The Art of Gold Digging

Ch.49— A Battle of Attrition: Part Two

Time stopped meaning anything after the first twenty minutes.Amy had given up trying to track it; there was no point. The creatures just kept coming in waves that weren't quite regular and weren't quite irregular, just consistent enough to deny rest, and even the constant loud growling exhausted them. Every time the pressure at the front seemed to ease, something would slam into the lateral wall, or a new sound would emerge from deeper in the corridor, and they'd have to readjust.

The only saving grace was that a natural barrier had formed from the pile of corpses gradually filling the hallway. Thanks to that pile, which now occupied a third of the hallway, the larger and more dangerous enemies were held back, and Ash, Lyra, and Amy only had to focus on the slippery ones. If not for that, they would surely have perished by now.

Amy was functioning on something that wasn't quite adrenaline anymore. Her body moved, and barriers went up when her ability told them to. She stopped thinking about the process and just did it.

Meanwhile, Ash had also stopped calling out warnings about dangerous enemy attacks. That, more than anything else, told her how bad things were. He'd been quiet for the last few minutes, doing nothing but punching, repositioning, and punching again, all while accepting the healing light Lyra fed him without acknowledgment.

As for Lyra, she was holding together better than Amy had expected, despite being poorly suited for this kind of close encounter. She wasn't moving well and had some close calls that she defused with her knife, but her hands never stopped glowing. If anything, she looked like the one in the best condition.

[You're slowing down.] Bloodedge suddenly spoke into Amy's mind. [At this rate, even a half-blind village guard could cut you down.]

Amy, not even capable of speaking, just glared at the sword in her hand with a scowl; no matter how many times she heard it, she couldn't get used to them using Libris' voice.

Still, they weren't wrong. She was bleeding from her nose again. Had been for a while. She'd stopped wiping it away somewhere around the third wave.

With a groan, she shifted her attention away from the sword and created a barrier around a black humanoid figure that had been trying to flank them from the left. She compressed the barrier until only dark liquid remained inside, which fell to the floor once she released it.

There has to be a way to make the barriers not transparent…

She looked at the sight with disgust, then turned toward her next target appearing from the other side, catching it in the corner of her eye, but as she did, her body completely froze, and her eyes shone.

Luckily for Amy, Ash was there just in time to stop the pouncing beast with a punch that shattered it in half.

"Amy!?" Ash called without turning back.

Amy frowned, then looked toward Ash and Lyra. Their condition was extremely bad, yet she still thought they could fight a little longer. Moreover, the natural barrier formed by the corpses should stop most monsters if an unexpected situation arose. Which meant that the instruction she had just received from her ability…

"Prepare to leave. We're regrouping with the others," Amy announced. Whatever reason her ability had for telling her this, she had learned long ago not to question it.

Ash glanced back quickly with a faint expression of relief, then turned back and continued fighting. "When? And should we run at full speed?" he called loudly enough for Amy to hear despite the constant shrieking of the beasts.

"In a few minutes, and no, jogging will be enough."

"Great," Ash said. "That's great. Holy hells, finally."

Amy regrettably could not share the relief. Her ability could only take them so far, and this held only until Crow finished his trial; any more than that, and her head might actually explode. Moreover, the details needed to achieve this objective were fuzzy at best, since specifying them required far more mana, so Lain and the others might not be faring that well…

As she was thinking this, Amy's peripheral vision caught a shape. She turned, expecting another monster, but found nothing visible.

She'd had enough bad experiences lately to know better than to assume it had been the wind, so she stood ready to cast a barrier at any moment.

[Ah. How interesting, this aura… If it isn't my slave's obsession. So he finally appears.]

Amy's eyes narrowed at Bloodedge's words. "Lyra, Ash!" she said, still facing the corridor. "I need you to cover for me for a minute. Don't move from this position unless I tell you to!"

Lyra looked up from Ash's shoulder. "Amy, what—"

Amy did not wait to hear what she had to say as she quickly took off. Her ability wasn't warning her, so she probably wasn't doing anything too dangerous. Still, she couldn't shake the bad feeling…

As she got farther away from the chaos, she began to be able to discern footsteps, unhurried ones.

Amy made a split-second decision and used her ability. The path to finding the intruder was simple and cost very little mana, making her decide it was worth it.

Shortly after, the information flooded her brain. And just like the process, the answer was incredibly simple.

"Come out!" Amy spoke boldly, while keeping herself ready to cast a barrier at any moment.

The footsteps grew louder.

A figure emerged from the shadows at the far end of the corridor, moving slowly. He looked hurt, very hurt. Fractures ran all over his body, reminiscent of Libris', his direct involvement during their first encounter, where he had likely broken his pact of non-interference with the Goddess, having clearly taken a toll on him. Lain's observation from the balcony echoed back: favoring his left side, shoulders hunched. Whatever you and your book did to him, it left marks.

He looked worse up close than he had from a distance. Even Amy, with blood all over her face and hands, looked better than him.

Abaddon stopped about ten meters away.

He looked at Amy, then sighed.

"You are truly such a nuisance…" he spoke, a scowl visible on his face.

Amy didn't respond, instead giving him a small smirk that provoked the scowl on his face to deepen.

"The ritual with my son," Abaddon continued. "Using him as a deterrent. It was clever." He tilted his head slightly. "I want you to understand that I'm not saying that to be cruel. I genuinely mean it. Functionally speaking, you lot are the first opponents I've had in years who required me to actually think. To think you are still just high schoolers… I still can't believe it."

"Is that supposed to be flattering?" Amy said.

"It's supposed to be accurate," he said. "Flattery implies I want something from you. What I want is for you to stop, and clearly these words are not helping that cause."

"You think we're just going to let you kill us?"

"No, but I wish," he spoke with a sigh, looking at the ceiling. "You know what this world requires. What comes after the Library? I have a faint feeling that, just like that man, your father, you are eventually going to direct your gaze toward the lost city of Avalon, aren't you?"

Amy frowned at the mention of her father.

Abaddon looked at her, then tilted his head with a curious, confused expression. "You… are you perhaps not with him?"

Amy didn't respond.

"You are his child, clearly." His black eyes narrowed as he studied her with intensity. "And yet you aren't with him." He paused. "Why?"

"Is it that surprising? You and Crow don't seem that close, either." Amy said flatly.

Abaddon let out a short breath that might have been a laugh, had she not seen his face twist at the mention of his son.

"Let me ask you something more important, then," he said, returning his expression to neutral. "You were the one behind linking Crow to the barrier. I won't ask you how you did it, because you won't tell me. So instead I'll ask, to what end? I'm not asking rhetorically. I genuinely want to understand. What is it you're actually trying to do?"

"Get everyone out alive," Amy said instantly. "That's it."

"And then?"

She said nothing.

Abaddon studied her silence. "This isn't your final goal, is it? You're going to keep moving forward eventually, whether you know it yet or not." He exhaled slowly. "I've seen enough to know what that road looks like, Miss Stake. I've walked further down it than most."

"Good for you."

"It isn't," he said quietly. "It really isn't." He looked at her for a long moment, something shifting in his expression that Amy couldn't quite categorize. "Why don't you join me?"

Even with the growls of the creatures in the background, the corridor felt like it had fallen into heavy silence.

"I'm sorry?" Amy said.

"You heard me," Abaddon replied. "Everything that fake Goddess in the sky has arranged, the trials, the nightmare, the creatures, my son suffering," his jaw tightened briefly before smoothing over again, "none of it was necessary. None of it was inevitable. It was chosen. Designed. By her." He looked upward for a moment, though there was no sky above them, just the ceiling of obsidian corridors. "I am fighting against that. Against the fate she has written to keep all of us moving in the direction she finds most entertaining."

Amy said nothing, watching him carefully.

"You probably don't understand since you haven't spoken to her. But believe me, she is evil incarnate; not malice in her actions, but disinterest of the worst kind. We are nothing but toys to her." He met her eyes directly. "I have resources. Knowledge. And there is something above us right now that I believe can be used to reach the true god beyond this realm. That obsidian creature in the sky. I don't fully understand it yet, but I believe its power can be harvested. Turned against her own design."

Amy shook her head with exasperation. She hated the Goddess, but she could well believe the Goddess' claim that Abaddon had constructed an elaborate delusion to shield himself from the reality of her near-omnipotence.

Instead of dwelling on the Goddess, Amy focused on something Abaddon had said that gave her pause. "You said before you don't know what the colossal obsidian figure in the sky is."

"I don't," Abaddon said simply.

Amy tilted her head. "Then how exactly were you planning to harvest its power?"

Abaddon looked at her and said nothing, just held her gaze with exhausted eyes, the silence stretching until it was clear he wasn't going to fill it.

Amy let out a slow breath. "So your plan is 'I don't know what it is, but I'll figure it out.'"

"Plans evolve."

"That's not a plan. That's a hope mixed with delusion."

Anger flickered across his face, then exasperation. "Then perhaps," he said quietly, "you have a better one."

"I do," Amy said. "It doesn't involve you."

This was not true at all, but he didn't need to know that.

Abaddon looked at her for a long moment. The distant sounds of battle were still carrying through the corridor, and another wave shook the building somewhere behind her. She couldn't stay here long. She had mostly come to ensure his presence wasn't going to pose an immediate threat, and seeing his condition, it was obvious that any further direct interference would destroy him entirely.

"Then I'll ask you plainly," Abaddon suddenly said, pulling her from her thoughts. "Why won't you join me? You don't even seem to consider it. If it's some moral compass guiding you, I would be truly disappointed. I thought you were smarter than that."

Amy looked at him, at the fractures running through his skin, at the exhaustion in his face, at the absolute, bone-deep delusion behind his eyes that he was right. It took her a moment, but she finally understood: this man was truly pathetic.

"I promised my friend I would kill you," she finally answered, after a pause.

Abaddon went still.

For a single moment, genuine surprise crossed his face. Then, slowly, he smiled. It was a genuine one, as far as Amy could tell, small and tired and oddly without cruelty.

"Good luck," he said quietly, then held her gaze for one more second. "I'll face you with the same conviction."

And then he was gone, stepping backward into the shadow at the corridor's edge.

Amy stood there for a moment, staring at the empty space where he had been. Then the wall to her right shook hard enough to crack the obsidian, and the sound of the renewed wave crashed back into her awareness all at once.

She turned and ran.

"Ash! Lyra!" she shouted as the two of them came back into view, both still holding position exactly where she'd left them, Lyra's hands glowing, Ash bleeding from a new cut along his jaw that hadn't been there before. "We're moving! Now!"

"Finally," Ash started.

"No talking, just run! Left corridor, we're regrouping!"

Lyra was already moving before Amy finished the sentence. Ash knocked back the nearest creature with one last punch and fell into step beside them without needing to be told twice.

As they ran, Amy's mind was already moving ahead, thinking hard about why her ability was ordering them back to the others. Best case, Crow's trial had to be close to finished by now. Worst case… something bad had happened.

Damn it.

She would deal with Abaddon properly later. But first, it was time to bring everyone back together.