Spellheart 9: Chapter 60 (Patreon)

I didn’t dig the whole way down. About a kilometer beneath the surface, the effects of the Sacred Grove on the surface diminished, and the earth ley lines returned to more like what I was used to. Eventually, I found one headed straight down.

I should have felt more claustrophobic than I was, buried so far beneath the earth. But my doppelganger had lived like this long enough that any fear I might have had was gone.

Besides, if I needed to, I knew I could make a chamber for myself and fill it with air. I did that several times when I sensed powerful earth elementals brushing by me.

While I could take down one or two without much issue, killing too many would leave blood in the water. The last thing I wanted was an elemental feeding frenzy while going about delicate manipulations of earth zeal.

Unfortunately, the earth’s elementals grew stronger as I delved deeper. There were beings of immense power down here if my last experience pulling off something like this was anything to go by. And what I was about to do was going to really piss them off.

I felt their consciousnesses brushing against mine. I made my bubble of air to isolate myself, but it was proving less effective as I delved deeper and the elementals grew more powerful. One attacked me despite my best efforts.

I dealt with it quickly, thinking it was just bad luck.

Then another brushed against me, attacking me just as voraciously. This one was only a little stronger, roughly the equivalent of a Wizard. I dealt with it in the same manner, but that was just the start.

I began suspecting that these Earth elementals could sense my hostile intent for their planet. Well, if they wanted to die, I would oblige them.

I dove deeper, far past the crust and the solid bits of rock. The stone around me grew hot enough to boil water, and then it started growing hotter still. Before long, I encountered more and more bits of iron, and I seized control of them as weapons to wield against the encroaching horde of elementals.

There were dozens by now, but I spotted a ley line ahead. I reached it first and slipped inside it, willing myself to travel through it as fast as the currents of zeal would carry me. The elementals followed close behind, and when I emerged amidst molten metal and a pocket of noxious gasses, I prepared an ambush for them.

“Come here, you rocky bastards!” I yelled as I set my feet on the soft, partially molten ground of the small cavern deep beneath the surface.

I found myself in a hidden cavern that had probably never before felt the gaze of an elf, satyr, or human. The walls were made of hardened stone, and molten magma burbled nearby, throwing off light in all directions.

The ground shifted, and the elemental following me took shape one by one. On the surface, elementals took more recognizable forms like those of bulls or squat, powerfully built humanoids.

But these elementals didn’t know the forms living flesh took, so most of them were little more than the shifting, amorphous blobs of earth they came from.

Amorphous Earth Elemental (Early Wizard - Level 31)

Amorphous Earth Elemental (Early Wizard - Level 33)

Amorphous Earth Elemental (Mid Wizard - Level 34)

Dozens more earth elementals appeared, and I waved away the notifications. Some were only True Mage, but most were somewhere in the wizard realm. While their individual power was nothing much to me, fighting so many of them would take time and be quite tedious.

“All right, you rocky bastards! If you want a fight, I’ll give you a fight!” I yelled, my voice echoing off the nearly molten stone walls.

The glow of the nearby magma cast huge shadows against the wall, like some ancient cave drawing where one man faced off against thousands of shapeless mounds.

The elementals responded to my taunts. Their bodies vibrated with a deep, resonating rumble that encoded through the small cavern so loudly that it was like a physical attack. The sound waves pounded against my ears, and I pressed my hands over my head.

“Alright, no more of that,” I grunted, though I couldn’t hear myself over the noise. I reached for all the bits and pieces of iron I’d gathered and launched them at the elementals. Jagged chunks of metal cut straight through the nearly molten stone the elementals were made from. But that didn’t even slow them down as they lumbered toward me.

Under the kinds of heat and pressure this far beneath the surface, the earth’s elementals responded differently from what I was used to. Normally, I could chip away at their bodies until they were nothing more than a pile of broken rubble.

But down here? Under such intense heat and pressure, that stone burbled nearby as molten magma?

Here, they were more akin to swamp or water elementals. If I cut them, they could just reform their bodies and rejoin the fray. At this rate, the fight would go on for far longer than I had the time for.

The only thing that seemed to do much of anything was using the unique properties of steel.

There was enough metal within my grasp that some of it worked well enough as steel, and I could use steel to siphon away the zeal of these elementals.

More memories flashed through my mind. Memories of my doppelganger slaughtering hordes of elementals just like this group before me. He’d drained them of their power just as I was planning.

With his experience to guide me, I attacked just as he would have. I struck with all the ferocity of a cornered beast, launching myself into the fray. Blood dripped down my ears from the constant wailing, but I didn’t care as I swept Spell Eater around in a wide arc.

The steel in my weapon was my conduit, the means through which I could siphon away power. And I used it with ruthless efficiency.

One elemental after another collapsed, and their zeal drained into me. I found the surges of untamed power in my own will and the might of my World Titan Fiendbody. I would see what I’d gained from the fight when all this was over. It felt like I had only just become a Demigod, and yet here I was, already thinking about Immortal Ascension.

Emboldened, I repeated the process with the next group of elementals. What followed was a slaughter as elementals died in droves. By the time the last of them fell, I was alight with power.

Zeal alone would not do as much for me as it might have once done, but I wasn’t about to throw away the combined lifetime’s work of nearly a hundred wizard-realm elementals. I condensed their power within me, compressing it and shoving it deep within me. Already, my World Titan Fiendbody was drawing on the energy to replenish what I’d expended.

My ears had stopped bleeding, and I felt as good as new when I put away Spell Eater. Perhaps better, once I finished making the zeal I’d stolen mine.

Rejuvenated from the battle and alight with the stolen power of the defeated elementals, I continued my descent into the caverns. Before long, the flickering light of the molten lava came into view. The heat was intense, radiating off the glowing liquid rock in waves that would have been deadly to anyone else.

But I was not just anyone.

With the World Titan Fiendbody protecting me from the intense heat, I dove into the lava without a second thought. I moved through the molten rock as easily as if I were swimming in water, the deadly environment around me unable to harm me.

Deeper and deeper, I went, navigating through the underground labyrinth toward the planet’s core. The closer I got, the more I could feel the immense power at the heart of this world. It was a raw, primal force that pulsed with the rhythm of the planet.

I drew on the power within me with one intent. To turn the planet’s core against itself. A world existed in a delicate balance. Beneath the calm surface lay immense energies gathered and compressed together. With a mind to nudge it in just the right way, this power could crack the world into pieces, just as I planned to do.

I'd nearly done this by accident when guiding the crust of the World of Sanctuary and Serenity to rotate faster than usual, sparing our continent from a dragon attack. Now, I did it faster and harder, with the intention of doing exactly what I'd avoided doing before.

Slowly, the core responded to my nudging. I increased its spin, urging it faster and faster. It resisted at first. The amount of mass I was trying to move was truly immense. But my power was just as vast, and as I continued to push and push, I felt it buckle and move.

I felt tremors shake the magma around me, some strong enough that they might reach all the way to the surface. It was working just as I envisioned. As a Demigod, I could do in minutes what would have taken me hours as a Sorcerer.

Just a little longer now...

When victory was nearly within my grasp, something shifted in the depths. I felt a surge of earth zeal, but this wasn’t like the power of lesser elementals I’d fought and slain before. There was something else behind that power.

There were undercurrents of the same sensation I experienced with I manipulated iron and steel. That much was to be expected from an elemental living so deep underground. This world had an iron core, after all.

But there was something else, too. Like my concept of gravity, but not quite. It was more like pressure. Like being crushed from all sides, similar to being deep underwater. A bad feeling crawled up my spine.

Primordial Planetary Guardian Elemental (Peak Demigod - Level 59)

I cursed, though the words came out as nothing more than bubbles that hardened the magma and molten iron I was swimming through.

I tried the trick I’d used before to hide myself and hardened more of the magma, then filled the pocket with air from the Hearthwood. That instantly created an obsidian sphere with me inside it. I worked quickly to wrap that sphere in an Unnoticability spell while maintaining the magic I was casting to encourage the planet’s core to spin faster and faster.

“Don’t notice me. Don’t notice me. Don’t notice me...” I whispered to myself from within the sphere.

My obsidian sphere cracked in two, and an enormous shining blade made of solid diamond nearly ran straight through my guts.

Crap.

I finally got a good look at my foe as the magma rushed in. It stung my eyes like water from a pool full of chlorine, but I needed to see what I was fighting.

It was enormous, and I couldn’t even make out more than the claw that had tried to stab me with my normal eyes. The shards of diamonds on each fingertip were roughly the size of a wagon, which meant the hand they were attached to was large enough to be a castle.

I extended my magical senses, feeling its shape through the magma around me. It was big and muscular, hunched in on itself with four legs and an enormous tail. It took me a while to realize what it reminded me of. An enormous and incredibly powerful crocodile.

The Primordial Planetary Guardian elemental moved through the molten magma as easily as I might have expected a beast in its natural habitat to move. The lethal heat and pressure had even less effect on its body than it did on me.

As it turned its gaze on me, I could sense more than the primal anger of an enormous beast. There was an odd type of feral intelligence, like the Shadow Blade Beast when I’d first met it.

Its roar echoed through the magma, and I let out a silent battle cry in reply. It was defending its home and would fight with desperate fury.

But I was defending my home as well.

I swept a claw at me again, and I dodged. Snapping teeth earned it a scrape across the side of its jaw with Spell Eater.

The molten magma flowed into the wound, healing it as fast as I could with the full might of the World Titan Fiendbody.

This thing was fast and strong, and defeating it would be no easy feat, under ordinary circumstances.

But now? While I was busy and most of my magic was invested in increasing the speed of the planet’s spinning core? I simply didn’t have the focus to fight this thing off.

Or did I?

Once, I had been two people: me and my doppelganger. And I had the Parallel Thought skill. Perhaps I needed a ruthless fighter who could battle unflinchingly while I focused on completing the mission.

I wracked my brain for all the thoughts and memories I’d inherited from my doppelganger. All the ruthless aggression and the lust for battle. I shoved it all into a box at the front of my mind and then activated Parallel thought.

My body started moving instantly, following long-honed battle instincts.

[Keep that thing busy!] I shouted in my own head. [You don’t have to win. Just buy me time to finish!]

After a long moment, my doppelganger responded. [This is a battle I will gladly fight. Good luck.]

With my mind divided in two, the battle was no longer a distraction. I could watch it like I was observing someone else fight. Meanwhile, I continued the delicate manipulations of zeal I was struggling with. The currents were growing unstable. Inefficient.

It was almost like the planet had a will of its own and sensed what I was trying to do. It was fighting me and trying to disperse its extra energy. But I wasn’t about to let that happen.

While I wrestled currents of zeal and the will of a world, my doppelganger fought with our shared body against the enormous Primordial Elemental.

Diamond shattered beneath my spear. Currents of molten iron brushed past me.

The giant crocodile activated its own concept, the Concept of Pressure. The weight of a world pressed down on me from all sides. Blood pulsed through my temples, and I felt blood leaking out my nose and into the magma around us.

My skin burned and my hair sizzled. He channeled his own Concept of Strength. He was better at it than I was, and I felt unyielding power push against the pressure around us. Then he turned to me for aid.

[Can you attack?] he asked.

In reply, I set my gaze on the most vulnerable part of the giant crocodile’s underbelly. During the fighting, we’d chipped away at the diamond armor there.

Now, I focused on the magma beneath the wound and used the Concept of Identity to convert it from molten magma to liquid oxygen.

The reaction was instantaneous. First, there was an implosion as something far hotter than fire met something far colder than ice. Then, the combustible components of the magma reacted with the oxygen it had just come into contact with, resulting in an explosion that sent another wave of tremors shooting through the entire planet.

That was just enough of a blow to break the Primordial Elemental’s pressure on my body, letting my doppelganger break free and begin his attacks again. When the Primordial Elemental tried to lock us down with his Concept of Pressure once again, I had a counter ready.

I activated my Concept of Gravity and worked on reducing the pressure as much as possible. With two powerful concepts struggling against one another, it was like neither was active at all.

Then my doppelganger activated his Concept of Strength once more and struck point-first with Spell Eater. He buried the enchanted adamantium weapon deep in the enormous monster’s eye.

It shook its head, knocking us loose but leaving Spell Eater lodged there, draining its zeal.

The Primordial Elemental let out a wordless scream, and energy charged within its mouth. But then my doppelganger opened our mouth, and a crimson beam charged within it to meet the Primordial Elemental’s attack.

Kaboom!

Two massive beams of energy collided, and I felt something around us crack. Turning my attention upward, I realized it was the planet’s crust high overhead.

This was more than the World of Woods and Wilds could take.

[We’re almost there! Hit him with everything you’ve got!]

Earth zeal poured from me in quantities as vast as the ocean. My doppelganger took us back to the Primordial Elemental’s head, punching it with a blow that could shatter mountains and grabbing hold of Spell Eater again. Soon, he was draining the Primordial Elemental’s power through Spell Eater and funneling it to me.

I used that power to hasten my spell that much more. The beast screamed in fury, and I screamed with it. All that power flowed through us and into the trembling planetary core we battled in.

Between the two of us, the World of Woods and Wilds shattered.