Scorching Shifting Sands, a depth 7 passage realm
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Fairy-Robert had evidence this realm was actually a depth 3 but he wasn't sharing it with anybody. Maybe Noah.
The quest for this realm paid well exactly because it was so deep. The place was a desert constantly bathed by sandstorms where the sands constantly shifted and formed new dunes every few minutes. The sky behind the forever-suspended sand was a blend of purples and reds, and the air shimmered with heat waves. Full-body environmental protection was absolutely necessary. The superheated sand would strip a person's bones of the flesh and bleach them white in minutes. While cooking said flesh at the same time. Temperatures could reach over 250F / 121C. Air pressure was about a third of Earth's, causing most liquids to boil.
His choice of upgrade for the mage armor was showing its worth. The Force barrier kept the sand and the heat away from him. But it was still a bother and it put a huge drain on his essence. Robert sighed. With a spatial distortion creating his favorite type of lens, he fired a Zoltraak void lance. The cone of Void essence vaporized sand, in the air and on the dunes and killed a few monsters hiding under the dunes. The storm rushed to fill the vacuum with a thunderclap. He readjusted and fired again. And again. He emptied his void heart, went to the liminal void to recharge, and repeated.
Each time, his beam went further and further as it found not as much essence or matter to disintegrate as before. After the tenth time he emptied his void heart, the local sandstorm subsided. Temperatures remained high and he dug a massive hole that was in the process of filling up again as the sand fell into the hole.
Robert flew over the area he'd cleared, carrying the spatial distortion next to him. He knew he hadn't hit the monster he was looking for but it would happen soon. He fired his cone of Void essence every now and then, probing the dunes. He only found small fry, sandstone serpents, small Wind and Earth elementals called dust devils, and obsidian scorpions. These small fry monsters were all two-stars but Robert was almost halfway through his second star now. Still, the amount of shit he had to kill to develop that star the second time was mind-boggling. It was closer to what he expected to happen if he was a three-star Archhuman.
Eventually, he found his mark. the Sand Wyrm. A giant sad sandworm covered in draconic scales. It was sad because its poop was worth shit. It blended perfectly with the shifting sands but Robert could see the three stars burning in its core. He could also see all the Fire, Earth, and Wind essence moving around the monster.
The bounty was for a hundred of its teeth. Robert set an array of lenses that would turn his cylindrical beam into a thin blade. He could do it without the spatial lenses but not this thin. He aimed it at an angle to sever a wedge off of the monster's mouth. Once the slithering monstrosity underneath him moved in place, he ignited his two stars and fired the Zoltraak beam.
The serpent squirmed at the last moment, causing him to miss. Alerted, it moved to face Robert and spat a cone of superheated quartz crystals at him. Basically, sand. Robert placed a wall of force in front of him and blocked the attack. Serendipity rose by 5 points. His spatial array was lost as he was forced to flee.
Ten minutes later, the Sand Wyrm ignored him and resumed its sand-eating journey. Robert conjured the array once again and fired. This time, the attack struck true and a massive wedge of the monster's toothy maw was cut off. The moment the beam struck the creature, Robert was already in the liminal void, going there to fetch his prize. he grabbed it, waited for his return, and used his primary talent as fast as he could, dragging the thirty-foot-long severed lip with him. He placed it in his spatial storage.
Back to reality, he struck the Sand Wyrm with a two-star combo of drain essence and sap stamina. He waited and dodged as the Sand Wyrm got sucked for all it was worth. With the hours he'd accumulated In the liminal void, he used telekinesis to extract and safeguard the teeth in an insulating box. The flesh was useless so he dropped it in the desert and went away.
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Elemental Nexus, depth 5
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This realm was technically owned by a German faction. They didn't allow access to outsiders regardless of how much people bribed them. Robert technically didn't care. If they weren't protecting all passages, then they could go fuck themselves. Every mapped path leading to this realm went through a passage owned by them.
This realm was extremely valuable for any Arch of the four basic elemental affinities. Because they often spawned treasures that could increase one's attunement with their affinity, boosting the potency of their spells. The reason Robert's Void magic was so powerful was because of his attunement with the Void. It was largely unspoken of because changing one's attunement was very expensive. The treasures birthed in this realm never appeared at an auction.
The landscape, if one could say they had one, was in constant change. Floating islands, floating water bubbles, boiling water bubbles on fire, cold mist and hot vapor, sandstorms, landmasses on fire, fire without fuel, and patches of mud, all existed and morphed into one another. The monsters were all elementals of one of four affinities, ranging from one to three stars.
It was easy to distinguish how many stars an elemental had. You just needed to judge it by its size. One-star elemental sizes ranged from small to tiny. They barely reached a person's waist. Two-star elementals could be anywhere from twelve to six feet tall. And three-star elementals were more than twenty feet in their biggest dimension, be it height or length. The purity of their element also changed. A one-star Water elemental could be muddy, fizzy like soda, or even hot or cold. A two-star Water elemental was mostly clear, having some debris or bubbles floating in it. But a three-star Water elemental would be almost transparent and pure. Drinkable, even. Their shape could resemble anything. Amorphous, humanoid, or any animal.
Then you had the elemental lords, four-star creatures. The recommended path with one of these was to run away. Because they had power over their element that transcended reason.
A Fire lord could suck the heat out of your body, causing your body functions to cease. Or
A Water lord could make you a desiccated husk or give you a taste of stage 3 hundred wet hells tempering. Without the benefits.
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An Earth lord would take control of the metals and minerals of your body, causing massive damage just by, for example, making all the calcium leave your bones and go to your brain.
And Air lords (or Wind) would forbid you to breathe or extract the oxygen dissolved in your blood. Or force enough nitrogen into your pores that you would bloom like a balloon.
Fighting those required specialized enchantments to keep one in control of one's body. Or enough soul pressure to keep their powers at bay.
However, the elemental lords only appeared if someone caused an imbalance in the elements. Kill enough Water elementals and the Water lord will come to have a chat. And so on.
Robert wasn't after any of these. What he really wanted was a creature allegedly stronger than the lords.
He flew around until he found a vast mountain that covered almost the entire horizon ahead. Ice covered its peak. Magma ran down its slopes. Lightning struck its metallic veins. This was the only spot in the whole realm where the advanced concepts of the four basic elements appeared. And it was home to creatures that embodied all four elements in one spot. The Titans.
Quad-affinity creatures, these titans were four-star creatures but their power in a single element was comparable to the three-star versions. They towered thirty feet (or more) in the air.
Robert found one such titan in an isolated foothill. After flying around and checking if he was indeed alone, the assault began.
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Fairy-Robert struck the titan with his usual debuff suit, slow, drain essence, sap stamina, and added a new spell. Feeblemind slowed down one's thought processes and barred the higher faculties from working. The little sister to mind blackout and the inverse of accelerate thought, it was surprisingly harder to resist as its effects were subtle and insidious. At the level of proficiency he had, the spell wouldn't do shit but he needed to train it anyway.
Then Robert flew around, delivering Void punches to the knees, hips, elbows, and shoulders of the titan. Each blow sent chunks of stone, splashes of water, tongues of fire, and bursts of wind out of the monster. But they also limited his mobility and increased Robert's advantage.
The titan tried to fight back. But hitting the invisible fairy was like a drunk man trying to swat a mosquito. The titan tried to use his elemental powers but he made a big mistake by not going all out. Unaware of the threat looming over him, he used his powers at base level to save essence. Robert cracked an elbow, then the other one. A failing knee brought the monster down on one knee, and from there, drain essence bottomed out the monster's energy reserves. Robert finished it with a Void lance aimed down into the mountain. A black bean flashing into the sky would be too conspicuous. Headless, the titan collapsed.
Robert harvested an orange-sized quad-elemental core inside the titan. If properly refined and enchanted, this could become an artificial core satellite to the bearers of one (or several) of the four basic affinities. The failure rate was high so the raw core wasn't worth as much as the finished product. But the request from Yolania's catalog offered two hundred million for this jewel. Most of it was a rarity. The controllers on the upper layers of the interspace didn't allow anyone to come here and get them.
Before he left, Robert gathered three other titan quad-elemental cores. He intended to hand the worst one among them to Yolania as the request didn't state the quality, and give the best to Amanda as a gift. Even as a souvenir, this core was beautiful. Placed as decoration, it was a powerful statement of wealth and status, something Amanda would appreciate.
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Marianas Trench, Pacific Ocean.
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The thing with passages between water realms was that they either appeared in pressure-adequate spots or flooded the place they opened at. This was the former. The Abyssal Chasm was an open passage, bigger than the Frost Giant one in Scandinavia. Whales could cross this passage with ease. Nobody claimed this passage as it was too difficult to control access or even monitor it.
Robert's Mage Armor needed its initial casting time in maintenance every five seconds to endure the pressure. That wouldn't do. He shapeshifted into a young anglerfish, used Life essence to remove the bioluminescent organ, and swam through.
This place was dark and deadly. It was an underwater trench of immense depth, filled with darkness and strange, bioluminescent creatures. The pressure was crushing and the water, freezing cold. Cold currents could sap a warm-blooded body's heat in minutes. The thermal vents spewed volcanic poison. Lights weren't your friends; they signaled predators. Floating organic debris was either excreta or decaying gore from previous fights. And the crushing pressure would make humans implode if they weren't prepared.
Robert navigated using his spatial senses. The range improvement shone here, as he couldn't see shit. Not that he had much to see aside from the floating carcasses of dead monsters. The water here was so dense that bones could float up as fast as air bubbles.
He had to be careful with his void lances. The beams removed matter, which meant creating a cylinder of pure vacuum that would be violently filled by the surrounding water. It happened before in the water realms he visited but in here, it would be worse. The pressure waves would draw attention and the beam started in front of him. The water behind would shove him into the vacuum and he'd be hit by that massive thunderclap of rushing water. No. His two Void offensive spells would need to take a backseat.
For hours, he swam along, trying to find his target. It was supposed to be easy to find because the Abyssal Leviathans were giant serpents with bioluminescent organs all along their bodies. You could spot one from thousands of feet away, they said.
Anglerfish-Robert felt relief when he finally spotted the rows of colorful dots. The Abyssal Leviathan was everything they said about it. Long, deadly, and this particular specimen had three stars. Robert approached carefully, doing his utmost to shield his stars' pressure. The Abyssal Leviathan didn't care about small fry. The lightless anglerfish swimming next to it was so tiny it wouldn't even serve to fill the crevices between its teeth. Robert approached and swam slowly next to the Abyssal Leviathan's head. This part was crucial. He cast feeblemind at its lowest potency. It didn't do much but he followed up with another Mental spell he recently learned. Id insinuation weakened the barriers of a mind without alerting the target. It was the best attack against someone with a tower of iron will, for example. The metaphor was that the King atop his tower wouldn't see the sapper mining the foundations until it was too late.
So, he kept alternating between feeblemind and id insinuation. Like a lawyer with magical hands from two hundred years ago, he methodically picked the lock to the leviathan's mind. It took another couple of hours but he managed to get feeblemind through. With the spell dulling the creature's mind, he kept using id insinuation to further weaken the resistance and increase the potency of the feeblemind spell using his two stars.
The Abyssal Leviathan stopped. It just leaned against a rock spike that rose hundreds of feet from the trench floor and rested. It had not a care in the world. Robert used mage armor and returned to his fairy form. He needed his speech faculties for the next stage.
"Mind Blackout."
His special spell needed him to speak the spell's name out loud. The Abyssal Leviathan's mind was complex and fully capable of sentient thought. Its emotions were not as evolved and it was born with the powers it had, making it a monster according to modern understanding of the creatures in the interspace. Robert made sure the Abyssal Leviathan wouldn't ever move a muscle again. Next, he dulled its senses of touch and pain by making its mind ignore the nervous impulses. He also changed its mind to welcome Life essence into its body, essentially making the monster always consent to it. With the changes in place, he let it free of his mind control.
Using Life essence, Robert harvested all the bioluminescent organs on both sides of the Leviathan. They didn't lose their glow but would run out of nutrients soon. He also removed its bigger fangs, thinking that such thick teeth would make good weapons. With nothing else of interest, Robert touched the leviathan and dragged it to the deep void. He let the void feast and received its tithe of a bright blue sphere. Taking it in made him feel drenched.
Frustrated that he got no closer to finding out what that talent evolution did, Robert returned to Earth.