Hera and Alex flew across the sky on Nimbus. It took them a couple of hours to reach the village where the Empress first found the Spirits and where the roots that were able to protect people from those Spirits existed.
During the time, the two of them were talking about all the different spells or skills that they might use to face the undead horde. Alex had a myriad of plans and ideas that could work with her Legacy, and the Empress was doing her best to show off her knowledge of necromancy that she recently gained once they realized that this was what they were dealing with.
Both of them felt confident with their ideas, but at the same time, they understood that they had no actual experience facing creatures like those. The closest thing that any of them ever got to fighting an actual undead horde was the vampires that Alex fought with Bonnie in a dungeon. After all, vampires were also undead.
To make matters worse, none of them was truly knowledgeable about how zombies and other creatures like that behaved. But that didn't mean they were going completely blind, as pop culture was filled with examples of undead and necromancers that they could take inspiration from.
The first idea was to offset the Legacy with some sort of radiance or the equivalent of holy magic, even if that wasn't something that existed as far as either of them knew. But it should be possible. After all, some civilizations did have deities and worshiped them. So maybe there was some sort of mana that would behave as they were expecting, mana capable of cleansing undead.
The most obvious idea related to this was, of course, Alex herself. The assassin had a Legacy of purification. She was called the Purifying Light, and that might be the exact skill set needed to deal with the undead.
The conversation continued to evolve into more and more ideas, from tactics to specific spells and even types of weapons or armor they could look for before properly starting the expedition. Eventually, Hera even mentioned how Daskka wanted to take a more active role in the fights and that they were hoping the Herald would be able to behave as a magic caster for the Court, which was an idea that Alex really thought to be a good one.
After all, considering that Daskka was the oldest Court member, the snake had been with Hera for the longest time and knew very well the types of spells and how the Empress would act in most situations.
Eventually, they reached the village and quickly started to gather some of the roots by the base of the tall building. Hera made a point of not going after the roots that were actually covering the structure and only taking the ones that were already on the ground or that didn't seem to be affecting the Spirits nearby.
The reason for that was quite simple. She wanted to keep this guardhouse, this watchtower, as a place where people could still stop by and rest before continuing their journey through Deakoshara. Sure, the idea was that between Bonnie, Ruby, the Empress herself, and Nimbus, they would be able to take anyone who came here flying directly to the outpost.
But what if they had to call for help from the MAZE at a time when there was no one to pick them up? What if any of the mounts they managed to acquire couldn't make the entire journey in a single day? Then, people would need a place to rest. More importantly, that place needed to be safe, and so far, this was the safest place that Hera ever found.
It took them another few hours, even with the help of the entire Court, to gather enough of the roots for them to feel as if they could potentially make a difference in the outpost. It still was a pitiful amount considering how big the place was, but the only way they would be able to completely cover that area was if Eridan or someone else was able to extract the Spirit repellent from those roots and pass it to something else.
The Empress knew that the best way to go about it would be to have the alliance send some crafters who specialized in woodwork to try to come up with a solution, and she very much intended to do so. However, Hera wanted to give her dad a chance to prove himself in a way. So far, the biggest claim to fame he had was that he made her. Even if the people who knew his work agreed that he was a great crafter of beds and other furniture, it still wasn't as if he had contributed to the MAZE as a whole.
But if he was the one who created the protection that they would be using against the undead horde, Hera would be able to shut down any attempts of people complaining to her that she allowed her own father to become an Ophidianite without going through any tests. Something that, apparently, was already happening.
Typhera told her about a few posts on the internet of people basically being salty that they were not called to be Ophidianites. Mostly human, although there were a couple of harpies involved in the thread, and everybody understood that it all boiled down to the fact that they were complaining about it taking too long for any official path to becoming an Ophidianite to be revealed. Because they were positive that they would be able to fulfill any requirements and be able to join the ranks of this new species.
Although there were even some just arguing about the lack of transparency. As if there was anything to be transparent about. Hera herself still had not come up with all the details surrounding how to pick the people who would ascend to this new form and join her future civilization.
One way or another, everybody was telling her that she shouldn't worry about those posts. No matter what her decision was or whom she allowed to ascend, people would find ways to complain about her decision. Such was the nature of the internet.
But if she was able to gently guide her father into doing something big, she would at least drown out some of the voices that were protesting his new form.
Hera and Alex gathered as much wood as they could, as much as Nimbus would be able to carry without leaving any one of them behind, and they flew back to the outpost. To their surprise, they were not the last ones to return, as Vash's team was still exploring the depths of the cave. The place was truly massive by the small reports that they had given, but the biggest change was the fact that now they had access to the internet.
The transmitter would work for several kilometers, and between this one and the one placed back in the doorway, roughly half of Deakoshara should now have access to internet. With that access, everybody gave the reports back to the alliance and whoever else they needed to talk to, including Eridan.
The second Ophidianite was making some progress with the roots, but because he only had one sample, he was very worried about destroying it and had to be very careful with some of the experiments he was performing. Hera made a point of saving a handful of the roots after talking to her dad, who thanked her and promised he would do his best not to ruin everything. Less than 10 minutes later, she received a message letting her know that the roots that she had given him previously had been destroyed during his experiments. It was such an instant answer that Hera couldn't help but laugh.
Soon after, Alyson, Vash and Zephyr returned and the mage harpy quickly shared what they had discovered. The cave network here was, as expected, absolutely massive, and it didn't seem to have anything that could pose a problem. There was an underground river that could give them water, a few large caves that could be used for underground farms, especially if they had some sort of sun-adjacent relic or item that could replace the effects of UV light. And even several chambers that could be made for specific goals such as training, armory, medical bay, and whatnot.
They also found that in this network there were two dungeons side by side. And they were not regular dungeons but instead battlefields, just like the Kobold Battlefield that Hera found that caused Hera to find the dwarves from Boothudurn.
But instead of Kobold, it was called the Emissary Battlefield. On the outside, there were even a couple of statues on each of the sides of the battle. Underneath them was an entrance to one of the variation of the dungeon. One was a dinosaur-looking creature filled with spikes on its back, tiny eyes and a large mouth, together with a pair of massive claws that seemed to be ready to destroy everything.
The other could only be described as an amalgamation of eyes. A central eye that burned like the sun with a very snake-like slit in the middle, surrounded by a pair of rings that had countless eyes either carved on them as part of decoration or that were actual eyes that seemed to be moving around. And underneath it all, there was almost a halo that floated above the ground, creating its own shadow that the sculpture emitted.
"Well, I do have to get some of the roots back to my dad, but we could give it a try just to know what kind of a dungeon that is," Hera suggested.
"Are you really saying we should go into a dungeon right now?" Zephyr frowned.
But the Empress just gave a confident nod. "Yeah. This is the outpost. This is where we are going to have our people waiting around. We need to know the general types of rewards that we can get there and how long it takes for the dungeon to be completed. The last battlefield I participated in took a week, so if people are going to have to wait for an entire week to get food or supplies, they need to know. I don't really think it's the type of thing that can just be left alone, you know?"
"That's actually, a fair point… Yeah." Vash nodded, " We do need to make sure we are not wasting time. So maybe we only do that if we really have to wait for another team or something. Or we can go in and you stay behind together with someone else to keep trying to figure out what's going on in the Fields of Elysium."
Hera just gave him a blank stare and said, "Look, this is the room of my people, and I'm really curious about what's going on there. Besides, it's been a very long time since I participated in a battlefield dungeon. I'm not going to say I'm not curious. And this is a big thing. If this cave had not been seen by anyone before, we are talking about potentially two, if not three, first time clears. This means three levels plus the powered-up rewards."
While everybody was a bit iffy at first, when Hera mentioned the levels, they all understood why she was so interested. And they had to agree, they shared that desire.
"Okay, counteroffer. What if we wait for a day just so you and Alyson can go to the Fields of Elysium tomorrow and see if you can find anything else, especially because your snakes are supposedly still there? And we double check with Typhera if there are any teams that are going to arrive in the next week or so. Battlefields last about that long, right?" Vash asked.
Hera nodded, before the performer harpy continued.
"Then you can even see if there's anyone else we can just bring along to give them a boost, especially if they're going to participate in this expedition. And if it works, great. If not, well, we still have a way to figure out the types of rewards that those battlefields would give."
Everybody nodded in agreement, accepting that this was a rather good idea. And since battlefields were dungeons that, generally speaking, didn't limit the number of party members, they could probably take a lot of people along to level them up. Not to mention that for the third version of the battlefield, the one where one side was overwhelmingly more powerful than the other, they were likely to need some help in order to trigger it.
Which, now that they stopped to talk about it, they realized they shouldn't be talking about just three levels but four, as long as each version of the dungeon considered itself to be a single quest.
"And that's not even counting the hard modes, is it?" Oriko had a big smile on his face.
But Shane shook her head. "No. Battlefield dungeons don't have a hard mode. They only have the harder battlefield version."
"Oh, my bad."
"But we do know that they can house some strange stuff. I mean, Blue and I found the dwarves of Boothudurn inside a doorway that was located on a battlefield. So maybe there's something else there," Hera added.
"Any chance it's another passage to the Fields of Elysium?" Vash asked.
The Empress just shook her head. "I think that's almost impossible. The Kobold Battlefield is two rooms away from Boothudurn. At most, this could be a direct connection to a room that is connected to the Fields of Elysium. At least according to my experience. I'm not going to sit here and pretend I know what the MAZE is doing."
"So this might be a shortcut directly to where the Undead Legacy actually is?" Shane asked.
Hera gave a nod, but she wasn't entirely confident of that. "Honestly, I don't think we're going to be that lucky. We could have people exploring this and trying to figure out as long as the rewards are good enough. But I wouldn't say that anyone should go through what I did to get to Boothudurn. If I had made one wrong turn, I would have died."
With a new plan in mind, everybody continued their work, with Hera jumping back onto Nimbus and awakening him to rush back to Zaxalam in order to give her father the scraps of the roots and see if there was anything else needed before they started running dungeons.
To her surprise, as soon as the Empress arrived back home, a familiar face was waiting for her.
"Hello, sweetie," Helena said with a smile as she poured herself a cup of coffee.