Savage Awakening 230. Asura (II) (Patreon)

Just up the stairs— 

You have entered: Section 3-2 

Hall of the Ancients

They stood right outside the door of it—two pale walls. Giving away nothing. You couldn't see much beyond either.  

The Mini-Map showed a void beyond. Like its sight was blocked. 

Avery marched up to it and squinted at it for a bit.

"Uhh," she said after a little while. "Yeah—that thing's packed full of Monsters. And they definitely don't look like they're from here." 

According to her it was a bunch of Ogre-things. Meaty, spiked-club-wielding, drooling, red-eyed types. Cracking knuckles. All in the Level 270s.

"Yeah. Something tells me it's not a coincidence they're here," said Avery, wrinkling her nose. "They want to give you the business."

"Hmm," said Zane.

A pause.

"Soooo," said Avery. "What now?"

"I will give them the business," said Zane.

He felt no need to rest right now. He was fresh. And after the Guardian these sounded like light work. Nothing that could trouble him.

He cracked his knuckles.

It was time to clean house.

*** 

Grand Chieftain Helgax licked a fat drop of drool off his fangs. He was hungry—as were the rest of his Blood Guard. As was tradition, these twenty of his race's most elite warriors had starved themselves for ten days and ten nights before coming here. So their bloodlust would be at a peak. So they would fight like hungry rabid animals.

They were rabid enough as it was. 

The Chained One had given them this great honor. To portal down in secret from their dens in the 64th floor and crush a certain target. An uppity human man, it was said.

It was in the nature of Ogres to crush. There was nothing they liked to do better. This man of flesh and blood was, said the Chained One, a great hope of forces of the living—a man who could rise to one day be a powerful force at the peak of this Chaos Cycle, when the Jailbreaks came, and the Monster Waves could take to the world once more…

He could not be allowed to live.

Helgax had brought his very best. The very elite of the Blood Guards, bred from birth on the bloody battlefields of Lygar where one in ten survived—but only by slaughtering the other nine.

He appraised them with cracked red eyes, baring his teeth in a leery grin. 

Spiked steel clubs were clutched in fists big enough to crush human heads. Bone-necklaces hung round their tree-trunk necks, strung up with skulls. Their panting filled the air with noxious fumes. Dozens of red eyes, grinning slicked teeth, fat gobs of leaking drool… Purebred killing machines.

If they manage this feat, they would be greatly rewarded, the Chained One had promised! Helgax himself would receive a promotion to Monster Knight.

The thought alone was enough to drive him to slobbering frenzy. To receive a Bloodline—a splinter of a Heavenly Demon Bloodline—to receive a Weapon Soul to boot, to gain greater sentience and rise from the ranks of the rabble—it was any Monster's most fervent desire.  

So there his brethren waited. In ancient halls that once belonged to a mighty dwarven kingdom, halls lined with statues of their heroes and kings—all crumbled now. Broken. The ones left intact, his Blood Guard had smashed. They liked the sounds of breaking. 

Then—as one—they stiffened. And their panting grew heavier, quicker, making the hall a den of poison smoke—their ugly grins widened.

Their prey was coming. Stood before the grand doors.

It was a strange thing. Usually when approaching the unknown, humans would have a scent of cautious fear about them. A nervousness. Helgax could smell it from miles off. But this man… reeked of nothing.

Helgax frowned. It did not matter whether this human feared or not. Once he fell under Helgax's club, once he felt their overwhelming might, once the screaming began, once he realized he was trapped in a chamber of death…then the fear would come into him.

Helgax snorted gleefully.

The doors cracked. Started opening wide. And his brethren could hardly contain their slobbering; acid spittle dripped in wide hissing pools, melting chunks of floor. Their clubs started flaring with Earthen Laws, one by one, base Bloodlines burning in their veins… 

The man that stepped through was so large he might have been an Ogre himself. So wide he seemed to swallow up the space of the entrance. Rippling with muscle. Glowing brilliant-blue Chains wrapped his big fists. His eyes were pits of absolute black. 

The man's eyes narrowed. And he got to work.

Helgax was right.

There was a display of overwhelming might. 

A crushing. A screaming. BANG-BANG-BANG—whole bodies' worth of blood splattering down the halls...

Then the fear began.

*** 

Helgax limped his one good arm over the blood-slicked stone floor, crawling as best he could, whimpering. It was the only part of him that had not been crushed to pulp.

He was not even thinking then—he just had to get away— 

The hallway had been pristine at the start of it. Now every last inch was painted with many coats of deep red. The color of Ogre blood.

Then he heard the sounds coming closer. THUD. THUD. THUD.

The aura pouring out of that man was like nothing Helgax had felt—it might even compare to a Monster Grand Knight. 

The Chained One had sent them to die. 

Helgax shrieked, thrust out an arm—

An incredible force crashed over him. And he saw no more.

*** 

Reina brought up the rear cautiously, coming to get a look at the aftermath. Then Evan. Then Avery, eyes wide.

Zane scratched his head. Looked back at the hall, then back at his friends. Frowned. He had gotten blood on his head.

At least it was quickly vanishing. Going to essence. Pouring into him.

Level up!

Essence Level 253 -> 254 

"Uh. Y'know, big fella..." said Avery, blinking at him. "All I'll say is I'm sure glad you're on our side! ‘Cause…” 

She whistled. 

He glanced back down the hallway. It did kind of look like a horror movie. And there was lots of screaming... Hmm. 

Reina, meanwhile, had no reservations about it. They wanted to kill him. They were waiting to ambush him. They deserved what came to them—should have gotten worse, in her mind. She was very pleased it went the way it did. Somehow the caring part of her brain, which was most of her, quieted down when things tried to hurt Zane. She got too angry.

Zane enjoyed dominating. But Reina liked seeing him like that too—it was her favorite version of Zane. 

*** 

They made it through the wrecked hallway and into the next zone.

You have entered: Section 3-3

Royal Treasury

They turned a corner. Now the walls were made of pure gold. At the far end of this new hallway, a massive vault door was built deep into the precious metal. Covered in thickset locks. It had some kind of array seal over it. But that had lost most of its power by now. Thick streams of essence billowing from the other side… 

Treasure. Tons of it. 

Only, something guarded the door.

Grand Bullion Warden (Monster)

Essence Level 285

These dwarves really liked their golems. They built them chunky. This one was made out of some kind of solid gold. Gemstones made the joints, each a little fountain of power.

It came to life at the sight of him. 

Here he went again. 

Zane made to roll up his sleeves. Then he realized he was already shirtless. He shrugged, and waded in.

This one had pretty interesting powers. It could consume its own gemstone joints for energy. And it had so many cores, it could draw on a lot before it sputtered out.

The thing with absolute strength, though, was it had a way of making everything else irrelevant. 

In the end it didn't matter what powers this new shiny Warden had. Zane took out his chains and crushed it flat in five brutal strokes. When you crushed pretty much anything, they came out looking about the same.

Zane blinked at the flattened, sparking, groaning remains. He was still only breathing slightly heavy. His health hadn't even gotten under 75%. 

He did not find that very hard either. 

It was getting difficult to escape the conclusion that this First Floor had nothing left for him. He had outgrown it.

Reina was a little surprised too how easy things were going down… with how the Monsters had treated him, she would've expected them to stack stronger resistance. Maybe they already had—maybe they just hadn't thought he would grow this fast. Maybe they'd underestimated his Fourth Evolution.

Whatever the case, it was clear they were not ready for this new Zane.

Which was all the better. 

Down the hall, there seemed to be one last section. The final stretch—where Reina suspected they kept their nastiest stuff. 

Before then, though. 

Treasure. 

*** 

Zane tore the locks off the Dwarven Royal Treasury with a few casual swipes, grabbed the giant metal door, ripped it off its hinges, flung it casually behind them like a frisbee. It careened through the entrance hall, slammed through the grand doors, crashed to a halt somewhere in the far distance. 

They went on through. 

You would expect the dwarves to have tons of great steel. But what they came across still surprised him. 

It was a warehouse so big you couldn't see where it ended any which way, even up—a maze of shelves stacked high to the ceiling, all glittering… Zane's head was swimming. Everywhere he looked—rows upon rows of silver, gold, diamond.

A good chunk of it—likely most of it—was not good enough to be worth taking a bite of anymore for him. His body had reached too high a level. These were mostly Mortal-Grade S-rank Spirit Steels—nothing to him now. They kept walking, blinking at all the shiny, came across shelves of F-rank Earth Steels—but even those wouldn't do much for him anymore.

But the shelves went on and on. And soon, when they got to the furthest depths of it, they found the good stuff.

*** 

Stacked at the very end in great gleaming cubes…

Starsteel Ore [Earth (D)]

Prime-grade ore mined from Asteroid Belt YXN-B, of the Mount Steelheart Outer Faction. 

A shelf full of it. Stacked alongside blocks upon blocks of C-grade Mithril. 

Just looking at it was making Zane hungry. 

It was almost too much—even Reina was having trouble wrapping her head around it all. He wasn't sure he could finish it all if he tried.

He sure would try though.

After she got over the initial shock of it, Reina told him, with some excitement, she wasn't sure they would ever come across another stash like this. Even in the next few floors. They had better stock up while they could—and being Reina, she had brought lots of storage capacity to spare. Avery and Evan both got Interspatial Rings and scampered about lugging in steel by the rack-full.

For Zane, meanwhile, it was time for an experiment. To see just how much raw steel could fit in one Zane.

A dwarven kingdom's royal treasury, underground… he got a suspicion Reina was right. This could be one of the richest stocks they'd find in a long time. He would seize this chance.

Now that he thought about it, he had pretty much walked the realm. He had gone through the entrance, and crushed their Wardens. Gone through their cities and wrecked their fortresses. And stormed the castle now too. He had conquered all it had to offer him.

Now he got to claim his reward. 

*** 

Skill up!

Skill up!

Skill up!

The notifications came in a torrent. 

It took a full day and a full night to hit Zane's limit. And they did find out that he had one.

A notification popped up at a certain point—

Mythic Skill Cap XV has been reached! 

Upgrade to: 32 drops to advance 

It was a bottleneck he never thought he would hit.

In the meantime—

Behemoth Muscle XI -> XV

Four Levels of Behemoth Muscle. By now it was safe to say he had reached full-on overkill again. There was nothing here he felt he could not lift. He felt he could pick up a whole rack of steel blocks and sent it crashing into the ceiling if he liked. He could no longer gauge his strength adequately by the things of this realm. Only strong Monsters could offer his fists resistance now. 

Colossal Tendons VI -> XV

Nine Levels. If he leaped hard enough his head would go shooting through the ceiling. He had to stop Leveling every few hours to learn how to walk again—and even then it took a while to stop crashing into things…. 

Indomitable Hide IX -> XV

He had gotten a lot of blood on him today. None of it his own. He was curious to see if anything left here could even make him bleed now. 

Bastion Bone VI -> XV 

He knew he should not feel unbreakable. That was dangerous. Yet even he could not understand the limits of his body right now. 

It was a good thing he had hit some cap, anyway. He felt stuffed to the point of bursting. He had so much raw physical energy inside of him—it was almost too much. He did not know what to do with it all… 

Zane looked down at his hand. He knew the Monsters were watching him too. All this came because they tried to break him. He wondered what they were thinking, seeing what they had created. 

He wondered what they were thinking, knowing he was coming for them.