Health:

2290/2290

Stamina:

1673/4920

Wrath:

4207

Kal’s wrath limit was beginning to be a problem. Now that the majority of the kuroxet could not harm him enough to constantly be spending his wrath on healing it had become a challenge to spend enough wrath to prevent himself from losing control.

Wrath Incarnate was still the best thing for spending his wrath but when everything was so weak his killing speed had gotten far too fast. So whenever Kal was in a large group of weaker enemies he would deactivate Wrath Incarnate and spread his Flames of Wrath over his enemy instead before leaping away.

This had two benefits, it delayed the next burst of wrath coming his way and it gave him time to move away and reactivate Wrath Incarnate, wasting extra wrath as he had to re-engage each time. It wasn’t perfect but it was enough to help balance himself out until the horde around him had started to thin, increasing the cost of Wrath Incarnate.

Kal had deactivated Slayer’s Intent to slow his wrath production as he had gotten awfully close during the moments after he engaged the gorefiends. The sheer amount of worms that had begun to burst from the corpses of the kuroxet that he had slain had meant a drastic decrease in the spending of his wrath.

He weaved through the gorefiends as quickly as he could, hacking through their disgusting intestinal tentacles every chance he got. He probably could have let several of their strikes hit just so that he had something severe enough to heal but the thought of one of those worm things bursting from his body again was enough to abandon that idea and encourage him to kill them even faster.

The felflames continued their group skill or whatever they were doing as Kal dealt with the majority of the strongest-shaped ones.

Level up!

His stamina wasn’t in the best place, now below a quarter of its maximum but he couldn’t deny the speed of his leveling here. Most of the weaker demons didn’t grant him any experience directly but those who did were still plentiful. Even if they granted him barely anything, every kill was pushing him further, every kill was a tiny flame added to his raging core.

In between bursts of his Wrath Incarnate images and whispers were crawling through his mind, brought back to the forefront during the slaughter he was undertaking, the twisted bodies of the gorefiends resurrecting thoughts of the endless carnage. For some small moments, Kal felt the lines between his own thoughts and his birthright’s rage blur. Each time came faster than the last and Kal had wrenched his thoughts back on track as refocused his attention back onto the more powerful foes.

There were more demons coming and Kal couldn’t fight forever even though his health was more than stable. So he dropped his Wrath Incarnate for the last time and moved through what was left of the kuroxet and away from the haven. He turned back to watch the felflames continue whatever it was they were doing. They had been at it for most of the fight but they still hadn’t finished.

Kal was about to look away but then his eyes caught a flash of light from within the haven. Then in an instant, the haven was engulfed in a furious inferno of power, swirling flames, liquid earth, and cascading flashes of lightning in a variety of blinding colors. Then in less than ten seconds, it was over. Leaving the once pillar-filled haven a completely flat plain of molten glass.

Nearly all the demons had frozen with the display of insane power just like Kal, but he had seen something similar before and on a grander scale so he recovered more quickly. Seeing his chance to break away Kal took it and made for the closest outcropping of stone.

Kal’s speed had definitely increased. At the full sprint, he easily kept ahead of the chasing horde. He was burning through the last of his stamina but he just needed to get out of sight for a few minutes to take a breather before he could continue.

He wished he had thought of trying to make a wrath to stamina conversion skill while he was in the haven but considering how complicated Wrathful Regeneration was it was probably a good that he hadn’t. Who knows what dumping a heap of aimless physical energy into his body would do? He doubted it would be pleasant. Even Wrath Incarnate which amplified his attributes wasn’t a straight conversion skill, considering it increased his physical strength and endurance probably meant it used physical energy in some controlled way.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Once again something else he would have to look into, Another onto the pile.

It took Kal nearly half an hour to fully break away from the horde. Again it was mainly the bloody flyers that had made things difficult. They would just fly to the top of the dome and call out to the horde on his movements. A few lucky burning rock throws on some of the more confident sky hunters was enough to cull their numbers enough for him to escape though.

Kal didn’t waste any time on anything but rest besides wasting some wrath on a few more rocks to bring himself back down to safer wrath numbers. Like he had expected it had only taken about ten minutes for another demon to come across him. It was just a weak-shaped one but the noise of him killing the thing was enough to start another annoying fighting sprint through the spires.

Getting to the next elite was going to be a marathon.

----------------------------------------

Dalen grumbled as he went about making his next round of potions. The last few days had been hard, the order had pushed themselves hard to cover as much ground as possible to reach the entrance to the Fractured Path. Dalen was lucky that the order had some very well-leveled horses to keep up with the intense pace of the order, otherwise, he would have been left in the dust with the younger members.

During their journey further north Leo had made sure Dalen had gotten involved with any threats that had gotten near the group. All the dangerous monsters or demons were handled well before they reached the group by the order’s scouts or front guard but they often left the weaker leveled monster alone and if the monsters were dumb enough to attack such a large group it gave the younger and lower leveled members to gain some experience.

Before gaining his new class Dalen had little to no combat potential, only having a few very weak potions that could do any kind of real damage to anything but honestly, they were more of a deterrent than actual weapons. A few that could sting a person’s eyes or disorientate them.

But now things are different. Dalen had managed to figure out how to make quick and dirty bombs with his ability to use his anger as a component in his potions. It wasn’t easy but if he could use a small enough amount the potion would be stable enough to survive him throwing it. The moment the vial or bottle broke would explode into a small sphere of crimson-looking flame.

The resulting carnage from the bombs was definitely more than he had expected to achieve and was obviously stupidly dangerous. He hadn’t really known what they would do, he had just added the smallest amount of anger into the vial that he could while working to make one of his flash bombs and a crimson inferno was the result. He was just damned lucky to have not set it off in his tent.

He hadn’t had too much time to really test everything with its use yet but it was clear to Dalen that bombs were definitely going to be a main path for him in the future.

With the discovery of his bombs, he had managed to quickly level up twenty-eight in just two days. Now that he gained experience from both alchemy and killing monsters, leveling up would be relatively easy. A combination of both was probably best but he couldn’t help daydream about simply crafting potions for several weeks to gain a few levels away from all the bloody cult members.

The way they all looked at the crimson flames of his grenades was even more disturbing than the fact that they had given him a fancy tent and just moments after getting a spare cauldron from Melisia they had come out of nowhere and given him the fanciest cauldron he had ever seen.

Combiner of the Crimson Disciple [Rare]

This cauldron was commonly used by the chosen of —------ who showed potential in the arts of alchemy. Few disciples were ever competent enough in the arts to progress far but those who faced the path of the alchemical ascendant were cherished by their patron.

Alchemical solutions combined within this cauldron have much greater stability and an increased sensitivity to the user's mana manipulations.

The cauldron was smaller than he was used to, only about the size of his head but it was exquisitely crafted. The was made of a very dark gray almost black metal polished to the point he could just barely see his own reflection in it. Its rim was of a different polished metal a bit like copper but of a much darker hue.

Dalen wasn’t a fan of the cauldron description and the fact the person omitted from the description was probably this Fyborh god that cult based their whole damned religion on. He had almost given back but the rarity and the benefits of the cauldron were too much to pass up.

It was probably the only reason he had managed to make bombs at all with its greater stability. No doubt he would have blown himself up if he had tried his super flash bombs with his old cauldron. He might have been lucky to blow the thing up with health potions.

He was still working out the kinks with the mana manipulations part. It was one of the things that came along with getting the alchemy expertise skill. It basically allowed him to manipulate the release of the essences he was adding to the cauldron.

In the transition between tavern keeper and alchemist of the wrathful that had been the hardest thing to get used to. His old way of alchemy was definitely a “dirty” method. It left all kinds of impurities in the potion which both decreased the potency and increased the amount of herbs and the like he needed to use.

Now that he had Extract Essence he could ignore most of that, or at least more easily account for it. He still had unwanted essences when he used the skill but he could separate them with time.

But that was all something Dalen needed a lot more time and practice to figure out than he was likely to get on the road and still manage to get enough sleep. The order kept up a hard pace, only resting for a few hours each night. The young would be carried or tied to their horses until they were ready to ride on their own. To Dalen’s surprise, he had also found that most of the children he had seen amongst the order were born in the order, only a bare few were taken children all of which were orphans except for Harlm’s son.

Dalen wasn’t sure how much of what he had been told he actually believed, kidnapping at all didn’t sit right with him. Even with most being orphans and not missed, the few who weren’t poisoned the whole order in his mind. Kal had fought with people he knew damn well he shouldn’t have to help Harlm even though he barely knew him. Dalen knew that Kal would never stand for it. So neither would he.

If there was one thing Dalen was going to do while the members of the order continued to watch it was to make that point clear.

“Dalen! We’re moving out!” Leo called from outside his tent, likely already finished doing whatever it was he did during the short break. He sure didn’t sleep.