Elijah sat cross-legged on the desert floor, staring at the items arrayed in front of him. There were three of them, though the most outwardly impressive was Thor’s spear, which was scaled to fit the man’s immense frame, with a haft of carved bone, and a sizable blade that could have doubled as a dwarf’s shortsword. However, looks could be deceptive, and he was far more interested in the other two items.
One was a simple necklace made of twine from which dangled three large fangs. Elijah had no idea what it did, but he could sense that it was no ordinary item. Maybe it would be useful, but even if it wasn’t something he would use, it would at least net him a few extra coins. Magical gear was always in demand, and Elijah had expenses. He wasn’t poor by any stretch of the imagination, but with how much information he intended to extract from the Knowledge Base, he knew he would need as much money as he could acquire.
More than that, though, he felt that Earth’s economy would eventually normalize. When that happened, more luxuries would become available. And though Elijah had never considered himself to be particularly materialistic, he wasn’t above treating himself, either. So, while he didn’t really need much money as of yet, he expected that to change as Earth developed.
As a result, he wouldn’t turn down any source of wealth.
In any case, the third item was the most immediately useful. He had no idea what it was called, but the canteen was unique in that it didn’t require binding. More, despite being a normal-looking container, it held hundreds of gallons of pure, clean water. Thankfully, it worked differently than his Ghoul-Hide Satchel, because even with his bag’s weight reduction – which was around ten percent, if he had to guess – that much water would have been incredibly heavy. However, the canteen weighed no more than any other container its size.
So, even if it wasn’t particularly flashy, the item was far more useful than any new weapon could be.
But as excited as he was about his loot, Elijah was far more interested in the other rewards from his fight with Thor. So, he finally allowed himself to look at his status:
Name
Elijah Hart
Level
76
Archetype
Druid
Class
Animist
Specialization
N/A
Alignment
N/A
Strength
87
Dexterity
79
Constitution
87
Ethera
85
Regeneration
99 (79)
Attunement
Nature
Cultivation Stage: Cultivator
Body
Core
Mind
Soul
Stone
Hatchling
Quartz
Neophyte
He’d shot past the level seventy-five threshold, which, on the surface, didn’t make a lot of sense. Back in the Battle of Ironshore, he’d killed hundreds of orcs, all of which carried with them a decent level, and he’d only leveled a couple of times. One kill shouldn’t have been so impactful. Yet, it had been, which led Elijah to believe that the system took more into account than simple levels.
But he hadn’t understood how it all worked, even from the very beginning. That made trying to optimize leveling a pain. So, it was a good thing that Elijah had never really focused on leveling, per se. Rather, he tended to concentrate on other goals. Like completing a tower. Or protecting Ironshore. Killing Voxx. It wasn’t like he had much room to completely curate his experience, so he rarely thought about it.
Perhaps a Scholar could make sense of how it all worked.
Regardless, the levels themselves, while useful because of the extra attribute points they brought with them, weren’t nearly as important as the next two notifications he’d received after killing Thor. In some ways, the first was predictable. Yet, it was even more impactful than seeing the numbers on his status:
Stolen story; please report.
Planetary Power Rankings (Earth)
1. Elijah Hart – Level 76
2. Oscar Ramirez – Level 76
3. Sadie Song – Level 74
4. Hu Shui – Level 72
5. Niko Song – Level 67
6. Davu Adebowale– Level 65
7. Anupriya Pandey – Level 62
8. Ram Khandu – Level 59
9. Gunnar Lindstrom – Level 58
10. …
11. …
12. …
“Numero uno,” he said to himself. He and Oscar Ramirez, who’d been at the top since the very beginning, were the same level. Yet, Elijah had taken the position of primacy. He could only assume that it was because of his advanced level of cultivation. However, it could have been alphabetical, too. Either way, Elijah would take it as an immense victory. When the power rankings had first appeared, Elijah hadn’t even been on the list. Yet, now he was on top. The most powerful person in the world. It was a good feeling, and one that came with more satisfaction than he would have expected.
Elijah wasn’t really dependent on outside approval, but it was impossible to look at that and not feel a sense of gratification for all the breaks that had gone his way. For all the lucky encounters. For meeting Nerthus. For washing ashore on his island. For the panther. There were so many coincidences that if even one would have gone in a different direction, he would have died.
Only a handful of years before, he’d made peace with his own impending death. That familiarity with his own mortality had persisted, but he no longer expected to die at any moment. In fact, according to everything he knew, he now stood to live longer than anyone on Earth ever had. There were hundreds of years stretched out before him. Maybe even millennia, if he managed to continue his progression.
And avoid getting killed by hulking Vikings.
Though Elijah had won the fight, it had pushed him as far as anything since the orcish warlord. Maybe even further. Certainly, it had been more painful, and without any of his advantages, he would have failed. His survival was the culmination of a thousand other decisions and victories, so he knew that if he intended to make it through the next challenge, he would need to continue along his path, wherever it might take him.
Thankfully, he had a brand-new tool to help speed him along his way. Elijah looked at his newest spell:
Shape of the Sky
Take on the form of an airborne hunter, increasing Dexterity attribute. Spellcasting is suspended while Shape of the Sky is active.
Elijah stared at the spell. On the surface, it didn’t seem as impactful as Shape of the Guardian or Shape of the Predator. There were no vast attribute increases. And it didn’t come with a passive ability like Shape of the Predator. Yet, Elijah didn’t care about any of that, because he was too focused on one word: airborne.
It seemed that he’d finally received the ability to fly. Upon seeing that notification for the first time, Elijah had wanted to leap to his feet and immediately try it out. However, he’d forced himself to save the best for last. Otherwise, he had a feeling that he’d have ignored everything else.
Even his healing and gathering loot, the latter of which was usually his favorite part of post-fight activities, even if he never actually knew what he was looting until he had it appraised.
But compared to the ability to fly? None of that really mattered. It was one thing to shift into a terrestrial animal. As magical as that was, it was easy to accept. After all, he’d spent his whole life on the ground. However, the notion that he could transform into a flying creature was truly miraculous, and he couldn’t wait to try it out.
And now that he’d taken care of everything else he needed to do, there was no more reason to delay. So, after shoving everything into his Ghoul-Hide Satchel, Elijah took a deep breath, then cast Shape of the Sky.
As always, the transformation took a second or so, but soon enough, he’d shifted. His arms transformed, growing much longer, with a thin membrane stretching into leathery wings. The rest of his body remained much the same size, but the shape was quite different, though he couldn’t really inspect himself properly. As was the case with all of his transformations, he was, of course, quite scaley.
Once the transformation had completed, Elijah waddled – that was the only way he could describe it – toward the large pool of water he’d poured into a depression while testing the canteen. There, he saw his blurry reflection.
His head looked a lot like it did in his draconid form, though his neck was quite a bit longer. Maybe three feet, total, and around a foot in diameter, ending in a sinuous body. A long, snake-like tail extended for a dozen feet behind him. In short, he was shaped like a mixture of a bat, a lizard, and a snake, and when he stretched his wings to their full extent, they reached a span of more than two-dozen feet, which was probably twice his total length.
However, he was a little surprised to see how colorful his scales were. Both the draconid and lamellar ape forms were slightly subdued in terms of coloration. That could not be said of the Shape of the Sky. It was as colorful as any tropical bird, with a body of forest green and wings that transitioned to blue, then deep red at the tips. The tail followed a similar pattern, though with hints of yellow thrown in for good measure.
To Elijah, the effect was mesmerizing. But it highlighted one thing – the form wasn’t meant to be a stealthy hunter. He could feel the strength in his claws, which told him that if he was going to hunt in that form, he would need to use similar tactics to an eagle. Dive, snatch, and carry away.
And given his size, he suspected that he could hunt some very large beasts in that manner. After all, some species of eagle had been known to carry away livestock and children. Given that his wingspan was at least double that of the largest eagle to ever live – not to mention his inflated attributes – Elijah thought it was reasonable to expect quite a bit better performance from the Shape of the Sky.
But before he could get to that point, Elijah needed to test his wings out. After all, his instincts were sufficient to make running on four legs easy enough, but that was probably due to the fact that it wasn’t a huge deviation from things he’d done in the past. Crawling around wasn’t so different from moving around on four legs.
The same could not be said for flying.
Still, Elijah was more than eager to give it a shot. So, without further ado, he launched himself into the air and flapped his wings. And for a moment, it worked. He soared into the sky without much difficulty. But that didn’t last long, and he quickly lost his rhythm and plummeted right back to the parched ground of the desert, kicking up quite a lot of dust in the process.
Fortunately, he didn’t break anything. So, he tried again.
And again after that.
Elijah kept going until, hours later, he had mastered the art of taking off. He knew that without the instincts that had come with the form, it would have taken months to even get that far. Regardless, he spent another few hours learning to glide, to climb, and to dive. However, the biggest hurdle was learning how to land.
The first attempt actually broke one of his legs. The second attempt – undertaken after using Sooth to heal the fracture – went slightly better, but he still ended up twisting his knee out of socket. The third time was not the charm, and he experienced much the same result. In the end, it took him more than a week to reach even intermediate mastery of flight, but even then, his landings were more than a little rough.
He could only resolve to get better. Practice, as they said, made perfect, and Elijah was determined to reach that level.
Because flying was intoxicating.
More than once, he found himself simply reveling in the act of soaring high above the planet’s surface. And then there was the speed. Elijah had no real way to gauge, but he suspected that his top airspeed was at least a hundred-and-fifty miles an hour, which meant that he could cover some serious ground.
That practical detail was secondary to the sensation of flying, though, and his focus on the latter was what got him into trouble. He was approaching one of the large pillars of rock that stood near the Twilight Clefts when he heard a voluminous screech. A second later, something enormous hit him in the back, ripping through his scales and sending him plummeting toward the ground.
He twisted, lashing out with his claws as he used everything he’d learned to correct his flight path. He managed to level out just before he would have hit the ground, and as he skimmed across the rocky terrain, he craned his long neck backward to see an enormous raptor – it looked a bit like an eagle, but with a bright red coloring that marked it as unique – circling the pillar.
Thankfully, it didn’t pursue, hinting to Elijah that its intention was to protect what was probably its nest. So, he flew away, landing after a couple of miles to see to his wounds. He was just healing when something interrupted his intended flying practice.
The radio in his Ghoul-Hide Satchel crackled to life. He could barely hear it, but when he retrieved the contraption, a familiar voice came through, “Elijah Hart. If you can hear me, please respond.”
It was Lucy.
He pressed the button, then said, “What’s going on? Uh…over?”
“Oh, thank God. I’ve been trying to contact you for over a day,” she said breathlessly.
“Sorry. I was busy. Do you need something?”
“You need to get back to Seattle. Someone’s here looking for you.”
Elijah immediately thought about Thor. Perhaps he wasn’t alone. So, he asked, “Who is it? And who even knows I was in Seattle?”
“It’s a long story, but it’s Carmen. Your sister-in-law is here.”
That was all Elijah needed to hear. He told Lucy that he was on his way, then shoved the radio back into his satchel before shifting into Shape of the Sky. He was speeding toward Seattle a moment later.