Intruder!
Intruder!
Intruder!
A cacophony of thoughts flooded a particular part of the Underdark. The web of thoughts spread past the hivemind of the Abyss Terrors, shouting into the mind of anyone willing to listen.
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“Damn monsters!” General Red growled as the thoughts of hundreds of beings bombarded his mind. Luckily he was still far away or he would have succumbed to the assault. He dreaded to think how powerful the attack would be if he was in their midst.
A pale silver crown appeared in his hand which he quickly placed on his head. He sighed with relief as the voices in his head went silent. Abyss Terrors really were a menace when together. Their ability to amplify each other through a mental connection was truly terrifying.
He looked at the rest of his team, and they similarly wore various Soul-guarding artifacts. Whether it was a piece of gear or a talisman with limited duration, they all had stuff to protect themselves.
“Let’s go.” He somberly said, gripping his twin swords tightly. They were about to step into Hell, and they knew it, yet they still decisively marched forward.
But, just as they turned the corner, they came to a sudden stop.
“What the fuck!”
Their path was blocked by corpses! Shattered chunks of those terrifying Abyss Terrors were like a wall of flesh, completely filling the tunnel. Some of them were even still wriggling, barely alive!
It took a moment for them to come to their senses and make a decision.
“All together, blast it apart! We are going straight through!” General Red ordered.
The five of them formed a line and synchronized their energy, before blasting it out in a straight shot. The bodies of monsters were incinerated, torn to pieces, and shredded into bloody goo. The path forward was revealed, and they decisively stepped into the large cavern.
The nest of the monster was way in the back, nestled between ginormous stalagmites hundreds of meters tall and dozens across.
The stone floor was covered in a layer of dead organic matter flattened into a hard brown surface. Green crystal veins spread around the cavern, glowing with an eerie light just like their lanterns, and wherever the crystal went, the land was clear of the house-sized bugs.
A stench of death permeated the place, with centuries of rot and excrement piling up on the floor. In all that filth, large holes were made, some of them even ten meters across, housing the Abyss Terrors. The hive all the way in the back had hundreds of them, built from the same disgusting brown substance.
Stalagmites were sprinkled all over the cavern like some giant teeth of a prehistoric beast, with hundreds of real monsters rapidly swarming in from dozens of tunnels all over the walls.
The sound inside was deafening, the creatures screeching over each other and using their kin as footholds as they walked, and in the middle of that chaos, a blazing fire roared.
“Holy mother of…” Torin gasped as they saw it. A beast many times larger than the Abyss Terror themselves, with wings made of flames and scales as black as obsidian. Red color glistened beneath them, though it was not from blood, but from fire. A burning giant battled the swarm, alone, tearing the beasts and slashing them apart with the colossal claws of a Dragon.
The swarm, looking no more than a nuisance to the beast, never wavered in the face of a superior foe, and instead increased their assault, redoubling their efforts. Soon their work showed results as the impossibly tough scales were torn off, revealing crimson flesh and boiling red blood beneath.
The Abyss Terrors screeched with glee and focused on the exposed weak point on the beast’s back, bathing in its blood as they drilled in further.
“He’s… He’s going to die…” Astrid gasped.
“Haha! Yes! What a glorious place to die! To battle!” Magnus laughed and jumped the first creature he saw, which was an injured Abyss Terror that managed to survive near the tunnel they came through.
He used his oversized pickaxe to bash its head in and laughed all the while.
The rest decided to ignore him for the time being and come up with a plan.
Astrid would empower them as much as their bodies could take, and then they would rush in as a team until they reached their newest member. The chances of survival were slim, but if they worked together, their experience and skills, combined with the dragonified human, they might just make it.
But then, just as they were ready to put their plan into action, the Dragon roared. They all froze.
Its mouth opened wide, and they could feel the energy in the air shift, the Killing Intent oozing from it and making them vomit.
The sea of Abyss Terrors spasmed for a moment, and then it was over. A blinding light covered the underground chamber as the Dragon spat out a pillar of flames. The beasts screeched as they died. The fire was like a broom of death, sweeping through the masses of insects and incinerating them in seconds. The heat and flames rolled through their ranks, bringing death to whoever they touched.
The rumbling of flames shook the very ground they stood on, the terrifying energy unlike anything they had ever seen before. It was so dense, so incredibly powerful, yet still not quite reaching the threshold of Spirit Realm.
It was…
“Amazing…” Sunfire whispered.
“He’s burning his Soul!” General Red realized with horror. That was the only explanation for such a blaze! The man was burning his Cultivation to survive!
“Stop it! It’s not worth it!” He shouted. If that continued any longer, forget getting crippled, he would surely die! Even if his Soul was incredibly powerful, such power could not be sustained! It was suicide!
“Follow me!” Torin shouted over the rumbling and encased them all into a mobile barrier. They collected Magnus who was standing over the dead Abyss Terror, watching the slaughter with an open mouth. As a man Cultivating the Path of Mindless Slaughter, what he was seeing was nothing less than a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to deepen his understanding of his way. He couldn’t stop watching.
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“We are coming, fire guy! Hold on!” Sunfire screamed. She had never before seen such power, such purity of flame. The man instantly became an idol in her eyes. He was absolutely not allowed to die!
However, just as she said that, her idol broke. The flames were snuffed out and he fell down on all fours, rapidly losing size. His mighty form grew smaller, weaker. The blackened perimeter of death around him began to shrink. The Abyss Terrors began to approach, slowly at first, and then ever faster. They swarmed in even greater numbers, the death of their brethren fueling their bloodlust like nothing ever before.
In mere moments, he disappeared under the sea of bodies.
“Noooooo!” Sunfire shouted with tears in her eyes. Her idol, her inspiration, her was gone! She felt her heart tear with grief.
The screeching intensified, but instead of mad bloodthirsty shouts, the monsters were celebrating. The destruction of the intruder was a celebration-worthy event! They brought down such a creature, the Queen would be proud!
“No…” Sunfire fell on her knees, eyes hollow. No matter how General Red tried to move her and pull her back to safety, she refused to budge.
The rest of the team lowered their heads. They didn’t know each other for long, but his bravery had touched them all. Even in death, they could still feel his intense Killing Intent which was growing stronger by the second. In fact, the very energy in the Underdark shifted, flowing into the mountain of flesh that were the Abyss Terrors. The creatures didn’t notice it, but General Red did.
“He’s… still alive.” He whispered, surprising even himself by the statement. Logically, it made no sense.
“Huh?” Sunfire looked at him through tears.
“I… I don’t believe it. He’s still alive!”
“What?!”
“And he’s… He’s condensing a Seed!”
That’s when they all felt it as well. The Qi in the cavern shifted, instead of lazily moving around, it all flowed into the middle. A torrent of energy poured into that one spot, the density enough for a thousand Cultivators to advance together, let alone a single man.
“Impossible!”
“Junior Brother is alive! Hahaha!”
They stood dumbfounded as the energy just continued to condense and then disappear beneath the squirming insects. The beasts realized something was wrong too, but clumsy as they were, they were stuck, preventing each other from moving. Those in the middle wanted to get away, while those on the top desired nothing else but to get closer. It was a disaster!
Then began a low rumble. The entire cavern shook, with the epicenter right where Gerald was buried. Just as the shaking was at its peak, everything went quiet. The group held their breath.
“Did he do it?” Sunfire asked with a shaky voice while wiping her tears into Astrid’s hand. The woman held her close to her chest as she comforted her teammate.
“I don’t know.” She answered. Everything was still and quiet. Too quiet. Even the monsters paused their screeching, freezing on the spot.
A second later they were all thrown back into the wall of the cavern as an explosion instantly dusted the mountain of flesh and leveled the ground a hundred meters around it. As the dust settled, they saw a single being standing in the middle, its Aura blazing like the sun, with rippling muscles, a large body, and glorious fiery wings. Then came a roar.
[Your father is back! Bow before your Emperor, insects!]
“He’s done it!” Sunfire celebrated, unconcerned about the injuries she sustained from the explosion.
[All of you shall die!]
The giant form of a Dragon shifted, gaining the shape of a true Dragon, its animalistic form, and then, it multiplied.
Two globs of energy separated from the original, forming exact copies tens of meters tall, and then another one came into being, a white, transparent Draconic man. An Avatar.
A loud, booming laugh resounded as the four threw themselves into a bloody melee, crushing and tearing through the insects like they weren’t even there.
Instead of their numbers increasing as they did before, gradually the cavern became filled more with corpses than living Abyss Terrors. Even as larger warrior variants came from the main hive, they were torn apart and devoured just the same.
Their Soul attacks were ignored and their bites were disregarded as they failed to even pierce his skin. The creatures became nothing but snacks in the eyes of four massive Dragons, their corpses burning with white flames and turning into pure essence.
The group of five watched in silent horror as he ate, consumed, and merged with enough Essence to kill a Sky Realm Cultivator. Yet he just ate and ate, and ate. Even as his flesh expanded from the excess energy and ruptured, he just continued to consume. His wounds healed and reopened like a flickering flame, his skin burning and tearing constantly.
In the midst of so much death, Gerald failed to contain his power, allowing it all to come on display. The five, even as humans, with their inferior smell, could detect the stench of Body Essence getting wasted in enormous amounts. He absorbed but a fraction of what he devoured, yet each white pearl he swallowed was still worth decades of hard work. Many of them felt like crying. He was so greedy and wasteful!
Not Magnus though. He took inspiration from his younger Brother and went over to the beast he killed, tearing into its flesh and eating like a ravenous animal. The taste was disgusting, the flesh was poisonous, but the Essence it contained was worth it!
“What are you doing, you lunatic!” Astrid exclaimed, horrified, and ran to heal him. She mended his flesh and imbued his body with energy even as he continued to stuff his gullet with the remains of a monster. Alas, there was only so much his stomach could contain, so he soon had to stop. But then, unwilling to give up, he concentrated and purified the Essence from the flesh and swallowed the Spirit Essence Orbs one after the other.
His skin split and his bones burned as the energy was forcefully incorporated into his body, yet he just gritted his teeth and smiled.
“Stop smiling you fool! You are killing yourself! You are not like him!” General Red shouted as he held back the hand of his teammate as he tried to overdose on Essence. Eventually, they needed even Torin to help hold him as well, otherwise, Magnus would really stuff himself until he popped.
Obviously, the man was not happy.
“Leave me! Let me go! My Junior Brother has shown me the way, I need to follow him!”
But the rest of them knew he really would end it all in search of his ideal, so they didn’t relent until the wild barbarian calmed down. They just needed to keep him on a short leash until his suicidal tendencies ran their course, and then he would return to normal until something else triggered his wild impulses.
“So he can instantly heal as well, huh?” Astrid murmured to herself as they watched Gerald rampage through the cavern. He was just one being, the clones and the Avatar had already run their course and it was time to clean up. The Abyss Terrors were diminishing in number and even began to retreat, which was very unusual for their species. That made Gerald chase them all over the place, slowing down his work.
“Yes, he’s amazing, isn’t he?” Sunfire said with a dreamy voice, resting her head on her knees as she sat on the ground.
“Hmm, I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on him and examining his body intimately.” Astrid nodded. That healing ability was really too attractive for her.
“Hey, me first!” Sunfire frowned at her, but as their eyes met they both blushed and began to giggle like little girls first time in love. The guys also joined in, shaking with laughter.
“Oh, hahaha… Hey, wait..” Torin suddenly turned serious. “Wasn’t there supposed to be a Queen if there is a hive?”
All of them froze at once as realization struck. There was supposed to be a Queen! How come it didn’t show itself?
“Hey, isn’t the Queen also called The Shadow? The one-strike-killer?” Sunfire mentioned as an old memory resurfaced in her mind. The Shadow Queen was a patient beast that struck only once, at the perfect moment to deliver a killing blow. Nobody ever survived its deadly strike.
Realizing that, General Red jumped on his feet and turned, shouting towards the feasting Dragon. “Gerald! We need to get out of here! Hey! Are you listening?! It’s dangerous! The Queen-!”
The large Dragon turned, looked at him, and then blinked. That split-second of distraction was all it took.
Space split open, the inky blackness revealing a long chitinous blade. In that fraction of a second, it sliced a thousand times in every direction, splitting the massive Dragon into ten thousand little pieces. The blade then disappeared, sinking back into the blackness, and out stepped the Queen.
The terrifying Shadow came to light in all her glory, a colossal beast that towered over even the mighty Dragon. Her pointy legs stepped on the pile of flesh that remained, squishing it underfoot, as she turned towards the five still alive, and shrieked.