In any case, his mastery rose as Hushar went through his mental journey, and by the time the Uthraki was finished, he had risen by a level in each of his martial disciplines.
You have reached Student 5 in Club Mastery!
You have reached Student 4 in Mace Mastery!
The gains were slow and incremental, but still steady enough. As Hushar rose, Jonathan heard something strange, and he cocked his head to the side. The noise of footsteps could be heard in the distance, walking through the church that stood above the hallway of coffins. They were slow and measured, but seemed to be imbued with a great weight and power.
“He approaches,” the elemental spirit said. “I would advise you to return to wherever you came from.”
Heeding the words of the spirit, Jonathan held out the token to Hushar, and activated it. Before they were transported away, he felt a gaze upon him, and a sudden pressure. However, that faded away as they traveled between realms. An involuntary shiver rose up his spine as he felt the power behind that gaze. It was likely the lord of the second realm of Tartarus. He did not want to think about how strong the Uthraki actually was if that had simply been one of his servants.
Hushar let out a deep breath, and seemed to shiver slightly as he processed the primal terror that he must have felt in that moment between worlds.“That was power unlike any I have felt before. For a simple gaze to contain so much killing intent and aura pressure, it must be the hallmark of intense might.”
“We should wait a bit before returning to that realm. He might be waiting for us there.”
Hushar wandered off shortly after to test out his new abilities, while Jonathan made his way to the center of the small village, to continue his training. Tartarus was the best source of essence for now, and it would be more time effective to press towards Apprentice Rank in both his Club and Mace Mastery skills than to go hunting out in the waters of Mire.
For the next few hours, he weaved his way around the environs of the town center, improving his skills marginally. It took practice to avoid tainting his attacks with his Martial Arts skill, but he eventually got the hang of it. A lot of the footwork from that skill was still useful, but the actual attacks were not. Eventually, he came to a stopping point, as his stamina finally bottomed out.
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
You have reached Student 8 in Club Mastery!
You have reached Student 7 in Mace Mastery!
He gulped in greedy breaths of air as he recovered. It was not often that he emptied his stamina bar, but hours of whirling around at top speed would do it. He waited for his stamina to recover, but then noticed Edgar flying in from beyond the town walls, a look of urgency on his face.
“Something is coming this way,” he said. “I couldn’t pick it up fully, as it swims under the muck, but its power is undeniable.”
“Let it come. Training has made me hungry for levels.”
Jonathan walked up to the crude walls that surrounded the town, and leaped up. He could sense a disturbance in the muck, and a long wake of churned up earth could be seen extending off into the distance. A bulge traveled rapidly across the ground, displacing a hill sized zone of earth. As Jonathan and the others geared up, the monster surfaced, revealing a massive, eyeless worm with a maw filled with spiny teeth. It was over a dozen feet wide, and hundreds of feet long. Inside its gullet was a seemingly endless hole that extended down into an inky abyss. Its skin was covered in rough scales that glistened despite the mud surrounding them.
“That’s a Deeplurker,” Branth exclaimed. “They rarely come to the surface. I wonder why this one is here now.”
Jonathan leaped down into the muck, and held out one hand. A beam of Voidlight shot out, and straight down the monster's throat. Teeth shattered and melted away, and the creature writhed. However, given its shape, the strike was unable to kill it. Instead, the creature rose out of the muck, rising to a height of over fifty feet. Then it snapped its head forwards, straight towards Jonathan.
He cocked back his fist, and then powered forwards, slamming it into the monster’s lip. There was a crackling boom at the impact, and the creature reeled backwards, a chunk missing out of its head. Hushar leaped down from the walls a moment later, his form blazing with flame. He summoned a massive ax of fiery obsidian, making good use of his new boon.
The ax came crashing down, and sliced through the worm’s head, sending a massive slab of pallid flesh to the ground. Blue blood leaked out onto the ground, mingling with the mud. With a strange chirruping snort, the worm coiled in on itself, and then shot up into the sky, using its System granted strength to propel its multi ton body into the air.
It writhed as it rose, and then the mud around it rose with it. The Uthraki still on the wall sent out a barrage of elemental power, knocking it backwards and destroying its mantle of mud. The monster screeched in rage, which was quickly cut off as Jonathan sent a beam of Voidlight straight through its primitive brain. The massive corpse collapsed to the ground, dead.