Path of Stars, Ch 31: Blood Fortress (Patreon)

Congratulations, Astral Titan. You are now a Level 287 Astral Artificer.

The Titan’s Star’s announcement rang in Sam’s mind with a bell-like tone. Sam gave a nod as he studied the summary, looking only at the highlights. Apparently, killing something at the Fourth Evolution was worth a lot of experience. It was the first time he’d ever managed that, and he’d gained sixteen levels combined from the runemaster and the weaker enemies with her.

Between the two outposts, he’d just jumped from Level 264 to 287. That wasn’t too surprising, since he was fighting a hundred to almost a hundred and fifty levels over his head. It would be more shocking if he didn’t get some levels. The gains were respectable.

You gain 115 Strength, 115 Constitution, 115 Wisdom, 230 Intelligence, 230 Aura, and have 276 free attribute points to assign.

He glanced at the result as he felt a shift in his awareness of the world. Suddenly, it felt like he could see more deeply into the concepts of the natural world. His perspective of the Void and the auras around him were clearer.

It was because his Wisdom had just jumped past 1,000. In fact, it was up to 1,041 now. He nodded with satisfaction as he saw it.

There were clear differences at 100 and 1,000 for attributes, and probably again at 10,000. Each of those was like a goal post that somehow tapped more deeply into the natural laws of the world. Perhaps that was what they really were, a marker of a certain depth of understanding and power.

As for the free points, he assigned all of them to Charisma, which took it to 1,353. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but Charisma was useful. With every increase in it, his confidence in his abilities and his connection to his own personal path in the world became more clear. It also strengthened his personal aura.

As the points flowed into that attribute, he glowed with astral light and the silver flames around him became a little denser and hotter, as well as more responsive. It was like part of his personality was infusing them and bringing them to life.

When that was complete, he looked over to where the Ice Drake was slowly approaching. He’d sent a message to Sleset a few minutes ago and the ship was on a path directly toward him. It was coming in on an angle to keep the second fortress between it and the third fortress.

Because of the distance, it wasn’t a perfect shield, but it was enough to make it harder for the last fortress to fire on it. So far, it had only tried once and the ship managed to evade it. All of the nagas and Alora were pouring their mana into the enchantments to increase its speed.

There was still a little bit of time before it arrived and it looked like they were able to take care of themselves for now, so instead of worrying about it any more, Sam turned his attention to the layer of essence above his skin.

Few of the Outsiders were individually powerful, but there had been more than a hundred of them scattered throughout the two outposts, mostly in the 200s and with a dozen or so in the 300s. The essence added up. The layer was half an inch thick as it gathered around him, gleaming with a translucent silver light.

As he studied it, he reached out to touch the image of the Wild Leaf in his mind. It floated there in a silver imprint with a rainbow of colors playing across it, and it felt like it was singing. Faint ethereal notes rose up from it and radiated through his spirit before they merged into the Void. He wasn’t sure exactly how it worked, but it gave off a sense of harmony and balance.

Each note was like a tiny bubble of elemental power and as it passed by, it brought peace to the fluctuations of the elements, aligning them together. It was probably a separate concept of its own, some type of unique law of the Void, but he didn’t understand how it worked. All he knew was that it did.

A cool breeze from the chaos winds flowed through his spirit as he connected with it. The silver essence around him rippled like a wind was blowing past and then it suddenly expanded into a sphere. It continued to grow as it moved away from him until it was a thousand feet across.

The elemental winds of the Chaos Wild blew through it, making its edges wave like a banner. As it rippled, those same harmonious notes echoed from it like the Void was playing a silver flute in the darkness. The song made him close his eyes for a moment as he sank into it.

The Void was dark and deep. All around him, he could see the chaos winds stretching out to the horizon. There was nothing except him and them. At the center of it all, he burned like a silver sun. Where his heart would be, there was a glowing silver leaf with intricate veins. Rainbow lights rose up from the surface in tiny wisps and bubbles, flowing away as they merged into the Void and the winds.

In a flicker of existence, time passed, but he wasn’t sure how much. All he could tell was that his essence was flowing away into the leaf and then out into the Void. It cycled and returned to him, flowing into his essence constellation, and the stars in his spirit multiplied. Great swathes of new stars were born, settling into their place in the nebula.

Eventually, the winds faded away and the leaf dimmed. He opened his eyes as the last flicker of essence was balanced and fell into its home. The Titan Star’s announcement was waiting for him, but before heard it, all around him he saw the Void wavering like a mirage.

Swirling ice and fire, stone and wind, water and metal, wood and light clashed and spun, merging together like a thousand petals in a windstorm. Each of them was different, but together they made a vast mosaic with a law that was just on the edge of his understanding.

It was another Manifestation of the Void, and it wasn’t an illusion. All around him throughout the ruins of the fortress, the elements were spinning like lotus petals around their center. Each petal was a different energy and where he was standing at the center, they all merged into a silver flame. An instant later, they disappeared, changing into silver motes that flowed away into the dark.

Like the last time, it was revealing some innate law of the Void, and this time it was related to balance. It was different than before, and there were more elements in it, but it was also more beautiful. As the manifestation passed away, the influx of power he’d just absorbed shuddered through his body.

He’d killed almost a hundred Outsiders and the result was massive. If he’d absorbed it without the leaf, the shock would have felt like lava was tearing him apart. Now, however, it just felt like a thousand cool strands of power weaving through his body as his muscles and bones grew stronger and his mind sharpened. The change was significant.

Essence Constellation (Second Star): 996,431 / 5,000,000

You gain 1064 Strength, 1242 Constitution, 311 Agility, 1863 Intelligence, and 1863 Aura.

It was just over 745,000 essence in total. Each of the weaker Outsiders had given him two to three thousand and the ones over Level 300 had given him twenty to fifty thousand. The Level 410 Runemaster was worth 150,000 alone. The total brought him up to almost 20% of the way through the Second Star.

He looked down at his body, which was glowing again with curling loops of silver flames, and let out a deep breath. Then he glanced at his attributes and shook his head at what he saw. His Strength had passed 5,000, his Constitution was over 6,000, and his Intelligence and Aura were at 9,547 now. They had all just grown by about 25%. It put his experience attributes to shame.

By this point, he wasn’t sure what level he was equivalent to, but 425 was still a decent estimate, or a bit higher if his opponent didn’t have a Heroic class. At the Fourth Evolution, attributes rose steeply again, which made it dangerous to fight them.

His essence attributes were over 19,000 together and his total attributes were over 34,000. He was more well-rounded than any class he’d ever heard of, but most deadly attacks came down to a single attribute, which meant if he was calculating total offensive or defensive power, 19,000 was the key point.

That Level 410 Runemaster had only been a little weaker than him, which meant she’d probably had a high-tier class. His artifacts had made the difference. If she’d been more prepared, it would have been dangerous.

From what he knew, Third Evolution classes received 50-150 attributes per level, so a Heroic-tier Level 399 should have about 22k at most in total attributes. It would be 200 from their initial class, 1,000 from their First Evolution, 5,000 from their Second Evolution, and 15,000 from the Third Evolution, plus a free point or two for every level.

They would probably only have about 75% of that in a single attribute, since they would need some Constitution and other things to balance it out, even if they were highly focused.

As for Fourth Evolution classes, they would gain attributes of about three times that again for up to 500 per level, at least if they were at the Heroic tier. The difference between a Level 400 and 430 could be 15,000 raw attributes, or as much as the entire Third Evolution. A Level 499 Heroic class could have 50,000 more attributes than a Level 399.

He should be able to fight some higher rarity classes that had just broken into the Fourth Evolution, and some low rarity ones that were a little higher, but he couldn’t flatten everything. Fortunately, his next Evolution was swiftly approaching. He just needed to push a bit more to get there.

His mind cleared as he gathered himself together and looked at the Ice Drake that was looming in the distance. The ship was almost here. He could sense the shouts of the nagas on the deck as they raised their blades. Vibrant shades of mana erupted as they showed off their new elemental abilities and released flares of power into the Void. Their tails were thwacking the deck with overflowing energy.

A smile quirked across his lips. As the ship came up beside him, he waved at them and then pointed toward the fortress below. His words echoed in their minds as he told them what he wanted.

His orders were followed by the roaring hisses of the nagas as they leapt over the railing and dove toward the open holes in the fortress walls. There were still a lot of Outsiders in there and they were eager to test their strength.

The nagas flooded into the remains of the fortress like a silver tide. There were 29 of them and each of them was as strong as the best the Outsiders had left to offer. Their hisses were a storm inside the walls and their voices carried on the wind of explosions as they began to fight.

Alora and Laimar ran with them, tearing into the remaining Outsiders with a vengeance. Their eyes were tinged red as they sought out the enemies that had attacked their world. Alora had an ornately carved staff in her hand and where it passed, vines and leaves ripped her enemies apart. Laimar had his spear and shield and they were soon soaked in the Outsiders’ blood.

The Silver Army’s progress was accompanied by the nagas’ bloodthirsty and exceedingly joyful shouts. It was the first time they’d had a chance to unleash their energy, and they were making the most of it. The walls shattered as their tails and fists slammed into them with enthusiasm, eradicating everything that their enemies had built. Stones flew outward into the Void.

Experience began to flow through the fortress, including a small amount to Sam as the commander, but instead of joining in and collecting more of it, he turned his attention to the third fortress, which was lurking like a blood red lantern in the distance.

For some reason, it had stopped attacking and that gave him a bad feeling. He wasn’t sure what was happening there, but he didn’t want to give them a chance to try anything else. With a flash of silver light, he disappeared.

*****

When Sam reappeared, it was about a hundred miles above the third fortress. The green sun looked enormous here and took up almost 25% of the Void as he looked around. The world below was tiny, its surface like a burning emerald that was constantly polished by the sun’s heat. From what Alora had said, this world was rich in minerals and ores, but only a few heat-loving beasts lived here, as well as some Fire-aligned plants that thrived in the environment.

He studied the surface of the fortress with a cautious frown. The essence signatures of the Outsiders inside had almost completely disappeared. Unless they’d found a way to shield themselves from his senses, it meant there were only a few left. It looked like most of them had run or something else had happened after they saw the first two fortresses fall.

If they’d run, it meant there was a working teleportation system inside, one that should link to Alora’s world. If he was unlucky, they’d already expanded to another system and escaped that way, but he had to hope that wasn’t the case. Unfortunately, it was hard to tell if their flight was the result of fear or a deliberate tactic.

He cracked his knuckles as he studied the hexagonal structure. They’d already tried to blow him up once, and he didn’t feel like getting caught in the same type of trap again. At the same time, he didn’t want to give them too much leeway in case they were plotting something in there.

With a wave of his hand, he summoned a handful of artifacts to float around him and join the ones already there. Then he tapped on two of them and they shattered into an icy stardust that fell across his body and formed a suit of runic ice armor. Drifting snowflakes fluttered across his shoulders as the elemental essence reacted with the Void.

Then a blaze of golden light formed into a spear in his hand as he teleported away in a wash of silver flames. His body was a flicker of silver as he reappeared and disappeared again in succession, leaving a chain of stars behind. Below, the fortress loomed larger as he approached.

As he got closer, the red shielding energy on the fortress became more intense, fluctuating wildly in power as it extended outward in thin filaments like flames, until it looked like the entire hexagonal fortress was surrounded by a red corona, almost like a sun. It was different from the last ones, with a heavier trace of blood energy in it.

The Bloodsigils probably had some relationship to the Demon of Blood, or at least they shared part of that concept. More than the others, this fortress stank of it. The essence glowed as sanguine as an opened vein.

That made him wary, especially after he’d almost been blown up by the previous fortress. Before he jumped into this one, he wanted to test it a bit. When he was just a half mile above the surface, he stopped and scanned it, teleporting from point to point as he examined the interior.

Eventually, he frowned. He could only sense three Outsiders left inside the fortress, each of them in a separate sphere. Except for them, it felt empty, but the flow of essence along the surface was powerful and there was a subtle, jagged hum from the runes on the interior.

Since he didn’t feel like wasting time figuring out what was going on, he turned toward one of the spheres and unleashed his full strength as he reached toward it with a translucent, starry hand. His hand stretched through the sphere and gripped at it, sparkling with stardust, and a wave of distorted light rippled in its wake.

The fortress shuddered under the strain, but at that moment, the spatial pressure surrounding it that blocked normal teleportation became denser. The red corona of essence flared up, sizzling like a hot pan as it infused energy into the defensive ward. The sphere shook under the pressure, but with each shake, it diffused some of the force he was exerting on it.

When he drew his hand back, the only result of the Astral Rift was a series of cracks that ran across the surface of the sphere. The damaged areas began to burn as the red essence poured into them, slowly sealing them over. When he saw that, he muttered something rude and shook his head.

Unlike the first two, this fortress was in a purely defensive mode, and the wards weren’t entirely useless. The fortresses had been built to deal with Fourth Evolution or higher opponents and spatial energies were part of that. Astral Rift had worked so well on the earlier fortresses because he’d done it from the inside. It was much easier to shatter the wards from there.

He reached out again with a translucent hand of starlight, but this time he did his best to infuse Shatter Aura into the ability. It was more difficult at a distance. The ability relied on the force of his own aura as leverage and the farther away from him the target was, the harder it was.

This time, the red corona of essence blazed around the fortress in response and the stone sphere shuddered viciously as larger cracks ran through it, but it felt like he was trying to wrestle the entire fortress. A heavy pressure like a tide of blood pushed against him as the wards burned brighter. They were integrated through the hexagon and he was fighting them all at once.

The main result was that a new series of deep cracks ran through the stone and blazed with red essence, making the entire sphere look like a ball of magma that was about to explode. He growled to himself as he abandoned the idea of using Astral Rift from here. While he could probably get through, it looked like it would take at least half a dozen rifts. Even with his increased essence pool, he could only use that ability three times without combusting auras.

It looked like he was going to have to go down and cut through the wall again, since his astral blade ability worked better at that distance, but that would put him in range of whatever the fortress was up to. The red essence around it wasn’t calming down at all, especially now that he’d stirred it up. Instead, it was slowly intensifying.

He could sense the three Outsiders in the fortress, but they didn’t seem to be moving, so he began testing the defenses with other options as he let his essence regenerate. Scrolls flared to life around him in a series of blinding colors.

Crackling spears of ice that released trails of frozen mist, explosive lances of golden flame, a web of starry snowflakes, strands of moonlight with cutting edges, ethereal blades compressed from air and astral energy, a Nexus spell, and more all exploded across the surface of the sphere and clashed with the essence shield around it.

The sphere shuddered as one of its sides began to collapse under the barrage. An area about two hundred feet across was covered in sheets of jagged ice and sizzling flames and it began to dent inward. It looked like a meteor had slammed into it. At the same time, however, the red essence from the rest of the fortress poured toward it like water filling a pot, making the area glow.

With a flick of his hand, he reached into his storage and began to combust a few more auras to top off his essence as he studied it, and eventually he shook his head. He wasn’t going to be able to break through from here, not without an enormous amount of essence.

It looked like going down in person was the only effective way.

He studied the fortress and then the Void around him, locking his attention onto several astral threads that ran through the area. In front of him, the green sun still filled his vision like a warm, wood-scented bonfire. Its presence was reassuring.

He reinforced his runic armor with a touch of essence and the golden spear flared in his hand as he headed down. He twisted to the side as he ignored the spheres this time, where the defenses seemed to be concentrated. Instead, he headed for one of the tunnels. Once he broke it open, he planned to hurl an Astral Rift through it and retreat.

The defenses on the fortresses were still active and the surface of the stone glowed an intense and deadly red. The pressure of their spatial defense pressed on him like a crushing wave as he got closer.

Inside the fortress’s hexagonal design, the stone tunnels twisted around like a snarled web of yarn. They were woven into strange runes and spirals in a logic that he didn’t understand, but fortunately, he didn’t need to. He just needed to break them. He headed for the closest tunnel, the one that connected to the sphere he’d been attacking.

Shatter Aura blazed through the spear in his hand as it slammed into the side of the stone tunnel. In response, the red essence covering the fortress thickened at the point of impact, forming a shield that made it feel like he was attacking through a dense spiderweb. His spear tip carved through the substance, but it was slow.

It felt like all of the power in the fortress’s spatial defenses had been converted into this point. His muscles bulged and the essence throughout his meridians roared with silver flames as he stabbed the spear in deeper, working to tear a hole. Slowly, a dark crack appeared on the surface and began to stretch wider.

At that moment, the corona of blood-red essence from all across the giant hexagon lit up and surged toward him, converging at the point where he’d attacked. It approached in a massive wave that swelled with blinding light as it headed toward him. The ward he was attacking thickened around his spear, yanking on the haft as it tried to pull it away and stop him from breaking through.

Farther away, the red corona around the fortress also grew brighter and strands began to rise up from it, extending outward  until it formed a giant net that stretched into the Void. It was an effect he hadn’t seen before, but he wasn’t surprised. It seemed like they really were trying to trap him again.

That meant it was time to leave.

As the web approached, he growled and a blaze of astral flames ignited on the surface of his spear, searing away the red cobwebs around it. He jerked it free and then he turned to teleport away. The red web from the rest of the fortress was almost there.

At that moment, however, an enormous wave of suction force yanked down on him as the fortress around him exploded inward, collapsing toward the center of the web. Stones tore outward from the tunnel below his feet, blasting past him as they were drawn into the middle of the hexagon where a dark vortex was forming.

All across the miles-wide fortress, the entire stone structure shattered as lines of a different and colder essence erupted upward like cracks of darkness, revealing a second web of energy that spread across the surroundings.

Massive crackling pillars of dark essence shot outward into the Void, sizzling with a deadly, corrosive force. Wherever they touched, the stone disintegrated and fell inward, heading to the vortex. In between them, the spatial energy of the area turned wild and began to shudder.

The Void around him was like an ocean in flux as rolling waves of spatial energy slammed against one another and crashed away again, spinning into a thousand separate vortexes. The madness of it destabilized his teleport before it was fully formed and he was tossed into the mix, shoved one way and then the next as he was thrown to the left and the right, up and down, and then back again.

His mind was clear and he was able to track the movements of the energy across the Void, but his reactions were too slow to extract himself immediately. It was all he could do to predict the trajectory he was on as he worked to avoid the most dangerous areas.

He sent flares of astral flame around him, shoving himself away from the black pillars that were corroding everything. He didn’t know what spell they were made from, but they reminded him of the way the Outsider artifact on Aster Fall had once tried to corrode the auras of the Moonlight Relic. It was the same type of destructive energy.

As he was tossed around, he tried to throw himself toward one of the threads of starlight to escape, but the twisting space made it difficult to lock onto them. All around him, the flux of the Void was becoming even more wild as the pillars of energy reached their peak and then began to curve around.

He’d been expecting a trap, but he had still underestimated the Outsiders’ abilities. It looked like they were willing to sacrifice the entire fortress to destroy him. Stray bursts of essence tore at his runic armor, sending blue-white explosions of ice away from his body as sections of it disintegrated.

At that moment, a thread of red essence sprang out from the center of the crumbling fortress and formed a strange rune that hung in the air above the vortex. It was followed by a blood-tinged voice that echoed all around him.

“Astral Titan,” the voice snarled, “do you believe the Bloodsigils are weak?! How dare you attack my fortresses and think you can leave whenever you wish! My people lost the war, but I will not allow us to be insulted! Even though it cost me the lives of all of my people in this fortress, I prepared this Bloodrune Vortex especially for you! Die in agony!”

He didn’t know who the voice was, but it had to be the commander of the Outsiders here, either of this fortress or the one who was in charge of them all. Even in a message, there was a sense of power in his voice, as well as a heavy aura of blood, as if an ocean of it was swirling through each word.

His words explained why this fortress was so different from the others. Apparently, he’d sacrificed all of the Outsiders here to make it stronger.

Above Sam, the tips of the black pillars touched as they formed a massive cage with the vortex at the center and began to collapse back inward. Between them, the red web of essence was threaded through the gaps, finishing the trap so that it looked like two giant red and black hands closing around him.

Below him, the dark vortex was slowly growing as the rest of the fortress collapsed into streams of stone that spiraled into it. The pressure from all around was intense and it pulled at his body with jagged spikes of pain, stretching and twisting him in every direction. The green sun of Alora’s system filled his vision as he was pulled downward.