Chapter 416 (Patreon)

Enjoy! Just a few more chapters to the end of this volume.


* * *


The last Paladin Inscriptionist crashed to the ground, their head nothing more than a mashed mess. A few feet away, the Primordial's nasty bones shook and pulsed, but Beef refused to look at it—the horror made him nauseous. He straightened up and rested his maul against his shoulder with a grunt. The thing was riddled with cracks, each one leaking bright lights of blackened-green light, but he could fix it. He pulled out a Mana Potion and quaffed it in one go.

"Michael! The Golems and Wraiths are coming again," Hallow announced over the increasing din. Only sixteen Risen remained, all of them the stronger Paladins, but they could not hold back all of their enemies. The Nightfall Golems and Dustborn Wraiths weren't working together, but they all wanted to rip Beef and his Risen to pieces and that amounted to the same thing. "I cannot hold them for more than three seconds."

Chitin Construction!

One Mississippi...

His Mana mobilized, surging from his channels to forge a new set of armor around his chest and limbs. It resembled the spiked body of a large beetle, but it was stronger with every level under his belt, and the Skill had gained five in the last fifteen minutes.

Two Mississippi...

He also reforged his maul, lengthening and enlarging the spiked head until it was comically huge. He grunted and took it in two hands, the heavy weapon dropping to his waist in order for Beef to stabilize it. The glimmering, sunset-colored Golems tore through the Risen from one end, while from the other came the steel-clawed and bone-plated Wraiths. There was no screaming or shouting, only silent, eerie death.

"Hallow!" The last of the Risen, struggling to stand, went immediately stiff before collapsing. The light in their eyes snuffed out before being rekindled within Beef's own chest. Blackened-green power surged around his core, igniting the room within his heart and forcing Beef to shield his inner awareness.

The enemies charged at Beef, blades and claws outstretched and he hunched himself, feeling his muscles bulge and tighten like coiled springs.

Three Mississippi...

"Circle of Smash!" he bellowed, and unleashed a cyclonic blow.

Beef's muscles exploded into action, accelerating him from motionless to an insanely fast spin, maul fully extended. The jagged head of the weapon hit a Wraith first, fully and completely tearing them in half before continuing onward. Wraith after Wraith were less impediment than the wind itself, and power gathered behind the attack as it sped along—until it struck a Nightfall Golem, caving in its chest and knocking the magic robot onto its glowing ass.

"Hell yeah!" he shouted, before noticing that every Wraith was reassembling themselves. And the Golem simply climbed back to its feet, damaged but undeterred. "Balls."

"RAAAAAAAAAAARH!"

Without warning, every single Wraith convulsed and began to scream. Their long, iron claws tore at their bodies and faces, scoring the bone plates and shredding withered flesh. Beef gawked, unable to figure out what was happening. The Golems, both the one he'd smashed and the two behind it, halted mid-stride as their attention was turned to Beef's right...where the sea of undulating bones had gone utterly still.

"Hallow, what is go—"

Michael! Watch out!

The storm above them dropped, far faster than it had moved previously, just as a wave of obliterating force hit them all. Wraiths and Golems were ripped off their feet, and Beef was no better. He tumbled through the air, glass and lightning blasting in all directions, accosting his body with a sudden, scorching heat. Black and brown clouds ripped outward, streaked with brilliant rainbow lights as twenty-foot long bone shards shattered through his armor and shaggy fur. Blood burst from countless wounds, until he smashed back toward the razor sharp protrusions of crystal.

Michael!

A sheath of blackened green energy swept outward from his core and covered his Body for a single, brief moment—long enough to weather an impact that would have snapped his spine. Instead, the crystal cracked and broke, falling with him into the tiled edge of the chamber.

Be safe, Michael. The sheath winked out, and so did the presence in his chest.

"Hallow!" he screamed. Until a Golem smashed right into his face.


* * *


Felix stood among nothingness and an all encompassing light.

He blinked in confusion. Music soared around him, filling up every available space like cotton pressed against him. Harmony was a strident, triumphant crescendo that lapped through the thickened air...while Dissonance was an opposing burr, a jagged, atonal scouring that ripped the legs out of any note that tried to rise too high. It was a violent interplay, one that was echoed by the vast emptiness and cloying brilliance that yawned around and through Felix.

Ugh, that's...that feels awful, he muttered. The sound was both heard and swallowed up entirely by the forces around him. It was a confusing experience, but a chord of familiarity stretched taut through it all. It wasn't like the Divine pocket he'd wandered into, nor was it like the Void in any meaningful way; instead, it felt like floating underwater, except he was buoyed by sound instead of liquid. That noise. It's just like my core space.

With a rush of clarity, the fighting of Harmony and Dissonance took on the patterns and cadences of his dual cores, the ones that constantly ground against one another to produce a strange, chimeric child of the Grand Harmony. A tapestry of sound that was neither the System nor the harshness that Primordial's exuded from their very pores. It's all meshed, badly, but still. Pieces of pieces, fragments of a great whole—The Primordial! The curse!

Sovereign of Flesh!

The Skill was already active, was in fact overclocked to the point that his core space screamed with the effort of maintaining it. Felix hovered among the warring pieces of the Primordial as he tore it apart, a bubble of power that fought against his control. With that realization came the knowledge that his Body, only dimly felt, was failing dramatically. His Health fell like a rock, his Stamina was barely kept afloat by his regeneration, and his store of Essence was a fingernail away from obliteration. The vast sea of power was eating away at him as it disassembled and shoved through his core space, a torrent of potency that ran through him like a filter. Clouds of Essence and Mana were pulled into his channels and back out again, not a piece of them remaining behind, and he focused. If he could harvest even a piece, it would go a long way toward healing himself.

Chthonic Tribu—!

The activation twisted, halting mid-word like his airway had been constricted. The Hunger within him could not be overcome or gainsaid. It would take no more.

Why? he railed against the dark abyss. I need it! We're going to die!

From within him, Felix heard a guttural, almost unintelligible snarl. Too weak. Body flawed. No. More.

Then obstinate silence within the chaos all around him. The cacophony of light and Essence buffeted him, a storm that spread through him, pressed and strained against the resonating branches of his Divine Tree. The Primordial's Essence entered Felix, stained by the Divine, and when it emerged from his beleaguered channels, it was rendered pure. The curse itself was catching among the branches of his Tree, skimmed from the Essence like dead bugs from the top of a swimming pool.

His Fiendforge trembled, his grip on the Primordial's heart and Pit's cracking core tenuous at best. He still held tight to the flesh curse, which he dimly realized was why the Primordial's Essence was being shoved through Felix's core space at all. Sovereign of Flesh commanded with all the force of his Willpower, and its curse obeyed.

How long have I been doing this?

Time felt immaterial within the hovering, chaotic space. Was he frozen or was his Mind whirling so fast that a single moment stretched into a thousand? The Primordial's potency raged through him faster and faster, but it felt endless. Eternal. Like a trap he'd sprung on himself. Deep inside, a piece of his core space shook, and Felix gasped.

My Bastion...?

The cords of light, of connection, that gathered in his Bastion were thrumming and twitching wildly. One in particular sang out, a shearing sound of distress as it snapped taut, like a cable nearing its breaking point.

Atar. He knew it without conscious thought or reason. He's in trouble. Hurt. Felix couldn't tell which, only that their connection was pulling so hard that threads of luminous light snapped and frayed. A tiny echo of Atar was feeding back into Felix, enough that he felt the mage was grasping for something. Anything. He was falling apart...and it took very little guesswork to know why that might be. The Urge is...dying? Or is that Atar?

Felix did the only thing he could in that moment. He grasped the echo of Atar's need, his plea for help, and shifted his Will to seize a portion of the howling, useless Essence thundering through him. Then he shoved it into their connection.

Attempting To Establish Sympathetic Link...
Tier III Link Already Established.
Essence Redirection Allowed.

The weight all around Felix shifted, and it was like a mountain lifting off his shoulders by the barest of margins. Essence and more—significance—began to flow from Felix's stolen store into the connection with Atar. Pit groan in clear relief, the weight of it all lightening on him as well. The cord swelled, changing slowly from silver to a bright, almost blinding white edged in bloody crimson, and Felix grinned.

Tier III Link Advanced To Tier IV!

The connection, the Link, was remade. That white-crimson light raced down its entire length, up and out of his core space, to the mage himself. Yet around him, the chaos still raged. Pit?

Yes. Give it to me, the tenku agreed. I can handle it.

The brilliant, blue-gold and black-crimson Link between them slipped into the foreground and Felix repeated the process. Essence and significance was pulled just as it left the purifying branches of his Divine Tree, and filtered down into their bond. Into Pit directly.

A shriek of pain and fury tore from his Companion's throat, but Felix couldn't let up even if he tried. The process all but tore from his control the moment Pit accepted it.

Attempting To Establish Sympathetic Link...
Tier X Link Already Established.
Greater Essence Redirection Allowed.

The weight shifted yet again, and this time the chaos quietened. Felix did not stop, either. He snagged the Links that shone brightest from his Bastion, the threads of connection that had only grown larger with his months upon the Continent. And one that was still quite new. Vess. Evie. Harn. Beef. He held them up in the palm of his Will, and he asked a single question.

Do you accept this power?

The whisper of it sped down their Links like ghosts of his voice, moving faster than lightning...and returned to him just as quickly. The answer, unanimous.

Yes!

Felix gathered himself and reached, clutching all that purified power to himself, and hurled it into their vivid Links.

Attempting To Establish Sympathetic Links...
Tier III Links Already Established.
Essence Redirection Allowed.

Tier III Link Advanced To Tier IV!

Four cords, each a brilliant silver, were remade. The concentrated power of a Primordial thundered through them, racing toward his friends and transmuting their Links to a myriad of colors. He felt them all stiffen and scream, their own trials seizing their cores, but it was only a small portion of the Primordial's might. Still, it quieted the writhing maelstrom around him, though it left so much more for Felix to deal with himself. But that was fine—he had plans for the rest.

Fiendforge!

Once more, Felix split his attention. He held Pit's cracking core in one hand, and the wild energies of the disassembling Primordial in the other. With a third, shaking grip, Felix took hold of his own cores.

Here goes nothing. With the cleaver of his Intent, he split the conflicting, intermingling Essence and significance in half, diverting one portion to Pit...and the other to himself. His Companion's screams intensified, and Felix hesitated.

No! I can do this! Pit insisted. I can protect you!

Felix was forced to accept that, because the rest of the Primordial's potency slammed through his Divine Tree and into his dual cores directly. Pressure and pain assaulted him, unlike anything he had felt since the Ravager King...and so much worse. Essence roared as it burnt away, absorbed by the churning spin of his dual cores.

It would have been so much easier if he'd been able to feed some of it to his Hunger, but it was an impenetrable door. Instead, he forced it all into his cores, all the gargantuan flows of the Primordial. And just like with the Ravager King, Felix rotated his cores, spinning the rings of gel-like fire in opposing directions. The Essence and significance slammed down, growing his cores at a visible rate while Felix gritted his teeth so hard he felt a tooth crack. Spinning them was hard before, but now with his Mind and Spirit split in so many directions, it was torture to maintain it all. But Felix had no choice; it was this or be consumed by the sheer ferocity of it all.

Almost...there! The moment arcing prominences started flaring off of his two cores, Felix split his Will again. He felt all the balls he had in the air quiver and and almost topple, Fiendforge and Sovereign of Flesh and Relentless Resolution all burning bright, a hairsbreadth from failing. He screamed, grappling with the flaring tendrils of power from his cores—two from each—and hurled them out into the black of his core space.

Directly into two Skills. Sovereign of Flesh and Relentless Resolution.

They were both on the cusp, driven there by revelations and a sudden understanding...he could feel them about to advance, and with the right juice—

Sovereign of Flesh is level 75!
...
Sovereign of Flesh is level 78!
Adept Tier!

Relentless Resolution is level 75!
...
Relentless Resolution is level 77!
Adept Tier!

You Gain—
You Gain—

YES! he cried, just as Pit mimicked his triumph with a screech of righteous joy. Felix's overheating Mind sensed the tenku's power pulled inward, the opposite of Felix's process, until it condensed into a bright ball of victorious, furious melody.

Congratulations!
You Have Accessed Your First—ERROR—Second/////
ERROR
Recalculating...

First Evolution Accessed!
Path Detected!
You Walk The Path Of The Guardian Beast!
Primordial Influence Detected!
Adjusting Evolution Choices...

Felix's dual cores erupted in energy, burning up into his core space like a revivifying torch. Red-gold flame and blue-white lightning chewed up the Primordial's stolen flesh and spat it out as power, rotating it and pulling it inward to strengthen him. Claimed, it flared up once, twice, and then exploded outward in a shockwave of wild force.


* * *


Rahven Haim climbed to his feet and pressed an ungauntleted hand against his side. His armor had been ruined by the horrendous power of the dust storm, ground down to almost nothing in places and his cloak hung in tatters from his shoulders. The faintest of glows still clung to him, proof of his God's continual blessing...but the ritual had failed. He had failed.

Haim stared around him, uncomprehending. No one moved at all upon the battlefield, for the storm had done its work too well. He had failed, and his elite cadre of Paladins were dead to a man. None could have survived the onslaught of undead and insane heretics, and then the sheer insanity of the dead Primordial striking out against them all.

The indignity of it was almost too much to bear.

Someone moved in the distance and Haim narrowed his yellow eyes. His Perception was excellent, even for a Master Tier, and he picked out a familiar, long-limbed shape among the swirling dust and dispersing clouds of crackling Mana. Felix Nevarre.

His god had spoken to him. To him! For the first time in his long career, he had heard the direct voice of the Pathless and it had been as glorious as he had been promised. A voice like summer sun had caressed his Mind and Spirit as He had imparted a great duty upon Haim's shoulders: Felix Nevarre, this Unbound, must die.

Rahven Haim, High Justiciar of the Paladins of the Pathless was not a man who took oaths lightly. Yet he swore an Oath to kill the bastard Autarch without a single regret. I will do as you Will, Pathless. I will not fail you.

"Diurnal Lance!" he called out, and a spear of pure light Mana screamed across the intervening distance. It struck like lightning, faster than even his eyes could track, and hit the Autarch square in his chest.

Felix Nevarre gasped and took a single step back, his clothing consumed in a ball of lightborn flame...yet he stood, hand to now-bare chest. Unharmed.

What? That Skill has taken down other Masters! What did he do?

The man noticed Haim, finally, and stepped forward through the burning clouds of dissipating Mana. His legs trembled and blood dripped from his nose and hands. "I'm really getting sick of you," he muttered.

"Diurnal Lance!" Haim hurled a second spear of light at the man, this one packed with as much extra Mana as he could manage.

Felix batted it out of the air, still walking forward. "Stop that."

To his shame, Haim took a single, fearful step backward. "Monster. You're...you're a calamity. Unbound. We were told to bring your kind in, that to do so was the will of the Divine. But I will tell you this: the Pathless hates you. He has called for your destruction, Beast. Crucible of the Just!"

This time Haim pulsed one of his greatest Skills. A column of solid light manifested above their heads, a gallows axe shaped like the armored gauntlet of his order. Looping, Divine script covered it, imbuing it with a holy power that nothing short of a Grandmaster could survive. Its radius was such that Haim was going to be caught in it, but he no longer cared.

A breathless laugh bubbled up from the Unbound, and Haim curled his lip in disbelief and disgust. He's gone mad from fear. "We die together, then Beast."

"Beast? Nah," Felix panted. His legs had stopped trembling. "I'm just...some guy."

Haim threw his hand down, letting the Crucible drop. At the same time, a chaotic burst of swirling lights erupted from the Unbound's form, and a horror ripped free of its embrace. Directly into Haim's chest.

"That's the Beast."

Claws savaged him, tearing through his weakened armor and withered defenses. Haim tried to rally, to throw the huge beastoff of him, but a spike of vicious pain stabbed through his Mind, staggering him. Dust and flame and lightning descended onto the Justiciar, and he felt a final, scorching tear...

And then darkness.