It turned out to be more difficult finding snakes than they originally thought. First of all, the Wasteland was massive—it was the size of the state of Montana. Second, there were more geographic features than expected by the barrenness of the desert. There were mountains deeper in, though few had even gotten that far. The only people who had were those who had fled the area at the beginning of the initiation when two black and white mountains appeared out of nowhere. Since then, getting to the center was nigh impossible.
That might be where Alistair is, Alexandra mused. After all, it would make sense for him to head there to deal with the Wasteland’s Mana Storms. Usually the disaster’s boss was at the center, like with the earthquake in New Boston or one of the several hurricanes and tornados she had dealt with in the Northeast Freehold’s territory.
But she dismissed the idea of venturing there. It was too dangerous, considering how powerful the Mana Storms were. She envied Alistair, who had to deal with beginning stage natural disasters. The Mana Storms were one of the few disasters to survive past the Earth Asunder wave and into the next one.
Speaking of the second wave of [Armageddon], the sixth and final Quest… Alexandra shuddered. In some ways, it was smaller scale than the first wave, but it was far, far more deadly. It wasn’t destroying their infrastructure or food supply like Earth Asunder had, but the people were terrified. Terrified, and in need of their leader. She couldn’t replace Alistair. No one could. The #2 ranker, Pharaoh, involved himself more in helping out the innocent civilians, but it wasn’t the same.
She had worked with a strike team of herself, Pharaoh and Whimsy, the Wood brothers, Caren’s men, United Polities fighters, and various Northeast Order Freehold troops. All to take out one of the second wave bosses. It was only because of their help that she could afford to be here, instead of fighting on the front lines.
Alexandra had to pay back their generosity. She had to complete her mission.
Jesse popped into existence in a scarlet beam of light, accompanied by a loud sound that reminded her of a whip’s crack. “There are signs of serpent activity underground a few kilometers out. I think those bubbling black pools are their hidey holes? I was curious where they all were, I mean, even if this place is enormous, I’ve scouted everywhere with in a ten kilometer radius of here and found absolutely nada. Then, I realized that maybe they’re hiding underground. When I checked out one of those pools, I found that they’re way deeper than they look.”
“That would make sense,” Alexandra said. “But isn’t that stuff, like, toxic? It sure looks that way.”
“Well, I didn’t put my foot in, if you’re asking that. It smells like shit too, but I didn’t notice any negative effects from breathing it in, though I wasn’t there for that long.”
“You breathed it in without planning?”
Jesse jabbed her in the shoulder playfully. “You sound more like Alistair or Caren than the Alexandra I know.”
“I’m not stupid. Come here, let me feel you.” She gave him a deadly glare in case he enjoyed double entendres.
[Healing Current] had a far better diagnostic element than [Healing Touch], so she should be able to tell if anything was wrong with the man. Pressing her palm against his forehead, Alexandra didn’t feel anything wrong with him.
“You’re fine. Just be more careful. We can’t afford to lose a single man with everything that’s going on.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jesse declared. “I will strive to meet your expectations.”
Alexandra rolled her eyes. Jesse used his Skill to chain teleport them three times to the aforementioned pool. While they were alone, he didn’t touch her in order to teleport her. As far as she could tell, she only had to be within a certain distance, perhaps less than a foot. Whenever he fought, he would always touch his targets, to make it appear like he needed physical contact. He was not nearly as airheaded as his vibes gave off.
The area surrounding the pool was like where they arrived—barren and rocky. The sun beamed down with sweltering heat, no clouds in sight. Alexandra could see for miles in every direction, unimpeded by any topographic relief.
The pool was the size of a car, amorphous in shape and bubbling like a boiling flask. Wispy black fumes rose from the surface, smelling like oil and sulfur. Like Jesse said, gross, but not dangerous. At least for the meantime.
“How did you figure out there’s something inside of ‘em?” Alexandra asked.
“I jumped in,” Jesse admitted.
“You what?”
“While I’m not sure, I think the black stuff is a variant of the black goo that we got bathed in back in Capture the Beacon. Remember when, if you died, you woke up in the weird pool of goo?”
“My body was too destroyed, so they had to revive me the hard way by recreating my body and reattaching my soul.” Alexandra huffed as she recalled how badly Dragonus’s sun had burned her. She died in an instant. At least she got the last laugh now that he was dead for real.
“Oh, that’s right,” Jesse said. “I guess when Admiral and Dragonus killed me, they didn’t damage my body too bad. Anyway, when I woke up, I was in a pile of something kind of similar to this. The guy there called it Abyssal Titan blood.”
“This is something’s blood? Gross,” Alexandra blerched. “Hey, I recognize that name. I think Alistair told me about how he drank an elixir that had Abyssal Titan spinal fluid in it. Maybe Abyssal Titans are like the swiss army knife of alchemy parts. Kinda feel bad for them, though.”
Jesse stuck his finger inside of the liquid. “It’s less viscous and it has a different quality to it, so that’s why I said similar not the same. Maybe it’s some kind of variant that helps beasts grow more than humans, or maybe it’s geared toward reptiles or poisonous creatures. Also, isn’t it funny we’re calling it black? It’s somewhat difficult to tell if this stuff is actually black or just a dark green or brown.”
“I never thought of that.” Alexandra admitted. “But does it matter?”
“We’ll be at a disadvantage since we can’t see color in here,” Jesse said. “I bet humans rely on color detection more than reptiles. So let’s keep on alert.”
“I never let my guard down.”
Jesse circled around to the other side of the pool, digging his arms inside. “While I don’t think it heals us, it shouldn’t damage us that much since we have high enough Constitutions. Even if it is meant for the reptiles kind of grow and develop, it can’t be that toxic since there should be a ton of weak reptiles too.”
“So we’re going to dive in?” Alexandra asked plainly.
“It’s what I did before and I’m alright,” Jesse said. “If you have any better ideas on how we can get to the snakes, you be my guest. We could try to attract attention, but with this second wave, we’re on a time crunch, aren’t we?”
“That’s true,” Alexandra said. “Okay, I’m on board.”
“Don’t worry—if we meet any trouble we can’t beat, I’ll teleport us out right away to a saved location. The only thing that has successfully held me down is a Dao field, but you can produce your own Dao field. As long as yours is even relatively in the same league, I’ll be good. Practically speaking, that means only George would be able to trap us.”
“You flatter me.” Alexandra smiled. [Demonlord’s Nature Preserve], her evolved dominion Skill. A dominion Skill was anything that created a lasting change in the environment within a sizable area of effect. She got the feeling that the system wanted to call it “domain Skill” since that fit better, but couldn’t since Domains were a separate thing.
From what she’d seen, forming a proto-Domain was one of the most straightforward paths to power. Alistair didn’t have one, but he was a more of an exception. The more explosive, offensive oriented fighters didn’t need to have one at this level, especially if they were ranged, like Dragonus. For a melee fighter that didn’t have Alistair’s blinding speed, it was more important, since it allowed them to have longer reaching effects on the battlefield and defend against those powerful ranged attacks.
It was a good thing, then, that [Demonlord’s Nature Preserve] had improved with her mountains of practice over the last month. She eschewed using it in battle, intending to use it as a trump card. The other Devil Kings shouldn’t have had any intel on it.
As of the present, she could keep up the Skill for over a day, something that was impossible for almost everyone else. Pharaoh had told her he could only keep his proto-Domain open for thirty minutes at most. She believed the reason for the extreme duration was because of the life force of the trees. Nature was more self-sustaining than other concepts, and her trees were no exception. Plus, she was naturally hardy to mental fatigue, which was an important component of the drain of holding open a proto-Domain, from her Class.
That wasn’t to say that she had reached the vaunted realm of opening a proto-Domain yet. [Demonlord’s Nature Preserve] was still a Skill, a Skill that incorporated a ton of Dao energy into its physical presence, but still a Skill.
She didn’t understand it all, and as far as she knew, no one on Earth did. What she did know was that the Domain was an essential part of all higher realm cultivators. It was an inner world created within one’s soulcore that held one’s Dao energy. You could impose it on the world, replacing the space of reality. They started off small, but Exalted realm cultivators could have those the size of planets. Or they could keep it small still.
All that information came from a book she read from the Hall of Math that wasn’t even about Domains, but contained oblique references to them like you were already supposed to know all about them. Oh, how she hated that Foundations got next to no information about their futures. It wasn’t fair.
One line in that book intrigued her. Admiral’s proto-Domain wasn’t exactly “small.” Small in comparison to a planet, sure, but the text implied small as in, the size of a classroom or baseball infield. Admiral’s water was more like the size of a football field. So she did some more digging.
Proto-Domains could be larger because they were not true bodily formations of one’s Dao. A true Domain’s expansion into the physical world was literally the Dao becoming manifest, a divine miracle of the Heavens granted to mortals as providential beneficence, so her book said. She had to go to Caren to understand what those words meant, and scoffed. “Providential beneficence?” Wasn’t it Heaven that mandated the eternal struggle to the top?
A proto-Domain’s expansion couldn’t quite perform that miracle, so it included Mana to bridge the gap. In addition, they couldn’t write a complete blueprint of the proto-Domain into the soulcore, so the schematics came from the mind, or more likely, a Skill. She knew Admiral didn’t even use a Skill, but he was a madman.
A Dao field, the lowest rung of the ladder, was imbuing your Dao into your surroundings, or your creations, which she had easily accomplished with [Woodland Forest].
Therefore, there were two important steps in going from Dao field to proto-Domain. The first was having some manifested Dao, and the second was the internal space.
You needed to take some of your Dao energy and turn it physical. Alexandra didn’t know exactly how much, but the minimum was maybe 20% of the volume of the proto-Domain. On top of that, you had to project your space internally-outward instead of outward-internally. A Dao field was taking existing space and turning it into yours, while a Domain and also proto-Domain was taking your internal space and making it the world. There was a massive difference in the level of control and power by using your own internal space.
That was the hardest part. Through great practice, she had already achieved the first requirement. But the internal space eluded her. She was so close. The Pathfinder AI had given her an Insight Vision for a side Quest after defeating a powerful Devil Prince. It had given her further insight into her soulcore and mind.
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A Domain was the meeting of mind, body, and soul in one. Physical reality made of spiritual presence, envisioned by the mind, contained within the soul and imposed upon the world. The Insight Vision provided her with an understanding of Skills that transcended her previous understanding.
What was a Skill? The Pathfinder AI wasn’t something that existed everywhere in the multiverse. Other civilizations had their own ways of expressing Mana-related powers. In its essence, a Skill was a set of instructions on how the mind, body, and soul acted to produce a desired effect of Mana.
The mind envisioned the Skill, serving as a blueprint. The soulcore provided the Mana, which flowed through the meridians of the body. The technical aspects of a Skill were stored in the brain and also in the meridians that flowed throughout the body.
The Insight Vision provided all of this information, but it didn’t hand hold her. The step of actually creating the internal space wasn’t explained at all. But Alexandra had an idea. She had to transfer the blueprint of the Skill from her brain to her soulcore.
Was such a thing possible? It sounded insane. However, clearly it was possible. The only person she knew who possessed a proto-Domain, Pharaoh, couldn’t help her since his creation was far more natural. What a lucky bastard. Some were truly blessed with talent by the Heavens.
Yet over time, step-by-step, she had done it. She slowly etched the image of [Demonlord’s Nature Preserve] into her own soul. It was like Alistair’s meditation. She envisioned her soulcore within herself and willed her internal Dao energy into the shape she wanted, like an artist painting on miniature canvas.
She made her own edits to the Skill, naturally. The current state of her dominion Skill was quite ugly, in her opinion. Too much bleakness. The demon blood was a part of her now—there was no changing that, but it didn’t have to be so dismal.
Alexandra estimated her proto-Domain to be 95% complete. Only the finishing touches were left. Like Jesse said, without trying to be haughty, once it was complete, she doubted anyone but the First Devil King would be able to shut it down fast enough for Jesse to not be able to escape.
“You didn’t create an anchor for your teleportation underneath?” Alexandra asked, putting aside thoughts of proto-Domains for the moment.
“I thought it might be a mistake if the pool flooded or something. Do you just not want to get wet? The liquid is up to waist height in the tunnels still, so that’s not gonna happen.”
Alexandra grunted. “I wish I could fly right now.”
Not wanting to waste any more time, the two of them dove in. Alexandra closed her mouth tight and squeezed her nostrils, intent on not letting any of the stuff inside her body. Even still, as her head broke the surface and she felt herself falling inside, the taste got to her tongue.
She wanted to throw up, but that would only let more gross goo enter, so she battled through her disgust. After a few seconds, the two of them plopped out inside a dank cavern.
A loud cracking noise resounded through the cave. Alexandra balanced herself upside down with perfect poise on her Withering Promise, which she stabbed into a massive stalagmite. It was difficult to tell which was up or down in the layer of gunk, so she ended up falling face first. With her quick reflexes, she had taken out her dagger and destroy the pointed spike before it impaled her and potentially Jesse. The stalagmite shattered into a thousand pieces, but the two of them were safe.
“I’m guessing that wasn’t there before?” Alexandra asked, flipping out of her handstand position.
“Can’t say that it was.”
“That could have been bad,” Alexandra said. “My danger sense went off. Normally, something like that wouldn’t be able to harm me at all. We should stay on our toes.”
The subterranean cavern was dark and humid. They could only see because of the glowing moss grew on the walls. It looked strange because of the lack of color, like it was a void in the world. In fact, everything felt strange.
Alexandra was not as adept in the understanding of life force as Alistair, but she knew that something was strange in the air. The concentration of ambient Mana was lower, but it wasn’t only that. It was if someone or something that sucked the joy out of Mana.
It didn’t seem to affect her internal circulation, so she ignored it for now. Looking around, the initial spot where they landed was dry, but everywhere was flooded.
Alexandra glanced up. The liquid was coagulated on the ceiling, forming a gooey membrane. That must have been why it didn’t just fall to the ground because of gravity. However, when they broke that membrane as they jumped in, it took a while for it to reform, so more of the stuff fell on them after they landed.
She spit out as much of it as she could. It was all over her body like a slimy, oily tincture that resisted being washed off. Sighing as there was nothing more she could do about that, Alexandra investigated her surroundings.
There were five caves in the small grotto, each at a lower elevation than the rocky island they stood on. Island was the proper word, since the ground met a moat of the liquid as it sloped down. Like Jesse said, it was waist high at the lowest point.
“I sense them,” Alexandra announced. “There’s a large mass of life forces down this side.”
She pointed to two caves. “I’m not sure which one exactly, or it could be both.”
“Let’s make those serpents regret ever being born,” Jesse said. “Hold on.”
They disappeared in a flash of what should have been scarlet light.
----------------------------------------
27 hours later
Alexandra panted heavily. Her entire figure was drenched in the blood of over a hundred thousand snakes, lizards, and stranger things. The black fluid reminded her demon blood. She imagined that she was drowning in it. They’re not all that similar, Alexandra told herself. This stuff is way thicker and it might not even be black.
The slaughter was endless. She felt like the protagonist of an edgy comic book, ceaselessly killing in a black-and-white setting.
It turned out that possibly the entire Wasteland was connected underground by a series of elaborate serpent-made chambers. Some were so small she could barely fit, while others could easily house an entire aircraft carrier.
The system was labyrinthine, often having dozens of tunnels connect to dozens of other tunnels in a three-dimensional nest. Alexandra didn’t even try to understand it—Jesse was handling that. All she had to do was eliminate the threat in front of her.
Her body temperature rose as she continued to push past her own exhaustion. Jesse asked if she wanted to rest, but she refused. There was no time. Alistair needed to be found.
She stood in one of the largest tunnels they had found yet. It wasn’t even a tunnel, really, but an enormous dome housing tens of thousands of reptiles in a single location. The entire cavern was filled with branching, spindly rock formations hundreds of meters long that mostly snake and some other reptiles made their homes. They were thick enough that it made things difficult to see, since there was barely any moss except on the walls.
Skeletons littered the ground, clearly the remains of their prey. There were human bones in the central pit, more than Alexandra wanted to imagine.
A two-headed gecko the size of a lion suddenly leapt down from its vantage point on one of the spindles. Alexandra slashed it in half with her enlarged Withering Promise with ease, moving on to a rat king of snakes that spun in circles spitting venom.
Having been bathed in the blood of demons and snakes, her Tang Clan Dirk’s poison had become far more potent. There were two modes she could use, one where the poison coalesced around the blade and turned it violet, increasing the lethality to a single target, and the other where it expanded everywhere.
She chose the latter. As she spread carnage throughout the chamber, the purple gas (though it looked a dark gray because of the Wasteland) expanded. It spread to every nook and cranny, flushing out all the smaller and hidden reptiles she would have had trouble getting to. They dropped dead, rotting from the inside out.
As for her? Tang Clan Dirk’s rate of improvement could hardly be compared to her own. Her Constitution was over 600, and with [Barbarian’s Fury] active, she took practically zero damage from the poison, healing the small internal wounds instantly.
The only limiting factor was her Stamina. It was nigh inexhaustible, but after a full day of fighting, she was running out of juice.
Thankfully, they were all dead. All the reptiles in this sector of the burrow, anyway. Alexandra absorbed the poisonous gas back into her dagger and put it back in her inventory.
“Good work,” Jesse said. He was relatively unblemished, staying at a safe distance while he threw his signature scarlet [Blasting Spheres]. The oscillating balls of explosive energy were perfect at dealing with hordes of weaklings.
Alexandra sat down and closed her eyes. She was surrounded by piles of dead snakes that were taller than her. This was the morbid reality of the world. She didn’t take joy in killing, but it was necessary.
She meditated for several hours, refueling stockpile of Health, Mana, and Stamina. She cycled it throughout her body, feeling it struggle against closed meridians. So close. She was level 59, one away from level 60 when she would begin to open the 361 meridians. Technically, she only had to open 349, since twelve were already open. Furthermore, as she progressed to almost opening them, it became clear that they weren’t 349 extra vessels, but more like blockages and points within the existing system that had to be removed.
Alexandra had been level 59 for almost two weeks. Levels as a whole became easier to come by with the overwhelming amount of battles, but she still couldn’t accumulate enough Mana to break through. Level 60 was truly a bottleneck—the only one she knew that managed to surpass it was Pharaoh, and that only a few days ago. She was determined to beat his fifteen day pause, but she only had two more days for that.
Gazing at her internal state was difficult, even for how practiced at meditation she was. But there was an edge, a breakthrough she was tantalizingly close to. Was this it? She only needed a few more minutes—
Jesse appeared in front of her before she could even react. “Now!” he shouted with panic in his voice.
Alexandra knew what he meant right away. She activated [Demonlord’s Nature Preserve], cursing the fact that her proto-Domain was still incomplete.
Trees grew out of nothing, reaching towering heights in mere seconds. Like the time she used it against her father, three types of trees emerged. Closest to her were great oak and maple trees, then in another ring were black trees with white leaves, then finally white trees with black leaves. All three types had pale red embers, though through her will to incorporate more of her Barbaric Rage Node, they had become larger and more connected, forming an aura of war.
The entire cavern became her dominion. Not a single centimeter was not under her control, yet she sensed nothing. What was Jesse so concerned about?
Her danger sense blazed in alarm. The world turned dark and Alexandra ducked at the last second, seeing a blue streak above her head. It was familiar to her. But that was impossible—
The power of the attack carved holes in her canopy of trees, and that was just the start. A second, slower bullet emerged from within her Dao field. Recognizing the danger, Alexandra willed her trees to coalesce in front of her, imbuing them with extra Dao energy to block out the attack.
Impossible, Alexandra thought to herself. Something was wrong. Very wrong. She transferred her sight from her body to her trees, not trusting the innate sensations of the forest anymore. Her human body became blind and she gained a bird’s eye view of her forest. She spotted three people.
The first was a woman, perhaps in her late 40s or early 50s, with graying hair. She wore a leather jacket with skinny jeans. Her eyes gave away her true origins. They burned green, same as Alexandra’s, though of a lighter jade shade. There was no mistaking her identity—it was Oracle, the Second Devil King.
Right next to her were two of humanity’s vanguard—Richard Atwood and Carmen Romero, dead. Strings of visible Karmic energy connected their bodies to their controller, Oracle.
Rage filled Alexandra’s heart as she saw her former allies’ bodies desecrated by the Devil King. They weren’t on the best of terms, especially with Carmen, but to be killed in cold blood and turned into puppets was a fate that no one deserved.
Now she understood why she had felt nothing. There was a light haze around the three of them. Oracle was producing a proto-Domain, but only within range of herself and her two puppets.
The third bullet from the Navy SEAL’s signature attack never came, putting Alexandra on edge. They never fully shared their abilities with each other. Did he cancel the final bullet, or was it coming, but delayed?
A few seconds passed and Oracle seemed content to stay in place. Alexandra didn’t let down her guard, continuously watching them with her tree eyes.
Jesse appeared next to her in a flash of light. “What’s the plan?”
Alexandra sat down, realizing what was going on. “She’s going to try outlasting me. We might be here for a while.”
“What do you mean? She’s not going to attack us now?”
Alexandra shook her head. “I figured out what she’s doing. My Dao field is strong enough that trying to attack could result in complications for her. I don’t think she understands the precise conditions or powers, since no one was around to witness the battle against my dad and I haven’t used it in combat since.”
Without false humility, after the infusion of demon blood, Alexandra stood near the top of the world. She estimated only Alistair and Pharaoh were stronger than her on the human side at the moment. Oracle was likely more powerful than her based on the hierarchy of Devil Kings, but if the Second Devil King acted without caution, she risked death, especially with Jesse here to confuse the battlefield.
However, the enemy did know all of Alexandra’s other capabilities—[Partition Vitae], [Armageddon Slash], [Barbarian’s Fury], and [Healing Current]. She was no Caren, with nearly a dozen versatile Skills. She killed things, and she did it well. There was no need for more complications than that. Even her new Badges, “Empress of Strength” and “Patricide” were straight-up stat increases, with added infamy for the latter. That Badge was stupid—it wasn’t like she chose to be the daughter of a mass murderer, but that was what the system decided.
Oracle must have had the cheeky idea to outlast her Dao field and then kill them after. With her proto-Domain only having a radius of a few meters, she probably thought that she could maintain her safe zone for longer than Alexandra.
Alexandra smiled. That was a mistake. [Demonlord’s Nature Preserve] was unique among dominion Skills.
However, you could never be too careful. As she moved to discuss potential moves with Jesse, she saw a dark expression on his face.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Nothing much. Don’t panic, but I can’t teleport out of here.”
“What? How is that possible? I’m the one in control of this space!”
“I have no idea. It just won’t work. I can teleport within this space, but not outside. We’re stuck.”
Alexandra gritted her teeth. Damn Karmic cultivators, always having bullshit techniques. So they were stuck with Oracle as much as she was stuck with them. There were two options she saw: to adjust her trees to have Jesse manually reach the barrier, or to wait out Oracle and go on the attack.
There was something primal deep in her bones that told her it was a mistake to flee. She had no logical reason for believing retreat was wrong, but she hadn’t gotten this far by ignoring her instincts. Perhaps Oracle was more like a super-buffed William than Dragonus, and her strength came from her traps and intellect on top of overwhelming aura.
“We’ll stay here for now. I don’t think she knows who she’s getting into attrition fight with here.”