NOVPUB
Chapter 69: The Inverted Temple (I)
"Shit!" Bran cursed, yanking his axe free.
"Form up!" the dark-armored adventurer barked, his spear already glowing with energy. "Don’t let them scatter us!"
Zayn didn’t hesitate.
He kicked his griffin forward, his sword flaring with golden light as he swung at the nearest creature.
His blade sliced through its wing, severing the bony appendage.
The monster screeched, spiraling wildly before crashing into another one of its kind.
Tobias swung his blade at another, crackling lightning arcing from the blade as it cleaved through bone.
"Keep moving! We don’t want to get stuck in one place!"
More monsters came.
They didn’t fly like normal bats — they twisted and spun erratically, as if the laws of physics barely applied to them.
One shot past Kara, its claws barely missing her as she hurled a massive rock projectile at it, sending it tumbling backward.
Bran roared, swinging his axe at a pair of them trying to flank him.
His blue aura flared as the axe struck true, cleaving one in half.
The other screeched and twisted away, but Kara was already there, driving a sharpened stone into its skull with deadly precision.
Zayn kept his focus.
One of the creatures lunged at him, its skeletal maw opening wide to bite down.
He dodged at the last second, flipping in the air as his griffin adjusted.
He struck upward, his blade piercing straight through the creature’s skull.
As he pulled his sword free, another bat-thing shot toward him.
Before it could reach him, an adventurer on a griffin intercepted it with a brutal spear thrust, sending it reeling.
Despite the chaos, they were holding their own.
But the bats kept coming.
"They’re not stopping!" Kara yelled.
Tobias glanced around, his brow furrowed. "They’re swarming from something! We need to find the source!"
The dark-armored B-rank adventurer pointed ahead. "There!"
Zayn followed his gaze —and his stomach clenched.
Further into the dungeon, a massive structure floated in the abyss.
It looked like a twisted, inverted temple made of jagged bones and dark stone, glowing runes etched into its surface.
More of the skeletal bats poured out of an opening at its center.
The source.
"That’s where we need to go," Zayn said, adjusting his grip on his sword.
Tobias inhaled deeply as they flew toward the massive inverted temple, the adrenaline pounding in his chest.
The storm of skeletal bats swarmed relentlessly, their shrieks slicing through the air as they dived and twisted in chaotic, unnatural movements.
His grip tightened around the reins of his griffin, its powerful wings slicing through the darkness as they advanced.
The temple loomed before them, its jagged structure defying logic, as if it had been constructed in reverse, its spires stretching downward into the abyss below.
Glowing runes pulsed along its surface, the eerie violet light casting haunting shadows that flickered against the surrounding void.
"We’re almost there!" Kara shouted over the din of battle.
Tobias nodded and tucked his sword back into its sheath.
This wasn’t the time for close combat.
He raised a hand, golden arcs of lightning crackling between his fingertips before surging outward.
The bolt struck the nearest skeletal bat, sending it convulsing as it disintegrated into ash.
He didn’t stop.
His free hand ignited with fire, a torrent of flames bursting forth like a living serpent.
The fire spread like a wildfire in the abyss, consuming everything in its path.
The skeletal creatures shrieked as they burned, their bony frames crumbling under the intensity of the magical inferno.
Tobias swept his arm across the battlefield, carving a path of destruction toward the temple’s entrance.
"Go, go!" Bran bellowed, leading the charge as the adventurers shot through the clearing Tobias had made.
Zayn gritted his teeth, his golden aura flickering like embers in the darkness.
His grip tightened on his sword as he guided his griffin into the temple’s open archway, the others following closely behind.
The moment they passed through, the world around them shifted.
Inside, everything was... surreal.
The temple’s interior was vast, stretching infinitely in all directions.
What should have been the floor was the ceiling, and the ceiling below them pulsed with a shifting, liquid-like surface, almost like a reflection of another world beneath their feet.
The walls, jagged and uneven, curved in unnatural ways, as if bending reality itself.
Floating platforms of black stone hovered aimlessly in the void, held aloft by unseen forces.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Even the battle-hardened B-rank adventurers looked around in awe.
"This place..." Kara murmured. "It doesn’t make any sense."
"It’s like reality folded in on itself," Tobias said, adjusting his glasses. "Be careful. Even the laws of physics might not work properly here."
Zayn narrowed his eyes, scanning the vast chamber.
His grip on his sword tightened instinctively. "Where’s the boss?"
"That’s the question," Bran muttered, his axe resting on his shoulder.
The griffins, uneasy in the strange environment, flapped their wings cautiously, drifting lower.
Tobias could feel it too — a certain kind of stillness, it was almost as if the entire temple were holding its breath. 𝓃𝓸𝓿𝓹𝓾𝓫.𝓬ℴ𝓶
Then, the silence broke.
A deep, resonating hum filled the air, vibrating through the bones of the structure itself.
The floating platforms trembled, and the liquid-like ceiling rippled violently.
The runes along the walls flared, their violet light intensifying until they burned bright enough to blind.
And then, from the depths of the temple’s abyssal reflection, something stirred.
The first thing to emerge was a massive claw — an enormous skeletal limb, adorned with glowing runes similar to the ones lining the temple walls.
It pulled itself upward, its jagged fingers scraping against the floating platforms as if dragging itself from another world.
Then came the head — a dragon’s skull, enormous and ancient, its hollow eye sockets burning with violet fire.
Its body, a monstrous amalgamation of countless fused bones, slithered upward like a serpent, defying gravity as it coiled into the chamber.
"This should be the Boss, I guess?" Zayn muttered with a deep breath.
