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Chapter 356: Hunger and Madness (3) - Markets and Multiverses
🕑 Added 2025-02-26 05:56:30 +0000 UTCThe building quaked and shivered, as if we were caught up in the midst of an earthquake. Then, the building lurched upwards. I realized that the building had already sprouted legs and was trying to stand up. The building’s next movement sent me spinning wildly to the side, as the building did something that tilted the floor nearly vertically. I heard people groan in pain, as several people dropped a few meters and landed on the former wall. Luckily, the shelter wasn’t packed with too many people in each sub-room, or we might have suddenly entered a lethal free-fall before I could respond. Still, the drop was enough to cause some bruising and groans of pain, and I had yet to deal with the problem.
<Ow! Can you take it out?> asked Anise, as she struggled to make her way back to her feet.
I glanced at the building with my soul-sight.
<I can. It has nowhere near as much Fortitude as the leviathan,> I said, before I tossed an extinguish at the building.
About a tenth of my alteration essence disappeared. Along with my essence, the soul of the newborn building also vanished, and a new System notification appeared. However, I didn’t have time to read it before the building lurched again, and I heard the unpleasant sound of stone and wood crashing to the ground as we dropped another meter. Luckily, however they had built this building, they had made it incredibly sturdy. Otherwise, part of the building might have shattered and dropped part of a floor or ceiling onto someone and killed them.
I glanced around the building, and checked our surroundings again with my soul-sight. Luckily, it didn’t look like anyone had died, and I didn’t spot any major injuries either. There were a few broken arms and legs, but those could wait until the crisis was dealt with.
I relaxed, and glanced at my System notification. If I was lucky, whatever Ability I had stolen from the building would give me some sort of boost in the upcoming fight.
Slaughter: Kill a Hungry Building for the first time
Achievement +50
That brought my Achievement from 22,131 Achievement to 22,181. Of course, far more important was the next notification.
Endless Hunger of the Ocean has devoured Hungry Building for the first time. New Skill created.
Awakened inanimate object - you gain the ability to spend a significant amount of essence to grow a new part of arms and legs, if you do not already possess said appendages.
I looked at the new Skill, and sighed. I had been hoping for something useful - perhaps a way to turn the battle against the eldritch whale and kill it before it wreaked more havoc on the city. This Skill was completely useless, though. I didn’t even bother slotting it in. It was basically just a trashy version of my Renewal spell. Worse, it didn’t even have some sort of basic stat boost attached, unlike most Skills I had gotten so far. It was the most useless Skill I had ever seen from Endless Hunger of the Ocean. There was basically no reason to even consider it.
With my System notifications dealt with, I turned my attention back to our surroundings. The next moment, I grimaced as I realized we weren’t quite out of danger yet.
I had dealt with our building… but there were nearly a dozen other buildings in our area that were very much alive and well. There were even more awakened buildings further away, although not quite as many as I had expected. Some of the buildings the leviathan’s black sludge had landed on hadn’t awakened at all, curiously enough.
Unfortunately, that was the only good news. The flying defenders were still busy trying to fend off the leviathan and keep the tree safe - they didn’t have the attention to spare to deal with the awakened buildings. I could see other mages working to deal with the awakened buildings in the distance, but most of them were trying to help the flying defenders. It meant that we were practically on our own against the buildings. I didn’t fault their decision - after all, if the tree went down, we were all dead. But in about a minute we were going to have even more problems to deal with.
Then, with a flash of panic, I realized that the leviathan had made full use of my distraction and tried to rush the tree again. I created another set of spatial tripwires, nearly ripping into the creature’s face before it halted. The flying defenders caught up to it and started working away at the creature again.
<I think I need to start helping out,> said Anise, as she started scuttling out of the building. <I know you wanted to wait a bit longer before we exposed our magic, but… we might not live if we don’t make a move. And I don’t want to stand around while people die, either.>
I nodded. Anise was right. So far, I had been taking more covert actions, since most of my spells were harder to track. If Anise started flinging around spells, it would be very obvious who was casting them. Still, it was probably time. While I still suspected the city had some kind of trump card, it was obvious that they were hesitant to use it. That must mean that it consumed a massive amount of essence. Who knew how many people would die while the city debated whether to use it or not? It would be better if we could rescue ourselves, instead of relying on others to keep us safe. Besides, I had always expected we would reveal ourselves as heroes sooner or later. I just hadn’t thought we would reveal ourselves yet.
<Are your spells useful here? I know you haven’t had time to build your full toolkit yet>
<I think I can make do with magic missiles and mage hands,> said Anise. <It will be messy, but I just need to break the legs of each house, right? Then the city will be deal with the monsters later.>
<All right. Stay safe. Don’t get hurt,> I said, before I gave Anise a quick hug for good luck.
Anise nodded, before she scrambled towards the doorway.
“Anise! What are you doing! Wait, hold on a moment!” Yelled my mother, as she tried to scramble after Anise. My father chased after her, and I decided to follow along. If anyone got hurt, I wanted to be there so I could heal them. However, I placed most of my attention on the battle in the skies - that was where my strengths could be best utilized.
When I reached the outside, I realized that Anise was performing much better than expected. I had thought she would struggle with the buildings, but their limbs were far more fragile than expected. Anise was having a grand time blasting their limbs with Magic Missiles. She didn’t even need to use {Mage Hand} to improvise any part of the fight - two magic missiles was enough to take most buildings out of the battle.
Our parents seemed stunned by this sight as they made their way outside.
While Anise wasn’t quite killing the buildings, she was certainly taking them out of the fight. It was the first time our parents had seen either of us cast a spell - and they were responsible for our meals, so they knew that we had never eaten any essence foods. That meant only one thing - and our parents knew it. Our mother stared at Anise as if she had just had some sort of irrefutable fact about the world disproven, while my father glanced towards the building we had just come out of. His eyes narrowed as he took in the sight of four partially formed limbs, before he glanced at Anise again. Then, his eyes locked onto me.
“Girls…” he paused, and then glanced at the leviathan in the sky. He shook his head. “Never mind, we can talk later. But stay close to me. Just in case,” he said, as he beckoned towards me. I scooted over to his side, and then created another row of spatial tripwires before the leviathan could rush the tree. It dodged out of the way, but I once again managed to break off its charge before it could actually hit the tree.
A moment later, I felt something change. In the distance, there was a furious trembling - as if the very nature of reality was twisting and breaking. I felt a massive surge of essence start to build up, like a tsunami in the midst of forming. I frowned, as I realized that there wasn’t just one source of essence building up - there were two. One was the giant leviathan. It seemed to have given up, and was now glaring at the tree. Its skin had started to quiver and tremble in a way I found even more unnerving than the rest of its body. The other source of essence was something nestled in the leaves of the tree. I couldn’t identify what it was, but I suspected it was some sort of trump card for the city’s defense. I shivered, as I realized what was happening. Both the city and the leviathan were trying to use some kind of absurdly overpowered spell. It was just a question of who managed to activate their spell first.
I kept a close eye on the fight, as I searched for any place I could intervene if needed. Seconds ticked by, as the flying defenders distanced themselves from the flying leviathan as fast as they could.
Finally, the source of essence nestled in the tree erupted. The next moment, I felt as if I had gone blind. Reality broke as my eyes refused to see… something. It flew out of the canopy of the tree like a beam of death, but it wasn’t made of anything I could identify. It wasn’t light, or heat, or any type of energy I had ever seen before. It was just… nothing.
It collided with the leviathan, and nearly half of its body disappeared into thin air. The remnants of the creature’s body quivered once, and then fell out of the sky.
Slaughter: Assist in killing a servant of hunger and rage for the first time.
Achievement +800
Influence: Play a minor role in keeping one of the sky islands safe against a threatening incursion.
(Pending results - incursion has not ended yet.)
My Achievement increased from 22,181 to 22,981. I blinked away the System notifications as one of the defenders caught the leviathan’s body. The defender gently lowered the creature towards the ground, taking special care not to drop it onto the civilians and houses below. After the creature’s body was lowered safely onto the patch of greenery around the tree, the defender flew towards Anise. It was a taller fox-man with gentle-looking orange eyes.
“I saw what you did. Do you have any essence left?” He asked.
Anise blinked in surprise, before she shook her head. “I’m almost out,” she said.
The flying man nodded. “Got it. Stay put. We’ll talk after the battle.” After that, he and his compatriots flew towards the other section of the embattled city, while several other defenders worked to clean up the other buildings near us. The rest of my family huddled together in the middle of the street, as they eyed the final clean-up of the defenders. I fired a few more extinguishes at buildings that had been left behind, and after a moment of hesitation, I also started rushing towards injured people and splashing them with water and healing. Anise was obviously going to be outed as a hero after this, and whatever happened, I wasn’t going to let her face the consequences alone.
After I ran out of essence, I returned to my parents. They looked like they had a lot of questions to ask, which made me wince. It was time to see how the city dealt with the first heroes in millenia… but before that it was time to see how our parents reacted to having the first heroes in millenia as their children.
Author’s Note:
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Comments
NeutralQuartz
Interested to see how a world that could conceivably have records of the market will react to them.
no-thoughts-only-vibes
Shouldve extinguished while it was still quivering. But probably didnt have enough time. Good to see that they are willing to jump in now. Looking forward to the next chapter
