Taking it easy

-- Dred --

As we finished devouring the giant kobold’s body, we reached the five hundred and ninety-ninth level and every part of our bodies evolved to the limit. To reach the six hundredth level, we’d have to create our own world which wouldn’t be a problem if we had the time. It’d take a few hours and that’s also one of the reasons why Padinyss didn’t level up even after the seal was broken.

Once we created our own world and managed to understand a few things about our souls, we’d be able to become much stronger than ever before. Although Cor was above the six hundredth level in the past, due to his soul split, he lost many levels and even his world broke. Now, as an undead, he could easily remake it and teach us as well. With his knowledge, it probably didn’t cost him much to make this seal and those eight rings.

When the giant’s corpse completely disappeared, we found ourselves in the middle of an army of kobolds who were charging at us. I spotted the dark scars not far away and made our way towards them. Cor was in the lead, blocking most of the kobolds while the rest of us slaughtered every kobold in our way which was rather easy with our levels capped.

“Master! What are your plans for now?” Sareg asked.

“We’ll have to get to the sinkhole where the giant kobold came to the surface. These kobolds are created by large mana stones and I have a hunch that there is another one down there,” I replied. The threat level of the giant kobold was ten, but that was only if we never entered its body.

“Then please let us take the lead and open up a path for you.”

Hmm- that would be a good thing. “Alright, then your group shall take control of the others and move towards the hole. We’ll follow you guys,” I replied.

“Yes!”

As the thirty of them stood up in an offensive formation, with the guardians protecting both the front and the flanks while the magicians in the middle bombarded the kobolds in the front. With the help of the remaining people fighting in close quarters, they easily moved in without barely slowing down, leaving us with barely any work to do.

But thanks to the distance, it still took about an hour of slaughter until we finally reached the seashore, even though we tried to fly numerous times. Sadly, that turned out to be impossible with so many kobolds jumping onto our backs and dragging us down all the time.

The kobolds seemed to be rather clumsy when it came to magic, so they were swimming in the sea. The sun was high up in the air, the sky was clear, but the sea was filled with these creatures. No wonder the other races were always brought to near extinction. Most people didn’t have infinite mana and even if we had, our bodies would still tire out at some point.

Audrey froze the water in front of us on the move, decreasing the burden on the dark scars since the kobolds had to climb up to the ice to attack, leaving their defenses wide open. Another half an hour later, we noticed the level of the water decrease rapidly.

“I can’t freeze the water, it keeps breaking off,” Audrey shouted.

My neck popped as I tilted my head to the side and then jumped up. While still in the air, I transformed into my dragon form and found a huge waterfall, leading us into the darkness beneath. In the middle of the hole was a giant pillar of earth which had eight extensions connecting it to the seabed beneath the water. The kobolds were climbing up on that huge pillar of rock and ran towards the seabed, not bothering with the powerful wave of water that threatened to push them back into the hole. Considering their strength, it was no surprise.

I used earth magic to raise a path out of the seafloor that’d connect us with the stone pillar. I was about to land myself, but these shitty kobolds were already grabbing my tail and wings and tried to pull me down. They literally ran up on each other’s back and landed on mine. If not for my thick scales, I’d definitely die. I spun in the air and then landed on the path in front of my friends. “Follow me,” my words turned into a growl as I transformed into my bear form and charged forwards like a bull.

I pushed down one kobold after the other into the deep hole when we finally reached the giant pillar in the middle. Seeing that the kobolds kept climbing up on the pillars, I realised it’d be a chore to go down the conventional way, so after switching to my demon form and growing thick vines out of the pillar, I coiled it a few times around it and then jumped off. The vine kept growing as I fell deeper and deeper into the hole until I finally reached the bottom.

“Why are you not flying instead?” Elena asked.

“Well, why bother? I think this is quicker.”

“Yeah, and we could follow this path easily,” Jake chimed in.

Shrugging her shoulders, Elena let go of the vine and landed on the ground beneath. The ground was some kind of hard rock, though the most likely origin was volcanic. Waves upon waves of kobolds were swarming towards the pillar from a single direction and since we used our shadow forms in that pitch black darkness, they didn’t even notice us.

“What do you think, how deep are we?” Jake thought.

“The exact number is thirty kilometers seven hundred and sixty-two meters. Do you want to know the centimeters as well?” a smiling mouth formed in Audrey’s shadow-like body.

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“E-eh, no. I guess your elemental spirits don’t just give you additional control and power to the elements,” he replied.

“Of course! I have all kinds of unimportant and not interesting information as well, but I also know the age of the planet, the components of the rock you’re standing on and even more, all thanks to the spirits.”

“That could be useful, actually,” he muttered.

“Don’t just stand there and chat, move…” Elena urged them, seeing that they were being left behind. Giant pillars reaching a height of a hundred meters arched over us and held up the ceiling of the cavern. After running about a kilometer, a wall welcomed us. Audrey made a hole in it without the kobolds’ notice, but a red light blinded us from the other side.

Of course, that alerted the kobolds, but since they couldn’t see anyone, they moved on towards the pillar. Kobolds were born, or more like created, one after the other next to the giant red mana crystal. I had no idea what its colour implied, maybe it didn’t imply anything, but I had a feeling it was nothing good.

“Audrey? As the magician? Anything we should know?” I asked.

She stayed silent for a few more seconds before finally replying, “The crystal is filled with common mana, there is nothing wrong about that. But it also sucks in mana from the environment and the mana inside feels very unstable, almost volatile…”

“So your point is that it’s going to explode if we destroy it?”

“That’s likely to happen,” she muttered.

“I wonder about the size…”

“Oh, but fear not, I didn’t learn all these destructive spells for nothing! Finally, I’ll have the chance to use them!” she said and I couldn’t help but imagine her beating her chest. Well, not that it was possible in her shadow form.

“What do you have in mind?” I asked.

Her class, the Arcane Mage and even more so, her Mystic specialisation, seemed to focus on very rarely known and understood elements. Elements that were part of the world, life, materials, or some kind of understanding. All the new elements she had got to know up till now, she did so by comprehending different things. And so, these elements were mostly hard to control and had very destructive effects. It came in handy at these times when we were surrounded by nothing but enemies, but it was a different matter when we had to focus on a single opponent.

Either way, maybe one of those elements were the key and her next words proved my theory right, “I believe if I used cosmological constant and started splitting mana cells, I could basically ‘disintegrate’ the whole crystal and its surroundings without it detonating. But to do that, I need two things, the first being that you guys protect me and the second being is that if I feel that this thing will explode anyway, I’ll stop the splitting and somebody will have to take me away. Jake would be the best for that with his blink, I think.”

“Alright, let’s give it a shot. It’s not like we have anything better in mind…” I replied and then revealed myself to the kobolds. I had a feeling we’d be in deep shit if the mana crystal exploded, so I was really hoping it would just disintegrate as Audrey said.

The dark scars were still up there fighting back the kobolds, and closing off their path to leave the sinkhole. Sadly, they’d die if we died.

While we held back the kobolds that encircled us immediately, Audrey shut out everything and focused on the mana around the crystal. I’ve seen a small flash and the red crystal the size of a house was gone in the blink of an eye, leaving behind not even a speck of dust.

“You don’t have to run,” she laughed, seeing that I was getting ready to charge out.

It took five minutes till we cleaned up the room and killed every kobold underground. Whether there was a treasure hidden beneath or inside the crystal was a mystery we’d never find out. But even if there was and we wanted it, there was no better and surer way to go around it and a treasure wasn’t worth our lives.

“Master? The kobolds stopped coming up!” Sareg reported to Elena.

At this level, it was no surprise that her senses reached so far up to the surface.

“We destroyed the other crystal which means there should be no more kobolds coming. Certainly, this isn’t something normal humans or even epic ranked creatures could do alone,” she muttered.

“I’m pretty sure Cor, Jake, and I would have been enough to finish this,” Audrey stuck out her tongue. Although she was just joking, that may have been the truth. But they weren’t some common epic ranked creatures either… and most of it was all due to her almost infinite mana, cosmological constant. Nothing was infinite, we could empty an area, so just because we used the mana in the environment, we still had to move around.

“Alright, you people hop on. We still have to devour all these bastard kobolds on the surface,” I said and then transformed into my dragon form. The others jumped onto my back and after holding tightly to my scales, I took off towards the surface. Thanks to the wind in the hole, it took quite a bit of time reach the top and what welcomed us was a sea of kobolds.

But the best thing about it was that their levels decreased to five hundred without the mana crystal, making our jobs rather easy. It took another twenty hours for us to finish off all of them and free the world from these pests. The trench, on the other hand, was completely destroyed and overrun, the forest behind was burning and in tatters, the sea was filled with blood, despite us devouring the bodies, the air had the smell of burnt hair and bodies and the number of humanoid corpses reached millions.

Maybe it was a terrifying sight to many, but as for me, I didn’t really care. It wasn’t like I knew either of them and I killed probably just as many this last year. Maybe it was a perk of my race or something, but I didn’t seem to value life too highly… I guess that wasn’t a good thing, though I couldn’t care any less about what was good and what was not in others’ eyes.

With the death of the kobolds, a few days of cleaning came. We went around and devoured every dead body on the battlefield and fixed most of the destroyed forests and lands with our magic. It took us two whole days of work without sleep, but at least, we knew that the union lost its forces in the war. In the next few days, we killed the leaders of each leading empire, except for Trinity since the undead helped us.

Well, and there wasn’t much to clean up in that kingdom, or community? I wasn’t even sure how to refer to them. Maybe community was a more accurate name for them. Although it’d be nice to break through to the next level, we weren’t in a hurry and spent another half a year finishing what we started. We wiped out every unwanted kingdom or empire and left only people and places we deemed to be worthy of life.

Alas, it was time for us to have some fun, level up, and then leave for another part of the universe. The world was big, after all.