~ CHAPTER 292

Mimi winced once we turned another corner while following the trail the cultists left. She covered her ears with her hands and stumbled slightly before leaning against one of the walls. She was normally so resilient, so seeing something affect her like this was actually quite worrying.

"Are you okay, Mimi?" I asked while reaching out to support her.

Mimi shook her head. "That noise... it sounds like screaming. It's been getting worse since we've been following this path... I need to get rid of my ears." Mimi touched the base of her ears, and they melted into the sides of her head. She looked a bit unusual without them, but her comfort was more important than her appearance right now.

"Can you still hear us like that?" I asked.

Mimi nodded and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I can still hear you, but not in the normal way that all of you speak. I'm listening to you like a mimic does now."

"Did it help with the noise?" Bella asked hopefully.

Mimi sighed and nodded. "I can still hear it... but it's not as bad. I think we're getting close to whatever the source of the screaming is."

Lori took a step closer to us as her ears swiveled on her head. "I still don't hear anything, especially not anything I would consider screaming."

"You don't believe me?" Mimi asked sadly.

Lori turned toward Mimi. "Of course I believe you. You're an honest girl, and you wouldn't try to play such a dangerous prank on us here. I was just telling you that I'm not able to confirm it."

I turned and looked down the hallway that continued deeper into the maze. We had been walking through the dungeon for over an hour now. The demons have been coming from only one direction, and none of them had been much challenge, usually only coming one at a time. Compared to the fights we had on the way here and on the city walls, these ones have all been easy. So much so that we started letting our secondary team handle all the fights. The progress toward their levels wouldn't be as good as if they were alone, but getting actual experience fighting together would help the growth of the lower-level members of our team more than sparring would.

Of the secondary team, only Lori was still in perfect fighting shape. Kal'daeryn was still adjusting to her new body and Sibyl had been out of practice until recently. Raya and Nelly practically have no experience between the two of them, so they were gaining the most from this delve, but it was helpful for all of them to fight as a team. Lori was holding back a lot to give the others more practice, but she was forced to step in a few times to make sure everyone was safe in their fights. Of all of them, Raya was the one who needed practice the most. Her magic had improved significantly, but her situational awareness was poor, which could be deadly in a dungeon like this. We would have to put in some extra lessons into that the next time we had a free moment, but right now she was able to lean on the succubus bond.

Torien returned to the intersection where we had been resting. "We're close to something big. There's a bright light coming through one of the doors. It's blinding. From the look of it, it's going to be difficult to fight in a room like that."

"It might be better for us to handle the next room then," Silva added.

Torien agreed and turned to me. "What do you want to do?"

"I think I have something that can help, but I've never used the spell in combat before. With everything happening, I haven't had much opportunity to experiment with it," I said.

"A spell?" Morrigan asked curiously.

I cast [Light Siphon] and the nearby fireflies immediately dimmed. A small black spot appeared that seemed to suck up all the nearby light. Its base setting nearly wiped out all the light cast by my [Fireflies] spell, and it almost ended the spell early without any of my input. Controlling the amount of Magic Force that went to it, I was able to lessen its effect on my other spell, and the light returned.

Morrigan stared intently at the spell. "Is that black spot dangerous?" she asked.

"I don't think so," I replied. "I wouldn't try sticking your hand into it, but the description doesn't say anything about that. I pulled up a [Light Ward] and wrote out the description on a transparent blue pane of light before pushing it over to her.

[Light Siphon - Light Magic Spell]

Create a ball of light that absorbs the light nearby. The collected light can then be redirected into another light spell, released, or absorbed as mana. Strength of this effect is affected by Magic Force. Conversion rate of light into a different spell or when converted into mana is affected by Magic Control.

Morrigan nodded. "From the wording, I doubt the actual visible spot is dangerous then. Can you convert the light it absorbs into ambient mana, or do you need to use it to power a spell? How does 'releasing' the mana work?"

"Mori, I don't think we have the time to play around with magic right now," Torien said in exasperation.

I shook my head. "No, those are valid questions. If the next room is as bright as you say, knowing what we can do with the mana will be important."

"Just don't let her draw you into too many experiments. We don't have all the time in the world down here... and Mimi isn't looking all that great," Torien said.

I looked over at Mimi, who was leaning against the wall with her eyes closed, holding her head. When she heard her name, she looked up with a bit of a tired expression. "I'm alright, the noise is just getting to me. I'll be okay to fight when we get there." The usual enthusiasm in her voice was gone, which was almost more worrying than how she was acting.

"Would you rather turn into a choker again? You don't have to walk if you don't want to," I asked.

Mimi shook her head. "No, I want to fight. I'll be better off when we get moving again. It's the waiting around that's bothering me."

I turned to Bella, who nodded. "Mimi knows her limits better than we do. If she thinks she's better off fighting, I think we should trust her," Bella said.

I looked back at the tiny distortion of light above my palm. "We'd better test it quickly, then." I absorbed the light from my fireflies, restraining myself just enough not to collapse the spell, and released the mana out around me.

"Ambient light mana. Not too surprising," Morrigan noted. "Can you try converting it to fire mana?"

This time, instead of letting the mana just leak out, I started to use it to cast [Flame Imbue], but released the spell after the conversion step before the actual manifestation step. Fire aspect mana filtered into the room around me.

"I can see it, that's not bad. The conversion is better than I had hoped, but worse than I had dreamed," Morrigan said with a laugh. "We should test this in the sunlight to see how much ambient mana you could give me with it later," Morrigan said happily.

I nodded. "For now, I hope it will mitigate the light that Torien was talking about."

"Is everyone ready then?" Torien asked.

There was a round of nods before all of us carefully continued down the hall around the marked traps. The moment we turned and faced the door Torien was talking about, we instantly recognized it. All of the seams in the door were blasting out blinding white light that lit the entire room, despite only bleeding through the cracks. I held out the light siphon spell and it quickly gobbled up the light. I had to quickly switch it off of absorption mode and start releasing fire mana, or else I would end up overstuffed with it. I'm not sure I would want to find out what that did. The light visibly dimmed and it was no longer hurting our eyes.

"Uh oh, this could be tricky," Morrigan said worriedly. Flickers of fire began to manifest and float around her staff. "The light from your siphon is converting faster than I would have expected. It could be really bad if the room fills with too much fire aspect mana. That could lead to unexpected wild magic. I might need help to use up all of this fire mana."

Raya's ears suddenly went back. "Morrigan! I'm not that good at wildcasting yet! What if I mess up?"

Morrigan shook her head. "There will be more than enough mana around that it won't matter. Just take as much mana as you need. Inefficiency here will only help us burn through the excess mana. Only rely on normal casting for your illusion magic."

"What about my foxfire?" Raya asked.

"Unless you can convert the ambient mana into your foxfire, I'd rather you use up the ambient fire mana instead. I can already tell there's going to be a lot, maybe more than I can feasibly use on my own."

"Alright, I'll do my best," Raya promised.

"Does that mean we're ready to go?" Mimi asked while rubbing her temples.

I looked at everyone. We looked ready, but I hesitated anyway. "Are you sure you're going to be okay?" I asked her.

Mimi looked at me with an annoyed look. "Let's just go. I want to go to wherever the screaming is coming from and make it stop," she grumbled.

I came up to the door so that I would be the first one through. I would need to use the light siphon first so we would have a chance to see in this next room. "Okay, let's do this then," I said confidently.

Taking my cue, Silva opened the door for me, and I stepped forward, pulling as much of the light into my little black spot as I could. My [Fireflies] spell instantly broke, but that was fine. As the room began to dim and the spell swelled with mana, I began to release it as ambient fire mana. After only a few moments, the room had dimmed to a still bright, but no longer eye-searing brightness, and I could finally see what was happening in there.

I stepped through the arched door with my friends and fended off an attack from one of the demons in the front. The shadow horror swung at me, but I was able to easily parry the attack away and imbue my sword with ambient fire mana before slashing back at the demon. The intensity of the ambient fire mana made the wild cast [Flame Imbue] even more potent than it normally would be, and I bisected the demon easily with a single blow. Once it was out of my way, I could quickly get a better look at the room while my friends followed me in.

There were several demons here, but their presence was the least of our worries. In the center of the room was a massive ritual circle with the corpses of ritually sacrificed cultists surrounding the nine-pointed star inside the circle. The interior of the star was the source of the intense bright light that was bleeding into the room. It looked like a distorted tear in space that opened into a blinding abyss below us. Demons were crawling up the sheer walls of the abyss, visible only as dark specs that drew closer with every moment.

Morrigan was quick to pull the ambient fire mana and cast magic from it. The fire mana was abundant and filling the room quickly as my [Light Siphon] spat out intense amounts of magic that only grew denser by the moment. Armor of fire, far more intense than a regular cast of it, sprang up around all of us as all of our weapons began to glow with a freshly wild cast [Flame Imbue]. Walls of fire sprung up in the room, blocking off the demons already here and lighting them on fire. Balls of fire began to appear in the air above the gash in the dungeon floor and rocketed down into the hole to indiscriminately hit anything trying to climb its way up.

"We have to close that!" Mimi yelled out in pain. "It's hurting the dungeon! The dungeon is screaming!" she cried.

My eyes shifted into the true eyes of a succubus so that I could better perceive the magic that was flowing in the room. The room was cloudy with all of the ambient mana and magic pouring through the tear in the floor, but I was able to begin tracing the working of the ritual. Ongoing rituals like this were tricky. It would be akin to disarming a bomb. I couldn't just disturb the ritual if I wanted it to cleanly turn it off. Being careless here could have all kinds of effects, and I'd rather not accidentally explode because I was too hasty.

"Something big is coming!" Morrigan cried out.

I tore my eyes away from the lines of mana I was following to see two giant clawed hands grab the edge of the tear and begin to haul its body up. The thing was so large it didn't look like it would be able to make it out of the dungeon, but I doubted that was even its intention.

The demon had smooth and shiny red skin. Unlike most of the demons I saw, it wasn't repugnant. Instead, it looked almost beautiful, like a graceful exotic creature. Its broad elongated head curved into two sharp horns that poked out to the sides of its giant face. Large eyes with glowing red irises stared right at me as its mouth widened into a sharp dangerous grin that looked too large for its face.

"Kill it!" Mimi cried.

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