Chapter 65: Wyvern Queen
The skies grew dark as time went on and the deeper the army traveled the more repugnant the smell would grow, it was as if there existed some eternal rotten substance at the center of wyvern valley. In the past, the corrupted atmosphere would have injured and even corrupted the soldiers but they were many times stronger than before and Sia had cast a protection spell upon them.
“what exactly happened here?” Scitus’s eyes grew sharp as he pondered what tragedy occurred at wyvern valley. Sia looked around as if looking for information and then turned to Scitus, "it was most likely Mern, he seems to fancy using corruption as a power source. Even Slayn is partially corrupted." Scitus nodded his head in agreement as he cast a quick shield spell on a small goblin who was about to be smashed by a wyvern claw. "what exactly is corruption anyhow?" Scitus casually asked, not once turning away from the army.
Sia sighed, wondering how she could explain it to a person like Scitus. Sia and Scitus had gotten to know each other over the months and she realized that Scitus was someone who had a firm grip on reality, he could not be swayed into certain ways of thought. Scitus was open to the ideas she put forth, but some were so foreign to him that in his heart he would never be able to wrap his hands around them. One such foreign concept was the idea of corruption.
"As I've explained before there are two types of corruption, Moral corruption, and True corruption. What we are seeing here is True corruption. In your world magic was a thing that only existed in peoples minds but here it truly exists. You have told me that mana has a certain quantifiable energy and yet I am able to produce effects beyond a single mana drop's capacity. This is because mana doesn't follow any set form of rules, it follows rules, yes but depending on how someone uses it, it can follow different rules. When using it as [foundation magic], it has a quantifiable energy, that can be used to convert it into anything you wish of equal energy; but with [mind magic] it is the power of one's imagination, a single drop of mana in this form can theoretically create entire oceans or even worlds. The value you place on an ocean and the value you place on a single drop of your mana effect the eventual outcome. though this is easier said than done."
"true corruption is like this. There is no singular set of rules for its existence, but at its core one can consider it a deformation of mind magic, a terrible amalgamation. True corruption holds twisted and negative thoughts, murder, depression, sadness, death, all these thoughts are amalgamated and turned into corruption that inevitably infects those of weaker wills and transforms them into demented and powerful creatures."
"we tend to reverse these creatures names but some of them are especially brutal and obtain their own names: corrupted minotaurs, for instance, can become Chorts but they can also become Ruatonims which are a less dangerous variant. The wyverns here are quite special however, they are in a borderline period and are what we call half-corrupted. Their minds are lost but there are sudden glimmers of consciousness every now and again.”
“some people use corruption to increase their power but even if they become as powerful as gods, they’ll eventually lose their minds and die a horrible death. Corruption eats at our minds until there is nothing left but our sorrows and hatred.”
After defeating six wyverns, the small army began heading back. the wyverns were being stored inside a dimensional pouch that Scitus had created after the destruction of his bag. He repaired his duffle bag but it had lost all its magical properties startling Scitus. Sia helped Scitus create a new one with some animals skins that they had saved up. The pouch was made of deerskin and had many symbols written in red decorating the exterior. The symbols formed a neat circle and intertwined with one another, if one looked closely they would see that the symbols did in fact moved and twist in different directions, almost like two-dimensional snakes.
Although Scitus’s magic ability was still rough and it could be said that he had less than zero talent in the field, Scitus had two major advantages over other spellcasters. The first was that he could enter his god realm and speed time up relative to the mortal plane. The time difference wasn't as large as during the god meeting because of many factors such as concentration and simply because he had insufficient knowledge of how the magic worked. Scitus could spend ten minutes in the god realm while only using one minute of the mortal worlds time. This allowed Scitus to spend days practicing his magic technique in only a matter of hours. To the world, he had only been studying magic for a few months but the reality was that Scitus had been studying magic closer to a little over a year. Scitus’s second major advantage was his vast knowledge over laws of the world, this knowledge allowed him to cast [foundation magic] spells, which were notoriously difficult to learn, in only a matter of weeks.
His free magic was progressing well but his semi-solid magic and especially his solid magic were still lagging behind. Normally people used mind magic to enhance their physical and mental attributes because it was easier to accomplish: Scitus however, had a hard time wrapping his head around the idea of gaining strength simply because mana was integrated into his body and mind; instead, Scitus had been using foundation magic to change his physical structure to gain enormous degrees of power, this inevitably led to Scitus harming his body in the process and so Scitus had begun studying [mind magic] more seriously.
Just as the army was climbing up a steep hillside to exit the Warbeast valley, a large shadow loomed over the army creating furious gusts of wind that lifted several soldiers of the ground and tossed them several dozen feet down the hillside. The incredibly large wyvern landed on the precipice of a small cliff side, blocking the sun as its beady black eyes stared at the army.
"You dare enter my domain and wantonly kill my children." The wyvern screeched as it dug its talons into the cliff side, destroying large chunks of rocks which then attempted to crush the soldiers. The Shield knights moved towards the chunks of rocks and fortified their feet into the earth and grit their teeth as they resisted the human-sized rocks. Some knights weren't strong enough and were then crushed underneath the huge rocks. Sia quickly rescued these soldiers and healed them herself. She shifted her gaze at the large wyvern with an intense rage that chilled the nearby soldiers.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
"you can talk?" Scitus said aloud as he moved his soldiers out of danger and pointed down the hill, ordering them to descend. "Human?" the large fifteen-foot wyvern screeched. The wyvern was fifteen feet tall, about twice the size of an ordinary wyvern, and on its head, it wore a scale-like crown that extended from its forehead down to parts of its back which then combined and traveled down the tail. It was the wyvern queen.
The wyvern queen didn't answer, instead, it lunged towards Scitus. Scitus quickly dodged the wyvern, using his enhanced legs to travel eight feet in only a single instant. He gritted his teeth as he felt his muscles tear from his sudden movement. "I still need to balance my muscle structure, or my weaker muscles will tear." he thought to himself.
The wyvern queen whipped its tail and hit the cliff side causing a sudden earth trembling shock. The cliff side was easily decimated from the sudden strike and countless small rocks flew into the air. The shield knights were quick to protect their fellow soldiers but before they could do anything, Sia stopped the debris from hurting anyone with a single spell. “Still!!” Sia shouted and suddenly the inertia from everything in the area stopped and softly fell to the ground, some small rocks still hit soldiers creating large lumps on their heads and arms but even so they were grateful. Sia had saved them from instant death.
"I'll handle this Sia, you protect the soldiers," Scitus said as he tightened his fists. “Atonene” atonene was a three atom layer of aton-245 which was a special element formulated in 2250, it revolutionized mechanization. Similar to graphene, atonene, when the element was compacted into three layers it would then become incomparably hard. A single three layer sheet of atonene was one-thousand times stronger than steel. Unlike graphene however; atonene required a three atom layer to properly function, any less then three made it as brittle as paper and incredibly unstable.
Instability wasn't a problem in a world of magic however and so Scitus created a thin layer around his skin and prepared his muscles to fight. Magic, as Scitus understood it, allowed him to mix and match certain properties of different substances and materials and he could then place those new properties on different objects. This magic was known as half magic which was a combination of mind magic and foundation magic, it was still safer then mind magic but could lead to dangerous outcomes if a caster wasn’t t prepared or didn’t or if their knowledge was lacking. "Change property: muscle elasticity, Change property: muscle hardness, Change property: muscle power output.” Scitus quickly ran down the list of spells he ordinarily cast when becoming superhuman. Fortunately, he had some knowledge of superhuman abilities, in his world, there were people whose biological bodies were changed to being able to lift tanks with ease, their lifespan tended to be short but their power was superhuman.
The wyvern snarled and launched itself forward but this time Scitus but the massive creature head on and cocked his fist. The wyvern slashed with both her claws but just she thought her talons would cut through the human's flesh she suddenly felt a small fist hit her side. For the first-tenth of a second she thought it wasn't so bad but after two-tenths of a second terror began to fill her mind as the small fist penetrated her scales and dug into her flesh. BOOM!!! A near sonic wave lifted debris of the ground and flung it forward at intense speeds that Sia had to suppress, once again, to protect the soldiers. "Hey!! Be careful” she shouted in a playful tone.
The impact was so sudden and so strong that it was as if a blade cut her open like a fish on the chopping block, it was only the near-sonic boom that had forced her into the wall, while the initial attack had terrifyingly penetrated her flesh like a blade through butter. The wyvern queen looked over at Scitus expecting him to be cut up into tiny pieces but there wasn't even a single scratch on him, even his hand which was covered in corrupted sludge was unaffected.
“You!!!” she shouted as she prepared for a second attack but before she could muster the strength to do so, Scitus moved and using only his palm pushed her deeper into the cliff side, forming a large crater at its side. The wyvern queen coughed up black blood as she felt her life force decrease with each impact.
The small human was relentless in his attacks and although the wyvern queen knew the human could have ended her life at any point; the human was instead weakening his attacks as if to taunt her.
Scitus had no such malicious intentions, he only wanted to hone his power, his muscles were still tearing every now and again but he felt himself quickly adjusting and with every strike, fewer and fewer muscle tears occurred.
"I surrender; you malicious bastard." The wyvern wailed in pain as her body was constantly slammed against the cliff side.
At the moment of her surrender, Scitus was forced out of his trance and he stopped attacking. Scitus looked awkwardly at the large beast and said, "sorry, I was practicing." Sia started to laugh but the wyverns eyes opened wide in shock. She was only good enough for practice; she, the wyvern queen who had lived for two thousand years and ruled over wyvern valley for one thousand years, was only practice for a small human child.
Sia reined in her laughter as she explained to the poor frightened wyvern queen. “the human you attacked is a god.” She managed to squeak out as her laughter quickly began to overwhelm her again. The wyverns eyes widen again in surprise and then anger. “YOU!!!”
“LOOK WHAT YOU DONE TO ME AND MY CHILDREN!!!” she shouted as she tried to move her broken body to attack Scitus but her bones were already broken and she couldn’t muster the strength to even shift her gaze to look at Scitus let alone attack him.
“YOU PROMISED ME PROTECTION FROM THE GODLESS!!!” she shouted and then her wrath was transformed into tears as she remembered all the events that happened the previous months. she had lost more than half her children to the godless and all because of the deal she made with that human.
“I’m not the god who you made a deal with.” Wyvern queen clenched her claws into the earth as Scitus continued, “honestly I didn’t even know you were intelligent enough to speak” Sia was actually initially surprised too, beasts almost never gained sentience but it seemed that the wyvern queen had and quite some time ago too.
“tell me what happened and maybe I can help.” Scitus warmly said. Sia looked at Scitus and smiled, “he truly is a benevolent god.” She shook her head as she thought of Scitus’s future potential. Scitus appeared cold at his exterior and was brutal when he had to be but Scitus had compassion that surpassed most people. This compassion came from his parents who wanted him to live helping people, they wanted him to use his genius to create wondrous things to help the downtrodden and uplift the miserable. He didn't have the ability to do it in his former world but now that he had become a god he would try to help those he could, make a place for the weak and downtrodden a place he didn’t have growing up.