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Chapter 419
🕑 Added 2022-04-08 19:08:53 +0000 UTCWHEW! 4262 words in this one. One more tomorrow and that's the end of Book 6! Book 7 To start Monday!
* * *
Begin Challenge!
Rime Shaping!
Ice flowed upward, forming into a three-foot deep rampart ahead of Felix...and the Grandmaster smashed right through it.
"You'll have to do better than that!" he said, and fire streamed from the gray mage's mouth. "Burn!"
A cone of flame erupted from the Grandmaster's face, forcing Felix to speed out of the way. His Tempering Body surged in chaotic spasms, wildly propelling Felix through the fire head first. It hurt, eating through his already tattered Garment and charring his skin and muscle to the bone, but he didn't stop. If he stopped, he'd be dead.
Supercharged bolts of fire flung after him, screaming through the air before detonating bare inches behind Felix's mad dash. His Agility was high, but the advantage in Titles, Skills, and Stats was with the gray-skinned mage. Kicks, jabs, and brutal knee strikes flew from the Grandmaster, each one coming closer and closer. Felix threw up barriers of ice, drawing on his own Mana, but summoning ice before the towering heat of the Grandmaster was frustrating. Even with the water Mana emanating from the crystals all around them, it was like sucking mud through a straw and a vicious headache built rapidly behind Felix's eyes. Spikes and swirling nets hurled at the mage, but he accelerated through them without regard for his own Body.
"You cannot run forever!" Kel'lyv shouted, before landing a knife-hand chop. Felix cried out, hurled off his feet by the resulting explosion. He tumbled forward, ducking into a roll and summoning a whirling blade of ice.
Rime Shaping!
The blade swung with his rotation, dragged along the ground until it popped upward into the Grandmaster's path. It was thick enough that the two seconds it took the mage to demolish gave Felix the time he needed to regain his feet. His back was charred and bloody, but it was healing slowly. It wasn't anything like the damage the guy had inflicted on him previously, even with a glancing blow. "You are weaker," Felix said. His eyes flicked at the bronze sword across the chamber before settling on the mage again. "Without the Primordial's might, what happened to the Highest Flame?"
Kel'lyv bared his teeth. "Be more concerned with your own hide, Autarch. If you fall here, all of your Territory becomes mine...and I will enjoy ruining all that you have made, boy."
Relentless Resolution!
Adamant Discord!
Mantle of the Infinite Revolution!
Lightning blasted outward, slamming Felix into the Grandmaster faster than either could blink. At the same time, his Mana surged and spun, rotating wide and fast as the air turned into a frigid storm. Ice crackled and built in a flash, forcing the Kel'lyv's eyes wide in surprise.
Rime Shaping!
Wild Threnody!
Corrosive Strike!
A conjured fist of ice ripped upward, snagging around the Grandmaster's arms, just as Felix arrived foot-first.
The impact blasted ice and stone and corpses in all directions. Twenty-four hundred points of Strength hit the Grandmaster square in the chest, reinforced by ice and acid, and the gray mage was thrown back onto his ass in an arc of blood.
Felix did too, though it was a consequence of the rampaging energies in his chest. He convulsed once, before pulling himself back to his aching feet. His Body was still forming, and the addition of his Sovereign of Flesh meant his wounds were recovering faster and faster. He was pretty sure he'd broken his leg in several places with that kick, but by the time he mustered the breath to stand it had healed over. Broken skin shivered and pulsed, bones thickening and weaving tighter than before. His Body was changing, reshaping itself into something stronger as the Essence forced his Temper.
Only it was devouring his Essence supply, leaving none for him to activate his scales or claws. He had taken a ton of purified Essence from the Primordial...but so much more had been given to Pit and his friends. That decision was biting him in the ass. Thankfully he was surrounded by the smoking corpses of the undead.
Chthonic Tribute!
Felix shoved at the Skill, forcing it to activate while the Grandmaster was down, but barely absorbed a single wisp of Essence. His Hunger refused again—the rejection felt like a hot poker shoved into his guts—and Sovereign of Flesh couldn't pull on them either. Their flesh curse had been cleansed when he'd torn apart the Primordial, after all.
Work, damn you!
MORE, his Hunger demanded incomprehensibly.
That's what I'm trying, you idiot! Agony spiked his core space and the dark abyss became a solid wall of convulsing teeth.
The riot of pain distracted him for a dire instant, and the Grandmaster caught him fully across the face. Superheated air and an explosion of fire took him in the skull, throwing Felix down into and across the ground, skipping him like a pebble on a lake.
Before he could smash into the far wall, the Grandmaster was there, blazing hands grasping Felix by the scruff of his Garment. "You brought all of this on yourself, Felix. Remember that, as you burn."
Felix screamed as the world was dyed with flames. His Garment burnt to ashes, his skin cracked and charred, and the bloody flesh of him boiled beneath the Grandmaster's fury. A single, mammoth punch to his sternum sent Felix reeling back into the crystalline wall. The Mana crystals cracked, but mostly they torn into his fiery flesh too. Kel'lyv paused to breath in deeply...and torrents of the scorching Mana around him were sucked up and into the man. He glowed as it settled into him, just like how Atar would do it, and smiled.
Wild Threnody!
Arrow of Perdition!
"You have quite the store of Mana, boy." Kel'lyv's fists shot out lazily, deflecting his attack with one hand and blasting into Felix's shoulder with the other. Felix gasped, muscles tearing and bones snapped inside of him. "A trick that fool Atar never learned was that Strength Ignition, once Mastered, means you are no longer restricted to your own Mana pool."
The golden-azure glow of his Skill flickered and faded, floating off his fist before turning decidedly orange. It was pulled toward and into the Grandmaster's glowing Body. "Mm, yes. That is quite exceptional. I'll have the rest now."
Relentless Resolu—!
Before Felix could move the Grandmaster laid into him. A flurry of brutal blows smashed into his chest and abs, cracking bones and pulping his muscles with incredible force. Belatedly, Felix ducked his head and lifted his arms to block, and the mage's fists shattered through his forearms. Bones snapped, blood flowed and boiled in the fiery heat, and he couldn't even manage a scream.
Felix! Pit sent as if from far, far away. Felix's Health dropped lower and lower, his regeneration overcome. He couldn't heal fast enough, and the Grandmaster didn't stop.
Last Cry Of The Chthonic Host!
Last Cry Of The Chthonic Host is level 2!
Energy flushed Felix's body, and more of his Essence and a huge chunk of significance vanished. His Health and Stamina skyrocketed, returning to full while every wound upon his body vanished.
Kel'lyv hesitated, eyes narrowing. "A healing Skill, boy?"
Felix swallowed, Mana coiling in his channels. "We've all got tricks."
Shadow Whip!
Adamant Discord!
Black shadow and blue-white lightning lashed outward, but Kel'lyv caught them both in a net of sizzling flame. Their Mana was subsumed and torn from Felix's grasp. "Tricks are useless before overwhelming strength."
This time the Grandmaster's counter blasted him a foot into the crystalline wall. Blood burst from Felix's throat, and he felt his sternum and shoulder blades shatter. Mana crystals broke and rained down on them, but the mage didn't pay them any mind. All of his dreadful attention was fixed on killing Felix, and his titanic, pummeling strikes increased to an all time high.
Felix's world became pain.
Sovereign of Flesh sang within him, repairing torn vessels and replenishing his blood as it ran like rivers from his chest and legs and obliterated arms. But for every bone mended and muscle reattached, another vicious hit tore them apart again. And again, until there was only heat and brutalized nerve-endings and reforming tissue.
Sovereign of Flesh is level 79!
Sovereign of Flesh is level 80!
* * *
Beef opened his eyes but everything was blurry. His Health hovered just above zero, but he was alive. That was all that mattered.
Hallow...?
There was no answer from his friend, and Beef's throat burned. But there was no time for tears. He had to get up. His legs wouldn't work quite right, and it wasn't until he looked down that Beef realized both were mangled beneath the corpse of a Nightfall Golem. The thing was slowly dissolving into the air, but he was trapped.
And Felix was in trouble.
Beef reached down deep, grabbing a handful of his Mana and Stamina and feeding it into his newest Skill. It's all I can do, Felix. I'm...I'm sorry.
With a deep breath, Beef opened his mouth and shouted as loud as he could.
* * *
His cores ground at one another, their contact point producing the tangled interplay of Harmony and Dissonance as Primordial Essence soaked their ring-shaped flames. The song of it resounded, a presence that had spent months building up and spreading throughout his core space, not so much noise as it was a tangible occupant within his breast. Sovereign of Flesh glowed and thrummed, vitality pumping out in exchange for the lives of his foes, a power over his flesh...and his soul. The Essence of Cardinal was there, crouched within the newly Tempered Skill, and it resonated with the chaotic song of his heart. Relentless Resolution lit as well, a stifled, vibrating fury that pealed like a collection of vast silver bells, and was quickly joined by the steady, unstoppable beat of his Song of Absolution.
Elder Soul...
Stand Firm...
Persist Beyond...
Essences of an undying will to fight, to struggle. They howled into the chaos of pain, pulling at Dissonance and Harmony both. Each beat and breath reinforced them with each other, each moment of resonance soaking deeper and deeper into the Body that was forming just as it was dying.
I!
A burning chop blasted through his elbow, until only ligaments still held it together.
Will!
Another snapped his femur, burning away a dinner-plate sized section of his thigh.
Not!
Blow after blow, shattering ribs and pulverizing organs.
Stop!
Sovereign of Flesh is level 81!
Relentless Resolution is level 78!
The Song of Absolution is level 84!
He broke, but his flesh healed. His Body Formation surged, fueled by Felix's uncommon Will, and by the wild song of his Tempered Essences. He knew, in that moment, that Aspect Formations weren't only leveling Skills and choosing a rare and powerful Essence to Temper them—they were a piece of Truth, an echo of a greater understanding that he was burning into his very bones. His was an Elder Soul, torn from a creature that had Persisted Beyond death itself, and it called upon his Body: Stand Firm.
A torrent of blinding System energy roared in the distance, a tsunami wave of power set to crash against Felix's cores. He accepted it, welcomed it, as his flesh was remade. Strike after strike, blow after punishing blow broke Felix's skin and muscle and bone...but it healed stronger each time. Muscles became denser, bones thicker, ligaments and joints more fluid and nimble. His inner song raged, fueled by the flood of the System, and the flame of the Grandmaster's fury burned him away, only to reveal something new.
"Why won't you die!" Kel'lyv bellowed, smashing down into Felix's shoulder with two interlocked hands. Bones creaked and the muscle split, splatting more blood into the walls. "Know your place! And! Fall!"
"Desperate Provocation!"
A shout tore across the chamber, one that echoed with a powerful reverberation that tugged at the edges of Felix's Will. The Grandmaster, however, had been more weakened than he had admitted—because Beef's sudden Taunt arrested his latest punch just inches from Felix's face, before the mage turned around completely.
"Beef! No!" Felix shouted.
"You! How dare you interefere!" Against his Will, the Grandmaster flashed across short distance, a spinning lash of flame and earthen debris forming into a deadly whip.
Relentless Resolution!
Adamant Discord!
Felix burst forward, blood and viscera trailing behind him as the song in his chest rose to a vehement crescendo. Power boiled within him, exploding outward across his core space before rolling into and through his entire Body. Lightning crackled, thunder roared, and Felix's hand clasped around the Grandmaster's elbow.
And stopped the mage's attack, cold. Kel'lyv exclaimed in outraged surprise, and was met by Felix's speeding fist.
Congratulations!
You Have Tempered Your Body!
You Have Formed: Chthonic Ascent Body!
+75 EVA
+100 MIG
+75 VIT
+75 STR
+200 AGL
+100 DEX
The Grandmaster backpedaled, face bloodied and fire Mana sputtering all around him. He raised a hand to his broken nose in disbelief, Beef all but forgotten. "You were...you were broken. I broke you!"
Felix stood and realized he was looking down on the gray-skinned mage. He was covered in blood and shreds of discarded flesh, but he felt...amazing. With a flex of his Skill, a bit of his remaining Essence was consumed and his skin rippled, turning to diamond hard scales the color of midnight. Claws burst from his finger tips and vicious spikes emerged from his knees and elbows. He bared his teeth at the mage. "You tried."
"RAAH!" Kel'lyv screamed and turned into a comet once again. He slammed, fist-first, into Felix's abs...and was stopped dead.
"Huh," Felix said. "Barely hurt."
Before the mage could react, Felix slashed upward, across the Grandmaster's face. Blood arced into the air and the man stumbled backward with a cry of pain, three claw marks ripped across his cheek and forehead, blinding him to Felix's powerful follow up. The kick connected with an explosive boom, the sheer force of his Strength ripping dust and debris away from them in a perfect circle. Kel'lyv was hurled forty feet backward, ass over teakettle, and landed hard enough to send Paladin corpses flying in every direction.
Felix stared at his foot and then hands in disbelief. Aside from the strangeness of being newly proportioned, he felt incredible, as if he could run for weeks and lift a mountain on top of his head. More importantly, another part of him felt utterly refreshed, and his Aspects surged in concert. Adept Mind, Spirit, and Body moved as one as a plan formed. The guy's getting back up already, and I can't rely on surprising him again. He swallowed as his Mind turned over his desperate plan. Gotta try.
Relentless Resolution!
Felix's increased Agility had him tear forward faster than ever before. He blurred back to the huge sword, to the pile of scattered potions at its base. For a moment, he felt a tingling call from the sword itself, an urge to grab the thing...but he ignored it. Instead he scooped up the large Mana crystal that had fallen from Pit's saddlebag, the one he'd grabbed from the Latticeways. It was the largest chunk he could see, and had the best chance of working.
"C'mon Affinity, do your thing," he muttered.
Dimly, Felix could feel the link it had to others of its kind. A frequency buzzed at the edges of perception, one that he could feel extend outward into the desert. Not just to where he'd found the thing, but further. Not just to one place, but to a hundred, a thousand. A field of vibrating light arced outward from his little crystal, thin strands of connection that were so numerous that it was like the horizon was briefly stained with blue. Felix knew, could feel from the draw of the crystal in his hand, that there were millions of others, billions even, all an outgrowth from a single process that began Ages ago.
The Grandmaster was up already, and the heat of his wrath fill the chamber. "FELIX! You die today!"
Here goes nothing. He gripped the crystal so hard he felt it creak. Chthonic Tribute!
His Hunger roared to life, suddenly fully willing to consume again. FEED ME!
Shut up and listen! Felix hurled his Intent and Will at the creature in his abyss, wrangling it along the rails of what he needed. Listen!
The moment his Body had formed, Felix had understood: all his Hunger needed was his Body to catch up, to grow strong enough to contain its ravenous appetite again. He'd hit the limit, but now that goalpost had been moved, and he forced his Hunger to focus upon those connections between crystals. There! Right there! Pull!
He drew deeply on the connections as well, adding his efforts to his Primordial Hunger's. The resonance between crystals increased, vibrating until the chamber around them began to groan under the weight of it, but Chthonic Tribute wouldn't be enough.
Unite the Lost!
Time slowed, the Grandmaster's charge barely started, but Felix couldn't enjoy it. Every ounce of his attention was suddenly captured by his Skill.
All of the significance he'd sequestered from the Primordial of Withering Dust was flung from the branches of his Divine Tree, down to the grinding press of his dual cores. It spun through them before flowing outward into Unite the Lost. A dirge sounded from the swirling patterns of the skill, a dirge that cut through and added to the chaotic song of his core before flowing outward, racing along Felix’s channels and out of his palms.
Felix focused, wrapping the energies around the Mana crystal he held, the soulful melody pulsing all the while. He pressed, his Intent shaping its direction until it found the crystal's connections; then it raced outward, expanding rapidly and expending significance all the while. Around him, the walls echoed with the dirge, staining the air blue as a mournful, haunting call shivered through everything.
This... Felix started as a vast shape flowed past. It was the size of a skyscraper, but shaped as a serpentine whale with massive fins and a rippling, spiked ridge. He recognized it in pieces, having only seen its bones before—it was a leviathan. Felix gawked in awe as two more swam in its wake, faster than any car he’d seen.
All around him was water. An ocean filled with creatures big and small, and the chamber he had been in had vanished utterly.
A Memory? Of the Primordial?
From below a flurry of bubbles enveloped Felix, while powerful current buffeted his body as he floated. Deep down, within the dark depths was a creature of multitudinous limbs and bright, burning motes of flame around its many palms. The Primordial of Withering Dust, in the flesh. It fought against…something. Something vast and terrible that Felix couldn’t make out. A monstrous struggle that clearly put the Primordial on the back-foot. In the darkness, Felix could see it losing. Jaws tore bits of it away, until the water was so occluded with offal that he could see nothing more.
Then, from the opaque struggle, a dire, golden radiance shone through. A scream shook the water, blasting it upward in a geyser of incredible torment.
The flesh curse? Something happened there, something big that Felix couldn't see or understand. But he was thrown out of the Memory, stumbling atop the hard tiles of the chamber. He wanted to linger, to find out more, but that wasn't his task or goal. Felix focused, and felt his Unite the Lost and Chthonic Tribute near one another. The crystals around them literally quaked, trembling in the vast chamber and elsewhere as well. The Grandmaster was speeding forward, once more a comet of violence and flame, his moment of heightened concentration at an end.
Now!
Chthonic Tribute is level 86!
Unite the Lost is level 51!
All at once, the massive collection of blue crystals in the chamber turned to liquid. A huge deluge stormed from the sky, a waterfall that roared with a powerful voice. The wall of water hit them all, smashing them into the earth before flooding the chamber completely. Felix leaped just as the water struck, rising to the top of the waves, but even then couldn't escape their reach. The Grandmaster was swept off his feet, the inferno he wore upon his shoulder snuffed out utterly.
Rime Shaping!
A thick, boat-like platform manifested beneath Felix's feet, lifting him to the top of the raging waves. A second tendril sped outward, into the depths, to grasp at his Minotaur friend. Before he could feel it connect, however, a brutal, golden light flashed into his Mind. Felix screamed as the hand of something immeasurable reached into the still-singing connections he'd established and pushed. The vibrations that he'd manipulated and encouraged in this huge chamber spread, pressed outward until along the billions of connections all around the Expanse.
And then it unleashed them all.
"No," Felix choked, the waves surging all around him. "No! What've you done?"
Of that golden presence however, all he felt was a sense of smug vindication. Then it was gone.
* * *
Ahkestria shook, and Vess nearly collapsed under the weight of the wounded she carried. Buildings around them cracked and quaked, as if the entire city were being shaken by a massive hand. "What is that?" she asked.
Zara and Isla were ashen-faced and staring out into the distance as screams began to echo all around them. Clouds manifested in the blue sky, rolling and crackling with dark-bellied storms.
"Did he—?" Isla asked.
"He did. I am not sure how, but he did." Zara looked to Vess, and the heiress flinched back from the intensity of her expression. "We must go below. People are in danger."
"We're in danger! The Paladins haven't even all left yet," Evie said, pointing at the Manaships still in the air. Yet even as she did, a bolt of cerulean lightning flashed from the clouds and blasted apart one ship's engine. The craft spun chaotically before disappearing over the edge of the city. "Whoa."
Zara clenched her jaw. "The sea has returned."
* * *
"It comes!" screamed a bandaged Yttin, standing atop the stone-encased skull of their Warren. "The Beast, it comes!"
Clouds piled into the sky, and all around him was the ceaseless howl of the End. Of a new Beginning. A wall of water roared toward them, three hundred feet high, sweeping across the sands like absolution itself.
Klzix only laughed as it swept over him.
* * *
"Goddamn Pathless!" Felix shouted. He recognized the feel of its power in retrospect. "You released all of this just to get back at me? You jackass!"
The water rose, and rose, now filling nearly half the chamber and showing little signs of stopping. The amount of water that had been condensed into a single Mana crystal was immense, and now all of them, everywhere had been released. An ocean's worth of water was flooding the desert, and there was nothing Felix could do about it.
Felix rose closer and closer to the surface of the chamber now, balanced atop his impromptu ice-boat. He cast about for Beef in the rising waves. Pit was safe in his Spirit, still reeling from his Evolution, but he still hadn't seen the Minotaur. He'd even lost his swords somewhere in the depths, but Felix couldn't care less about them at that moment.
"Autarch!"
At his side, the waves burst apart, turned to sudden steam as the Grandmaster Kel'lyv flew up into the air. His robes were torn to shreds and waterlogged and his aura of fire had dimmed, but he didn't hesitate to hurl everything he had. An sphere of incandescent flame ignited around the Grandmaster, evaporating the water faster than it could accumulate around him, and blasting Felix and his boat backward. He smashed into the massive bronze sword, the only constant in the swirling sea, and it tingled like electricity against his skin. "You've taken everything! And I'll see you dead!"
The sphere of flame shot forward, coming for Felix...but he was done. Felix leaped up, grabbing at the hilt of the massive bronze blade next to him, shoving his Will and Intent at the strange weapon as he heaved with every ounce of Strength he had.
Inheritor's Will Detected!
Strength Above Threshold!
Vitality Above Threshold!
Endurance Above Threshold!
Access Granted!
A shockwave of blue-gold radiance blasted outward as the massive Crescian Bronze sword shrank. It came loose, forming to Felix's grip just as he thrust it forward. Skyslain's Riposte shifted again, draining Felix of nearly all of his Mana to burst into a hundred-foot long spike of Crescian Bronze, a spike that stabbed straight through the Grandmaster, pinning him to the wall.
Under the ever-falling water.
He struggled, raged, but the blade would not be budged. A cataclysmic explosion of fire tore apart the water, revealing a screaming Kel'lyv to Felix for a single moment...before the explosion burst inward and with a concussive boom, the entire wall collapsed into the water.
You Have Killed Sig'nyh Kel'lyv Grandmaster of the Desert's Fire!
XP Earned!
Challenge Complete!
Other notifications tried to crowd him, but Felix wavered, his Body, Mind, and Spirit all suddenly and utterly exhausted. He'd foisted off the rest that was required when Tempering, burned through it with the energy of a Primordial and Willpower enough to contend with tiny gods, but now Felix tottered. The toll was due.
Pit...?
Beef...?
He fell into the water, and was dragged into chill darkness.
