Beneath the towering skyscrapers there were darkened shadows from the sun, they stretched relatively far and wide against the cold pavement.
From those shadows a small flare of black rose up slightly and started dashing full speed in the direction of the World tree. Whipping through the streets, and dodging the vehicles that laid in the road… then from the depths of that shadow emerged Six and I.
The trench coat we had on was of dark black shadows, it was rough around the edges and had a strong white outline. Our eyes were pure red like mine and only my number was in the left eye. Under my eyes were these dark markings that opened up, revealing Six’s off-black eyes with his yellow-gold ‘06’ in one of them. My body had mostly a shadowy type of look, with jagged marks up near my neck. The streaks in my hair were a mixed black and red, going off into a side curve.
Our feet were dipped in the shadows, surfing along the streets.
“Cyn, how fast do you want this done?”
“Can we get there in a few minutes?”
…
“What about that gate you used?”
“Can’t. It used about half the mana I took from Esther, and we still need an escape from this continent.”
He sighed with something that sounded kind of grumbly.
“Cyn, give me full control.”
“Huh-? Why?”
“I have a method, but we’ll both die if I don’t control it.”
I was skeptical for a second.
“How fast can that get us to the World tree…?”
“Two minutes.”
“Wha- yes then!”
I immediately gave up control of my part of the body, for reference we decided to split our control by upper and lower body this time instead of left and right.
My pure red eyes swapped into an off-black, the lower marking eyes changed to red. Our numbers swapped places as well.
“Hold on tight, Cyn.”
Six changed our positioning so we started scaling up a wall, our feet emerging from the shadows as he ran up the skyscraper’s glass walls. When he jumped he went diving toward the ground, we plunged deep into the shadows. This weird feeling surrounded us while the shadows warped and bent, suddenly we went flying upward. I closed my eyes for a second and when I opened them… I saw the Elven Continent shrouded in black.
Our body had changed into almost inverted colors, we were pure white now outlined in a black coloring. The only coloring besides black and white was my red eyes in the markings.
Everything around us was made of shadows with these giant tentacles rising high into the sky. Six landed on the wavy black pavement and immediately accelerated to around the same speed as a Maglev Train.
He moved back and forth rapidly, dodging hundreds of dark entities.
“S-Six, where are we?!”
“This is the Shadow Realm. It’s a world that resides directly underneath ours and it’s where I pull all my power from. [Shadow World] doesn’t make shadows, it releases them from their underworld prison.”
“So this place is a carbon copy of the real world?”
“Exactly, but everything is overly aggressive.”
“What-”
Six quickly disconnected from the ground as this monster tried latching onto us, he spun around quickly and launched us up a skyscraper. He started sprinting up the walls, these giant almost pterodactyl-like monsters dropped from the sky above us. Everything seemed to be targeting our back.
Six moved hastily, dodging everything that came our way as we zipped closer to Cyconis. Six moved our feet around and connected to one of the skyscraper’s ledges, he slid along the dark surface. Our body moving masterfully past each of the monstrous shadow figures.
Six leapt forward and connected our feet to the side of a skyscraper, our feet sunk into the shadows as we slid across them. Our back was leaned toward the shadowy glass, one hand out for support.
I spotted a giant tower…
Maybe a radio tower of sorts?
Six quickly maneuvered over to it, and scaled up the metal bars before throwing out this long rigid dark chain. It shot high up into the sky, to the point where I could barely even see the end of it.
The chain latched onto one of the many leaves of the World tree, the line became tight sending us flying upward. I heard clacking and winding as if we were being reeled in.
“Woah…”
The Elven Continent’s size shrunk before my eyes, we were going higher and higher. I turned my eye to the right to see-
Huh?
A shadowy crocodile… no, fish…? Dragon…?
What?
Wait- why is it coming this way?!
“Woah- woah, woah- SIX WATCH OUT-!!!”
Six abruptly pulled down and turned our body, the chain quickly lost its slack, sending us upward, the chain going down in our place. The head of the monster was a crocodile’s jaw, it had a giant almost fish-like body with fins… and then dragon wings and a sharp daggered tail.
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It rushed in and grasped the chain in its teeth, Six let go quickly at the same time.
We were slowly falling through the air before Six started skydiving straight down… our speed accelerating as the heavy ground approached us.
“Six…?”
“Six?”
“Six-!?”
We plowed straight down into the solid dark pavement, the shadows bent around us again, our realities warping and color returned. We shot out into a completely run down and stuffed with rubble version of the city. Shattered glass and debris surrounding us. I retook control of our body, quickly looking around.
Directly above us was the World tree.
“I guess you weren’t lying…”
“Why would I lie?”
“No reason.”
I sunk my feet into the shadows beneath us and started moving toward the World tree’s base. I passed by the cracked and ruined streets, covered in debris of shattered concrete and glass. Metal bolts and plates littering the destroyed earth. There were puddles of black and red liquids scattered throughout the wasted area… most likely oil and blood…
“Well, let’s get this over with~”
I jumped up and started scaling Cyconis. I grabbed the loose plates, and started climbing… I think this tree might have been bigger than I thought. On top of it being weirdly shaped like a double helix, it was absurdly large.
I hung off the side of one of the metal plates. I was now eye level with the World tree’s core. The size of that alone was insane, at least a skyscraper in itself. I then resumed climbing up, jumping between ruined pieces.
“Six, you know anything about that variant?”
“Hm? Which one?”
“The one that fused with the World tree.”
“Ohh… uh… probably Three.”
“Do you know his other name?”
“Nope.”
“Ah-... okay.”
My hand slipped for a second and I started falling back. I hastily shot some of my slime forward and reconnected us to the metal.
“Six, could you take over? I want to look at my stats.”
“Tch-... fine…”
“Stratum.”
————————————
Name: Cynical
Species: Regulus Slime
Level: 144
Rank: A
EXP: 32/1,125,678
————————————
[Titles]
‘World Ender’
‘Monster in Human Clothing’
‘Otherworlder’
‘Magician’s Crusade’
‘Darkest Monster’
‘Arcane Wipeout’
————————————
[Stat Points]
Strength: 311
Speed: 293
Perception: 319
Health: 250,000
Mana: 614
Intelligence: 182
Wisdom: 133
Luck: 77
Remaining Points: 104
————————————
[Skills]
||Passive:||
-Quick Learner, MAXED;
-Sentient Mind, MAXED;
-Chantless, MAXED;
-Language Master, Lvl 24;
-Integral Requisite, Lvl 15;
||Active:||
-Spell Creation, Lvl 27;
-Storage, Lvl 15;
-Sword Bolt, Lvl 7;
-Fireball, Lvl 29;
-Stealth, Lvl 15;
-Mana Control, Lvl 22;
-Heaven’s Barrier, Lvl 2;
-Water Shot, Lvl 6;
-Vocalize, Lvl 5;
-Teleport, Lvl 20;
-Flight, Lvl 18;
-Transfer, Lvl 4;
-Down Fall, Lvl 1;
-Glimpse, Lvl 2;
-Search, Lvl 9;
-Map, Lvl 13;
-Fire Wall, Lvl 1;
-High Heal, Lvl 3;
-Fire Beam, Lvl 7;
-Con-Paradox, Lvl 1;
-Mana Steal, Lvl 1;
-Variant Break (8/999);
————————————
As soon as my status window appeared in my head, I was hit with a ton of notifications. They swarmed my mind, I guess I hadn’t checked since we left Dynanimus…
So what do we have here…?
||Skill Acquired: Fire Beam, Lvl 1 → Lvl 7||
||Skill Acquired: Con-Paradox, Lvl 1||
||Skill Acquired: Mana Steal, Lvl 1||
||NOTICE: Variant ‘541’ has been recaptured!||
||NOTICE: Variant ‘@#&’ in possession!||
||NOTICE: Quest Completed! Since you have completed the ‘Kill Vorhees using any means’ Quest you have been granted a new title! Title: ‘Arcane Wipeout’! Title benefit: Mana stat can temporarily boost up by 10,000!||
Hoh~...
That’s a decent bit, huh?
So to start we have our basic ‘Skill Acquired’ tag… it pretty much is like a devlog so I know what new skills/spells have been added.
Next up is the variant notice. It just lets me know when a new variant has been reconnected to my body. Specifically when it says ‘recaptured’ though.
Finally we have the ‘Quest’ line. Which is completely new…
‘Arcane Wipeout’... I want to see the specifics on that.
I swiped through my status window and pulled up a description for the title.
————————————
Title: ‘Arcane Wipeout’
Benefit: +10,000 Mana Temporarily
Drawback: Long Cooldown, Sets Mana to one when time limit maxes out.
Flavor Text: To combat the weak mana level of humans a special elixir was created that had tremendous benefits. It raised their mana levels to an absurd number even among magical species. This elixir had a critical drawback though… it would kill the user after the twenty-four hour duration ran out.
‘Arcane Wipeout’ is the remaining essence of this elixir and gives the same effects! Among titles it is said to be strong, and can grant the user victory!
Though if you’re human. You’ll die~
————————————
…
Who wrote this shit?
Some edgelord?
Ah- I can’t say that… Six is one of those.
My condolences.
Anyway, it says it’ll kill the user by setting them to one mana… but I’ve been to zero mana before. So I’ll probably be fine, though that drawback is really shit. Like… really shit. I can’t use [Mana Steal] as a compatibility for it either since it just sets the mana to one.
Not worth it.
Not at all.
“Cyn, we’re almost there.”
I closed my stat window along with all the notifications. Six pulled us up onto the top of the main metallic trunk. There was some form of platform and above us was a large amount of metal leaves.
“Welp. Here goes~”