Years since Creation: 3993
Location: Significance Plane, Elemental System, Eno
After staring for a good five minutes at the scene in front of him, through both his magical and nanite eye, Darvon came up with a tentative plan. He would have to distract the elemental by using a homing bolt shot from a steep angle, and hope that it left long enough for them to be able to sneak through. It was a rather dumb and uninspired plan, but as Maroc always said: simple is best.
With that thought rattling in his mind, Darvon carefully stepped away from the small bit of cover and walked away using a slow backwards crouch while keeping his head on a swivel. It was only once he was a couple dozen meters away and could see the occasional yellow glow coming from cracks around him that he relaxed enough to jog back to Maroc and Saria who were whispering to each other.
“… are you guys so scared of Inspiration if a couple random elementals would solve the problem?” Saria asked.
“Because it is extremely hard to tame wild elementals of that power level as almost all of them have achieved some level of intelligence which would instinctively block any attempt we can manage.” Maroc said as he sent a new stream of pink blood into Pyra whose face was now almost completely pale. “Though that doesn’t mean we don’t have a few naturally grown sovereign elementals like Vortex to rely on in battle, and we also have quite a few sovereign level Extranar creatures of our own to use for battle. The problem is that Inspiration definitely has more than enough to match us, so there’s no point in trying to find an edge there. What we must focus on matching is their Mythos and thirty sovereigns, that’s the real threat to us.”
“How strong is the–.” Saria went to say only to stop once Darvon pulled up alongside them with a small worried smile. “You already distracted the elemental? That was fast.”
“Not yet, I just came by to tell you to move a couple dozen feet closer since the distraction will likely only give us a short window before it returns.” Darvon said, to which the two nodded and then joined him in jogging towards the final glowing crack. Once there Darvon took a few nervous deep breaths and then started climbing up the wall next to them, using the small cracks as handholds.
“What are you doing?” Maroc hissed. “You will attract the fliers above.”
“There are next to none above the sovereign, if I’m only up there for a bit I should be fine.” Darvon said as he continued climbing, scrambling up to the top of the five-meter wall before turning to face the two below. “I don’t know how loud the elementals’ reaction will be, but regardless of what noise it makes don’t run until you hear a bolt slam into the wall ahead.”
“Got it.” Saria said as Maroc nodded. “Good luck.”
“Thank you, though let’s hope I won’t need it.” Darvon answered and then stood up from his crouched position to stare at the sight extending below him. It was beautiful.
From his vantage point he could see how the mountain was composed of a web of black cracks extending into the distance, with every hole letting out a slight yellow light which matched the glow extending from the firework like battle above. The whole structure reminded him of Sybil, with the mountain altered into a vast wonderous artwork, except this time the piece was created by tunneling elementals instead of an all-powerful Old One.
Looking away from the scene Darvon looked upwards to see that they were a mere couple hundred meters away from the indented silver dome which was being constantly slammed into by waves of submission elementals, whose eerie blasts reminded him he was on a short timeframe and got him going.
Mapping the ground in front of him Darvon began walking diagonal to where the elemental was, hopping over cracks all while being careful to avoid making any loud noises. Luckily it was a short walk and within fifteen seconds he was right next to the creature’s hideout, and a mere dozen feet away from the left pathways open tunnel.
Once there he swept away all useless thoughts, slotted the correct bolts in his chest, calculated the perfect shooting position, got into it, and fired.
A navy-blue flash shot out of his chest with a small whistle which gradually grew louder as the few holes he had drilled into the homing bolt started picking up wind. It twisted forward under the command of the engravings covering it, arcing the moment it reached the inside of the tunnel to fly straight into the elemental’s hideout with a piercing shriek which vanished in a moment.
Then a deep silence that Darvon could feel deep in his bones filled the mountain as a wave of pressure expanded from the cavern which sent him stumbling a few steps forward.
Of course, that was the very moment that a twenty-foot-wide torrent of condensed yellow light slammed into the pathway Darvon was next to, shattering the stone all around it and sending him flying back with hiss of pain as a shard tore clean through his left calf muscle.
Once he landed, Darvon had to suppress every instinct in his body that wanted to scream, for he knew that he wasn’t out of the woodworks yet. The yellow light hadn’t disappeared, it had instead condensed into a Gos like figure which was now flowing down the passageway at a rapid pace. Seeing this Darvon scrambled back to his feet and limped his way to the valley, hoping against all hope that the sovereign wouldn’t think to look up. It didn’t.
After painfully stumbling forward for a few steps while leaving a line of blood behind him, Darvon reached the ledge looking into the valley and without much thought fired out a steel bolt to the entrance. Yet instead of the usual slight knockback shooting a bolt would cause, a small explosion echoed out as a small shard of stone which had lodged into the exit shattered into a dusting of stone which tore through his peck as the projectile went through it to slam against its target.
“Fuck!” Darvon whisper yelled, as he clutched onto his chest in agony while sliding down the wall to collapse onto the floor below as he clutched onto both his leg and chest. He laid there for a few moment just wallowing in pain, a pool of blood forming around him and only just managed to force his head up when he heard two footsteps running towards him.
“Darvon are you okay?” Saria asked in a desperate voice as her body almost blurred in its hurry to reach him.
“No, but that’s not important. We need to go now.” Darvon said, as he forced himself to stand with the help of Maroc who had forced all of his shed blood to clog up his wounds. “The sovereign could return any second.”
With that he started hobbling at a snail’s pace towards the marked path, only to get picked up in a princes carry by Saria who sprinted forward with Maroc running behind her while clutching onto the bird elemental.
Within moments they reached the path and continued running up it until they saw the reemergence of the yellow lights of wandering elementals flashing within the ever-present cracks, as well as the edge of the looming silver dome a couple dozen meters away.
Once at a safe enough distance Maroc formed a green blood which chewed through the nearby stone with a loud hiss which quickly formed into a rather deep cave which he pushed everyone to enter before blocking the exit with a barrier of black blood crystal. Only then did he rush over to the collapsed Darvon who was rubbing at his wounds with a grimace.
“Are you alright?” Maroc asked as his face twisted into that weird Fatherly look he got whenever Darvon got injured due to some dumb experiment.
“Not really.” Darvon answered with a wince. “I got a hole torn through my calf, a busted bolt launcher, and a couple dozen scrapes all over my body.”
It was an almost overwhelming amount of pain, which Darvon was barely holding back through sheer force of will alone. Of course, that barrier collapsed the moment Maroc summoned some blood filled with regenerating essence which he used to close the hole on his leg and completely stop the bleeding on his chest.
“I can’t heal the rest right now; I’ve wasted too much of Vortex’s mass as is.” Maroc said with a frown as he patted Darvon’s shoulder. “We still need to prepare to fight the Iron Collar Cartel above.”
“How do you know it’s them?” Darvon asked with curiosity as he laid his back against the wall and tried to let his muscles untense to little success.
“The spiked collar symbol on the pathway is their symbol.” Maroc said before sitting down on the rubble to stare out into the distance. “They are a small-scale slaving group, who primarily deal in large amounts of command essence.”
“A slaving group?” Saria spat out with disgust palpable enough that Darvon could practically feel it infecting the air it accompanied, not that he could focus all that much on that. A much more interesting proposition had filled his mind.
“Command essence?” Darvon said, his mind running at lightning speed. A base next to a sector of submission. A slaving group in Eno who dealt with huge amounts of command essence. The silver dome blocking out any light from escaping. “That means that this base must be located in the command essence sector.”
“Yes.” Maroc said, prompting Darvon to immediately start salivating as his eyes turned red from greed and desire, his recent trauma completely forgotten.
“This is fantastic news! Do you know how long I’ve been looking for a command elemental? Years!” Darvon yelled out, ignoring his injuries as he stood up to pace around the room. “And if this is their base, they likely have a treasury full of essence. With that I won’t even need to rely on Busari’s charity I could fully fund the expedition myself!”
“What’s so valuable about command essence?” Saria asked with a disgruntled look on her face as she stepped in his pacing path. “And how are you glossing over them being a slaving group so quickly?!”
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Darvon turned to her, his eyes still rabid, and grabbed her shoulders with shaking hands.
“Command essence is the foundation for nearly all heterogenous magitech!” Darvon said as his mind flashed through a dozen schematics he could create with the kind of impact this place would for sure be caring. Sure, Maroc was rich and had provided Darvon with enough money for most of his experiments, but he was single famous person rich, not cartel peddling in illegal essences rich.
“What does that even mean?” Saria asked as she stepped away from Darvon, an unnerved look in her face.
“Heterogenous Magitech is any item that has been engraved with two or more types of essence that interact with each other.” Darvon said, going into a crazed lecture mode. “While any one type of essence is able to easily interact with more of itself, it is impossible for it to be able to connect with anything outside of it without an intermediary. That’s where command essence comes in. It is THE perfect bridge between enchantments!”
“Though not the only bridge, there are several less expensive ones as well.” Maroc interjected casually with a distant look in his eye.
“None that work anywhere near as well.” Darvon said with a wave of his hand before opening his mouth to continue talking only to be interrupted by Saria raising her hand.
“I get it.” Saria said with a finality that snapped Darvon out of his haze of greed to finally look and see how tense she was looking. “Can we go back to this being a slavery group?”
Darvon hesitantly nodded, annoyed that his daydream was shattered, and then glanced over at Maroc to see him still zoned out and staring in the distance while fiddling with a medal of honor necklace he always carried on him.
“Maroc? Have you encountered this group before?” Darvon asked to which Maroc turned to face him with a flat look on his face.
“No, but I have faced slaver groups before, several much larger in scale than the Iron Collar.”
“Are they common?” Saria asked.
“Yes, though they tend to be caught pretty quickly as any big enough source of command essence is investigated immediately. The problem is there always a few who are smart enough to slip through the cracks, be it from being smart enough to create shell companies, or by purely working through fifth party intermediaries.”
“Like the Iron Collar?” Darvon guessed.
“Yes, they have been established for a couple decades now and are one of the main sources for illegal command essence in Tivian. Sadly, I don’t know much more outside of them being led by a paragon who runs a slave path.” Maroc said, before standing up with a palpable aura of violence forming around him. “Though that is more than enough for me to condemn them to death.”
At that the air inside the room chilled, and Darvon was reminded of the fact that before Maroc had retired from being a scout he had been one of the best sources of overwhelming power the Legion had ever had the privilege to wield. They had used Maroc to crush rebellions, scout out dangerous regions, destroy foreign armies, and of course raze slaving dens. There were likely few with as much experience as he had, with only Darvon’s parents’ collective accomplishments maybe being enough to match his illustrious career.
“We will rest for an hour here and only then leave to destroy their base.” Maroc said as he turned back to send a stream of healing blood into the pale Pyra who had begun foaming at the mouth again. “That should be enough time for a basic repair of your bolt shoulder Darvon, while still leaving me with enough of Vortex’s mass to destroy the opposing Paragon.”
Darvon nodded at that and pulled off his robes to begin digging out the rubble while simultaneously pulling out some metal essence which he collapsed into a tube-like shape in his other hand. This would definitely be painful.
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After an hour passed the three of them left the cave like hole, with Pyra trailing along behind them, her face pale but peaceful in her forced slumber. She had briefly woken up in the cave and had panicked when she saw her surroundings and had lashed out with a blast of earthen spears which had been hastily blocked by Maroc who had been forced to use Vortex to tie her and Joven up. Once tied up he didn’t explain anything, and instead simply poured another milk white potion down her throat which sent her drifting back to sleep. When Saria asked what type of potion it was, he simply explained that it was something he kept on him at all times after she had had a series of particularly bad episodes in a row, which Darvon knew meant that time she had attempted a few times in a row.
Aside from that one incident everything else went fine, and he had even managed to fix up the bolt shoulder enough that it should work fine at shooting out material bolts, though he would need to spend a few hours creating a more intricate version before he could use magic bolts, but that was for a later date when they weren’t struggling for time.
Approaching the silver dome was an easy task, though they did have to be careful to remain hidden from any wandering paragon elementals who floated in the air. Once they got closer Darvon found himself bog smacked by the layers of enchantments covering the forty by two-hundred-meter silver dome, with most of them glowing a dull navy blue which would send out a blast of energy that would deter any elemental that got too close.
“What a waste.” Darvon said with anger as he calculated their expenditure using his improved mind. “Their burning through thousands of Zi a minute, why would they ever use command essence of all things to power an enchantment?! I thought their shtick was money?”
“Because they have a large excess.” Maroc said as they walked up the dome, which extended into the ground and formed into a small two-and-a-half-meter tall gate covered in the same navy-blue runes as the wall. “While I’m sure they would love to dump it all and gain a ton of money, all that would do is attract attention.”
“How will we get in?” Saria asked as she stared up at the vast curving wall before them. “I doubt entering from the front would be all that smart.”
“What do you think Darvon?” Maroc asked and turned to him. “You’re the expert on material and supernatural alchemy, and certainly have more knowledge on Magi tech than I do.”
“Let me get a closer look.” Darvon answered and stepped up to the door which immediately exuded an intense mental command to flee the moment he approached. It was annoying and completely unlockable by Vigil since the moment it hit the elemental he would scurry back into the Elemental Binder while ignoring all of his masters’ commands. Darvon thus had to face it completely bare, relying solely on his willpower to deal with the battering which quickly led to him developing a growing headache as he got closer. It was only through sheer force of will that he was able to approach long enough to be able to use his nanite eyes to get a closer look at the material, as well as scratch out a sliver of the wall using a steel bolt. Once done he stepped back with a wince to analyze the material, his headache slowly fading.
He started by Sacrificing the sliver of metal in his hands, making sure to not Temper a single part of the energy as it formed. He then separated out the component parts and fount that it mainly turned into a large streams of brown defense essence, though the few pieces of material essence painted more than enough of a picture. There was specks of silver, mithril, shaped singing clay, as well as a few pieces of steel thread. Darvon recognized the parts as being components of the alloy Hidden Soul, whose main focus is maintaining a strong defense against energy attacks while also blocking strong blasts of physical damage. It was a solid piece of material alchemy which was known as a good defense against elementals and most energy attackers, though it did have one weakness which Darvon could take advantage.
“So?” Saria asked while curiously looking at the floating essence which Darvon casually condensed back into smaller sliver of alloy, sans the defense essence which he crunched down into a crystal.
“The wall is made of Hidden Soul, which is strong against Elemental attacks but weak against acid.” Darvon said as he pulled out his last acid bolt and then carefully unscrewed the metallic bottom from its glass form to release an acrid stench into the air. “All we need to do is burn a hole through the wall by pouring this concentrated acid directly onto the metal while trying to avoid any dense engraving areas.”
Darvon handed the vial over to Maroc who nodded and approached the wall while completely ignoring the commands sent towards him, which Darvon had been banking on. He then poured a small bit to form an eye sized circle, which he then stared through. Within just a few moments a deep frown had marred his features.
“What’s it look like?” Saria asked with worry. “Are there too many to handle?”
“There are a fair amount, but nothing we can’t handle. We will need to split up though.” Maroc said, before stepping back and waving the both of them forward. “Come look, while the engravement is strong you should be able to resist for long enough to get the picture.”
With that Saria strode ahead, her feet stuttering a few times as the engraving glowed but eventually reached the hole. She than looked inside for a few seconds before stumbling back to puke all over the ground.
“That bad?” Darvon asked with some worry, to which Saria only kept puking out bile. So, with some worry he stepped up to the hole and with a concerned frown looked through.
The first thing he saw was that the dome’s interior consisted of a set of six buildings made out of navy-blue stone all circling around a central courtyard. There was a crafting hall manned by a male Doyen who was using piles of metal essence crystals to create steel masks stamped with their logo, two comfortable houses, one of which had a strong Paragon Image inside it, and a teleportation hall which was glowing with black light which sent out streams of light which seamlessly merged into the surrounding walls. Though pretty as all the buildings were, they were all overshadowed by the scene happening in the courtyard.
The yard was made up of mud pits filled with dozens of wailing slaves who were being forced to use torture tools on themselves by a group of five masked Doyens who micromanaged the torture with streams of blue command elementals attached to their brain which pulsed with every order they gave out. There was an old Zhra woman who slowly sunk herself into a boiling pot, a middle-aged Horus burning away pieces of its oath skin, an elderly Gos man whipping a young child who looked like him, a Golem being slowly melted inside a furnace, and a dozen more horrible scenes. Overlooking it all was a single Paragon figure which would bark out commands to the masked figures, while simultaneously sending out waves of pink light towards the slaves which forced them to torture themselves faster. It was a horrible scene which made Darvon want to puke right alongside Saria, though at the same time he couldn’t stop himself from admiring the sheer efficiency of the system. The leader would prime the slaves to only answer to the masked figures, who would then order them to torture themselves, which is an activity so heavy significance that it would instantly fill the mask with command impact.
“What a genius system. Horrible, but brilliant.” Darvon whispered as he tried and failed to force himself to stay on the wall.
“I don’t know if I would use genius to describe what I just saw. Sadistic seems more accurate.” Saria spat out alongside more bile.
“I don’t disagree with you.” Darvon clarified. “I’m just amazed that something so terrible could be so streamlined and efficient. That carefully curated series of steps must be the work of years of planning and training, especially the Enchantment Paragon. He likely has a whole path dedicated solely to creating the perfect slaves for this.”
“Yes the paragon.” Maroc said as he started scratching at his chin while staring into the hole on the wall. “He will be your target Darvon; Saria will have to deal with the masked doyens, and I’ll handle the final Paragon.”
“Wait what?” Darvon said with surprise. “Why would I deal with him? You should be more than strong enough to handle him and the one in the house.”
“I could kill them yes, but not without risking the destruction of the teleportation hall.” Maroc said as he started preparing for battle by creating ball of blood next to him into a series of a dozen bone daggers. “All you need to do is block him for a single minute.”
“He’s an Enchantment paragon!” Darvon yelled, before quieting down when a passing flying doyen elemental had to be destroyed by Maroc because it heard the commotion. “He would steamroll through my mental defense within a second and then likely force us to fight you.”
“Then ambush him.” Maroc said as Vortex expanded to cover him in a crystalline blood armor. “That’s what I intend to do.”
“You say that as if it’s the simplest thing in the world!” Darvon hissed out, though already he was calculating what he would have to sacrifice. After a few moments of his nanite mind running through a dozen scenarios, he turned to Saria who had already pulled out the dagger from her pocket. “Saria don’t attack until you see the enchanter collapse. If he catches sight of so much as one strand of our hair he could destroy us within moments.”
“Got it.” She nodded before turning to face the door with a determined look on her face. “Now let’s go save some slaves.”