The group walked over to one of the furrows, and with no other indicators of the way towards the epicenter of the circle, they started walking. As they progressed along it, the minutes turning into hours, the amount of element energy being channeled through the bones in the ground grew and grew until it was an omnipresent force. It did not harm any of them directly, but it created a pallor of dread that hovered over them like a miasmic cloud. The living were not meant to encounter such a concentrated swathe of Death, and their instincts were telling them to run as far as they could.
Jeffrey informed them that it was far from being harmful, as for uncondensed elemental energy to be fatal, it would have to be in such quantities that there was more of it in any given space than the actual matter there. As all matter possessed its own elemental energy, the only place that something like this could happen was in interstellar space, or after an extremely high ranked battle.
They walked for over half a day, not wanting to pick up their pace in case they disturbed the bones and the skeletal juggernaut came back to kill them. It was unlikely that the creature would run over the line of the summoning circle that it had already created, so they felt relatively safe. Besides, the signs of its approach would alert them to its presence a good while before it actually was upon them.
It was getting dark now, and for the first time Sam realized that the days felt longer than before. Since the arrival of the System, he had been too distracted with leveling up and surviving to note the world around him in much detail, but walking for hours on end tended to make one look at their surroundings. Behind the haze of the elemental energy, he could see that the sun was still up, although it was near setting. It was in the middle of early winter and the sun should not have been that high in the sky at this time, at least at this latitude.
Sam’s enhanced mind pieced together the details. Because the planet had been embiggened dramatically by the arrival of the System, while still retaining its general shape, for it to have no gravitational interference with other nearby celestial objects, then it must have been placed further away from the sun. It was not by anything especially crazy, but it was still noticeable. A day was likely about 30 hours long now. In any case, the System has smoothed over the physics related problems that this would have brought. The Earth was still the same temperature that it had been before, rather than being noticeably colder.
Sam only let himself be distracted for a little bit though, keeping most of his attention on the road ahead of them. This was just as well, as there was a sudden groaning noise from the right side of the small fissure that they were walking in, and a shambling corpse dropped into the tunnel. It was a hideous amalgamation of a lion and some sort of snake, and it lashed out at the closest target, which happened to be Sam. He redirected its momentum with the back of its hand, and splattered the corpse against the ground with his mace. It had been quite weak, but its presence meant that undead were spontaneously forming here and if the concentration of element energy kept on rising, then they would become stronger as time went on.
Sam gave the others a terse smile, and they continued, on guard for more surprise attacks. Over the next hour, the attacks ramped up in frequency, until there was one every minute or so. The monsters grew more powerful as well, starting to be recognizable rather than being just mounds of flesh and bone. Soon they were regularly being attacked by necrotic inferno boars, whose fire attacks had been turned into icy lances of ectoplasm. They were quite hard to deal with physically as well, as the already tough skin and powerful muscles of the boars were accentuated now with their mindless urge to kill, meaning that they had no concern for their own safety.
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Fighting such large beasts in such tight quarters led to inevitable injuries, and by the time that they had reached what seemed to be the epicenter of the elemental energy surge, all of them were injured in varying stages of severity. Sam was the least injured as he was the toughest among them, but some of the squishier fighters were sporting large cuts and in Jeffrey’s case, a partly severed ear. The man didn't care much about it though, as his concealment device made it invisible anyway. There would be no impediments to his seductive skills if he could help it.
Finally the tunnel came to an end, at a large building that almost looked like a shrine. It was supported by obsidian pillars, and dark energy flowed in regular bursts out of its wide open doors. A malefic presence could be felt within that shrine, and a towering aura filled with death and misery accompanied it. However, it seemed to be dormant in a way, the aura of some sleeping monster rather than a conscious threat.
They walked into the shrine cautiously, and beheld a wondrous, if terrifying, sight. A borehole that was at least fifty feet wide connected the shrine to a vast cavern underneath the earth, one that appeared to be multiple miles wide. Of course, the cavern was dwarfed by the creature slumbering within it. A titan in every sense of the word, made out of hardened bone, lay there, curled into a fetal position. If it stretched all the way out, it would have been as tall as a mountain. A constant stream of body parts and blood was being ferried into the borehole by streams of energy, and a thick vapor made out of Death element energy filled the room, sucked down into the hole. The beast beneath them was being fed, but for what purpose, Sam did not know.
“There’s a plaque over here,” Jeffrey said quietly trying to not disturb the process going on around him. Sam edged over, and read it.
Here lies the Corpse Titan, third among the progeny of Gaea. When he rises, all living things shall tremble.
It was a short message,but one that was very meaningful.
“Why haven’t we heard about this Gaea monster or whatever she is before? Surely such a large threat would be mentioned in the Engines of the End Time quest?” Pyotr asked. Nobody knew the answer, so nobody bothered replying. It was a mystery, and presumably something that was not part of the natural progression of the initialization process, as it was not mentioned by the System once, and Jeffrey had no idea what it was either. The man was by no means a fount of System related knowledge, but he was well educated, which meant that he knew a lot of things because of his enhanced memory.
Sam frequently wondered if the man knew how much of a lecher he came off as sometimes, as he was quite intelligent, but after seeing him in action, Sam had begun to believe that Jeffrey simply had some sort of animal magnetism that was irresistible to women. After a few minutes of staring down at the Corpse Titan, somebody asked the inevitable question.
“Should we try to kill it?” Addas said, looking at the Corpse Titan with an uneasy gaze.
“I mean, you’re welcome to try, but from that size alone, that creature must be at least E Rank. I would be surprised if any of your attacks even scratched it,” Jeffrey answered.
“Very well then. I’ll give it my best shot.” Addas stepped forwards, and a halo of tarot cards appeared around his head. He grunted and blood started to drip from his nose, but he continued with the technique. Rampant energy started to gather around him, and soon he started floating in the air above the borehole, before letting it all go in a burst of searing white light. It raced down the hole, before striking the Corpse Titan directly in the stomach. Nothing happened, save for the beam leaving an almost imperceptible mark on its bones. It shifted slightly, and the ground rumbled. Addas paled and leaped backwards. Luckily the monster did not wake, staying faithful to Jeffrey’s earlier description of it. Still, that was the sign for them to leave. There was no stopping the rise of this creature, save for gaining as much power as possible before it awakened.