historical

Chapter 188: Downwards Spiral Pt.4

Lake turned away from the guys the guild had sent to investigate the stairs and said. "Alright Grendia get the undead moving again." Now that they had handed the stairs over to the guild they had to deliver the undead to someone who could handle it and then they would be done for the day.

Well his team would, he needed to talk to Masters and try to get him to let him help more in the final hours. Lake had become very curious about what was going on here in the Metal Domain and he wanted to find out what was happening more than his need to leave. In his mind when he had made his plan to run away a day early he had pictured the city just exploding and instantly killing everyone.

That was unlikely to be the case and he would probably be able to run no matter what happened if he was to use his full speed. Stepping onto the freight elevator Lake said. "Are you guys done for the day after this?" Lake realized he had been making his plans based on what he expected the others to do and they might want to push it tonight since they were starting to run out of time.

"That's what I plan to do unless Masters has plans for us. Either way I'm sure we won't get much sleep." Lake nodded and could tell the others were probably thinking something close to what Grendia had said so he didn't need to worry about changing his plan. "Bang." Lake looked up just in time to feel the elevator they were standing on start to fall.

"Fuck." Lake didn't know who had cursed but they had picked the appropriate word for the situation. Something had happened to the elevator so Lake started to charge up Wind mana so he could fly away before they crashed to the bottom of the shaft. That being said he was pretty sure they had a while before that happened so he was going to try and save the people on the elevator.

It would look bad for him if his whole team was wiped out in some freak accident when they were what was supposed to build his trustworthiness so that Masters could trust he wasn't some spy. "Grendia, can you stop us with earth control?" Lake looked back to where Grendia had been standing before the elevator started to fall to see she was already trying to do what he had said.

She was slowly walking towards the stone wall but she was having a hard time because their speed had gotten to the point that they were starting to lift off of the elevator floor making it hard to use your feet to move. Lake was ready to use Fly though so he used it and flew over to Grendia to move her to the wall.

Lake watched Grendia place her hands on the stone wall and a second later the elevator started to screech to a stop. Once they had fully stopped Lake set Grendia down and saw the state of her hands when he did. It seemed the friction of placing her hands on the wall as they fell at full speed had caused her hands to be worn down to the bone.

He was happy he had seen it because she wasn't making any noises one could take as her being hurt. "Do you want me to get a potion out of your bag for you?" Lake looked behind him to see the state of the other while he asked Grendia if she wanted him to use his intact hands to dig through her bag for her.

The only one who seemed vaguely injured was Julie but Freed was already dealing with it with his Life magic. "No point in wasting a potion on this, I'll wait for Freed." Lake shrugged, he guessed people who didn't work for the Alchemist guild were used to being frugal on potions.

Lake started to look around to see how far up the closest opening they could use to get out of the shaft was. They had passed a few as they were falling down the elevator shaft so he knew they couldn't be too far but he changed his mind when he thought about them all having to climb out.

"Grendia, could you lift the platform up there using the surrounding stone?" Lake knew he had been using Grendia heavily today but she didn't seem to have any trouble doing any of the things he had asked of her yet so he didn't see a problem. "Yes." Lake nodded and walked over to the undead statues they had been taking up to the surface.

He had noticed the formation guy looking at them and wanted to know if everything was alright. "Is it ok?" The formation guy wasn't done yet so Lake gave him time to answer. "It's fine." Lake was about to walk away but he was getting tired of calling this guy the formation guy so he asked. "What's your name by the way?"

...

Donny hadn't been expecting this question at this time so he ended up just saying his actual name without much thought other than he couldn't say what most people knew him by. "I'm Donald." This was his birth name but no one called him this because his dad liked to call him Donny so everyone called him Donny.

"Donald huh, so what's her name?" Donny wished he knew but all he could say was. "I'm not sure she's not big on talking." Lake seemed to not care that much when he said this and Donny was happy he didn't have to explain how they were together without even learning each other's names.

"So what do you think happened?" Donny had noticed Lake seemed to be in charge of this group or at least seemed to be the one making the plans. "It's either retribution for what we did to their stairs, or they had always planned to knock out the elevators to make it harder for us to get around today."

Donny thought this sounded reasonable and said. "If it's the second thing it means they want to separate the surface from the underground for some reason." Donny could tell Lake was thinking about what he had just said and felt he had said something smart until Lake said. 'Or they want us to think that way."

As soon as Lake said this Donny remembered you should never think in such a simple way in a war. There were constantly multiple levels of things going on at a time and you could never truly know if you were on the right trail. As he was thinking, Donny felt the Elevator start to rise again and heard the dwarf Grendia say. "Should I just bring us all the way to the top?"

...

Lake felt like that would be for the best if she was able to pull it off so he said. "If you feel like it." He would leave it up to her because she was the one doing it. Their pace was slow but they were able to get to the top eventually and saw a bunch of people around the elevators freaking out. It was clear all the elevators were out and the damage was bad from the smoking piles of metal that had been pulled out of some of the elevator shafts.

Lake was sure they would be able to get some form of rudimentary pulley system set up that would work until they had the time to fix them for real but he doubted the new crappy elevators would work as well as the ones that had been destroyed. He wouldn't be surprised if they had a lower limit as well which would mean him and his team would have to travel down separately.

Lake decided to just stop thinking about it and led the charge back to the guild. The inside was in chaos but Lake didn't mind that and wished his team a good night's sleep. After that he used Detector to look for Masters to see he was just in his office. Lake pushed his way through the crowd and knocked on the door.

He didn't get a response but Lake didn't care and just pushed the door open to see Masters with his head down. Lake could understand Masters falling asleep after all the work he had done. He wouldn't be surprised if Masters hadn't taken a break for the past few days with all the stuff he had to do.

It wasn't time to sleep through so Lake walked over to the desk and was about to wake him up when he heard a dripping noise. Looking under the desk Lake saw a pool of red and that was when the smell hit his nose. "Blood! Shit." Lake ripped one of his health potions out of his belt and took the top off.

Leaning Masters back, Lake just started to pour without even trying to look for the wound because he was sure it was small and would be hard to find because this had most likely been an assassination. Once Masters was covered Lake opened his mouth and started to feed the potion to him.

Lake saw Masters take a shallow breath and was about to pat himself on the back when he saw something he hadn't thought about in a while; what seemed to be the effects of poison spreading on Master flesh. "Get in here!" Lake needed help to save Masters now and he needed it fast.