of the decommissioned canal.

The cabin's iron door was pried open from the outside with a heavy wrench. Master Gurn appeared in the opening, wiping grease from his face with a dirty rag:

“We made it in one piece, girl. The old sewers of the south sector are two hundred meters up that rusted iron ladder. You're in the Second Circle.”

Diana climbed down from the cabin atop the monster's back.

Her boots sank into the cold cistern mud. The Commander was coated in a fine layer of stone dust, dry acid soot, and worm oil stains along her jacket sleeves.

But she was in one piece.

Diana thanked Gurn with a brief nod and walked along the cistern's stone catwalk to the iron ladder anchored in the wall.

She climbed the twenty metal rungs, shoved the heavy cast-iron manhole cover open with the strength of her arms, and hauled herself to the surface.

Fresh mountain air and the soft purple morning light of the Second Circle struck Diana's face.

She was in a narrow cobblestone alley, a mere three blocks from the Forge District and a ten-minute walk from the gate of the Bastion of Arcane Greed.

Diana took a deep breath of the citadel's clean air, smoothed the black leather coat over her shoulders, and dusted the amethyst circlet on her brow.

The descent had been an accident. The ascent had been a test of survival.

But now, the Commander was back on her home turf.