necariin
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Chapter 208
🕑 Added 2021-04-05 15:08:31 +0000 UTCDidn't make the goal yet this month, but! It's a rolling goal. Whenever we hit the target, I can afford to get 4 chapters a week out.
Thanks for reading!
* * *
You Have Defeated Deceit of Misfortune!
XP Earned!
Territorial Quest Alert!
You Have Gained Significant Contribution!
Save the Lost? Felix spared his notification a single glance, though his vision wavered with pain. It...cured her?
He hadn't had a chance to try out the other racial Skill he'd gained upon becoming a Primordial Nym. Or rather, he'd been too worried about how vague it's description was and put it off. So many other things were vying for his attention all the time...
Like, for instance, the Ghouls stomping through the darkness ahead of him.
Wrack and Ruin!
Wrack and Ruin!
Dual Casting is level 45!
The orbs of dark green Mana tore through the Revenants to either side of Felix, but when they reached the nearest Ghoul neither penetrated its thickened hide. It barely sizzled against them.
Status Condition: Spirit Damage
"Ugh, shut up," Felix groaned, slashing his left hand claws to create some space. With his right, he went to feed Essence into his club...and promptly spasmed, catching a Revenant's talon to his abdomen as he doubled over.
Corrosive Strike!
Acid wreathed Felix's left claw, swiping upward in a blind strike that gutted the beast. It fell backward, skreeling in pain.
Blind Fighting is level 44!
Even my Sovereign of Flesh is weaker. Felix ran a hand over the deep gouge in the scales protecting his belly. The Revenant had nearly torn through them. And he was running almost completely empty on Essence. The pain that stabbed at him was his core, greedily sucking at the emptiness where usually the cloudy nebula of power lived. One way to fix that.
Ravenous Tithe!
Death was rampant all around him. Some Felix had caused, but most not. His Tithe required him to claim it if he was to absorb the power, and slowly, Felix had come to learn that was merely a matter of Will. The Essence that burned from the smoking corpses of dead enemies contained pieces of Primordial, of the Maw. As far as the Hunger inside of Felix was concerned, that was his. No one else's.
Mine!
Glowing crimson vapor rushed toward him, filled with dark smoke like striations in a stone. Even the sky was not immune, as the cloying Mana radiation from the Scale was pulled toward him on a ceaseless tide.
The storm was reignited with him, though parts of it were being eaten up by his core ring again. Felix ignored that, focusing instead upon releasing a stream of that Essence into his weapon. The club grew, the Profane Sigils on its length burning with a crimson and blue luminescence.
"Much better," Felix grunted, before shoving it forward like a lance. The heavy weapon crashed into another Revenant leaping for him, checking the movement before sweeping sideways to crash into the rows that had surrounded him. "Back! Off!"
The ground trembled. Felix Blind Fighting Skill gleamed and he twisted aside, but not fast enough. A fist the size of a small boulder hit his face and shoulder, all at once, and he was slammed into the tiled floor. Stone shattered and Revenants were tossed aside as his body plowed a shallow furrow into the chamber floor.
"Eat!" The Pride of Blight bellowed. Felix saw the once-chorister looming out of the dust and smoke like a twisted, tooth-filled tumor, it's arms grown even heavier than before. Mouths had opened along his arms, tiny, gasping monsters with writhing tongues. Neither the Hand or any other of his allies were to be seen.
"Ugh," Felix said, rising to his feet. He coughed up dust and dirt that had shoveled into his mouth. "Why are Primordials so gross? Or—or is that a Maw thing?"
The Blight screamed and charged.
Ravenous Tithe!
More of the room's ambient Essence and Mana siphoned into Felix, but the Blight wasn't slowed an inch. Felix yelped and dove beneath the thing's fist, coming up under the arm to deliver a caustic blow.
Corrosive Strike!
Felix's armored fist hit the former-chorister's elbow joint, easily as thick as his torso. On someone regular, it might have actually been useful. Instead, Felix felt his hand slip into one of the many teeth-lined maws on the abomination's body. The acid gushed from the mouth, and the damn thing bit at him and ripped straight through the scales on his hand.
"FUCK!"
"Got you," the thing chuckled. The Blight flexed, and suddenly Felix was air-borne again.
Felix fumbled at his waist, grabbing at his Femur of the Envoy with his left hand. He yanked it free and streamed Essence into his club again. The thin, metallic bone became a battering ram in seconds, hitting the Blight's elbow with all the force of his 296 points of Strength.
It did nothing.
Then lightning struck.
"GRUUUUAUAAAHhH!" The monster cried out, pain clear in its voice. The mouths all over it's deformed body all screamed at once, and Felix slipped free of it's nasty teeth. He landed in a crouch, and cradled his arm against his chest. Other than his many other injuries, he was unharmed. Somehow, impossibly, the lightning didn't even touch him.
A second, then a third lightning bolt coursed out of nothing to strike the Blight. Now the High Adept abomination was seizing, all but frozen in place by the immense currents shaking through it's flesh.
To Felix's utter confusion and delight, Elder Holt stood nearby, his hands out stretched. Bright, blue-white Mana crackled around him like a halo of volts, and his greying beard swayed in a violent gale.
"We got ya, kid," Holt groaned, his body flexing beneath the strain of his spell.
We?
A second stike, this one of shimmering grey-black Mana, stabbed from beneath the creature. A jagged jaw of shadows ripped from the earth and tore into the convulsing thing. Great gobbets of flesh stripped away from it's legs, and the Blight stumbled to a knee.
"If you're going to make a move," shouted Elder Regis, her face covered in sweat. "Do it now!"
He knew just what to use. Felix thrust his hand into the air. "Vess! Sword me!" A moment passed, but nothing happened. Just him with his hand raised like an idiot.
Where...? Vess!
Felix spun, frantically casting about for her, but he couldn't see anything. "Vess!"
She didn't answer.
He turned back to the Elders. "Hold on!"
"Sure!" Holt gritted through his perfect teeth. "Take your sweet ass time!"
Felix exploded from his position, tiles shattered with each step as he plowed through the Revenants gathered around where he had seen Vess. Revenants died by the truckload, but there were always more.
Reign of Vellus!
A flex of his Will pushed his evolved spell back into the 360 degree attack it had once been. It sacrificed the focus and power of a concentrated spike to instead throw handfuls of enemies up and back. Two quick castings momentarily cleared the area, chaotic as it was, but still he couldn't find his friend.
"YAAH!"
Vess leaped backward from behind a triangular pillar, just ahead of a Ghoul's inept but powerful claws. Her spears, re-conjured, maneuvered around her body like five independent tails. Each one was a barbed stinger, packed with Mana and deadly. The spear in her hands was a blur as well, and she used it to clear the ground—explosively—of Revenants before she landed.
"Vess!"
She pivoted, barely ahead of the Ghoul's smashing counterattack. Felix could see her left leg was broken and unable to take her weight, though she was agile enough to evade the claws of the Revenant horde. The true problem were the Ghouls, five of them, smashing their brute force against the shield wall. Just as Vess retreated over it, her pursuing Ghoul followed.
It plowed into the shield wall with little more than a hitch in its step.
Stone Shaping!
The distance interfered, well over a hundred feet at this point. A line of hollow earth erupted from the shield wall, but the beasts tore through it without pausing. That's when Cal flitted outward, attacking in a blur of dagger strikes. She demolished the leading Ghoul, rending their head and shoulders to pulp. Closely following her were the darkened orbs of Atar's Sparkbolt, lighting up the Ghoul and surrounding horde with crimson blooms of fire. Cal rode the corpse of the Ghoul to the ground before speeding through the crowd toward the next one that Harn was facing.
"Felix!" With a ragged cry, Vess hurled one of the spears floating at her back. It rocketed toward him and Felix snatched it out of the air with a practiced jump and grab. When he landed back down, the Revenants that had been closing in on him ran all the harder, panting for his blood.
Wild Threnody!
Essence as well as Arctic power thrummed through his Blade as Felix spun in a wide circle, arms extended. Hoarfrost coated the Blade and trailed through the air, leaving jagged, flash frozen wounds in it wake. Arms, legs, and chests were severed by its preternaturally sharp edge.
You Have Killed Manawarped Revenants (x12!)
XP Gained!
Territorial Quest Alert!
You Have Gained Contribution!
Thunder filled the chamber again, accompanied this time by a groaning bellow from the Blight. Felix raced back toward the monolithic monstrosity, Blade of the Fang held out to the side like an a toothy spear. Unfettered Volition raged, giving him the oomph needed to push through the shifting horde.
The Blight finally wrenched free of the Elders' spells, sending both of them crashing to the ground, spent. Out of the smoking bodies, the Hand emerged, running full tilt toward the abomination.
"Focus on me!" The Hand shouted, leveling his blade at the Blight. He looked bloody and tired, but his face was lit up with a mad grin. Felix felt the man release some sort of Taunting ability, and every Revenant within ten yards suddenly reoriented on him. "I've got it, Fiend! Go elsewhere!"
But the Blight's own attention didn't waver; it had eyes only for Felix.
"MINE! RUAAUGH!"
Mouths gnashing, it pounded the ground, obliterating it into jagged shards that its scales ignored. Felix crouched low, Fang to his side, and poured all he could of his twin resources. Essence and Mana burned through his channels, both at the same time crowding each other and tearing at his pathways, but he brute forced it through. The Fang crusted over with ice, growing frosted crystals and spikes along the length of it as more and more Mana flowed outward.
Mana Manipulation is level 46!
C'mon, closer...
The Blight ripped through ranks of Revenants and the burning arcs of Harn's silver axes. The man had dispatched those Ghouls nearby with deadly brutality, but the Blight shrugged off his attack with no effort. The shadows beneath it boiled, releasing spikes and dark hands that grasped...yet these too, the creature eradicated with it's relentless stampede.
Closer...
Unfettered Volition!
Reign of Vellus!
Felix exploded from the ground, Reign of Vellus shot backward at an angle to provide him with lift. He'd attempted this before, but never with the Tempered Skill. He went fast, and only his Unfettered Volition allowed him to maintain his form.
Felix swung his Blade, low to high, as he flashed toward the Blight. He felt the weapon catch, the resistance of flesh, before a massive fist came down from the sky.
Reign of Vellus!
Kinetic force blasted him aside just as the Blight swung, narrowly missing the strike. He reoriented mid-air—thanks to his Unfettered Volition—and landed feet-first on a column before launching himself back at it. Felix could see ice had formed along a section of the monster's arm, right where he'd hit. He struck again, this time on the other arm, but the ice barely formed at all.
Barely broke its skin that time. Essence burned through his Fang, but it wasn't enough. He needed more. Landing atop the next column, Felix shot off another Reign of Vellus and reversed course again.
Ravenous Tithe!
Flying through the air, Felix drew in all he could from the cyclone of carmine power in that chamber. It thundered into him like a hurricane and rampaged through his core. He shook, a leaf in the wind, but still he flew true. Sword extended. A Wild Threnody on his lips.
Wild Threnody!
Arrow of Perdition!
The ice of his blade sheared off, dissolved into purple-white vapor as new Mana took its place. Golden-azure light, so thick it was like liquid, sparked off his Fang.
"Felix! Prey!" The Blight screamed, its once human face twisted into a mocking replica of fangs and eerily mortal eyes. "Mine!" It lifted its arm to deflect his blow, once again.
"Shut up!" Felix shouted, and cast.
Reign of Vellus!
Felix's body dropped, propelled downward by his kinetic spell. The Blight recoiled, the lightning discharge harmless but surprising.
"I'm!"
Reign of Vellus!
"Not!"
Again, he pushed backward, but this time his Fang was extended like a lance.
"Prey!"
The Fang hit the beast in the gut with the sound of a thunderclap taken to eleven. Felix felt his eardrums burst as golden-azure light bubbled and sparked from his weapon, now sunk to the grip in the Blight's abdomen. The creature howled with every mouth it had, and Felix could feel something wilt within it.
But he wasn't taking chances. He wrenched open the wound and shoved a taloned hand into it.
Ravenous Tithe!
Mana and Essence poured into him, desiccating the flesh around the wound as if in time-lapse, and Felix simply fed it back in to his sword. It cut deeper. Onward the power came, so much that Felix had to grit his teeth against the pain the two resources generated, traveling through his channels at once.
"No!"
The Blight screamed and swung a pendulous fist at Felix, missing him but forcing him to release his Blade. A second swipe knocked the weapon free, and the malformed creature stumbled away. Its gut was ruined by necrosis, and black veins spiderwebbed up its chest and down it's thick legs. It stared at Felix with its all-too Human eyes.
Then it ran.
"Motherf—!" Felix grunted, but a heavy hand on his shoulder stopped his pursuit. Angry, he found Harn at the other end.
"Finish the job here. Then we hunt it down. Yeah?"
Felix wrestled with himself just a moment before clamping down his Willpower. He nodded. "Yeah. Finish the job."
The Revenants were still swarming, hundreds of them, but they were more manageable now that the two choristers were taken care of; the shield wall proved effective against the rank and file Primordial-Spawn, while the heavy hitters took down the Ghouls in three on one slugfests.
"We've got the beasts," the Hand said, wiping his brow with a dark cloth. "But...we can't do anything about that." He pointed at the Scale of the Ravager King. "You can."
"Admitting I'm useful, Reed?" Felix asked, too tired to even smile.
"You're a one-trick avum, Fiend," the Hand spat. "So go. Perform."
The man was gone before Felix could even form a response, so he didn't bother. Who cared what Darius Reed thought anyway? And he wasn't wrong.
Felix bolted toward the Scale.
Flitting above the heads of the Revenants, he was able to easily evade their clumsy attacks and landed among the twenty foot radius around the Scale. It was clear there, utterly devoid of Revenants as if they refused to go closer. Or couldn't.
It didn't matter. Felix placed his hands against the Scale. Its heat was like an open furnace times a thousand, but not actual heat. His Song of Absolution didn't tick up at all, much as he wished. It was a burning that Felix could feel along his Spirit, perhaps even more acutely now that Pit was hurt. The poor tenku quailed within him.
C'mon bud. Just a little more. Stick with me.
Pit let out a single, steady, solid chirrup of assent.
Ravenous Tithe!
* * *
Vess nursed her leg by using her floating spears as crutches. It worked well enough to fight off Revenants, mindless beasts that they were. Their hunger made them predictable, and their relatively lower stats—compared to her, anyway—were not a true threat. At least, aside from their razor sharp claws.
No, the true threat, aside from the mutated choristers, were the Ghouls. It took at least three Bronze Ranks to handle one of the behemoths, and they kept coming from the darkness. That tunnel seemingly had an endless supply of the monstrosities, and despite killing several there were still eight Ghouls on the field.
Then it changed.
Cal, Atar, and herself had just dispatched another when the room grew monstrously hot.
"Felix," Atar groaned beneath the weight of that heat. His face had gone ruddy and beaded with sweat. "He's doing something. I know it."
Elemental Eye!
The Mana in the room was suddenly visible to Vess, though limited. She could see swirls of power arcing off those still fighting, as well as some of the natural features close by; but it was all of it dominated by the monstrously oppressive cloud of crimson power that hung above. Her first thought was that it was a storm building to a devastating thunderbolt, but as she watched the storm receded. It did not calm or reduce itself, but it simply...fled.
An aura of vibrant, multi-hued light burst from the far end of the room. Well beyond the Revenants, it was near the mouth of the tunnel. At the Scale.
Felix. Be careful.
* * *
The Scale screamed within him. Or maybe that was Pit, or himself even. Felix couldn't tell any longer. Ravenous Tithe pulled an immense amount of power from the Scale. The thing was made of Primordial Essence, and each mouthful was a crumbling chunk of the Scale itself, sublimated and inhaled.
It was so much, but it didn't even scratch the sides of his capacity. Forged by his encounters with the Ravager King, Felix was in pain but it wasn't going to kill him. He was certain of that, and so was Pit. Even if his ring core wasn't doing...that.
Essence poured from his channels, a constant influx. It gathered above his core as it always did, a cloudy nebula above the sparkling solar system of his core space. And, as always, the abyss within the center of his ring core took its due.
Only this time, it was not stopping.
It was like a tornado, funneling down into the hungry emptiness within him, pieces of the Scale vanishing just as fast as they appeared. All but the Echoes of the Maw, those ruby red drops fell to the side and collected atop his core. Slowly, yet far faster than he had expected, the Scale of the Ravager King vanished entirely.
That...was distressingly easy.
Fire Within guided Felix's eyes to his core, where the scattered Echoes of the Maw coalesced into a larger whole. An amorphous blob of crimson liquid, still spinning above his ring of liquid fire, it exuded a new weight to it that he could not fully describe. The larger, congealed whole trailed specks and spatters like a comet's trail as it turns in counterpoint to his core.
A thrum of discordant power pushed outward, into his core space. Or rather it tried to: Felix flared his Bastion and severed its influence before it got very far.
Things...settled. The Essence nebula above his little solar system crackled with unreleased potential and his Skills harmonized into a brilliant, shining song. Each vibration working on the whole, acting as counterpoints to one another.
It was beautiful.
Then it was over, and Felix gasped a breath of true air. He looked around himself, only to find scores of Revenants running...away. They streamed back into the dark tunnel, fleeing the chamber far faster than they had arrived. Even the Ghouls were fleeing. Their Spirit, usually so hateful and visceral, conveyed only a sense of terror.
Yet when Felix looked around, all he saw was the ragged remains of their fighting force.
Territorial Quest Alert!
You Have Gained Significant Contribution!
Territorial Quest Alert!
You Have Gained Significant Contribution!
Territorial Quest Alert!
You Have Gained Significant Contribution!
"Huh."
Comments
ben regnard
They weren't named characters. They couldn't be saved.
Imran
Thanks! Man, Felix is really bad at prioritizing. So, is the MC going to have an teensy mental breakdown that he's been killing & consuming people that he could have cured & saved?
