My Servant System

"By the..! The longer we're here the stronger this damn storm gets! What is going on?!"

Anput's complaint fell on deaf ears as we continued to push through the sandstorm, Draka and I pouring out so much mana that we had been forced to drain a potion each just to keep ourselves from passing out - not even from the mana drain itself, but the tax it demanded of our bodies alongside the march.

Time losing meaning had become far too frequent in these last few weeks for me to be unaccustomed to it, but even then I simply had no idea if we had only been marching for a couple of minutes or if it had been an hour; either was terrible if I was being completely honest.

The amount of debris being picked up by the storm had only continued to grow as time moved forwards, and now it wasn't only quartz being whipped through the air at who knows what speed - now we were getting hit with the dismembered corpses of various monsters alongside all of the parts that should have been attached to them.

Arms, wings, heads, bones and chunks of flesh to name a few all slammed into the crystalline barrier of Ice Mana, splattering against our protection and smearing a paste of organic mass wherever they landed, with the bones and talons always leaving cracks that required immediate repair.

The fact that those parts survived being transported here amongst hundreds of thousand if not millions of grains of quartz likely had Anput salivating a little, at least if she still had the ability to divert some of her brain towards something like creating armor and weapons.

Our first real encounter inside of the Labyrinthian wasn't even with a monster or a group of them, but instead with the land itself, which... was likely fitting, considering everything we had heard, and yet at the same time it was raising even more questions for me about what had earned this place its reputation.

Just like Anput though I didn't have much brain power to divert towards this fascinating string of questions that likely had no answers I would like, so I focused on my part of the barrier and continued to protect us as we marched through this desert of white.

The monsters that had found us from the inhospitable skies above swiftly met their fates at the sharp end of the spikes Lilith summoned from the ground, no amount of metallic feathers, overlapping chitin scales and thick, roughened hide providing enough defensive prowess to block the wonderful mixture of gravity and power that was tied to those spikes.

If they did happen to live - only because of those spikes missing their vitals by inches due to a last second adjustment - they were silenced by the blades of the roaming Caninekin, who were given a task where no glory or achievement could possibly be squeezed out of... only results.

Something that neither of them could find much pleasure in doing, and yet they were both fulfilling their role perfectly as they made it possible to get to the edge of the desert without much issue.

Those monsters that survived tried to release calls to their comrades above the moment they slammed into those spikes, but an efficient chop through their armored necks always silenced them right before they could do just that, and so we were able to only catch the eyes of random groups of these Wind attuned monsters.

We were beyond blessed, truly, to have avoided any Earth attuned monsters since they would have applied pressure to the barrier that Draka and I were maintaining, and any more pressure than just maintaining it would have revealed one of the major flaws in this plan of ours.

Simply maintaining a strong enough barrier that could regenerate quick enough to remain stable was draining all we had in our Cores, and our veins were aflame with the constant streams of mana that was pouring out of our hands.

The nerves were alternating between being doused in grease and lit ablaze before being quenched in liquid nitrogen, our mana attempting to heal and harm us at the same time while the overuse took a more natural route of harming us via attempts to stop us.

It was a battle fought entirely within ourselves to maintain this barrier on its own, but if we had to actually worry about something actively beating on it I don't know if we could manage; at least, I didn't know if I could manage.

In short bursts I could do so much, but this was a marathon that I hadn't properly prepared for and it showed; my arms felt like hell on earth, my head was throbbing hard enough that I believed someone was hammering it for fun, my vision was blinking in and out as those grayish white sheets of sand zipped straight at us...

My legs felt like lead as I dragged them forwards, my body simply hurt, my mind pleaded for this insanity to stop, my spirit demanded I go ahead and break already...

All from just maintaining a barrier that was strong enough to block wind and sand.

Not to block monsters, not to block an attack, but to block the elements themselves...

It was beyond tiring and draining, but it had to be done, so the moment that the white faded away and was replaced by a vibrant purple glow I almost leapt for joy and dropped the barrier instantly, only for my elation to come crashing down as a roar slammed against the barrier just as hard as the winds were.

The transition from quartz desert to what looked like an amethyst jungle was already drastic enough, but now a gigantic tiger with two heads was looming over us like it had been waiting all along for someone to be stupid enough to come here, and now that we were here, well...

It was hungry, obviously, and it might as well just go ahead and eat us now that we were stepping onto its territory.

From one hell to another I just had to smile wryly before doubling my efforts in maintaining the barrier as two separate balls of bluish flame gathered in the maw of the monster before us, realizing we had really only gotten a small taste of what the Labyrinthian had to offer.