Chapter Sixty-Seven


    It wasn''t a cave filled with monsters like he had expected. He didn''t even sense any traps, nor were there puzzles. It was entirely possible there were traps and his awareness offered by his armor didn''t pick them up.


    He was careful not to be complacent. His awareness ability was powerful, and he would use it. However, he wasn''t about to let it replace his own good sense and training.


    Mostly, what he noticed as they walked were murals. Carved into the stone were depictions of a great battle.


    Do you know anything about what these are, Akaroth?


    Frankly, the only reason he cared was because information on his potential opponent was a weapon all its own. Another nugget of wisdom from his old man.


    It certainly wasn''t because he had much interest in the lore. Akaroth’s voice filtered through his mind.


    I was not present for it, but this was the battle between the aesir, Loki and his son Fenrir. The clash of mana that day was felt across all the multiverse.


    Ambrose paused next to a mural, studying it. A hooded figure and a man with an axe that looked a little like him were wrapping great chains around a dark wolf deep within the earth.


    “The artists did an excellent job, they even included the glyphs on the chains.”


    It didn''t take a genius to put together that he was headed straight for where Fenrir had been chained up.


    In another mural, the chains appeared to be sapping something from Fenrir.


    The glyphs are weakening him. Taking his strength, his skills, and locking them away somewhere. Akaroth sounded like she was impressed.


    Whomever worked the enchantments did so like a dragon weaves flight.


    Deeper and deeper the smooth path wound. He never once felt like he was losing air, nor did the cave grow darker. A feint green light shown the entire way from a source he couldn''t determine.


    Before long Ambrose and Noelle stood before a great door. Broken glyphs sputtering with dying light were emblazoned upon it.


    Ambrose had no idea what they did. He assumed they were warding glyphs, and someone had managed to break them.


    Eric couldn''t have done it. He was positive of that much. He was a one trick pony, and pretty much always had been.


    Which meant the glyphs had to have been broken for a while.


    With a shove, he pushed open the stone doors, the scraping as they moved echoed like growling thunder. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    Beyond the doors was a massive cavern, so big you could probably fit several football stadiums within.


    But that''s not what drew his attention.


    It was the massive wolf out of nightmares and legends that demanded his focus.


    Great chains of wrought silver, red and black metal wrapped around its great form, engraved glyphs pulsing a toxic light, seeming to suck in vitality from the wolf.


    Its fur was the color of painted horror from the deepest recesses of a dark, twisted mind. It''s eyes were a dark, polished amber.


    There was no hatred there, no madness, no wild light.


    Just deadness.


    Whatever had been done to the wolf had broken it so utterly that it was beyond even madness.


    Rattling metal blanked and echoed like a detonation as the great wolf rose up. Its maw opened up, revealing fangs the size of glaciers and shining like forged moonlight.


    Its great tongue was a living flame, and Ambrose knew that this monster''s only desire was to kill. To kill and to devour until itself met the same fate.


    Ambrose took a mental leash, wrapping it around the pulse of cold fear that settled over his heart like some icy hand. He jerked the cold hand back, tucking it in a neat cell constructed with thought and mental discipline honed over a lifetime of training.


    He used [Retributions Gaze] on the wolf. Already knowing part of what he''d get back.


    [Fenrir, The World-Eater Level 250]: The son of the aesir god of magic, Loki, Fenrir is destined to end Asgard, the world of the aesir. Fearing this, the pantheon chained Fenrir in a forgotten world in an ancient forest. They seeded the forest with deadly monsters. The chains were designed to sap the monster’s power, locking it away somewhere else. However, the enchantments were so powerful it weakened the entire forest. Fenrir is now beyond mortal madness and desires only to kill.]


    “Magnificent, isn’t he?”


    Ambrose looked past the great monster, finding Eric in the middle of a circle of glyphs. He was grinning and dressed in the same academic-like attire as on the day he came to his house. He waved a hand enthusiastically at him.


    He threw Akaroth right at him, but the great wolf raised a massive paw and, with an ease and quickness of movement that defied his size, batted the weapon out of the air, showing unconcern with the lightning that exploded against it in a flash of iridescent blue.


    Eric’s mocking laughter boomed throughout the massive cave as if he held a loudspeaker.


    “I must say, I am so grateful to whoever chained this great beast up. If they hadn’t designed them to sap its strength, I would have never been able to control it. Isn’t he such a good boy? Yes, he is!”


    Eric laughed again, throwing his head back as Fenrir let loose with a stone-shattering roar that shook the very cave itself.


    Ambrose closed his eyes as its force washed over him. He recalled Akaroth, and his grip on it was firm.


    Beside him, Noelle was tense, ready to spring into action.


    A calmness, a single moment of utter focus descended on him.


    This was it. He could feel it like the sounding of a great bell or morning dawning.


    The path ended here.


    Here, he would destroy Eric, or he would die trying. It had been a long road, paved with obstacle after obstacle, but finally, finally, it would end one way or another. Either he would die and face whatever journey lay beyond the doors of death, or he would send Eric straight to hell.


    All of his skills and training will be used at this moment. Alice would have said now was the time for boss music.


    What seemed like an age ago, Ambrose and Alice had been trying to find a good song for her paladin character. She had wanted something epic, and it had to be just right. They had spent hours combing the internet. Finally, they had settled on one song that even Ambrose had enjoyed.


    It was a song called “I’m So Close I Can Taste It,” and the music filled his mind now. The claps, the beats of the music, the memory of Alice dancing to it, and a grin on her face all rushed through his body.


    Ambrose was calm, and he tried to control his emotions in every fight he had ever had. It was usually the best practice because if he didn’t do it, he paid for it.


    Darren’s death was a perfect example of that.


    But here, now, in this moment, in this place?


    Ambrose raised his arms, unleashing the storm in his chest, giving voice to it in time with his thundering heart,


    “COME ON THEN! LET’S SEE WHAT YOU GOT! I AM THE STORM!”