"Crucible! Give me the same dungeon as yesterday. Three-tier Hard difficulty. No permanent injuries or death." Eli commanded with a hard rap of his knuckles on the metal doors. He felt the array of enchantments weaved throughout the doors thrum to life as they stretched and pulled reality as if it were a malleable thing. Space elongated as a portal plopped over the door. After creating his own portal and after its evolution, Voidspace Horizon showed him how similar but different his portal was. Originally, he had thought his had felt like two places overlapping their space was correct, but this one felt like this dungeon was one of several in a corridor that had been aligned for him to step through.
It also didn't feel real.
Eli stepped through into the same starting tunnel and grimaced at how he felt space double up in a way he couldn't feel before. It was like he stood in a closet with the walls close enough for him to touch with the airlock just behind him, but also that he stood in an entirely new place separate from where he had been.
Voidspace Horizon let his spatial field unfurl with ease as it penetrated through the millions upon millions of empty gaps through the rock and air. He felt the top of the peak above him with the stones and the slumbering giant as well as the outside of the cave down to about the arch. Eli dragged his will through the intangible currents of voidspace emanating from him as he focused only on the space. His range tripled until he felt the vast empty air above the peak beckon alongside the curve of the path through the second tier. Information flooded his mind while he allowed everything in his vicinity to stop his voidspace.
Silhouettes drew a comprehensive topographical map of his surroundings until he felt every uneven dip and bend in the rough cave stone. Vapor twisted in his spatial field focused down to his prior range. He closed his eyes and walked perfectly fine as he navigated his way out of the cave. While he walked, he poured a low, but potent charge of Lumencloud Fortification into the earth with Enchanter's Dominion. Each breath of air refueled him while tempestuous radiance sparkled off the strata of the earth in his wake.
He wanted to test himself far more than he ever had before.
Eli climbed the drab rocky ascent without any armor or other protection beside his clothes. His trail of enchantments left the rising peak glowing white as if it were transformed into divine marble. Before too long, he mounted the top where the same slumbering giant awaited him, with its massive sword sheathed in its chest. Fields of red rot led from it to the three monoliths.
Last time it had spoken, would it again?
He took a deep breath as power ignited in his body. It doubled as he transformed into radiance, then tripled once he activated the [Might] perk he had equipped to Body of Light. Cracks snapped through its layers of petrified stone while the giant thrashed itself awake. Eli squeezed out gales of Strength from his Lumencloud Fortification while he watched it drag itself up to its feet. Rock flaked off of it in chunks as it tore the sword out of its chest. Fractures filled with molten magma as it lurched toward him with a rumbling roar.
It swung its sword sideways with an impotent howl of wind as it swept towards his face.
Eli smiled.
A violet portal flashed in front of him to intercept the slash of the giant's sword shearing in three pieces. Two oversized shards of metal spun into the distance behind Eli while the middle part shot through the tether with magnified force out of the other portal he'd summoned behind the giant's head.
Brackish blood burst in a geyser as the blade cleaved through the giant's skull out into the valley while it twirled on its way. Eli stretched and twisted the space around him so none of the blood splashed on him as the giant collapsed. He enchanted the peak while he spun on his heel to march back down toward the arch. He stepped through and watched while goblins and trolls rose out of the ground to rush him.
Hordes of them converged on him with claw and fang. Weapons rose out of the ground into the hands of the trolls or appeared out of thin air with a malevolent glow into the grubby hands of the goblins. They swarmed around him with high-pitched squeaks as the trolls grumbled toward him in silence. Banks of lumencloud steamed off of him while Eli pushed out voidspace blades that scythed through any spawn that drew near.
Eli's smile widened as they breathed in the thick plumes of lumencloud that rolled over and under their teeming bodies. Corrupted spears, staves, and claws flashed toward him. He teleported up in the air. Four portals bloomed from where he had been to crash into the press of spawn, eager to take his life. Instead of shearing them into a pulped mess like he had expected, the portals cracked against their bodies as it crunched their bones. No notifications flickered across his vision.
Trolls rumbled the earth with their powers as they shaped, then loosed a volley of stone spears.
Eli teleported them back into each of them with an echoing crack of pressurized air. Goblin and troll bodies fell, but more rose to join the assault. Lumencloud flashed beneath him to hoist him up. Spears and staves flickered as they were replaced by bows that the goblins lifted to loose at him. Trolls shaped the earth into slopes and columns that they scaled to get closer to him.
Still, they breathed in the shimmering mist that swirled over each and every one of them. He raised both of his hands as he created a single portal that he linked to itself. Wooden and bone arrows vanished into his voidspace, where he slapped lumencloud enchantments on them until they blazed with power. Dazzling arrows fell from the portal like a meteor shower, slaughtering dozens in an instant. Trolls leaped for him with a guttural roar.
Instead of their meaty paws breaking his bones or their blunt nails tearing his skin, he only winced at the itching sensation as they phased through his soft light body. Radiance turned into searing light enhanced by a focus on infrared charring trollflesh. Each troll screamed as they dropped back down to the tide of spawn below.
Eli dropped into the fray, with his spatial field drawn back to its previous range.
He closed his eyes while he infused Lumencloud Fortification with Body of Light. Weapons flailed around him in a mad flurry as he ducked and weaved his way around the attacks. Plumes of lumencloud blotted out all natural light with the shining pallor of the fog. A troll lurched toward him from behind. Eli sidestepped as he grabbed its arm and wrenched it sideways into the gaggle of goblins pouncing on him from his left. Rot festered in the troll's wounds as they ravished it.
Every now and then he'd lash out, but while he did hurt them, his powers were too weak. Too under-evolved to do more than artificially wound them.
Despite his limitations, he found ways to slaughter them, as long as he was willing to stand there and focus all his might on one target at a time. He froze all the lumencloud a goblin had breathed in with a splintering pop as the arctic chill tore it apart from the inside. Another he forced his lumencloud in the other direction as he turned it blistering hot as all the water vapor in its body boiled into scalding steam.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
But it was risky and left him wide open for them to maul their weapons into his radiant body. He healed in moments from all the lumencloud surrounding him, which supercharged him every second he fought within its fog. So instead, he dodged and set them upon each other. He couldn't kill them as easily as they could kill each other. Enchanter's Dominion had a blind spot for the living, but once they fell dead, their bodies opened up to his influence.
Eli turned them into lumencloud effigies that brimmed with lumencloud brilliance. All the lumencloud air they'd breathed in crystallized in their veins as he enchanted them all in one fell swoop.
At last, they were all dead.
He surveyed the field washed out by all his fog that he drove deep into the ground with Enchanter's Dominion. Weakness trembled in his radiant body from the steep drop of available lumencloud, but it quickly renewed itself from the ambient air and water. A teleport dropped him onto the trail before he swept the pass with Voidspace Horizon. Silhouettes of trolls lying in wait in the walls reflected back at him.
Eli narrowed the space along the trail in front of every single one before he teleported rocks next to each one as if he walked. Stone rumbled as it shifted into loose dirt as ten trolls up and down the path leapt out into open air. Then he unfolded the space in front of them with a hard snap as he shot them all down into the valley. He walked down the trail to the foot of the cave while his smile grew. Lumencloud Fortification enchanted the cliffside and the trail with as much spare power he could shove into it.
Voidspace Horizon stretched behind him as he pushed it to its limits. Two miles of information howled into his mind as all the knowledge tried to split his skull in two. Voidspace consumed layers of earth and corpses as he gutted the mountain of all his enchantments and shoved it into a spatial vault in his void. Enchanter's Dominion speared into his voidspace as it showed him all the places gaps in-between the structure of the enchantments for him to fill it with commands or another power.
It was shit material for enchantments that he doubted would last the day, but he didn't need them too.
He prepared to fill them with light from Body of Light when he noticed he had another option. He could enchant using his perks too from [Might], [Subspace], and the unequipped Blight. That called for some experimentation later, but not now.
Eli injected all of his [Might] boosted light into the enchantments again and again while he waited for his internal stores to refill from the ambient light and whatever he got from Lumencloud Fortification. Finally, it was full. He reignited into radiance before he stepped through the veil of space with a knowing smirk. Eli was becoming the master of all space under the horizon and he was going to take his due from that spider.
A familiar grand cavern spread around him once again, but this time, it fit easily in his spatial field. He used voidspace to shear disks out of the cave that he enchanted with Lumencloud Fortification and Blight before he popped them into his voidspace.
It didn't take long for the goblins and trolls to come screeching out of their holes.
Luminious disks burst into reality with an explosion of gore as the impact shattered the rock, releasing the contained tempest inside. Goblins and trolls screamed in their respective high-pitched and guttural tones. Sections of the cave vanished as he continued his rapid-fire battery as he pushed his will into both Lumencloud Fortification and Enchanter's Dominion, as he turned each carving into a wall with a honed edge. Goopy blood sprayed and splashed through the air as he mowed them down, one after the other.
Fault lines fractured in the stone from the shaft below as the Colossal Titan Spider made its move.
Lumencloud surged beneath him in a billowing nimbus as he ascended. Panes of voidspace erected in a cage around him before he draped it with portals that he connected into a massive one beneath him. Broken earth heaved before the spawn below even noticed he'd vanished. The ceiling of the cave shattered and fell like a mass of asteroids that broke against his portal shields before they shot out of the portal beneath him into the array of monsters below.
Spiders rasped along the walls as they shot out webs to snare the other dying spawn. Eli pushed Voidspace Horizon out with a malevolent smile the moment he felt through their flimsy exoskeletons. They were weaker than Voidspace Horizon was. An inverted voidspace bubble scraped along the walls as it snatched up every spider and corpse it could.
The goblins and trolls were too high level, but they were already dead.
At the edge of his expanded spatial field, he felt the Colossal Titan Spider lying in wait.
He mashed the corpses up in his voidspace where he squeezed the mangled bodies of spider, goblin, and troll together while he enchanted them all with Blight-enhanced lumencloud. Then he teleported it right into the Colossal Titan Spider abdomen. It screeched with an ungodly sound that turned into what he imagined was a wrathful bellow. New cracks ruptured through what remained of the cave even as the sound ruptured his eardrums.
Body of Light and Lumencloud Fortification slowly healed his ears within his radiance. That was fine. He'd be done with this delve soon. He didn't need Hyper-Regeneration. It was over one way or the other.
Eight massive limbs like tree trunks sharpened to spear points stabbed into the earth as the Colossal Titan Spider rushed toward him. He eyed its impenetrable carapace and its oversized mandibles. Explosions spouted through from the craters it left in its wake as shockwaves buffeted through his portals. His eardrums popped again from its screaming onslaught.
In seconds, it was already upon him.
Lumencloud Fortification focused his equal vitality all into Perception to slow time down to a standstill. He roared as the pressure on his radiant bones grated. A crackling hiss echoed endlessly as his brain tried to decipher the hellscape of sounds filtering through his constantly healing and breaking ears. Molten blood poured down his face.
Still, the Colossal Titan Spider approached. Two spearlegs jabbed toward him and he already knew it'd destroy his portals. So he broke the tethers as he crossed all of his multiple portals together as he teleported his payload of an enchanted mountaintop through it. Before it could explode, he teleported as far below as he could then did it again to the depths of the shaft where webbed skeletal trophies remained along with an oversized pirate's ship or galley suspended by webs.
Its legs sundered his portal with a wet tearing sensation as his head wrenched with agony. Blood bubbled in his throat and leaked out of his nose as he screamed.
Shadowed purple light flashed up above as the portals seemed to converge before everything flashed white in a nova.
Giant (x 1) Troll (x 500) Goblin (x 600) Titan Spider (x 800) Colossal Titan Spider (x 1) With the powers: Natural Armament Ev. 2 (x 600) Putramancer Ev. 2 (x 600) Earthborn Regeneration Ev. 2 (x 500) Earthen Mantle Ev. 2 (x 500) Terranean Proprioception Ev. 1 (x 800) Terranean Sovereignty Ev. 3 (x 1) Titan’s Vault Ev. 3 (x 1) Will of the Colossal (Giant’s Superiority) You may select from one of the following options: Siphon Power Experience Gain a Power Perk Obtain Power from the Conquered > Terranean Proprioception Ev. 1 (x 800) Terranean Sovereignty Ev. 3 (x 1) Titan’s Vault Ev. 3 (x 1) You may select from one of the following options: Siphon Power Experience Gain a Power Perk Obtain Power from the Conquered > Lumencloud Fortification Ev. 0 You may now select from one of the following options: Evolve Power Obtain New Power N/A N/A>