89
1030 Words
Liz hadn’t moved from her spot when Matt removed the cornucopia.
Looking at her, he asked, “What’s wrong, Liz?”
She shook her head, opened her mouth then closed it before raising a finger.
“I. Um. I think I know what that is.” Liz licked her lips before swallowing.
Matt looked at the apple he had bitten into and asked, “Is it dangerous?”
Liz slowly shook her head. “No. More stupid. We saw the Fishman bringing out a horn and scaring away the octopodes.”
When she said nothing else, Matt nodded, but Susanne asked, “So?”
Liz pointed at the cornucopia. “That’s a cornucopia.”
Aster finally gave up after the silence stretched as both sides waited for the other. “I don’t get it. Am I supposed to get it?”
She looked from Matt to Susanne, but both of them were in the same boat as her.
Liz finally sighed. “I think the ruin pulled a fast one on us. What does the word cornucopia mean? Anyone?”
Matt wracked his memory before realization hit him. “It means horn of plenty. Horn. The mural on the wall had the fishmen raising a cornucopia over its head, not an animal horn.”
He paused as that sunk in for everyone else. “That’s so dumb, though. How can that be right? The magic item that fended off the Fishmen’s controllers, the octopodes, was a cornucopia. A horn of plenty. That makes fruit. What the f**k?”
Aster was even more aghast. “Is that what the pirate lady was talking about? The prize above all? A cornucopia that makes fresh fruit? I like smoothies as much as the next fox, but this feels like a scam.”
Susanne rummaged through the treasure chest before asking, “Who has the compass? Check it.”
Matt withdrew it from his armor before sighing at the sight.
The compass pointed directly at the cornucopia.
He moved around the room, but it pointed at the stupid item no matter where he went.
That discovery pretty much ruined any of the goodwill and excitement they were feeling for the ruin and its ‘wealth beyond their imagination’, the treasure chest had promised them.
They had fought their way through an ocean that wouldn’t let them fall into the water and sailed through a storm with hundred-foot waves, and landed on an island that sank underwater. All of that for a cornucopia that made fresh fruit.
In silence, they fought their way up through the floors until they reached the final encounter without saying a word. All the items and skills the fishmen dropped tasted like ash to them despite some valuable drops among them.
It just felt so pointless.
On the top floor, they found a throne room that looked out over all the sea floor in a magnificent display.
Or it would have been, if there hadn’t been two platoons of guards standing in front of the throne, where a Fishman sat with an octopus on her head like a crown.
Sending the elephant in first, Matt and Susanne followed it up, lashing out at the formation of guards.
At the final showdown, none of them held back, but the Fishman on the throne never moved or raised a finger to help the fight.
Matt sidestepped one thrust and spell and activated his gravity gauntlets, pulling everything in the room toward him for an instant.
Spells, weapons, fishmen, all of them flew at him, but he flexed his Concept and pushed.
Pushed at them and at the world itself.
The sudden change in direction caused the air to crack as he enforced his own will.
Matt felt drained at the expenditure but grinned as half the Fishman writhed on the ground with broken bones and other injuries.
Susanne, who had been ready for the attack, drove her main weapon manifestation into the stone floor to anchor herself, while her second sword flickered to life and cut apart any of the fishmen who flew past her.
Seeing her guards dead or on their way to death’s domain, the Fishman on the throne raised a hand and pointed. Not at them or the sky, but somewhere in between.
Matt’s anti-possession enchantment stopped draining mana and started pulling on his Genesis Energy reserves.
A swipe of his sword took the monster’s limb that was trying to possess him off in a spray of blood, but he was too slow to stop the octopus from grabbing the bodies that surrounded him.
He tried to cut the tentacles reaching down, but a possessed arm blocked the attack.
Not wanting to get surrounded, Matt used his Concept’s repelling ability and forced a way through the tentacles. The maneuver wasn’t without cost, as the burning pain from his foot indicated.
Susanne and Liz were launching attacks at the octopodes surrounding the bodies, but it did nothing as [Water Bubble]s appeared around the mollusks, and each one brought a single body close to their heads.
The once dead guards started to jerk as their bones realigned and snapped back together.
Matt cast [Hail] to give Aster some ice to work with and rushed forward, drinking another bottle of Liz’s potions. Stacking potions meant drawbacks when they wore off, but that was okay if they broke even on this fight.
Susanne chopped down with her blade empowered with a [Wind Cutter] bolstered by [Hypersonic Edge]. Her attack cut through one of the octopodes’ [Water Bubble] shield but failed to kill the octopus before it had its possessed Fishmen reform the obstruction.
An arm of ice reached up and grabbed one of the octopodes and its water shield, dragging it to the ground and freezing it solid.
The rush of Genesis Energy that flowed out of the pile of ice told them everything they needed to know.
Liz called out as she blocked a volley of spells with a wall of blood, “Susanne, take out the leader! Matt, use it!”
Matt, who was blocking an attack that cut down on him, jumped into the air and unleashed [Cracked Mana Spear].
- Writer
