The creature let loose a Vital beam from his mouth. A slight flash in the corner of June’s vision signalled the activation of another one of the Mayor’s talismans.
“That’s my last!” Mayor Greaves yelled. June smiled bitterly, shifting a defensive talisman from his own spatial ring and activating it before the creature’s attack reached him.
A previous attack had broken through the talisman’s shield. The resulting beam of pure energy engulfed him, forcing him to use all his power to resist it.
Its scale was beyond compare. It ran on all fours, but when it had first beheld the two peak Elemental Initiate cultivators, it stood on his hind legs.
Neither of them had hidden their power from the creature. They were there to meet its challenge head on.
It flexed its power, and both June and the Mayor felt some relief.
It wasn’t in the Unbound stage, after all.
Thank the heavens.
However, it was something like a few dozen peak Elemental Initiates concentrating their power into a single creature. Vitally speaking, it caused the same ripples that an Unbound would when its full power was let loose.
Both he and the mayor were impressive for their stages, but against this kind of power? They might as well have been going up against an Unbound, after all. That being said, if they could cut past the creature’s outrageously tough hide, it would be easier to kill than an Unbound would be.
Just before the Vital beam hit, June concentrated his power at the tip of his word, and then projected it forward in a long, thin line. The blade of compressed air shot forward just as his shield fell, as effective as wet paper against the attack of their enemy. His own attack only held back the energy for the split second it took him to appear above the beam. He saw the Mayor was already on the attack, his empowered fist striking a wound that they’d both cut into the creature’s face mere minutes before.
The behemoth — its hide and eyes reptilian, but its features were humanoid — reminded him of the legendary dragons of ancient myth. Its rage filled cry caused the earth to shake for miles around.
Perhaps this was a descendent of those fabled creatures. To be this powerful when only an Elemental Initiate? how powerful would their celestials have been? How were they not dominating the known universe, immortal and unchallenged?
A question for a time when his life and the lives of everyone he had grown to care for weren’t at stake.
Thankfully, the townspeople got the shield up. June and the Mayor invested significant resources in their combined attacks to buy the town time. At the very least, the town would survive a little longer. It would also give Oberon Enterprises time to come up with a solution as well.
“June, this is looking like a worst-case scenario,” the Mayor yelled. June pursed his lips. He agreed, but he’d been wishing that things wouldn’t escalate to this point, even if all signs pointed to it being inevitable once they beheld the creature before them.
It was over a hundred feet tall, by his estimation. Who had thought that a beast like this could exist in this world?
June sighed and pulled out an artifact from his ring. He held it with reverence, regretting the fact that he had to use it at all. If it were up to him, it would sit unused for another thousand years or more.
It was an heirloom, passed down through his sect for untold generations. It was in the shape of a 3-level pagoda. No one knew its specific origins anymore. He only knew that the esoteric strain of Vita used to charge it was almost depleted. This could very well be the last time it would ever activate.
“That old trinket, eh?” the mayor said, transmitting his voice over the hundreds of meters between them. “Very well. I’ll pull out my trump card as well.”
He felt an upwelling of strange Vita coming from the Mayor. His eyes widened.
“Is that—” he asked, but the Mayor smiled at him, confirming his suspicion.
“I may have been holding back in our last spar,” the mayor transmitted.
A deeper echelon of Vita saturated his aura than the base earth element the mayor cultivated. The old man had been closer to the next stage than he’d let on. June couldn’t make out which deeper element the Mayor had touched upon.
But no matter the specific nature of it, even the barest whisper of a higher-order of power could be a game changer. Although the Mayor wasn’t yet an Elemental Adept, being able to command a bare fraction of an Adept’s power could spell the difference between life and death.
The beast’s attention centred on the mayor, whose aura rippled and expanded, not quite matching the creature’s own presence, but it was enough to intimidate June.
That was a fact which he would only admit on his deathbed, and not even then.
With the creature distracted, June activated the artifact. It had several levels of functionality, and the higher the level, the more it demanded in return. June pulled from the ambient Vita as much as he could in order to fuel the device’s activation.
The first level lit up. Then the second. As his energy saturated the third level, their surroundings darkened. A giant eye appeared high in the sky. The eye beheld the pagoda, and then its wielder. June felt as if his body was being crushed under the Vital pressure the eye exuded.
Its gaze centred on June, this eye of an unknown god, and June pointed at their enemy.
The eye shifted to behold the abomination. A bright light appeared in its pupil, and then—
The eye disappeared.
The darkness in of the world faded, as did the phantom pressure of a Vital stratum deeper than any he’d directly encountered before.
The artifact turned dull, the energy he’d invested evaporating into the air. June closed his eyes and let out a short, disappointed breath.
“Useless garbage,” yelled the Mayor.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Another shift in the surrounding Vita. He realized that the light that the eye had manifested hadn’t disappeared. It shot down towards the creature like divine judgement, gouging out a long chunk of flesh from his enemy’s shoulder, down its chest, and across its leg. With a bellow, the beast’s power amplified.
It was enraged. June wondered if it would go berserk.
The Mayor didn’t appear to share June’s worries about the sudden spike in danger he was feeling from the creature. He flew towards the Guardian, in the blink of an eye he appeared before it, and unleashed a storm of blows on the creature. First, right under its eye. Then he dropped 30 feet, avoiding a fast counter from the behemoth which caused a blast of wind so strong it upturned trees.
June could imagine hearing the triumphant inner monologue from his longtime comrade. The borderline of the Adept stage was right before him, and it set his blood aflame.
He cut a path through the air towards the creature’s head. As he expected, it left nothing but a superficial cut on its skin, but this was not a combat technique. He appeared next to a small hole along the side of the creature’s head. He assumed it was the creature’s ear.
“Boo!” he yelled, cutting another path through the air. This one was a very long arc, which started at the base of the creature’s ear and ended far above its head. It was a desperate move; his power more diffused along the path he cut than he would prefer. He wouldn’t be able to move as far as he could had he made a smaller movement, but that was fine.
All he needed to do was dodge the incoming—
The beast’s hand clipped his foot just as he was about to pass through the threshold of the short-lived passage he’d created for himself. The guardian avatar gripped the side of its head and bellowed in pain.
June had been most of the way through the threshold, but the hit to his foot caused him to be pulled off course. His transit through the air met more resistance than he would have liked, and it took him precious seconds to stop his uncontrolled spin and reorient himself towards the fight.
That wasn’t too hard, considering the Mayor was still dishing out more damage to the creature per blow than June had dealt throughout the entire fight.
He ground his teeth in frustration. The advantage that a half step towards another stage could provide was impressive.
His blood still boiled.
“I will not fall too far behind you, old man!” He yelled.
“Shut up! I’m concentrating!” came the Mayor’s transmission. “I’ve had an insight.”
If they weren’t on the same side, he would despair at the news. The further the Mayor progressed ahead of him, the more pressure June felt.
Before returning to the fight, he checked his foot. The Vita within was running rampant, and he took a second to calm it down and cut off the pain from the fractured bone. He’d have to heal it later.
Content that he was ready, he flared his aura to the limit. The creature didn’t even flinch. Its eyes didn’t so much as flicker towards him. All of its attention was on the Mayor.
He could work with that. He called upon the building blocks of the Stellar Sword Vita he’d been cultivating for a century, and circulated them through his channels. Wind, water, sharpness, and the first insight he’d had in the more esoteric spatial element.
He breathed, cycling the elements as he flew.
June cut a path to the creature, aiming for a vulnerability in its defence against the Mayor, right below its abdomen. He raised his blade and focused his power. He finely honed his concentration, willing the Vita saturating his channels and body to flow through his arm, into his sword, in a pattern that would call forth something profound.
Profundity refused his call. He slashed, knowing that the accumulated power would still have some slight effect on the magnificent beast.
He called again, and he felt the power fluctuate in a harmony that was not of his own making.
It was right there — the sign of resonance. Only once before, purely by accident, had he reached this. He struck the creature, but his impact was no greater than his previous blow.
He’d achieved resonance, but had yet to reach that critical threshold.
Once more, ignoring the world — ignoring the feeling of being reckless. He ignored the fact that before him was an existential threat, and behind him was everything he cared for.
All that existed was him, his blade, and the power he sought.
Once more, he pulled upon the Vital elements he knew. He claimed full dominion over them. They were his, and they would do what he—
He stopped.
How had he been so foolish?
Perhaps it was the fact that he was on the brink. Maybe it was the power he sought, calling from the ethereal Simultaneic Domain within which it lived, pulling him through with direct inspiration.
June remembered something his old master had said before he’d passed away. He’d said that domination was a means for the unenlightened to begin the process of transformation. He’d said that true enlightenment came not from domination, but from the opposite direction.
In that moment, instead of pushing and corralling his disparate energies together, he loosened his concentration. He softened his grip on his mind, his body, and his etheric channels. He let his attention drift.
And like a magnet, it shifted towards something he’d never seen before.
A vortex.
A whirlpool.
An opening into a domain that should not be, yet its truth could not be denied.
In that domain, he saw a vast space. He saw an endless line cut across the horizon. He saw the unification of forces beyond his comprehension.
A fierce roar cut him off from his vision.
The beast was before him, its hand clawed at him, like a small island with hills in the shape of talons.
Out of reflex, he cut towards the hand. He felt all the energy pulled out of his body and into the sword.
His eyes widened when he saw the briefest flash of a line like he’d just witnessed. It cut a deep, bloody gash into the guardian’s palm — a gash far wider than the line had appeared. It was almost as if the line occupied a volume of space that was greater than it appeared to be.
“Yes!” the Mayor yelled, “keep going!”
If only he could, June sighed. He’d touched upon the borderline of the next stage. The Stellar Sword Vita had answered his call, but it had taken everything from him. He had no more energy to attack, and he fought off the temptation to fall deep into a sudden sleep.
He pulled out a pill from his storage ring. It would keep him alert and somewhat energized. It would saturate him with Vita, but nowhere near enough to pull off what he’d just done.
Not that he could. Capitalizing on that vision would require a few days of secluded meditation.
Instead of lamenting on what he could not do, he focused on what he could. Until now, he’d proven an effective distraction against the creature.
Then a bright flash of light heralded one of the guardian’s strongest attacks so far. A blast of condensed Vita aimed right at him. His concentration on the fight had slipped after his attack. His mind was on the pill, on the future, and away from the great beast who had finally decided that he was a threat.
“No!” the Mayor yelled.
Using was little energy he had to spare, June shot as high above the beam of energy that he could. To his surprise, he saw that the creature’s mouth was the origin. The Mayor slammed the creature’s face with his body, changing the trajectory of the beam, so that instead of hitting June head on, it only hit his lower body.
Beneath him, his legs dangled, useless. His pants, which had been crafted to withstand the blows of peak Elemental Initiates and Illumined beasts, had dissolved. His legs looked like he’d taken a quick dip in a lake of fire. Charred, cracked skin peeled and exposed his boiling blood and well-cooked muscle.
It wouldn’t be impossible to heal from, but it would take a while.
Of course, if he could make it to the next stage, then healing would speed up dramatically.
Alas, as he was now, he could not spare any energy towards another insight. He was exhausted, but the fight continued.
June summoned a treasure to keep him aloft. It was nowhere near as fast as he would normally be under his own power, but it had served him well in his youth. He cut off the pain he felt from his legs and did re-entered the fray. He could only do his best to keep the creature occupied. It took some effort to keep himself on the artifact, as he could only provide enough power to manoeuvre it through the air.
It wasn’t enough to activate its ability to keep him attached to it.
Dangling from the flying treasure, he circled its head. He hoped to distract it so the Mayor could attack.
That it hadn’t killed him seemed to have enraged the Guardian, and its power fluctuated, increasing once more.
The mayor let out a cry of rage to match it, and something changed. A deep presence suffused the air, emanating from the Mayor.
Mayor Greaves became the centre of a vortex of Vita.
June’s wounds, the creature’s rage, the pressure from his own exhaustion, it must have all cumulated in the perfect conditions for a breakthrough.
“Lucky bastard,” June muttered.