Chapter 8: Legacy Acquired
Written by Etnalla
Written by Goald3n
Sharp piercing screeches rang out through the mine, bouncing off walls resonating and magnifying such that almost no other sound could be heard. The screeching of the wendigos were furious as they chased a figure through the tunnels. Their bloodlust cut through the stale mine air and stabbed deep into the heart of the running figure making him run with increased vigor and fearful energy.
"Fuck! Why the hell is everything fucking me over!!" Yelled Prince Kaiser.
He was out of breath and felt like he was about to collapse at any moment, yet every time the wendigos howled he forgot all of that and ran forward with all his might. It actually surprised him a bit, how fast he was running. Kaiser was never the athletic type and, despite how he looked, not the brutish type at all, he'd never ever been in a real fight! If anything the only reason he was still alive was because of one simple fact. He was a coward.
Pain. Injury. Death. All of those scared the shit out of Kaiser, especially the last one, and every screech of the wendigos only served to push him harder than before. Actually it was quite lucky that the mines had were all tunnels and had very few places to hide, if there were Kaiser would probably just have holed up in one and died when the wendigos found him.
When he'd woken up in the cabin he never expected for things to go so bad for him. He thought that God's Dimension was his chance to escape being a coward and acted as confidently to impress Jack, Vic, and Miria. Back then he was sure he would make it out alive with enough points and rewards to get a good enhancement or weapon.
Kaiser's confidence came from the fact that he was sure only he knew where they were from the moment their group had woken up. God's Dimension. It was a rumor amongst certain circles, that if a person had given up on life they would receive an invitation to God's Dimension where they could evolve past their pathetic selves. He had come across it while he was randomly browsing sites between his usual searches. At first he'd dismissed it as foolishness but....here he was.
After he'd woken up Kaiser had been planning to hide behind Team 66 who were apparently veterans of God's Dimension. Seeing Dragonslayer in Jack's hands had strengthened Kaiser's desire to gain points. If Jack had that sword then that meant it there were more options to the enhancements and weapons than the site had spoken about. It meant he could become like those characters he'd admired, and—even better—get rid of his cowardice once and for all.
That was foolish of him. Reading those stories on the site made the missions seem fun, exciting, and much more interesting than his normal life. He'd underestimated the danger. You can read stories and put yourself in imaginary situations all you like, think about how you'd act, how you'd change, how much cooler you'd be, but when the situation happens for real....you're fucked. And that's exactly what happened to him.
The moment he saw the wendigo hoard waiting outside the cabin he felt his knees go weak. He wasn't ready to face that. No matter how much he'd psyched himself up and planned to kill as many as he could to get the best enhancements—the moment he saw what he was up against, he couldn't move at all. In a flash all his confidence disappeared and fear took its place. Fear of pain. Fear of injury. Fear of being eaten and torn alive by those monsters. After being thrown out from the safety of the cabin towards those creatures, Kaiser's instincts told him to do what he did best. Run.
He ran away from the hoard—the fear of the wendigos looming over him as he flew across the snow. Almost soon after, he heard sounds of fighting and the shadow of death—the personification of his fear—felt even closer than it had ever been before. In that moment the only thing on his mind was the desire to escape. Not to live but to simply escape. An almost primal instinct took hold of him at that moment—pushing him to keep moving. Without thinking of anything else Kaiser kept running.
By the time he had come back to his senses he was standing in front of an entrance. It seemed to be nothing more than a simple hole in the side of the mountain but a mysterious air flowed out of it hinting at hidden depths. Kaiser didn't know how he got here and whether it was safe to enter but when faced with the danger of the wendigos hiding out in the storm and the possible shelter the cave offered he quickly chose to enter. Stepping into the black maw of the cave ranked high in what Kaiser considered to be the bravest things he had ever done. The blackness quickly surrounded him, swallowing him up like the mouth of an angry beast. He should have guessed there was something odd about the cave, but at the time he was only preoccupied with survival and this seemed to be his best chance at it. How wrong he was. Actually, it might have been his chance.....if only he hadn't activated that stupid mission.
After walking a few measures into the cave the darkness was suddenly diffused by bright glows coming from all around him. The sudden light blinded him for a moment and it took some time for his eyes to completely adjust. All sorts of colors were being emitted from markings on the walls—they flew around intertwining with each other creating a mesmerizing aurora within the cave. As the colors danced in the air the markings themselves were given new life, sliding across the walls to form wondrous images before separating and forming entirely new ones. The markings constantly formed and reformed into various images but six were always present.
Above him on the roof of the cave was a vast ocean surrounded in blue light, the markings within it formed and reformed to create and endlessly changing reef. It was a sea that was full to the brim with life. Bright coral in odd shapes twisted together to create shapes that could only exist in nature. A myriad of different sea life swam through the sea: a school of shimmering fish cut through the water leaving behind streaks of glittering silver in their wake, a fish that had scales like all colors of the rainbow swam calmly through the reef shaking itself and passing on its scales to any creature that drifted near, a giant turtle carried a massive piece of white coral on its back as it swam against the currents and overtime the current sculpted the coral into the shape of a grand royal palace, a large clam with a shell so large he couldn't see the end of it serving as a home to countless other creatures. Clear blue light moved in company with the markings bringing the sea and all its creatures to life.
Beneath him in the floor was a rolling grey expanse of clouds so dense and violent that he couldn't see the ground. The colors became sharp lines that flashed across the surface of the sky turning into bolts of lightening: azure colored bolts cut through the air zigzagging across the wide grey expanse, golden colored bolts flew straight piercing any clouds in their path, red colored bolts moved in a wide circle creating crimson colored rings across the sky, black colored bolts swam hidden in the grey peeking out through the rolling clouds. Every few moments the different bolts would coalesce, like the markings, into new forms: the azure bolts zigzagged together forming into a electric blue stallion that ran across the sky its hoof steps becoming thunder as it stamped down on the clouds, the golden bolts crashed together to form an eight winged crow whose eyes gleamed with arrogance as it cut through the sky its path become a road of lightning, the red bolts spun together ferociously forming a crimson cyclone that shot into the air forming into a blood colored bat with a wingspan that enveloped the entire sky, the black bolts swam together unnoticed until the cloud cover suddenly pulled back to reveal a massive black snake that stretched everywhere under the cloud cover. The marking and the colors violently spun as the the beasts began to do battle across the grey expanse until their bodies broke apart once again into lighting waiting to reform and restart their battle.
Around him the walls of the cave formed into a four distinct landscape that revolved around ancient objects placed at their center. In front of him was a great shifting desert, the sands were everywhere and everything, they covered the sky, ruled the earth, and they swallowed the seas. At the center of this landscape was a pyramid of sand. It towered over the entire desert as its center and, like the desert, the pyramid constantly shifted—its blocks moving in constant motion forming an uneven, ever changing, rippling surface.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
To the right was a vast green expanse. Flowers bloomed across the land together in clumps making the entire scenery look like paradise, large trees grew and bore a seemingly endless variety of fruits, and lush gardens with rows upon rows of vegetables. The caretakers—large stone beings covered entirely in colorful moss, flowers, and vines—walked across the landscape and tended to the fields. At the center was a massive stone cauldron. The cauldron was the only thing that resembled a mountain in the landscape, it was filled to the brim with soil and at its center grew a single flower. Each petal of the flower shimmered and shone as the light touched it, and each petal began to emit a colored scent that became the color of all the plants in the area.
To the left was a river of fire, and on this river swam thousands upon thousands of corpses. None of the corpses were similar, some weren't even human, but all of them were carried forward by the river's current. Every single one of the corpses' mouths were open as if screaming from the pain of the fire's touch yet no sound could be heard. Above the river was a plain wooden boat inside of which sat an withered looking old man with a fishing rod that smiled down at the river below. Every so often he would wave his hand and the river would surge carrying the corpses further along with it. At those times the silent screams of the corpses seemed close to boiling over but the old man smiled down at them and swung his fishing hook into their open mouths, pulling them out of them river. When the corpses were pulled out of the river they immediately started rotting at an incredible rate until nothing, not even dust, remained. At the center of the river was a large pillar that reached into the river's unseen depths. Upon the pillar were the figures of all the corpses in the river and it slowly spun around generating the force that was moving the river.
Lastly, behind him, as if reflecting the outside of the cave, was an endless frozen wasteland. There was nothing present on its surface only cracked ice and white mist that seeped through those cracks. Slowly the mist began to clump together and formed into something else, something with pale skin, sharp protruding bones, dead milky eyes, long dangling arms and vicious-looking claws and fangs. Wendigos. Immediately after coming into being the wendigos started fighting amongst themselves. There were many more types than just runts, warriors and chiefs fighting on the wasteland. The wendigos fighting took many different forms some similar to the one's Kaiser saw, others even more nightmarish. It was a fight with only one purpose—to feed—and the wendigos could never be satisfied. No matter how many of their own kind they killed, how many they ate, they still desired more. At the center of the wasteland was a slab of ice, it was clear like a mirror and reflected all the bloodshed that was occurring on the wasteland. On its surface was a large crack down the middle, actually it looked less like a crack and more like something had clawed the surface. The cracked area showed something else, not the wasteland but a cave. As the fighting on the wasteland grew more brutal some wendigos fled towards the crack and leapt through it to enter the cave.
Kaiser stood mesmerized as he watched the scenes taking place in front of him. The ocean, the cloud covered sky, the four massive landscapes, all these completely captivated him as the markings continued to move and the colors continue to flash. Everything he was looking at filled him with a sense of wonder and amazement, none of what he saw existed in the world he knew but here, in God's Dimension, they did. It was...
"Awesome..."
That was his mistake if only he hadn't spoken up.
The moment he had spoken the markings and colors simultaneously stopped, and the images they were creating stood frozen. Immediately after the markings and colors began flashing and moving more violently than they had been before. The images surrounding him moving faster and faster as if they were trying to form themselves into a different image but failing each time. Kaiser panicked, because he was filled with an immediate sense of crisis that hadn't been there before and started running for the exit of the cave but, to his shock, the exit was gone.
He immediately looked around the cave looking for a way out and spotted a tunnel in the far side of the cave. Kaiser sprinted hard towards the tunnel, looking to outrun whatever was causing his sense of impending doom. As he ran the cave seemed to shudder as the markings flew around the walls of the cave as if their speed was shaking the cave apart. Cracks began to form on the walls of the cave and pieces began to rain down but even then Kaiser still ran and the markings still kept moving.
Kaiser was just a inches away from the tunnel when it happened. The markings had stopped moving. The erratic movements of the markings had caused almost all of the images to disappear into jumbled messes on the walls. Only two images were still clear: the string and hook of the old man's fishing rod, and the fourth wing of the eight winged crow.
The markings that made up the two images peeled of from the walls, and shot through the air towards Kaiser. The hook was bright green and the string was an ethereal white, it flew towards him hook first and buried itself into his right palm—the string wrapping around, and burrowing into, his wrist.
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Legacies Acquired:
Spirit Sealing Hook
Soul Wrapping String
Requirements:
Survive until the end of the mission without losing the legacy brand.
Notification: Player evaluation has increased, increasing mission difficulty.
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Intense pain came from his right hand as the hook and string burrowed themselves into his body. The notification that popped up was completely ignored by Kaiser as he threw himself forward, into the tunnel and out of the collapsing cave. As he flew threw the air the fifth wing impacted with his body carrying him further into the tunnel and throwing him off balance. The fourth wing hit him in the back branded itself onto his flesh. It felt like thousands of volts were running through his body as the branding took place.
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Legacy Acquired:
Forth Wing of the Celestial Lighting Crow
Requirements:
Survive until the end of the mission without losing the legacy brand.
Notification: Player evaluation increased, increasing mission difficulty
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Dealing with the two sudden and unexpected flashes of pain the coward Kaiser was immediately rendered unconscious. But before he completely lost consciousness another two notifications popped up.
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SIDE MISSION UNLOCKED
Objectives:
World Mission
Seal the spirit world breach on Blackwood Mountain
Eliminate the Primordial Wendigo
Eliminate all Wendigos on Blackwood Mountain
Rewards:
30000 points and S Rank reward.
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UNTIL DAWN LEGACY TEMPLE DISCOVERED: +10000 POINTS, + A RANK REWARD.
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Author’s note
Hey, guys! Sorry for the late chapter! Had a pretty busy past few days but I made sure the quality is still the same. It made this one in a different Pov cause, like I said, I want the characters to be more alive and not just names or plot devices. Hope you enjoyed this one because it was really fun to write! I'm taking creative liberty with the plot since a complete plot copy would be totally boring and give you guys nothing new. Anyway I am not that experienced in describing scenery so I thought this would be a good chance to see how I do. How's the description? Too much? Too little? Not epic enough? Feel free to tell your opinion. So, like always, I hope enjoyed the chapter and see you in the next one. Oh, I made the description a bit wuxia-like since I've been ISSH and Er Gen makes really good ones. I want to be a published author someday so any reviews or advice is very much appreciated!
Editor’s note
Lucky son of a-, Prince kaiser so lucky found a temple by mistake got free insight of the primordial while also getting branded then gaining 10k points and an A rank reward! NEIN!!!