chapter02 · 055-ep49
Episode 49: Lightning Doesn't Work
Past Floor 131, the air changed again, another notch.
The black water ran deeper. Levee paths were nearly gone — only now and then did a small island of earth show its face above the surface. The rice had gone past withered to a scorched, charred black.
The ceiling hung high, and dim.
And the sky was loud.
Ragged cries — gyah, gyah — came down out of the ceiling's dark. Mixed into the wingbeats, a kasha-kasha scrape of metal on metal.
Heron Knight Difficulty: D (higher)
Armored herons. Five of them, wheeling in a ring near the ceiling.
Gray wings, dull silver armor. The tips of their long beaks gleamed like spearheads.
"Oh — aerial combat."
I raised the bow.
Against an enemy in the sky, the water doesn't matter.
"Skoll, go!"
Skoll barked — wan — and raced up into the sky.
His golden body plunged into the middle of the flock. The ring broke apart; all five herons turned on Skoll at once.
In that opening, I drew the string.
Crackling, the lightning arrow was born. A fine numbness crawled up from my fingertips to my wrist.
The heron closest to Skoll — the base of its wing. The seam where armor met armor.
Loosed.
The lightning arrow drove into the gap in its armor.
The heron convulsed once, wings stopping dead.
Falling.
The falling heron, Skoll caught in midair, whipped it around — and slammed it into another.
Armor crashed on armor — gashan — and two of them dropped into the water together.
"Nice!"
Skoll's tail whipped through the air.
Beyond that tail, one of them climbed high.
Wings folding.
Here it comes.
Its target wasn't Skoll. From dead overhead, it dropped straight at me.
I leapt for the neighboring island.
The beak stabbed into the island I'd just been standing on. Mud sprayed; cold grains spattered my cheek.
The heron wrenched its beak free of the mud. Its silver chest swung toward me.
Close.
Its wings snapping wide and my string reaching full draw — the same instant.
Point-blank — loosed.
The lightning slid into the seam between breastplate and wing, and the heron froze mid-takeoff. Toppled sideways onto the mud with a heavy thud.
That's three.
The last two wouldn't come down anymore. They began circling just under the ceiling, at a height arrows struggle to reach.
They're learning.
But at that height — Skoll can reach them.
The golden wolf kicked off the sky and climbed. Chased round and round, one fled downward.
Into its path, I placed an arrow.
Pale sparks scattered at the base of its wing, and the fourth dropped. Before it could hit the water, Skoll was on it.
The last one Skoll chased up to the ceiling and pinned from above in his jaws.
Golden and silver, tangled together, tumbling down.
Just above the water, Skoll let go. Only the heron slammed into the black water.
Through the rising spray, Skoll howled — awooo.
Sounded a lot like: we won.
"Heh."
Looking up at the golden wolf hanging in the sky, I caught myself smiling.
On the fingertips that had drawn the string, the tingle still lingered.
In aerial combat, the Bow of the Thunderbolt was absurdly strong.
No arrows needed. Draw the string, and lightning is born — as many as you like. Heron armor is hard, but lightning slips in through the gaps and numbs them from the inside.
Skoll drives them in. I shoot.
Floor 133. Floor 135.
Skoll got to where he'd spring clear of the water the instant I drew.
No words needed.
"You're smart."
One stroke, and Skoll snorted — with the face of someone saying: obviously.
Hati, I thought — just a little — was the modest one.
On Floor 137, it came.
Skoll noticed it first.
The golden body ahead of me stopped dead in the air. Ears flat forward, he stared down at the black water.
The surface swayed.
No wind. No herons. And still, only the ripples came drifting our way, slow.
Something long and slender was gliding through the black water.
Long. It crossed from island to island and the tip of its tail still didn't show.
Black Thunder Eel Difficulty: D (higher)
"An eel?"
The head broke the surface — just the head.
Huge. Thick as a person's torso. A black, slime-slick body. And across that surface, pale-blue light raced, prickling.
Jijji — like oil spitting in a pan. The fine hairs on my arms rose on their own.
"Eh — it's wrapped in lightning?"
A bad feeling.
But no way to know without trying.
I drew the string and loosed a lightning arrow.
It drove straight into the eel's head.
Bzzt.
The eel didn't stop.
If anything, the light on its body burned stronger than before.
"It ATE it?!"
It had swallowed the lightning whole.
The eel opened its mouth.
Deep in that mouth, pale-blue light swelled.
"—! Skoll, dodge!"
Lightning vomited out of the eel's mouth.
Far thicker than anything I'd fired.
Skoll kicked off the air and leapt sideways. The lightning grazed past him, struck the ceiling, and burst.
Sparks came rattling down from above. A scorched smell stung my nose, and a crackling went on ringing deep in my ears for a while.
"Lightning doesn't WORK on it?!"
The Bow of the Thunderbolt's natural enemy.
Worse — every shot just made it stronger.
What now.
The eel gave me no time to think.
The black water heaved; the head rose again. This time, it was watching me.
Deep in its mouth, the pale glow swelled.
I leapt for the island beside mine.
Before my feet touched down, lightning fell behind my back. The mud of the island I'd just left hissed and spat steam.
Close.
Skoll dove from the air.
The eel slipped, smooth, beneath the water. Skoll's teeth cracked shut on empty surface.
Skoll snatched his forepaws back. A hair from touching the water — hauled, just in time, back into the sky.
In the water, Skoll can't fight. Bite a lightning-wrapped eel below the surface, and this time Skoll's the one going numb.
The bow — useless. Fire a hundred shots, and all I'm doing is feeding it.
In that case.
Cut it with something that isn't lightning.
I dismissed the bow.
The white-and-gold bow unraveled into grains of light inside my hand. The numbness lingering at my fingertips drained out along with it.
I held out my right hand.
"—No inscription, no meaning — cut, Nameless."
The black katana settled into my hand.
No guard, a slender blade. Light-drinking steel that stayed black even bathed in the pale-blue glow.
The problem: reach.
The eel's in the water. I'm on an island. It wasn't coming out where a katana could touch it.
"Skoll — drag it out of the water!"
Skoll glanced over.
Looked at the black katana in my hand, then back at my face.
A face that said: understood.
Skoll raced low, skimming the surface. Cut ahead of the eel's line and slapped the water with a forepaw. Splash — spray flew.
Startled, the eel's head came up.
Skoll's teeth hit the scruff of its neck in the same breath.
The lightning on the eel's body flowed into him. Skoll cried out — kyahn!
But he didn't let go.
Every hair on end, he kicked off the sky. One step. Two. Dragging that heavy body up out of the water.
"Skoll...!"
The eel came fully out of the water.
In midair, the eel thrashed. Lightning burst and scattered along its skin. The long tail lashed like a whip and caught Skoll's flank.
The golden body listed in the air.
Even so, the fangs didn't come loose.
Eel clamped in his jaws, Skoll looked at me with those orange eyes alone.
Hurry, they said.
I ran for the edge of the island.
Skoll came down, eel hanging. The thrashing torso swung down over my head.
Close. Every time the pale light burst, the skin of my cheeks prickled.
Any closer, and I might go numb too.
Didn't care.
I kicked off the island's edge and jumped.
The black, slime-slick torso filled my vision. Thick as a person's body, pale-blue light crawling all over it.
From below — I cut upward.
The blade skated on the slime, starting to slip.
I rolled my wrist and set the edge back on line.
It bit.
The black blade ran straight through the black torso.
A needle-prick in the fingers on the hilt. That was all.
I landed on the mud island.
Behind me, the sizzling cut off mid-sound.
I turned.
The light was dying out of the eel's body, in order from the cut. Toward the head. Toward the tail. Like lamps going out one at a time, the pale-blue glow receded.
One last spark leapt — a single crack.
The tail half dropped into the black water with one heavy, murky plunk.
The half left in Skoll's jaws had stopped moving too.
Skoll flung the eel's head out into the black water.
Then he wobbled down out of the air and flopped onto a small mud island.
His golden coat stood off him in one great poof.
His whole body, it seemed, was still prickling.
"Skoll, you okay?!"
I ran over and crouched down.
Skoll snorted through his nose.
Meaning: I'm fine. But his forelegs were still trembling, just slightly.
"Thank you. You didn't let go — that's the only reason we won."
Slowly, I stroked the bristling fur.
Every stroke, static jumped — pachi, pachi.
"Ow."
Skoll looked a tiny bit sorry.
But his tail was wagging.
The eel's magic core glowed pale blue.
Skoll fished it out of the water and brought it to me.
Set in my palm, the core still gave off a faint, tingling bite.
I dismissed Nameless and called the bow back. For herons in the sky, it was still the one.
Floor 138. Floor 140.
The Black Thunder Eel came out twice more.
From the second one on, the plan was settled from the start. Surface sways — dismiss the bow, call Nameless. Skoll drags it out of the water, I cut. Done — the bow again.
By the third, Skoll had started glancing at me before biting in.
Like he was checking: swapped over?
"Any time!"
I gave the black katana a light swing.
Skoll leapt at the eel.
Just meet his eyes, and we knew what came next.
Hard to believe he was the same wolf who'd turned his back and sulked at me this morning.
Floor 142.
Floor 145.
Halfway down a stairway, I stopped.
Lv: 157
Seven since Floor 126.
Slower than Golden Week. But climbing — steadily.
The clock said three in the afternoon.
Five floors to go.
From the bottom of the stairs came a low sound.
Gohh, gohh —
like water swirling into one great whirlpool.
Skoll's ears pricked straight up. He growled, low.
The golden fur bristled, just a little, again.
The deepest zone — the one the Guild encyclopedia says only: "unconfirmed."
We could already hear it, from this side of it.
"Skoll."
Skoll looked up at my face.
I set my grip, once more, on the bow of white and gold.
"Let's go."
Skoll barked — wan — just once.
It wasn't a scared bark.
It was the bark of someone who couldn't wait.
Mine was probably the same face.