World Seal, Ch 25: Path to the Peak (Patreon)

Sam appeared on the Storm Plains in a streak of silver light.

A wave of his hand sent dozens of Void beast corpses tumbling out across the golden grass.

There were hundreds of beasts, all between Level 340 and 400. Anything over that, he’d let the nagas take for themselves.

It had been a month on Aster Fall and more than twice that for him in the Void, and his hunting was profitable, both in terms of beasts for the World Core and for his own advancement.

Silver threads of experience rose off the beast corpses and disappeared into the world. A moment later, the World Core’s announcement rang in his mind.

The experience has been transferred.

You may now release up to 341 Level 399s from the World Limit.

It should be enough for the first wave of people, but from the number of people gathering at the relic, he’d have to bring back some more soon.

He’d already absorbed the essence from the beasts while he was hunting, so he nodded and collected the crafting materials. His aura made short work of the beasts, slicing them apart in clean sections and stripping their hides and other materials away.

It was impossible to find this many Third and Fourth Evolution materials on Aster Fall. The hides would make for good scroll parchments and armor and anything left over could be tossed into the relic as base material for new golems.

He didn’t need it himself, since he was able to create astral materials for his crafting now, but it was useful to stock the relic. There were a lot of crafters there who needed these things, including his old friends Krana and Lesat.

High-quality materials were a mark of success and having them available was one more reason for people to flock to the relic. It didn’t hurt to have a few more supplies.

He’d once promised the dwarves of Highfold that they would have access to high-quality materials and training if they helped to repair the relic, particularly the buildings and other areas that weren’t part of the self-repair enchantment.

That promise had been fulfilled naturally as part of their work, since everything related to the relic counted as part of a divine artifact, including the ancient buildings and the walls, but they could have some of these as well.

They had been a great help in restoring the living spaces and other structures, especially those that the Elemental Order golems didn’t have time to work on.

When he was finished gathering the materials, he disappeared from the Storm Plains.

A moment later, he stepped out from the Void on the peak of Sun’s Rest.

The sun was high and golden in the sky, the clouds drifting silver and purple ribbons. All across the land, he could feel the sense of visitors approaching the relic.

They weren’t all here yet, but they would be soon, most of them within the next day.

After the last month, the relic’s fame was rising like the sun.

The Legions of Ice and his own efforts had driven home their power across a dozen kingdoms, and all those who had visited the relic so far had seen the power of the golems and the ancient enchantments, both those of the relic and of the Ice Sylphs.

The sylphs’ ice palaces and fortresses stretched across the mountains around their valley, tinting the sunlight blue, and the silver flame of his forge on the peak of Sun’s Rest flared into the night sky, shining like a beacon of power across the valley.

Anyone who came to the relic for the conclave was well aware of what they were dealing with now.

More importantly, the personal strength of his family and their allies was rising, making it clear that they stood as a power of their own. After the dozens of battles against Flaws near the relic, they had benefited from the experience and significant rewards from the World Core.

They had all just reached their Third Evolution.

One of the reasons he’d come home today was to celebrate with them.

He looked down from the peak and checked on their location. It didn’t take long to find them. They were gathered at his parents’ home, preparing a small celebration for just their closest friends.

Everyone was there, from his parents and sister to Lesat and Lenei, Krana and Ayala, all of the Ice Sylphs they knew the best, and a few more, including Belanos, the chieftain of the dwarves of Highfold, and Garild, the old governor of Highfold who was working to manage trade for the relic.

His avatars were here and he’d done his best to spend time with them when he could, but the last month had been busy. It would be good to celebrate together.

There was still time before he needed to arrive, so he took a moment to let the feeling of home settle in. His shoulders relaxed as he looked up into the Void.

Then he turned his attention to his status sheet, studying the results of his hunt and the destruction of the Flaws.

Sam Hastern

Level: 421

Class: Lord of the Silver Void

Subclass: Guardian of Aster Fall

Essence Constellation (Fourth Star): 6,319,781 / 30,000,000

He’d gained 21 levels and over six million essence.

The World Core had given him six levels in bonus experience after his avatars dealt with the elemental storms and sealed some of the worst dimensional cracks.

He’d picked up some fragments of essence from Outsiders that came through the Flaws, but most of them were below the Third Evolution and not worth a lot, at least from his current perspective.

The rest had come from the Void.

His hunt had netted nearly two thousand beasts, a quarter of which he’d returned here for the World Core. Many of them were light on essence, but it was enough to take him twenty percent of the way through the Fifth Star.

His avatar in the Deep Void was searching for more, but it took time, which was in short supply.

The Fourth Star was a trial for survival.

He needed to grow as quickly as possible before a truly ancient Vos’Rekan noticed him or things would become dire.

Right now he was in the unique position of being on the rise as a Titan, but compared to the ancient ones, he was young and his power was radiating across the Void.

He was a tempting meal to the devourers.

Fortunately, with essence came power. He turned his attention to his attributes, which had jumped up significantly.

Over the course of the hunt, he’d gained more than 10,000 Strength and Constitution, 2,600 Agility, 2,000 Wisdom, and 20,000 Intelligence and Aura.

The 21 levels in his new class had nearly doubled his Charisma by adding 3,150, which gave him 1,575 to all other attributes, including Wisdom, which only increased with that and free attribute points now.

From those levels, he had 42 free points, which he had added to Charisma as well.

STR: 39,731

CON: 45,273

AGI: 14,484

WIS: 5,573

INT: 71,116

AUR: 71,116

CHA: 7,075

He studied the result and then turned his attention to the parts that mattered the most. He had reached the necessary attributes in Strength and Agility to awaken new racial abilities.

You have gained the Racial Ability: Strength of the Void (30,000 Strength).

A Titan’s strength radiates like a sun, bending the Void around it. Your physical movement and attacks carry dimensional force with them. You have gained the ability to tear apart dimensional walls and to crush dimensional energy with raw force.

It was the physical complement that matched his True Dimension Body.

He looked at the second one.

You have gained the Racial Ability: Stellar Wind (10,000 Agility).

Your movements are as swift as the wind between the stars. Your agility has improved, granting you the ability to speed your steps by calling on the astral winds, which temporarily free you from the inertia of objects nearby. Your ability to respond to danger and your reaction time have improved.

It made it easier for him to move in almost every way. As soon as he unlocked it, he’d felt a sense of freedom like he could move in any direction, at any time.

It was innate, so he didn’t need to think about activating it, but when he studied it, he could feel a presence like the chaos winds swirling around him.

They were both useful abilities, but at the moment, the most important gain was the increase to his intelligence.

A short while later, four new avatars were standing in front of him.

He gave them some basic equipment and a few auras, and then they disappeared, heading off to help with the repairs to the relic. With these new ones, he was up to 14 mental divisions, which meant he could have 13 avatars.

There might have been a limit on the ability if it had stayed at Epic, but with it at the Heroic tier, he still had room to make more.

Their addition meant that the repair time for the relic would be cut in half.

The Fourth Layer repairs had been delayed slightly by dealing with the Flaws, but with this many avatars working, he could make up for it. It would be done in a matter of days.

The lunar wards he’d activated were already fully active.

If he could stick to the same rate, the Fifth Layer would be done in another month, and the Sixth Layer in two months after that.

It was a blinding speed, one that made his hope surge.

With this type of progress, it might even be possible to create the ring of anchor points around the world one day, like Cerei had planned when she built the relic. She’d wanted to create a massive dimensional anchor to defend Aster Fall, but the prospect had always been daunting to him.

With the World Tree here, he would have to find a way to integrate both it and the relic together, but he was confident in finding a solution.

With that surge of optimism on his mind, he teleported down to the First Layer, heading for the celebration with his parents.

***

The days passed quickly as visitors flooded the valley.

Sam kept part of his attention on their arrivals as he prepared the final things for the conclave, including an enormous meeting hall at the summit of Sky’s Descent to host the event. The design he settled on was a tribute to his race and to the relic.

It was a massive double ring of arched pillars that encircled the peak that was made entirely of white astral stone. There was a small inner ring of pillars around the relic’s aura-gathering node that served as a protective ward, and then an outer ring that marked out the limit of the peak’s plateau.

The arches were linked in each ring by horizontal arches, but the space between the two rings was open, leaving a clear view of the stars.

The Void was both his home and the goal of the Boundless Alliance. Since they were coming to the Conclave to leave Aster Fall, it was only appropriate to give them a view of what they aspired to.

He built the hall to his preference, not on a human one, which meant that each of the pillars towered a hundred feet high. It gave the structure an awe-inspiring size and the gathering space between two rings was nearly a half mile wide.

There was enough space to host tens of thousands of people, and the hall could be seen from across the entire valley, like a crown on top of the mountain.

If he’d been in the Void, he would have built it even higher, but this would have to do.

His height had continued to increase as he gained more essence in the Fourth Star and he was swiftly becoming a true Titan. At his full height, he stood almost 800 feet tall.

It was a size that made this world seem small, and so he usually maintained a more human height while he was here.

He’d wanted to build this hall even taller to match, with pillars a full thousand feet high, but after considering what that would look like on the peak, he’d had to settle for something that fit better.

Since the peak of the mountain was essential to the relic’s ability to gather aura and to the Festival of Three Crowns, he built an enchantment into the hall to make it disintegrate in a year.

Over the course of a month, it would slowly turn to dust and would blow away on the wind.

That would ensure the mountain peak returned to its original austerity, so that by the time the next alignment of the moons arrived, it wouldn’t block the view.

But it would work for now.

After that, he created three staircases that led from the valley up to the peak, covering a distance of almost three vertical miles. Each of them was a hundred feet wide and had thousands of steps, all formed from the same astral stone.

He imbued the stone of the staircases and the hall with silver threads of astral energy like the veins in a leaf, making them glow softly both day and night. The style was similar to the relic, and it gave the mountain an ethereal presence, making the staircases feel like a sacred path to the peak.

Many of the visitors watched from the valley and the mountain slopes as he worked. Some of them had started out with arrogance and a frown, but their eyes widened as they saw the golden Titan raising a storm of molten stone and silver light around him.

By the time he was done, they were pale and solemn. Whenever they looked toward the peak, their conversations fell silent. Their eyes burned with reverence and desire.

Even with the Voice of Law and his titles, there were those who had doubted him. They’d come out of hope, but not fully believing what he promised was possible.

Now their minds had changed.

They might not be fully convinced until they traveled to the Void themselves, but what they’d just seen transcended the realms of power they were familiar with.

When everything was arranged, there was still a day left until the conclave began. Instead of working on anything else, he went to spend it with his family.

They had been busy with their own preparations for the conclave, including meeting many of the most important visitors and acting as the formal High Councilors of the Moonlight Relic.

The main event hadn’t begun, but there was always politicking to be done, trade agreements, and more. As a new and overwhelming power in the region, they had the dubious pleasure of everyone walking around them on eggshells.

It helped that they’d all reached the Third Evolution before the conclave, which was a reasonable level of power for a ruler even if they hadn’t yet reached the World Limit, and it afforded them an easier time of things.

Some of the guests might have been rude even with that, but the presence of the Legions of Ice and the immensely threatening astral golems that accompanied his parents everywhere stopped anything like that in its tracks.

When he arrived at his parents’ home, Silverbeak was stationed at the door along with another astral golem with a similar form. He rubbed the golem’s head, giving it a friendly pat and analyzing it.

Silverbeak. Aura Construct. Legendary. Level 410.

Astral Assault Golem. General Class.

Formed of astral metal and the quintessence of the elements by an Astral Titan, this golem is a legend of enchantment and the artificer’s craft. Its lethality and durability are extreme. It has the innate ability to command lesser golems, to repair itself, and to pursue targets across dimensional space. Those who incite its wrath will suffer swift and fatal retribution.

Innate Abilities: Runic Command Core (General Class), Dimensional Flight, Stellar Wings, Astral Tempest, Meteor Strike, Astral Talons, Enduring Quintessence, Dimensional Stability, Self-Repair.

Many of its abilities were similar to its old self, but vastly improved. In particular, its durability was leagues beyond what it had been. Creating it from quintessence droplets had ensured that.

It was difficult to even scratch its feathers without using a dimensional blade and it could fly straight through a spatial storm. Its metallic feathers were imbued with their own form of dimensional stability, a blessing of resistance to ensure that it wouldn’t be destroyed so easily by the next Vos’Rekan.

It might not be able to fully resist Voidfire, but for a while even those flames would roll off its feathers like water.

Silverbeak gave him a pleasant chirp and nudged his hand in response, but it never stopped surveying the area. It was the commander of all the golems, but unless something happened, it was personally serving as his parents’ main protector.

He patted it again as he headed inside.