The landscape slowly changed as they exited the Hills, turning into a flat expanse filled with strange trees that seemed to be made almost as much out of stone as anything else. Veins of lava ran up and down their bark, replacing the sap of their more earthly counterparts. Their canopies stretched out in the sky, made up of plates of glowing stone, casting a dim light down upon the world below.
Some of the trees even bore fruit, vast peaches made out of molten rock. Jonathan didn’t dare go near them, as his Third Eye flashed danger at him whenever he used it on the trees. They were a trap, one that relied on outwards charm to work. A bit later, Jonathan found physical evidence of his Blessing’s reluctance. There was a corpse in the process of being dragged into the ground by one of the trees, vines of red and black rock conspiring to bring it under, to whatever foul digestive system the tree possessed. The corpse was that of a large reptilian creature, showcasing the potency of the fruit. Next to the corpse was a half eaten fruit, glistening in the light of the lava leaves.
Jonathan shuddered and continued on his way, with Hushar following close behind. Tartarus was a realm of nightmares thinly shrouded in spectacle. It was best to remember that.
As the trees faded away, the ambient light diminished, only replenished by pools of molten rock bubbling on the surface of the realm. This area of the world was noted by the maps as being especially dangerous. A few minutes after entering it, they found out why.
There was an eerie screech from above, and a monster the shape of an eagle, but the size of a plane, came swooping down. Talons the length of swords hissed through the air. Jonathan threw himself to the side as those talons raked through the place he had been standing. The tips touched the rock below, slicing through with ease.
The monster let out a screech of rage and turned around, extending its talons once more.
Jonathan roared in rage, and sent his fist flying forwards, imbued with his elemental energy. As he did so, he used Energy Manipulation to create a net of Void energy around his hand, loose streamers of purple light extending outwards.
The bird was ensnared by the net, and Jonathan yanked it to the ground, pulling the bird towards his other fist, sparking with purple fire. A tiny path of nothingness grew on the end, and he unleashed Maw of the Void.
A shockwave of nothingness rippled through the monster, blasting it to pieces. Its entire head vanished, melting away under the onslaught of the Void. Jonathan’s control and power seemed to grow ever greater the higher his level rose, in a way that seemed disconnected from his stats. Most mages supplemented their elemental energy with their mana, which allowed them to keep up to their own level of power. However, Jonathan was more of a font of energy than anything else, and rather than being limited by a mana pool, he was limited by the power of his own body and elemental mastery. The body to ensure that he could survive, and the mastery to allow him to channel it more safely.
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Jonathan let the corpse fall to the ground with a dull thud, and then wiped his hands off. The demise of the bird had splattered some sort of oily blood all over them.
“You know, sometimes I feel like I made the wrong choice,” Hushar said. “My strength has grown by leaps and bounds since meeting you, but my ego has plummeted like a stone.”
Not sure how to respond to that, Jonathan simply chuckled, and started off again. The dark expanse of this sector of Tartarus only grew darker the further they went, becoming less of a question of their being no light, but rather one of how much elemental energy was being channeled into the air.
There was some sort of elemental font filling the land with unnatural darkness, and it was starting to get to the point that even the enhanced senses of Jonathan and Hushar were too weak to pierce it. Well, at least their sight was. They were more than capable of finding their way through their other senses.
More of the eagles came and went, transitioning from life to death in moments as they made their final mistake. Unlike the first time Jonathan had entered Tartarus, back in the Ash Heaps, he was at the right level now, and most opponents were too weak to trouble him much. He had hundreds of stat points saved up as well, but those would be kept for the meeting with the realm lord, in case things went south.
The patch of darkness continued on and on, but eventually, once the darkness was absolute, Jonathan noticed something looming in the sky over them. There was a hole in the movement of the wind around him, and his extremely sensitive skin was able to detect that through tiny gaps in his armor. As the only protrusion in the nearby landscape, it was most likely the source of the elemental effects.
Jonathan alerted Hushar to this, and the two men changed direction, heading towards the tower. Without sight, it was hard to tell if they were moving in a circle or not, with the relative lack of landmarks.
They kept the tower in front of them, and by the time they were in front of it, the hole in the wind had become even larger. Jonathan reached out with one hand, and felt a crystalline structure. Even with his armor on, his senses more than made up for it.
Jonathan ran his fingers along it, and felt a perfectly formed surface, with facets regularly spaced along its length. With a lack of sight, it was hard to discover anything else about it. He reached out with his elemental senses, and found that it was absolutely filled with concentrated Darkness.