Chapter 29
Darkness Beckons
Asher paused for a moment, not immediately choosing the Grimoire and prompting the time to start.
It was tempting, seeing the sheer level of agency he’d finally have--but having agency did not mean that the stage would suddenly become easy. The drawbacks of the Grimoire were evident--though he had a choice of what to use and when, how many times he could use spells within a small window was few. He suspected that both Lumine charges as well as how quickly they, well, recharge would in effect grow as he Leveled-up, but that was still a blind gamble of sorts.
He’d be giving up limited but persistent damage in lieu of choices that might just hamper him down. But he knew, deep in his heart--as soon as he saw it, in fact--that he’d choose the Grimoire.
Seven spells, just to begin with, liken to a sordid array of choices, but an array of choices nonetheless. Asher took a deep breath and made his selection, prompting the world to come alive.
The wind whistled silently, carrying the nigh-invisible grains of sand along its course as Asher took his first steps. As he suspected, the sensation of simply walking was... strange. Sinking and floating, being dragged into this quagmire of oddities was rather uncomfortable, but he’d have to get adjusted to it fast--especially so as he saw the monstrosity peek from behind one of the dunes, sliding downward in a straight line.
It was just a single monster, to his surprise, shaped like a praying mantis, clawed and scythed, its bug-like eyes prodding forth like radars. The Grimoire lay open in Asher’s left hand, the selection of spells evident on the unfolded pair of pages. All Asher had to do was just focus his mind on one... and it would be so.
He conjured up a bolt of lightning in his right arm, lifting it up overhead, and felt an electrifying sensation ripple through him--both energizing and terrifying him for a moment. He aimed squarely at the monster and heaved forth, sending the bolt flying so quickly that, in the time he blinked, it arrived and punctured through the beast, killing it on the spot.
At the same time, Asher began to move toward the incline; as he was inside one of the pits, he didn't have a good vantage point. As such, it was imperative that he climbed uphill. It was a struggle, a mighty one at that; he'd have to sink his feet deep so as to not skate back into the pit, pulling himself up inch by inch. At the same time, he spotted several monsters appear at his rear, the same bug-eyed mantises, and slide down after him.
He coiled himself slightly to the side and cast Fire Blast--twice, in fact, at the same time. His fingers momentarily smoldered as smoke drifted up from between them before his entire arm ignited for just a moment; as soon as it reverted back to normal, the two monsters seemed to spontaneously combust into flames, exploding in the shower of cindered gore. It was quite satisfying, overlapping abilities and seeing the damage numbers explode.
He waited one extra second for the charge of Lumine and cast Fire Blast once again, killing the last monster. The world paused suddenly and, to his surprise, he Leveled-up. One of the choices was to increase his Health which he immediately ignored and focused on the two that seemed somewhat central to his build.
Lumine Mastery [Uncommon]
Level: 1/3
Effect: Increase the number of Lumine Charges you can hold by 1 per spell's Level.
Cradle of Creation [Legendary]
+1 to Projectiles (if applicable)
Level: 1/1
Affects the following Spells: Ice Weave, Lightning Spear, and Fire Blast; partially affects Arcane Rain (increases its area of effect by 50%)
Asher groaned in exasperation.
He wanted both as both were immensely important to him. In the end, though, he knew that he couldn’t pass up on the extra projectiles even if he wasn’t particularly certain as to how it worked. Could he control where the extra projectile went or did it simply strike the same target twice?
“Guess I’ll find out,” he shrugged, taking it.
He resumed his climb, slow and tedious, and already felt sweat break out. Though he wouldn’t necessarily feel the ‘physical thirst’, as it were, he was certain that his mind’s horrors would yearn for water. It was impossible not to, in this kind of heat. Even if he wanted to experiment a bit with the Ice Weave, he held back; sacrificing entire 3 charges of Lumine just for an experiment was moronic, especially when he wasn’t what awaited him once he climbed on top of the dune.
Some twenty seconds later, he finally climbed up and immediately wanted to weep--apparently, there was a good reason why he had only seen so few monsters so far. They all seemed to have been born on the other side of this particular dune.
Overlooking an oasis of sand that seemed to go on for miles on end unlike the Grassy Lowlands, Asher saw hundreds of shifting dunes casting hard shadows into the valleys--and in those shadows, and occasionally on top of the dunes as well, he saw hundreds of bug-eyed monsters. No, there were only a dozen or so of those; the rest was made up of other mortifying amalgamations in the insectoid shapes.
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There were crawlers like centipedes and ants, though with misshapen heads and a multitude of limbs protruding from their skeletal flesh; beyond them, he even saw a couple of truck-sized scorpions with bloody-red claws. He didn't like insects when they were small and easy to stomp out, so watching their overgrown, mutated selves gave him goosebumps.
But it was no time to spiral.
Focusing on the valley right beneath him where there were some twenty monsters that started moving toward him as soon as they spotted him, Asher closed his eyes for a moment and focused before aiming Arcane Rain right there--due to the size boost, it actually covered the entire valley from one end to the other, pelting tiny yet sharp-seeming droplets of bruise-dyed rain.
Though the damage wasn’t particularly high individually, it stacked and, over the course of its duration, it managed to kill six of the monsters. In the meantime, Asher loaded up Fire Blasts whenever he could, and, to his joy and surprise, the extra projectile was precisely that--he could fire it at whatever monster he wanted or in whichever direction he wanted.
As he pelted the monsters from above, switching over to the Lightning Spear and occasionally even getting the lucky roll on the pierce, the world paused once more.
Avennon’s Grimoire [UPG+1]
Level: 2 (Starter’s Upgrade does not apply to Grimoire)
Effect (Choose 1):
1. Increase max Lumine Charges by 2
2. Add ‘Infernal Armor’ to the list of your spells.
Infernal Armor [4 Lumine] -- coat yourself in the sheen of fire for 15 seconds. Any attacker suffers 14 retaliatory damage and has a 60% chance to be inflicted with a 'Burn'. At the same time, all active 'Bleed' statuses on you are immediately removed.
Asher ignored the other two options--extra damage and movement speed--and immediately picked the increase to max Lumine Charges. While the Infernal Armor was nice, it cost quite a lot, especially for what it offered.
The world unpaused once more and Asher heard the shuffling of sands behind him--glancing back, he groaned once more. There, rapidly approaching, he saw an oversized sandworm--no doubt one of those Rare variants. Luckily, the monsters didn't exactly navigate the sandy dunes swiftly--they struggled as much as he did, especially with the uphill climb. Well, the normal ones did.
Asher gulped as he watched a twenty-foot-long monster leap from the dune peak that was at least a hundred yards away, arching through the arid air and falling toward him. But he waited. Even as his heart began to rage like an overheated engine, he waited. Even as every fiber in his body told him to turn and run as fast as his legs would carry him, he waited.
He waited until the perfect point of impact--and activated Hallowed Ebullition at that moment. Against his will, his lips parted and a glottal roar blasted out akin to the clangor of a tenebrosity-born monster. At the same time, a blast of gold-laden energy evacuated directly from his skin into a radial shape, ripping out and clashing with the approaching sandworm. The latter beast didn't last a second--all its momentum immediately ended and was reversed as it began flying back.
Asher, at the same time, strung three Lightning Spears and sent them flying after the beast in the arc. The spears were much faster than the monster’s flight, puncturing through and dealing 60 damage in rapid succession. The monster roared in agony, but it was also its last whimper--it fell onto the shifting sands, its milky-white innards spilling out onto the pale sand, bleaching it further. At the same time, the world paused.
Muscle Training [Common]
+10 HP
Level: 1/99
Spell Gigantification [Uncommon]
+50% Projectile Size
Level: 1/10
Mage of Evocation [Epic]
+20% Cooldown Reduction
Level: 1/3
“Oh, come the fuck on!!” Asher spat out into the still wind. He wanted both, but could only have one. Though, in fairness, he couldn’t quite grasp how the gigantification worked precisely--he mostly wanted it just for, well, the appearance. Imagining the Lightning Spear increasing in size massively until it was less a spear and more a missile or a bomb was quite drool-inducing, but he elected to go with CDR.
The Lumine recharge went down from 3 seconds to 2,4. A pretty decent decrease. If he could stack them further...
Shifting his attention away from the rotting worm, he turned back to the sea of monsters. Narrowing his eyes, he tried to focus on the vast distance where the sheer heat bent the world into a wiggly shape, the reason being that there was something there... and it was fast approaching. So fast, in fact, that it kicked up a dust storm behind it.
While Asher passively tossed spells at the smaller monsters just so he wouldn’t over-cap on the Lumine Charges, he kept his attention entirely on whatever was causing the disturbance--its shape sharpened when it breached some five hundred yards of distance.
Asher’s jaw dropped to the floor for a moment as he recognized that it wasn’t just one thing--rather, it was a swarm of table-sized locusts numbering in hundreds and thousands and seemingly more, spread out in both directions for at least several hundred yards. Panic setting in, he shuffled backward and, as he wasn't paying attention, slipped. The fall was all but gentle and a good chunk of sand ended up inside his mouth as he yelped in horror at the start.
He didn’t have time to pay attention to it though--the blue sky darkened and the silent sound of the desert was overcome by the rapid flapping of the wings. He shivered and shuddered as the crescendo of flying monstrosities came overhead, each more disfigured and disgusting than the last. It rained guts from their disemboweled bodies, and yet they flew. Hundreds. Thousands. Tens of thousands.
The sun and light disappeared--and he couldn’t see a damn thing for a moment. His rear sinking in the sand, hand grasping at the Grimoire tightly, and eyes peeled to the darkness from which he couldn’t discern a thing, Asher waited with a bated breath, ready to use Cosmic Drift should he sense anything to be amiss.
-2.
Something poked his back and he immediately jumped like a startled rabbit, using Cosmic Drift without an ounce of hesitation, bounding through spacetime. He appeared on the other side of the dune where, to his shock, there was light. He could see, at last.
His joy, however, was short-lasting--as the source of light was not the sun, but rather a singular, peculiar locust that drifted along in the midst of the swarm. It was much smaller than the rest, the size of an actual insect, yet it shone so brightly that it illuminated a few hundred yards of space beneath it.
Fire Blast.
Asher’s fingers tingled with excitement as an intrusive thought won. It was a very simple thought: What would happen if that tiny little fella died? It was a fleeting thought, a passing musing that he would have ordinarily never acted upon. And yet, he did.
Why?
He asked himself as he watched the firefly-like locust combust, shining even brighter for a moment.
Why am I so goddamn fucking stupid?!
He prayed he’d live to find out the answer.