Before I left Sylvia behind and marched to my likely death, I took a moment to examine my Status. I’d been involved in quite a bit of combat in the last twenty-four hours, and killed…more than a few people. Normal people wouldn’t have gained anything from that, but…

I wasn’t exactly normal, now was I?

I pulled up my Status using Hidden Amidst the Spheres.

You have gained 7 levels! You are now Lvl. 91. Acting has reached Lvl. 7 (Max)! Dual Wielding has reached Lvl. 5! Short Bow Proficiency has reached Lvl. 3! You have 70 unspent Virtue points. Level 90 Class ability inherited. Would you like to review your Status? Y/N

I let out a silent sigh as I shunted the task of managing my level up to my remaining core ring. My outer ring took the task of standing up off of the slab that Sylvia was resting on, and approaching my gathered comrades.

I wasn’t surprised to see so many levels at once. I… had no idea how many people I had actually killed, during the assault on the warehouse. It had to be well over a dozen, and from my experience, people were…just worth more Aether than monsters, when it came to leveling up.

God, what a revolting thought.

Considering my advantages, I never wanted to become the kind of person who boiled down my opponents to what they were worth to me. Sapient beings were more than just grist for the mill that was my advancement.

My core ring tiredly selected yes, and then allocated my Virtues. No deviating from my established allocations today, like I had by getting some points in Strength. I didn’t feel like I could take the risk, and preferred the tried and true method of more Intelligence, Wisdom, and Dexterity.

My remaining ring reviewed my changes briefly, before confirming the allotment.

Name

Nathaniel Eugene Hart Titles

Unbound Liberator Level

91 Age

24 Sol Race

Human (Precursor) Affinity

Terrestrial Classes

Thornblade Acolyte (Uncommon) Professions

Aetherial Melding Health

843/1000 Stamina

46/100 Vitality

100 Strength

50 Spirit

10 Dexterity

190 Perception

100 Intelligence

260 Wisdom

260 Free Points 0 Options [Talent Page], [Skill Page], [Profession Page]

I was unsurprised to see my Status reflecting how worn down I felt. I sure as hell didn't feel one hundred percent.

As I reached Liora and Baldric, leaving Sylvia and Isolde behind, my core got around to seeing what the last ability I would get before reaching level one hundred would be.

I nearly laughed aloud at what I got.

This…would have been pretty useful, only hours previous.

Level 90 Class ability (Thornblade Acolyte) Bloodroot Resilience (Talent): Body and Soul are bolstered by the strength of the unseen earth.

Talents were typically easier for me to understand what they did than Skills, since their effects were immediate.

And I sure felt this.

All at once I felt…firmer, more solid somehow. My body and soul were, like the description said, almost being shored up by something. It seemed to me like my Vitality was being reinforced, if I had to place this new feeling.

Actually, that…might be exactly what was happening.

This sensation, in a weird way, felt almost like how the multiplicative effect of Sylvan Vigor did, just bolstering a different Virtue. But it wasn’t a Skill, and thus wasn’t something I could turn off or tune up and down. No, now that I thought about it more and examined the feeling, I was pretty sure I knew what was going on with Bloodroot Resilience.

This was a passive increase to my Vitality, it had to be. Either I was drawing strength from the earth around me, like the description said, or I was getting an addition or multiplication to the Virtue.

But…it was odd.

Moments after the Talent started working, I swear I heard an inaudible whisper, from somewhere just out of earshot. But when I looked around to try and find the source, I saw nothing.

Baldric saw my rubbernecking and raised a tired eyebrow at me. “Something wrong?”

“Ah…” I paused, before shaking my head. “No…nothing. I think it was just…an odd Talent interaction or something. Don’t worry about it.”

The dwarf inspected me for a moment before nodding. “If you say so. Anyway, listen up. We’re all ready to move out now, including Tlazo,” He nodded to the Lich that was standing off in front of us, directing his ‘assistants’. He had finally started getting them underway and was directing them towards and out of the door that I knew led out to the surface. The odd sound of a combination of marching and shuffling from the undead filled the cavernous lab. “We’ll follow behind them, and try to assess the situation when we reach the surface. We…all know the stakes here, so…don’t fuck this up, I suppose.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Liora turned her head to look at me from the corner of her remaining eye. “The Lich indicated to us that you were meant to slay the Godbound?” She asked shortly. Still, I detected a mote of doubt in her voice.

I didn’t blame her for it.

I nodded at the two of them. Even though I had gotten Ringed Mind only a few months ago, I was unused to managing my emotions without it. I’m sure they could both see the apprehension on my face at the prospect of killing a Calamity. “Yes…Elys told me I had everything I need, to kill it. I…don’t know how, but I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”

Baldric closed his eyes. “Then the goal is to get you close to the bastard,” He said shortly, before nodding ahead of us, to where most of the undead had cleared out. Tlazo was already floating after his minions even as more continued to stream into the cavernous lab, without even a glance behind him to see if we were following. “Let’s go.”

The three of us set out after the departing undead army.

Behind us, just on the edge of my hearing, I heard a young, whispered voice.

“Good luck,” Isolde said quietly, voice trailing after us.

We probably needed it.

…………………………………………………..

In a mirror to how we had first entered into Elderwyck and Tlatec not so long ago, we marched through the tunnel that connected Tlazo’s lab to Tlatec above, trailing behind said Lich’s army. Before long, we had reached the stairs that led upwards, and by that time, the tremors I had been feeling earlier were starting to become more intense.

And when we actually started our journey upwards, sound began to filter down towards those of us that were still alive and coherent enough to understand it.

The sounds of battle.

Or slaughter.

It only grew more and more obvious that something was going on up there beyond what we had thought. It sounded to me like Tlazo’s forces were already engaging something, which was odd. The exit point of his lab led out into Tlatec, not Elderwyck. But…with Calamity out there…

Maybe the fight had spilled into the Orcish twin city.

Fighting what, though?

My small group eventually reached the exit point to Tlatec.

Dread pooled in my stomach, and my mouth fell open at how the world seemed to have deteriorated, in the scant few hours we must have spent underground.

We had exited out into a veritable hell.

The sky above was shrouded in an artificial darkness that resembled the smoke of a forest fire more than it did night. In the distance, the normally warm light of Tarus above had been almost…corrupted. It glared down at the world with a blood-red hue that cast menacing shadows upon the city around me.

And that city was under siege.

Screams and the clash of blades on scale filled the air, as the Orcish Imperials desperately tried to fight back the waves of monsters that seemed to have filled their streets. I had never seen anything like the beasts, and there must have been thousands of them in Tlatec alone by my guess, much less Elderwyck.

To my eyes, they looked to be a strange cross between a lizard and a bat. The creatures were scaled, and had the basic body plan of something like a long-extinct bipedal dinosaur from back home, almost raptor-like. But instead of a lizard’s snout, they had the head of some kind of monstrous scaled, flat-faced bat, gnashing and gnawing at the world. A long, sinuous tail ran behind them, while near-foot-long claws stood out on each of their powerful-looking limbs, much longer on their legs than their smaller arms. If that wasn’t bad enough, each of them had what seemed to be long, vestigial wings on their back. The actual wing part of it appeared to have been reduced to the barest of useless membranes, and in lieu of flight, they were intended for fighting. Instead of having claws at the end of the limbs, they had what seemed to be out-and-out razor-sharp blades.

They were engaged with both the Orcish guards of Tlatec, and with Tlazo’s undead. It was a good thing too, because it didn’t seem the living had been doing so well against these things. The lizards were so dangerous to get close to that it took at least a full squad of the Orcs in order to deal with just one. The problem was, there were a metric fuck ton of the things infesting Tlatec’s streets. But with the introduction of the undead, those numbers were being evened out. It seemed like the battle lines in the streets had been pushed back by the lizards, but not anymore.

Instead, Tlazo’s ‘assistants’ were stemming the tide with their own numbers.

Benefits of fighting alongside a Necromancer, I guess.

Though…these things didn’t seem to be jokes. Where the hell were they coming from? I had never seen anything like them before.

I got my answer.

I watched as one Orcish guardsman was speared through the chest by one of the lizard's back blades, his high-quality armor unable to stop the monstrous limbs. He was flung off to the side carelessly by the beast, and by the time he hit the floor, his corpse was already changing. It bulged oddly, rapidly growing new flesh, scales, and limbs, until in moments, a new lizard creature had taken the place of the deceased Orc. It loosed a disturbing, warbly screech into the air before bounding into the fight.

I…almost instinctually threw out an Observe at the new birthed monster, before it exited my sight. I wasn’t expecting much, considering how strong these things seemed to be.

I was surprised when I got something back.

Name

Rhazalian Revenant Level

156 Age

2 minutes Species

Revenant Abilities

Unknown

I wish I had time to take in all the oddities of that Status, such as the fact I was even seeing it if the monster was over fifty levels above me. Also that the System itself couldn’t even tell me what Abilities they had, but I didn’t have that luxury.

I had to dodge out of the way, as one of these ‘Revenants’ fell out of the fucking sky, jaws opened wide in an attempt to remove my head. It looked to have somehow materialized in mid-fucking-air, formed from a wisp of the dread-inducing smoke blocking out the sky.

It looked like these things had more than one way to spawn.

Wonderful.

Luckily, Tlazo was right in front of us. Faster than I could track, the skeletal right hand of the Lich lashed out and grabbed the Revenant right out of the air, while he held his gnarled staff in his left. He examined it, floating in place, as the thing trashed and snapped at the powerful undead uselessly. His glowing green, empty sockets regarded the thing almost contemptuously.

“It’s already spawning Revenants, I see. Never a welcome sight to see the spawn of Calamities,” Tlazo said consideringly, before letting his gaze drift down to us. “You need to hurry. I’ll find your leech and deal with her, but I’ll not stick around to be overrun by a tide of these things if you fail. Not even I can withstand a horde like that. In the meanwhile, my assistants will work to clear these streets as best they can.” Without another word, the Lich floated into the smoky sky, before seeming to accelerate in the direction of Elderwyck, glowing a menacing green in the process.

In the meantime, I was on guard now that I knew these Revenants could fall out of the damn sky at any moment. In fact, I was tracking another group of them, as they fell towards the melee of undead and Orcs.

These, too, never reached their target. But instead of being grabbed out of the sky by a Lich, they were shot out of it instead.

By what looked like a bright red, burning laser thicker around than my torso.

The Revenants were instantly incinerated with a sizzle before they could even screech.

I blinked, and looked to where the blast had come from. I was almost hoping in vain that Honoka had showed up out of the blue, but no.

Instead, the lasers were originating from the odd guard towers set up along the wall that surrounded Tlatec. I had seen them and the massive ruby crystals at their apex before when we had originally entered the city, but I’d had no idea as to their purpose. It looked like they were turrets.

Laser turrets.

I watched as the guard towers fired their burning payloads in short bursts inwards at the air above the city, targeting falling Revenants. They lit up the smoky sky in brief flashes of crimson light, but weren’t able to pierce it entirely. And they weren’t able to hit all of the monsters that were falling out of the sky, either. Some were successfully dodging the near-flak shot of the towers.

The entire sequence of events that had occurred since we’d exited out into Tlatec may have only taken moments, but I had still frozen slightly. I was knocked out of it by Baldric pointing to a nearby rooftop. “The Orcs have this covered,” He said grimly, to an accompanying nod from Liora. “We need to get some air to see where the Calamity is. It shouldn’t be hard. Fucking things are meant to be massive.” Without another word, both he and Liora took running leaps onto the roof of what seemed to be an Orcish butcher’s shop.

I didn’t have their strength, so I cast out a Thorn Grapple and trailed behind them in the air. Once I had settled down on the rooftop and cast my eyes over in the direction of Elderwyck, my breath left me once more.

There was a monster sitting in the ruins of Fort Duality, using it almost like a makeshift throne.

It was…beyond enormous.