Dungeon Raider System

62  Forest guardian

"Didn't you hear me, we're screwed, this whole expedition is going down." Nika was having a hard time keeping it together. As long as cryptids remained in control of the site, even running away was impossible.

"Just trust me on this!" Uriel limped towards the great platform, uncaring of Nika's frightened condition. He had seen Sam on a similar state before and he knew how difficult it was for a person to snap out of it on their own, but he didn't count on all the years of experience Nika Garcia carried on her back.

She soon caught up to him and placed his arm over her shoulder to help him walk faster. Two times they had to stop so that Nika could fire her coil handgun at incoming enemies, but thankfully for them everyone was fighting for their life which provided a nice cover allowing them to go mostly unnoticed.

As soon as they reached the platform, Uriel leaned over to pick up the golden jaguar statue not even knowing what was he going to do with it, but before Uriel could figure it out he was attacked by one of the small pygmy scouring the place.

Uriel attempted to kick it off but his leg was already hurting and he couldn't think of anything else but to brandish the golden statue as a weapon. Yet that was unnecessary, because as soon as he managed to lift the statue from the platform, the golden shell started peeling off and the feline cryptid emerged from it recovering its former size almost instantly.

The jaguar roared and then pounced towards Uriel who kept his eyes closed the entire time, his heart kept pounding as if it wanted to escape from his chest, but the cryptid didn't attack the young student and, instead, took what can only be described as a powerful nibble out of the pygmy's head.

The jaguar then gazed at the distance, standing proud and magnificent as its mercurial blue flames erupted from its shoulderbones, shifting wildly as if being stoked by the nonexistent wind.

"Is that thing by our side!?" Nika watched in disbelief how the jaguar made quick work of the invading cryptids, easing the situation for all of the researchers and fighters alike, effectively turning the tides of the battle.

"It's not, but it's the guardian spirit of the forest. Why else would the Mayans keep it sealed if not for self defense?" Uriel replied after recovering his breath.

"But it's not attacking us!"

"It's either under my control or it will start attacking us as soon as it finishes with the cryptids. I guess we'll find out soon enough." The jaguar pranced across the whole site, clawing at pygmys, biting off their heads and fighting all sort of abominable beasts that had been relentlessly scouring the place.

Distant cheers were heard as people rallied behind the jaguar spirit and gathered in a single group. Given the circumstances it was a lot easier to protect everyone that way, they either survived as a whole or perished together.

Nika and Uriel went their own way, as Uriel wanted to check on every different POIs to see if there was a way to turn the ancient horrors back to stone before they awoke completely, or at least turn back on the protective barrier. On their way to the first POI Uriel had to discharge his gun, missing his mark entirely.

"Just stop shooting at everything, it's just a weakling." Nika said after stomping on the attacking pygmy.

Nika was still running low on flux energy, but their situation wasn't as dire as before thanks to the help of the guardian spirit Uriel released from the figurine. Still, she couldn't afford to use her trait as recklessly as before, and decided to only help Uriel if his life was at risk. If he was knocked out, she would finally be able to retreat arguing that it was needed to save his life.

But that didn't come to happen, as Uriel wasn't just a scared student like on his previous adventures. Instead, he showed incredible resourcefulness when dealing with cryptids. Whenever a small cryptid appeared, he simply dodged its attacks and kept running towards the POI he wanted to check up, taking advantage of his new found speed. Unfortunately for him, that strategy wasn't possible when dealing with bigger beasts as they had longer limbs and were able to easily keep up with his speed.

Already gasping for air and still far away from the priestess temple he wanted to investigate, Uriel was forced to face against another beautiful feathered snake, this one bigger than the one he killed before. Without so much as a second thought he fired his revolver. Afraid to be left with no bullets and completely defenseless, he immediately stored his magnum inside his trait and proceeded to pick up and crush the flux orb dropped by the cryptid he just demolished with a single shot.

[Flux orbs 3/10]

"No," Uriel shook his head. "Up until this point I thought that flux orbs provided the energy for the buildings to function, but that's not the case. Instead of providing the energy, the crushed orbs are repairing the structures. This can only mean that we may be able to activate buildings that seem to be useless if we provide the right type of energy."

10:50

The pain Uriel had been experiencing after being stung on the leg slowly subsided as he spent yet another point into speed. He didn't have time for theories, but he could feel he had become not just faster, but also a little bit more resilient than before.

"Why don't you fight using the dagger?" Nika asked without much hope of getting a reply out of him as he was now deeply focused studying the inside of the priestess temple.

"Because it's in bad shape and I don't want it to break." He said as he took the dagger from his belt but, much to his surprise, it was in a better condition than before. "It's the flux orbs! It seems that this material is capable of self repairing as long as you provide flux orbs to it, that's why the buildings can be activated when crushing flux orbs nearby."

"I don't get it, didn't you know that already?"

"No," Uriel shook his head. "Up until this point I thought that flux orbs provided the energy for the buildings to function, but that's not the case. Instead of providing the energy, the crushed orbs are repairing the structures. This can only mean that we may be able to activate buildings that seem to be useless if we provide the right type of energy."

"Do you mean... electricity!?" Nika exclaimed as she reached for the tier 3 battery strapped on her thigh, also taking the chance to recharge her coil gun. "Do you think it will work in here?"

"I don't think so, this temple... I don't know what it is for, I think the reason why the cryptids are now able to attack is because its field of disruption was deactivated after losing energy. That jerk Schlieman activated so many buildings it probably consumed all of the energy they had stored."

"So... Not electricity? I'm confused." Nika tilted her head.

As the two of them chatted inside the remains of what used to be the priestess temple, cryptids could still be seen running in fright from the jaguar guardian from time to time. Although the ghostly jaguar was incredibly strong, it still had some trouble defeating some of the stronger monstrosities.

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