Zane's Chains crushed in. Constricting relentlessly, splitting the Monster into twitching parts, digging into the joints, cutting off limb from limb, scalding, melting through flesh and muscle alike with a hiss like an angry python.
This creature's flesh was a lot less tough than Zane's. But it was still hardened, preserved by demonic energy, a fossil cast in permafrost. When Zane's chains bit in, they found a half-frozen sludge of black blood, long strips of lean frozen muscle, hardened to supernatural toughness by the Frostbite Law coursing through them. Preserving their shape against the very will of nature.
But they still began to crack where Zane's Chains closed in. Began to shatter, melt at the joints. Stormfire was finding its way inside. Crushing through what essence it found. And feasting on the flesh beneath.
Now the beast was starting to shudder, like the demon inside was being violently exorcised. It marshaled all its essence, flailing for all it was worth, domain dropping dense and heavy on Zane's head, and it felt like a frozen waterfall crashing over him again, beaten down his back, thrusting him deep under—
But it was too late.
Zane forced a mass of essence to his fist. And forced his fist through all that icy current. Dropping right on top of the creature’s head with the force of a hammer blow.
He felt a chunk of bone shattering under his fist, heard the satisfying crunch of it—the beast screeched. Splitting up like the surface of a frozen lake.
Its domain warbled. Flickered like a light about to go out. Somehow it managed to thrash even harder, almost worming free an arm even as its joints lay half-melted.
But Zane was not about to let up.
It was time to finish the job.
He bellowed. Dropped another hammer of a fist—BOOM! And another and yet another, both hands wailing in a fury of fire and force, one, two, three—CRACK, CRACK, CRACK—
The skull caved in. The Frostbite Laws, battered to tatters, started unraveling en masse, at last, forced by sheer heat to release their death-grips on the flesh—
Zane crushed through the freeze. And got at the matter beneath.
The Monster let out one last gasp. Its limbs locked out in full—the domain spasmed up and down its length….
And shattered. A wall of glass crashing down in the Astral Plane. The blizzard halted in an instant.
The beast went limp.
Zane’s Noose flared to its maximum. Strangling through the last of its melting neck, crushing its spine under enough pressure to turn coal to diamond. He gave it one final all-out effort.
And its head lulled to one side, dropped off its body, rolled uselessly away.
Its palms sagged open.
And it was done.
Leaving Zane standing there, hot vigorous blood seeping out of every last torn-up inch of him. Heart still beating strong. Powered by Godbeast strength.
The one thing that kept him standing—slowing now.
He tilted his battered, bloodied head to the sky. And collapsed to his knees. Heaving in deep breaths. Ruined chest gently rising and falling…
The creature was flaking away. The remnants of its crushed body withering black, drifting off in the still air…
Zane looked to Reina. It was the first thing he did after the fight.
She was still on her hands and knees, shaking a little, but he could feel her life force—she would be alright, he was relieved to see. She hadn't just taken shots to the body, but also to the soul just then.
He blinked.
Thick streams of light started flowing into her. Quickly started flooding her, flooding Avery and Evan too beside her, soon growing to a torrent. Leveling them up. Healing away their wounds.
Zane looked down. They were flooding him too.
Level up!
Level up!
Level up!
Level up!
Level up!
Level up!
Level up!
Level up!
Level up!
Level up!
Essence Level 309 -> 319
And all that dragging weight, that bitter cold, the creeping darkness, that heavy load of pain, lighting him up on every limb—it all vanished, like that. It was quite a strange experience. It left him with a good kind of whiplash.
And Zane was whole again. He looked down and saw a plane of whole hale hearty muscle, skin without a blemish. His flesh was even glowing a little. The only evidence he had been through a fight at all were the phantom pains still stabbing through him—but even those were quickly fading.
Then it was only Zane's soul that still bore the brunt of the fight. He still felt like he had been wrung dry—like that fight had squeezed out the last of his energies. He could use a nap.
He looked around.
Soon the only thing left of that demon was a strange amulet. A gemstone hung at the end of it. The metal drawstring and the stone itself had both been charred black.
??? [???]
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
There was no light in it, no aura. It looked inert. Spent.
Zane wobbled back to Reina. Some color came back to her cheeks at the sight of him; she rested her head on his chest, and sighed. “I knew it,” she said simply.
“Are you okay?” said Zane, brow furrowed.
She looked up at him. “Zane, you just took a peak Nascent Soul Monster’s all out assault! Am I okay?”
Zane blinked at her.
“…Yes. I’m okay,” she said. She looked half-exasperated, half-amused. “I took a flesh wound compared to that.”
Zane nodded, satisfied. Yawned.
Avery and Evan were still lying there flat, gasping.
“We did it!” cried Avery. She pumped her fist, did a little flipper kick. “Wooo!”
Evan cheered.
They all sat there blinking for a bit, processing what had just happened.
Then—
“Hey anyone want some more s’mores?” said Avery.
“Why do you have so many s’mores,” said Zane.
***
They settled around a little campfire munching on s’mores. It took about a quarter of an hour before it hit them.
It hit Avery first.
“Heyyy,” said Avery through a mouthful of marshmallow. “Where the heck’s our rewards?”
She frowned at the sky. “Where’s that big tampering thing?”
They all thought about it for a bit. “It must be hidden from the system,” said Reina. She pointed at that gemstone the Monster left behind. She thought it must have used that as a way to sneak in, somehow.
“Can’t the System do something about it though?” said Avery. She wrinkled her nose. “Feels like it should be able to detect stuff like this. I mean—at this point it’s getting kinda silly!”
"Maybe it’s just taking a nap,” said Evan hopefully. “Maybe it’ll wake up soon?”
“Hmm,” said Zane.
Just then, red comets started streaking across the sky.
“Well at least we're getting our gifts,” grumbled Avery.
***
Lightning Constellation
Inner Reaches
Azure Flame Faction
The Lightning Constellation was the private realm of Grand Elder Noughtfire. The place where his estate and all his direct disciples made their homes—so called because the stars that made it were arranged in a lightning-bolt.
It was wrapped in so many secrets and mysteries that it had become a mythical place. So much so that many in the Factions, even Inner Faction members, doubted it even existed. Although every so often you would look up in the sky and catch a glimmer of that jagged pattern of seven stars. But blink, and it would be gone.
Grand Elder Noughtfire’s Sacred Forge lay in the heart of a star. A star at the tail end of that constellation. Burning pale white, the color of lost souls.
The Grand Elder had exited seclusion just to visit it.
At its very center, the molten core had been hollowed out. Made a workstation of cosmic scale.
Lava rivers of nine different colors flowed into it in nine different directions, down its walls, ending at the central pedestal forged of Heaven-grade Spirit Steel.
There stood Noughtfire himself. Staff raised high over a certain treasure, placed right atop the pedestal.
Eye of the Seer Cyclops [Earth (B)]
Noughtfire’s staff was pristine white gold all the way through. A singular rune had been engraved at the tip, a forbidden rune—just to engrave it would summon a backlash that killed all but the most powerful artificers.
This was not a soul weapon. But rather an artificing instrument. A staff that had belonged to a very old Ascendant of a desert civilization long-lost to the sands of time.
Noughtfire closed his eyes. Drew in deep.
And the molten flames around him responded.
Streaming up to the tip of the staff, concentrating in a singular ball of swirling molten steels, all clashing, then melding together, making a curious alloy.
Around it bands of swirling runes flared into being, runes written in a language so old it predated even Noughtfire. A language long-lost, too; a language only he knew. Uz’Kardesh, One of the most powerful scripting languages in the galaxy.
The powers Noughtfire summoned now were not those of Stormfire. But rather of another one of the most powerful Paths in the Azure Flame Faction—Laws deep on the path of Core Magma. Where Stormfire governed much of Fire’s most destructive potential, Core Magma held its most potent powers of creation.
It was very unusual for an Elder to have the time or aptitude to walk more than one Path. Burnwater, standing off to one side, watching in apprehension, had devoted his whole life purely to Stormfire. It was the only way he had gotten so far.
But Sage Noughtfire had lived a very, very long time. He had forgotten more magics than most Sages ever knew.
He tapped his staff to the tip of the eye. That molten ball sank in. Vanished without a trace….
And soon a new treasure sat on the pedestal.
All-Seeing Eye (???)
“Master?” said Burnwater, sweat beading on his brow—and not from the heat. “Just to make certain. You… are not planning to wage war on the Temple of the World Tree… right?”
Noughtfire raised a brow. “No. That would be ridiculous. And unnecessary.”
He picked up the eyeball between two fingers, studied it carefully. “And… messy, besides.”
Noughtfire finished his inspection and nodded, satisfied. “There is a saying where I hail from—the wise man makes big ripples with small stones.”
The old man paused. Sharp eyes flashing.
“The System,” he intoned. “Is akin to a sleeping dragon on whose back we all live. Sometimes it is easy to believe that because this dragon has slept aeons, it might never wake. It is easy to grow complacent… but I still remember a time what its fires look like.”
Noughtfire clenched his fist around the eye. “Never forget. It is greater than any of us that live within its confines. And when it wakes, it will shake the world. Disturb it at your own peril.”
When Noughtfire opened his hand again, the eyeball was gone. A notification popped up—Your gift has been successfully delivered.
“Observe,” said Noughtfire.
He paused. “There is another saying where I hail. The wise man takes no pleasure in the ruin of his enemies…”
The faintest hint of a smile. “Alas. I fall short of wisdom.”
***
Zane and his friends watched as the comet drifted down, ever-so-gently. Came to a hovering halt before them, and opened up. Revealing—
“…An eyeball?” said Avery.
They all looked at each other. Zane wondered if he was meant to eat it. He wonderedhow it would taste.
He was just about to reach out to grab it when it started to float of its own accord. Started to glow with an eerie golden light, pupil dilating, swiveling, staring—coming to a stop at that amulet
Green lines flickered into being.
Like they were seeing the fabric that stitched the very universe together. Lines, some thick, some thin stretching every which way—like they were getting a sudden X-ray vision into the world’s inner workings…
Lines that all intersected at that amulet.
Zane had seen these lines before.
Back when he fought Eze. It was how Eze saw the world with his Touch of Death.
These were lines of Fate. Lines stretching deep into the sky—stretching far into the future and the past, stringing all of them together, ending at this precise moment.
Scenes started floating into view. Right over the amulet. They saw themselves in green film, as though looking into some distorted blurry mirror. A mirror that started going backwards, replaying the fight, moving faster and faster, blurring together—a kind of recording rewinding…
Then it started to slow, came to stop, as a final scene floated into view. Of a Cat-kin, and a snake-lady, and an elephant-man walking together, seeing the amulet drop, cloaked, from the sky. The Cat-kin being possessed, taken over, then starting to wreck the rest of them.
The scene paused there.
Then flashed.
It was like a flashbang had gone off in the Astral Plane—green lines flooding the world, an explosion only the soul could feel—not a damaging one. More like a firecracker going off. And soon that faded too.
“…Um?” said Evan.
And then—
Anomaly Detected—
System has detected external tampering—
SYSTEM HAS DETECTED MASSIVE TAMPERING.
The notification started flashing before their eyes.
SCENARIO 0 TAMPERING HAS BEEN DETECTED.
ENGAGING EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS.
“Um!” cried Evan.
PERPETRATORS IDENTIFIED.
METING PUNISHMENT.
PUNISHMENT LEVEL: DIVINE RETRIBUTION.
***
Evergreen Grove
World Tree Faction
Lan Arandor and Inquisitor Thaele scrambled up over the highest boughs of the World Tree, staring out into the vast twinkling expanse of space, gasping. Searching all over, trying to find the source of the disturbance—the one that had set off every last alarm in their defense systems, made their scrying glasses go blank—
It didn’t take them long.
Thick stormclouds were gathering, high above. Stormclouds so black they seemed ink-stains on the fabric of the universe, thick, burgeoning at shocking pace.
Stormclouds that pulsed with a certain kind of lightning. A lightning woven together of all seven of the Divine Lightnings—to make a perfect instrument of destruction. One that shone pure-white. One that only appeared on a singular occasion.
“How—how is this possible?!” croaked a pale Lan Arandor. “It’s Heavenly Tribulation!”