Cube of Reversal

With the Cube of Reversal in hand and having made another test using her own poison and another version of the altar that Bob had created, Hera went back to Deakoshara. She was ready to finally start solving the problem in the lake. Not trying to be overly optimistic, but she was feeling really good about the situation. There was a poison rain covering that part of the room, and it stood to reason that by getting rid of a lake of poison, the rain would go back to normal.

Then she could bring a large group of people here to start exploring the room. Everything that they uncovered about the Naga homeland indicated that it was a considerably big place. Hera had spent some time asking questions to Ariadne to get a sense of the actual scale. 

It took her a couple of days, but she eventually reached an answer that Deakoshara was about the size of Portugal, not counting the ocean. Zaxalam only had less than 100 km² and it was already absolutely massive. Even several months after finding the place, there were a lot of areas to discover. Deakoshara, which should have almost 100 thousand km² would take much, much longer to be explored.

Still, right now, Hera was confident she knew exactly where to go. All thanks to her [Treasure Map] which was pinpointing the exact location of the altar, even if it was underwater. Not to mention the map had confirmed how deep it actually was. And it was just about 30 meters or so below the surface of the lake. Talking about underwater things, that wasn't something to worry about.

The Empress even came up with a better way to approach it, even though it would be a bit more dangerous. Once they arrived at the lake, Nimbus took flight, making sure to be just a few meters above the water until they were standing directly on top of their destination. Hera created a very rare javelin in her hand and prepared an attack. Making sure the entire chord was ready and only at her warning, she let the javelin fly downwards, activating both [Grasshopper Throw] and [Weapon Break].

She had tested this before and knew that by using this combination of skills, if she was not too far away from the surface of the water, the attack would pierce through and continue into the lake or ocean. Even more than that, the attack would push the water away due to the mana enveloping the weapon. And at the end, it would cause an explosion that was more than likely to give an even wider area of empty space for her to work with.

The moment the javelin started to break the water, carving a path through the poison lake, Nimbus leaned his beak downwards and dove right after it. Livy was already on the Empress's back in her war axe form, ready to change to her sea serpent shape at a moment's notice. They went down for about 10 meters, following the javelin before the surface tension of the water became too much and it triggered the explosion from Weapon Break.

The blast attempted to push them back, but since the attack was aiming forward, the amount of energy being tossed backwards was not enough to disrupt Nimbus's movement. Just like the Empress was expecting, a large hole appeared on the lake. The hole didn't go down for about 3 more meters before the water started to close in. At that time, she dismissed Nimbus, called Livy, and activated the effects of the set once more.

The water crashed on top of them with a heavy weight, but their attributes were enough to push back against any damage. And Livy, in her sea serpent form, was more than capable of fighting off the water currents that were trying to push them away. After all, the Leviathan could handle even the strongest currents of the bottom of the ocean. This sudden mess was nothing to her.

The moment the water crashed on top of them, the poison started to make itself noticed. And Livy started to struggle with it. But, just like last time, she could handle it for a while, and this time they had started much closer to the destination which would translate into them having more time before the Leviathan couldn't handle it anymore.

In less than a minute, after being swallowed by the water, they had arrived back at the altar. Hera once more called all her blades around the structure and triggered the [Echolocation] skill from Ariadne. It wasn't to gain any more information, just to confirm that the details they were expecting had not changed. Otherwise, the entire plan would have to be remade on the spot.

Thankfully, everything was just as it was before. Meaning that Hera had to remove the southernmost gem from the altar. She quickly swam to that area with Livy's help and used [Blade Accord] to create chains around her waist and wrap them in the altar so the Leviathan wouldn't need to keep pressing down on her to make sure she wouldn't be pulled away by the current.

With that out of the way, the Empress started working on removing the gem. As much as they had studied and made a few test versions to make sure that their plan would work, it didn't mean things were easy. After all, she was going to have to interrupt a spell circle that had been working for the past hundreds, if not thousands, of years. She wasn't even sure of that, too. It was something so powerful that was changing the very essence of the room itself. Even if the change took a while to complete.

After taking a deep breath and making sure once more that she was messing with the correct gem, Hera slowly touched the gem and cast a Mana Reinforcement around it. Using her own Mana to cut the connection that the gem had with the spell circle without making it all break. She slowly expanded her mana around not just the gem but the small pedestal where it was located and then only once there was a large enough area of the altar covered with her Mana, she removed the gem, plugging the hole with the magic coming from her.

That was the most dangerous part, and doing so made both Hera and the Leviathan freeze, staring at the altar in fear of making it explode or something, but nothing happened. As a matter of fact, Hera could feel her spell working as an extension of the altar. She could feel the trickle of Mana coming from the central crystal towards the gem and then moving past to reach its destination.

Satisfied with the result, the Empress reached down and took the Cube of Reversal from her pouch and placed it in the same spot that the previous gem was located. The cube didn't match with the other gems of the altar. Bob could make another one that would be the right size and shape, but it would take him a couple of weeks to get enough materials for that, as he was working on improving his design to make something smaller. And that wasn't something that Hera or Shane wanted to do, since they would waste too much time.

But at least, during all their testing, even if the shape of the cube was not the same as the shape of the gem, she had confirmed that the cube would work just fine. And that's exactly what Hera was expecting to happen. But when dealing with something so ancient, so powerful, and so independent, expecting things to go exactly as planned is the last thing one should do.

The moment she placed the cube, the Mana from the main crystal tried to reach for it. And once that Mana connected to the cube, using it to complete the connection that was previously the gem's responsibility, the entire altar shook as the flow of Mana caused a strange feedback pulling the mana back into the main crystal.

Hera went wide-eyed, trying to figure out a way to get out. She instinctively kicked from the altar and tried to swim up, calling for Livy, but the chain that she had wrapped around her body grabbed her. She quickly dismissed the [Blade Accord] to free herself before grabbing on to the Leviathan as they sped up to the surface.

The entire lake seemed to be shaking due to the reaction of the altar to the Cube of Reversal. And going back to the shore would take too long. So instead, Hera told Livy to swim as fast as she could towards the island in the center of this lake. It was considerably closer, and maybe it would be a safe place for them to wait out until the altar stabilized with its new form.

She thought for a moment about calling Nimbus, but considering the large waves that were splashing around and the fact that Livy, when in the water, was faster than the Sentinel in the air, she decided against it. Nimbus would still be much faster if they were on land, but this wasn't the case.

In just a few moments, they arrived at the central island. Quickly lake jumping out of the water with the Leviathan, Hera ran alongshore towards a higher ground. Only when they were far enough from the ocean level, or in this case the lake level, the two of them stopped to look around from the top of a hill.

They were not running for no reason as the entire lake shook. Not just the area around the altar. However, that specific region was having the strongest vibrations, with what seemed to be ripples coming from below. 

Livy looked around, worried that something was going to pop out or the entire lake was going to just explode and asked, "Is there any chance that the entire lake is the spell circle?"

The Empress scanned the area, seeing the ripples strangely form a pattern on the water. Not that they were actually making up a discernible spell circle, but if one were to squint hard enough, you could say that the ripples were connecting where a spell circle would be if there was one under the lake.

She turned back to Livy. "I never considered that, but if we think about the altar as a single sigil that is placed on a wider circle, it's possible."

Livy took another look at the lake, "Can Nimbus take you out of here?"

Hera was about to say yes when from one of the sides of the island, a massive geyser of poison burst forward reaching hundreds of meters into the air.

"I don't think he can escape that. And if we get hit, then well... fuck." Another geyser exploded from the back of the island.

That explosion wasn't a continuous thing. It was more as if someone was boiling oil and splashed some water inside, or in this case a lot of water as the bursts were massive, sending poison everywhere and on more than one occasion causing Livy and Hera to dodge even though the effects of the poison set were still active.

"What do we do?" Livy asked, but Hera didn't have an answer.

"For now, we try to wait it out. This part of the lake seems to be safe enough with exception of the things that are exploding around us."

"I wouldn't call all this safe," Livy protested.

"It's safer than trying to cross that." Hera pointed at the water again. If Nimbus were to carry them out, he would risk getting hit by the geysers and the explosions all the while they were traveling the sky. At the same time, he would have to keep dodging the poison that kept simply raining down on all of them. And if Livy were to try to take them out, even though she would struggle to fight against the current due to sheer force, of course she would eventually reach the other side and could do so unharmed.

But that is if this was only water. Considering the fact that it was poison, there was a very high likelihood that the poison would hurt her too much before they were able to get to the other side. And it was even possible that she ended up returning to the Legacy before taking them into a safe place.

"Shit," the Leviathan growled just before another geyser exploded from their left, but this time, poison wasn't the only thing that it sent into the air. There was this massive green cube flying into the distance before it landed on the island a few meters behind Hera and Livy.

The two looked at it, not really sure if this was a giant crystal or what, before the cube started to move and roll, acting almost like it was made of jelly.

"Oh fuck," Hera gasped and triggered Observe.

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Poison Gelatin of the Lake - Level 42 - Poison

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"Shit, it had to be one of those," the Empress cursed.

"What is that?" Livy gasped. 

"A type of slime. And the problem is that they take from the environment and become stronger with it. And that thing..." Hera had a glance at the poison, which Livy quickly understood. 

"Lovely. And how do we kill it?" the Leviathan asked.

"Usually they have some sort of crystal or sphere or something inside of them that's their core. Kind of like a command center. You break that, you kill the creature. But some don't have that, so you have to just destroy its entire body. Until it stops regenerating. "

What are the chances that we got lucky, and this is the version that has a core for us to break," Livy asked, but Hera just gave her a sad smile.

"With our luck?"

Livy grimaced and pulled out her war axe, ready to attack. At the same time, Hera said, "Everybody out!"